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McCord and if I can start off our discussion there is also the option should we decide to do that to simply ask ASB a the legislative committee to accept our previous years submittals so we can also exercise that option as we go through however I see a need for some discussion but it is very possible that we can enumerate some of the items that that see to us under each of the selected categories and then submit them at a later time to Gabby and ratify at a meeting prior to submission on May the 29th and one of the things that I would like to present to you as your let's play of representative is the items that at least have struck me as continuing and important ongoing items on the category number one that is adequately and equitably fun district schools to at least the national median as per student funding bullet number two and the three sub bullets seemed to me to be still very important to keep on the docket and in front of legislature and not that the others are not the others will possibly be submitted by other boards from other districts the other one that struck me was bullet number four on the second column related to career funding to a system that provides districts with appropriate stable annual budgeting ability reliability so under category one those are the items as things that would be paramount to us and we'll just take each category as as we complete our discussion in each of the individual categories so those are my recommendations and the ones I will be submitting to Gabi if you have any discussion please go right ahead dr.
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Sharon please tell us about yourself and why you believe that you are the best candidate for this position and why Mr Schools thank you during and welcome to all of you who are watching from your computers at home first of all I'd like to just acknowledge the awkwardness certainly when I began this process in pursuit of this position I didn't anticipate that we would be doing this virtually so I can't see any of you and you can see me but I'm just putting that out there so my name is Diego Sharon I have been an educator for over 25 years about about 18 of those as a classroom teacher and the rest of them in various forms is administrative work during those years I have developed and had the opportunity to have a broad range of experiences not only in in school settings and in different communities but also in different parts of the world I had the great pleasure of working in South America and in and in Thailand to help develop as part of the team humanitarian educational projects that underscores my commitment to social equity as a way to work as as schools as a vehicle for social equity and I think that's a really important part of my career and my work and my passion throughout my time as an educator I've had the opportunity to develop great many programs and I found that social equity is always at the forefront of those my attraction to Amherst and my profound belief that I am the best candidate for this goes beyond my love of Amherst which I've developed over the past year and in particular of Amherst middle school which I've developed the past year as the Dean of Students I have a genuine regard for the professionalism and of the of the staff and faculty and also a high regard for the students and they're striving as well I I believe that I'm the best candidate because those experiences have given me a real insight into what the issues at play are some of the challenges that we collectively as a community face and as a professional community in particular and looking at the school and particularly at a time of tremendous change I think it's beneficial to have someone who has relationships established with students and with staff alike and who has the capacity of ability to call upon and leverage those relationships in order to build more trust and to develop clear goals and a teamwork orientation towards working on those so that's that's why I feel I'm the best candidate besides my broad experience my connection to the community thank you please tell us what do you like about middle school students that's a great question you know I have worked at all levels I've worked in elementary schools I've worked in mill schools I've worked in high schools and I've even taught college-level courses for educators and the thing I like and really appreciate about middle school well there are many of them but I think the primary thing is that it is a really critical period in the life and the biography of students and it's a time when students can be supported in a way that really helps them to develop resilience ease that can carry them through not only the rest of their schooling experience but also the rest of their lives and it's a really critical period for for the opportunity to affirm students of all backgrounds and to really create a culture that teaches all of us not only to respect ourselves and to strive but also to respect others and to really find benefit and growth in those differences that we encounter at that age and developmentally I think it's it's a really important time to help students develop a picture of what it is to be not only a leader and an educator but also just a person of integrity and modeling that for them with them is a really important part of why I enjoy that because I feel that they're very responsive and and there's there in certain ways aching for that kind of model in their lives in in their schools in in their communities and and that's one of the things I really enjoy about working with middle school students I also find them to be tremendously creative it's a when they retain some of the goofiness if you will of of being a child but there they're also developing the critical thinking capacities that will become more refined as their life progresses and so in that regard it's a it's a very powerful and potentially impactful time for them to to develop themselves and that's what I really love about working with middle school students thank you if you are chosen to become the next principal at the middle school how will you support students with mental health disorders you know I think one of the things that I always focus on has as an not only is it educator but specifically as an education leader is the development of a culture that's supportive to all individuals and I think one of the things that's a particular challenge is working in a community with so many people and recognizing that there are different needs that everyone brings with them and and so I think first and foremost developing and working really hard to develop a culture that is supportive of all students and their needs is really important that goes that's particularly true of our most vulnerable students and I think I think that speaks to your question the other thing I think is really important is to focus and into focus on relationships my experience is that relationships that students develop with adults and with one another are really one of the most important vehicles for learning in the middle school setting and and so to really work on supporting the development of relationships through a purposeful engagement of culture and and through really to really work on developing mechanisms that allow those relationships to shape how we interact with one another I I was having a conversation with a colleague who's a administrator as well and we were talking about the specific social emotional needs that are present for students during this time of so much uncertainty and and in talking about it we really were affirming this idea of relationships being that vehicle we've talked about teachers who are adapting to this new online learning environment and creating leadership and lessons that none of us thought were possible before this and and so being able to focus on those opportunities being able to engage students and really being able to deepen relationships are the things that I find inspiring and they can serve all students particularly the students that you mentioned thank you how how will you close the equity gap for students you know I think that's a one of the things that I feel is really important about my intentions and and my desire to take this position on at Amherst I think one of the challenges that Amherst no school in particular faces is that there doesn't seem from my experience to have been in place over an extended amount of time very clear goals around this particular issue or very clear understandings so my intention is to embody the role not only of school leader but also of lead learner and really to support the development of clear and transparent understandings about what those issues actually are what they look like how they manifest and and to really have clear ideas about what we as a community as a professional community in particular but also as a community as a whole community are doing to address these and I think it's a it's a situation where it's really important to be able to talk the walk in the sense that it's one thing to know what we're doing but to have everyone in the building be able to talk about what we're doing and use the same language and have clarity about what those things are is really important and and I and it's my goal and and my intention to really work as a team leader but also as a lead learner to identify the issues in play particularly around social equity and to name them and to to engage in a few initiatives because I think sometimes we can get muddled with too many a few very purposeful initiatives to address this particular goal and to revisit them in a team as a team regularly and to report out to the community about those the progress and to really be consequent with communication to be transparent with communication and to really have this goal of developing social equity and closing that gap be a a critical part of what we address in this team setting really bringing on the expertise that we have in the building and engaging it and and having a very intentional approach to doing that and so I think I think one of the one of the things that can be very frustrating about working with goals like this which are huge and and are multifaceted is that the change is incremental and and but the reality is that incremental change is is the only change it's available to us and so if we don't keep our eyes on the prize of this change and continue to report out and develop a movement around it then then I think we have the run the risk of losing the thread and I think to be quite honest one of the things that I've seen here is that is that there hasn't been that continuity or clarity of action on a consistent basis and so I would I would hope to bring that and I would hope to bring that in a way that allows us to work on this goal over many years with myself guiding and supporting that again not only as a school leader but also as a lead learner so that I could also model the kind of engagement and vulnerability that is an important part for all of us as educators to work on as we grapple with this difficult issue thank you what is your plan of action to ensure that english-language learners and students with special needs make significant progress you know that's again that's a great question and I and I think it's important to realize that whether we're talking about a teaming gap or we're talking about English language learners or regardless of what population we're talking about what we're seeing is that in the absence of a of a really comprehensive and cohesive plan of action action what we're seeing is that is that we're not continuing through with a a thorough and well thought-out process of school improvement and and so my I would assert that in the in the presence of this kind of cohesive plan this would be an improvement for all students and and so one of the things that I think is is difficult to recognize sometimes is that the beneficial things that are that are going to be happening need to be things that are seen school-wide as having the effect of benefiting all students and every single adult in the building needs to be on that same page and that that kind of teamwork and that kind of cohesion is critical to developing change in success in a school setting and in the absence of that what you might have very good things happening in different parts of the school but if they're not happening in all parts of the school then effectively what you're doing is you're you're having one hour of a student's day be supporting growth or a couple hours of student day supporting growth but in the absence of those things being manifest in every single part of the students day what you have is students having to learn different systems students having to learn different skills and instead of learning similar skills or the same skills that will benefit them in their math class in their science class in their history class in their art class and the PE class etc and so and so my plan of action is to work collaboratively with with a group of teachers and educators in the building who have a strong sense and a strong impulse to understand these ideas and to develop to develop tools and our to use tools that are available to us in order to and in order to make sure that equity at all levels is something that we're bringing and so so whether we're talking about the achievement gap with ëall students or with any other group of students this should be a concerted effort that's happening throughout the building and in our capacity to be able to understand what those solutions are collectively and to agree upon them and to implement them and to speak with not only with cohesion but also with clarity and with transparency about our progress along that network is I think what I would call my plan so I don't have a plan that's in place because I believe very much in the idea that every single school community has a plan that is the ideal fit for that and my goal is to work to develop that plan in concert with the tremendous professionalism and expertise that already exists in the building and and to work to implement that plan plan in a way that is that is like I said cohesive but also in a way that allows all students to understand and clearly what's what are the successful see what are the skills the word suggesting will help them engage them in success and of course part of that is revisiting the work and revisiting it in a way that that allows all of us to be able to understand where our strengths are manifesting and and what adjustments we need to be making in real time to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all the students thank you with change in administration comes changes in policy procedures and methodologies how do you plan to streamline existing systems and utilize staff feedback when implementing new initiatives you know one of the things that I have experienced in many places is that when there is a change in administration and particularly when there is change in administration that happens regularly it can become very confusing because if if a group of teachers were working very hard and purposefully five years ago to engage a practice that was being supported by leadership and they did a very good job of that and then two years later it's a whole different system I think I think that can be very dangerous for for the ability of a school to continually adapt and certainly there has been a lot of change in Amherst middle school I believe that it's really important to develop a a collaborative and clear approach to addressing the identified issues that are present in the community as a team and to very clearly state what those are not only to ourselves consistently and to one another consistently but also to the community and to have those goals and those methods engage and become part of what we talk about how we communicate to each other and what our expectations are for one another as professionals in the school building and so and so my goal for for implementing my leadership in the school isn't to throw out everything that came before and to say this is my system but to really have open and and and and trusting dialogues with professional stakeholders in the school whether they be parents or teachers or the the para staff or whoever and and really identify what are the things that are working what are the things that we see as as continuing to be a benefit to students and and and and and what are the things that we don't see and and so my goal would be in that setting to be able to determine what these are and to work with fidelity in order to make sure that those are things that are happening across the board and and the the positive attributes of that is that though if those are widely held and widely understood solutions that are being proposed too widely held and widely understood problems and those are gree agreed upon by all the professionals and and all the teachers in the building then it gives us all the opportunity to engage in continual renewal of what our goals are and when our roles are and the within those goals and also to to work at addressing them in a way that that is a benefit regard of the leadership that is or isn't in place it would be my goal to to become the principal and to be a long-standing principal at the middle school but in in the event that I was principal and something happened and I wasn't there five years later my hope would be that those goals would have been taken up by enough people in the building and understood to be positive and proactive and successful ways to work at our collective goals that they would continue to be worked on regardless of who sat in the principal's office thank you what is your experience with performing arts departments and what vision do you have for the role of Performing Arts in the middle school that's a that's a great question um you know I think I think one of the really powerful things about the arts in general and and Performing Arts in particular is that they give students an avenue and an opportunity to try different things on I myself and I'm an artist I'm I'm a mediocre musician and someone who has worked for years to become a painter and and so I really value the role of art and I really value the opportunities that can happen from that kind of outside the box thinking that is available to us when we engage that side of our brain that asks us to be creative and to not be self-critical and and I think that practice in and of itself of employing one's creativity and to do it in a way that is supported by peers and engaged in collectively by peers and adults is a really powerful model for for the kinds of successes in community that I feel really mark and that can have a long-lasting impact on not only who we are but we are in relation to to our world and others so in terms of of supporting the performing arts I think it's really important that arts be brought to students in a way that they can be appropriately managed I think I think if if someone has a drama class or someone has a chorus class and the way that it's it's done is such that that the classroom management is the most critical piece of the success of that you're setting yourself up for a lot of a lot of real challenges because of course being in a vulnerable space in student in a community of young people is not a comfortable space for a lot of middle school students so it has to feel safe if I'm going to elevate my voice and sing I want to feel that I'm not going to be made fun of if I'm going to take on a a certain role as a character and maybe act different than I normally would and and have that witnessed by a group of my peers I want to make sure that that's recognized as something that is a an attempt at art not not as something that that should be targeted or singled out and so and so I think it's really critical for the integrity of Performing Arts in particular that it be done in such a way that's supportive and supported I'm sorry and that really becomes that safe space for young people who are developing themselves who are developing themselves and not only as as thinkers and as doers but also as as people who whole human beings who are going to be trying different things on and and elaborating themselves and hopefully becoming more and more of themselves as time passes I think that opportunity to to feel safe in a performing arts space is absolutely and can be absolutely transformative and and and I don't mean only to an individual but also to a community and so I I you know I I feel like I have a very strong value for the arts and and I as a parent I have always made sure that my my kids are involved in the arts and one of the first things that I ask students when when I would meet them in my role as dean at Amherst middle school is I would ask them hey what do you like to do do you play an instrument do you like to draw and and I actually musically was quite a bit there were there are various different art projects that I engaged in with students at different times well I did painting with some students I and and I always marveled it and what it is and the power of having a young person make something beautiful genuinely beautiful and to watch the pride that creates in them and to and to watch how empowering those actions can be and so I I think I would I would like to work to further develop the role of Performing Arts and at Merce middle school and to have that be an important part of what everyone does at school thank you if we have a period of time next year when we have to rotate between in-person and online instruction what will you do to ensure that students are engaged in their learning and what will do you do to ensure that their social I can excuse me social emotional well-being is being taken care of or addressed yeah you know that's that's a really important question to be thinking about right now and and one of the things that's interesting about that is that all of us collectively who are educators but also your parents at home with our kids are engaging this question for the very first time you know when people say these are unprecedented times they're not kidding I have a daughter who's graduating from an architecture program next weekend and there's no graduation there's nothing really momentous to Demark this tremendous work that she's been committing herself to for a number of years and so and so I think I think this question of how we support students through this has a lot to do with demonstrating to them our willingness to work hard at being resilient being creative being thoughtful and being purposeful in these times and I and and Mme unfortunately there are students who have more natural or socialized capacities for this and there are students who have more abilities and supports for these things and so I think what's really an economic is in a school community the systems that are responsive the systems that are proactive and the systems that are beneficial in order to help students through this difficult time I I can't predict what's going to happen over the following school year because there are so many variables that are taking place in our community and in this nation and world at this time that will have a very strong impact on that I think we're all seeing that but as a school leader what I would what I would guarantee is then I would roll up my sleeves and work very hard with a group of concerned and engage educators in order to make sure that all students were not only being given the tools that they need in order to be successful but also the the the support from from people whether that means Vittorio didn't I know that district has worked very hard to make sure that everyone has access not only to a computer but also to a connection to the Internet and I'm very proud of the work that's happened at a district level to ensure that and and what that creates as they're known as for us as educators to be involved in the day-to-day lives of of all the students in the to the extent that that they need but also to the extent that's possible and and a lot of that has to do with creativity I've been very impressed and and and very touched by the kinds of work that I see teachers doing and offering and the opportunities for students to bring themselves to the classroom experience and even to see each other in in the quote unquote classroom the virtual classroom in a way that is affirming of their of their humanity and and and and fun as well and I think those things are and can be a part of what we're bringing to the classroom and and again the more we allow students to to be open to be vulnerable in in those settings that's going to enable learning and and and you know and I think the other piece is to like I said develop those systems that are in support of students we continue to week I'm sorry we continue to meet as a as a school in various ways through this whole situation and and part of that is to ensure that that there are students who are being left behind and and I know that I as well as others have done a lot of work over the past few weeks to reach out to students and their families who are who are not saying involved in learning as much as we'd like or not seeing them present in the in the classrooms or the synchronous opportunities to meet up with other students and and you know and sometimes those those communications end up giving us the opportunity to be creative and about developing systems or or adapting our systems to support parents and families and students who have needs that are outside of you know the the the most typical kinds of needs that we that we're seeing and so I think you know I think it's important to remain flexible to be creative and and to be diligent and bring our will to this work particularly now because because there are no you know there there aren't education departments that have been teaching us how to teach in this in this environment it's it's really about us as professionals bringing our skills and again our will to to this new work what are your new during I just want to there are some questions that I'm seeing here would it be appropriate for me to read those are those we're gonna get to them soon okay great I just wanted to make sure we didn't leave any out mm-hm so what are your fundamental beliefs as to what instruction should look like at the middle school level yeah I you know I think I think my fundamental belief is the instruction should be responsive and and I think that responsive instruction looks different in different settings I I have taught in a lot of different schools and as a teacher I have always taught differently because I have a different group of students in front of me I have even when I'm teaching at a school and my morning class they're gonna be different than the class that I might have been learning the exact same thing in the afternoon and so and so I I always really value the role of or I should say the value of being responsive to the students that you have in front of you and so any any I think any preset ideas that one has about what a classroom should look sound or feel like actually limit our ability to be responsive and so I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to evade that question because I think it's it's a it's a good question but but i but I do think that within a particular school there could be agreed-upon norms about how we're teaching certain things or are the skills that we see as being most beneficial and wanting to have those in place in across the curriculum in various classroom settings and things like that but again I think those those are elaborated in dialogue and they're in professional dialogue with teachers who are being responsive to the to the to the real needs of their students and and within that having the flexibility to acknowledge that there are different strengths that are present in in our in each of our students and so and so I think the you know the the most important thing is that classrooms are responsive to the needs of their students and the teachers are supported in being responsive to those needs in ways that enable learning by all students thank you what is your view about discipline in the middle school in your response please address issues such as cell phone use Halloween orbs and expectations around kindness you know kindness is is an undervalued trait sometimes oftentimes I would say and and I think kindness is one of the things that that any student who's had a conversation with me over this past year may have heard me ask if if I if they felt they were being kind when they engage in a particular action and the reason I say that is because I think I think it's it touches something very human in all of us when we experience kindness from another person that being said I also know that as and particularly having been the Dean over this past year there were many many times when when when when students were acting in ways that were perceived as being unkind and in some and in many of those cases they were they were actually being unkind and and I also admit that that can be a very subjective thing based on on people's experiences and and people's perceptions and so so it's a very complicated picture but but I do believe strongly that that middle school is a time for learning many different kinds of things and one of the things that we learn in middle school is how to behave in a way that's productive and inappropriate and also kind in various settings and and it's also a time when there are increased freedoms that students are are are coming upon and so I think it's very important to be proactively instructive I think it's very important to clearly state the expectations for behavior and I think it's also very important to work in a way that allows discipline to be instructive and and not purely punitive in my role is as Dean of Students I had the opportunity to work with teachers in developing ways that that students could be could be restorative in the way that they redressed actions that they engaged in that may have been unkind or may have been may have detracted from the learning environment of others or whatever and that wasn't always easy for a number of reasons but but I think it's it's really important to to have as the foot as the fundamentals at that middle school is a place for learning learning includes not only the facts that we learn and the skills that we learn but it also learns how we behave in different settings and you know that ability that that I have and that then that and that all of us as adults develop to be able to switch our behavior Minh and behave differently in different social situations is something that doesn't isn't instinctual it's something we all have to learn and I think middle school is a place to learn that and and to develop ways to help students see that to develop responses to students behavior that are appropriate clear and fair but also instructive I think is is a really important part of doing that and and to the extent that that we can as a professional community develop agreement about what those goals are and and what the appropriateness is related to to cellphone use to behavior in the hallways and to really clearly state those expectations and to be really consistent and thorough about implementing those and and supporting not only students but also teachers and all adults in and having that classroom that hallway space those all the spaces in the middle school will be part of what you know what what is our learning environment is a really important part of how I would see discipline being enacted you know I I have I certainly have my own experiences and my own values around the use of technology and and all those things and and I would be happy to communicate those but but what's more important I think is to be able to develop shared norms around what those things entail in a school community and and to recognize in discussion that we're not going to be developing a perfect system because such a system doesn't exist but to make commitments as adults in a school to one another about about these norms and to and to recognize that it's important that they be fair and to commit to those I think is what what I would seek to do as a school leader thank you the next question says and what is your vision or what thoughts or ideas do you have for bringing a sense of joy compassion empathy for each other and unity to the middle school at the student level staff level and for the whole school thank you for that question I think um you know I think one of the things that that I consistently experienced within myself this year is a wish for more joy when when I was in school I felt like there was a dearth of the kind of celebration that enlivens the culture of a school I think these celebrations happened they have been here and there but they but they weren't consistent and and so so I I have a lot of ideas for for how to celebrate people you know the the public address system is a fantastic way to have shared celebrations on an on a regular basis in a way that that honors the work of not only adults but students in the building I I was always surprised when I learned through the school grapevine or by having conversations with students or teachers about the accomplishments that students were engaged in outside of school and and and it wasn't surprising to me that students did those things it was just surprising that those things weren't really brought to the school you know one of the things I I mentioned earlier that I really love about this age of students middle school students is is their willingness to be goofy their willingness to to be joyous and and and I was you know I was wanting to have opportunities for that to be practiced in the school setting in a way that actually added not detracted to the learning environment having regular spirit weeks for example where students have the opportunity to dress up on certain days in and pajamas or whatever it is those are small gestures that just create an environment of joy I think as a school leader I would I would bring joy and celebration on a regular basis whether it was through through engaging and interacting with students in the classroom setting on the whole school setting but really enacting those things as part of how we how we live and how we how we engage in the development of culture we all have a need to to celebrate to identify things that are positive and and to recognize them as positive and in doing that you also create it you know it's it's it creates more more positivity and so it's it's a real win-win I believe to be engaged in doing that and and it's uh and it's you know was one of my a very common experience that I had wishing for more of that and and and unfortunately I think that was a shared experience of many people in the building shared and there was certainly plenty to be joyous about and to celebrate one of the things that's difficult about that is to do it it takes planning and takes follow-through by adults in order to make sure that it's done in a way that's appropriate and safe and and and fun for all and so to prioritize that to bring that to the forefront is is one of the things that I would seek to do in terms of really developing a culture that's supportive of learning of learning so but also supportive of of engagement and I think that engagement really needs to be brought through various methods and and an important part of that is by bringing fun and then I would really enjoy bringing more of that thank you as principal communication with families students and teachers is key how will you communicate communicate effectively with each of these stakeholders yeah I absolutely believe that and and you know one of the things that I had the opportunity to experience this year and at middle school is the need for those things I felt like there were really important things ideas principles but also really important celebrations that should have been shared could have been easily shared with the entire school community that weren't and so one of the things I've thought into quite a bit and and have already began enacting and practicing on developing and creating templates for is regular communication from the principal's office in the form of a newsletter to the to the school community I think having a regular and and continual communication that parents could could rely upon as a way to get information about what's going on in the school and there's a way to share in the celebrations of certain things and also to hear about the growth and progress that that were working on and experiencing as as a professional group of educators I think is really important I think communicating you know I think that that communication in the form of a regular newsletter would be something that they would have the audience not only of parents but also as students as well I think having regular announcements on the public address system in a way that respected learning times and learning but also in a way that gave information to students about important things that would be important and and I think really being creative about utilizing some of the communication methods that we have at our disposal there are some monitors and in the in the lobby that I think can be utilized more effectively to communicate important ideas there's an opportunity to have announcements when you have all the students in the cafeteria all the seventh graders and at one moment in eighth graders after that you know I think there are a lot of ways to really leverage the opportunities to do exist to to communicate and and I think not only having regular communications and effective communications but really creating those systems and conventions so that teachers and adults and students could reliably understand that they're there there are some communications that they can rely upon that that that are going to be happening on a regular basis and and I think in the absence of that what you experience is a lot of confusion and a lot of tension and anxiety because if there is an event that's happening let's say next week and there isn't an understanding about when communication about that event will be received and if it's not if it's not done in a way that's proactive and it's not done in a way that is respectful of all the changes that people have to manage in a building then you end up really undermining the ability of of adults to do their job and and of of people to do their job not only as teachers but also as students and so regular expectation after our regular communications about expectations about norms but also about the the challenges and successes that we're facing it's my hope that if I'm given the opportunity to be the principal to school that then all the all the parents in the community will will experience communications from from me about my thoughts and my hopes and wishes and and and also the recognitions of the challenges that we're facing on a regular basis so that it becomes a collective mission that we're all engaging in and then we're all working on in order to improve the school community for the for the benefit of all students thank you how do you foresee your leadership style influencing teacher instruction and how have you supported teachers in meeting the needs of all students so I'm a very collaborative leader and what that means to me is that I don't have the belief that I understand or know the solutions are the best way to do things I I do feel like if I was put in almost any situation I could come up with solutions for those things but but my commitment to collaboration as a leader means that at the very basis very fundamental of my leadership has to do with respecting the expertise and the experience of others and so I wouldn't be wanting to influence teacher instruction in a specific way but I would work very hard to engage and develop a shared vision of what is good teaching in this community in the school in the setting and how that should be enacted and to and and once those things are developed in a collective way then you have the opportunity to really bring then I would have the opportunity to really bring my leadership to bear on making sure that there's fidelity with that and so and and so in my role as as dean of students this year it was it was often challenging because I wasn't in the leadership role and I didn't have the opportunity to really be as collaborative or as as supportive as I would have liked to have been a number of times because I was supporting the vision that existed and that was being communicated from the leadership and sometimes that was that was genuinely frustrating not only for myself in the role of Dean of Students but also I think for teachers who were recognizing a need and and and perhaps in conversation with myself recognizing a way to address I need but maybe not necessarily feeling empowered to do that in a way that that that was supported throughout the school and so and so I think I think to answer that question I think it's important to recognize that my collaborative leadership style is one that would seek to to bring shared understanding about what is effective teaching and to bring that to bear in a way that that was supported throughout the school and to create support and accountability in a way that enables all all teachers in the community to really enliven their role in in that part part of that learning for the benefit of the whole school and so so I look forward to being able to engage and and really have the opportunity to hear those needs from teachers and students alike and to to be able to in some cases communicate that how those needs and fit into our shared vision of how we're engaging in improvement and and to really support the development and creation and and engagement of methods that will allow that to be enlivened in the entire school and I think that's you know at the heart of what I what I seek to do is to create partnership between the administration and the faculty in a way that allows all of us to really bring our efforts together and and to really work together as a team and and I think there's tremendous capacity in in the in the Faculty of this president at the school to do that there's tremendous expertise and and there's tremendous and genuine goodwill and I think when you have those things it really it really speaks to the potential that I see in in the school and something I'm genuinely excited for I I feel strongly actually that with with support with with collaborative guidance and leadership and with a willingness to be a learner and to enact that as a lead learner I I feel genuinely excited and hopeful about the kinds of growth that can happen in at merce middle school with my leadership thank you please discuss oops you may have taken or will take to include restorative practices at the middle school thank you you know earlier I spoke about the importance of having middle school be at a time of learning and and I think and I think that's that's the framework through which I see every aspect of of the middle school experience for students and and I think it's also at the heart of how I envision and see restorative practices existing in the school setting I had the opportunity this year as dean of students to really to really lead on the implementation of restorative practices and and what I mean by that is is just that that clear idea that that discipline has to be an opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes because all of us make mistakes and when we have the opportunity to understand how those mistakes impacted community and and to offer our energies in reparation of those offenses that we may have committed then then it gives us a an opportunity to turn something that could be otherwise in a different paradigm just a time of castigation or a time of being singled out and and and and and not and and not experiencing learning but perhaps developing resentment and those kinds of things I think that that does a tremendous amount of negativity to a community just like anything what that is that is involved in the in the development of social capital like getting in trouble punishment those kinds of things there's there's a real opportunity in the correct application of of discipline policies to actually grow and increase that not only the kindness but also the genuine goodwill that is present in a community I know that as a as a Dean I made mistakes I know that in my experience as a teacher I have made mistakes and and I know that if I'm afford the opportunity to be the principal I will also make mistakes and it's a commitment that I have to myself and not only in my professional life but also in my personal life to recognize that making mistakes is part of being human and and one of the most human things like I have found to do is to admit when I have a mistake and to make a genuine commitment to myself to not repeat that mistake because I understand how that mistake may have impacted others and and so and so I would really seek to broaden the reach of restorative justice and and restorative principles not only in the discipline and immersed in the school but also enacted in in every corner of the school and in the classrooms and and in all ways because I think it's very important that we have a to experience accountability as a growth experience and as something that is that is actually nurturing not just something that is painful and difficult to experience and and to the extent that I that I have been able to do that as dean I've certainly tried to do that imperfectly and and have a lot of ideas about how I could have been better at that work and and was constantly trying to grow from those but I don't I don't I don't think he could be underestimated how valuable and the other side of it how damaging it can be when a young person particularly someone who's genuinely learning something is punished without the opportunity to have that be a learning experience I think it's very damaging and I think we can see this president in in a lot of our systems that we have across the country they have to do with discipline and and the the supposed implementation of what's often called justice and I think and I think the the value in restorative justice is that it actually recognizes the short and long term impacts of of how justice has been implemented in a way that values all community members and and recognizes the role that we all have to play in the development of community thank you the next question has many parts after I asked these questions I will move to the questions in the chat so the first part says can you give an example of a change you have led in one of your schools what strategies did you use to engage staff and teachers and to bring people through the process well start there okay that was in too many parts thank you okay okay so so I'll start with those so I had I had a really I had the real privilege in Southern California to work at a school that as head of the middle school that was specifically trying to address a very underserved population the community and and and one of the things that we recognized was that these students in order to become part of the school you had to have been expelled from the school district and there's a very large school district in Southern California and so and so there are unfortunate a lot of students who had been who found themselves in that role and and we recognized early on that these students were not experiencing generally experiencing success in the classroom setting and so we really wanted to be thoughtful and and purposeful about how we brought learning to these students and so as part of that we spent a great deal of time in conversation with with teachers at the school and we explored different things or happening educationally in different communities and and we settled upon project-based learning as a way to upend the kind of normal paradigms that existed in the kind of didactic classroom setting that a lot of the students hadn't been successful in before but we knew the project-based learning was a very difficult reform to implement because it does fundamentally address or change the paradigm of teacher as giver of knowledge and student as receiver of knowledge which is a paradigm that to be fair many of us who are educators have have been brought up under and so and so and of course we bring that to our experiences educators as well our experiences students and and it just so happens that many of us who are educators were were successful students and so it's sometimes harder for us to to understand or to empathize with students who aren't successful because that wasn't our experience and that was certainly the case in this setting and so and so once we settled upon project-based learning as a way to try and address and and significantly alter the way instruction was delivered in the classrooms we knew that implementing that would be an another difficult thing I remember working with very successful teachers who said oh yeah I do project-based learning already because at the end of a unit students have to create a poster and and so there are all these assumptions that were in place my word project-based learning is I won't go into the details of it but I'll just briefly summarize it in in saying that the the in project-based learning the project becomes a vehicle for learning and through the enacting and and and and the the the through the project itself the learning happens so instead of for example having a unit on democracy you might work with students to develop a voter registration drive and through the work of developing a voter registration drive students are going to end up learning a lot of the same things that they would learn if they were sitting in class and reading books and documents and hearing lectures about the history of democracy and voting but they're doing that based on on the work of developing this project at the same time they're also developing collaborative skills and leadership skills and all these and citizenship skills and all these soft skills that that have tremendous value in our own communities but in workplaces these days and so and so thankfully we had a lot of support from the district and we had the opportunity to work over weeks in the summer on really understanding and developing capacities in teachers around what was and what was in project-based learning and there was a lot of learning that took place the part of teachers and and once we were able to develop clear and shared understandings of what project-based learning was and wasn't then we had the tools at our disposal ready to help us begin to implement this kind of learning with our students but then it was important to really make sure that this was met on an ongoing basis in a way that allowed all this energy that was being built up and all this excitement that was being generated over the summer that allowed it to have life and and so in my role as a middle school leader I had the opportunity to to to become trained in and to deliver regular professional development to the faculty about project-based learning but I think one of the most important things was that we developed a practice of using certain protocols so that teachers had the opportunity in a in a protocol setting had the opportunity to share their progress their insecurities and their and their and their triumphs with one another in a setting on a regular basis that allowed them to get useful and constructive feedback on where they felt they were falling short and and so these systems had to be developed but they also had to be carried on over over an extended amount of time and and and it was actually really amazing and and work that i'm very proud of that this school was able to implement over the over a you know a relatively short amount of time and by that I mean a couple years a very strong capacity and culture of project-based learning that was able to dramatically improve and address some of those same achievement gap issues that we talked about earlier in this conversation by giving students the opportunity to work with teachers who were engaged in continual professional growth and professional development and to celebrate those triumphs with one another to communicate those at regularity to the community and to involve the community in being able to see the work the fantastic work that was being done by students that that didn't that hadn't really had the experience of of being quote unquote successful in the school setting and and and so if if any one of those things weren't present if if it wasn't if it wasn't regularly reinforced if there wasn't agreed-upon norms and practices that that the teachers in the school felt were have a shared feeling of being critical to this growth if all those things weren't present then you wouldn't have had that kind of success and and you know and I'm very proud of the fact that that success continues and and and that the school has has had for for a number of years tremendous growth based on this implementation of project-based learning that continues to impact the way it's happening it that's cool thank you you seem to have addressed the other two parts of the question so I will move on to some of the questions in the chat thank you we have wonderful how well it says do you believe that a principal should know all the students names and how they are pronounced also what percentage of students do you know yeah that's um that's a difficult question in in the sense that you know one of the things that was my experience at at the middle school this year was that in in August when I arrived there were nearly five hundred people that I hadn't met before and and I think it was a really difficult thing for me personally to get to know all the students particularly because I was often viewing students in in the from from the perspective and the view of the Dean in working intensively with some students and not at all with other students I do think it's it's a it's a justified and valuable goal for a school leader to know all the students in a school and I would certainly want to do that and and I would seek to do that and I would admit to probably making mistakes around doing that you know even there there were a number of times when I when there were students who who I knew and and and you either because either because it was a name I wasn't terribly familiar with or it was a name that was or someone who I hadn't spoken to in a while I wouldn't immediately recall that name and at times it would be frustrating for me and certainly apparently from students as well but but I think I think that's a that's an admirable that would be that'd be a really valuable goal I can I can also say that one of the things that's a very strong influence on me is has to do with my first job as a teacher when I was when I was in my mid-20s I started teaching and and I was a teacher at a school in in California there was a high school and I had the really good fortune to work with the principal named our londo Smith was still a mentor and a friend and and one of the things that I found most inspiring about him was besides the fact that he spent so much time with me as a new teacher helping me understand what my role as a teacher was and engaging me in conversations and he seemed to have endless amounts of time for me even though he had so many demands on him but it was it was the fact that he walked around the school and he did know every single student and this was a school that was much bigger than it granted it had four grades it was in high school but it had about 1200 students and and he knew every single student and had developed relationships with with many of the students and and that left a really powerful impression on me and and I also remember how successful he was at communicating with students and and really being able to carry through and carry forward with us with those conversations and so one of the things that I have made as a commitment to myself is that if I'm given the opportunity to be the principal at the school is that I would spend spend time studying the yearbook and and getting to know all the students in the school so that I could really be able to speak to all of them and and and and not say excuse me or whatever but but actually address them by name and I think I think that that's that's a fair expectation and one that I would work to meet one of the one of the funny things that happen this year is that so my first name is Diego I think you can see that on the screen right here Letta but because I was Dean there were a number of students who called me Dean Sheeran and I think a lot of people thought that my first name was Dean and so from time to time I still get called Dean by people within the school and that's kind of a funny thing and and it's and it's one of the things that always makes me laugh but anyway yes that's I would I would love to know every student's name thank you so we have another student who said what would you change about the middle school if anything yeah well I I think I think I think there is a there are a lot there's a lot of change that's being that's happening that's not coming from within but it's coming from without and so so I think to a certain extent trying to keep as much about the middle school that then we value but really working hard to try and change the things that don't serve us is an important part of the work that I would like to try and do I think I think I would like to make it a place that's that that feels safe for all students I would I would love to make it a place where kindness is something that that we all express to one another and and I would really like to make it a place where everyone feels comfortable in every part of it and and the students who have our time with that have the recognition that there are places and and and adults that they can reach out to in order to to feel safer more secure and also to feel supported and all those things and so there's a lot of things that I think are really good about about arms and and what happens there and and certainly the students are an important part of that but I think just amplifying the good and and trying to work on making sure that the kindness rings through every hallway is an important part of what I would want to bring so yeah so and that's a lot thank you we have nine minutes left and our time that we have told the community that we would have this meeting and there are quite a few questions I will get to one that says how accessible will you be during the day for students to come and talk to you about issues they have that's a great question one of the things that I would like to do is to you know certainly as as principal and as and in any role that you play in the school there are certainly times when you can't be available for students but what I would like to do is is to have regular office hours so students know hey these are the three or four times a week when I know I can walk into the principal's office and and be heard and so again communicating those making those available to everyone so that it's understood and and and being consequent in following through with being present for those times is something that I plan to do thank you we have a question what identity do you want arms to have district-wide citywide statewide that's a that's an interesting question I like it I feel like I would like to I would like arms to be known as a school where all students are valued where kindness is an important part of the culture and where where students are challenged in a way that allows them to reach reach further to try harder but also supported in a way that makes them feel successful and so so for me I think I think the the those things will go a long way I also it's also really important to me that arms is a school that that is fair where fairness is an important value and I think that's an important part of kindness that that maybe I haven't stated as explicitly as I would like you know I think it's it's natural and developmentally appropriate for for middle school aged students to lament the lack of fairness but I but I also think that that they they are often speaking to things that are real and and appropriate for them to speak to when they're talking about things not being fair and so I so I think being a place of learning being a place where kindness is valued and being a place that's fairs is how I would like our school to be known but also I think a place that's fun you know I had a lot of conversations with students this year and and in many cases very successful students who who were you know eighth graders and who had been there and and they some of them didn't look forward to coming to school and and and I found that very sad I I want the school to have a reputation as being a fun place as well a place where students look forward to coming to in a place where they look forward to coming to because they have opportunities to demonstrate who they are and and to grow but also where they have opportunities to have fun and and that's something that's really important to me as well thank you there's a question how do you see the role of parent and how would you support their work thank you for that yeah you know I developed a tremendous amount of respect for Peres this year in my work it at the middle school and so how do I see the role I see it as absolutely essential and critical and and I think you know one of the things that is really important to support their work is to really listen to what their needs are to really understand how to support it from an administrative point of view and also to develop that same kind of dialogue that allows for for those shared values and that shared sense of purpose to be developed by by all the adults including bears in in the context of a school there were there were a number of times when when I was involved in engaging students about their interactions with Paris and I found that there were opportunities to engage restorative practices in those in those contexts that allowed Paris to feel like they were as valued as they should be in the context of the school I mean honestly there is so much important work that happens in arms that could not be done without the work of parents and and so to properly put that in context and to support that work I think is really essential and to give Paris ownership of what that work looks like and to develop practices that we agree are are are essential to their success as Paris but also as professionals in the building is an important part of that and and I think to the extent that then that that's done collaboratively will really support the success of all all parts of the school well thank you mister Sharon for telling us about yourself your beliefs and your qualifications for this position and thank you all for joining this forum once again the session was recorded and will be available for viewing at a later time we will return tomorrow Thursday May 7th at 11:30 to hear from our next candidate thank you very much thank you very much and thank you all of you for tuning in and for the questions and I look forward to continue to work in the community for the for the sake of all students and their families thank you Dorian for the conversation well take care of be safe and stay healthy I appreciate that same to you
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and so when extend that invitation there's a website a web address and I'm gonna provide you with that has a Google Form and if you provide if you fill out some information then I'll make sure that you get all the details to be able to join in that that conversation and so it is the web address is Adrienne for Azusa and that's the number for Adrienne for Azusa dot-com slash coffee online again Adrienne number for Azusa dot-com slash coffee online so if you go ahead and do that I'll get your info and then I'll make sure that that you get the details so joining in on a call and again my hope is to kind of open up a conversation you can share whether it's challenges that you're having or things that are going well or just kind of generally opening up a conversation I want to create that space and so that will be happening this upcoming Monday that's all that okay thank you and board member ariana.sea yes I wanted to go ahead and start off by by reading this and it says teacher appreciation week is a celebration that honors teachers for the contributions they made towards education teachers helped shape the future of our children and are some of the most unhung cheer unsung unsung heroes who stuck often go unnoticed this year our teachers are more deserving of the celebration than ever before during this pandemic let's all be reminded to say thank you to the teachers who are preparing online class curriculum zoomy with students and continuing to provide the support necessary for our children to be successful and I I want to congratulate each each teacher being honored today and the Teacher of the Year I want to extend my gratitude to all the teachers in our district for going beyond and taking this overnight challenge of doing distance learning and for those that this is a great challenge I applaud you guys for willing to to learn this new technology so thank you thank you thank you and I would like to piggyback on top of everybody congratulate all the teachers apparently now everybody knows what you go through trying to teach a class all the parents are going take back I love teachers I love teachers it's so cute you are more appreciated than you will ever ever ever know I figured out when my kids were young and I walked up in it I've got four of them five years apart and I'm like no handle that minute together so all that you do and this new distance learning and I just cut dues across the board I really really appreciate everything you do and now we'll go ahead and move on to comments and requests reports by student board member who happens to be absent today Jen we miss Jin Valdez we miss you so forward to you at the next one and I'm sorry I missed a lot of votes with you last week and then student board member cabinet and superintendent 7.1 comments and reports okay let's start with Jorge thank you please good evening board members and guests I will reserve my comments for the actual item on teacher mission mark Bommarito I just wanted to say how amazing our teachers are and with all the challenges that we've had recently the ingenuity and skillfulness that they've been able to put lessons together so quickly it's been a true testament to the way that has deucey does education so very proud of everyone arthur dorotheya even everyone I just want to echo what everybody's saying I just want to send a congratulations to all the teachers that are being honored today also show my gratitude for the immense amount of learning and preparation as we are doing our distance learning today I got to jump into some optional professional learning and we had over 30 teachers jumping on and so it just warms my heart to see the dedication of our teachers to become learners and teachers side-by-side with their students so congratulations thank you and I would also like to add to the tributes there aren't enough words I think that any of us has to thank teachers what they do with their children one of the things that I thoroughly enjoyed being here is getting the chance to see that light that goes on in a little kids eyes or a big kids when they have a chance to listen to their teacher and really resonate with the explanation that the teacher is given that is just priceless just priceless and it's thanks to the work of our teachers and when we've asked students what is it that they really admire about their teachers it's that ability to to help them learn to focus on of course the subject but to make sure that they learn and that caring and dedication is is the the highest accolade I think of what our highest best description of what our teachers do so thank you so much I'm really excited to see our celebration tonight thank you hmm okay and now we'll move to 8.0 report action of closed session matters there was nothing to report and we'll move on to 9.0 general functions 9.1 kovat 19 update so tonight we're having a special kind of update back over the 19 and that is because we know that we are celebrating teachers of the year today I thought it'd be really great to let the board hear from some of our own teachers about what they're doing how they're doing distance learning how they're working with their students so that you get a sense of a flavor of what it is that we are also proud of so our third Oh will you introduce our first speaker absolutely thank you so much I too and very excited to have our teachers one from the elementary level one from the middle school level and one from the high school level share some insights and give you a koban 19 on the distance learning block schedule plan and we'd like to start off by welcoming and turn it over to Janet short teacher from Murray elementary school thank you board members dr.
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so i don't know if this makes a difference uh but it looks like he's on here twice yeah like he's solicited as an attendee so i don't know if that's like the phone part of it here's the 248 number oh somebody who raised their hand mr butler is that you with phone number ending zero nine zero yes hear you hello all right can you hear hi heroes yeah okay there we go uh sorry we were trying to get your attention for a while and it looks like we're on mute we apologize can anybody hear us now i heard some comments about the shelter housing people with covid at our hotel and i think there was another question that's the timeline so yes we are housing um we are housing for the washington county correct and our timeline right now is kind of up in the air because of everything we we want i think our permitting process will be i think your approval if you approve us i don't want to be presumptuous is about two years before we have to come back to you folks and ask for it if we do not get a permanent start so we are looking within that timeline to start once we secure our financing and uh kind of get a grasp on how the situation is these days but we will hopefully break ground before the end of the you know period where this plan is approved that's the best answer i can give you right now what um what kind of coordination or collaboration would you plan with the shelter association to make sure that they you know understand these timelines and can plan accordingly because the logistics of moving 75 uh people who need supportive services is tough so we've been in constant contact with them on a weekly basis right now they tell us they want it to may 15.
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McCord mentioned behind them that those students would then be released out of their vehicle and go in so that it just continues that flow going into the auditorium and back to the vehicles that's why they wouldn't be actually parked in the parking lot as far as how students will receive their diploma they they're going to receive most of our schools have their diploma covers already at their sites so the student most of them would receive it that day there are a couple schools that they the shipping is backed up there in a warehouse in Kentucky or somewhere so there's a couple schools where we would have to have a different date for them to get their actual diploma cover but all of the students would have their diplomas their actual diplomas and the program mailed to them after the graduation date so we're going to wait for all grades to post and then we are printing actual programs like we would typically do at a regular graduation so that those students would have that as a memory with their names all listed with the you know GPA designations in their vowels designations in there with everybody listed and so forth so they will receive that in the mail with their actual diploma okay and my one more question just follow up on the diploma cover is there someone from the company that will stop those where the students pick them up yes and the the company has ensured us and you'll see in the video if we can get that going that they they will all be wearing masks and gloves and all of those things that are the requirements right now they have considered and kind of thought through all of that so it's it's been pretty impressive working with this company they're really on their on their game all right thank you dr.
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Santa Cruz I had a couple points on that I agreed with you that was actually my number one priority was to revise the state funding formula the finance formula and I thought the bullet points there were very very well done so that was definitely one I concur with you I also agree we warming the current your funding the other point that I had added was advocate to preserve and protect the voters original intent on prop 301 would see which is just the fourth bullet down in that first category so that was one that I had thought particularly important because they passed the extension of that through the legislature but it has not been okay by the voters so the legislature for members it is it is likely that the legislative committee will accept any and all of these recommendations that are currently listed and and any new ones that might come in and the discussion will be about which ones to include under each of the categories at the legislative meeting court members uh any additional ones on category number one I did have an additional one on category number one which was not stressed but with the things that we're looking at in educating children who've been out of school for six months if we can open up at our normal time and having more perhaps more online the year I think that they should look at for additional revenue by evaluating the text okay all right those are four options under category one at this point remember we have five to validate plus two additional new ones if we should choose to do that is would mr.
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Kaminsky and our whole is a family thank you for this opportunity to share some of my experiences with distance learning first I need to say thank you to our district for all of the support without our Tosa team without our Mis team I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing because of all the work they're doing I've been able to focus really on making connections with kids and on student learning because I'm not having to mess with all of the technology stuff and there's so much professional development out there and answers to questions when I need them so I just I just want to thank all those people who are are busy behind the scenes so that I can be online with my kiddos it's the connections really that we're making right now that I think are making the biggest difference connections they might be small but they're significant bright spots in what's going on I have one student who was finally able to join our classroom meetings after a few weeks and working on getting her to internet and getting her technology and the first time the rest of my class saw her come on everybody was just ecstatic hi are you doing oh my gosh and one little girl who's one of my true true people people people but I'm a little bit worried about this situation just burst out oh my gosh Chiara it's so good to see you how are you and I'm worried about you and and are you okay and how are your sisters and how is your mom and she just had to ask the whole thing so it's really good to see ya it was just this heartfelt sentiment from a nine-year-old and it was neat to see their connection and how they're still finding classroom community even in this crazy time um I have an open office hours meet during the week on Wednesday afternoon where kids can come just drop by if they need to ask a question about an assignment I'm just there working and a couple kids said teacher can we come even if we don't have a question can we come and just sit and we'll just do our work in Google classroom and you can just be there and other people can do and it'll just be like school cuz we'll all be working side by side and I said of course please come those kids who are needing connections are finding ways to make connections I even have one student who had to go to grandmother's house in Mexico because there was no childcare here and mom and I working together with grandma who only speaks Spanish and we have got her she's connected she's coming to all of our classroom meetings and I was glad to know that my teacher look and you need to make a better decision works even all the way to Mexico yeah so she has really been able to be a part of our class and I think it's been helpful to her because she's been down there with no one else she knows that grandma so those are all student connections that have just really really been significant for kids then there's also parent connections our parents are connecting to their kids learning like never before I'm getting pictures of connections that are happening in their homes from the third grader who had never learned to ride a bike and the mom says instead of doing the PE stuff you post teacher what if what if he learns to ride a bike I said I think that's a great thing for him to do right now and the little boy who said I'd the science this week teacher but then my grandpa took me outside and taught me all about the Olivera plants and I got a picture of him him and Grandpa together as well as kids working on stuff together younger brother and older brother doing their science experiment together so there are really neat things happening in homes and with parents as well and the last kinds of connections I'm seeing our staff connections truly I'm sure this is true of lots of staffs but I just have to say my Murray staff is amazing um people are stepping up to help each other out like you wouldn't believe whenever someone has a question there are five answers even sometimes before we have a group chat going and they'll address a question to somebody specific and before that person can get back to them five other people are saying oh this is how I do it or hey I'll help you out or let's jump on the computer and set up our own meet so we can work on that together and it's just really fantastic to see one great opportunity that I had that I wouldn't have had if it hadn't been for distance learning was the opportunity to hop into someone else's virtual classroom she was talking about a technology tool she was using I saw that it was valuable but I wasn't quite sure what it would look like I could have figured it out but instead of having to figure it out I got to go sit in her classroom as a student you know I asked her can I do it just invite me and I and I started way further along then I would have started had I not been able to be in that other teacher's classroom so that's something that's not always easy to do in our brick-and-mortar schools so it's something we're taking advantage of right now when we can and so there are just so many connections that I think are the most important part of what's going on right now I mean it is this easy snow is this the way I want to teach or you know I'm not running out to get an online job when all this is over trust me I want to be in my classroom with my kids there are opportunities and I think that we really need to just focus on that there are lots of positive connections happening and I think we need to focus on that and and kids are getting a lot of what they need maybe not everything they would get in my classroom but they're also getting some other things from being home with their parents and so I feel really good about the support we've had and what we've been able to accomplish with distance learning Thank You Janet that is so heartwarming it really I'm sitting here it really tears my eyes just and a little bit of jealousy because I wish I could be in your shoes and and see that too and the love that the teachers and students have for each other and the willingness to do whatever it takes to keep those connections strong is what I heard over and over thank you so much you're welcome yes Thank You Janet shoutout to to the your Murray staff thank you so much for being here tonight next i would like to introduce john garcia teacher from center middle school good evening everyone is this working I have never used to hear you just great thanks awesome come on I'm a special ed teacher at Center Middle School I have an unusual class I have 16 mild moderate students 14 of those are boys oh that makes things interesting and I have two young ladies in class any given day can be difficult in the classroom but surprisingly going to distant learning 7 weeks ago I was skeptical how well this was going to work and Wow my students stepped up and met that expectation that I had said at the beginning of the school year they knew what they needed to do and they knew what they had to do to get there I have students who were behavioral issues in class come online and be there when class first starts stay until the very end and even come back later and asked for more help it is so nice to see a student go from being a behavior and maybe not doing his work to doing all of his work during a distant learning environment it is awesome on the first day that we had the first block as I teach three different blocks because I have five different subjects I teach one of my students came on and said oh wow you're really gonna teach like like like really and like in the classroom you're gonna really be there for us the whole time I'm like yeah we're gonna do this together we're in this together and if you need help with technology just ask either myself or ms titular my instructional aide will help us out we have gone above and beyond with being able to present things being able to get them to do things they've never done before as far as using different technologies and having parents sit with them and little brothers and sisters joining in and you can hear the all the chatter what's that how's this what is that wow she's your teacher and they are just loving the connections that are being made between myself and with the other with the family members as far as using technology I myself had to learn how to use different platforms how to gain other ways of presenting the curriculum so that it could help my students to meet their needs because they all have different disabilities but they all need to be met to be met to meet their goals and they are stepping up and it's so exciting to see how well they've done I have greater connections with other staff on campus if I have a question about the curriculum I'm able to go and ask them hey you know how did you teach this or what are you using for this and they're helping me with how to simplify it how to make it easier for my students to attain I have a student who has he's dyslexic he struggles quite a lot was able to introduce him to more reading where he was able to read the books online and be able to hear it at the same time he has fallen in love with reading absolutely loves it and it's so sweet to see such a bright light come on and have him go wow so this is what everybody else is reading I'm like that's it that's it everybody's reading the same and now so are you so it's great like I was skeptical seven weeks ago and now I'm going wow these kids are awesome they stepped up to the challenge their parents stepped up to the challenge they asked questions they're better connected with me than ever before it's amazing I you know even thinking safer to head to the fall definitely going to put something in where I have a student who better learns and this kind of distant learning platform to be able to use where he's learning on the computer while I'm teaching the rest of the class just for better focus so this was great I figured out what he needed by using this distant learning um thank you for letting me share so many successes it's been amazing wonderful Jan thank you so much for for sharing I was really struck by here the efforts that you put in to increase your own technology skills and because it is scary at first that's Mike my experience is that first it's scary thinking you know I don't know how to do this but you just jumped in there right away and reached out to make sure that you could do that and have students comment this is what the other kids are reading this is what everybody else is reading just warm to my heart because it really opens a door for that student to feel part of you know the rest of the kids part of the crowd of Education and you know a member of this community in a very important way thank you so so much Thank You Jan one once again for joining us here today and to go to our third guest tonight I like to introduce Tina from ceará high school welcome you hi everybody I am happy to be here I too am a special education teacher which is wonderful that I get to join in all these Google classrooms so I am in a lot of the Google classrooms with my staff and I also have my own classes that I teach so I'm doing a lot of Google classrooms right now but I I just can't say enough of how wonderful things are going but right off the bat I just wanted to recognize you to recognize the first thing that came to mind was I was so grateful that the Chromebooks were able to be handed out and I want to thank everybody who was part of that because I did see the line outside of this high school of cars trying to get in there to get their Chromebooks I know that the district had made many calls because I've communicated with parents ciara staff has made many many calls to make sure that the kids had what they needed and I just think I just want to mention the support of the district and the school together really made that happen and I made a world of difference so when they were able to get those Chromebooks the kids were it was more available to them to access the online learning the distant learning but I know at Sierra last week alone our big push has been communication and communicating with the parents and the students and over 250 calls were made last week alone and what we're finding is so many appreciative parents they're very grateful and they're happy to hear from us honestly they're just thinking like thank you for you know reaching out what else can we you know and we're asking is what else can we do is there anything you need what can you know for the most part we've gotten really positive feedback from the parents and the students so with that and then I I just wanted to share with because we make so calls so many calls and communicate with the families I had a student or I have a student I should say that was very disengaged in this distant learning wanted no part of it and but because of the communication between our principal and myself and our counselor we came to find out that the student actually recently experienced a death in the family it had nothing to do with the distance learning the whole time we're thinking why is he so disengaged so with that said he's back on track he's doing he's read in the work he is excited about this learning he is gonna participate in an AP government test next week and he's really excited about that to try and get some college credits his ap government teacher has been really on board and stepped outside to help him out and get him what he needs to do that and again because I get to communicate with all the teachers and I get a jump in their classrooms and talk to them it's made a world of difference for a lot of my RSP students the other thing I just wanted to mention that it I just think is a bright spot is I've had a student that was doing credit recovery on APICS and he was able to independently do it he made it he finished his class and he is back on track to graduate with this class of 2020 which he didn't think he would be able to do it but he was able to do it so I just want to give a little shout out to the apex program I know you know I hear things about it but it's it's it's worked and I'm glad that we have credit recovery another extension of credit recover besides us at Sierra so that was another bright spot I wanted to mention and then but ultimately and just like I heard from your other two teachers the perseverance of our staff and our students has really come alive and I cannot tell you enough that I'm so happy to be part of the team at Zera amazing what and I'm including everyone classified staff administration the teachers everyone has come together to to help make this distance learning successful and myself I've been learning more technology more and more technology and but when I have another teacher that is more than willing to help me the teachers welcomed me in their Google classrooms the administration's always been there for us but I do have to give a little shout-out to my special ed aides because they are amazing amazing have stepped up and talked to some of our students that would kind of get unsure that they were going to make it because you know we have juniors and seniors and they just want to graduate I mean that's it and so if it was difficult they were able to you know talk them down get them going and the kids are doing a great job they're really getting on board about participating in this distant learning but I think ultimately the phone calls the emails supporting each other this technology we are so united as a team the staff and the students and the parents and I just can't say enough I was I was a little surprised that it is going as well as it is so we are grateful and I just want I know from a high school perspective and sometimes the kids think well I don't need to do this but I know they also have ultimately the goal and that's what we keep talking about what's the goal you want to graduate you want to go to college you want to move on and so we're all in it together and that's really what I want to share thank you thank you so much that the stories and all the bright spots that you shared weren't just just really warm to my heart you know and in this time of of kovat 19 I've noticed so many if you look on the news or you read the paper or you hear people talking about all the negative the challenges which are all very very real and it is so important that what you shared and there are other teachers tonight what they shared is the what's working the positives and how you're making differences in kids lives and that this kid who's going to graduate now right or has been open for him and I can't thank you enough for what you do but it is really I really do believe that teachers creates a future and your stories gave them a real powerful example of how you'd created futures for these kids thank you okay so now we'll move any comments how many board members or anything no thank you very much for your insight on what's going on in the school school so it's good to hear all the positive things that are going on with the students and the staff and the parent in and the administration and I think you know working together it's made a very good team but what do I need to tell them is short is that I reached 100 miles me short I walked two miles every day just wanted to give you heads up on that thank you all right we'll have metals at the beginning of next year okay board member who is first gate Adrian or Gabriella okay board member Ariana's Hey hi can you guys hear me I wanted to thank the three teachers that came out and shared their experience now and the special ed teachers thank you for for the extra mile that you guys you know take for our special education teachers and it's really nice to hear that you found a way to connect to a student that learns best and that you're gonna can't remember if it who I think it was J Miss Jane Garcia that she found that one of her students learns best through through online and being able to get the materials upfront and knowing what to do and to actually visualize it so and I thank you guys for for being there for our students and having those open meeting sessions with them just to come I mean that teared me up when you said but they just come and they just want to do their homework with you online that that speaks volume that speaks volume of the greatness and the great energy that you give these students and they just want to be online with you just to do their homework so truly truly appreciate it thank you yeah thank you board member Grier yeah and echoing a lot of that just just grateful for for you well thank you I know that I've been able to hear so many of these types of stories just you know small anecdotes and so and so being able to really take a moment and pause and and hear from you all a bit with a bit more depth and context and deeper understanding and and plus being able to share that out loud and broad like this is what you're doing is the important work that is happening and so thank you thank you for for for sharing and thank you for representing just examples of just the tremendous work that that's happening so I'm just grateful for you thank you for you taking the time to be here and sharing that with all of us board member Chris Gonzalez yeah thank you I think I really just want to echo my colleagues and and I would not just and just one this this one piece I think I'm hearing some really amazing nuggets in terms of I would say new new things or new connections that like that maybe we had thought about when it comes to distance learning so for example I'm having you you as teachers talked about how it was this the connection is strengthening to the families and so I love that and I and I think so that and I'm trying to think that maybe we need to as we eventually get back to normal schooling in schools um how do we capitalize on those pieces so for example that building that strength the connection with the family in the house and the other piece talking about technology seems to work for some kids right um how can we how can we make sure that we take everything that all of you have learned as teachers because you guys are you guys are doing the work and learning as we go along right and and make sure that strengthens what we do in the future so I just want to appreciate all of you of and say thank you very much for sharing okay and um I'd like to piggyback on what everybody else said oh my son opened he's a special ed teacher and he opened the Vogel school of Awesomeness and all of my nieces all my grandchildren join and that's how their parents learned how to do a lot of the technology so all my sons and daughters learned from my oldest son on how to do it in the volkl school so I appreciate the creativity you all are coming up with to get this done and we'll just move on over thank you so much and at this point we'll go over to the ten point Oh consent calendar all matters listed under the consent calendar considered by the board to be routine and will be enacted by the board in one motion in the format following the last consent calendar agenda item there will be no discussion of these items prior to the time the board staff or the public requests specific items to be discussed if discussion is requested by a board member that item will be removed from the consent calendar and it will be considered separately the superintendent and staff recommend approval of all consent calendar agenda items so do I have a motion oh board member cruise Gonzalez you need to say something Oh daddy okay do I have a motion I move to approve item 10.1 we have a second okay so moved by board member Grier second if I remember Ariana's is there any discussion okay let's vote Danny passes 5-0 and now we will move on to 12-point o recognitions and awards twelve point one presentation teacher of the year 2020 2020 and 2021 good evening everyone I Madam President board members dr.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we told them you can have the hotel as long as you like for as you know as many rooms as you like we're we're not in a hurry where it's uh even though you know we are in some way taking a financial hit on this because of what red roof franchise corporation is doing to us but that's okay um so we're in constant contact with them weekly right now they've extended out to may 15th and we told them if they need it more just let us know we're more than happy to oblige if they need different hotels we have other hotels in the area that we can service them to still in washington county and they seem to be okay with that okay mr leonard yeah well um i just want to my understanding from um talking with um county staff is that red roof has been a really business and i was just going to offer if it's helpful to to sort of provide the other side back um i'd be happy to um coordinate with the county and provide sort of a some length of that as well should this advance to city council so that information is available as well that would be good and i we also remember keeping up one of the buildings that's not getting demolished so that can also be service for them should they need it you know in years from now i guess we're only knocking down the building that runs perpendicular to the road we're not knocking down the building that runs horizontal to the road and that's about 52 rooms i believe okay yeah that's that's reassuring but mr leonard yeah if you could nail down some some details and the other side of the perspective just for our reassurance because we did just last night invest 250 thousand dollars into supporting um this so that'd be uh we really appreciate it thanks um that's all the questions for for me from now i'm i was encouraged to see um what's moved in the last months i'm curious to hear colleagues reflections as well further discussion there was a traffic study that was made i think there was somebody referencing a traffic study we did submit a traffic study outside was done by bergman was reviewed by the city okay thank you um mr mills did i see your hand yeah commissioner mills thanks um so this this first one is specifically on the rezoning and i'm definitely um uh i take the point of the caller um in terms of like when you once you rezone it it's not necessarily tied to the specific site plan so i think that that's a really good thing for us to talk about and whether that zoning overall if we feel comfortable with it because future things might not look exactly like this if you know there's lots of things up in the air right now um and so and and that zoning decision sticks with the land it doesn't necessarily stick with this site plan um one of the things that i couldn't find necessarily that um maybe i'm just looking in the wrong place in the in the staff report alexis is um often uh how the far kind of compares to what is allowed here versus um what would be allowed under c3 versus you know how much based on the site plan that we're seeing um is actually what the far is of the site plan compared to what would be allowed uh in in c3 total had to unmute myself um the site currently has about 12 percent far it's proposed to be 47 and as you uh may know c3 allows up to 200 percent thank you um so um presumably i mean that that's quite a big difference right so like much more could be built on this site in the future um the the horizontal or you know the building that runs east west that is currently staying um could then be redeveloped according to the c3 overall zoning in the future is that correct yes it could be um you know with site with a site plan um things are subject to redevelopment right and so the one comfort i think that we have is that all of those things would require relooking you know if there's effectively more built there there would need to be additional parking and at some point you're going to run out of space for that there would also like often a concern of neighbors is um with additional floor area right there's more activity there and so there's additional traffic um but any subsequent change would require a traffic study so this is not the only you know rezoning to c3 in my mind isn't like unleashing um making it a free-for-all for effectively what happens there sure there are a lot of uses that could be allowed by right but they would also be subject to coming back and doing additional site planning um and all of that would have to go through traffic studies is there any is there something that you could imagine that wouldn't necessarily that would be effectively a large development there that would not require traffic studies um no the the only thing i was going to say the only thing i can possibly think of would be if somehow they're able to renovate the existing buildings whatever they are be today or tomorrow renovate the existing buildings into um into a permitted use and wouldn't need to go through the site plan process however um even if you don't go through the site plan process and are renovating for new uses you still need to do zoning compliance and that includes a check of the parking requirements so um most everything that you can think of um that's gonna be a real change of use meaning you know apples to oranges would trigger either site plan or the full review of meeting current code got it from my perspective like i think that it's it's good to think through like what i often think of like worst case scenario and i feel like the challenge with thinking about worst-case scenario and rezoning is that everybody has a different worst-case scenario in mind um i so but i think often what um what people are worried about is just something that's going to drive a whole bunch of additional traffic this is a place that is literally right on the highway um right like you can see all of that and so from my perspective like this seems to be the right place for um for this zoning in particular and um so i'm not i often i think that that's a helpful thing to think about is like what else could be here in the future if we do rezone it and this doesn't get built um but i i think that that zoning actually fits here um so thank you for answering those questions commissioner abrams um thanks i found commissioner mills uh perspective really helpful for framing how i might think about it but one question i had is like it seems like the parcels are that c3 is appropriate zoning for the parcels but the zoning of the parcel doesn't take into account the ingress and egress so in other words like what it's adjacent to might make sense in terms of c3 but if it has one point of access that's too narrow to allow proper traffic in and out that wouldn't be something which would kind of be taken up in zoning if that makes any sense so i was wondering um maybe staff could educate me a little bit more about the traffic study itself i i in my time on the commission i have not yet seen you know a traffic study which essentially um indicated that the proposed development was that was prohibitive of the development like that said this site cannot accommodate this development because of the traffic and i wondered does that happen or like what are the um how might one mitigate that if in the future the thing that wanted that was going to be developed here was going to produce an excessive amount of traffic um i can um mostly address that there is a traffic study for this our traffic studies analyze the new trips and the trip distributions um also a side note i'm not a traffic engineer i just play one on zoom um but our uh requirement um traffic impact studies are submitted they are triggered when um a proposed project will um has more than a certain number of peak a certain number of trips in the peak hour i believe it's 50 trips in a peak hour and when you have that threshold then you must submit a traffic impact study our traffic engineers look at it and you know still the bedrock of traffic engineering is level of service and how long are vehicles waving at intersections our traffic engineers are getting better and are definitely moving toward the direction of it's not how long our vehicle is waiting at intersections it's how how are does all modes of transportation getting around and treated a little more equal but the bedrock of a traffic impact study is level of service so it took it looked at the current traffic conditions at all the nearby intersections it and um took into account what they call background traffic which is what new development is proposed in the whole area and then this added in this development proposed in particular and the study concluded that there will be additional traffic generated from this bigger newer hotel and the new restaurant um but there's already so much traffic that it it's not really statistically significant or you wouldn't really notice that additional seconds of delay or i guess it might be fractions of a second compounded um most of the traffic concerns i've heard tonight revolve not around the hotel the red roof in hotel or or even perhaps the proposed hotel but some of the existing conditions it has to do with loading i i and that is probably a function of layout of another site that is adjacent and uses the same private streets and same driveways as this one your other comment um i feel like it's been in the past 12 months but i believe that the planning commission did deny a special exception use um because of traffic conditions um on north main street um you usually it doesn't get to this point where the planning commission or council have to deny a project because of the the layout because staff we work with those um design professionals and we say your layout doesn't work we're never going to let you get farther we can't we won't let you go until you fix this circulation issue um um and then sometimes we get a traffic impact study that says um yeah horrible impacts and this is what we need to do but as a community we sometimes push back and we say to fix the traffic problem means to widen a road to eight lanes and we say thank you but no thank you we'll keep our bad level of service and i i would just add i think alexis uh did a great job responding to all that i would just add to that to that a footnote to starting to make sure we're really comprehensive looking comprehensively looking at transportation um there are inherent trade-offs in that you know if we are to widen streets and put in extremely large aprons and drive accesses that's going to facilitate loading and vehicular travel it's going to compromise pedestrian safety and at times on motorized safety so um so i think they do uh a thorough job and and ultimately to alexis's point we work very hard because we know that that balance and that aspect of site plans are of um paramount importance to us commissioners to the city council and to the community and so we work very hard to make sure as many of those issues are resolved as we possibly can well that thank you that's very helpful so i guess my kind of takeaway then would be that the site plan has already taken into account existing traffic patterns and is designed to be as efficient as it can be within the constraints of that site for the expected traffic um and that staff feels confident that that's been done essentially right um and yeah i mean i guess you know on the commission we often we often i think hear kind of um a difference between perception by neighbors of certain problems in congestion and kind of what the traffic report is is saying right these things are sometimes an odd so i think it's difficult to think through it but that um that information helps thanks and i would say it's not always perception you know there we definitely experience congestion in different areas of the city and that's part of the balance as to how we respond to it yeah and i i would never advocate for widening the road as a as a mitigating as a way to mitigate it i just was curious kind of what the what it is yeah um i mean i guess we'll come to this later but obviously the drive-through would be something which contributes to automobile traffic on this site and so that's probably something we'll we'll continue to talk about uh this evening further discussion commissioner give random i would just say too it wasn't very clear in the site plan because they didn't do a zoom out to show how it related to the rest of the site um but there you know it comes down and hits plymouth road but then it also connects through past the plum market and the cvs pharmacy and exits out onto green road which for not for the uninitiated that's never been there before but for somebody who does know the site there are actually a couple of ways out through this one that are a little bit different than some of the other sites where they're more landlocked um so there does seem to be you know green road can get busy too but plymouth road i think is the the real challenge um so um again that's not shown in their site plan anywhere but just pulling it up you know on on google maps you can see that there are kind of back ways out in terms of congestion too commissioner hammersman so i can actually offer resident perspective as well i live about a mile south of this site i go to the cvs in the plum market all the time so i know that plum is doing the best job of any grocery store i've seen in this area and all of the social distancing safety stuff for grocery stores um i've been to this site at various times of the day i've never seen it backed up trying to get back out on the green road um it's definitely narrow when you try to go through like two to the plum and past it um to the parking lot of the old big boy but um i don't know i've i've really never experienced terrible issues i think my one concern would be and we can probably talk about this later with the drive-through too the left turn out of the site back onto plymouth road could get a little bit dicey if there's a lot more cars coming in and out but even with that i don't know i guess i'm as a resident of this area not super concerned with what this might do to traffic based on what i've experienced with existing traffic um and i'd just be happy to see something done with this site so i'll just say that for now about my experiences with the traffic all right further discussion all right looks like we're ready for a vote on motion number one all those in favor please say aye hi and mr lana do we actually do should we take a roll call on this or are you okay with a voice vote but it'd be my preference to take a roll call when we're taking actual actions on the petitions okay let's let's do a roll call commissioner woods yes commissioner briggs yes commissioner mills yes commissioner milstein yes commissioner gibb randall yes commissioner ackerman yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes okay motion cares all right thank you so we'll move on to the second motion and i will go ahead and read that uh the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the mmg plymouth road mix use development site plan and plan project modifications to increase the maximum height to 65 feet 10 inches and eliminate the maximum front setback requirements for new buildings subject to providing solar orientation and energy conserving design by maintaining solar panels covering a minimum of 45 percent the proposed hotel and 25 percent of the renovated restaurant roof surface and maintaining a minimum of 30 percent open space and development agreement move by commissioner survey seconded by commissioner hammerschmidt we are in discussion commissioner briggs um i'd say god i'm not unmute anymore um i just wanted to comment that i appreciated the modifications that were done they seem much more in line with um with what i would have hoped to see for plan project modification and and so i'm supportive of of the changes uh commissioner ackerman thank you mr chair uh a process question um what if let's say the special exemption used for a drive-through wasn't permitted in the next motion what would happen to the site one i believe that the um i believe the site plan will can stand without the use they'll have a useless driveway so they may want to come back with a um it would be a site plan for planning commission to rearrange the layout of the parking lot um um but the just from a site plan perspective it functions without the window it's not like it's a separate building okay thank you further it discussion like we are ready for a vote on this all right so uh mr leonard if you can do a world cup commissioner briggs yes commissioner mills yes commissioner milstein yes commissioner gibrandall yes commissioner ackerman yes commissioner yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner woods yes carries unanimously great thank you uh moving on to motion number three and this is a long one um the ann arbor city planning commission after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant information find the petition substantially meets the standards in chapter 55 unified unified development code section 5.29.5 special exemption use and therefore approves nmg plymouth road mixed-use special exemption use for one drive-through lane at the freestanding restaurant this approval is based on the following findings one the proposed use will be consistent with the c3 french commercial zoning district which allows commercial activities accessed primarily by personal vehicles two the site plan is located adjacent to a highway and its axis ramps and the drive-through facility is more appropriate in close proximity to highways three the proposed use will not adversely impact pedestrians bicyclists vehicles and general circulation based on the location plymouth road is and the private street network through the site provide adequate access um and the proposed facility is consistent with the surrounding uses on and adjacent to the site the special exemption and use approval is based upon the following conditions one approval of the mmg plymouth road mixes development rezoning petition and safe plan with planned project modifications go commissioner they'll move this moved by commissioner mills seconded by commissioner woods and we are in discussion commissioner briggs yeah so i continue to be concerned about the um the drive-through in this location um for a number of different reasons i think one is actually because of its proximity to the highway i think it's inappropriate i think that it encourages a lot of in and out traffic in a location that is particularly dangerous you know we have heard some public comment tonight that suggests that there are neighborhood concerns about um about increasing um encouraging more in and out traffic at that location and kind of conflicts that are maybe already occurring um when i look at you know what our criteria are for approval there are a few piece little a few points that um i think are conditions for for not approving um i mean i do think that we as a as a body should consider um drive-throughs in general and and determining whether or not they're appropriate anywhere in the city but um one you know will be consistent with the general objectives of the city master plan obviously there's a lot of different components but i think the sustainability framework which is um there are reasons to multiple reasons to think that idling and increased encouraging that sort of um the sort of traffic movements is not consistent with their sustainability framework um and then you know will not be there's another point will not be detrimental to the use peaceful enjoyment economic value of the development or development of the neighboring property or the neighborhood area in general um this is adjacent this is drive through adjacent to a hotel where we should be concerned about air quality to some degree i mean i also know it's next to a highway so there's there's questions about whether or not that's consistent and internally in terms of thinking about it but we are certainly encouraging um i think there's reasons to question it and then finally um will not have a detrimental effect on the natural environment which i think in general we should be considering whether or not drive-throughs i think it will have a detrimental effect so for those three reasons i'm not comfortable with supporting it but um i'll leave it open to rest for you guys to discuss commissioner woods um i am i actually am in favor of it and um because actually i think our most recent experiences with the whole kobit uh phenomena and the way that those things are changing some of our uh lifestyle um leads me to believe that perhaps there are times when it is better to uh have someone in a vehicle and doing a pickup or something for whatever they're ordering from a business or in this case a restaurant that that might be a little bit uh better situation for our community in general so so that's one reason why i would be in favor of it also i know rece a couple of months ago we discussed another a place where there was a drive-through that was uh that was requested and um later on in talking to different people um some folks brought up to me some um situations that i hadn't really thought about in terms of um persons who might be driving who are um either disabled or unable to get out to go into a business and to get what they want and that a drive-through affords them that opportunity i i don't want to debate uh the pros and cons of those kinds of things but i just wanted to indicate that there certainly are times when drive-throughs may be appropriate and when i think about whether or not a drive-through is appropriate this close to uh to a highway maybe that's one of the better places to have drive-throughs because it doesn't bring so much traffic uh down into the city and into um a little bit farther i know when you know if sometimes when we're traveling it's easier to do a pull off and to go into a location that has a drive-through or or something like that and not to have to get out of your car and to keep be able to keep moving so for that reason i actually am leaning towards supporting uh this uh particular motion commissioner ackerman thank you mr chair um and thanks for the consideration and dialogue um i i'm torn as well i understand that drive-throughs have a real positive impact on people's lives being disabled or single parents who are in a rush and need to get food and panera presents a healthier option than a lot of fast food take out and drive through but you know i think commissioner briggs outlines some valid points that like what are we trying to encourage both on the site but also citywide and if there are real concerns from neighbors about turning movements in and out of this facility those are going to be exacerbated by incentivizing and encouraging these kind of short 10-minute trips 15-minute trips to the drive-through as opposed to the longer stay of a dine-in or a take-out experience um i know that you know there are uh that impact is hard to to quantify them although i'm sure the traffic study did and i needed to review it more closely but um the other elements are what are we trying to encourage city-wide which is trying to to incentivize through both carrot and stick you know reduction of carbon emissions and transportation through single user vehicles uh is a huge contributor to our carbon emissions citywide um you know the the original pud was constructed in the early 70s and so it's been standing for about 50 years now and as we think about what we want to be building for the next 50 years on this site um you know it it it is difficult to say you know with our carbon emission goals as well as just the realities of climate change um that that having 50 years of drive through is a good idea and so i'm torn as well but leaning towards now further discussion commissioner mills so i am also torn um i would love to see kind of more of the research on how this factors into emissions really but also like i feel like now is not the time for us to be doing that that that those kind of decisions need to if we're going to be basing our decisions on how this fits to sustainability and carbon neutrality then i think that that goes into re-evaluating drive-throughs entirely um i think that in terms of looking at my unders my reading of kind of the a lot of it has to do with um the safety around there and i i feel like the arrangement of this particular drive-through definitely does like not give cars the priority so much and actually pushes them to the side i take into it also um to commissioner woods point about where in the city if ever there was a place for drive-throughs right next to the highway off so that's another thing that i um kind of keep in my mind i think um one of the points that i've also seen is we don't have very many drive-throughs in the city of ann arbor which i think also like my experience has been that the queues are often quite long and so um and that was also something that a caller had raised or maybe it was in our packets um thinking through kind of where all of those cars would cue i think that there actually is space that's again kind of tucked into the site it's not right out on the street and so i'm not so concerned about um the traffic impact that it's going to have on the circle drive um what i just have a question for staff about is uh how i want to just verify um that the the arrangement is or the the special exception use for the drive-through is pinned to this site plan and so it's not just saying that there's always a use comes in or a different site plan comes in that wants to have a drive through they can't put the drive through on the other side is that true the special exception use would run with this site plan and it would be for this restaurant a different restaurant could come in and then use this drive-through but say a bank um that's a different use and this um this would this i'm going to check the staff report as well but this is for a special exception used for a restaurants drive-through so as long as it met that criteria um and any layout changes would need to come back as well because it is tied to this site plan but it could it could be a different type of restaurant as well thanks i i'm i am even though i'm torn i'm leaning towards support and you'll see that in commission proposed business i think we should put this on our list of i think looking at drive-throughs is something that i um would recommend that we look at again because this is not you know this is going to continue to come up i feel like and so i think it might help us as a group review it not in the context of a specific proposal but overall all um all right further discussion commissioner gibrandal i i agree i think that this should be a policy level discussion not a specific site discussion and i would really like to take this on as a larger policy issue um so i just i think that you know when you submit for these things it's like you know years it takes a long time to get through the process and so i think when somebody first comes in and talks with staff you know staff needs to be able to let them know like hey you got a high bar for for a drive-through in this town you know i mean so that that was probably not communicated because that isn't our policy you know so i feel like it's kind of letting them know really late in the game that we're we're changing on them um so it's still a special exception use i get that but i feel like um we need to we need to have that larger discussion and and i would be very supportive of having that larger discussion because i completely believe in the things that you're saying um uh commissioner briggs so i just think that we should have the bigger discussion about it and so i will um i will support this because because of that um and again i i agree also with what others have said about it being close to the highway i think if you know if it's going to happen that it makes sense there and not downtown or something like that further discussion commissioner abrams uh just briefly wanted to share and say that i'm also torn i kind of agree with all of the comments um but i think the this last this last um point about kind of thinking about taking this on at a higher level and not simply trying to take it up in a ad hoc basis one project here one project there i think makes a lot of sense uh and given that we recently did approve a drive through for another project it would feel inconsistent to me so i don't love the idea of it but i plan to vote for it commissioner hammerschmidt um i also don't love drive-throughs also agree that if there's ever going to be one this is probably the best place to have it also as a mother of two small children and i can totally see how they can come in handy um my concern i think and i don't i this isn't really going to sway me one way or another on this permit but is again the the safety issue of people coming from the highway wanting to go to panera coming going through the drive-through and get back on the highway and needing to turn left back onto plymouth road to get there though as i'm looking at the site plan the way that the drive-through comes out um kind of spits you back out in a way that you could take that through road back to green and then green turn left onto plymouth so i guess my question is more for staff is it ever possible to do like a no left turn onto plymouth from that driveway like who would make those decisions if in the future um this just gets to be so popular that there are tons of accidents like is that something that would be like looked at again like this would be a very easy place where you're just like hey if you want to go back what direction would it be like back to 23 you have to go um you know out to green and do that first or if you want to turn right on plymouth road that's fine but is that something that like in the future could come up like who would who would look at that if there are potential issues that come up and there are a lot of safety issues that occur because of what's going on this site um our city traffic engineers can right now work with and i believe that the um the land owners and all the people who have access to and rights to the circle drive they can put up signage now if they'd like the the wayfinding or you know best way to 90 you know sort of like um the some i think it's the ddas putting up signs like go this way to get downtown they can do that today um our traffic engineers you know are also they are responsible for our city streets and i do know that if warranted they can have um traffic control restrictions at plymouth road to um prohibit the lefts um and i believe that plymouth is not under mdos jericho jurisdiction so if warranted our city traffic engineers can control movement there at plymouth road not on the circle drive because it is a private road although they can consult and help okay yeah i actually think there's a another shopping center further down where you can't turn left back onto plymouth um i don't i guess there's probably nothing to do about that now because we don't really know what the impacts are going to be but it's good to know that that's an option in the future okay thanks it sure breaks i'm still not needed um so i appreciate the desire to have this discussion you know kind of a more global discussion and and not be unfair to this petitioner i would note that this issue got raised um you know quite a while ago and so there was there has already been this discussion here i don't think it um i i hope there was some discomfort with coming back and still proposing a drive through to some degree um in terms of i want to just talk a little bit more about why i say in close proximity to the highway why why i think that's problematic i'm not suggesting that downtown's a better location obviously i'm not suggesting that any places but um but i am particularly um i do think stadium was a much better location than this location and the reason is if you think about it why why is it that we're saying that next to the highway is a better location well we're thinking okay when we're traveling and you're googling where you're gonna get you know where should you stop and get some food and you grab you know you get off the highway you pull through and then you get back on so what are those movements that we're asking people to do you know we're asking people suggesting that people that it's safe that they stop stop at panera and then get back on a highway going 70 to 80 miles an hour while eating food while driving i mean we're encouraging behavior that we recognize is dangerous and so i think we have to push back on ourselves a little bit about somewhat of those assumptions are that we think why is this better next to a highway because we're accepting the sort of autocentric you know patterns anyway larger discussion but that's the reason i don't think it's great next to the highway um and i i was actually thinking about this um commissioner woods as well in terms of the covet 19 piece where um i agree we're we're seeing a lot of restaurants coming um a lot of take out and um just anecdotally my son who is 20 is back from college and does not follow fall in his following his mother's footsteps in terms of traffic stuff so he drove out to carpenter road for starbucks the other day where he could find the one starbucks that was open and his report back to me was that the drive-thru line there was 60 cars line long or something like that and he parked his car you know did the mobile thing walked up to the door somebody brought out their food you know brought out his drink and he got on his way and so but there were people wrapped all the way around the building waiting to go through that driveway when it would actually have been a lot quicker for them to park call in their order have somebody walk out and that's what we're seeing at a lot of places we're seeing at a kroger we're seeing lots of different places we're not saying that accessibility is not possible we're not saying that christ disease you can't deal with things in a different way we're just suggesting that maybe the best way that you can do that is you know pull into a parking spot and somebody can pull out your food so um i don't think that we necessarily have to worry about that so but i understand everybody else's arguments and impositions on this but that's those are my thoughts on it further discussion commissioner survey i would say anecdotally i've seen the opposite on stadium the one of the banks that has a drive-through i saw a man standing between two cars getting through the atm right after covet where people are trying to get money because of the issue that you couldn't have access but i mean you can do walk up and you can do the thing you know it's it's more about the management of the building than it is about cars versus people i have concerns about stadium because it is getting more pedestrian friendly and adding more cars to it through drive-through i think is more problematic than here we might be asking people to get off of the highway and on their way home to deliver bring food to their family um it as a park and ride adjacent to it this is a very trick car heavy area so i think we have to understand the kind of modes of transit in different areas of the city this is a special exception used is not making a stand to us saying that uh drive-throughs are for the city this is not saying that drive-throughs are 4c3 this is special exception so we are reviewing it in a case by case right now i think uh commissioner get brandel really kind of brought up the strong point of we need we need to evaluate this as a policy um and i think we see a lot of policy things that even though the other one came up in the past year i mean we've been talking about parking heat islands and maximums instead of minimums is you know a significant thing to sustainability too that hasn't moved forward very swiftly things take time and it's worth putting on the agenda but we have to kind of look at the current condition so i think for what it is i support it for this project further discussion all right looks like we are ready for a vote mr leonard commissioner mills yes commissioner milstein yes commissioner gibb randall yes commissioner ackerman yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner woods yes commissioner briggs no motion carries i just say one thing um we are unless would one of the uh commissioners like to hear something from the petitioner we are all set here i would like to hear what the petitioner has to say thank you thank you i just want to let you know you know i'm a father of four children i want to see this planet for my four children so i when i was here last i heard you folks loud and clear if you recall last time when we did the panera building there were no solar panels on the panera building i said you know what let me try to mitigate as much as i can with this drive-through by putting solar panels so you know i'm the first one who wants to save the planet believe me i want to see my four kids enjoy this planet but we have to do this in a reasonable smart kind of way so i thought how can we avoid this and i thought if we do solar panels on the panera and mitigate some of these things then maybe we can all get a win-win out of this and that's really what i was hoping to do and you know i think and i want to thank you folks for listening in and really reading the materials and i appreciate your support thank you okay thank you very much all right we are going to move on to the next item on our agenda which is the unified development code udc amendments relative to solar energy systems installation for city council approval and i see mr kowalski is here welcome uh you're muted right now but welcome um and thank you um so we will begin with with you okay thank you very much um good evening everybody it's been a while since i saw you all um so it's good to see you in the virtual settings so i have a couple of amendments here proposals for tonight uh mr leonard is going to be running a a slide show in a minute um so the two proposals we have are our udc amendments regarding solar um solar equipment solar energy systems um these were presented originally back in um i believe it was january or so to the orc committee and i honestly by now i kind of forgot who was at that meeting we did have it at that meeting so these drafts do incorporate some of those changes um as the staff report says we did originally plan to present this in march but obviously that plan was uh sidetracked a bit so um we will go through the first uh proposed amendment is really regarding the um is an exception to the height limits what this would allow is basically it's an exception for uh solar panels and accessory well sorry solar panels and their supporting structures to um exceed the height limit by up to 12 feet um that is for a flat roof so what this would allow if we can go to the next there we go thank you um so basically and again this is only on a flat roof right now currently um as is mentioned that our height limits are taken to the top part of any feature of a roof of any structure whether it's mechanical equipment or architectural features on there so currently if you put a solar energy system on on top solar panels on top of a roof a flat roof in particular where this is focused it's it's typically going to extend beyond the limit of a roof and as many of you know we have people that like to get up to the maximum the height limit but we're also trying to encourage solar in this area as well so um if we could flip to the next i just have a couple of examples really obviously you've seen these all before the first example they obviously don't extend that far above the surface of the roof you can see kind of there's an edge these are not from ann arbor by the way i've probably many of you can figure that out um by looking at that um these do kind of extend a little bit below the parapet on the around surrounding the edge of the building but gives you an example um you could go to the next place here these ones have extended a little bit higher you can't quite tell from some of the angles of the photo but um it does extend upon the parapet beyond that obviously in this one it has some other structures that are higher than that but in the city of ann arbor again with that slope if solar panels were the highest structure we would take the height to the highest point of those solar panels um so in particular that and again we really apply this to flat roofs only so the next example is really why we've gone to the 12 foot limit um so you can see right here is as we're trying to go to encourage maximum solar coverage as i said many of our buildings the mechanical equipment is on the roof in most cases in particular downtown buildings and the flat roof buildings tend to have their equipment on the roofs so this would allow for them to as you can see in the picture to extend solar panels above any mechanical equipment this one was elevated about nine to 10 feet i saw some other examples that you know again vary between they're usually around 10 to 12 usually less than that so we figured 12 feet does give enough room to allow for any kind of if there's additional mechanical equipment for those to extend um so again this is not i want to stress it's not an exception to the height limits of the downtown it does not allow you to extend structures up 12 feet all this would allow is the extension of solar panels and their supporting equipment as you can see here um so that's and we can obviously come back for discussion but i'm going to handle both of the um amendments kind of at the same time so if we can hop to the next one um so the next one is a little bit more involved but um really what it cons what what it um boils down to is an exemption for solar panel accessory structures things like carports again right now in the city of ann arbor if you install anything including solar panels it's greater than 240 square feet on the ground it's considered an accessory structure and it would trigger site plan now in most cases that would be an administrative amendment um but not always so um what what this would what this amendment would allow would be to for solar panels as accessory carport structures to basically cover areas and we're gonna see it um actually maybe we could flip to the slides if one of mine right now we'll give you some examples um of kind of and i'm sure many of you seen this this is from uh kind of a local if you could recognize on the trash barrels um uh east lansing so one of the largest solar car ports in the country well it's installations i mean they have it over a couple of lots um so this kind of gives you an example these uh vary about to about 20 feet in height in some cases um they have these in a couple locations around their their um campus so this is again kind of a larger of an extreme example we did put a limit in our um in the regulations for a 10 000 square feet thank you a limitation of 10 000 square feet but there's not necessarily a size limit per structure but the total of all the structures cannot exceed 10 000 square feet and if you'll see the other standards yeah we're gonna flip through the other pictures nope sorry we can go back to the pictures thanks brett um next picture again these are just some typical examples nothing that's um earth shattering but these are some other things that we we were looking at that in the past we've had interest for people adding carport structures um at very locate at various locations now this is obviously kind of a multi-family setup so while um you could not just a carport a would trigger car uh site plan this if you put one up for the express purposes of solar panels under this you would be allowed to do that um again here's kind of a much smaller example but it does exceeds 240 square feet as well um and then the last example very similar to um kind of what started this all this proposal and um so again you see them in various sizes and bread if you could go back to kind of the text language so um okay so again so really what this would allow is if you have an existing parking lot something like a westgate maple village large parking lots that want to construct structures over existing impervious area this would allow that it does not if if the construction of the uh solar energy system would it affects any other site plan elements it it does kick it in the site plan so you can't remove as you can see here uh required landscaping landmark trees if you add impervious surface so basically if there's anything that would trigger a site plant it still triggers it this is only allowing them to put it over existing impervious surface um this really was kind of triggered by a uh a case that was kind of brought forward to us that initially really um kind of a one of our dealerships in the city um wanted to install solar panels for uh you know solar vehicle charging and a bit of display as well and um you know unfortunately as as i told them while it's not it's not prohibited you are allowed to do those it it would trigger an administrative amendment um this particular location has not been site planned in quite a while um it truly would be a cost prohibitive um uh activity for them and really though it did start getting all of us as planning staff thinking in order to bring things in line with kind of our sustainability goals and all those other type items and looking around through other communities this does seem like something that could um allow and maybe encourage in some cases certain locations to to do this so again i mean parking lots you look like larger installations like briarwood the maple villages and things like that so um it would may allow them to do this even on an incremental basis so really the bottom line on that one is it's still any site plan elements that would normally be triggered will still be triggered if the solar installation occurs if it removes landmark trees or if it has anything to do with so um i think that kind of in a nutshell covers almost all of it so um i look forward to any questions or discussion at this time yes am i calling or no thank you mr kowalski okay thank you at this time i'd like to open up the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed solar energy zoning code amendments public comment may be made by calling 853 5247 and then it and then entering meeting id this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand after dialing into the meeting please press star 9 on your phone you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments commissioner mills my apologies if i somehow booted you out of the meeting when i was doing all the arranging um and chair milstein you did an excellent job we have no callers on the line all right thank you um seeing no one i will close the public hearing and i will read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the amendments to chapter 55 unified development code section 5.18.4 exceptions to height limits to allow solar panels to exceed height limit section 5.16.6 n solar panel or i'm sorry solar energy systems to wave site plan requirements for construction of solar car ports subject to standards for accessory structures do you have a commissioner that will move moved by commissioner ackerman seconded by commissioner mills and we are in discussion commissioner ackerman i just want to say i think this is great and thank you to the staff from the orc for your your work in this uh it's really appreciated i feel like these are pretty much no-brainers any way that we can add incremental solar coverage in the city we can and this is to structures that would already exist or to cover parking lots that already do exist and i think that that makes total sense um just from an aesthetic standpoint that's the one point of concern that i could anticipate um uh especially like given in 2017 all the debate we had about ground-mounted solar in front yards um i i fell in love with my girlfriend when i found out she led the advocacy to get her entire high school's parking lot covered in solar panels um and they live in a very like hoa mindset town in california and none of the neighbors to the high school have complained and they all appreciate it and it produces 880 kilowatts uh of power so it's uh it's pretty cool and yeah these things uh i think it inspire more than they detract from the aesthetic uh commissioner brandel um i too thinks this is great um i there's there's one thing i want to bring up that has to do with designing these things um which is that by virtue of putting in the posts you will be non-compliant with the size of the parking space because they have to be a certain width and depth and they don't float magically above and so i'm wondering if there are some ways that we can still make this work by allowing you to um increase the number of compact spaces that you have because you could have a slim post and comply and make it a compact space um so i get it that you're trying to like really keep the site plan exactly the same but you're not going to be able to keep it exactly the same if you cover large areas of parking lot with this the way that they got away with it in the um the one area in kerrytown where they put up a few you know over there if you look at the structure for that thing it's this massive cantilevered thing with big steel i-beams coming out that do not have posts that is super expensive and is not going to encourage people to necessarily do this and so um if there's some way i really want this to happen i've i've you know i i think we this is exactly the direction we need to go in but i also think that we need to set it up so that people can actually do this and still comply so if there's some way to write in language around um you know that they can change the number of increase the number of compact spaces that they have in their site plan or that like as long as they don't reduce the number of spaces by one percent or some some sort of way to be able to allow people to still build these things and comply with our design standards um that's that's my concern so just figuring out how we can because if you imagine i think what we're all imagining are these huge parking lots like you know briarwood or or maple village or something like that most of those things don't have tons of islands in them in which you can put the posts you know you're going to be putting in the middle of a bunch of pavement and so um i just want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up so that people can can still comply with um with what we're so you see yeah see how they have that slim footing there but that and and you could split the difference and allow it to be six inches on either side or something like that but i just want to make sure that we are cognizant of of what we're doing to the dimension of the parking space seeing that they got away with it because they actually they put their parking spaces this one was designed with this in mind and and we're really trying to do this as a retrofit situation i mean we would love it if people did it you know with their site plans too but i just want to make sure that we're covering our bases in that way in the in the way that this thing is written um see big big cantilever i mean you know this is partly because they're trying to you know advertise this and show it off but building that structure is massive you know to be able to do it that way so um that's i just want to make sure that you know as we're reviewing all these things that we're taking all the kind of design aspects into consideration too so that we are allowing this to move forward in a way that is going to make it it's going to facilitate its installation for people so that they you know that you're like oh all of a sudden you don't have as much you know you're not complying with xyz and you're going to have to go through site plan so i just want to make sure that we're covering our bases in that way you can respond to this if you'd like matt but um i appreciate that and i just want to remind the commission this the same question came up with eb parking as well and so um it's a um i hadn't thought about it in the context of these i'm glad you raised it but i think some of the solutions or approaches that you were talking about maybe look at compact spaces frankly maybe we look at adjusting the dimensions of our parking spaces i don't know this to be true but i would guess that a higher percentage of electric vehicles might be smaller i know they're not all but um so i think um the solutions the sort of palliative solutions might be the same for both of those proposed ordinances further discussion commissioner mills i it was my internet connection it was not you mr leonard who bumped me off sorry um my question is about the first set um the the roof mounted uh flat roof solar panels and i really appreciate um the presentation mr kowalski um as you know was curious about the height limit going 12 feet above and then you showed mechanicals underneath i want to be clear that that would allow for the mechanicals that are associated with the solar panel solar energy system itself but as i read the ordinance you can't use solar panels as an excuse to have other mechanicals that exceed the height limit is that right that's correct yeah okay so in my mind like honestly allowing that loophole might actually get us more solar um and so uh you might maybe what we have right now is safe but i would say in the future that's something that you could loosen honestly if you're like people are going to want to keep those solar panels relatively low just because as i mentioned like they become a sale right and and it just takes more to to anchor them the other thing though that i thought i would mention is that if we're allowing them to be 12 feet tall they could be an amenity space so they could be shade for the roof um uh there's that's being talked about actually right now in our state parks about offering some ground it's on ground but offering ground-mounted solar panels as like shaded picnic areas and so i think that that is a good height and i would say that as written right now it's fine in the future if we're not seeing as much solar as we want again maybe providing allowing other mechanicals to be hidden under be an additional carrot that we want to offer to see more roof mounted solar in this in the future so overall though i'm super supportive of this and i i really appreciate what shannon said about the parking spaces too and i wonder if like we could just maybe that's a tweak to the language about overall number of spaces like if we if we allow for reduction in number of spaces we might have problems but like reduced width of spaces um i think should be non-controversial or even a language that would say like reduction in number of spaces so long as it doesn't go below our minimums are you know i mean i this kind of gets back to the circular conversation that we talked about before about whether we have parking minimums or maximums and i don't think we want to pull that into this conversation right now but for the future um i'm not i again i could happily draft a little amendment amended language to the to the second one i just don't know what seems to make sense to people um but i think that those are a couple options either allowing you know um compact spaces to count or or kind of what shannon said about reducing it either by a percentage or as long as it doesn't reduce the number of spaces to be less than the than the minimum required yeah i so just generally as as you discuss my my thoughts are um i i feel comfortable that we could take that direction from you and progress with this to the next stage with city council um my the intent i'm hearing from you is that um making sure that we're thinking about some of the structural aspects and how that relates to our dimensional parking spaces so that we're we're sort of like to mention randall's point we're not creating this option only if you spend a premium structure wise to accommodate it um so i i feel i likewise i'm not sure what i would suggest in that regard right now we are i know that planner khan and the sustainability office are starting to look at some of those options for evs we could approach this kind of two ways if you are comfortable with us taking that direction and advancing with this i'm happy to progress with that recommendation it might result in a little bit of break before it goes to city council or on the flip side we would of course be happy to bring this back to you with that more fleshed out in a little bit more detail so if i can i just ask a question for clarification as well is um is because because we did i did actually consider a little bit of the impact of the um the posts and things like that and some of the like the ones towards the end of the show right the chevy one that's significantly overbuilt obviously um so it's a really good point it would the commission be i mean we could build in something i mean i think typically when i was looking at the base of many of those they're not that large you can like you said kind of split in between the two um i think if we get into the question of modifying any kind of parking weather compact mounts and things like that i think it gets a lot trickier and it starts to open up things however we could explore that but is it okay to say we allow you know like some variance in in width to these individual spaces or is your concern more that people just simply can't use it because of those posts there because we could it maybe make more sense to you know the posts can take up as much as one foot square well you know two square feet of a parking space you know what i'm trying to say is we can allow the post to encroach into space spaces rather than mess with the amount of compact or other spaces allowed um does that make sense and what are some ideas commissioner gabe randall so you just don't want to make it so it's difficult to park um and so i think that splitting the difference health you know if each side can absorb it but there's a reason that your compact spaces are eight foot wide and your regular spaces are nine foot wide because getting less than eight feet is pretty tricky you know because you have to turn to get in right so if you can just say something about like you cannot encroach more than six inches into each you know side or you know something again bret i i trust that you guys can kind of figure out um how to be able to take it from here i think that's fine um but you also just have to be cognizant of like it's got to work for a car to be able to pull in there and and the further back it is in the space the harder it is because you can't start turning until you get all the way out of that thing and so if it's really narrow it's like backing out of a really old garage you have to stay straight for a really long time and the way that our dimensions are set up for our parking lot aisles is 22 feet and that's small like you have to start turning before you come all the way out because your car is 18 feet long you know so like where it's placed and you know i mean there are different ways to be able to but maybe just talking to some of the folks from engineering about the the issues with turning radii and all that kind of thing i think you could get it straightened out with that um i and and again i trust that you all can figure it out in between now and city council but i think that you have the resources on your staff to be able to figure this one out and i think you probably can get away with it in terms of like not necessarily it being a compact space or not in terms of categorization but more defining how much you can actually encroach into the space to still make it workable for cars to be able to move in and out of there fluidly and things like that we could also make minimum dimensions of the spaces to cover any spaces they must be nine by so not to allow them to cover compact spaces with it that gives them an extra foot well that if they you wouldn't want to do it on a compact space because then you have you don't have enough room right yeah exactly so you it's like it has to be in a normal space and then you could define something about how far you can encroach in either direction or something along those lines um but again i think you all have the resources around you to be able to make a good decision with this and i'm completely fine with you all just running with this and then um taking it to council that's me anyway mr leonard did you have a comment i had a question if the commission could comment what what would be your feedback on if it resulted in a reduction of parking however it still met the parking minimum of of the site okay so that might be that that's not going to solve everything but that might be part of some of the things that we look at if if you're if the site were over parked by two spaces and you wanted to convert two of them and they could function in such a way but maybe they shrunk below our minimum size or something maybe we could still accommodate in that regard we're still we're still sort of hitting the goals that we're still on existing impervious surface and we're still going to be meeting the parking minimum requirements for the site and advancing sustainable sustainable options commissioner so kind of the thing i for the parking what i think this kind of triggers is like an administrative amendment for internal rearrangement parking spaces and the only kind of line item it says is no removal of required parking is the language and so maybe it is just a terminology that you can do a re internal rearrangement within the project area as long as it still meets those minimum requirements um so that that's one of those kind of like muddy areas that it's not really covered if like if you can get away if it's a loophole or not based on this language it just says that you can't remove parking so maybe it's that internal rearrangement is kind of part of the language to look at to make sure people can do that without going through the whole administrative amendment process for something like this i had a question maybe for clarification about the height limit and to commissioner mill's point about tucking other things under it like i like it as an amenity as long as it looks good doesn't you know like you can make pretty rough scaffolding 12 feet high to like have as a pergola for people to hang under but it's a it could be an eyesore so there's a little concern about that but what i what i understand is it's 12 feet high but um if it's other mechanical equipment it would still have to meet the minimum height i guess what i don't want to see is things keeping like building up off each other so the top of that mechanical equipment still hits a height limit and now we can just build scaffolding but the scaffolding could still sit 12 feet above even that mechanical equipment if that's the height limit so it's not really kind of nesting in nicely in a way it would only be if that roof hit the top height limit and then we wanted amenity coverage is what the reason for that 12 feet would be yeah i don't know how much it would come into a play as an amenity out you you probably know it's better than i do but you can guessing for most rooftop for more most rooftop amenities it's going to be accessed by an elevator overrun um so you're you're probably i don't know how much higher you would need to go with solar panels to for that that particular circumstance i think this is going to be more probably coming into play when a building is really kind of just barely making its height limit with mechanicals or elevator overruns based on what it's trying to accomplish and and then you can't get higher for solar i don't know like it's still like a plus 12 like i'm i'm just kind of like seeing that gap like there's always going to be a 12 foot gap between the top of the last thing at the max point so there'll always be that margin and the only thing that would fill that 12 foot margin would be equipment to service the panels yeah i think anything else could fail that gap i'd have to double check it but i think the the standard the project at the corner of william and maine i think the way that's constructed is the tower portion of that is pretty close to the height limit so they couldn't put solar panels on that portion so but i was trying to like understand like the 12 feet and what happens in that 12 feet just solar yeah i guess like that's more like an angle for pose than it is like if these things are at like 12 degrees you never really need all 12 feet to get that height um i don't i mean i i think it's okay now we'll just kind of see how it goes and adapt like i don't think it's critical to adjust at this point but i just kind of want to talk through like what we're really going to see in that height margin um based on this maybe we need to do some more um diagrams matt that um just like clearly we could take a couple of examples about how this may manifest and what would count and what wouldn't count on that commissioner gabe randall i just want to go back once more to the parking lot scenario and that is i think the other thing that's important is to make sure that none of the posts come down um in your handicap spaces so that you put that in there too because you you you have to comply you know with that um in terms of those those dimensions that's regulated way beyond the city so just make sure that that gets included in the language too all right further discussion looks like we're ready for a vote um with the understanding that there's going to be a couple of minor amendments when it gets to city council all right all those and are actually we'll do a roll call vote mr leonard start with you commissioner milstein yes commissioner give randle sorry yes commissioner ackerman yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner woods yes commissioner briggs yes commissioner mills yes a lot of yeses thank you thank you very much thank you we'll get it refined and hopefully in a really good shape you guys will be proud of i guess i would ask um to extend your comfortable um commissioner ackerman um you can kind of be a role of of checkpoint to make sure that by the time this progresses to city council you see that this has been reflected right all right so we are moving on to our regular business um and before us we have the 2020 2021 city planning commission meeting schedule uh mr leonard do we need to vote on this or is this an fyi uh you need to vote on it all right so i will have a commissioner move our schedule move by commissioner mills seconded by commissioner survey uh discussion on our 2020 2021 schedule commissioner woods uh just one question i know that i think mr leonard mentioned earlier that the governor's um guidelines might be coming into play and the city guidelines and everything um do you think that we will be able to even if we if it's moved that we can begin to have meetings in city hall will we still possibly have this option of zoom for those who might not feel comfortable coming to city hall um or even for the public that might want to call in and not come to city hall yeah um it's a good question um i i will i'll have to follow up on that i i can tell you generally um the city has been learning a lot from zoom meetings and we actually see the possibility of incorporating this by choice not out of necessity um in some circumstances i think it's much more accessible for people to be able to participate um via from your home as opposed to having to come to city hall and perhaps perhaps it's a little bit more challenging to multitask while you're waiting for a particular agenda item to come up or something so a lot of things are at play in that regard the city has traditionally taken steps and policy directions that all meetings whether they legally have to comply with the open meetings act or don't do take steps to comply with the open meetings act a great example that is we post the ordinance revisions committee meeting to meet open meetings act that's a committee meeting the oma would not typically require that to meet the same publication requirements as the full planning commission but the city's always done that from you know a lens of a desire to be as transparent as possible and so um as to your specific question about if um the governors or a lot of it comes down to the governor's order and what is allowed and not allowed um i would have to follow up to what extent the city has made any determinations that incorporating zoom as part of an in-person meeting would still be compliant with the open meetings act right now this is compliant specifically because of the governor's order and if that order were to expire without any extensions or modifications my understanding is that we have to go back to in-person meetings but i i'll follow up on that question and if i don't share it prior i'll definitely share it with the next uh commission meeting the also just some perspective um mr linder i don't know if you caught but mr poston of the city attorney's going to be providing the city council with advice on that subject and hopes to give us an update by friday oh great um uh mr leonard i can't send that to you without permission but if you want to request that same feedback uh we should be getting it soon okay and then i can also just float to city council colleagues we have like a policy agenda committee that writes resolutions advocating for certain state level policies um and while i can't convince governor to do anything we can at least kind of formalize our support for that with a letter an official letter or something if city council wanted to take that up um so i'll forward that because i i you raise a very valid point that just because the laws go away doesn't mean that the virus does and in the meantime i just said we've really tried to expand our method so we now have our e-comment which previously was only provided for city council agendas in addition to email and public speaking that is it's modest i'll i'll provide you but we have regardless of how well how the meetings conducted we've tried to open up the ways that we can hear from people for feedback on particular petitions commissioner yeah i just wanted to echo commissioner wood's recommendation also around public input even if it doesn't work out for us to to not be there in person i think having this open for public engagement there's you know is something that we could do and actually something i think we should consider doing for a long time even if even if we don't get a lot of folks that end up taking advantage of it i i've noticed as i've been watching more public meetings that it's nice to feel like you have an option to comment at one o'clock in the morning should you choose to do so not that we meet until one hopefully it hasn't happened in a couple years but it has happened um any further discussion on our calendar for 2020 through 2021 seeing no one um mr leonard are you okay with the voice vote for this one all right all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed all right it is approved uh we now move on to audience participation and at this time um this is an opportunity for a person to speak for up to three minutes in regards to anything at all public comment may be made by calling 877-853-5247 and then entering meeting id 921 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed uh city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand after dialing into the meeting please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address for the record at the beginning of your comments do we have any comments all right no callers online thank you um moving on then to commission proposed business and i believe commissioner mills had something for us mr leonard could you please add a discussion about drive-throughs and as special exception uses to our list of things ordinances to consider and i it what excellent i'm thinking i mean this is something that you know ultimately would be an orc decision but it's i think that there's there's enough interest that maybe it's a working session thank you guys um further discussion or any further commission proposed business uh mr loner uh i just wanted to tell you i i really appreciate uh the conversation i uh continually to be impressed by the time and the fact that you're committed to the public service and taking on this role which is very challenging and i just wanted to say that i really appreciated the discussion tonight everybody i thought brought a lot of thoughtfulness and passion and i just um kudos i really appreciated hearing you work through some of those issues i know a lot of you were uh torn as you said on a couple of the aspects of that but um i'm just reminded what a terrific commission that the city has so thank you thank you and thank you for your leadership mr leonard we couldn't we couldn't do this without you so thank you um any other uh commission proposed business seeing none i will take a motion to adjourn moved by commissioner gibrandal second by commissioner abrams um all those in favor please say aye aye and we are adjourned thank you very much have a great night bye you
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Santa Cruz where mr. J I dr. McCord we when the question that I asked you with his first kind of went down I think probably was not heard by everybody but I the question I asked was about how this company was able to pick us off and if we were the only ones do you mind answering that again just in case it wasn't heard thank you again for that this company works their primary source of income I guess the best way to put it is they worked several events they work for fortune 500 companies Microsoft Intel a lot of the big name companies this is this is that company who was part of and I'll say this you may or may not understand what I'm saying or remember it but years ago when they did a hologram concert of Tupac who's now passed away and but they were part of that and at that time that was some very big innovative ways to do a concert and so forward to now they one of the employees at the company was just kind of lamenting about how his kid won't be able to have a graduation just like everybody else because of Koba 19 and they started brainstorming on how can we get of a student and Families the very best opportunity virtually to experience graduation while still adhering to CDC guidelines of social distancing and keeping health and safety at the at the forefront and so they developed this and this how we're sitting here today thank you thank you very much board member are we ready to beautiful video you go ahead okay we'll try it again with Sean he's running because I think there were some settings in order for everybody to hear it he had to do some special magic to get it to go so hopefully it'll work this time the first demo video is kind of the explanation of the technology involved and the social distancing plan that the company presented to us and the first one's a little bit longer and as I introduced before I don't know if that was on the livestream or not but they set this particular video from their warehouse in Phoenix so they have come up with the plan specific to mesquite junior high location so that all of our students did not have to drive all the way to Phoenix so that is where you will see and he'll explain kind of those things in this one and then the second video is a little bit shorter and it shows the from the viewers perspective of what we would see as a final product again it's not using our kids but it's using their employees to show what the best they can since they don't have a sample video from an actual graduation they created these just so we could use them to try to explain some of these these technological wonders that they're they're planning to do so go ahead John okay we're going to give this a try again either and welcome to our demo my name is Jay Kohler I am the partner and CEO of vx3 and solid-state designs in Phoenix Arizona we know that these times have been especially difficult for our graduating class of 2020 and we have come up with a product that we believe is the solution to allow your graduates to the satisfaction of walking and graduating while practicing social distancing keeping everybody safe and having a unique experience that people remember for a long time what you're gonna see here is a product that we've developed in-house that uses holographic technology LED screens high-end broadcast cameras and a lot of ingenuity to get what you're about ready to see so let's go ahead and take a look what you see here is a soundstage that we built in our twenty seven thousand square-foot warehouse this soundstage is actually fully functional and we're able to hold the graduation here and I'll get into the logistics a little bit later on how that happens but it's important to know that this product is mobile its scalable and it's repeatable so we could do this all over the valley all over the country if we need to and be able to reproduce the same product as long as we have enough stage for the students to walk across and complete control over the ambient lighting so what you're looking at is obviously a stage and behind me is an LED wall that is any digital backdrop we want this can be a backdrop of your auditorium this could be simply a curtain it could be maybe just the logos of your school it doesn't really matter what it is we could change it up and we could change it up instantaneously and we can even change it through the prop through the program if we wanted to let me show you the important part though I'm gonna bring in mark who's playing the role of our Dean or principal in our isolation studio so now what you're looking at is me still on stage by myself but I've got mark in our isolation studio who can see me who could actually talk to me interact with me and it looks like he's right here on stage this is our in-house built hologram technology hey Mark how's it going in the isolation studio it's going good Jake what you doing over there staying healthy and staying isolated awesome so as you can see it looks just like he's on stage with me we're even evil able to interact I could even come up and give social distancing elbow bump if I wanted to so this is what it looks like and this is what your people will see on the other side of the broadcast now this could be recorded and sent out it could be live broadcast it could be edited into sections and pushed out the possibilities are pretty much endless and all of that happens in house here with one solution you don't have to go out and try to figure all the IT stuff out we've already got that handled for you so let me show you how it works a little bit behind the scenes we can't have an in-person graduation because of social distancing and health concerns we've developed a system to make sure we have the absolute minimum amount of crew required to run this all of our crew is required to follow certain sanitation protocols before they enter the building and utilizing stuff like robotic camera control and IP and IT based technologies all of our texts are spread out throughout the building never having to have physical contact with anybody or each other once the show is underway I'm going to take you into our isolation studio to show you where our colleague Mark was earlier on in the video so here I am in the isolation studio and I'm gonna actually invite onto the stage the very very first graduate of a virtual holographic graduation Pike Towers I congratulations on a great year come and get your virtual diploma congratulations Ike what do you think thank you so much I am excited to be here able to graduate and I'm excited that my family all over the country will be able to see me awesome thanks a lot like next I'm going to take you outside to show you how we're gonna manage the people and how we're gonna actually get them in and out of the building here we are outside of our warehouse in our parking lot I want to show you some of the logistics on how we're gonna handle people handle the flow of traffic to make sure nobody ever has to have any physical contact in our case we've got a couple large lots that we could stage people in and we would have radio communication with the people directing traffic as you can see over here we've got some cones set up with our vehicles and they're more than 15 feet apart and everybody would remain in their vehicles until we're ready to stage them and bring them in we'll bring them in three people at a time but not three people at a time where they're gonna be close together for example I would be the third person standing out here and the second person is actually going to be inside at our sanitizing station and I'll show that to you now our second staging position is just inside the door in our sanitation station here students could sanitize and we could make sure that the area remain sterile for everybody coming in even though they have no interaction with any people or any objects we want to make sure we're taking every precaution necessary to keep people safe once they're done here their name will be called and they'll be able to walk the stage I'll take you over there now and here's the first staging position this is where the student will be when they're waiting for their name to be called it's about 30 feet from our sanitation station and there will be dividers so when one student is coming up and the other is going down they never have any contact and there's an actual physical separator so when they walk up they take the diploma Mads you can see here you can see the monitor in the background that's where they'll be able to see the Dean or the principal whoever is actually giving them the Diploma and interact and they'll be able to see the hologram in front of them as well once they received that they simply walk offstage and they actually walk out of another entrance in our building get back in their cars and depart and their graduation is done thank you for watching our demo we think we've got a great solution and a great product to bring some normalcy to a horrible situation that was dealt to us and give the graduating class of 2020 not only something that they're gonna be able to take with them we hope that it's something that will be very very unique to them mark I appreciate your time I appreciate your help how about one more elbow bump just for for fun yes there you go again thank you so much our contact info will be on the bottom of the screen give us a call at anytime looking forward to talking to you and just a reminder this is completely scalable and what you saw is just a model we could take this and adapt it to almost any situation not only just here in Arizona but around the country thanks a lot so that was more of the technology and some distancing plan that this video will show you more of a graduation or perspective and again this is the one that they created specifically for us so that we had a better gauge of what the end product might look like hello and welcome back he saw our demonstration on how we're going to do a virtual graduation using holographic technology we had a couple requests to see what the final product would look like for the Ewers at home so we're moving ahead and set up the studio again and we're gonna show you that now what you're gonna see is you're gonna see the actual walking part of graduation the main part students walking across stage in real-time and then you're gonna see the same sequence with all the holes cut out and the final touches like lower thirds added in so you could actually experience what the at-home viewer will see with that let's just go ahead and get started and invite our first graduate up on stage mic towers hi congratulations on a great year thank you very much our next graduate is Paul Breen Paul congratulations 4.0 grade point average great job thank you next is our valedictorian aergon Schmitz congratulations they're gone thank you I knew I could do it and our final graduate is Ike towers twin brother Mike towers congratulations Mike thank you and that's pretty much how the sequence would go now you're gonna see it in the actual timing with all the holes cut out final touches put on it and this is exactly what the viewers at home will see mic towers my congratulations on a great year thank you very much our next graduate is Paul Breen Paul congratulations 4.0 grade point average great job thank you next is our valedictorian aergon Schmitz thank you I knew I could do it and our final graduate is Pike towers twin brother Mike towers congratulations Mike thank you thank you very much we hope this gives you a little bit better feeling on what the viewer will see at home for the final product if you have any questions please feel free to contact us at any time all right so hopefully that gives you a little bit better idea we will have this presentation posted on our website as well so that if there are families that are wanting to take a look at that that aren't watching right now they are absolutely welcome to access those videos and get a little better idea of what we were talking about with the technology and this gives you kind of a general idea of what we are including in all seven of our graduation so you can see that the musical inserts the salutatorian a dress valedictorian principals address the acceptance to the graduates by the governing board closing speakers specific music selections from each school will be provided that this company will be dropping into the final production as far as pomp and circumstance and the introduction and then like we showed you with the specific pools press and logos and the photos that we have attached in this this video so it's as close to an actual the end product will be as close to an actual graduation ceremony as as we can possibly make it at this point again this program order in the actual school you know brochure like will be mailed to the students along with their diploma so that they have that to remember and parents can look at it and use that or you know reviewing later on as well I think the last slide just shows kind of our timeline as far as when we sent out our district in-school communication the board meeting and then the timeline for filming all of our schools students at our seniors at mesquite junior high the goal right now of doing a live stream on May 21st for all of our schools at 7 p.m.
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Carr Mazur jetty anything else in category one I I would like to make a general statement dr. Santa Cruz if I can please all wrote it I totally support you know what we've done and what we've had to do in the past and what we want to do but I feel like we have so many other issues that we need to deal with right now that are much more of a priority than this I would really like not to spend a lot of time on it that's just my opinion because we can talk about all of this but with everything that's going on right now it might not do us any good to be talking about so that's my feeling but I don't think that these are all not very important but we don't know what's gonna happen in terms of so many things at so many different levels that's just my opinion point well taken mr.
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Kaminsky cousin and esteemed guests I have the honor of starting off the formal recognition of all of our teachers on this teacher appreciation day teaching is the profession that all other professions grow from and it is not only fitting that we take the time to honor all of our teachers it is essential that we recognize and celebrate the work and dedication that our teachers exhibit salient teachers have always been essential and given our current situation it's teachers who are working tirelessly to connect through distance learning with our students and in the process our teachers are learning and stretching their professional practice so that they can meet the unique needs of all of our students over the last nine weeks we have seen countless faces and images through screens a lot of images have been frightening but many have touched our hearts like human and Escobar the Bassett high school and the Phil she produced and the bright spots we just heard about from our teachers we have also seen images of celebrity elected officials and I'm sure many have seen the faces of friends colleagues and family members there zoom and got my googa leaf before our students the teachers the faces of teachers represents caring learning friendship and a semblance of normalcy and I know that our teachers have been going the extra mile to meet the needs of their students by calling status homes by learning how to use digital tool and by converting spaces in their homes into whiteboards and focus walls I've seen some of these myself when meeting with teachers to Google meet our 2018-2019 district Teacher of the Year Kathy Hendrix had one of my favorite quote from Mahatma Gandhi need the change you want to see in the world it was on a poster in her home clearly evidence of the lesson that she had recently taught to our students I was also I was also brought to laughter from a story from a story from a teacher when she described how some of her students have asked her to stay after class that they could review with her how to use Google needs that was a little bit was actually really fun really funny story a lot has truly changed in a short period of time but one thing we don't want to change the event where we get to recognize all of our teachers of the year this is a special event and through the creativity of our Sousa administrators we've been able to recreate our individual tribute to each science teacher of the year while nothing can replace being together and recognizing our teachers together in one physical space I hope this video gives us tonight on this special night a sense of normalcy I want to congratulate our teachers thank you and happy teacher appreciation day I'm about to share the video and I want to thank our teachers I'm sorry our administrators who helped put this together sit back and enjoy hi everyone my name is Linda McNary and I'm the director of the Aziza Adult Education Center I am so pleased to present to you mrs.
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we will confirm that we have to set up some separate youtube channels for each of our high schools and make sure that vx3 is able to project all of those live-streamed at the same time so if anything it'll be some time around there and we will make sure that everybody's aware of that we may have to stagger the time frames but again around that date of May 21st is the the goal right that takes care of our program unless anybody has any additional questions after seeing the videos or anything else doctor Santa Cruz I do go ahead Richard mrs. Taylor or dr. McCord as of May 5th at 7:58 p.m. which is what time it is right now what exactly are were your guidelines based on what the governor gave us so that the parents can know that what what you know what we were having to deal with in terms of trying to make this decision are you talking about social distancing guidelines basically all of them I mean yeah I mean I know I'm asking you a lot but you know social distancing and how many people can be involved and why we had to come to this point we are we are recognizing what the CDC obviously they've relaxed those guidelines a bit for you know reopening America I guess the best way to put it so they'll be able to do certain things in restaurants or they can have a limited number of people that can be in there for us we're gonna we're gonna adhere to the social distancing guidelines in terms of being six feet apart making sure sanitation is is correct and again having those individuals in and out of that auditorium as quickly as possible to one to make sure the Safety's adhere to - to make sure that the lines flowing extremely well so we can get all of our graduates we have you know 850 with 850 students all the way down to 75 students and so we'll be making opportunity to adhere to those guidelines as we move through just as part of that they'll also the the number of people that can be involved to my knowledge as of right now it's no more than ten at a time am I correct in that I believe you are and that is an area there might be other people in other room that aren't even it same area as the but that's what our goal is right and and and what I'm the reason I'm asking this is that I know that there's a lot of things that have happened in the last few hours I just want us to whatever I want our community to understand where you got to this point as of right now that could change tomorrow morning or next week or whatever but as of right now what what we had to deal with what you had to deal with what our district had to deal with is we were going by the guidelines that were given to us by the governor and the CDC am I correct in that you are correct thank you large groups cannot congregate together so we can't fill our stadiums right now according to the CDC and and it's my understanding that you know even like with the major league baseball they're thinking about going back to get going back like the 1st of July but at this point right now they're thinking that if they do they're going to be not playing or they're gonna be playing for television revenue not with people and I and I I don't know that could change tomorrow also right but my point in this whole question is we're where we are right now at 8:01 on may 5th I have a question thank you mrs.
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jetty because I think with all that has occurred it'll be pretty interesting to see how alleged going to have to contend with taxes and revenue and the things that that have impacted the state so your point is well-taken if I could take liberty then given that commentary if it would be preferable for board members and all but miss wooden mr. Carr way in here and a little bit but to take these on our own look them over and send them in to miss Wilson and then we validate the five or seven at a meeting prior to the 29th to be submitted to a ASBA or request that our previous be accepted as our use of metal and we can move on to our next two items of business what's your pleasure and I'll turn it to is wood and mr. Carr I would appreciate that as well your suggestion what you just made would be good for me I would echo that sentiment let's let's have everybody put in what they think and then just come back and discuss the items that we have in common or don't have in common versus all of the items I do however think as you as you indicated bringing it back or a final discussion is important so that our public knows what we have submitted since it's an action of the board very good thank you and I anticipate that the document that is crafted by the legislative committee of ASBA will look very much like what you have in front of you with items added and/or deleted from the previous year as they have been successfully adjudicated through the legislative process so I had me some praise if could you have the previous year's items that we submitted last year send out to us also so we can review that I remember some of the items that we submitted I couldn't remember it in total so if could receive that and then look it over send an email to Gabby on what our preferences are I'm happy to discuss at a later meeting okay yes that will be possible dr.
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Naveen Ibrahim he's been selected as our Teacher of the Year Naveen is a highly committed professional who teaches in our medical pathway program specifically she teaches in our health unit front office secretary and medical coding and billing programs Naveen students described her as the best teacher that they have ever had and that she generally cares about their success the classes that Naveen teaches are very technical and in her class students are always highly engaged and continually challenged as they learn about complex medical conditions health care legalities doctor's orders medical terminology body structures and medical coding Naveen has a strong background in the medical field and continuously strives to bring real-world applications to her students thank you and please join me in congratulating mrs. Naveen Ibrahim as the azusa adult education centers teacher Ebina Contreras principal of Center middle school here to proudly introduce our teacher of the year mr.
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Taylor the musical selections are those going to be pre-recorded selections that the schools put into the video yes that's correct they're using their own choir their own not to report right now because obviously they can't get together in a group as well but our auditorium managers a nice job of recording all of these events all of concerts so they're selecting their favorite or best musical pieces some of them have selected pieces that would typically be performed during a baccalaureate operation at a graduation and so it's it will be kind of nice because each pool is able to select which groups or they're using a recording of a concert that been this school year with those particular students that are that are in the graduating class right now something that would be also a nice option for our schools thank you I appreciate that of course dr.
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McCord and mrs. Wilson we would appreciate that and we'll operate on a consensus that we will work individually the information that has given us and we will submit individually for discussion brief discussion and ratification at our next meeting prior to the 29th of May is that everyone's conclusion of the discussion it's mine thank you all right then we will work off of consensus and say that we will submit our items individually and go from there and we'll move on to item 2.0 - dr. McCord thank you dr.
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David Louie binos David has brought a professional and distinguished career to a USD for 32 years he was at center when they were still Cavaliers yes that long ago name changes haven't stopped him he continues to bring passion for a subject but more importantly a genuine love of kids and respect that is reciprocated by both students and he is currently slated to be summer school principal and is our PBIS chairperson colleagues note mr. Liu ever notes continually advocates for services that support our most vulnerable populations family friends students and staff all could break out into song sing in the accolades of mr. Liu Ava knows with pleasure the center middle school community presents teacher of the year mr. David blue emails Laura Clark principal of Dalton school our teacher of the year is Greg Cahill creating a tribute for someone as admired appreciated and essential as Craig is so tough how can one capture the essence of a teacher who is practically perfect Craig provides intervention for students his skill knowledge attention patience preparation and differentiation for those most in need is amazing he puts students first which can also be seen through his work across campus including supervision discipline special events PBIS leadership team and in his support of grade level PLC's attention to detail dedication to his work and a high level of organization has earned Greg a reputation for impeccable accuracy he makes sure that everyone has what they need the most impressive part is that he accomplishes all this with a positive attitude and a willingness to do more Greg is the glue that keeps us together at Dalton he notices when we need help even before we do his caring and thoughtful nature has also been critical in times of personal need when a staff member has a struggle or when someone has a cause for celebration Greg can always be relied upon for making them feel special congratulations mr.
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McCord you know a side benefit if there is one I concur with your first statement and that was nothing can replace the person-to-person large-scale graduations that we are famous for in this district but one of the things that is a silver lining in this particular mode is the fact that time ever if there is a silver lining a parent or parents and family members and their graduate can sit in their living room on the night that would have been graduation and that's assuming all of our timelines are met and watch the event together right there sitting next to their graduate so while that is a benefit it's a small consolation because those families will be together watching listening and virtual form in that event so that's that's a positive I suppose and again hoping that all of the timelines can be met so that in fact we can broadcast all of those graduations on the same evening is that an accurate assessment yes sir dr.
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Santa Cruz governing board members what we have for you tonight is the prison regarding 2019 2020 projected budget revision number do we believe the three visual goal before you in June but we wanted to give you a little taste of what you'll be seeing coming up and plus as things are related to funding jacoba 19 and from things that are state are lowered we in paint there'll be some changes you've been after our presentation tonight over to miss met and go from there thank you sir miss Bence good evening everybody I just wanted to introduce this item Jackie Mountain and I have been discussing this over the last week or so we did receive an email from on behalf of the state from ASBO late Friday afternoon letting us know that we had through June 30 to revise the final budget for fiscal year 2020 primarily due to the advent of the federal characters act so the I think the items from ad II wanted to give them an opportunity to determine how the carers act monies would be allocated in therefore provide opportunities for school districts to account for those so that would be the biggest change that we wouldn't anticipate when we actually have the final documents to you some time and information however as you know we've been sharing the projected estimated final budget revision if you in the monthly report and so we have scrutinized all of our budgets very carefully as I indicated over the last week or so and so we wanted to share the results of that which will then be incorporated into the monthly reports through the remainder of this fiscal year with that I'd like to turn it over to Jackie Manton and our Director of Finance and they also wanted to make sure everyone knew that our internal auditor miss Pat Donahue was on on this WebEx as well so both Jackie Pat and I are will be available for any questions you may have so with that I'd like to hand it over to Jackie it's all yours Jackie can everybody hear me okay yes dr.
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Cahill you truly deserve this honor my name is dr. riskiness and I am the proud principal of Ellington's most amazing 80 K through 8 I have the very proud moment here to celebrate Ellington's Teacher of the Year mrs. Stacey Kirino this is where you can cheer at home let me take you on a little journey about Stacey curry now there's many things that I can say about Stacey but for today I will focus on only two quick ones first and foremost she's a lifelong learner Stacey's a career surgery models for our students daily that it's never too late to learn something new secondly Stacy's favorite characteristic of mine is she really wants to make a difference for all of her kids and knows that she needs to hold all kids accountable she believes that all kids no matter their background should be challenged and there's no reason to believe that some kids can't do anything lastly one thing I should mention about stacy is her partner in crime Ellington lost the teacher this year Oh mrs.
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