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um i seriously hope uh and and that that happens i just i'm not convinced that that's in the cards um and and there's a scenario by which this goes on beyond this school year um so at this point i'm really just thinking about the next academic year okay um can i ask a question just a clarifying question about the the 10 magic number that was more for kind of space and developmental reasons not financial yes for me you know the eec guidance talks about um 10 students eec is the governing body for early childhood education again because it's in a public school we can this is sort of a unique program in massachusetts so frankly it's unclear whether deci or eec guidance would be the one to follow decia said for their integrated preschool programs they would they would follow the deci guidance this is not an integrated program but it's in a k-12 school so there's gray but i do believe when it looked at size that when we looked at size of the room having a more conservative viewpoint would be better it is reducing the number of staff members just to be really clear again we would guarantee employment for those staff that staff member in this model but uh i think we go above 10 students at one time and i should be clarified i mean 10 students at one time because it could be that students are coming on a monday wednesday friday and you could replace them on tuesday thursday but that really gets into this cohort model and we really would probably want to have students uh not come a couple days a week because of the cohorting structure that we're looking for in all of our schools so you know if we have 15 kids over the course of five days even if only 10 are there at a time we're now expanding our exposure so that's another piece you asked that i should have said that more explicitly earlier we are looking at full-time students from an exposure point of view as opposed to students who may be there intermittently um okay maybe other places intermittently and the same way for our public schools you know at the elementary level we're talking about a cohort that really stays together and and minimizes mixing uh between classrooms the preschool wouldn't be any different that's public health guidance that's there's nothing special about preschool that would guide that so you know we'd want to think through their decision-making matrix on that but it might it might be that we're not as flexible uh based on what other students are doing if they're home sorry this is really it gets into the weeds a little bit but i think it's a really great point yeah right so if students are coming monday wednesday friday but on tuesday thursday they're at home that doesn't concern me as much because they're going to be home in the evenings and the weekends anyway but if it's the case where students are coming to pelham on monday wednesday friday but tuesday thursday thursday they're in another public setting with other kids um right that would be more of a cause of concern around mixing so that's where the nuances play out and we'd have to really wade into that and try to get a lot more information from families who were not full-time families than we typically would ask okay all right yeah that was long-winded but yeah um okay and so it's possible then that there might even be students who wouldn't be able to come back if we couldn't fit them this way if we do the majority of preschool families who don't go full time uh are home the other days but i know in some some schools there are people who split days based on family work schedules custodial arrangements with you know living with different caregivers um so some monday wednesday friday they're with one caregiver where pelham works or a preschool not pal a preschool relates well on the other days they're with a different caregiver where they're living in a different community and pelham wouldn't be uh as as reasonable a site so it's not about pelham specifically but when you look at preschool um partial preschool attendance there's a whole range of why families be partial and we'd have to typically we're like great you want to come three days a week or four days a week that's fantastic we would have follow-up questions this time and i think the majority would be the home that's a more typical situation but we we'd really need to know what's happening on the other days okay um and this is i mean i might be getting ahead of myself a little bit but is is there any precedent for having some kind of commitment or contract that a family would sign committing them to make future payments it just either in pelham or other districts that just seems like a a fraught place for the district to be to kind of be enforcing future payments and i didn't know if that happened if there were other situations where that would happen there are less than a helmet more at other levels or other districts uh the challenge becomes when someone decides they don't want to um what options do you have right so um you know we can go down the road of bill collecting agencies uh we typically haven't gone down that road um because that's felt really awkward um so but in this instance with this quantity of the budget at stake um that's something that the committee would have to really think about uh what to do and and you know because we even if it's a binding contract if someone doesn't pay it you can't knock on doors right you would have to go down a legal road uh around that and you know i think it's a really important point because you know i think if we're going to commit to work on that you're sort of committing to come go down some roads perhaps on bill collection that we have not gone down before uh on the issue of precedence that jcc program in dc if you sign up for the program you're there for the full year right and that would be the expectation it's just that that's the commitment it's the back end of it that gets more complicated when there's a problem i think the commitment's clean it's what do you do when it's not being met right right okay all right the other thing that's the hard variable i'm sorry to stay with that theme i'm sorry this morning apologize is people don't know what's happening with their jobs right and that's not much just about well i don't want to pay because it's virtual because the people have committed to that but people's ability to pay isn't what it was for many people and locally and beyond that it was a year ago and so there's some real risk here um that we'd want to think through um about the commitment and you won't know till you get there and i think that's the hard thing but um you know more often it's the case that there's family hardships then there is people going back on so going back on a commitment it's that they're not able to meet the commitment anymore so there's risk in this one way or the other you know um and um you know that's it that's the hard part is even if families sign up there's no guarantees um so that's sort of where where we are but thank you for these are really helpful questions in my thinking so i appreciate it sure um any other questions for dr morris just on specifics okay so i think then we should just talk for a minute about what our next steps and the timing will be um sarah best i think your comment is very true like this is you know people are really really need to know a what it would look like if we are going to offer it and you know that this is i mean preschool is a i remember having preschoolers how stressful it was and if someone had told me you know a month and a half ahead of time that it suddenly wasn't going to be open that would have turned my life upside down and i certainly understand that um so i guess the things that we wanted to learn more about was is there anything having to do with like an essential worker designation or something like that that we could somehow benefit from um a better sense of what a virtual plan would would look like not necessarily like the whole model put together but you know what a family could expect from that um and then i guess just generally timing of like when when that would be presented when we could expect to vote on it and and communicate with um with families jeremy speaks out a little bit yeah i guess timing i mean obviously you know i i know you have like a couple other things going on in your professional life currently so i also want to be you know i i think there's a need to kind of balance that and not put too much on the district in terms of how quickly this is turned around but also have some urgency about it so yeah what how responding to that would i think be helpful yeah so and lee certainly feel like if you have something to add when i'm done you know uh and feel free to be offer a divergent opinion too that's fine we're very comfortable here in pelham um with with difference of opinions and so uh in my head we'd want to get something out in the next week um to families with you know we had this conversation if people actually want to watch you know we could send the link perhaps this meeting because i think it actually for people who really you know would be willing to sit through with that 59 minutes right now they might get a sense of the context uh i expect anyone everyone would but i think then at least there's transparency that this is being talked about publicly i think the second piece is that we'd be asking for a contract and a commitment to pay for the year regardless of virtual or in person and i think the third period would be uh some some right not everything drawn up perfect like exactly but some version of what does it look like in person and what does it look like in virtual right because even though the in-person people have a familiarity with in person won't look exactly the same as that the knowledge that you know adults would be wearing masks and that students will be more spread than they typically were and that you know we'll be following some of the eec guidelines which are not as limiting as they are at the k to 12 level um but that you know there will be ppe for for all the staff like the reassuring i think for families that we were taking safety in mind that there'll be regular cleaning and disinfecting you know i think families will will need to know that stuff for the in person as well as miss kenny's point about uh knowing at least some sense of what the virtual would look like um so you know it's the 16th today you know so if you think about that getting out on the 23rd or thereabouts if not sooner i also imagine a meeting similar to this format this using this tech model jewel or a zoom or google meet where people could ask have interactive questions um because i think you know it's good to put together a good document and give people the opportunity to do that so i'm looking at my calendar right now just mapping out um the weeks and so if we're talking about having a letter go out to 23rd you know perhaps a follow-up the beginning of that following week like the 2028 where people have been able to read a letter behavior questions uh and then coming back to a decision the week after um yeah that first week in august um that feels like an aggressive but not too aggressive schedule like an aggressive that meets the needs of families in the organization um without feeling rushed it's where people will feel pressure to make a decision because we're actively doing that for them um how you feel about that so um i think that all sounds really good i appreciate how much thought everyone is giving to this and the level of detail that folks are going into um so i just want to share two things so the first is that i've had multiple calls every day from families who are very eager to know what the plan is for the fall so my sense from speaking with them is that um child care options are very limited right now because spaces are opening with with less capacity um so i think the quicker we can give a concrete answer to folks the better the other piece is around around some concrete planning for what the digital learning remote learning distance learning will look like we're not quite there yet with our k-6 teachers in terms of the expectations for the number of synchronous versus asynchronous minutes the number of content areas covered the number of hours a day um it will be different from what it was in the spring where it was a little bit loose in terms of the guidance um you know our our plan and you know mike you may speak to this as well but our plan is to be much more structured in any kind of distance learning plan to be very clear what what the expectations are that is not developed yet or a hundred percent developed yet because we're we're in a different phase of our planning with the physical spaces and different models for reopening so um i i have some curiosity about doing that for preschool before doing it for k-6 and i would want to make sure that any anything that we put out to families for preschool expectations we would be able to mirror or align with our k-6 staff and that just hasn't it hasn't at least to my knowledge been discussed yet but with the teachers association or with the teachers or um building based leadership so um well i think it would be really helpful to get that concrete information out to families in the next week i i think there are other conversations that need to happen before we put out that concrete plan does that make sense it does i can add to that and we don't even have state guidance yet uh what all this would look like except for students with special needs which came out last friday and that's not as relevant for this for for integrated preschools or students with special needs in preschool that's very clear um now or it's a lot more clear anyways for this particular program it's harder to do i think i wonder if we can just develop some some general thoughts this is what happened in spring and here's ideas for the fall you know without being i think lee's concerned is accurate but i think hopefully we can find a middle ground of not having a daily schedule exactly what it would look like one of the huge variables at the k to six or particularly at one to six is that um we're required for 900 hours of time on learning instruction each year that doesn't apply to our preschool setting so it is subsequently different um model but i think even collecting some of the good work that happened this spring from the staff and and some ideas for the fall uh might probably satisfy uh might be the best we can do yeah and to clarify i was not i don't think that the intent was to kind of oh go ahead of what they're doing everywhere in the state including k-6 in this district i think in fact well and i can't speak for other committee members i would actually be fine picking direction from staff and from yuli on what is feasible to present now so certainly not like a day by day schedule but uh like maybe there would be this once a week and this would be the kind of activity that we could help with so i think i would be fine if it was like we're presenting what we think is feasible to present right now and not having that come from this body i'm sarah best i saw you had your hand up i was going to say the same thing i wasn't saying we i want to see at 9 15 what's happening and at 10 25 more of just of like uh these are some overall things we're thinking about and like here's how we think it can be implemented just so people you know like in in reading the public comments some of those letters like i didn't know what preschool looked like virtually i knew what fourth grade looked like virtually in sixth grade because i had those but you know outside of that i think that will just like you know rough outline of what it could maybe look like like what what are we thinking of just because i think if i were a preschool parent that would be really helpful for me if i was trying to make this decision which would feel hard i mean everything feels hard right now but yeah yeah and i think also pr hopefully not creating even more work i mean hopefully kind of based on some thoughts and planning that staff have already yeah through you know that there that's not going to be like some new science project that google is requiring so thank you and i just have one more clarifying question so for families um who would be signing on for this model would we be making a commitment to provide technology and devices to those families if we did shift to a distance learning and if so how are we factoring that into our planning yeah so last year we did you know and there weren't families who didn't have hot spots or things like that and we did have uh we did make um chromebooks available for families last spring and you know um when i did talk to ms desjarlais who says to say hi by the way she texted me the other day that you know the needs of pelham families were covered with the chromebooks we were able to provide last spring so i do think we're in you know if we had enough last spring um hopefully that will not create it means it's different students so i think you're right to say that there might be students who weren't with us last year who might need a device but based on our generous and pelham was a part of this contribution for our pgos that supports this infrastructure i feel like for the next school year we'll be in good shape yep good question though yeah thanks for asking that okay so oh go ahead margaret um i'm sorry i missed the beginning of this so did i understand that it would possibly be limited to 10 people 10 students yes 10 students and if so um because i assume we've had more students i know we've had more than that in the past how will decision be made about what can get accepted so it's a great question i haven't thought through that in my quick thinking would be well first of all attendant would fully commit to be able to fund the program for the for the full school year um but i think as it typically goes we'd go back into the order of registration um so the families who registered at the beginning of that process seems like they should be able like it would be in any other year that when we fail we fail and when we're going to make this adjustment i think we would respect that same part of the process but thank you i had not thought through that question it's really important one okay um all right and so we will we'll have another meeting we'll have a chance for people to ask questions and then ultimately a meeting to either i guess either vote or potentially not either way we'd have to vote um okay so do you i guess lee and mike want to have a chance to connect and figure out just details about next steps and then we can chat after this meeting that sounds good to me i just want to make sure midi is comfortable with the rough timeline that was totally back in the envelope not even because i was just doing it early that i uh suggested earlier i had thought about it before but um i just want to make sure if we're the next time we're talking about this as a pelham school committee meeting it's the this is what we found that everyone's comfortable with us moving forward with kind of what we've talked about over the last hour um because i think if people are concerned about and don't want us to do that and i'm not trying to push it but i just feel like i feel like there's consensus but i'd rather i don't need a vote but more actively be assured that the committee is comfortable with us moving forward in this way yes any any concerns from focus on that okay yes so yeah that that rough timeline sounds good and obviously as with everything these days if we need to be flexible then we'll we'll figure that out but that all sounds good yep so we'll follow i'll help lee and i will follow up together and follow up with staff too if they want to have input which i think is highly likely they're very engaged staff here in pelham which we love and uh we can we can go move forward with that plan and then we can report back to again you know in the next two weeks about what we found and where we are and we'll also communicate if we when we do have a public meeting like this whether it's again in this format or in a google meet format we'll let the committee know when that is so that if you'd like to just be cautious about the quorum piece but if you'd like to be an observer uh you'd have the ability to do that okay all sounds good i have a public health call that i need to get on that i'm uh so i know there's a couple other things in the warrant but is there any last-minute questions for me before i depart because that um it's an important one i don't want to miss this one nope i think you're good thanks very much thank you i'll take it oh uh so i probably will leave this broadcast i don't take myself off it because otherwise you'll all go away so um so at the end i'll just keep look looking at the screen and i'll end the broadcast when you're done miss hall or miss whiting jones wouldn't mind texting me so that i um don't just leave it on indefinitely for people to look at blank that'd be great we will let you know all right thanks so much okay um all right next up is warrant review so with jesse not on the committee anymore it's me this is my first time so bear with me i think this is what i'm supposed to do i have two of them so i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty two thousand four hundred and thirteen dollars and nine cents for a warrant dated july 8th 2020.

so um so maybe like a week before that yeah why don't we say like to like by august 7th just so that we don't forget about it um and debbie if i may um oh and rosa too if i made for one second i forgot to include the policy that you're getting um in proposal is inclusive of the agreement that we would have the staff sign um although the board just approves policies and doesn't include regulations um i you know administration john myself uh um and uh and the team that reviewed this um felt it important to um have that go up have the form itself that we expect students and parents to sign um that go before the board as well for approval so um this policy not only has a policy but also has the the actual agreement that that parents and families and students will sign okay thank you okay um so everybody just get your comments to debbie uh by the seventh and uh we have another policy um this is just an update to a current policy so i will move that the board approve for a first read updating current brookfield policy 6141.328 as recommended by the policy and communications subcommittee thanks bob okay debbie this one is directly related to the other ones that we just discussed this is really specifying when students bring their own electronic devices that those devices will not be permitted to use outside internet resources but as eric pointed out more importantly we've added that paragraph about taking or making audio or video recordings so this policy was already revised more currently in 2013 so we're just aligning it with the other two that we just talked about so that they're all consistent um and then the only other thing i will add is um although this policy is a little bit older same as the other one on the language in kiev's um newest policy uh that that handles byod or bring your own device the language did not change um enough really much at all um but um it is important you know that the the paragraph added record regarding recording meetings um that this policy was to be amended to add that paragraph um as per recommendation from council um that that if we change if we add that into 61 61.41321 that we also added into 6141 328 which is why we bring this policy to you okay okay thank you eric okay so any other discussion on this one okay so all in favor all right hi okay uh let's see up next is the dissolution of the board subcommittee security task force and possible motion um i actually think it's probably more efficient for me to go ahead and make a motion and then we can have any discussion and to go through with that so as an ad hoc committee having met their objective to formally review the physical security of our schools as well as security protocols and procedures and recommend improvements to the board of education i move to dissolve the security task force second amy got that one so any discussion on this john did you want to add anything very quick just just would like like to first of all thank the the members of the public uh we had we had several um parents uh who actually joined us with board members and administration and police chief uh and the like and um again we achieved our objectives we also um there's a requirement state requirement that the administration has a district security team and so while we have that um and it doesn't involve board members we need to meet regularly and then we develop our security plans submit them to the state and that kind of thing um that would involve the police chief as well fire marshall and so we'll continue that but in terms of having yet another subcommittee for the board of education who has met his executives uh in the consideration this evening of establishing a new subcommittee there's just only so much time in the day and if we don't actually have an active subcommittee the thought was this is the the time to move forward continue the work we've done and continue implementing the enhancements and move forward okay i will uh i'll just make a comment that it was a very effective subcommittee in terms of reviewing uh all the things that we can we're doing in our schools and finding breakthrough areas but it was losing momentum right it's because we covered just about everything we needed to cover so i think it's right the right time to move it into more operational mode as john says um and uh and use our time for yet another ad hoc committee which we'll talk about soon thank you and thank you bob and other gold members who were part of that it really was important to have your input thank you we put some good things into the budgets and uh into our procedures and processes that i think were excellent discussions so all right any other questions on that okay so all in favor aye thanks everyone okay uh up next um is establishment of a new subcommittee regarding equity diversity and race and uh amy rather than um read the motion that's here which is really just to have a discussion um we have here tonight some guests from cabe that dr burrell and i have been having some very meaningful and thought-provoking conversations with um and so i think there there might be a better place for emotion later on um after they speak um but being the incredible valuable uh resource that cabe is we thought it would be helpful if they share shared their experiences with us and how they might help us work to develop this potential ad hoc committee so um first i would like to introduce uh robert rader he's the executive director of the connecticut association of the boards of education he has a media in industrial and labor relations from cornell university and a jd from albany law school of union university uh bob joined the new york state school boards association in 1981 as assistant counsel and has worked there in a variety of positions including legislative representative direct director of risk management services and director of and counsel for policy and employee relations services he has too many memberships and chairmanships and awards in his bio to list and he has also presented numerous workshops on issues of importance to boards of education both nationally and statewide and has authored hundreds of articles in nationally recognized journals bob has a passion for helping school boards provide all kind of children with a high quality education he has written extensively on issues of equity diversity and inclusion and he staffs the k board of directors equity diverse diversity and inclusion committee and was a key driver for the search that cabe offers in this area including the equity toolkit bob is also a member of the board of directors for the connecticut regional branch of the anti-defamation league which fights for justice and tolerance for all so without further ado i would like to welcome robert rader to tonight's meeting welcome bob and thank you so much and i would take the time rose if i could just now introduce uh martha raquin harris who um i think you'll find is so lovely i feel like i have a new friend and i've only met her through zoom um uh and i'd also like to add in that that we were fortunate enough last week to have dr ruby join our conversations um and we really got into some thought-provoking uh uh conversations as rosa said it was really really really great um uh martha bracken-harris is a retired educator with over 40 years of extensive experience working with students and adults in a variety of public schools independent schools and college settings as a classroom teacher administrator and diversity trainer for sphere of influence includes educators children and families from cities towns suburban and rural she has been the director of the summer institute for beginning teachers in the independent schools she's trained new teachers and she's she's been all over martha's passion has been her work in diversity equity inclusion and social justice she is a founding member and served 34 years as a trustee of the sphere consortium of independent schools an organization that seeks to make the hartford area independent schools welcoming and safe for employees and students martha's also worked with the avon public schools hartford public schools suffield simsbury and manchester public schools as well as west hartford and bloomfield so she has been in all kinds of communities and again like i said all over the state this past february 2020 so we're actually very lucky here in brookfield uh martha was hired as a diversity consultant 4k and so the the nelly may foundation has provided a grant for diversity work for cave we are working under that grant mr raider has been incredible with his generosity of resources for us at this point and again we've had great conversations some initial discussions about what things could look like and what both martha and bob could bring to supporting brookfield and uh i'd like to just maybe start with after introducing martha maybe start with bob and bob maybe reference we shared our value statement from the district and from the board with both martha and bob and i i think you'll be happy to hear kind of their perspective uh when they saw that um unity frankly uh so bob i'll turn it over to you and let you share a little bit about yourself a little bit about thank you so much john and thank you rosa thank you maureen it's a pleasure to work with you um and and thank you for all the board to all the board members for being good supporters of cave um we we appreciate what you do the voluntary nature of of so much of your work and and at this point uh as i as i always say um nobody really signed up to be on a board in the middle of an epidemic like this a pandemic so i appreciate the hard work you're doing we we are very well aware of uh what a difficult time this is and it's not only difficult because of the pandemic obviously there have been social justice issues in the country in the state and i very much appreciate and admire brookfield which is you could just tell by how your meeting was running uh one of the best uh school districts i know of and your willingness to embrace or at least look consider embracing uh this whole different area of work uh is really to be commended and i i thank john and rosa uh for asking us to come in this uh this type of work has been very important to me for years uh i've mentioned and i've written about i have a son who is transgender in and he has really opened up my eyes to this whole world of hurt in some cases of pain of oppression uh that not only has he in some small ways luckily uh worked his way through uh to become a teacher a public school teacher but he's also opened my eyes to what is happening with others in our communities and certainly we're very well aware at cave of how the demographics in our state are changing uh probably 50 percent of our kindergarten students entering this year are of color and uh certainly there are things to learn no matter how much you might think you understand racism implicit bias and so on it's eye-opening it's interesting i'm i've just started reading white fragility which is actually written by a white person white professor out in washington and i think we don't as white people realize the privileges we have um it's as easy as you know we'll never you know i don't worry if i'm ever pulled over by a cop that because of the color of my skin i would not be treated right i don't have to worry about that but every person of color to some extent does so what we've tried to do over the last year we put out the toolkit i know john has seen it and and it is available on our website uh for downloading we thought it was so important we opened it up for everybody who wanted to see it in the state not only our members which you are of course and therefore would have the opportunity to see it uh but we started working with martha and martha is it's a real privilege for me to work with martha because she knows this type of work has been doing it for quite a while understands school boards her her husband is uh president of cabe um and also president uh chair of the bloomfield board um and just so you don't think there's conflict of interest i made the decision to hire martha uh don had no no part in it at all at all uh but martha's the best person for this and we really look forward to working with you in any way you think is right and we'll talk about that after martha talks about her background a little bit martha okay thank you bob for those kind words and um thank you all who are on this call it to me it was just such a pleasure to be able to sit with educators and listen to all the great work that you're doing i'm very very impressed i loved our meeting last week when we were getting our heads together and how the energy just flowed from all of us and the enthusiasm and i'm just um i'm just always loved being in educational settings so this is this is a great you know it's just a great job for me to have and i am so excited to be able to continue the work that i've actually been doing all my life my um dad was a baptist minister martin luther dr martin luther king's good friend and he worked with him and so i grew up during the 60s and was very involved in everything and i i think that um having those experiences and being able to watch work happen from nothing and how people made it grow kept their commitment and changed the world but not enough many disappointments i before i um came before i got on the call i was reading why we can't wait a letter from a birmingham jail from dr martin luther king and um when john and i talked and he says it's now and he's committed not just because of you know all the things that have happened but because the time is now um it's been too long and so we know that i'm excited about being on the ground floor again with um seeing something develop and seeing you nurture and mold it because ultimately i'm interested in each and every child in every system across this nation and abroad and if one child is being denied the right to be able to develop and change his life his or her life and go out into the world to change the world then that's that's just an opportunity that we missed and the great thing about diversity work is that we may think it's just focused on race but it's not the things we learn by working um to have justice for uh people people of color all of those skills are transferable and when we're thinking about policy we start to include all and then we we just end up having a better system not just for people of color not just for people um you know who are not in dominant positions but for everybody because diversity this uh this you know i'm a researcher and i just love reading um studies and it shows that a diverse environment is just better for everybody so um thank you for thank you bob for giving me a chance at a after career career um but but it's great because i've um worked with many many different kinds of communities and i've worked you know in cities and i've worked all around but most of my work has been with um in educational institutions where which are majority white so it's very interesting that um you know that that i follow this path always going back to my community and bringing what i've learned but knowing that um there are so there are so many good people in every in every race and for me to see the transformation that the work does for some of my white colleagues and friends and it moves them to tears and they are just ever so grateful so you're on a great journey we're here for you with whatever you need and thank you for giving this this time to just tell you something about our passion thank you so much and thanks for being here does anybody have any questions or comments um for either martha or bob while they're while they're here so bob you're leaning towards the camera i'm not sure if you wanted to say something and now you're on you oh there you go working to get this darn thing off mute excuse me so thank you both for coming i appreciate it and i'm looking forward to working with you both on this journey that we've agreed to go embark on i guess the question i have for you is you watch and you work with other districts who are in a similar situation to brookfield um what has been the biggest secret of success of really getting organized to go after this topic i mean who's been what what have people done that have been extraordinarily successful in terms of building momentum because this is about building momentum uh to doing the right thing and i'm just kind of curious from both of your experiences you know what are the one of the little tricks of the trade that would help us as a board get it off on the right foot well i if it's okay with you martha i'll start and i'll just say um for me um and for the districts i've seen its commitment a lot of this work starts with yourself you have to understand your biases and how you feel about other people and what you've gone through in your life and this is not an attempt in any way to say that the uh the experiences of of people are not valued they're all valued but this is just a different perspective so i would say commitment to to at least be open to learning about this area um and and having a core of people who are willing to spend the time do the reading think about it and then talk about it and spread the word to me that is the the way to do it martha right and you know i agree with you and you know because we've talked about this and i think about momentum and what does it take for momentum it takes food fuel and the more you read the more you educate yourself the more you educate everyone around you then that can keep the momentum going because just maybe one book or one article will just spark something in you but i'm also going to add to that there will be challenges and i just invite you to lean into the challenges because they are not there to stop you they are there to help you grow and once once you figure out how you're going to handle the challenges and you'll be amazed at what you learn by it and rather than um making you tired conquering those challenges will energize you and so um just just keep the right perspective about the process and i guess one more thing i unite i always have one more thing is you're not in it alone and don't be alone you have people around you i'm sure bob and i will get to know about what other districts are doing things don't duplicate you need to find some partners to share to talk about if if some people are half a year a year ahead of you then you can really benefit and they can benefit by teaching you because they will be reviewing um what they've done so please don't don't stay in a cocoon and say this is going to be our little thing and we're not going to um you know nobody will know you know but but do but do that don't don't sap your energy on things that you don't have to thank you anyone else okay um so i have a motion drafted um it's quite long-winded so lisa i'll probably just send you the wording to it but i'd like to go ahead and read that and then if there's any further discussion on the motion we can do that then so i will move that the brookfield board of education establish a diversity equity and inclusion committee which is charged with strong consideration of the following actions as part of their comprehensive planning process to develop a process for students and staff to recognize existing racial biases understand how curricular approaches may inadvertently promote such bias and develop an intentional and intellectual approach to addressing racial issues with the aim of all members of the community being valued and a and feeling a sense of belonging supporting the development of instructional activities extracurricular opportunities and field experiences that promote a richer awareness of cultural and racial diversity reviewing and monitoring policies on diversity inclusion and equity reviewing curriculum in grades k-12 through the lens of multicultural and diverse perspectives reviewing and employing mechanisms for example anonymous tips or trusted adults to allow students and staff to share sensitive and confidential information that will help in the investigation of acts of bullying harassment and racism continuing to research and implement best practices and emotional programs and resources to ensure that every student feels safe in a supportive environment determining where our schools could enhance understanding respect caring problem solving conflict resolution anti-bullying etc providing training for all staff aimed at maintaining a safe inclusive and equitable learning environment for all students including students of color and while the board recognizes that it is difficult to develop quantifiable metrics for the results of all the work of this committee these will be the indicators of progress made one further lessening or elimination of the student achievement gap between students of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds two cultural competency through throughout the school system especially in communications between students staff and members of the community and third survey responses so that is very long but very comprehensive motion do i have a second second second thanks bob does anybody have any questions can i just can i just make a point about that um a lot of that was taken as as uh martha was just talking about was taken actually from not a charge but a some kind of emotion in newtown just so you know other districts are starting to to wake up to the need to do this i also looked at glastonbury which is the town i lived in i live in but for the metrics at the end the discussion between dr ruby and and john and and rosa was really what i used to sort of say this is what uh will be helpful to to brookfield and certainly if you want to change any of it as you go forward that's fine i just wanted to make sure i gave you something comprehensive so you can think about this this is this is very important stuff and it will take some work absolutely yeah go ahead john thanks rosa and if i may bob it was extremely helpful and what was really important to to rosa and i and just crack crafting that for the board to consider is we wanted to give some you know when you think about bob's question you know where do you start with all of this and what what are the strategies and tactics going forward to get things going obviously we have to do what we're doing right now we have to have a chair for the committee we have to establish the committee membership there's a lot to do but going at this in a unified way with board direction to the committee to give the committee uh some tangible starting points and then let the committee make that you know make this happen is is really the i think the best process way to go about this absolutely and that's basically what i was um about to say i think it's you know important to to have some sort of structure generally in place for what we want this committee to accomplish but really it should be because it's such a intellectual process um the committee is going to be the one obviously to to figure out the best way to to make those approaches so so rosa have you given any thought or discussion about the size of the committee and the makeup of the committee um i wa i wanted to leave that to most well mostly to the committee in terms of who they feel they should pull in whether they should have um you know some standing members um or some that they just bring in an advisory capacity but um i do think that at least two board members um should be a part of this and um anyone from the administrative team john feels um you know is is important to have um be a member and there are already because we have talked about this sort of in the past um there are already community members that are saying they want to be a part of this so obviously the community um uh members that are parents as well as um other interested parties are certainly going to be part of this well i think it needs to have a little more structure than we'll let the committee decide um i think i think the core membership of the committee needs to be defined by this body and uh you know they there and then and then once the core membership is done they can set up a broader community of ad hoc subgroups if necessary but i did much like this uh the standing security committee we were on we made that decision up front there was so many board members so many members of the public so many members of the administration and uh i think we need to decide that we can always modify it later but as a starting point so that that we can start going out and recruiting the proper standing members of the community i think we need to we need to establish a starting point we don't have to do it tonight but we ought to do it from this board establishing what the committee makeup is well i i would i would say that you know at least two up to three board members john is there um any members from from your team that you think should be sort of permanent members of of the committee yes and i've had uh expression of interest so i won't mention names or anything tonight but yes there's definitely teachers and admin team members that are interested in energy and i'm gonna i'm gonna interject just here from the high school perspective i think you know just when you start as you start to talk about membership i think it's gonna be critically important to have um students on this as well so i just i put that in there as just a consideration as we move forward there's already several students that have come forward to me um that are looking to to step in and take some make some real change so i just want to put that plug in there as well thanks mark what do other board members feel is important to have in terms of committee makeup i mean teachers and students seem to be sort of obvious choices um both parents yep how about uh i'm sorry that's how about business owners certainly if we're looking at this sort of as a if there's any component of it that can be community education things like you know field experiences and things like that so you know to the point bob is making a very strategic selection could be very helpful in terms of that thank you mike so so just a thought i i think you need to establish a core committee that is sets the leadership and agenda right that is small enough to be um manageable right because you can't do that with a 30 person committee right and large enough to have representation right so i'm thinking this is going to be bigger than your normal committees would be but that um you know i'm thinking that you would want to shoot for 10-ish right with a couple of board members some members of the public students teachers administrators um and probably some minimum requirement and minimum diversity requirement in that committee right because we want to make sure it's properly represented um then i think that committee can establish subgroups right which go off on missions to deal with things like and they could bring in additional people on that so you know they you know like i could see a a community outreach committee or a curriculum group or whatnot that might be more like curriculum may have more educators in it and less you know community members but in terms of awareness we might have more community members involved so i i'm thinking the committee can set the table but you need to establish a core group that's a reasonable size so you can start setting that table right and it's about building a momentum if you start with 30 people or 25 people what will happen is they'll get into a morass all right and i think you just need to start with a group that allows you to to grab it set the agenda and then expand right as the committee sees fit so i would i would charge the committee you know i would actually recommend that we establish maybe at our next meeting here's the number of members from each you know grouping um let john start advertising for those you know if it's administrators he goes to his administrative team if it's educators we go through his leadership team to seek out uh proper and appropriate people and if it's members of the public we advertise it right and see what volunteers would get much like we did john at the security thing um and then we have two members of our board on that committee right i think two would be a good starting point and then first charge of that um committee ought to be what are the first five things we want to go work on and do we have the right committee makeup gonna recommend a change to the committee or an expansion of the committee that's when we do that after we have that first group because that's just how you just in terms of building momentum you can't do it with too many to start with okay that's my two cents worth rosa i'm thinking it might be helpful and whether it's in the core committee or as bob talked about the subcommittee to involve um one of our school resource officers or someone else from the police department that's a great idea and then also maybe similarly a school social worker or psychologist or someone from you know in those roles within the community okay uh for the other bob that's here since you're here um what are what's your input on this in terms of committee makeup and well how big it should be i would defer to martha but it would seem to me that starting with a few people like bob suggested is strategic and will help you in the long run you want the gut yeah i agree with that too you need to be very deliberate about how you set your structure and be very very clear and too many people will you know will be just hard to manage you'll you'll have so many opinions it's it's great you have to have as many voices as you can that represent um you know your population um however you need to you know there are other ways you can get people involved and you can think about that um once you get settled in the in the small thing plus it takes time everybody is not going to have a lot of time and be willing to put in that time so you really have to get com a commitment with people and say you know can will you are you willing to make this a priority knowing that we don't know what's happening in the future but um so really it's much better to get really people who are going to be able to get give that commitment to begin but make sure that you're doing things maybe right away uh a workshop a general workshop so everybody can start to feel that they're they're going to that they were in people love to be in on on the beginning of something you know and um but so that can happen you can make strategize how you can make you know the education part will will really help people feel that they're in getting involved and can think about the work okay um so i mean i have i've jotted down what everyone has said um two board members the school resource officer administrators teachers students parents business owners is there any other group that anyone feels we may have overlooked i mean that's already even just one representative from those groups is we're already at a fairly large committee that said i mean knowing how other committees have gone schedules lining up you know sometimes it's nicer to have a bigger committee because then there's always sort of representation there um so but other than you know those general groups have is there anything else that we may have overlooked in terms of committee makeup just make sure you put capital letters diverse on the bottom of that list right or the top of that list yeah that's true it's got to be diverse if it's all if it's all one race or one uh one mix of people and one point of view it will not work absolutely okay um so there there is a motion on the table is there any other further discussion on this okay so all those in favor hi thank you and thanks bob and martha for being here that was great invitation i'm sure he'll be in touch yeah i hope so i hope so anything we can do to help you know you got it yeah bob and martha thank you it's been great to work with you in just a very short time we look forward to a to a very fruitful and uh rich relationship thank you thank you so much thank you hey good night everybody good night take care okay uh up next we have an overview presentation regarding reopening school for the 2020 2021 school year thanks rosa so while i i always uh like to be brief um this is something that we can't just rush through although um it won't be overly lengthy i just promise you that uh at this time in the evening um as eric's getting the powerpoint up i would like to just start this off by sharing with you that tonight is not a presentation of the reopening plan again i want to repeat that for the public who might be watching this back or watching this right now tonight is not a presentation of the reopening plan the reopening plan i will be mentioning several times obviously throughout this presentation tonight is more about context requirements perspective planning process and next steps the uh i'll get into the rest of it as the powerpoint goes on so eric if you could just move on for us so just uh very quickly and people could read this i don't have to to read the whole thing the district's school reopening team was made up of various stakeholders from the forefoot's affordable ed and finance we had student representatives with representatives from all of our bargaining units including you know one representative with the exception of the teachers we had five different teachers on the group uh we also had parents the administrative team of course was represented um and then uh the uh we have here trying to look i don't know what happened there oh um i have a little mix up in that slide i don't know what happened but anyway the membership that was the membership of the stakeholders we also um have had many conversations and we have been consulting as you look at the bottom part with all of our caps representatives and colleagues the connecticut state department of education western connecticut regional group which i do a great deal of work with um our regional reopening team health department um our consulting physician dr ferreira and um of course um the issue coming up that we're looking at with adjusting our school calendar already and we're looking at the waiver that we talked about earlier so there's a lot going on there's things we're consulting with there's things we're considering and we have a variety of people really helping us out the the june meetings were held in 5th 11th and 18th for that entire school reopening team which was speaking of committees and organizations was quite a large group joy and rosa were on the team from the board of education okay next slide so what did the reopening team do in june specifically they provided critical input to our educators specifically provided broad guidance regarding the model for returning to school in the fall our models we communicate they communicated with stakeholders so they have meetings the meetings were virtual they were recorded many stakeholders would share those with uh their friends their colleagues and talk about what was discussed at the meeting and try to make sense of things for them to build perspective in the community the administrators from the school reopening team have developed the details of the plan based on both the broad guidance from the team and also from survey data the plan was shared today with this with the full school reopening team to solicit feedback and consider adjustments i'm looking for that feedback uh and turn around by this friday as many of you know we have a very tight turnaround having to submit the plans by next friday the principals are actually with their teachers with a focus on instructional models this coming friday uh it's a volunteer for any other teachers that have questions ideas thoughts and the principles have been um intimate in working with the district team to develop the plan the number one priority is health and safety we said this at the start of june and we continue to say that and that has to be the number one priority considering the circumstances we are in next so the adapt advance achieve state department of education and governor plan for reopening the schools was released it doesn't seem like this but it was just a short two weeks ago the state plan was released and we have three major directives plan to reopen school this fall for all of our student days per week develop a high hybrid model where 50 of the students attend at one time or another depending on health cert health data and circumstances and also prepare for full distance learning or what will be referred to going followed by the state and by uh in our plan as remote learning or remote instruction next all right so there are key mitigating strategies in the plan and they are non-negotiable most people are familiar with about putting them on one slide we'll make it very clear and start to paint a picture for what school will look like uh in in-person learning for all students in the school or if they're even in a hybrid model things will look very and and i don't i want to be very transparent um and we're not going to pretend that things are going to look exactly like they were because they are not under the current circumstances so face coverings are mandatory um with very few exceptions and people heard about what those exceptions might be medical et cetera mass breaks will be built cleaning and hygiene there's a lot of protocols that have to be developed uh training that goes along with that and staffing implications to ensure we have a clean cohorting this is a newer a newer concept in terms of a requirement of the plan uh where we try to keep groups together uh as much as we can for lessons to spread as well as contact tracing of course social distancing uh the phraseology in the district plan is six feet uh while wearing a mask to the greatest extent possible and the american academy of pediatrics talks about three to six feet with a mask and so we're using those requirements also advised by dr ferreira our medical advisor and also working with sullivan our public health director who are at the meeting tonight and can answer questions at the end of this powerpoint and then transportation we're um we have the uh ability per the state plan to um uh fill the buses uh with students and encourage parents to drive their children because of that um we've talked a little bit about the limitations of transportation and um asking parents to bring their kids to school this is an area where we're paying close attention to and mr post is working with the bus company uh in terms of uh sanitation on the buses as well and so the big takeaway here is that they're non-negotiable of course but these are the the very strategies we're talking about the the four the first four ones there that protect us are also the most challenging to implement we built an efficiency model with our traditional school system and so we're looking now to increase space uh increase in increase area and it's it's very difficult and challenging and i know lots of you watch the news you have friends some of you are in education um in some way or another we're all touched by education beyond the board of education with our families our friends and uh it's a significant challenge at this moment though i do need to to share that the our our parents have been incredible um our special education program for the summer is in a remote learning model um i'm getting really excellent feedback things are going well synchronous and live in many cases and um the administrative team uh our directors our administrators uh are willing teachers who have been working uh in in other groups that have been working uh with our administrators our nurses have been incredible in working together to develop the plan so anyway we can move on all right so i just wanted to list out all the things we've done to ascertain information from the community it's been a very inclusive process and so i wanted to review that so the schools during the spring um conducted surveys some uh conducted surveys of both parents and students others of parents um and they have we've been working on that with that information and especially on distance learning and the experiences the kids had and what we could do to improve uh we've listened to parents uh student anecdotal concerns of mr baldwin deal with the athletic advisory group but also through the spring summer we receive emails we have phone calls we have conversations and we we really process all of that into a little perspective um we conducted a staff thought exchange on june 18 asking about the staff how can we improve uh our distance learning we improve connections student to student and teacher to student uh the parent survey many of you are aware of we just went out on june 30th right after the examination of the plan from the state the uh input i always get this one wrong eeoc survey we just surveyed our staff regarding coming back to work and that is the employment equal opportunity commission survey there you go i had to get that acronym straight we just conducted that survey to get some information from our teachers the school reopening team um is giving feed on the plan as i just mentioned they received the plan the the near final draft of the plan today our principals and faculty are having focused conversations this friday once the plan is published at the end of next week we will the following week conduct a update parent survey specifically trying to find out the information as to whether they plan to send their children or not and that's a big choice that parents have to make and also faculty and staff survey we need to find out more information regarding our faculty and staff and their needs as well okay eric you can go thank you sir we have some key lessons learned about organizational and staff capacity we have this training that was needed during the spring and conducted and will need to continue the social and emotional wellness of our students and staff is after physical uh safety is first and foremost uh there's a desire for live interaction there's a desire for consistency uh reliability and scheduling equity making sure that our most vulnerable students are served technology access is a major piece and our tech department has been working very hard on that instruction there's challenging challenges in meeting individual student needs and we need to figure out how we could even do better engaging students again talking about synchronous and asynchronous instruction we need to make a lot of progress on that going forward engaging our families in partnership assessing student learning and other technology needs that are um uh for instruction uh as well as the software and support that goes with that so there's a lot of conversation that continues to to emerge from the next slide guiding our reopening plans it's always important to remind everybody that we do not operate in isolation as a school district uh or as a town here in brookfield we work under the guidance of the cdc the connecticut department of health the connecticut reopening team there was a regional reopening team the june 29th document produced by with the guidelines and requirements from the state coordination with the health department our medical advisor emergency operations and then we all do our own on schools that are opening have opened earlier than us different states what's going on in other countries um i can't thank uh dr ruby and some of our other uh colleagues enough for the webinars they're attending and the reading they're doing and the sharing of articles so we're continuing to develop our greater profit uh with what else is going on in reopening and how we can learn from that next our priorities in brookfield facilities and operations as i said physical health and safety emotional health and safety and of course teaching and learning and instruction there's integrated themes throughout like equity organizational capacity and hr and obviously budget implications that come with us next so we have six folk there's six focus areas and then compliance and communication is kind of the seventh big area the health and wellness uh focus area facilities and operation which includes transportation as well instruction and teaching and learning as i just said social emotional integration technology our pandemic response and then compliance and communication all of this is detailed um uh in in in great great detail in the plan going forward um and again it's being reviewed tonight by the reopening team and i've also if the board did not see that email i forwarded it to you to start reviewing as we were bringing it forward next week at the special meeting so under health and wellness things like social distancing space demarcation health screenings of students and staff ppe cleaning and disinfecting training ventilation hr and of everything i'll say budget implications on it these are things that we're looking at under the category of health and wellness next year facilities and operation looking at school models space utilization schedule considerations food service ordering ordering supplies equipment et cetera hiring facilities transportation so many things under facilities and operations next technology in a big focus area if you're going to have hybrid remote or even in-person learning with the opportunity to learn from anywhere ready at a moment's notice we have to plan for three scenarios and we have to be ready uh at a moment's notice with our technology as i mentioned in my superintendent report we had a purchase of 300 chromebooks uh recently approved by the board of finance and in next year's announce this year built into the existing operating budget was a purchase of 450 chromebooks so we are updating our fleet with 750 chromebooks to ensure our students are outfitted faculty laptops i talked about the uh update for our oldest laptops at wisconsin course building our infrastructure programs applications and software and training that needs to go with that we're gonna ask teachers and staff to work remotely they need to have the best training possible next our next focus area is under the title of instruction teaching and learning we have to look at our curriculum and our instruction our technology that goes with that resources for student the change out and revision of our assessment practices as the year starts human resources what are the staffing implications we're still working on that engaging students we talked about synchronous learning with remote learning formal scheduling live teaching and interaction blended models and learning from everywhere you'll hear that phrase a little bit more because you learn also in school from your device we have pd that needs to go with that and obviously our goal is to strive to have all students on grade level by the end of the school year a tall order considering how much time has been missed next the social and emotional focus area making sure we are looking at the social emotional needs of our students and our employees we want to identify our most vulnerable and help them as best we can and support them we need to partner with families and community like i talked about a little bit earlier um our staff making sure they're connecting along with our counselors and planning for support pandemic response you'll see this color code many of us superintendents are just using a simple green yellow red to designate in-person uh learning when health indicators are positive uh positive in a good in a good way meaning negative i guess nowadays uh where we're able to have uh in-person instruction in our schools um when things might get a little worse moving to a hybrid model which we've talked about quite a bit where we go into school 50 capacity where students would rotate particular days and then if we have to move if there's particular substantial community transmission if we have to move to full remote learning um one thing i need i want everybody to know is that we are still awaiting the actual health indicators public health indicators they have not been communicated to the school districts yet as to when you would make decisions to either shut down or reopen school we've been asking that for a couple of weeks we still don't have that next slide final slide is compliance and communication we are required from the state plan to have what's called a compliance liaison i have decided that i will serve as the compliance liaison in working hand in glove with our nurse coordinator mrs laforgia who's also joined us this evening and been a tremendous contributor to the planning document we will collaborate with our administration our nurses and our health officials to ensure timely and accurate excuse me that should say communication i apologize for the spelling mistake there again we're waiting for that specific criteria i just talked about and that request for information was sent uh yesterday we have a response which is they're working on what that will be we do not have that yet next slide i wanted to share a little a quick uh quick bit of information we had almost 1700 responses on our survey which is a tremendous turnout for our small district and on the parent survey which was given on june 30th at this time 81 81.6 percent of the parents surveyed who responded to the survey said they plan to send their children back to school um and uh 18 and a half percent say they plan to keep their children home of the student the parents who are planning to send their children to school 59 percent of them say they plan to unilate utilize bus transportation in the comment section it was uh quite obvious uh people were all over the place but one of the themes was that uh regardless parents were concerned about uh children having to wear face coverings all day and we understand that um when the plan is published that's okay eric you can go when the plan is published next week and we put out another survey those those uh uh response data may change uh drastically or remain the same we're not sure so what are the budget implications everybody's been waiting for this and we're still working it out be very honest with you it takes a lot of time and there's a lot of physical plant work that we need to do which impacts um staffing possibilities etc so um we are working looking at will we have increased transportation needs will be issues with the school lunch program supplies uh whether that's instructional supplies remember we talk about children not being able to use the same set of supplies in the same day really discouraging sharing materials so that means you have to purchase more materials so there's a lot of that thinking that needs to go on our principals are working like heck with their teams to work on this uh ppe which we made a major purchase already um and obviously cleaning supplies and things like that those are just some examples equipment technology we made a big technology purchase already so we're kind of set there but there may be software and program things that we need to uh to buy and then of course staffing looking at custodian um and tutors monitors things like that depending on the situations that we find again physical plant is being worked on on this week by our principals and facility team so we anticipate having enough information to provide uh an estimate for next week and we'll do the best to be as accurate as possible again things change all the time just like yesterday we were totally surprised by the 180 day waiver we didn't think that would come down from the state and and there it was on the news so things are constantly changing in this world we're in now next all right so i have two slides on next steps because i want to walk through the process for everybody so of course we want to incorporate stakeholder feedback from the district district reopening team and the faculty conversations coming up this friday into the reopening plan as feasible and appropriate we want to make revisions to complete the reopening plan next week i will bring the plan before the board for possible approval and that is july 22nd if there is feedback from the board we will make any final revisions in edits and then i have to submit the plan to the state by july 24th which is next friday at that point we'll disseminate disseminate the reopening plan to faculty staff parents in the community and post it and then as like i just said health data changes uh edicts from the state come down or from the cdc we will have to adjust the plan accordingly next slide continuing on the next steps the district continues to continue collaboration and support of each school team to implement the plan and develop local practices and the areas obviously of facilities protocols training in communication uh we will be holding once the plan is disseminated public q a sessions where i've already talked with dr ferrara and i'm sure dr sullivan will make himself available as well where we could have our health experts medical experts available to help with parent questions and things like that and next and that was it so thank you so i really want to open the floor to the board if there's any questions um and we also have dr ferrara and dr sullivan with us and so we're ready to go it's a lot to process yeah and i was involved in the reopening team and it's still a lot so and rosa that's this is just kind of some of the process right things to think about in context it's not the actual plan which is 46 pages well i i was going to ask a question about a basic structural question john is um do parents have the flexibility to say i want my child to be at home and being taught at remotely or because that sounds like that's an underlying assumption but at the same time you have this red yellow green where it's 100 of the kids in the school so what is the basic guidance of parents rights in terms of what they can and what they're allowed to declare or not declare at this point the state requirement is that we prepare to open for all students this week but parents can choose to not have their child attend our school in that model in person and we would have to provide a remote opportunity for the child and that is not typically a an opportunity if a parent is not in a typical situation a parent does not want their child to be educated in our school system they choose to homeschool their child and we are not responsible so it's a very different edict from the state and it puts an incredible strain extreme strain on the system and we're working on how we can work that out so so if we're if parents have the right to make that this high level decision i want my child to be at home and i'm okay with my child in the school what information are we providing to parents sort of just a survey right so they can make an informed decision about that decision um and it's a public health question so maybe i had to direct this to uh the public health folks on the phone but i'm just i'm worried about parents making a decision in either a vacuum or in an environment where they're hearing all these stories on the tv every day um which may have more to do with texas than have to do with brookfield connecticut so how are we orchestrating communicating to parents so they understand what it means to be in school health-wise so the first thing bob is we we have a uh the plan is extremely detailed and it will be disseminated next week so i gotta god i'm not trying to i'm not trying to circumvent that but that's important parents need to read that and and we will have uh after that um and we will have conversations where where the picture can't be painted well what does school look like my child be at a desk they really have to wear a mask all day those pieces but in terms of the health data i appreciate where you went with that question at the beginning i'd like to turn it over dr ferreira could talk a little bit about that on how that information what parents could process and so forth so cornelius will turn it over to you yeah so you know so i think i think it's very important that we do that's a really good point an informed decision about coming back to school the reason the american academy of pediatrics was so outspoken in their guidelines on returning and having kids come back to school is because of all the social interactions and the pieces that children can get in the classroom that they can't get at home so from a developmental standpoint it's it's critical that that parents make an informed decision so agree 100 that there should be um information provided to them at the same time parents need to they it's they have free will and they need to ascertain the information ask the questions we will provide information that but they ultimately it's their child and they can make their decision and um we can't advise we can share information no i understand that but my i i come from like my point of view from the question is it's a very different decision if you live in a community that's not having a lot of uh communities spread right then if you live in a community where it's ranked and the problem we have in the united states right now is we have both right we have some places in the country that are relatively low community spread we want to eat fit that way but at the same time the news is filled with stories of situations that are happening and stories of huge and brookfield happens to be on the low community red point of point and uh and i'm i'm absolutely convinced that people will react out of context if we don't talk about what brookfield situation really is right and uh and i know mr dunn is doing a good job of communicating but i think it has to dovetail right into what we're talking to parents about in a very a very powerful way that we're in a different place than a lot of communities we want to keep it that way here's where our plan is right read exhibit a um but um understand we have i mean how many new cases have we had in brookfield in the last uh month uh i have to i have to go to doctor supplement on that one i know i know ray is on i can clarify that as of uh yesterday we have had 170 positive tests that doesn't mean they're all they've all been sick but we had 170 positive tests of a total of 1831 tests now that puts us well ahead of the state average but we have to recognize that most of those cases came within a a good month or more ago we've only had two cases since uh july first in a one and a half year old and in a 12 year old prior to that the vast majority of cases were in older individuals we have had eight deaths the youngest 54 the oldest 90 and most of them have been octogenarians so we have to realize that this is a dynamic situation and what we say to parents today may be entirely different from what we have to say to parents five weeks from now right so that's that's really the key um we are doing well our numbers are uh considerably falling off um we only are ahead of the state average of one percent because of the fact that we had a goodly number of positive cases early on and as i say the good news is that we've only had two cases in the month of july and those have been in younger individuals we have not demonstrated community spread our vast majority has been intra-family spread which means basically that the the index case within that family has not been self-quarantining and hence preventing spread to their family members but we have not demonstrated that there's been communities spread that is to say a number of individuals within the same street within the same neighborhood who have been affected it's quite widely scattered at this point in time that's great input thank you um and you know what we need parents to hear that um you know so they make the informed decisions um and uh or what you're gonna get john is you know 20 of your students not coming to school and i feel sad for that right if uh because those children want this out of an opportunity um and maybe the right answer is ten percent maybe the right answer is five percent maybe it's 25 percent i'd like it just so everyone's informed right so as we're looking at that communications plan just keep feeding together let's take a video of dr sullivan and i put that right in there so that people hear that because i don't think that'd be all people here i can't tell you how many times i walk down the street and people have no idea what's going on in brookfield and i say go look on the town website but you know i'm getting communications multiple times a week and there's just too many people who just don't go use the resources so i think in our school district we have to we have to force ourselves to not assume that parents are not getting all that information therefore give it to them again or give them the links or give them themselves we provide the links and so forth we're going to provide the facts and and and make sure our parents are informed to give opportunities like a session like this where they can ask those direct questions i mean given that the major concern was wearing face masks all day i mean that's something that we don't really have any control over and correct you know that poses a health concern for parents in a different way maybe dr ferrari if you share a little oh i'm sorry did you ask me a question i was just going to say and some you know children are health you don't have compromised health so that's their reason too dr ferrara can you just weigh in on face masks and you know the length of time and you know the natural concerns that folks have you hear the same same concerns yeah so you know so so mask use is really one of the critical pieces and you know as you as you look at the rate of infections in children the good news is once they get to the um school age that that transmission rate and dr sullivan can weigh in on this too is much much lower right so the majority of cases to what he pointed out happens in in adults and older individuals so the american academy of pediatrics was pretty clear that you know three to six feet of of distancing and then the mask really goes a long way to help out you know limit the risk for an infection spread so we're gonna have some challenges i think with our younger kids right but again the good news is those are the kids that are likely not to um transfer this virus the older kids i think that's an easier thing to go about but your challenge will still be you're going to get those outliers right that joke around or touch their masks or do things that they're not supposed to so i think with anna and her team really doing some education right not only with the kids but also with the parents is going to be a vital piece to help them understand the importance of mask use and that's an excellent point the fact is that if a covid carrier is wearing a mask uh and you are not the lyco transmission is about 30 if both of you are wearing a mask the likely transmission uh drops down to 1.5 wow both of you are not wearing masks it's about 70 possibility of transmission so we all have a stake in this um in point of fact um we all have to buy into the fact that uh we have a role to play in preventing the spread of this uh disease called covid19 uh and by doing so we just might save somebody else's life so it's important to stress the fact that uh masks will protect you from an individual who might be a carrier and right now we don't have any idea whether or not there are asymptomatic carriers in the population we suspect that they are just as with the common cold but some of us are old enough to remember typhoid mary in new york city a carrier who spread her disease of typhoid to a large population of individuals and yet she herself never produced any symptoms of the disease itself so um masks are have been promulgated by the cdc as a substitute for social distancing but we're realizing that that six foot social distancing may not be true it may be that respiratory droplets may remain in the atmosphere for a little longer than we suspect so in point of fact if there's a respiratory droplet cloud and you walk through it you may in point of fact contact the disease or contract the disease without actually knowing it a mask will prevent that so that's the key a mask is a substitute for social distancing but remember that being without a mask you can be in contact with a a coveted positive person for up to 15 minutes and very likely not contract the disease the mask is a substitute for social distancing thank you doctor there are other questions from the board yeah i have a question on the uh in person learning where it says uh is there a defined uh what minimal to no spread of the virus are we doing that like in one per million one per thousand like is it what is there a set number there or we just is it more of a subjective term at this point well i'll i'll start mike and then i'll turn it over to to the to either one of our consultants the the green as you have it and again yeah it doesn't matter which one it's a moderate high like what's an idea of what that looks like i i assume the situation we are in here in connecticut um those that that that data is where governor lamont and the state department of education and the department of public health have worked together to say we at this point with the data we have we can move forward with in-person learning 100 i don't i can't speak directly to right now what would change to make us say we have to go to hybrid but we have we have a general idea so maybe i can lean on either doctor to weigh in on that um where that will change and how we base that to answer uh dr murphy's question dr sullivan do you want to start uh sure um one thing that is going to change is the fact that we've opened up sports clinics uh we've opened up the beach uh we've opened up a number of activities for children we've opened up playgrounds um and in point of fact this will give us some good idea within the next few weeks as to whether or not we can move forward safely on this issue our total numbers as i said are 170 cases so far out of 1831 tested as of yesterday but that's out of a population of seventeen thousand so it's significantly sample size right lower right with regard to the total population also they print out numbers with regard to uh rates per hundred thousand and our rate per hundred thousand uh is quite good compared to a goodly number of other communities in our area so i think we're holding our own we may see a shift towards younger people testing positive as time goes on some some researchers such as the scripps institute are reporting uh some mutations in the virus making it more prone to binding to younger people's lung cells and as i say it's a very dynamic process and uh what will take place within the next few weeks as far as children's activities in town might have some influence so our message today to parents will be significantly different than it might be four or five weeks from now right as if is there uh i mean there's a doctor but i said before that we don't operate in the bubble so you know is this a minimal spread through the state and minimal spread through uh you know just the town minimal spread through the region like i just kind of feel there's a lot of subjectivity here it's like it's not even like there's not even we're just throwing words on there so you know so there's there are there are specific formulas that they utilize right so and you know and i think that's part of what we're waiting for so there's something called a two-week cumulative incidence rate so that's going to be looking at the number of new cases right over a two-week period out of say for example 100 000 people and then based on that equation right number of cases per 100 000 people there's a definition that comes in as low rate medium rate or high rate rate or high risk and that low in some of the states i know south carolina for example that was defined as zero to 50 cases per 100 000 people medium was 51 to 200 and then anything over 200 would put you into a high category state so i think we'll wait for some guidance from from connecticut to see how they would like to define that incidence rate and that's going to be your trigger that's going to say open hybrid model or you've got to close down so we're not we're not doing it by state or region or like like when new york count like let's say putnam county goes over two percent i do not have the data or information on that at this time but okay it just kind of seems like like i said i will say any direction or minimum moderate or high yeah um i will say this i think brookfield is doing very very well um oh i agree we have only had two cases this month so far um early on with our contact tracing we determined that a large number of individuals contracted the disease by if through uh westchester county uh and new rochelle or traveling on the train that's kind of quiet back and you could literally watch the wave of progression out of new york and right up route seven uh it's it was almost pathetic mnemonic that you could appreciate how it spread right up through route seven now the concentrations are of course in the are in the larger cities hartford and new haven in particular but brookfield is doing very well at this point in time i hope it continues to do well but we will have more information within another few weeks with regard to transmission by uh children because of their interactivity uh that's going on now yeah but now you know and i think i think the key thing here is you know we're learning as we go so you know there's a lot of data there's a lot of information we've learned over the last three four months but you know we still don't have all the answers so i think we'll we'll track this very closely we need to look at some of this epidemiological study that dr sullivan is saying and then i think we'll look at the governor and also the governor of new york because we'll have to track both sides of the aisle are we testing at higher rates at this point i know a lot of other states are testing at a much higher rate i mean they're testing two more thousand people a day is connecticut on that route there so you know so i can tell you for for new vans health so as a hospital system we are we are doing up to 900 tests a day but much of that is actually not symptomatic patients because the numbers to what dr sullivan was saying have declined substantially and people are actually symptomatic with it the vast majority of folks that are now getting tested are people who have to go back to work or who have a surgical procedure scheduled that they've put off their specific guidelines and criteria on how how far out from the surgery you need to be tested and certified as negative and the good news is we are not seeing positives in these these patients which i think speaks again to the area and then brookfield specifically that we've kind of gotten ahead of the game we keep our fingers crossed it stays that way and and i will add the fact that we have an excellent contact racing team headed up by maureen farrell and as a matter of fact some of your nurses some of your school nurses are part of that team um and they are basically uh sitting by uh waiting for cases to come in to to do contact tracing so um we have the team in place but there's a little work for them right now thank you thank you thank the lord but um if there is a sudden spike um they'll be ready to to to do that contact tracing for us does anyone have any other questions about this um can i ask if i didn't want to change the subject if anybody had more health and safety questions i want to let them go first but i just wanted to ask like a curriculum and instruction question if but i don't want to maybe stay on the same topic does anybody else want to have more health and safety questions so i was just wondering and if it's if we need to wait for the plan for next week that's that's a fine answer too but i was curious to hear um what are some of your thinking about curriculum instruction in terms of what did we learn from the spring and what are some um ways that we're thinking about planning for an environment that you know could sort of change on a dime i'm curious to hear a little bit more about that i i want to turn it over to dr ruby and um and really thank her and mrs farias and our principals for their leadership in this area we've done a ton of collaborating and so dr ruby please so thanks for that question we learned a lot because we spoke directly to students and i think that students because they're living it every day are the uh one of the greatest sources of information that we have and some of the stuff that we heard from them was really surprising like we tend to think or many of us tend to think that you know kids just want to do their own thing and be on their own and one of the things that we heard loudly and clearly was that they wanted more structure they wanted more um regimentation they wanted more uniformity and if you think you know if you look at this through a social emotional lens that really does make a lot of sense because they want security they want um they want uh something that they can they can depend on and high school students um really did not for the majority of the students did not like the asynchronous um system that we had and the reason that we had the asynchronicity was because we needed to respect the fact that you know families might not have enough devices that everybody was just thrown into this you know you know kind of head first into the deep end of the pool um teachers not you know having students their own students at home and whatnot and we wanted to remain flexible but what we heard loudly and clearly from students was that while they didn't want to start at 30 they wanted to have a system they wanted to have contact this is the other thing contact and relationships with their teachers and with their with their fellow students and i i know i saw dean on here earlier we heard the same thing from the um middle school students and so we um we've talked to a lot of districts that have more experience with synchronous learning um than we did and you know if we had to go to um a hybrid model or a fully online model we would be um thinking more in terms of uh more structure to meet the needs of the students and more you know synchronous type of not not like sitting in front of a computer from eight in the morning until three that would be like ridiculous but more synchronous learning and we we would have time um at this point you know because we're working on it now to um to really do something that was thoughtful and as we're planning it to get input from um students and from some of their parents whereas before it was like you know here it's you know gone today and you know here tomorrow like what we knew before was gone and suddenly we were just doing it so that's one thing that i can tell you um in terms of um the 100 back all in model um things that we net that we know that we will be changing that i can speak to is typically when children come back to school in a a more normalized year where you know getting to know each other form communities and then we're quite quickly towards the third week of september moving into our um first um uh benchmark assessment well we're not going to be doing that we're not going to be testing kids um i think that there's a little bit of um uh kind of standing standing back on the part of the state we don't know what they're going to ask for but we're certainly not going to be starting to test kids we're really going to be looking to develop initial units of study that aren't even part of our curriculum right now that we'll be working on in the next couple weeks that really um take the perspective of the social emotional lens and really looking at how kids are feeling you know kind of trauma informed instruction not not set you know testing kids do you have trauma do you have trauma you know give them to but just trauma informed um instruction so that we can provide um kind of a wraparound um service approach to bringing kids back into school and so that's work that we that we will be embarking on as as people are coming back from vacation and um we're really fortunate because the curriculum work that we've been doing is in our online platform that we're still we've been building it for three years and we're still working on it and because of the way it's structured i spoke about this and some of you will remember um it's very easy to go in and adapt the curriculum without rewriting everything because it's you know it's in this online platform and so our our principals and um the teacher teams that can work with them over the summer we'll be looking at mrs farias and the curriculum specialist will be looking at the priority standards and being reasonable about what is it that we that we absolutely have to ensure that we teach and what are the things that we have in our curriculum that are extras that we can either compact or put aside so that we're not killing kids that's not you know we're not gonna try to like fit everything in we're gonna try to be very thoughtful and judicious um and intentional about what what we keep what we cut and what we have to create in our curriculum so that's all i can tell you right now jen i don't know if that helps no i think that's great i think it's really important for our community to hear that you know we've really considered their feedback students feedback and that we've learned from it and there's ways that we're adjusting our curriculum to address it so i think that's really great thank you yeah and the other thing i'll add is we were really lucky that we had you know the principals and i you know that they that the principals and and steve baldwin actually did a lot of work with this at the high school bringing in the athletic advisory group because they were always willing to really help us out and they invited me in and we actually i can tell you this um with all sincerity we listen to those students on a weekly basis and our faculty was also being pulled by one of our faculty um members of the high school ernesto de villa and he was giving doing weekly staff and student surveys and mr bollanda and his team were changing things in the curriculum on a week by week basis in response to what the students and the faculty were telling them so it wasn't like what we did the best we could to launch what we had to do but we knew that we wanted to continually iteratively review it and make it better and student voice was like hugely helpful to us and mr belanda and his team changed things as they went along week by week so you know it was it was a really very interesting and empowering journey to um these kids are amazing they're so articulate and they if you give them the opportunity to tell you what they're feeling they're just so forthcoming and honest thank you maureen does anyone else have any questions so john you need um our feedback or questions by friday right uh that's the folks from the school reopening team uh we like that by friday um that was that that was a pretty speaking of the organization of a committee that was a pretty healthy team in terms of the number of people so we'll get that feedback and try you know a lot of it may just be questions you know we'll see what people are thinking um and we'll take it from there but it's a quick turnaround because i'll be providing the final draft uh for the for the uh for the board on wednesday night next week and we'll actually go through we'll go through the plan we won't read every line in the plan because obviously i want to get it the reason i gave it to you today if you have a week to to read it it won't have major significant changes um uh in the next week but there will be areas where we can highlight and say hey we've emphasized this a little bit more we had so we feedback and we thought about this a little bit differently and so i'll highlight those areas and again we can walk through and have a very similar discussion to this next week and and there may be several other areas where we receive new direction um that we have to make adjustments okay thank you all right so um just double checking there's no other comments or questions on this right so uh let's move on to the discussion of calendar school year calendar revisions so so rosa therein lies you know that conversation clearly i think for anybody provided a rationale for why we could use more time for training and why the state made the the state board of ed made the decision it made um commissioner cardona so eric i'd like for you eric if you could please put up the current calendar that the board has approved so we have a visual reference point and then we have the proposed um option with moving to 177 days and three additional days of training but let's show the first one so everybody can just see this and one thing i will tell you is some of the just briefly some of the items at the bottom of the calendar you know the decision just came from the state yesterday um i think there's some brookfield high school open house dates that in the proposal will not work and we'll have to you know adjust those uh but that is not a uh uh have to be under board auspices that is administrative so in our current calendar uh for net for the coming year you can see if you look at august our new teacher orientation begins with three days of training on the ninth are onboarding on the 19th 20th of august and then all of our teachers are in the week of the 24th for five days of training now you may recall that about a month and a half ago we made an adjustment to this calendar where we shortened the 182 days that we have typically built into our annual calendar to 180 and moved those two days to training days at the beginning of the school year uh in addition to moving a professional development day as well and that's how we're able to get the five days because we have known we are going to need not only training and technology and ppe but training in uh instruction remote learning etc there's just so much that has to happen and so this is the existing calendar where the first day of school is monday august 31st and so what we've done um in our so in the proposal about the era show is a change in that very beginning of the school year um walt is in alignment with the new state um opportunity that we have with the 180-day waiver and it provides us the gift of time and so it's no place and we want to take advantage of this as best we can for all the training to ensure our students end in a robust and safe environment and our staff enters in that way and is prepared so eric if you could put up the option that we'd like to propose give me a second i just have to change it i am doing it hold on what i'm thinking here and what the team appreciated uh today uh and and in the conversation based on on the ruling that just was announced yesterday is getting those three days taking advantage of that for the training as i just said and taking advantage of the very late labor day holiday this year which is september 7th and moving the start of school for students after labor day which is september 8th and so if we do that and we add three days of training using the total student days from 180 to and add three days of training for our faculty and staff and if we back that up as you can see on the calendar new teacher orientation excuse me would start on friday august 21st a few days later than the original 19th and then all teachers and many of our staff will be coming in around the 26th or a few days later depending on contracts and they will have as you can see one two three four through august 31st and through that first week in september eight full days where we have the opportunity to plan provide training provide professional learning provide organizational opportunities um to really get prepared for the start of the school year and then there'd be the long labor day weekend and then the students come in for a four day week beginning on september 8th so that's the difference what's really nice about this is in the current calendar that the board approved about a month and a half ago june 9th was the end of the school year for students was the last day of school now the last day of school with the adjustment that was that is being proposed tonight the last day of school still happens to be a friday um june 11.

Stowell event alluded to this earlier some of the priorities from the state is that all students should be returning to school full-time in the fall and so as long as the public health data continues to support this model will be in full will be back in school and full up to full capacity in the event there are any changes in kovat 19 instances or occurrences in the community we could be moved to a to a hybrid model in which only 50% of our students are allowed to come in school and then if the cases continue to increase as per the health department we could be moved to full distance learning but the expectation is is that as of right now anyway is that we would start full-time instruction up to 100% of our students and so some of those sections that are required in this plan is that we have some specific mitigation strategies relative to transportation food services extracurricular activities childcare answers for social emotional support mitigation strategies with facilities and operations making sure we've provided one-to-one devices for all of our students and found ways to ensure that our families had access and connectivity began to walk through what the academic experience would be like for all of our students our teachers and our staff and our families and then also and most importantly as for a lot of the feedback that we're receiving addressing the health and wellness of all of our students and staff and Families and then making sure we have a plan for school family-school partnerships and continue to connect with our families in the community through this effort and so I'll start with bus and transportation some of these are requirements others are considerations and so to begin with the required it is required that all that that all of our students and staff have face coverings on the bus and and certainly and for our parents in particular you know encourages social distance and that pick-up and drop-off points in the community you know these are not things we had to worry about in the past but it's certainly going to be important that we will maintain social distance when we're away from school as well we've had a number of conversations with our Transportation Department and we'll have protocols in place what we have what we are intensifying cleaning protocols and disinfecting protocols on our buses and and and soon we'll be talking about this later on in a plan we'll be asking feedback from our community on my believe we've already surveyed you at least one time I'm trying to get feedback from you and seeing if you had an appetite for you know having your students take it having your kids take advantage of a school transportation or what might you be driving your kids to school yourself and then of course if we have an increased number of parents deciding to drive their students to school there certainly helps us on the buses with social distance in but it'll also causes a challenge on the other side of an increase track traffic in the schools so part of our considerations and things we'll be looking at is number one certainly working with our safety advocates and training them on best practice to help with with traffic flow but also reviewing and explore the idea of hiring additional crossing guards on to help to help manage that so certainly a big issue for us is trying to figure out how we're going to feed students in a social distance environment and on a full day this continues to be a challenge for us as we you know walk through the different scenarios but some some things that are certainly non-negotiable and that is that we'll continue to have to final follow our nutritional safety guidelines but through throughout this model whatever model we look to implement we'll look to a design classroom delivery models for younger students in which we would figure out how maybe we can deliver class foods to classrooms maximize social distances as much as possible during lunch period this could be in the cafeteria this could be in classrooms it's really dependent on a school and so we're very mindful of the of the gathering guidelines you know provided by the state but at the same time we also have some capacity issues with supervision in classrooms so that staff can also have an opportunity to have their own lunch and so we will be figuring that out and in some schools we allow be able to use the cafeteria and social distance and then at the same time in some schools we may not be able to use the cafeteria at all and so you know we'll continue depending on a school it's certainly school specific but we will be exploring all of those things certainly will be will be providing grabbing gold meals and again whether that's in a classroom cafeteria throughout a school campus that will be a priority for us we're applicable we will have cashless touchless point-of-sale transactions you know we're still exploring exactly what that food exchange is going to look like but in any case we will have grabbing gold meals so that we don't have a congregation of students at lunch counters and and and we're possible we'll be looking to stagger over lunch schedules as much as possible to reduce the number of students in a cafeteria or in any space for that matter in the school and so we know we have a lot of athletes in the school community and a lot of students who participate in extracurricular activities a couple of weeks ago we had a town hall meeting in which you know some of our students it was they they reminded us how important it was whatever model we choose that we maintain their their school experience that you know to the best of our ability and so we will absolutely continue to have extracurricular activities but we also have to do that in a safe manner and so the CI a C has already released guidelines for athletes that has already started and has been implemented effective July 1st so for those of you who are aware or may not be aware you know some of our athletes have already come back into school campus in in many cases they've been encouraged as part of the phase one and that is working with their coaches in a virtual way and working on conditioning and then a different phase was they were starting to come into the school in cohorts and begin to work out in work on conditioning and those can in those cohorts have been increase and more students are coming back in a safe manner with social discs being mindful of social distance and guidelines also any equipment whether that's workout equipment you know whatever that might be procedures for shared equipment and making sure those things are all sanitized and making sure they're coming up for it with a system to make that happen and just going back to after-school care and before school care we will be working with those programs and surveying the community seeing what the interest in and participation in those programs to make sure we have adequate staffing before and after school and then of course the expectation is that staff will be expected to implement the same procedures that be happened during the school day and so social emotional support for our students in our staff has been a priority for us and training will be a priority for us to open up the school year as you probably aware at our board meeting in June we implemented a new district calendar in which we grouped more days at the beginning of the year for training for staff and then most recently we just we were just in performed I believe it was early as late as yesterday what two days ago where instead of the hundred and a 180 day expectation it is now only a hundred and seventy seven day expectation and the expectation is districts can use those additional three days for preparation and planning with staff and so I mentioned that because this will help give us even more time for our staff to receive the training that they'll need to implement trauma-informed professional development for everyone making sure our staff has an opportunity to get acquainted or get reacquainted with their space which will certainly look different when they come back dr.

i just came on late hello there i just want to ask you a question about the safety advocates what are the safeguards you're going to have for the safety advocates because they're the first line uh in the schools and are are they going to be uh the ones enforcing right at the door uh the wearing of masks is that their responsibility i know there's you know there's some uh question about the you know asking somebody if they don't have a mask you know can you put it on and and so forth about their health and everything so uh that was i guess it's a two-part question okay okay and and and john that that's a fair question um one i i think the responsibility is shared um at many of our schools and i'm just talking about just regular entry into a school you know we will be asking most of our schools do this already the principal is outside for morning and you know entry advocates are outside for morning entry in many cases we have staff outside for morning entry and so it will be a shared expectation that all of our staffers are reminding students you know to have their mask on have their face coverings on as they enter the building but then of course once the doors close we will have in addition to asking the asking the advocates to remind folks as they entered building to have them on we will also have language you know to greet all of our families and visitors which will be discouraged at this time john just so you're aware but we will have language in our windows and posted for families that it's required if anyone is going to enter the building it will be required um so the answer is yes but they're not you know they're not the only people who have to help enforce this um because certainly at the beginning of the school day there's an expectation you know like every school um everyone's part of morning entry and i think we all have to be vigilant and kind of share this responsibility thank you now you're welcome john i appreciate you jumping i'm glad he's able to join us particularly given a last-minute notice um christy can you bring us home with some questions from your from your unit i would love to um we had our top 10 which i was able to post finally in the faq for your reference a lot of it's been um already referenced and stand with aaron and all the other um union presidents in our major concerns our top one which is um really goes to the heart of our schools which are our teachers it is the ventilation heat issues across the buildings we have far too many that are a million degree i remember my own classroom i was on the third floor and the sun would beat in it all and it was 95 degrees all day long so we are really concerned about how we're going to address this when building some classrooms with no windows they don't open some of them there's no screens we have interior classrooms with a labyrinth in some of our schools with um not using air conditioning he is we're really concerned about that and i'll just give you two because the ten are in there uh a huge concern with the sanity sanitizing rooms bathrooms offices common areas throughout the day in between the end of the school day and remember we have our adult ed friends and between when the high school leaves and the adult ed people come in and then again when our friends leave at the end of the night and we only have a couple hours for the custodial staff to get that clean and so that's our top two maybe i'll give you three because it goes raise the hand washing stations and just that the idea of trying to how feasible it is to incorporate hand washing sanitizing and the mask breaks throughout the day understanding it is of utmost importance but we're concerned with you know regulation and supervision of these so those are our top three but the other seven are in there uh so kevin christie thank you sir if you're through with all the groups i did this there's a ton of questions but i wanted two folks to make a comment that was kelly and kara because there's a lot in their belly wig and then we call it to an end there's no way we could get through everything there are so many legitimate questions and even some of the questions are not answerable at this point but uh we'll make an effort to do um to answer them where we know the answer we will where we don't we won't so do we have time to have those two or not do we have time for kelly and cara for a minute and two a piece uh sure i mean we yeah of course i mean we have time we can make time i i don't know what the appetite is you know the other side but yeah absolutely all right let's just take a minute uh cara dr casmarov would you like to go first regarding the specific question well you mentioned a lot was about dl about how we're going to maintain um you know do we teach in both worlds or do you have any comment that if not we'll go to kelly and we'll read i mean the i think that's um you know i think one of the concerns that everybody has along with these lines um is first of all obviously our teachers um you know really did a great job during the distance learning under the conditions that we were in in march um april and may and i think that we got better uh pretty quickly over the course of those couple of months given sort of the circumstances that we were given and sort of the lack of being able to prepare before we left um so we were really proud of that effort moving forward though you know we have to think strategically about how to to get better distance learning how to get better blended learning um there's no doubt that in either any of the phases whether in person hybrid or distance learning that they'll we'll be using digital uh content more frequently we'll be asking kids to operate in that environment more frequently um and so making sure that we're providing some professional training and a lot of our collaboration time is dedicated to improving that craft as far as the um you know there's there's a great missing piece here about the balance between the number of teachers um that uh you know that will be available the number of students choosing a distance learning option and and the and and how all of those pieces fit together and so we're a little bit of a chicken or the egg so the the full program can be developed once some of those n numbers are known um but folks want to see the want to see the program before they make the selection so we're kind of working between those those pieces um as far as the distance learning goes for for 612 teachers we're seriously considering a program called edgenuity you may be familiar with it it used to um be under another name called odysseyware um edgyduty is also partnered with learnzillion um so i'm i am working with edgenuity now to under best understand all of the different opportunities we would have if we utilize their system and utilize the digitized curriculum that is all common core standards-based and can be aligned to our dps curriculum topics and sequences and pacing and so forth um so i think that that will take a huge lift off of the teachers um in terms of having to digitize everything i know that was a big struggle in terms of finding texts or having text accessible um and and making lots of videos um it still wouldn't eliminate the need for some of that but it certainly would take a heavy lift off of that 612 piece um at the k5 level um you know so the idea right now and again this is all very preliminary information and and details are all subject to sort of the proportionality of how this plays out in august the idea is that students are selecting a distance learning option in august um you know that there won't be as many teachers available obviously and they would be working more remotely self-paced independently through edgenuity um teachers the all teachers would be using edge annuity core curriculum there's two different versions one is a teacher facilitated version and another one is more looks more like a credit recovery where it's independent it's more mastery-based um and we can explain more about that you know once we make some final decisions on that at the k-5 level we're also investigating some additional digitized curriculum that could be supportive of teachers in this environment um way too preliminary to to discuss anything more than that at this point because we're still doing a lot of research um and meetings um but just know that we are looking uh for the best tools and resources available to make this doable for teachers students and parents um and that um you know we will as as we have done before rise to the occasion and do our best to um you know to make this a balanced and and you know high quality experience for everybody um but you know that again it's very early on with program details so we will definitely uh release more and update folks as we as we go similar to the way that we did in the spring thank you cara kelly uh focusing on your students and your department quickly sure just a couple of brief comments um first i just want to know there's really been kind of two big buckets that i've been focusing on um along with partnering with cara on the curriculum is the social emotional needs and that's of staff and of students um so we're looking to bring in a pretty comprehensive um professional development program during the extra time that we have for pd at the beginning of the year which will focus on uh staff's needs as well as students needs um so we'll certainly be more information coming on that we are in the interworkings of putting it all together but that that has been a huge part of our planning um second i've noticed in some of the comments um and and i appreciate the feedback a reference to preschool and um please understand that this plan is inclusive of preschool they are not left out of the document if there is a language or reference i did pick up on one myself of k-12 it should read pre-k-12 so i do apologize to that group but please know that they have been a huge discussion um in the planning of um of this and then kind of piggybacking off of that is some of the special education self-contained programs or students with other emotional behavioral challenges and needs we are talking through what that programming will look like for those individuals i apologize um we have what that will look like for those individuals as well as um you know how we make tweaks and changes is there additional time that needs to be put in place for those individuals um and similar to cara we will be making those decisions um once we get more information on which parent which parents will be opting for distance learning only and which we'll be opting uh for in-person where i'm partnering with kathy o'dowd and i thank her for all of her hard work during this planning um to make sure that all the needs um ppe and so forth is in place for those programs so um certainly more to come in the planning phases related to individual programs across the special education and related services and the last thing is i know some of the office space and things particularly with some of the related services members are quite tight and that is something that will be addressed in the individual plans um by the building principles and something the supervisors and myself will be working with them on um to make sure that we provide space as much as possible um so that we're safe thank you kelly can i add just one last thing actually two quick things this is kara because there were some questions that popped up and i have seen these before so i just want to i just want to address them very quickly um you know esl students are not left out of this equation we've had lengthy conversations about the needs of second language learners i do know that some of the new asl curriculum in particular at the k5 level um there the the company itself we're buying the curriculum from is in the process of developing um digitized modules so um they are feverishly working to to to um to have that ready um they may not be completely ready but they are concerned about um you know being able to deliver things uh in a digital environment for all students um and certainly some of the uh the programming and platforms that we're looking at a huge consideration is uh the ability for students to have uh stacked language and to be able to end translations within some of the course content that we're offering so we are very aware of those things we want to make sure that our students are supported and the second thing is there's a lot of conversations around screencastify and wondering if the district can purchase that i did look into that i know that it's something that the teachers got really good at using it was free through the spring but it is uh there's still a small there's an option a free version um but we're not going to be able to purchase the uh the full version of that it's it was a little over 15 or 16 000 just for that one app for the district and we are you know looking very heavily at some very expensive platforms and resources for the fall and we just can't do anything but uh folks can use quicktime uh to make to make any uh any movies or videos and that is free if you have an apple or mac book from provided by the district that is already loaded on your software and that is already available to you thank you devon turn it over to you yeah so dr sal please uh take this moment to close out i think we are i think we're all fine well we have about 700 folks back in here um you know many questions not all you know not a lot of answers uh uh with explicit uh details but uh categories that we have to deal with um there are things that that that we've had over the years regarding ventilation and other issues that we're not going to be able to solve but we have to make it better um some of these things even if we're in the hybrid model we have to do the sanitation the eating all of that the hybrid model simply permits us to break down the classroom so that um we believe the distancing could be much more enhanced it'll provide the the climate that we think would be more conducive to learning for our kids so um you know keep that in mind if you're saying what can i do um write your delegation tell them then danbury uh wants to do what's best for our youngsters and um coming to the hybrid model is the best way to move into next year to uh to service our youngsters and our teachers and our families so thanks for spending today it's time during your vacation time to do this we value you and your comments very much so thank you and be be safe thanks dr sally

Polk moves Mr Hunt seconds mrs. Anderson hi mrs. Anderson bow tie mr. cope hi folks I'm mr. hunt fight this kind of outside chair votes aye all right resolution passes for the 0 explain to us somewhat the process a little bit sure is seeking two of you to be on a subcommittee for this process and this process what we're looking to do is valid help logistics for clerical or the process what we will do is it will open up a window to seek applicants the window it would open from July 24th through August 7th at the close of business on the seventh I would be with a subcommittee to see which candidates are eligible based on the criteria to fill the seat we would then bring all eligible applicants forward to the August 19th for meeting where the board you four board members would interview any potential candidates and make a determination of which one of those members you would like to place in the vacancy after that we post the name for 10 days if there is not a substantial disagreement with that we would then install the person that you appoint after September and I believe it's 19 meeting and then they would resume and fulfilled it for the term remaining part of the term of that mister abilities they gave seat so what I'm asking today is just as a direction on your agreement to see who would like to serve I got two of you serve with me I'll I'll get with you probably tomorrow or the next day to set up the time so we can meet just make sure the logistics behind it are parking there so just that maybe mr.

our others are closer to 33. and again you cut those in half you're 15 16. but we also expect that we're going to have families that make decisions to go to oak bridge academy go to an online learning model and when families aren't enrolled and when they're choosing another option that decreases the number of students that would be in a class so those are items we're going to have to watch very closely we also are going to have to work with furniture to make sure that we have furniture in place that can accommodate um you know the the social distancing requirements that we would like to have in place and that may mean that we have to move furniture out as well okay so being that with the using the 900 square feet that that was just said by someone on the panel i can't see and that equating to eight students by putting more in there you're going to be in violation of the gunners order and by doing so if anyone gets coveted the school district will be liable for that pursuant to the laws that are currently in place because there's no immunity for any lawsuit that might be brought where children can get coveted at school because the school's in the following directives so is yeah well we we've surpassed the three-minute time limit right here not to cut you off but um just just to mention on that um is those i think have not been determined yet that that has still not been determined so um and there is actually a bill on the floor of the assembly with regards to liability with regards to schools and dealing with covid okay so let's move to the next one thank you this is elizabeth stevens elizabeth you are needed thank you um okay so when thinking about these proposed models i mean obviously i'm concerned about the safety of students and their families but i'm also very curious how the teachers that serve our community feel about these face-to-face models about the different models being presented and how they feel about working face-to-face versus um online or a distance learning model because i feel like as a family in this community i want to know what they're thinking and how they're feeling about this it's really important to me um that we hear their voices well we actually have been hearing their voices we've surveyed them we've they have been discussing this with their unions and we have actually been hearing from them about how they feel about this so that's who they go to when they have concerns about their work conditions also we want to be able to say that every monday we had a group of 70 teachers and administrators discussing these models and they vetted these models through us every monday we started changing them as they as they asked for certain changes on what they look like so these are the ones that they came through with us in that process that we had 70 of them which included the union and teachers so we did survey our teachers and just like parents they're they have their mixed group also some um want to get back in the classroom some um have serious um concerns regarding their own health or health of loved ones that they live with and so we're in the process of working with our teachers association to make lists of teachers so we're hoping to pair the teachers that have the greatest concerns up at oak bridge and then the teachers that desire to get back in the classroom to pair them up in their regular classrooms so we're working with the teachers at the same time we're working with parents okay let's move to number three okay the third speaker is under mike b is in boy mike b you are your microphone is open i'll lower your hand mike we can barely hear you if you could thank you uh i'm speaking tonight as a teacher and a parent uh i would just like to say that as a teacher i would prefer an online model for the fall semester uh if i'm forced to go into a classroom in a stage two situation i think there are advantages to the alternating day schedule because they would have an opportunity to better clean the facilities before or between groups of kids with an am pm model it seems like the pm kids are going to be exposed to any virus that may be left behind by am kids and i feel like any limited sterilization that takes place will probably be the teachers sterilizing their own rooms which won't be won't be as thorough as it could be with an alternating day okay thank you the next speaker we have is let's see marcy lynn marcy i'm going to unmute you thank you i really appreciate it you know i loved hearing from mike as a teacher and his point of view and i'd love to hear more teachers speak up you know we're talking about students and their vulnerability but we haven't put in a protocol for teachers either and um all of you know i've been listening since 6 pm this evening and um you know i keep hearing a lot of suggestions but i don't really hear any protocols being put in place that make me feel very comfortable as a parent putting my children back in school you know i have the flexibility to stay at home with my children as uncomfortable it is with a child that needs more help than i can give them but you haven't given me any confidence that i should send my kids back to school and i'm wondering how you'd like to address that for all the parents that still don't feel comfortable that still haven't felt like you put a protocol in place you know and by the way like everything could change in two weeks and you know i mean sacramento has already closed down for online schooling san francisco's closed down for honest schooling i understand that high school students have a better capability to be successful at online schooling but i understand that my children are disadvantaged at that because they're in grade school and and younger but you know i'm i'm looking for some vote of confidence that i can instill in you people as the you know child guardian per se because let's face it most parents put their children in your custody as a child guardianship while they're working and can attend to them and i'm not in that position i want to know that my children are safe in your custodianship so thank you for your comments we do have as we mentioned earlier for those that are not comfortable returning to an in-person environment we have a very strong oakdale academy program that's not comforting that's all they could comment yeah okay let's move to the next caller please okay our next speaker will be maria sayre maria i'm going to unmute you there's always a delay here depending on how close they are there we go maria your microphone is open hi thank you very much for taking the time to listen to my comments um i first want to say that i completely understand how hard this is on everybody the board teachers parents and all the other school staff that works for chica unified school district me being one of them i am a special education aide i am also the parent of a special education student one of the comments made in regards to what options will be available to working parents who would have to engage in child care when their kids are on a possible a b schedule or limited day schedule is the option to use services like card well those are not services that are generally flexible or open enough for kids with special needs and severe disabilities so i'm wondering if there is some discussion within the card realm that would help parents like us who are in that unique neat position my second comment is this i was frustrated by a lot of the comments in the chat room because i felt that people weren't stopping and really listening to what is being said so as a parent and as a special education aide who works for chica unified school district i am ready to send my child back to a limited day schedule i'm ready to work a full-time schedule i'm ready to do what i need to do to get through these really difficult times and i know that people are scared i know people are worried but i also think that people need to just be patient and listen for a moment and those answers will be eventually will be coming but it won't be coming today tomorrow or the next day it's going to take a week or two to really figure this out so i want to again say thank you for the school district and the parents and the aides and the secretaries and the teachers and the superintendents and everybody who's really working hard on trying to figure this all out thank you maria okay thank you our next speaker is william nitzke william you are your microphone is open i'll lower your hand hi yes thank you very much um i just have two uh questions and comments the first question i have is has there been any discussion on outdoor learning and creating facilities outside that will allow students to be outside in a more in what we have seen statistically at least in a safer safer environment if measures are met my second question is how much have teachers been involved in this scheduling model that you're presenting to us and what are their thoughts um from the teachers i've spoken to they have said that they have really not been consulted and even though um mr marshall mentioned that they were surveyed and then they can go to their union that was only one survey parents were actually given two surveys because as you said before measures have changed circumstances have changed and maybe some of the teachers have also changed in their opinions so i just wanted to mention that and recognize that maybe they should be consulted uh further thank you mr mr marshall you want to talk about this yeah again i just want to repeat that every monday that we've been zooming in with 70 plus teachers and educators in our district to go over these models so it wasn't just a survey that we used for them we did send them a survey we also sent them the same survey that the parents got so we've actually sent them two different surveys to do that and we have i've been receiving emails from them quite a few these past couple weeks and we've done a pretty good job of responding to our teachers concerns and we also meet with our union leadership every week too to talk about concerns and questions that they have that they're hearing from their teachers what about the outdoor learning comment that i made just as a matter of fact we were meeting with all the music teachers today talking about kind of different concerns they have and that came up as a regular or a big question they had is how do can we conduct band outside can we conduct choir outside with some of those kinds of things and if that is something that's going to help them provide a quality experience for students if we share with them we're all in favor of something like that i know several teachers even talked about lunch outside different ports and portions of the elementary school day outside and absolutely if that's something that's going to fit and work for everybody we are supportive of those things options that fit into that outdoor model could be discussed with the monday group at this point you know and hearing the frustrations of the of the previous speaker but at this point we need to know what that instructional model will be and then we can start building the program around the instructional model thank you thank you i'm attempting to unmute amy's iphone there you go amy's iphone your microphone is open hi can you hear me yes okay hi thank you uh for hearing me out um i am a teacher and a parent of two chico unified uh students and it's interesting i've been watching the chat and i see a lot of questions about how are teachers feeling and you know i i'm glad that the focus is on students as it should be but i don't think we have talked much and enough about um what it's like for teachers and faculty and um certificate everyone else um and i have to say everyone that i've talked to we are very nervous um we are very nervous about returning i think about not only my own health but what i'm bringing home and in my household four of us go to chico unified schools and so we i did the math if we go back in any form of traditional model we will be interacting with well over 600 students a day if you split that in half let's say that we do a half deal you split that in half that's still 350 minimally that we're in contact with a day and so i feel very very nervous about my well-being and my children's well-being and i don't feel that even with the measures of the ppe or anything else that that will necessarily ensure me that mental you know security that i'm not going to bring something home or one of my children or my husband that we will all be safe and so i just i i while i appreciate that the monday meetings have been happening with 60 70 staff members i do want to emphasize that that is not a representation of how all of the chico unified teachers feel because when i speak with all of my colleagues everybody's in the same boat as me we're nervous we're scared we know we all every single one of us wants to be back into the classroom we know that's best for kids but we also value our lives and value the lives of our loved ones and so i just want to emphasize that because i see a lot of questions about about how are the teachers feeling and i don't feel like everything is being represented accurately with how i feel or a number of the people that i speak with okay thank you amy okay our next speaker make sure i have it on my list here is jesse williams jesse i'm going to attempt to unmute you here okay jesse your microphone is open i'll lower your hand hi um i just wanted to uh ask real quick if these students are going to school and then we move to a phase one and need to be moved to online school will they be keeping the same teacher or assigned a new teacher they will be keeping their same teacher if we've already started the school they will be the school year we they will be keeping their same teacher unless even if they're at oak bridge you'll be keeping their same teacher but if they're on one of our school sites they will keep their own their own teacher for those lessons yes thank you thank you very much okay next speaker is dawn don i'm going to attempt to unmute you thank you um i just had a quick question regarding um if a teacher or student in a class test positive um is there going to be will that class be going online at that point will they be going back and forth between online and will be then losing out on learning or will they be online with this model during that time and then jumping back and forth between online and in person thank you for that question recognizing that we are not health care professionals we have had a committee that has been working with butte county public health for the entire county not just chico unified but all of the school districts in the county and they have developed protocols for that we have seen those protocols they have allowed us to look at those in planning we've had a school school nurse work on that committee and we hope to have very soon the ability to share those protocols with our parent community and our community at large because they really do take responsibility the health department takes responsibility for the identification the notification identifying who needs to be tested identifying who needs to be in quarantine identifying whether or not it's a whole class a portion of the class so we look forward to being able to share those dr kaiser did you have that as the 10th number 10 thank you so the next speaker is kim castor kim i'm going to unmute you okay kim your microphone is open um my question would be um what will it look like for special education kids with the different models diane olson do you think you could um oh hi can you hear me okay yeah can you hear me okay john yes we can hear you i'm going to wait for people in the chat to let me know that they can hear you you need to go ahead and speak don't you okay thank you um so for special ed students parents have the ability to choose the model they would like and within that model once we have the parents choices our team is going to be spending the rest of the summer reviewing ieps and making sure that we can develop the services and offer those services based on that model whether it be in school models oak bridge models or other models on the parent shoes so that there might be appointment based there might be in school there might be online options for services we are looking at a variety of ways to offer all services needed for all students thank you director olson if you could again repeat your answer in the chat we are able to hear you through one platform but not through all thank you okay so at this point bearing in mind that what we're talking about is we're at a moment in time where we are in a particular stage and we are looking that on august 17th what are we going to do if we stay in this stage or if we're in a stage which is less restrictive so which of these models would be best suited for us to incorporate at this at this point in time knowing what we know now but also realizing that however things change if if we do get put on a watch list if we do have increased cases if we do have a heightened risk we will adapt accordingly so but we do need to have guidance and a plan in place as to what we're going to do based on what circumstances exist so i just cathy did you want to talk about this yes i was going to make a uh i was going to voice my opinion i didn't i thought you were yeah that's right i am okay i'm sorry so i think a number of speakers have expressed um just their frustration with the lack of certainty except i think it's in real time it's reality none of us can ascertain with certainty what tomorrow or august 17th will bring however i strongly believe in the quality of our teachers and their commitment to our students and so to me actually i think for both the high school secondary and elementary that the am pm model works i believe that for students to have the consistency if it's going to be the morning then they know what time they have to get up and when they have to get there and then for the afternoon again there's still certainty there is definitely an issue with parents but no matter right now no matter what we do i think that issue persists and i think it would be a lot harder for a parent to handle alternating days than it would be to have a morning or an afternoon schedule so i just believe that the teacher student contact every single one of our students is going to come into a new classroom with the new teacher that is the nature of progressive education the way we have it structured in the united states you move up and so i think that this time period where they can establish relationship and they have half of their classmates but it's the same half and so i think for them that's really really valuable they'll actually maybe even have stronger relationships with their fellow students so that's my argument yes tom a couple of speakers brought up the uh whether the level of cleaning between am pm shifts was going to be equivalent to the overnight cleaning can anyone speak to that kevin perhaps i think what we need to do is look at our custodial schedules currently we have a morning and an evening schedule we would need to have some conversations about really combining our custodial time so that we had both custodians on site to do cleaning during that break period between the am and the pm second that system that we're looking at purchasing right now i think would allow us to be much more efficient be able to get through our spaces we're also testing foggers disinfectant foggers that we might be able to take into classrooms and frankly we'll have to have some conversations i think with our classified support staff about additional cleaning related to our grounds crew even our light maintenance so i think it's one of those things that based on the decision of the board the goal will be to do the cleaning that's going to be required to make sure that it's a safe environment for not only the the morning students but also the afternoon if that was the model you chose [Music] apologize yeah there are some and actually we tested one in our transportation department last week um it's a pack that can go on it has a spray fogger that you can then go through in a bus for instance we were able to disinfect the bus uh in a minute thirty and that was a deep cleaning through the entire bus so it's just another idea that we're trying to test and see if we have that available to us but we would make every effort to make sure that our afternoon students have the same clean environment that our morning students have the tom's question what about those lights that you can yeah what about those i think we'd want to look at every option we possibly have available to us i think one of the nice things is that i think there'll be money to be able to do some of these needed purchases to make sure we have safe environments through the the karzak dollars so i think we'll have some resources and we'll research whatever options we have and i think frankly we'll buy what we need to buy to make sure we have a safe environment for students for that cleaning to happen to allow some of the concerns of our parents who might end up on a pm schedule all right thank you yeah well at the elementary level too tom is we'll look at where we if let's just say there's 24 kids in that k3 class and we're only bringing 12 in the a students will only use the a desk we'll keep the 24 in there that means 12 12 of those deaths every day will not be used only by pm so we yes you know the teachers will be looking to see if a student put a hand on another desk but we're that one student will only have that one desk every day and then the b students will have their beast dust also so that'll help at the elementary level yes we'll still have to clean the high volume areas that the doorknobs and everything something that like that but i also think that'll help us too that we're not having to do every desk at the elementary level okay there's there's something else i think that has to be discussed and that is that um a lot of students um are actually reliant upon us for providing lunches and uh if there is no school that would be a very difficult uh thing to to do and and to manage um lower socioeconomic members of our our community have a more difficult time with with you know their their work schedules they don't have as much flexibility and so and also not the resources to be paying for child care for so that is another reason for having school in session at least part of the time if it's any way possible that we can do that uh there's you know to not have an option if we can have it work if we can make it safe would seem to me to be doing a disservice to parents in the community because you know if they if they absolutely need this and we and we take it away when there is a possibility that it would work of course we're going to be very diligent and watching to make sure that things are safe we're going to be monitoring the cases the rise in cases we're going to be having constant discussions with public health so it's not a matter of we're going to go into this and we're just going to barrel forward and not look back and if we do make this plan and circumstances change between now and the opening of school we will not be feeling married to this plan to the point where we can't change it so i also agree with dr kaiser that the am pm model would probably be most um oh i don't know beneficial and workable and um so i i that's that's my preference eileen um thank you madam president um is there a way to put uh the slide up for the am pm model that has the model for elementary and the model for secondary because there is a bit of a difference between the one that meets every day yeah that shows that and and uh am i correct and assuming that there there is a difference between the secondary schedule that does an am pm five days a week or is it exactly the same they are different in and right now to be frank mr robinson we need to be sure that we have ingress and egress nuances addressed we need to be sure we have cleaning nuances addressed so we have some samples but we don't want to marry ourselves to those samples at this point because again we need to be sure that we can we can address all those nuances and um i also believe that we have some restrictions on pe under the curtain current stage am i mistaken but i i saw a memo regarding the discontinuance of the summer athletic programs do we have any word yet on what we're going to be able to offer in the way of a typical physical education within the school day framework so physical education minutes um have been waived so we have a requirement of how many minutes we have to um have a physical education every 10 days so that has been waived for this year so we would not have to have physical education per se at the elementary level what has not been waived yet and maybe it will but what has not been waived is the graduation requirement for high school superintendent staley just a clarifying question on bullet four it says students would attend each class five times every two weeks is that the plan for an am pm i yeah for secondary i yeah i could for secondary yeah okay for elementary they would say every day every day thank you very much but isn't that because of the length of the classes and everything right you correct the secondary three period they'd go to three periods and they would be a longer period right and and so yeah but they would be there every single day correct that was the problem i was having in finding what i was looking for in the packet it's not labeled secondary thank you that's what i was looking for liz may i comment yes so i want to just start off by thanking everyone who submitted their opinions and their views i read every email and comment and some social media involvement as well and it was just very important to me so thank you to everyone who uh did send in their their views my first inclination in reading all those emails was to actually support starting the school year only with online learning but you know after much contemplation and speaking with some families and actually also some teachers i personally feel very strongly that the children like dr kaiser said need consistency and they need routine they need that social stimulation as well they need their teachers um one parent that i talked to let me talk to her little child and the child was just bubbling with excitement almost in tears about getting back to school and seeing their teacher so you know i really i took that into account i am hopefully optimistic that kovid will run its course sooner than later um and with that in mind and looking at these proposed modified options i like my colleagues would like to support the am pm models for both elementary and secondary and continue to pace our full reopening with the phasing and guidance from the state and local health experts so thank you well i'm going to throw you a curveball and i apologize for that in advance i agree very much with what you're saying about the consistency and the classroom environment especially for our younger students and i would like all of us to very strongly consider the possibility of adopting an amp and model for a k5 while starting the year for the secondary classes online to cut down on the total number of contacts that our teachers have again there's a huge level of concern a lot of that concern is coming from secondary teachers who will see hundreds of kids a day the numbers in butte county are going up and i think we need to think about not only where we are now but if this time continues what phase will we be in by the beginning of the year i think there's a really strong case to be made for maybe some kind of orientation but then having our high school students who can handle it start the year in the safest possible environment especially since most models show that the virus is more contagious among physical adults such as our high school students i kind of find that interesting in a lot of ways how easy would it be i'm going to look at the education staff to to do something like that and tom are you thinking like starting six weeks of online learning for the high schools or going the full semester um online and then translating some some metrics or ask butte county to help us set some metrics um we could look at what other uh localities that are starting online have done i think we know that sacramento just went their whole county went online uh it'd be interesting to know what their metrics were in terms of when they felt safe having their secondary students back and how easy would it be to transition from ingenuity to um back in the classroom because could i get a clarification because tom is saying and you're repeating him high school but we haven't been talking that way we've been talking secondary that's true and so i i really think it's you're talking very different because you're talking sixth graders sure correct i was actually going to go there because i might agree with his idea for high school but not necessarily for middle school yeah my thought was that high school is online sorry my thought was that it would be the high schoolers online and the either an ampm model like this for middle school or ideally middle schoolers in stable cohorts that didn't change much so i know that's a big ask for you guys come with another plan i do think it might be the best combination of safety for all involved and our educational options okay so um jay you had mentioned before the meetings that were held with the teachers and we know that numerous many teachers participated in those was this topic ever broached was it considered was it suggested um no it wasn't um the models that we came through are the ones that they work through um again i'm i'm not going to comment either way tom's suggestion is coming up one of the questions i think linda was would we be able to go back and forth with the ingenuity that would come with the training that we would be doing in august 5th and 6th and august 13th to get our teachers ready because we want all of our teachers trained in both the elementary and the secondary models for ingenuity and the wonders in the toolbox and tracking where they are and then that's where they would have to pick up when it comes back the transition if we were pulled back into stage one after the school started they would have that teacher already aligned if we started with high school only we we would need to be able to assign a teacher with them and also go through mr hanlon and hr and kim ready about talking about what teachers and how would we we'd go about doing that i think the student contact just to comment on some of the i'm just thinking of the different pieces of that conversation so thank you mr lando for making us think about it the student contacts would stay the same for middle school and high school just to be clear okay the student contacts would say the same for high school under which model so if they were if you had students in secondary all of secondary right they'd be in in am pm right they'd stay the same if you i guess what i'm yeah i just need to do some some more thinking on the student contact piece i'll take a look at i'm just i'm trying to give you to respond back from an educational perspective without getting into contracts or into yeah um philosophy because that's it's not science so if we went started out with the online model and again i'm just thinking through this too in my head they would be assigned one teacher if we went into stage four we went to a modified traditional they would go to six if we went from we started with them in a modified traditional model where they had six and they we went to online we would assign one of those six to be their teacher we were talking about first period if i'm correct right uh mr shepherd when we were talking about it on our mondays how would we go backwards because right now they would have six if we went to a modified so we would get them down to one and most likely would be a first period and we teach her but we would have to work through that so just to consider they'd have to be teaching be able to teach all six of those courses which um they're not you know they're in high school and junior high they're more specialized so that may be fine for lower level but you get into ap courses calculus physics chemistry those types of classes that's going to be a big challenge for for that individual teacher teaching all of those that's one thing to consider okay eileen you had a comment um yes i do i think where i'm coming from that the all online option is one that would only be on the table if we get shut down by having to go back to step one the fact that we're not there means that we can sit here tonight and look at options that are best for students families and teachers i don't believe and and i just experienced a high schooler going through the shutdown in march and um it wasn't good as many parents have indicated i also don't believe that [Music] high schoolers have any less need for the contact with teachers than elementary school kids do that's still where you connect with mentors where you connect with you know with people that inspire you and having an opportunity still because we haven't been shut down to have in person for the families that want to choose that because we're with the offer with the options we're considering we're considering offering families that absolutely do not want in-person contact the oak bridge option but we're also then offering for the families who feel that that in-person contact is vital between the student and the teacher that option and i don't want to take that away unless we're mandated to take that away i too believe that you know some of the most significant memories in my world of growing up were you know my general science teacher in high school or the history teacher my goodness the stuff not only did they teach me but that they taught me um and i don't want to take that away from the families that feel that's important and are willing to participate in the risks that we're all taking i mean this is not risk-free in any sense of the word for the teachers for the students for the families it's not but i think that we've done a darn good job of trying at this point to fill in with mitigations for what we're facing and so i i support an option that allows both in person and the oak bridge option okay dr kaiser so i'm a first gen college student and i started as a physics major and i went on scholarships because my high school counselor beat me up almost every friggin week that i was going to take some kind of a test we already know nationally the data on the number of students who even applied for financial aid who even looked at going to college plummeted literally plummeted because they didn't have personal contact with counselors and their parents weren't prepared or aware or didn't have the information they didn't know how to do it you don't start college because of your senior year you start college because somebody started poking you encouraging you giving you other ideas much earlier than that and so um and then the same thing happened to me in college where i got kicked encouraged to go to grad school so i really do feel that high school students need that kind of inspiration none of our elementary school and some of our middle school kids will have that click in their head about oh my god i'm meant to be an x or a y or a z but typically it's the high school curriculum that starts to make them see themselves god forbid you'd be english like john but you know it might be the right thing for you or kelly or liz it might be the right thing but the other fields the other areas the aps the ibs those come out of somebody really encouraging you to think about that as an option and so i don't think it's uh we can expect parents to have that kind of mirror for their kids because they tend to see their kid the way they presented you know for the last 10 years 12 years whatever the teacher sees them as new and sees them as potential and makes it exciting what it sounds like is that you guys don't believe that personal connections can happen through online teaching and i think that's a real slap in the face to the teachers who already work at oak bridge the whole point of that program is it's not like last year that it is a system in which teachers and students have connection and have at least weekly contact often more and build those relationships i don't think we have to be face to face and put anybody in danger to build those same kind of relationships i have taught in a similar model for several years and the possibility of building those relationships without being in the same room is 100 real i don't think it has to be either or what we're talking about here is choice giving people choice um we had somebody who called in athena who attested to the fact that the oak bridge program is excellent and her children do have excellent relationships with her teachers and she thought it was it was great so that does you know back up your view however a lot of people want a choice a lot of people do not want their child to be strictly in a environment where they have to monitor that that child constantly they they may have teenagers that they do not want to be at home all day long that they want them to be engaged in school at least part of the day and so i believe it's not that you have to you have to say one thing is good and one thing is bad or one thing is even better it's just it's an option it's a choice and should we give people a choice if a choice is possible to give them so um that i think um is i think we have to move forward now i think that um we need to uh it sounds to me like we've pretty much hashed this one through i know it's it's a controversial thing i know there's very strong feelings um and uh you know having been a teacher having a daughter who's a teacher who's currently working i understand the concerns of going in a classroom and facing possible risks but i think what you also have to realize is that we are gearing this up according to risk and we will back off if the risk increases and so people's fears that you know this is an absolute this is what's going to happen it may not happen it's just we need to be prepared with something we need to plan for what could possibly happen we can't leave it hanging teachers need to be lined up logistics need to to uh to be made it it has to start and we have to have something some skeleton on which to put some flesh so i'm asking you now if um if we're ready to to make a decision on this so that we can move forward yes i would like to move option one for elementary and option three for secondary and i thought you stated the situation very well okay that was if you didn't if you didn't know it was am am pm for both elementary and secondary yeah okay so i have a motion by dr kaiser i have a second by eileen robinson and the question is whether to endorse having the am pm instructional model if we move forward on with this when school starts and we're capable of moving moving forward are we ready okay i'm going to take a roll call vote on this okay eileen kaiser okay we have a four to one split uh but the um motion passes okay so now what we're going to move on talking about is uh what sort of professional development is going to occur in order to ensure that this can move forward and that everybody is going to be able to move backward or forward in case situation does change so mr shepard and mr sullivan have been working on staff development plans both for the summer and for the back-to-school staff development day so mr shepherd would you like to kick us off here sure just looking at the first bullet there that we began training additional teachers on edge annuity not knowing if we were going to be moved back to stage one and that was the major premise behind starting to train teachers not about on a vote or where we're going to go with things tonight but back in in may and june we didn't know where we're going to be if we were still going to be in stage one so we realized we needed a much more consistent platform for online learning so we started training teachers there we did pilot it with some teachers over the summer in summer school we had 10 teachers trained then and i'll let mr sullivan talk about some of the next bullets from the elementary perspective we have a couple dates already set up august 5th and 6th with a pretty extensive overview of the curriculum we purchased with representatives from those companies ready to come in and provide a couple hours for each one of those we have a couple teachers that have done a bang-up job with online instruction in the past ready to kind of provide another few hours of kind of best practices and how that looks and how that weaves into with the curriculum we've got so we've got those two dates planned so i'll be about six seven hours per day there with training for teachers and we also have the august 13th is our first kind of professional development day back we've already started planning as far as what we want to put in place so the teachers all teachers but certainly teachers are going to do the online instruction have another round of overview with curriculum planning and how to have things ready for that first day of school when it starts like there we've also talked about what staff meeting time would look like for those teachers in the online version of things and we've already said really staff meeting is really going to be professional development meeting time is what it's going to be more than staff meeting kinds of things so we have some teachers that once can have a good background with that and they've kind of agreed that that's what they would like to be part of dealing with us i think in our staff room we've actually kind of coalesced a whole bunch of online resources also if you look in our staff staff room for teachers they will see that there's a whole slew of online resources training modules training videos things like that ready to go as well as a curriculum with kind of a scope and sequence with all those things laid out so we think we're off to a good start we certainly would like more time to plan and provide professional development but we're feeling we're off to a decent start right now and and i know it's been um you know the the board has made clear that we want to be sure that uh all the teachers have some familiarity with edgenuity and wonders and the math for ireti because should we need to rather quickly switch over to independent study you know we don't want anybody to be floundering and and so that you know i think that has been conveyed loud and clear and i know you are constricted in some ways by how much you can require and so i know you're working to to to make that happen and to encourage teachers so that uh they will be prepared and they will feel capable of taking on we have planned for that august 13th that all teachers whether they're on online or not they'll also get a couple hour overview of the curriculum and some of the practices so just in case something were to happen where we had to shift back to stage one everybody would at least have a workable level to kind of start providing that online program and experience at that point right and should that happen i'm sure we will provide more support and more instruction okay um so moving on now are we [Music] good and click any did we want to talk about anything else relative to this uh superintendent staley did you want to go over the butte county so i did mention this earlier and i do apologize my computer died we have worked with butte county public health and do have some a flow chart of how we will handle situations as they come forward i also want to say thank you for making a decision i know that there are viewpoints all over the board and there was no way we were going to make one decision that made everyone happy and met everyone's needs but i do appreciate the fact that we have options so that parents and families can choose those options that are best for them i also want to really thank our teachers our support staff and our community because just trying to get my through my emails every single day has been a challenge but that's what we wanted that's what we asked for we asked you to reach out we asked you to give input and i can say i read them all i know that board members read them all as and most board members if not all read them all so we really do appreciate the input and i know you may not feel like what you said or what you wanted was heard because it may not have ended up that way but again i i think that we at least have options in place we still have a ton of work to do and we knew that going in we knew we were going to have a lack of specific specificity until we had a model in place so now that we have a model in place we can begin working on the staffing we can begin meeting family needs we can begin working with our staff and our teachers to make sure that to the best of our ability we get them in situations that they desire and are comfortable so i wish i could say decision made this is over no this is when the real hard work for us begins so unless there are other questions we do have up here a sample of the flow chart we have been asked by butte county public health to not distribute this at this point they are working on one that will be for community distributions for parents and families and other community members to see so we look forward to seeing that sooner rather than later we have told them there is there are lots of questions um a lot of anxiety surrounding this so we look forward to having the public version of what happens when who does what um that we can share mrs robinson i can cancel not on this issue um uh ms daly that that was uh shared um last week and and uh it was comforting to know that they too are you know looking forward to what to do if so this is a good a good outline of what to do if i have something else next yeah i will say they have been good partners they've been very responsive when we have questions and needs they get back to us so i do feel really good about that working relationship with our health department so with that unless there are other questions i can answer eileen are you ready to go away from that uh yeah i mean i just it's it's very very quick i just wanted to um address the public that's been watching and texting and mr shepherd can probably attest to this there are lots of comments yes and i just want everybody to know that the the feed is you know it comes to us i've been reading through them off and on and the questions like what do we do if we have kids at different schools how can we schedule all of those things are on our list community members give the district the rest of this week to kind of begin to to outline those things because by next week those kinds of options and things are going to be outlined for you check the cusd website the announcements and things will be there so that we can do exactly what we intended to do here tonight which is outline options and give parents enough information so that they can make choices that you know that they can support for their kids for this next year until everything changes okay yes last slide we have for you and again i want to thank you again for all you guys hard work on this and the the teachers as ms staley talked about and our ed services team and the unions working together getting to this process i know it's not an easy one and it's a new experience for all of us that we've had to get to get here all right so the next steps on monday july 20th um communicate reopening of a school model and conditions with our chico unified families and staff we will have um available for families to register for instructional models so they we're going to want the families to when they do that choose if they're going to be going to our oak bridge model or the am pm model on there also too we'll have something where they could suggest if they're going with the am pm if they want am pm and how many students that they have on those um we were just reading through the chat one of family said i might have want to pick different ones because my older child can drive and give drive the am one in the morning and they can go to the pm so we're going to want them to let us know what they're thinking on that so we can kind of best meet their needs planning for staffing adjustment begins um mr hanlon and um our ed services team and um and working with the union um getting that all taken care of um we got a puzzle piece to puzzle to put together when it comes to our staffing and how many families choose online versus the am pm model fine-tune each instructional model and begin implementing safety guidelines on the safety guidelines our maintenance and operations staff along with mr baldwin's group have done an excellent job of getting that prepared we're getting how many of the portable stations will need for in coming into our campuses for for wellness checks and for hand sanitizing we will continue to work with them with maintenance and operation now that they know what model that we're going to be starting out and remember the models could change at any time because it depends on the stages so we're going to be continuing to be working on all that and initiate the professional development for all of our staff we're going to want no matter what all of our staff trained and the secondary teachers trained in ingenuity are elementary changed in the toolbox and wonders we want them all just in case if the state does put us back in stage one but we're also going to have to talk to now because they're going to be seeing teaching a lesson twice basically at the elementary level at the am pm and how did that look like when their day just got cut in half with the students they'll have yes they'll have less students but they still have to be able to um regulate how they're going to be teaching that and we're going to have to be it's a professional development out there and we will have to do the same with the secondary and so we're going to be we have some meetings set up with our district leadership council our dlc group to work with us and how that professional development would help support their teachers going forward so finally i just want to say again we do have work cut out for us this will not be perfect it's not perfect in a year when we come back there are kinks that have to be worked out there's things that aren't thought of and that we have to address that is going to happen anytime you're going to a new model and frankly it happens every single year so this year is going to be ultra challenging but we have great people we have wonderful students wonderful support staff staff we will make it happen for our kids so thank you for your time tonight and that's all i have on this particular topic okay well we have one last item on our agenda but before we get to that one last item i want to thank everybody here and everybody out there in the viewing public who has participated and shared your views and those people who also have emailed as kelly mentioned before the fact that what we came up with may not have uh you know been exactly what you were looking for does not mean that we did not listen or consider it we had such a variety and multitude of many many considerations and we needed to start somewhere so we will be ironing things out and addressing a lot of those questions as time goes on so thanks thank you everybody everybody who's here has worked so hard um so we're going to address our last item and that is a board policy that has to do with student wellness and is there any discussion yes dr kaiser i actually want to suggest if it's feasible to do it now or if we have to wait i want to suggest an amendment on page 4 to the number 1230.

okay but the 23rd isn't live the 24th will be live we were a little scared that if we all went live at the same time our technology might go wonky and people people couldn't get in so on the 24th the live sessions are little mini sessions for like groups of five parents at a time so fingers crossed that works we've really um gotten creative in education yes we have thank you thank you for that Richards and what time are those live session supposed to take place they're going to sign up through um what it my brain to swim sign of genius and so they'll be five time slots they'll make sure they get them all in so it'll be throughout the day so like two and a half hours of time usually is there evening slots available um at this time they were going to try to put them in the day but you know on Monday they're going to offer oneon-one sessions if they need to as well okay because we have to remember all our kids are not in school parents are working and so we our meet the teachers have been typically in the evenings so parents can get there and if although we're virtual if we're doing it during the day we we have to be cognizant of yeah that's great those families who are still working so so I'll pass that on because they could put possibly put that on Friday is another time slot so thank you thank you so I know that many of you have um have expressed um what is an update for our Athletics and our summer activities um to be opening again and so I just wanted to give you a brief uh summary of what's Happening uh we have met with the high school administrators in the athletic directors and the principles and talked about our process and looking at what we're going to do with these uh athlet and people in activities starting this summer and so as of right now currently ours are suspended but the plan is that we will look at resuming once again and we need to emphasize this heavily on a voluntary basis coming in on Monday July 20th and so that is next Monday we we need to emphasize that this these are optional activities for students to be on they're not mandatory practices and parents will have that ability to make a choice whether they feel comfortable for themselves to have their students participate or not and you know an heavy emphasis is being placed with coaches and with uh directors saying that there are not going to be penalties for kids missing that is a choice and these are some are activities once again voluntary and optional are two words that we're using quite often we will continue to follow the uh guidelines that the district had put in place starting in early June about what happens when a student comes to practice and what are the guidelines that are allowed them to participate and we are going to be what's it called stage two and the reason we're at stage two is that's where we left off of out outside groups are going to be at 50 or less so that we can have space interior groups are going to be at 25 or less mask will be required to and from coming to it depending on the activity as much as we can to wear masks that we will temperatures will be taken uh parents will be asked to provide or and students to this is where I'm at with my own health and then we're going to record that information one of the important things for us to continue looking at how we address this issue is maintaining the information that we have from our campuses in terms of ins idents in terms of how many students are involved and how we can continue to check and so when the question is asked what data are you going to look for starting when we come back on the 20th we're going to look at that specific data that's going to be within our own people coming onto our campuses maintained by our coaches and directors and going through our athletic directors additionally we're going to follow models that are consistent with most of what the East Valley is doing being in communication with other District athletic directors I know that a lot of our peers are planning to open once again on the 20 and talking with Gilbert and talking with Mesa and part of Chandler as well and so when I think I look at that we're being very consistent about what's happening within the East Valley in general and um I know the question has come up due to some um publicity about whether bands are going to be allowed I I think that Athletics and bands go hand inand and so when we take a look at what happens with our band programs specifically I've had many conversations with Mr Edgar at williamsfield about how he has incorporated health and safety standards within what he does and the opportunities provided for kidss I'm more than comfortable in saying that he will be tracking the exact same data and we'll be all part of the same uh database when we're looking to allow for students and people to come back once again on a very voluntary basis and and why now I think is a question that people asked because last week we made the decision that we were going to suspend for a continual week but why now we're coming up to some deadlines unfortunately in terms of how we prepare our athletes and our activities for competition we can't expect for our student students to walk in on August 17th provided we're open and be full board ready to go knowing that we're going to have competitions the first week of September uh with the current guidance that's coming out from the AIA they need time to acclimate and that's why the summer things are so important for them in order to be prepared to come back and and to do that so yes we are offering those opportunities on our campus on a voluntary basis and going through that and I I do want to thank our High School principles and athletic directors and meeting with Mr stangle and Mr D about this and the confidence that we have in order to follow these procedures that we've all put in place uh we feel comfortable that this is the right move looking forward to reopening activities and Athletics uh Summers on July 20th which is Monday do have some questions I'm extremely nervous this with where you're going with this um my concern is um Arizona you're looking at other school districts here in in the state Arizona is not the leader in this country in reference to addressing this this virus that's taking place um I feel like I feel like almost like in Arizona here we like the orchestra on the Titanic and it's sinking and the conductor keeps telling us to play and the orchestra we keep telling I hear water that's where weat here okay and and um I I'm just really really concerned that um especially with the music program and things like that there there's virtual choirs there's virtual ban I mean there's it's it's pretty incredible what's taking place across this country um for the safety of our children and um I really don't want us to to um use our teachers and our students as a commodity for economics okay we're human beings and I want us to be safe and um my other concern is is the training okay you're you're telling me okay the coach is going to looking out for these students so and so who's training them okay and how are we even addressing this and what's going to happen if some of these positive and I mean who's making sure the tables are wiped in the gym and and the band instruments are cleaned this is this is huge and I mean if we don't have a set procedure at each school like this is what's going to happen at this school this is going to the in instrument is going to be clean the students are going to be apart from each other this is going to be a free-for-all here I can see and I'm extremely nervous and I'd like this to be known know that me that myself as a board member this evening I'm extremely nervous as far as where we're going with this and again it is voluntary at this time even when schools resume July 27th our schools are technically closed so anybody that wants to participate if a sport opens up later on and the schools open they would still be a part of that sport is that is that what I'm understanding that is correct these are voluntary uh things that are happening right now and there will not be penalties for students and families who say that they um are making the choice not to have their uh children participate thank you for that clarification Mrs ree I'm just going to assume that this is also at the request of our coaches our directors that we're not telling them you need to go out and do this that they're requesting that this happens so we're not directing our coaches our directors if they're not comfortable doing practice or whatever it may be then yeah we're not telling them they have to they're asking in no in no way shape or form are we requiring any of this and uh many of our coaches and directors are are looking forward to that sense of normaly and being around kids who want to be around them and the different literature that we were reading a lot has to do with the social emotional Warfare of our students and the isolation that they've been feeling and how Sports and activities can allow a reduction of that and and quite honestly we were getting feedback we get feedback on both sides of this from our community and that uh a lot of the feedback that I've gotten recently has said please this is what my child you know this is their life and this is what they want to do and I please allow them to have that opportunity um and and we'll make the commitment uh about how we follow through in sa health and safety procedures for them and uh we do have protocols put in place for all of our campuses outlined um these started in early June once again about the cleaning procedures and different things in the expectations of the coaches and the training for that was done at the beginning of the summer president Cay members of the board also like with our community education program and our program that we had started in early June we are daily tracking individual students uh um activities whether there're signs of illness or not too along with the staff and so we do have a good data track from the beginning of June through our community education program and through our Sports programs too that very important so we know exactly how many students um did not attend because they were feeling ill we know exactly how many adults did not attend and we track their their signs their Vital Signs and their um their symptoms while they're in the activities too and so it's a very uh heavy datadriven process that we're also utilizing so should the need come up to take a look at whether we need to shut down down immediately we do have that data information available and thank you for recognizing the social emotional the sports that are happening the band the um the programs that are going on these kids are involved kids and I have no doubt the last four months have been very difficult for them because they're typically used to being involved and being potentially isolated at home um or less involved because there's nothing for them to do from that social emotional piece that for some and I've heard from some parents that that's been the harder part of of this for their for their child that they wouldn't see their kid unless they went into their room for days at a time and they just had no desire to get up and move where their child's normally a very involved student um or person so thank you for addressing that social emotional piece I too got the emails about the social emotional piece from parents there were parents who emailed us directly and asked that we support these programs um I and it's voluntary I know You' said it's voluntary I'm going to say it again it's voluntary for the coaches and the staff correct and their directors they are that is correct it's voluntary voluntary voluntary that is correct okay um and just a thank thank you for thinking of that piece just like Mrs ree said I've seen the emails from parents these involved kids are they're struggling and we have to address some emotional states too here thank you Mrs Wilson Mrs ree following up this morning too had an opportunity to talk with Bob Edgar who also happens to be the president of the aboda organization and the abota organization for marching ban has already made the decision that the competitive marching season for this fall uh will be suspended at this point however the uh organization is stressing the fact that um participation is and involvement in this is more than the sum of competition and so that there are ways in which students can continue to be involved and engaged and so hence the theme that there is the continuation of this even in the removal of the competitive SP for the marching band component and so um my other question is so I know that williamsfield ban is is higgle ban and interested as well and are we communicating what each school is we are communicating when we when we sit and meet it's all of us in the room together and I think one thing that's important for us is to provide the opportunities for both campuses to be the same and consistent and so um their their band if I know correctly right now has been doing virtual band camps instead of being in person and then that's that's the choice of their community and their director great thank you for that okay thank you all right um I'm excited to tell you that title one summer school is going well we had pushed it back to July with the hopes that we could be in person but that didn't work out and the good thing was our teachers were trained they were ready to go and canvas is going very very well so it's kind of good for us because it's a little test drive of what's going to happen on the 27th um actually 25 more students joined in after we announced it's not in person it's virtual so we have about 80 kids every day participating and it's kids from Gateway chaperel and power um they're focusing on math Ela specials and social emotional so you can see the quote notes up there and that was probably my favorite report was these teachers these teachers are excited about it along with the kids so that's our little update on summer school okay so let's talk about the school year schedules and now what um so some communication has gone out to families today specifically from their administrators at their school to start talking about schedules and talking about what it looks like and we're going to go through some of those details together tonight um one of the things that we wanted to do is sort of a clarification of terms and then an update to where we're at today based upon again the evolving Logistics of how do we make this work and work well for everybody with with ever evolving changes that are happening at all levels so again the remote learning com the remote learning term when we were talking about remote learning was obviously for those initially we had Parents identify which Camp do you want do you want to be an in-person learning and we're going to call you remote you know this will be remote learning um until inperson um learning is possible to you can go to the next slide to the idea of online which was distinction so that if you or or don't have any plan or want to return to school at any point that you could go all online okay so next slide so where are we today and this is kind of where it evolves and and again the going back to the idea of that crystal ball you know what making decisions for today for tomorrow with an unknown future here um one of the things that we are saying is that all of our students are going to begin what we call uh remote obviously because we're not able to open person iners buildings um we also want people to know that I mean and the news if you're one of the things that's been being discussed right now and that is a Hot Topic as well is um the potential um her words exactly that we are actively re-evaluating the date in which the governor would allow in-person learning so right now that is the date we have um but again there's the potential that that may be moved um logistics for scheduling um and wanting to limit the difference between if to be honest with you if we um the date moves back further there may be families who choose one thing today who may say you know never mind tomorrow so one of the things is because it's virtual any how we're starting with everybody and a remote model the other thing that this helps with is tonight on the consent you mentioned you approved our uh the forming of our official uh higgle virtual online Academy tonight you approved the ability for us to get a ctds so that we will actually have a school number to register with the state so we can actually enroll students into that we are working with the state to do that so one of the things that we have decided is to stop asking our families what do you want do you want to commit today to being all of this or all of this with knowing that we don't know how long this or this may last and we don't want you shifting back and forth between there's also a lot of Logistics in planning scheduling training moving numbers teachers how many who so um right now we're beginning with everyone remotely um and we sent that clarification to families today so that they understand that now we're going to talk about next slide what does that mean Dr Foley can I just ask a quick question yes because you had on there that we're going to be surveying families again is there a way we can do this through parent view student view that when they log in whether it's High School Middle School to get their schedules or the elementary because they're logging through canvas something where there can be an option that is selected so that we really can have a better idea that like everyone it's hitting everybody I mean if you want to know your schedule you've got a for middle and high school you got to log in to student view or parent view um to be able to get that instead of an email survey um and the reason so part of the reason I'm asking is we've started sending out information today um today I enrolled my great niece and nephew at Coronado clearly they can't get it inputed and all that information so because we're remote um we're already missing information you know because they wouldn't have already gotten this letter that says click on the survey here if you need a a a device or this is what's going to happen and so it's we may have families missing Vital Information and sometimes surveys go to junk mail sometimes they're like I can't take this right now I'll come back to it forget about it we know we don't get a true it gives us an idea but not a true scent based on the the response we get so is there any way we can look at at trying to gather this information through that where then we know like Yep this family's checked off this family's checked off it doesn't mean they can't change it right but we do need to know who not just how many yes yeah I think one of we can we can work closely with Brian on this because a lot of this has to do with us so the enrollment because Clarity in that program um is actually enrolling in and enrolling out and what we were trying to do is save as people's minds change as dates change the enrolling in the enrolling out because it is uh it is a massive logistical process but using that same platform as a way to Garner that information when we do survey we real to see how helpful that could be We Will We Will We Will explore the extent of how that would best work so that we can ensure to get it but also the very good point is one of the reasons why having everyone start remote is as we have new families enrolling and some moving out trying to formalize and finalize Who's online who's not online who's remote who's not REM when we're all using the same platform similar curriculum in a similar ways at this moment you know at this point until the 17th but but potentially potentially longer um is getting that information so we can adjust accordingly so I I I hear you you and absolutely correct the hard part is is even those we've heard from are saying um I'm not sure right this moment because I don't know or or I think I've made up my mind but I I reserve the right to change it so at this moment we're going to say we are we're not going to ask you to declare either way we're going to staff and make sure we get you started and start connecting with you make sure you have the the your device you have your access you know can you log on do you know how to use it in fact while we were sitting here I got we got a text the three of us got a text from from Chantel who is monitoring obviously the communication went out with a survey for do you need a device well here we are at this point and we already had over 765 requests for devices so the good news is that they're reading it um but the good news is they're reading it now we got to make sure we get them those devices um and so but again you know the start of school is right around the corner and so getting schedules and teachers and prepared and devices connecting with you and then we will help figure out what model you're in and honestly that'll work really good for us too because the state getting us a ctds number to make us an official school to enroll them um was going to be a challenge until that capacity was done anyhow so again this is where we are building our plane as we fly it as we wait for you know the state to also get clear on logistics for attendance and and making that work with our student information system and then training people on how to do that so ready or not here we go um when we talk about remote learning um and we talk about it with our with our teachers and we talk about it with our leaders when we talk about it with our families one of the things we're going to be conveying and we want to convey this without creating Panic is is that the remote learning that's beginning this school year is different than the remote learning um than you that you ended school year with we may be calling it the same thing but the experience will be very different we learned a lot you've heard us talk to you about canvas lift you heard us talk about summer school the fact that we now have a literally we are evolving um we now have we'll have an online Academy in Higley we have a learning management system that is being utilized K12 is Big um and we are going to be more explicit in and providing instruction and assessment and engagement so one of the things you're going to see here in a minute is we're going to talk about what the schedules look like yes remote learning is different um we are expecting participation we're expecting or in we're expecting engagement checking in with students will be learning activities there's going to be instead of and our our families will have an opportunity to learn about this um instead instead of getting emails and trying to open things and having multiple places they're now going to have a One-Stop place to go um grading will be part of the learning and feedback will be provided and attendance will be taken now while we say that we also realize that we that there will need to be flexibility there will need to be accommodation there will need to be communication that happens between families and teachers so um so that if you cannot turn in something on a set date because of a reason that you will not fail because you didn't turn it in on this date but the expectation is you will turn in that work and that learning will happen versus optional participation Dr Foley I have a couple I have just a couple questions just to shoot in here yeah um I've seen on social media some people are wanting to buy a device can we put out something on what requirements might be nice for the new device that they may buy that's a great idea that's because we have some people like saying what can I get for my kindergarten what computer I'm willing to buy a computer to get up to and get it all ready what and maybe we could provide you know I've heard the fire the Kindle Fire does not work for certain programs but maybe if we provide something some guideline some a I don't know what but maybe something there and I just want to thank our teachers and staff um last year was hard we know ending it was not easy um and then coming into this year that we're going to do a another new thing for them I just want to thank them because I know we're changing things and I know all of you are thanking them but just from the bottom of my heart thank you because we're changing the way we educate kids on the Fly and they're doing a great job so those are the two things I wanted to maybe just interject quickly thank you Dr F yes sorry sorry to interrupt no how I guess how is attendance going to be taken I kind of want to walk through that in my head like Elementary they're checking in every day or is it going to be the attendance on the days that they're scheduled to meet with their teachers like secondary like Monday Thursday Tuesday Friday in between how is how does that look president Kaylor you would answer you would ask the question that the state is still giving us guidance for exactly how that looks that's okay and here's the deal what we know is that because again for ADM a average daily membership the requirement for attendance from the state is something this is not something that we are doing to families this is something the state is requiring of us to conform that students are accounted for and are learning for and so those those details are being finalized as we speak on how that might be you know again aois or online institutions had logs and things kids had to do they are looking at this not looking like that that the remote log will be check you know teachers visually seeing them monitoring attendance and again this is one of the things too when we get clarity about where parents will also need to report if their kids are sick or are out so that the teacher knows that they won't be be connecting with them so this will be one of those things that we will need to provide an update for because literally we are they are are figuring out logistically how this works in the system so that we can teach so that we can teach administrators and teachers and parents and students on how to do this so it is one of the things that expectation is engagement attendance will be taken exactly how that is being done is still being figured out entirely so like everything else today it's clear as mud and it is it is and and this is not Higley hasn't figured this out yet Higley is waiting for guidance from the state on how to do this within the management system the Synergy Management system that we use president Kaylor members of the board one thing that is clear from the state is that we do have to have uh an attendance login One Time by the students in the first 10 days of education and so so between the 27th and two weeks after that we do have to have um One login for State funding purposes but that's really all the guidance we've had so far and is still evolving from the state level so thank you to our attendance clerks as they're uh maybe trying to I don't know monitor without being able to that sounds super fun to me so thank you for to them as well because I can't even imagine what they're trying to figure out how to Mark attendance this is one of the challenges that are this simple things that you would take for granted so easy how to take attendance is something we're still learning and figuring out how to do is is is just an example of some of the simple challenges that are a whole lot different when we look at at transforming how learning will happen um yeah Dr Foley yes hello um two things one is more of maybe commentary and the other is a question but there are things that you've already just talked about so I hope you don't mind my asking them but I think as the in at least in Maricopa County i i as start dates get continually moved back I don't I mean if that continues to happen our original survey was at taken I think at a time when we all thought things were going to be better I Envision a time where we um because I haven't been getting better in Maricopa County that we ask that maybe people reconsider and consider a third option I'm not eager to have 800 kids in a cafeteria in a day I'm not eager to have 30 plus kids in a classroom in a day and so we might want to resurvey and ask and I know that's a lot more work and it's a big ask but if this continues to get worse and things get moved back we should probably ask our teachers and our community again uh about that third option because I don't I mean at the time I I think I would have answered the same way everybody else did right so I just want to say that and then secondly I did notice and um I don't like you said we we ended the 9 weeks and it wasn't really grade sensitive stuff fine but we're starting the year and this this stuff is going to count and and uh and and matter to the grades I don't know how we've bought a lot of devices I've seen them come through so I know we have a lot how many do we have number one and number two I did see something that and I've already looked ahead so I'm jumping ahead but you know that I know that I'm we're looking at for high school and stuff a form that I saw from one of our secondary schools said you can get one device for every two kids but uh I think that's going to prove to be a problem so how many devices do we have anyway I mean if our middle schools are already one to one I don't know why you know anyway could you talk about that a little bit please or are you going to later uh president Kaya members of the board so we were prepared by the end of this school year to be a one toone school district now we know because of covid-19 a lot of that has been postponed because not only the higgle Unified School District but districts across the country are now now back ordered on computers so but we what we do know is the devices that we've had from last year and the ones that we have have come in over the summer would be enough devices for all of our students to be able to uh utilize the online remote learning at the beginning of the year with the individuals that needed remote learning computers and information to start the year out and so we're good on that aspect but we're not completely there to a one-on-one aspect yet we expect to be there by the end of the year the other the other aspect is that when we we checked out those devices to students at the end of last year we never collected those devices back uncertain if we needed to start the year we didn't want to collect the device from you to turn around and have to redistribute it to you again so the there the student device requests that we have right now are in addition to those requests that came in first so and we they're checked out to these students through Destiny um so that we have an idea aide of who has the device and what grade level and what family and how many are each family and so I think the hope would be is that as more devices come in if we're not able we will be able to provide more devices to families as our equipment comes in in October november-ish more devices can be deployed to families if we are not yet back in buildings okay my my what I'm wondering though is the form that was sent out says one for every two kids is that old language that was just taken from the end of last year and repeated because if I'm reading that as a parent and I didn't get one and I have two kids that are high school kids I I feel like I you they kind of need two devices in that household but this form is telling them you're not going to get two here's the issue because the new the new the new devices are not in yet based upon if one we have enough that could be deployed for every one to two at this particular point is what do what what Chuck Kelly are are Tech person provided to us when we asked about double checking on the language with what he knew he had his ability to get out to families right now that was still to keep it there without the new devices being in our in our possession um and again the idea was the end of this school year would be where we would purchase to have enough for one to one for everyone so again it's still a evolving um process we we are um on the trajectory to being where we want to be ideally we are not where we wanted to be yet uh at a time we would have been really nice for that to be the case president Kaylor members of the board I also wanted to address the hybrid uh educational option that we have not put together for the higgle Unified School District right now with the executive order of Governor Ducey with a hybrd option you would still have to make your schools available and open for any student that wants to come to that school for the regular amount of school days and the regular amount of hours as prior to covid-19 within the State of Arizona so the hybrid option would also leave an unmet need and an un um facilitated need for students that would show up for school to not have a place to go that we would have to make sure that they're supervised and that they're they're cared for while while we have school in session regardless whether they were uh part of the a schedule or the B schedule or the c Schedule whatever it was and so the highbrid option for the higgle fight School District was not a feasible option at this time but it's something that we continue to look at and we continue to work with our legislature to see if they would make that a more viable option but at this time the way the executive order is written we would have to have the opportunity for any child in kindergarten through 12th grade to be able to come to the school during an open time regardless whether it was a high breed model or not side okay this is one time where I'm going to tell you up front I think Elementary was more complicated than secondary and I've been giving him a hard time because he's like why do you have all those words on your page I'm like cuz I had to but anyway the principles worked really hard on this with me they did a great job so in a nutshell in first through fourth grade we wanted to do our very best not to overlap on top of interaction times with teachers so that if you have a kindergarten and a third grader and you've got one device which kid gets gets on and um we backed all these live sessions up to specials because we know how important they are for kids some of these will be live some will be recorded but if you're a kindergartener your parent knows you know what I'm going to get my kid with their teacher at 8:00 every morning and I don't want you to think that it's 45 minutes of lecture because we don't teach our kids like that there'll be interaction going on there'll be discussions I'm sure there'll be movement in kindergarten and some dependent practice so if you look at the schedule I realize it's not perfect but in first through fourth grade that was the thinking um and also on Wednesdays we know how important that social emotional piece is and we had a committee look at different resources and they found something called Sanford Harmony that they've been real intrigued with it's it's free it has a lot of components as far as um what works with kids and PD for teachers we also know we have Leader in Me schools we're going to have a no excuses University we already have a lot of things going on plus literature is a huge tool in teaching social emotional skills so Dr fully has this book in her office and it says she persisted and I keep thinking that's what we're all doing and then I'm going to Elbow this guy over here you want to tell him what book you got this week my experience with Elementary School is very limited and with elementary teachers is very limited but I was presented with a gift uh on Friday afternoon and the title of the book was David got in trouble and and it's and it is now very happily on my shelf following apparently it's a sequel to a book called No David and so I haven't read them all yet but I will well you're indoctrinating him H to the social emotional of the district office and literature was a big part of our afternoon both those books are great don't worry don't worry so in addition so I have a kindergartener let's say and I know they're interacting with their teacher at 8 every morning they've got specials but within in their canvas shell they're going to have Ela math science and social studies every day some of that might be a 10minute lesson in science it's a science experiment it's not that they're huge things but every day they've got work in canvas every live teacher or live teacher I hope they are every live lesson will be recorded So if your kid Miss this is a lesson they're going to be able to jump on and view that lesson teachers will also have time in their schedules um for small groups individualized instruction gifted support sped support EL support literacy support the teachers if you look at this you go what are the teachers doing all that time they have office hours they're pulling small groups they're in plc's they're planning they're grading they're giving feedback and they're having professional development so the one last thing is fifth and sixth grade looks a little different so looks a little bit like secondary can you go to the next one and so they're going to have two um instructional live periods a day plus specials and you'll see that kind of rotation that you're going to see in secondary that looks like a lot but those teachers typically don't pull as many small groups or as much you know individualized but they'll still have time for that so this was this this ends up a little bit on top of first through fourth grade but we're hopeful that these kids are a little more independent Mrs Richards yes just on this Elementary piece so you did say that all the lessons will be recorded I'm assuming there's going to be some perhaps a larger group of kids who won't be able to participate in the live sessions right so um they'll be able to is it are they watching what transpired will they see the other interaction with the other kids they'll see as much as we can record through canvas Studio that's what we're going to try to use and so I'll be honest with you we're going to see how this goes and so the good news is we're getting training on canvas Studio next week which is is something new to Canvas and I think it's going to be really helpful but we're going to have to work with our teachers to know how exactly to do all of that but anyway good questions and then they'll I'm assuming that the kids will watch that lesson find all the other documents within canvas and then like you said the teachers are going to have office hours so for some these parents will be teaching their children yeah for sure 5 6 7 o'clock at night because that's when they're home with them right and so they'll be able to then communicate with the teacher and and try and make sure yeah and so then the kids logging in once we figure out attendance even though they're not logging in live as long as they Lo log into sometime during that day okay and we talked to a lot about following up with those kids and how important it is because we did have some kids in the spring that weren't participating and so we're going to work really hard to support those families and those kids yeah I mean we talked about it earlier parents parents are still working they are and so um the expectation of someone else being responsible for facilitating this it may not not be a reasonable expectation um I can tell you at my facility we will not be able to facilitate the remote learning I have 20 School agers between Kinder and fifth grade and it's going to have to be something their parents do because I have special needs kids they're all in one class and I can't have my staff be responsible for this one and that one this one's on now that one has this this one has that crazy right so I mean it's going to have to be available for them and you know hopefully the parents will be able to have that good communication with the teachers and like Mr Glover said and thank you for asking that question because I will have a first and sixth grader you will you will and they're on at the same time and so from a device perspective that may become very interesting not to mention from a Wi-Fi perspective when I have three well I'll have a high schooler two so I'll have three kids on school and two adults working all at the same time um and I'm not the only one and so that Wi-Fi piece is really important as well um so it may be that I can or the first grader or the sixth grader can't log on that they're going to have to wait so and so our teachers they've been so great and they'll work through this we'll be flexible with due dates and Grading while we're supporting and later we're going to talk about kids club but we're going to have some Educators and kids club from preschool until we get back in the buildings supporting those kids with canvas so that's exciting anyway you want me to send some of those to your place too and I've we approved Florida virtual so that will be pieced in here correctly right correct Florida virtual we approved at our last board meeting I believe or two board meetings ago so that'll be able to um piece in some extra help and I think that was I tinkered with it I got to view a few things I think they did decent instruction on there to kind of teach me how to teach my kid so I would really encourage teachers to put those in whenever they see fit because it did help quite a bit like going through it because I'm going to have to probably teach algebra this year and it's been a while since I took algebra so it's uh it might take me a little bit I'm sorry Mr Glover you teach it a lot I do not so there's answer keys we can get you now that trainer of trainer sorry that trainer of trainers um training is Monday afternoon so anyway we're excited to have it thank you and Mrs Richards I have heard concerns from teachers saying you know my kid is going to go into kids club and you know they can be somewhat um not completely independent but sort of independent but having that ability to have a teacher kind of oversee our kids in higgle that's amazing because that would be really helpful to a lot of our working parents so I did hear about that and I was very grateful go good so from the high school perspective uh once again our secondary task team that worked this summer of high school administrators I did think did an outstanding job about developing a schedule for kids as as a former High School principal last spring trying to go through managing time having a set schedule for kids and for parents and expectations I just think is outstanding and the the thought that they put into behind how they would manage these students through this time I think is once again I I would be excited if I were still a principal to say this is something I could communicate to my families so if you take a look there and I think you've seen this before when we presented um basically we're asking the students to be in person for three of their classes per day uh twice a week and then with Wednesdays being our office hours and PLC time uh to provide enrichment opportunities as well as strug support for students who are struggling so when you're look from 8 to 855 similar to the elementary schools we're not expecting them to be in a teams meeting or at a zoom meeting or doing something like that the entire time but there will be opportunities for direct instruction and direct interaction with the teachers followed up with times that they can work and ask questions from the teachers this idea of of recording them uh right now is going to be highly encouraged however uh a lot of times we don't know about the timing and so we're going to work on that in terms of recording and posting of those uh lessons that are going but the expectation is regardless of whether there's a post posting there will be direct curriculum and support for teachers or sorry for students and families that will be posted upon canvas especially for those kids we know that aren't going to be able to be there and we I think the concern is the same that you brought up for elementary is the same concern for us and and honestly the question was 8:00 in the morning for high school kids as well is this too early and how we look at it but we are expecting them to come back into the buildings at some time and they'll have to be there earlier than 8 o'clock and so maybe this is a transition time for them at least I know it will be for my son that he has to get up before noon and engages within the content earlier than night my children are getting up at like one or two o'clock in the afternoon right about the time I need a nap yes I think I think it's so wrong they become nocturnal so we need to get them on a schedule I love it and so taking a look at that and then when we look at what happens in the afternoons this is still a really heavy lift for our teachers to be able to be creating this content this is where the integration of the Florida virtual supplemental curriculum can occur while they're creating content and and being consistent about that delivery we have a little phrase called 8 and8 8 8:00 in the morning on Monday mornings is when assignments are going to be due so kids are going to have some flexibility about making assignments due we're going to do at 8: in the morning for that next week and then at 8:00 they're expected to have their lesson plans and things posted so that parents can know ahead of time what's going to be expected of them during the week other than the live lessons and so we've asked for consistency across all the secondary levels so that a family that has a Jun a middle schooler and a high schooler that phrase 88 applies to both of them as well and so we really don't want these questions to be going well if I have someone at Higley how different is it going to be at williamsfield no we want to have the same expectations for them and so I think that's going to help families uh as we go through this I will note that this this is somewhat of an old slide and the next slide is going to help explain something we we're taking a look at the high school bell schedule and and really the question was posed when we come back in person how can we increase the opportunities for social distancing for our students and Mr Glover brought this up earlier going to lunch with 900 kids right and so we've implemented a different system but where instead of having either a fourth period or a fifth period lunch uh all of the we're going to go from two lunches to three lunches and so when you take a look at that we're going to reduce by 33% of the amount of kids that have the opportunity to be at lunch at the same time and so the difference between 900 and 600 is significant when you're back on campuses for uh the ability to social distance I was touring higgle high with Mr Fields today and we're talking about also how we're opening up additional areas so that the kids could spread out typically in the past we wanted to keep them as confined as possible okay and for those you've been at a high school campus at lunch it's quite an experience okay Junior High even more so Junior High 10 times louder but when you're looking at them we're going to offer different opportunities for them to spread out more than traditionally because we want to allow for that physical distancing when they're on campus and so this was a big lift and I need to thank our principes for wrapping their heads around looking at a schedule like this and uh and honestly for our support team behind the scenes in terms of changing things within Synergy to allow that where it didn't become an overburden on our high school counselors to change a lot of schedules they figured this out this week so thank you to Brian and to Steve and to Allen for figuring those different components out and our middle schools they already have three Lunes the midd scho they had already switched right last they had a switch and and when we met with the principles earlier we felt like the numbers about the previous schedules would be able to fit the high schools were of the ones we were really worried about when you're talking you know 2100 kids at Higley High having two lunches you're looking at about a thousand we know that some of our kids leave anyway she about 900 at each lunch now at least I can say hey we're reducing it down to 600 and trying to to allow for that more are we asking for some flexibility on our teachers especially those ones who have be lunch so if you take a look at that means they'll go to class they'll go to lunch then they'll come back to class so they have two smaller 30-minute periods and we're asking for their patients as they go through this honestly this is a schedule I'm very familiar with as an administrators it's the one that we've been running down at at my previous school and so it works and it allow us to be able to spread out more and so when we take a look at that if we would looked at the previous slide then basically 7eventh hour became sixth hour okay and sixth hour would be fifth hour and this fourth fifth would simply be their fourth hour class and so that's why that will be updated and it was actually updated when we sent it out to families today I think that was confusing last year having sth hour at sixth hour like we all got confused as parents so this actually makes more sense to me in my head so thank you for that um speaking of just going back to school I know we're only kind of focusing on the remote learning but for our secondary going back to school has there been more conversations because I did get some feedback from the community on the cleaning of our schools in between the classes are we going to be having one-way hallways what are some of the things that and I don't even know if they're set in stone yet but I know that those were some of the concerns that were coming to me in the secondary level so from a process and procedure not the cleaning part yet but the management of people on the campus uh I think what what's going to really look different is when they come on a campus and where the expectations of them are to be early and this is the same for elementary it is for secondary in terms of oneway hallways and different different things like that um from the the documentation and things that we've read we don't know how successful truer those are about elim eliminating kids from interacting anyway okay and so you think about it if a kid's going in the hallway whether they're coming one way or the other they're still going to have the inter opportunity to interact and it's going to be their choice whether they're going to be able to physically distance and do those things or not from the cleanliness standpoint I know that we've worked with our Support Services about the process and procedure in terms of having things available for our teachers in their classroom immediately so in between classes and I would never say we're going to require a teacher to give up that time to be able to clean but can they put a process within their classroom maybe it's the first person who comes in gets to spray down the desks and use the rag and then we change Rags uh periodically as we go through it but we'll we will have that capability for them to do that um immediately on the classes I I don't know if uh if you guys want to address more of the and president count members of the board um so for hand sanitizer we've ordered uh 5,000 stations to where we can put through all all of our schools and so each teacher will also have their their own hand sanitizer the 5,000 or was it 500 five yeah I added an extra zero sorry about that yeah I was going to say that would be one almost for every every two kids so we've ordered five 500 hand sanitizing portable that they carry with them like an IV but but we also have um hand sanitizer for each and every uh employee that that needs it and so those will be an ongoing ordering uh protocol for all of our schools and in across the district that will have the cleaners we do have a new cleaner that is supposed to uh have the um DMS paperwork that will kill the bacteria within 30 seconds with the spray and so we've we've you know taken all the stops to prevent as much as we can with the cleaners and the hand sanitizers and everything we can for PE PE for our teachers and staff Dr Foley just a quick question um how I understand it's the governor's executive order for in person not until August 17th how does this remote learning schedule impact our dual enrollment have we had conversation with Chandler Gilbert because clearly they're only taking this class they're participating in a class right now twice a week for any of our dual enrollment classes have we had this conversation with Chandler Gilbert how does this impact it oh Dr l m no sorry just Mr lsen Heiser liser can give you specifics on this one okay so when we talk about dual enrollment basically the approval for for from Chandler Gilbert is about the syllabus and the expectations about what's happening whether it's within a remote learning situation or an inperson learning situation so as long as our syllabus meets requirements and we're still going going to expect the same things whether we're meeting in person or whether we're meeting remotely that will continue and be consistent we'll be able to do it obviously we have to have a dual enrollment certified teacher right and but if we're providing the same content at the same time then we'll be approved to continue to have the dual enrollment options for our students where I think it's going to honestly a challenge that's going to take it is if we're starting in dual enrollment and we have the kids in our classes right now and then they choose to go completely remotely how are we going to allow that opportunity they for them to continue to have the same uh teacher and be involved and those are things by allowing us to start remotely it's giving us time to figure out those little details they're not little details sorry those very big details but it gives us time to figure them out other than trying to get it done here in the next two weeks can I piggy back off that can we go two slides ahead please the big question that I think you guys have got a lot about what is online learning happen and look and what are the elective offerings because we know that's where the differentiation and honestly a lot of the Joy from the kids come from when they get to take these elective courses preliminarily when we're looking at online electives these are the ones that we felt like we could do provided the curriculum and resources that we could offer now please understand when we say offer it doesn't necessarily mean make and one thing that we're looking at the data that we've gotten so far it's very hard for us to look and make a class for three kids or four kids and looking at those specifics and so that's why by allowing us to go remote it's going to give us opportunities to say how can I be creative and allowing students especially in these particular AP and dual enrollment classes provided they don't want to come back in person opportunities to continue with that and honestly the lift for us is to be going to teachers going would you be willing to pick up extra sections to be taught online and what kind of compensation way can we provide for them for doing that uh what we found with the survey of our teachers that I think originally we thought there was going to be a plethora and I don't want to steal mums Thunder a plethora of teachers that said I just want to be an online only teacher what we're learning more and more is that that that number is declining less and less so we're going to have to be having conversations with our teacher saying I might have to have you teach four in person could you pick up an extra online or could you do a six fifths and teach one online to help support those students by the making the decision to go remote learning it gives us at least three weeks provided let's say we get moved back longer to be able to figure out some of those details for our students and so our goal in talking with the High School principles and they're being very creative in terms of their ideas of thinking how can we continue to support additional electives than these especially ones CTE level two classes that are completers we need those kids to be able to get through those programs that's something that's very very important for them how can we continue to offer those online knowing that we also are offering them in person and we have a limited number of kids who are doing both and where do our resources go and honestly this is the huge lift for us I I don't think it's necessarily just at the secondary level but at the elementary level is when that actual split occurs and we have the opportunity to become back in person how can we support those online students by maintaining these the the the hard part at the high school is credits right after 9 weeks they haven't earned a credit yet we still have another nine weeks to go before they earn a credit at that semester and so how can we guarantee and put in places that these kids are going to be able to earn that credit uh through these processes and honestly right now we don't have all the answers but we are continuing to work so much to have Creative Solutions for our kids and provide them these opportunities and just as a followup with that kind of with the dual enrollment um Chandler Gilbert I think it was last year their enrollment time would moved up quite a bit so their dual enrollment would be before we go it would start being communicated before we return to iners so I think we're going to have to make sure that we keep that in mind so that we can have clear and concise communication because there's not something physical to hand to the the kids to bring home so that we don't miss deadlines and we don't miss enrollments and um I know they're high schoolers but they're still kids and when they're doing their class and Mom and Dad may be at work I they may see something pop up in canvas and then it's forgotten so I think that communication with dual enrollment is going to be really really important so if we can really kind of keep that um in mind and the other thing I would like to ask because we have this opport opportunity I'm going to flip this to an opportunity um just I'm sure you are but making sure that we're looking at our district as a whole in the past with in person I may not have enough kids at higgle High School to have a certain class go and I may not have enough kids at williamsfield to have a certain class go but because we have this opportunity if we know we have these kids and at both campuses who who are interested in a class how can we utilize our online our remote whatever you may call it how can we utilize it to meet the those student needs and we may have some really unique opportunities here um as well as um based on skill and teacher teachers and and their knowledge we may have a class only offered at William field are only offered at Higley that because we have this opportunity of remote learning and um online that we may be able to say hey two kids from williamsfield can log in whatever it may be and take this class at Higley and and have that opportunity that they may not have otherwise had so just I know you have a lot of work doing and I know you guys are working really really hard because there's so much that this is brand new and there's so much unknown but I would like to just kind of as we work through some of these things try and keep some of that in our mind and find out where do we have these benefits um this is giving us an opportunity um while we've talked about before starting this and what we have to do is not ideal it's not what's best for kids it's um a different learning environment however because we have to and we've done the Higley Virtual Academy and and we're doing these different things that we can really serve the needs of individual students much better with things um that you're going to be working on so but I am very sorry concerned about the dual enrollment we have a hard time with that um when it's even in in person and so I we really need to stay on top of that um I know it's important for a lot of our students um it's important for me I have another student who should be completing her Associates after this year and um so I I hope these are not missed opportunities for our kids Mrs Reese um just to piggy back on that um right now we do have the liaison for chanic community college so we should be utilizing them because they're not on summer break they work 12 months a year so there is our person who should be on our campuses I take it we should be having conversations with them because they're there now to answer all those questions and coordinating everything for us so so you do have extra staff there that we should be utilizing and that is a great resource that they're providing for us is that LE aison yes that's going to come be on our campuses new to this year because they're there now so they are I was just going to follow follow up with that Mr wov you literally said it is we are excited actually now to have that person who will be able to help in that capacity in a direct line to the uner you know to cgcc to help us do a better job with communication the follow through and and and the paperwork and timelines so that is another thing that we're excited about having this year as a resource that we didn't have last year and we're thankful because that just as you brought forward this is a different time and in a different way um so it will be very important thank you for reminding just share that Mr lsen Heiser I this is so so small if if I thought I could catch you before you leave I would I would catch you then can you guys back up one slide I'm just going to try to save you a little a little uh speed bump that you might hit there got the a lunch ends at 11:06 B lunch starts at 11:06 but then the C Lunch ends at the B ends at 11:36 and starts at 11:41 you got some time to flip the tables there but you don't have any time to flip the tables between A and B maybe you already thought of that I'm just going to point that out I saw it it's Petty move on you're quite all right we will revisit that and make sure and that that is a concern the idea of cleaning the tables in between but we have some plans for that um the online elective offerings I just want to make it clear these are just for those students choosing to only stay online the students that picked their schedules last spring for in person those electives are still on the book so correct Unified sports and um whatever those electives were those are still on the books and on the schedule for them and that's going to be in their schedule when they get it on July 20th yes I just want to make that very clear because I had lot the not and I said no they that these are just for those students choosing online only online only for the future and it's really once that split happens thank you for that clarification yes next slide okay kids club is going to be offered at four locations HTA Santan power ranch and Gateway uh we're going to work to keep that one to n ratio and that's the reason for the weekly sign up or registration there is a discount for employees we already talked about preschool teachers being there we'll also have some of our PA professionals there um and the one thing that I think it's important to all of us is having a health aid on campus at every site so that's a update with kids club good evening president kaylar members of the board um Higley community so in terms of our employees we spent a lot of time tonight talking about the curriculum and as Dr Foley mentioned this is presentation 2.0 um so before I go into this particular site I do want to address something that Mr lsen Heimer mentioned and that was relation to our certified um there was a lot of unknown in regards to what kind of Interest we would have from our certified in terms of teaching online um or returning back in person and as all of you know and as our community know there's been a lot of challenges and changes just in the time period in which we started our planning um and the last 3 weeks since our last board meeting so um you know one thing that I do think is uh something as my colleagues have mentioned a great move for us because of timing purposes is to do everything remote um and that does give us a little bit more time to figure out the online component uh we had a number of teachers who were interested in the online component at one part and then changed their mind um there was some concern about being able to return return to their current site location which they had been identified for the 2020 2021 school year I think some of the confusion though is that um in terms of Higley prior to covid-19 in regards to our contracts all of our contracts were always about having a contract to be a certified teacher or an employee we never designated or guaranteed a site location it's always based on our enrollment um and so I just clarified that in the recent communication um then it is difficult because as we know we are unsure of how enrollment is going to look in the 2020 2021 school year um and I think we are I think it's safe to say we really don't know what it's going to look like in 2021 2022 um so you know there are some concerns out there and I want to mention that but one thing I do want to mention and something that I've been responding with as well as everybody in the department that I work with um in terms of my colleagues is that if there are concerns we want to sit down with pardon me we want to sit down with you and address them um and again anything that we can do to reasonably assure them when inperson instruction returns um that we have their safety in mind and not only for our employees but certainly our our families and our students too so our classified employees um you know we have approximately 900 classified employees throughout the district um and this is a big lift for us in terms of human resources and what we do um so in preparation for not knowing what's going to happen and with the governor's delay of inperson instruction certainly what came to our heads and our mind is what do we do with our classified primarily our 10-month employees in regards to the fact that a lot of them are individuals that work directly with our students whether it's our transportation department or our PA professionals that make up almost 250 of those classified employees where their direct work is in person um so one of the discussions that we've had and some of this is through through um legal counsel and talking um what do we do and what options do we have was the encouragement to talk to individuals and say are you interested in an alternative assignment so we did take a look at our largest groups and that was our par professionals and our transportation and I worked with our sped director as well as our director of transportation and we inquired all of these individuals some of them were by direct phone calls some of them was a combination of phone calls and a separate individual survey sent to them about would you be interested in an alternative assignment or are you interested in waiting until in-person instruction begins or depending on that alternative assignment in terms of what work we have available um would you be interested in it and or could we look at other ways at supporting you or supporting your roles um you know just with everything else there's been fluidity through this process and one thing that I learned um I believe late last week earlier this week the days all merged together so sometimes I forget what day it is but um we are looking to work with our principles at the elementaries and at the secondary level to have our pair professionals if they're interested um and the ability is there to have them actually work remote with our online pardon me not with our online but with our teachers as they're working remotely um so I'm glad we've defined remote versus online because those are two different things now but being able to support them and what ways they can support them um and working with the principles and determining what a schedule looks like how that looks like what's the expectations of those par professionals as they're supporting that remote luning for them so we are having those discussions um and as I said earlier we're also asking people especially if they want to wait and they have the ability to wait that they can wait um when in person does begin whether that's August 17th or if it gets pushed back at a later date so what we know of as today this discussion in regards to we're going to try to find alternative assignments where we can um the feasibility of that is unrealistic to some degree as it stands currently um there's no way we're going to be able to find alternative assignments for almost 900 plus employees for up to three weeks before we start inperson instruction um and the reason why we want to look at an alternative assignment is through my understanding through colleagues as well as through the Arizona attorneys Association group um you know particularly udol sham who I've been working with and talking with is that the intent of the governor is that he wants to keep employees in a paid status however um until we get something like we did in the spring where we had HB 2910 we don't know clearly that's the intention um and there could be some some opposition um to that if we don't have something clearly in writing so we're hoping and we're crossing our fingers through our relationships with our various lobbyists um at different professional organizations that were involved D in um that they'll look at this executive order uh that has been drafted and see whether or not that that's an option that we can continue with and so until we hear that our goal is to find assignments um continue to inquiry and we're hoping we'll know more by the end of the week to determine where we move next for next week um fortunately we have a little bit more time for most of our employees in our 10-mth positions don't start until either next Wednesday or next Thursday according to their work agreement so trying to buy every little bit of time we can in the bigger picture next slide please another item that I wanted to take an opportunity to talk with the board about in our community is that we have updated our positive case covid communication flow chart um I've worked diligently with our benefit specialist as well as our district nurse Miss Folton in regards to this um the the struggle that we have had is since our even June 24th meeting guidelines have changed um it's resulted in us needing to change our exclusion guidelines as a result um we're fortunate that our district nurse is on weekly phone calls with the Arizona Department of Health Services um but it's also I know uh a challenge for her because sometimes those weekly phone calls result in weekly changes um so last week when we spent significant time working together um she had shared that uh through communication with the Arizona Department of Health Services they were getting overloaded with phone calls and asking for um recommendations advice guidance from individuals that felt as though they had had exposure and or that were testing positive themselves um and that led to some of their conversations about changing some information that we had presented we don't have um confirmed yet that they've made those changes our district nurse as I said will be having her conference call actually tomorrow so we'll see but there is talk about changing the primary and secondary contact exposure um and what that means because a concern larger in regards to um will we have a Workforce if we have this this idea and following the CDC with everybody going out with 14 days um so that will be interesting and as I said earlier we are changing our exclusion guidelines because some of what we've seen is that um and we mentioned this before so this isn't anything new um some of the information and the the guidance from the Arizona Department of Health Services hasn't always followed the CDC guidance um and so they've recently changed to instead of having 14 days out that they're looking at 10 days out um and you know combination of different things whether they're asymptomatic symptomatic negative test or no lab test so those recommendations have changed since our last meeting on the 24th too so we've updated our FAQs we've updated our website um for our families and for our employees to reflect that new information um and communicating out to them too we also ended up putting a little bit of an aster at the bottom of those exclusion guidelines um to Define what the Arizona Department of Health was was deciding what meant exposure um and even that has changed actually from you know six feet from somebody um at least with more than 15 minutes to discussion of whether or not it's 6 feet with 10 minutes um so are they going to change the 15 to 10 and at one point I think it was 10 and they changed it to 15 so there's been some flexuality there too um which has been a struggle one thing I will say though is that we've done a great job working as a team um I do know that you know with the delay in the start of the school year uh that's certainly going to help us in the bigger picture but knock on would um you know we've had very few actual positive covid cases and we've been able to manage them in the time frame that we've had um when I last reported to you back on the 24th at the time we had had none um so we've had a few since then um here at the district but we've been able to manage it as I shared with you um I was scared that we wouldn't necessarily get it right um I'll share with you candidly that we had a little bit of some hiccups um but we were able to work through it and get it taken care of and make it right um and you know more than anything um and I believe all of you have said this to us many times at different occasions it's about listening to our employees um and listening to whatever fears or concerns they have and doing our best to work with them um to help support them in that the best way that we can and understanding both sides of the picture um and just wanting an opportunity to have a voice in the bigger picture to this chart what is the estimated timeline on this chart I mean from the first up the top to notifying the families that we talking a day are we talking a week what do we what's the timeline you anticipate or planning so um you I have not been directly involved in relation to the student side so I can't answer the student side but I could answer the employee side and I will tell you um in the couple of cases that we've recently had we were able to get everything done within 24 to 48 hours good um okay watching the chart it says school board on the bottom I know there's cases but we haven't been told has anybody been notified you were notified how were you notified oh text one but I think there's more that I haven't heard so like School Board is it just going to be a text that the school board knows or how are we kind of made aware president Kaylor members of the board one thing that's very important is that we want to make sure we get a confirmed uh notification from it and that's where we're working with our district health Health uh um our district nurse to make sure that we get positive confirmation from the Arizona Department health services without that positive confirmation then we don't we don't move forward with that aspect to maybe cause rumor or speculation or uh something that may be a false reporting so we don't move forward until we get that confirmation from our district health nurse and she is the only one within the district that can get that confirmation from the aizon Department of Health Services and so that's how we move forward and when that does happen and then we move through the process and then that's when the board is notified um at at that time additionally um something that we had talked about the last time was doing it just once a week and of course again um you know I know you know this but I'm going to reiterate it um especially for those that are watching publicly we don't share any names um again because it's a hip of violation we just share that the total number um and you know again getting confused about days and the weeks um um but you know some of this is in terms of confirmed has been fairly recent so you know I know Dr thomasson's been working with identifying kind of consistency in that notification process too president Kaylor members of the board I would agree that it's a a very confusing and difficult process especially when you have to go through and you have to depend on other agencies to make sure that you have the confirmed case through them and even if a individual does come in and bring us paperwork work we still have to go through the Arizona Department Health Services to make sure that's confirmed and it's frustrating for us it really is um we still put in the proper protocols and we start the individual uh to their home leave and and take the precautions that we need to do and start the cleaning process but the actual confirmation has to come from the Arizona Department of Health Services thank you Miss Martins can I go back real quick to the classified update absolutely um um so I did hear from some employees who were concerned so thank you for clarifying who you spoke to because they were like I was never asked um and so just seeing on the presentation they're like well classified wasn't asked it some obviously some groups so thank you for clarifying that but leaving the question of what about the other 10-month employees that aren't bus drivers or transportation that aren't Paras there's they feel there's been no communication with them they don't know do they return to work in a week um like you said they their um return dates a lot of them are next Wednesday so I can imagine from an employee standpoint being very frustrated that am I going back to work in a week am I not do I have a job do I not I'm I mean at at some point obviously they will but do they have an option outside of transportation and Par Professionals of a different assignment do they have the option to return to their job um if they're not directly with students um if they don't have an option is there an option to take their General leave so they're not I there's all these questions and and I quite understand I have to figure my life out in a week certainly Miss Reese so um we have been intentionally waiting however we've been drafting communication asking questions Talking with supervisors about what kind of alternative assignments do we have um you know unfortunately just even in this last couple of days some of the information I've gotten back is that okay we could maybe muster up alternative assignments for 50 people um that obviously isn't going to satisfy the larger need um we have been talking with some of our other um supervisors and site Administration about what other things could we potentially have or again is there anything else um in terms of some of the employees that you've been talking about whether or not their interest so we've done a little bit of out outside categories outside of our Pairs and our transportation not a lot um again primarily because those are our largest groups of individuals within the 10 months but the plan is to have something out by the end of this week and communicating that um yes you know there will be an opportunity to use some leave time but there's going to be some other components related to that too and I will I will say very transparently The Hope was and um still is that we might get additional information before the week ends so we're not sending communication that says X and then all of a sudden it's like oh no it's why although I feel like we've been doing that already um and I've you know I've shared with some communication with others as well as um as Dr Foley mentioned earlier our model really is patience and Grace because it is fluid it is going to change but Our intention is to to send something out probably by Friday morning and I understand your concern in terms of well you know here I am as a um media Aid assistant or a lunch guard pardon me a a lunch a or a crossing guard and I don't know what the plans are um you know and so you know we will get some information and I understand the concern about okay needing to plan and what's going to happen in a week and what opportunities I going to have what opportunities I'm not going to have um but something for us as you guys know is that it's been an up and down roller coaster um I think uh Dr bourch um our new assessment director had mentioned there's a new coin term called covid coaster um and you know there's an actual definition and I don't have it with me right now but it's essentially ups and downs of covid where some days you feel you're on a high and some days you feel on a low um because you just don't know what to expect and what's going to happen next next um and that's certainly something that we're feeling um as a district in that perspective but certainly we'll take your feedback Miss Ree and make sure that we communicate and send some additional information before the end of the week well the other thing too is with some of these 10 mon month employees um and I'm not sure how personal information is gathered like they're not working right now so if the expectation and we're communicating through their District email I think we need to let them know look all of our communication's going to be through your District email and the expectation is you should probably check that once a week um you know because for some there are some who are like this is not my contract time and um for others they're like I'm on it so um I think just trying to Define too how we're going to communicate it's between a rock and a hard place like you said patience and great R but sometimes is it worth communicating and having that little asterisk and say look I think everybody knows but the plan is right now this and it could change and final decisions will be made no later than this date um so I know it's hard and I know you guys everything's changing sometimes by the hour um and it's difficult but it's also trying to manage that um other piece of it too if people have to find child care if they um you know not knowing what they're doing or um things like that so if we can try and make sure that we're communicating through this whole thing I know we've talked about the communication's got to be as clear and concise as possible but I think everything we communicate has to have that asterisk and says subject to change perhaps without notice you know and so I appreciate you taking that I I know um some of them that I spoke to they were fairly upset um but um and they're worried because they don't know what's going on so um at least if they're watching or um I can certainly follow up that hopefully there'll be some communication to them um I would say by the close of business on Friday just to give it some time but they need to know what they're doing next week certainly and we have been working diligently with our site administrators you know at the end of the spring term we worked really hard with identifying a phone tree if you will or a contact tree for those individuals who don't regularly use email um and you know our I know I've mentioned our transportation department earlier but that's there one group that don't um you know very few of them actually check their email and so we've worked well with the areas saying you know is it a group TCH TT do you have everybody's phone number is it followup with phone calls and like I said um you know working with our sped director Miss Miller she made 150 phone calls um and you know our our preschool director made another um 25 30 plus phone calls um and so forth and so forth so you know we're trying to do our best but I acknowledge um their frustration and I apologize for that and I'll make sure to to seek their Grace in that process when we do communicate we come to you with a conclusion here with some questions now here's the thing one of the things we know is that there are still unanswered questions one of the things we encourage people to do is to let us know what those are to work with your side administrators to talk to your teachers we're going to be working we're going to have to work through this together this is one of the things that's going to continue to evolve and to change we're going to do our best to communicate what we know as fast as We Know It with the certainty that what we're sharing is accurate uh to the greatest extent today knowing that we just as you said may need to say uh caveat know that that it is not our intention not to give you everything we know our our goal is to tell you what we know when we know it the most efficiently way we can possible are there some questions that you have that we have not addressed or that we should be working on in in in the near future I I just have um one question is back to the uh Sports and Band program and as I was sitting there I was thinking um last week um the governor closed all the gyms and in I remember the a lot of the gyms were saying well we're going to have smaller groups we'll make sure our equipment are cleaned no so all our gyms are closed in the state here for health reasons here and we are in turn opening our gyms up so I just want to make sure that we're not in violation ation of the governor's policies here and we're not going to be held liable because he closed gyms in the state and we're opening up our gyms so I think I want to be really careful on where you're going with this and if you could check into that that that we are going to be okay even though this is volunteer there is some liability here that if he said no and we are doing yes please be careful even though people say okay I'll volunteer I'll come in but you know when things happen people change their opinion real quick and say I don't know okay so just I'm just really concerned for the safety here in in this reference Dr fley I would just like to tell you and your staff you've done an incredible job and I'm so proud of what you have done here and I can't can't even say anymore I just it's incredible under these circumstances how it changes every day and and you guys all come together and we're moving forward I am so proud of each and every one of you here so thank you for everything that you have done okay Mr vich thank you I will tell you that it is our amazing higle leaders teachers team employees who have figured out how to do this together and honestly we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for the leadership of our of our employees across all levels to help us get here so and we are going to keep working together to do this but this this where we are today versus where we were at the end of of spring break we've we've moved a lot virtually uh this summer as a district so thank you for that and may I piggy back on what Mr wovi said I just it's mindboggling to me that we are perfectly fine and accept that restaurants should only open and and and work at 50% capacity but we are in a complete hurry to open up our schools at 100% it's it's utterly mind-boggling that we're in such a hurry to do that but I I am what I am I it's you know we get the emails every day and within minutes of an email of somebody saying please open the schools the next email it says please don't and so um I we hear you out there we hear you we're listening and we're trying our best in these difficult tenous times and um yeah it's just been a ride it is a CO coaster for sure thank you for your team thank you for this update I know um again Curtis canide tell us how many people are watching but again we encourage those people to reach out first to your um administrators if you can't get that answer reach out to um Mrs Mrs Richards for elementary and M doc David Mr lsen Heiser I'm just gonna call you Big Lots um big Big Lots is fine okay Mr Big Lots for our secondary and we we are here to answer your questions um I try to respond to every email that I get so um even if I don't have an answer I I just want people to know that we're listening we care and we're trying our best in these circumstances so thank you so much for this presentation president Kay i' just like to piggyback on then if anybody's watching on this I think it's important to understand that we're going to get through this together and if anybody in the community is watching this if they see there's a need or we're missing something by all means jump in here guys okay it's this is this is what a community is about it's about Humanity about helping each other out here and I think more than ever we need to come together and we are so please if you're out there watching we're going to get through this and we're going to get through this together be part of the solution well and I think our our kindness message too has been really great because every email that I've gotten so far has been so kind and so thoughtful and I just so appreciate that in our community of Higley is just that you know we may not agree on everything but we can be kind about it and that's a great message that higgle is sending out so I appreciate that with us so I think Dr Foley the last thing I have and not to be answered at the moment but what I have heard from community members is um looking for an answer and I hear Mr rovic and I hear Mr lover and um our community is just asking are we going to open our schools when the governor says we can and that way they can keep an eye on it they can plan that they know if the governor extends it they know the governor extends it but if there is no extension that they can plan and expect to for those who choose that's why we have the choices um for those who choose to need to want to send their kids back to inperson classes um they're just asking for sure a a decision that Yep this is what we're going to do we're strictly going to follow the governor's guidance when he allows us to open we're going to open um or we're still playing it by ear so I'm not asking you to answer that tonight but that is what I have heard heard from our community is August 15th they don't want to hear that we're not returning to inperson school or if the governor has allowed this to expire um they want the preparation so they're just asking to know yes we are we're we're simply following the governor and when we can we will um so um that way they can plan and they can keep an eye out and know where it's going on their own so that's the only other thing I would ask from um the community stpoint very good um my board members have asked for a little recess so we're going to take a little break and we will return in just a few moments thank you okay we're back and we are on 7.4 I move that the governing board approves the fiscal year 20221 annual expenditure budget second any questions comments all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z thank you Mr Holland for staying all right we're moving on to 7.5 there a Changing of the Guard coming uh I make the motion that the governing board approves the award of ifb number 16- 07-24-18 price of 3.5 3,540 th000 with the alternates which includes adjacent ways new fencing mill work and kitchen equipment for the price of $171,636 per se okay all those in favor I motion carries 5 Z thank you for staying moving on I move that we ratify it is recommended the governing board ratify the payments for college credit by examination incentive program CCE for fiscal year 2018 2019 and 2020 Mr Holland can you explain why we're doing this now please why we're ratifying for three years past two years passed um president did this come up in something that we didn't see before no um these payments have come before the board when when you would ratify the um the bills list each year um but since there was some questions back with the auditor general attorney general um concerns about boards not ratifying or approving all payments so as a process you'll remember we have ratified some other payments as well from previous years and so this was just wanting to bring this to your um to the governing board for um approval to make sure that it's clear that you guys approved for all three years of the same okay I just wanted to clarify that any questions comments all those in favor I I motion carries 5 Z president Kaylor yes Dr Thomasson yes tonight's agenda includes my respectful request that the governing board permit me to retire during the Spring of this school year and amend my employment agreement accordingly I have been blessed to work with all of you and our outstanding group of Administrators teachers and staff as well as it has been an honor and a privilege to work with the parents students and other members of our community for the betterment of our students we have accomplished incredible things during the past 12 years I have worked for the district however I'm determined that it is time for me to focus on my family and future endeavors should the board honor my request please be assured that I will work with the board and the entirety of the school Community to have a solid transition plan in place before I retire that a mutually agreed upon dates to make this transition as seamless as possible and I just want to thank the board for their consideration thank you Dr Thomasson and not only for your dedication to Higley but for your 25 years of education period And I know um to Higley you have brought so much kindness you've brought so much generos generosity and compassion for others literally changing the climate and the culture of Higley over these past few years um easy I want to thank you for caring for my family and my kids when Mama Bear came out you were there for me and I just want to say thank you for that and I I wish you good health I wish you good family times I pray your years to come are the best yet and while you might be far from Higley you're not going to be far from our thoughts ever so thank you president Kaylor yes Mrs W I have a couple comments Dr Thomasson it has been an honor and a blessing to have you as hickley superintendent you have guided us through some really rough rough Waters and I know that you will lead us this year until your retirement date thank you for the years of leadership tonight I will choose to honor your request for a for your retirement I appreciate you notifying us early so that we can get a replacement who is as magnificent as you are I wish you the best of luck please rest assured that you have made hickley a better place than when you started 12 years ago thank you Dr Thomasson and thank you to your family because I know you've given up a lot of time for us and our families thank you president killer don't want to look at him look this way um I want to thank you this is tough um for all your hard work and dedication I've worked with him longer than anyone up here um I've had the pleasure of working with Dr Thomasson um since I was elected eight years ago I was proud to serve as your board president for the last four years you have worked really hard to set up our district district for success I wish you well for your future thank you for all your kindness and you'll be in my thoughts and I hope you enjoy your retirement Dr Thomasson I um I sat on the interview committee this Mrs Reese and and when you walked in the room and you presented I knew right then and that you were the person to run this district and to take us to the next level and and you did okay and I've been with you for six years through your time that you've been with her um as the superintendent and uh you've done an outstanding job so um thank you very much I retired in February welcome to my world and uh wish you well in your retirement to you and your family yeah um Dr Thompson I cannot will not pretend to be happy about this um I want to thank you for a few great years um you're the only superintendent I've worked with here it's um you know I've enjoyed working with you I've enjoyed growing with you I've learned a lot from you and your presence will be dearly missed uh but I too will honor your request so with that I move that the governing board accept the superintendent's request to retire during the 2021 school year and approve related agreement to amend the superintendent's Employment contract a second any other questions comments all those in favor I I I motion carries 5- Z I hear they're the best years Dr Thomasson please show us that please know that my heart will always be in Higgly and I will always be here for you whatever you need thank you okay 8.1 any other future agenda items that the board would like to see okay I think we've got some good things still to come so we'll be looking forward to those um at this time I [Music] move where am I 10.1 9.1 no 10.1 H that's our 9.1 is our governing board initiatives that Darlene is keeping on our um on our uh board packet just for our information so it just that's where we kind of put it so that we always have it in our heads from our Retreat so um I move that the board moves into executive session for discussion or consideration of possible change in assignment and related matters regarding associate superintendent of educational services pursuant to ARS 38-43 1-03 A1 second all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z oh bring that back please Curtis um because we are also I move that the governing board convene an executive session for discussion or consultation for legal advice relating to the executive session item 10.1 with the governing board's attorney pursuant to ARS 38-43 1.03 A3 and ARS 38-43 1.03 A4 second all those in favor I we will return thank you e

Carey Coe and her fur and her staff for continuing to take care of kids and families in the community you know you even students they weren't Greencastle specific during the period of time where school is closed and continuing over summer as we recognize that that really does go a long way in helping families out and we plan to obviously continue to offer opportunities for breakfast and lunch and should the situation rise if school were to close again we would work to provide opportunities for families but building administrators have already worked to adjustment that were fine-tuned they're already difficult schedules and have created additional lunch periods so that we can not necessarily have the same amount of students and in the cafeteria as we normally would do creating additional space for students to eat you know we may end up in a situation where we have an alternating eating schedule in an elementary building to where you know one day they're eating in their classroom and then you know the next day they get to go to the cafeteria to a more more traditional environment but still with a with a smaller space and and social distancing and and sanitizing and cleaning procedures in place you know our older students if we have outdoor eating spaces they might get to eat outside I know that again just going outside seen a little bit of sunshine and breathe them a little fresh air can do a lot for the for the mind we've eliminated self-serve options so that way you know students won't be won't be touch you know multiple students won't be touching the same thing again we'll have hand sanitizer in our cafeterias and they're serving lines and it will be a reinforced students will be asked to wash their hands before eating visitors so this is really tough because in a community like Greencastle we have really great community partners and volunteers at the same time this is something that's tough to do is we're gonna have to be extra vigilant on on limiting the amount of guests or visitors they'd enter our building so in our reopening plan we're only allowing four essential staff and those who significantly impact student learning to enter our building so a good example of that would be someone who is working with a particular student or a particular group of students on a weekly basis for reading or tutoring but it would really eliminate kind of those one-off opportunities where someone might come in and help out so this would be somebody that's a little bit more regular part of our building you know I don't necessarily know that it's going to be a possibility but I also I know in the past that we've had some students come over from DePaul so again I would identify those as regular visitors to our building all visitors obviously upon entry will be expected to report to the office to be screened and certainly we're going to limit them to only visiting their designated areas we won't allow for random random visitors water oh this is a this is a challenge you know it would be great if we had water fountains that you know if every water fountain had a water bottle filling station that was activated on a sensor we don't certainly that's something that we're going to continue to explore over time that's something that we're we've looked into with grants we will continue to explore so that we can hopefully be able to provide those in our buildings you know not even kovat related but just in general those are nice things to have and it limits the amount of germs but water fountains in general will be unavailable disconnected for student use the only exception would be as if obviously had that automatic water bottle filling station option not all of our buildings have those we will make water available for student purchase with breakfast and lunch and certainly we're going to encourage students to bring a clear water bottle bring water from home we will have stations set up in our buildings during the day and during lunch for for students to to refill their bottle if need if need be transportation so obviously we're still we're still wanting to provide Greencastle transportation we are going to do something a little bit different this year is when it does come time for registration and we understand that this could change during the school year but just to help our drivers and help our school staff plan for students riding the school bus we're just gonna ask for you to select that option please know that we understand that that might that might change given no given circumstances but we are making some modifications with with how we transport students students and bus drivers I will require them wear masks students will be assigned seats variables such as you know student families certain bus stops bus seats will be assigned strategically strategically to help allow us the best possible methods for contract contract tracing contact tracing if need be we are going to limit students to a primary bus stop and a secondary bus stop again we want to really that's going to help us and help the Health Department conduct contact tracing more efficiently as I mentioned earlier buses will be disinfected after each use you know whether that's morning route whether that's afternoon route whether that's our alternative route whether it's a special transportation whether it's a after-school activity or Club buses will be sanitized and sprayed down after each use before they are used again next slide please so one of the big pieces is you know again kind of mentioning earlier we recognize that each family situation is unique is we want to provide for a variety of learning options in addition to on campus campus instruction we will be freighting a virtual learning option for all students in grades k-3 K through 12 we do obviously have a few requirements or criteria that students must meet in order to participate given the SSV that is an online program we have to have access to to high-speed Internet in order to eliminate some of the struggles that we experience through e-learning during our forced closure last school year and to set us up to experience more success be more effective and for families to truly have an understanding of what virtual learning looks like we are going to require the students and parents participate in an orientation session and we are working on what that what that looks like we have made some obviously there will be some adjustments based on the developmental age of students we're going we are asking K to five students and parents to commit to to a nine week period so essentially mirroring that of a grading period and then just given the difficulty with credits in high school in just the way courses are set up in middle school we are asking that students in grades 6 through 12 it's a semester long commitment virtual student students will not be eligible for extracurricular activities and unfortunately as much as we would like it virtual learning it's almost impossible to tamir it with the actual school day we this will also be something that is released during registration so your parents and families they will commit to on-campus or virtual learning we recognize that there's not a lot of time also so we want to we want to meet you and get the information out as quick as possible but until we have those numbers of what it looks like we can't provide some more specifics so you know for example you know if we have just um just throw numbers out there 20 students in grades K 2 2 then we're going to work with our building principals and our teachers potentially identify you know one virtual learning teacher or instructor or those 20 students whereas if we have you know closed what would look like closer to an actual class of just say first graders or third graders then potentially we could look at an adjustment and we'd work with our that the teachers association to potentially assign a virtual teacher for that class period so we will need some of that additional information before we can get some more of those specifics out it is our it is our plan obviously to to get our reopening plan approved first once that happens we expect to be able to push out our virtual learning options and very specific information for families and registration in general hopefully by the end of this week or at the latest at the beginning beginning of next week and we utilize school messenger or I'm still kind of learning the terms here I think it's Skyler door skyalert from Skyward so that families can have that information and and we'll post that on the website as well next please addition in addition going along with the virtual learning we are again with 180 day school year we are still held to mandates from the Department of Education that are grounded in law and so one of those things is is unless there's a pause and state mandated testing we will have to work out opportunities to schedule students to participate in state mandated testing just in general I can tell you right right now I know that there's a there's a lot of advocacy going on that you know just just during this in general and kind of even with things last year and one of the things you might have heard talked about recently is the I read three obviously we know student participate in it last year and then there's been some discussion about fourth graders potentially being able to take I read three well do e has obviously advocated one way the General Assembly and the State Board of Education have kind of taken another route so until that changes you know with the state Manoj's mandated testing we have to continue I can tell you I'm not real interested in in looking at giving I read three to fourth graders I think we have great teachers in our classrooms we don't you know that's not meant to be a diagnostic diagnostic test so I think our teachers can assess where those learning gaps are and accelerate learning to fit those needs but that's where we could definitely use some advocacy from stakeholders and folks in this room just with anything legislature related as always if you can reach out to your local legislators and ask them to pause testing during this school year I know that would be much appreciated at my end and it's it's a lot better when they hear from the parents themselves it also be obviously the responsibility of parent to provide Internet access monitor progress and encourage their students with work so again our virtual learning option while I can't mere the school day it's going to be much more rigorous and expectations are going to be much higher than what you saw with I saw with the e-learning at the end of last school year the apartments we've had a lot of time to prepare for that and then obviously students must complete the courses within the timeframe given the elementary nine weeks or middle school high school based on the semester next slide please athletics so the athletic for aintry plan we're still in phase one I believe with that but we're going to continue to follow excuse me the board approve athletics for a new plan and again as circumstances and situation changes we recognize that we also may need to make adjustments with that component as well so I know I've shared a lot of information tonight I understand and recognize that there are a lot of questions and we are we are here to work with you to give you clarity and help provide information with that you know one of the things I'd like to encourage and you know it's unfortunate that circumstances have dictated this is you know I've only had 10 official days in the office since beginning July 1 volunteered some of my time during the month of May and June just to get in here and familiarize myself with our facilities and our staff but I really do want to immerse myself and get to know patrons different organizations that really learn more about the Greencastle community and establish those relationships that if you do have questions which I know that some heavy some of email may some of even email me today I've got back to them yet but I do welcome that and I will respond to you within 24 or 48 hours so I really you know if there is a concern I'm here to work with you I'm here to support your students and provide them the best learning experience possible at Greencastle so by all means I would encourage you to read to reach out to me with that but that is a lot of information that I have for now we will work on developing the FAQ document which will be posted at green castle website these longer the larger reopening plan will be posted and we will also update and post kind of what I would call the simplified guidance as well and just work with you to provide clarity on those items so so this is this is a huge decision for me personally probably you know one of the one of the bigger decisions I've ever ever made in my life if not the biggest you know I I have a you know I have a kid in Greencastle schools too and and so you know there's there's a lot of your mask is a big thing you know and it's a requiring mask I think for be is it is important but a lot of work went into this and there's a lot of moving parts that you know there's just so many variables and and so I think you everybody tried their best to consider all of that I don't know that we will be able to answer I'm all of those questions or or fill in all of the gaps right right away but but I will I will say that for me personally I know we talk about kids and and you know I deathless was mentioned and you know but I I think there's when kids get sick and they're out of school that affects more than just the kid in their learning right and so excuse me for saying kid you should say student probably I'm sorry but uh but you know it that's that's a parent off off of work or you know whatever there's other other siblings that there's so many moving parts to all that and and so for me I think you know I think there's a lot a lot that's been been put into it and I appreciate that but I think that's a piece that I just I just kind of want to want to focus on that piece that that mask piece I know that's one of our biggest gatekeepers and doing all this and so so yeah I just I'll just leave it there quick quit rambling but um but but in a sense that's what we're that's were for reform yeah so just on the topic of mass mass are required when social distancing isn't possible back just to be very very clear and again I mentioned that we are the only Putnam County School District requiring that that wasn't even a requirement the board would excuse me the Putnam County Health Department would have been satisfied with their plan with mass just being being strongly recommended the CDC has provided a recommendation it's just that it's guidance the Indiana State Department of Health in the Department of Education the governor's office the mayor's office the county office mass at this time have not been mandated in our area but yes we're going to require it when social distancing is not possible and we also recognize that again it's a it's an ever-changing situation and is that you know if there is a is an uptick and that mandate is is handed down on us and there's anything that we can do to strengthen what we're already doing by all means we're gonna do just that to some kind of what I think is to give me and also get welcome to it's really hard I go home nice legs you is everything else fail and did that make sense of why we think so just again on the topic of mass and just the topic of decision-making in general during Cova 19 that's not my decision to make that's a family decision to make and again we are working with the guidance from Indiana in classic Ovid 19 document of the State Department health the governor's office the Family and Social Services Administration and the Putnam County Health Department's none of those mandates have been passed on to Greencastle Community School Corporation they have felt comfortable with our plan the way was written our plan contains additional contingencies compared with the schools surrounding surrounding or directly ordering our area none of the other Putnam County school districts are requiring masks there's exception that South Putnam I think the requirements school bus north clay isn't our plan with masks is very closely aligned with you know the avons the West fields I believe that our reopening plan allows again a great deal of a choice for families for some that might be the on campus traditional route and we also recognize it that you know it might be a virtual route so I think that you know we can't necessarily meet the needs of one particular group I think that our plan does does a great job of again providing options a variety of them for families [Applause] can someone pass a bet today I would say one thing that we do need of us and first of all let me think mister given a and the team that put this plane together tonight they work very hard I don't know who all they are but I know there's a large group of them I'd like to personally thank them so the master good and then I'm gonna leave you with this fifty years ago the whole night before last they still around [Applause] this is me just thinking like I said I really appreciate all the work you guys have done on this has there been any thought to pushing back to starter school and/or having group a group b and every other day I noticed that caramel think what they're playing out there they kind of separated by the schools my high school is going every other day and then you have to wear masks when you do come try understand that you know your third graders and below they don't really spread the virus they don't really have that capability as much as the older kids and I understand that they're gonna be eating their masks and they're gonna be spinning them around and shoot em at each other and trading them but has there been anything that has been thought about have pushing school back a little bit and to see what happens with the other schools and or like an A and B group yeah so is with anything there's much thought and consideration given to too many different options and there are a lot of factors that play into that again you know the Putnam County school districts have met ever met and collaborate and had some conversations we do share some services with area 30 Career Center so there are specific factors that can essentially kind of become a barrier when looking at kind of like a staggered schedule so to speak or or grouping different students I mean what does that look like for different families we recognize that you know Kovu 19 has been tough enough for families and now we're having families where parents are having to go back to work and now sudden they're having to to worry about providing childcare I worry about you know the social emotional well-being of students who are home they've been away a long time they've been having to to work through a scary situation they need to be with us back at school you know I worry about those students who depend on a GCSE breakfast or a lunch I just think there are too many potential barriers that would work against the different different groups again kind of going back to it you know the Department of Education hasn't relaxed any requirements so to speak with the amount of days per instruction the amount of standards that our teachers are expected to to cover we've already experienced what it you know we're gonna already have to make up from an art from a learning gap from from last school year and you know if potentially students aren't with us I think that gap could only only widen or worsen there's the you know justice essentially you know a lot of thought went into it and we the committee felt like that's the best option for us right now as far as calendar considerations you know I was on the Johns Hopkins website today that's a great resource for koban nineteen related statistics specifically with Hutton County I mean identifying hotspots says we recognize hot spots have flared up around the country Putnam County is not a hot spot currently there are 175 confirmed cases to date Putnam County if you look at a population of a hundred thousand the County case you know it'd be four hundred and sixty-three so if you're looking at Putnam County compared to say with Marion County they're almost triple that certainly their situation is much different in Marion County than it is in Putnam County so I think you have to kind of give consideration to that you also have to give consideration to you know we don't know what potentially could happen in the fall we have to get our 180 days in as well so I think that the initial thought there is while the conditions allow we recognize the need to bring our students back and if we have an opportunity that in a safe manner and provide them good core academic instruction and support their social emotional learning needs then we should do that now and potentially you know as if things change then we do have some flexibility to adjust later on okay Thank You Ann and I am all for kids getting back in school yeah I think that would be great and just kind of one more side note a little bit I know you've talked about it and and I don't want to belabor it that with the masks I kind of wonder if we're making it we're making it you know an option at times I know we're requiring it but if we think that there is enough social distancing we're allowing them to take it off in the classrooms what are we telling our what are we saying without saying it to our teachers because they're going to be in that classroom and they're gonna take care of those kids and yeah maybe the chairs of social distance and and maybe the kids are supposed to put the mask on when they stand up to go over and sharpen their pencil I'll talk to the teacher but my son in particular can't remember to take his pencil to class so they're going to be up and they're going to be asking a teacher's questions you're gonna be in their faces a little bit and I can't possibly see how we're going to have substitutes coming into our schools and if we start losing our teachers just like our secretaries that could really be bad and so I just don't know how we're gonna do that without having masks on I guess yeah and so even going back to staff you know that's a that's a personal choice that I think they're they should be allowed to make but going along with that we've we've purchased masks or excuse me we've purchased masks and we're also getting a lot lot mint of cloth mass for staff to wear we've also purchased some face shields for staff so that they are working in close proximity or working with a group of students in close proximity that they have those protections that are available to them you know just when you visit our offices on this next school year they look different we have the Plexiglas sneeze guards there are a lot of different accommodations that are being made to our facilities to help with just that because we are we are concerned about everyone's safety since it's already here so so top talking about masks so I'm hearing you know so I'm here in the requirement I'm here personal choice and and I don't I guess I don't understand where where that line is because if it's a requirement then we want to establish you know so what are the rules if you don't follow the rules right so if you if you don't wear it and you're supposed to wear it and then what's the what does that mean whether that's you know whatever whatever staff or student that's a you know that's a concern but I think the other concern is that you know we know a lot of times during the the school year that we don't have all the teachers and subs and aides that we need so so so we're talking about just that if somebody gets sick and then that reduces that but on top of that we're adding other other duties who we're talking about additional cleaning in monitoring masks and socially distancing and so I guess my concern is this is this probably gonna so when I say we don't have enough staff I don't I don't have a better way to say that well but a lot of times we're tight on that right I mean just just in the normal day-to-day so so if that's the case and we have these other responsibilities how are we gonna manage that how our teacher is gonna teach students in the classroom and online and keep Billy's mask on and and you know I mean whatever right and so you know that's just a real it's just a real concern I'm not an educator so but I I feel bad for but is feel bad for those that are in that situation I know it's gonna be very frustrating and I'm sure for you yourself as you get it calls and emails and whatever so so just those two things I think one I'd like to kind of clear up you know so personal choice is kind of eliminated once we say something's required right I mean that's it's I mean I guess you have the choice but what's the what's the consequences right and so just to offer clarity on that again mass are required when social distancing is not possible however even with social distancing that's where I allow for the further personal choice I'm not allowing staff or students to make a personal choice when social distancing is impossible but nothing would prevent a staff member from wearing continuing to wear the mask or a student continuing wear their masks even when they are social distanced so just to be very very clear on that you know we're we're in unique times it's we've never experienced a situation like this you know there there are there concerns just during any given school year about enforcing rules so you know just going along with with policies and procedures and the expectation that students the staff wear masks when social distancing is not possible we will uphold that much like we do all of our other rules and regulations and policies and procedures so working through working through our student discipline protocol and also working through our teachers and you know our staff and teacher protocols our handbooks for that because they speak very clearly to to to to correcting those things and potential consequences oh I was just wondering Jeff mister giving do we have an idea of you know we basically know what class sizes would be this year or they're not going to be too far off what they typically are do we have an idea of what percentage of classrooms it's possible to typically socially distance in I mean are we looking at you know are we saying that 50% of these classrooms we're gonna be able to separate kids and you know is it is it does it become a moot point to try to say you're socially justice month or we do we I mean I that was one of the sticking points dyad you know additionally we had the conversation but there was no provision for masks so we got this far here but it just I mean that are we moving in that direction anyway between Walmart's you can't go to Walmart Monday without wearing a mask and I'm just wondering is this gonna become such a moot point that it just doesn't make sense not require them to start with I don't know it's it's I don't know the answer to that question I don't think anyone does but I would you know I just don't know I you know I agree with Russell that it's gonna be very hard for a teacher to keep track of that and and I don't know that that's I know I don't know how fair it is to get easier to expect them to keep track of that supposed to and Kristen you could not be if you wanted to offer yeah come on up and offer a comment there or offers for certification yeah okay so you could tell I'm chomping at the bit first of all let me let me be very clear that I want everyone everyone's health and safety is number one concern but what I also want to say is that we are professionals you are professionals you go to your job and you do what you have been hired to do in my classroom if I have kids seated going forward like dr.

um and that one was um a payroll warrant and the next one is uh i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of thirty two 525 dollars and 22 cents um this is a warrant dated june 25th 2020.

happens to be a friday excuse me june 11th only two days later so you can see how reducing the number of student days changes things so that is the proposal for this evening i hope i explained that clearly for everybody any questions on that makes sense thank you and we have uh so is the time that the teacher training or is it also set up and prepping and all the stuff in their classrooms so specifically the um the ruling i'm calling it a ruling the decision that came down about um the the three days that are being provided are specifically for covid related preparation and training um so i think they're giving us some latitude there but really the the spirit of it is training making sure folks are ready for the adjustments we have to make based on covet whether that is direct uh personal protective equipment training or that is uh specifically new new technology training because you have to uh do learn from everywhere and help with students at home and work on some other things so there's a lot there i think we're going to have some flexibility i just got a figure these teachers haven't been in their classroom since since when march yeah and uh and it has to fundamentally change in their classroom they're going to need the time if the if it's not training it's going to just be set up exactly and so that that is a part of our discussions um but i wanted to speak specifically to your questions through the three days regarding the most you know what's going to be on the lower ear but yes there has to be opportunity to prepare the classroom no doubt about it john could you just clarify that the yellow dates starting with august 21st 24th and 25th when we hired oh i'm sorry debbie finish please go ahead when we hire teachers new to brookfield so they don't necessarily have to be brand new teachers just out of college they could be veteran teachers who are joining our team we on board them into the brookfield way with lots of professional development training um in sessions regarding uh the basic things like learning power school in in our district and other fundamentals in hr and so forth and so that that whole onboarding process is a three-day process we've developed over the years okay okay so those new to the district start three days earlier then the rest of the faculty comes in and based on our our needs and retirements and people leaving how big a hiring class do we think we have this year um i could look at what we did hire and then i'd have to look at maureen's raising her hand i can't tell you the number exactly this is my life we're we're really fortunate um we we've um we've gotten some great candidates i think john alluded to this before but our new hires are um not high in number we have one new teacher at um center school we have we hired one new teacher at huckleberry school and we are going to be hiring two new special ed teachers there we um hired one new teacher at uh wisconier we're about to hire another teacher at wiscon we got two great new uh school psychologists and we hired um the team at the high school sent us a really great math candidate that we hired so um right now without any other um you know retirements will will just be looking to fill um the two special ed uh situations that just became available uh a high school english retirement and um and then i i think one or two paris it's been we've been remarkably fortunate and and i'm just really grateful to the fact that the principals and their teams really got as soon as the budget was um finalized they got right on to apple track which is our candidate um resource and got people in right away i mean actually we we had a hard time trying to keep up with how quickly they were working to get the finalists in to um to work with john and myself and and terry and beth so so ruben knows going back to debbie's question the group that's in the yellow there in those 21st 24 yeah right now and we work intensively with them we um provide them with pd on like john said the basics on our instructional framework of gradual release of responsibility making sure they understand um our our approach to formative assessment and and our screenings and our diagnostics and we actually still use the powerpoint that cabe gave us the award for that we developed a couple years ago because it is what it is it works and then we um we give everybody because literacy is so important in our district it doesn't make any difference what you teach we give them the basics of literacy so that they you know can recognize even if they're they're a math teacher or whatever they can recognize science and kids and and get help we go over all the um special ed um required um training we do a lot of state mandated training they learn about the teacher evaluation process which will be changing but we still need to do what we need to do they learn about the team process if they're new teachers and as john already stated they meet with our our crackerjack technology people under eric's direction and they um get training on um powerschool they get all their logins and all that stuff and they also have training on building their their website and they also meet with the with the teachers union one of the afternoons after either before we start on one day or in the afternoon when we're done depending upon the schedule so let me tell you these people are really tired because i'm tired um when it's over it's all it's a lot of stuff oh and the other thing that we do that's really nice i don't know if we'll be able to do it this year but in the past we have a day where there's um you know because they we that we have a a coffee end in the morning they have lunch and we on one of the days all of the administrators from all the buildings come and have lunch with with the new teachers and so they meet in affinity groups and get you know get to form some relationships so it's it's a lot of work but it's it's i think it's a really nice program and we've had teachers who have come from other districts say that they didn't have this in their previous district so it's kind of uh the people that work on it you know in hr and all the building principles and technology have really they've just done a really they're like like the educational welcome wagon of the world they do a great job okay you can come if you want we'll send you a zoom invitation if it's on if it's online but you can come okay does anybody else have any questions or comments all right um i will move to approve the school calendar the revised school calendar as presented tonight by dr burrell i'll second thanks amy okay all in favor oh oh no go ahead rose i'm sorry no go ahead all in favor aye aye aye aye okay thank you i just couldn't get it out fast enough to say thank you to everybody for being flexible and open and supporting us um like i said i'm i'm in touch uh quite a bit these days every thursday morning my western connecticut superintendent organization and on some email exchanges today when i shared that i was uh making uh we were taking action on these this decision at tonight's board meeting and i shared the number of days our neighbors are salivating at this opportunity it really is a gift i really thank you and i know our our faculty and staff will thank you as well the administrative team was thinking about the plans right now um as a matter of fact this morning we were really working on this what it could look like um we're all thank you very much and really appreciate the board of support tonight thank you all right um yeah we can move on to old business the first item is subcommittee composition um there is a motion um amy you can read it yup i'll make a motion that the board continue its discussion on the july to december subcommittee composition thanks bob all right um so personally i don't see unless and this is an opportunity if anyone um you know is uh typically we don't i don't think there's any been there's been sort of historical changes you know at this point in terms of subcommittee makeup but um how are the subcommittees working for everyone in terms of composition or schedule too but that's been much more flexible lately yeah i think it's been great okay i thought we did have scheduling issues though and that's why we're revisiting this or was it right at the last meeting there was a big discussion about scheduling on the finance committee and uh because of conflicts but that seems to have gone by the wayside and i surveyed the committee and we're going to stay with our 5 30 on the second monday which is what's in the format i have the conflict for the um cape committee for tuesdays in the fall that was one of the issues is that and that's still uh still an issue with within the committee as well um like you guys weren't able to i don't know if we we landed on an alternate date or not i think it was hard for joy because you've got some work obligations i remember right you said on mondays can't do it monday either because i'm on the finance committee yeah i can't do mondays it's faculty meetings and yeah so uh training for school would have to be i guess a thursday maybe and i couldn't do thursday okay okay um i mean i could do monday if it was it would be one of the two mondays each you know each month jen can't do it because she's on a meeting she's on the committee yeah i'm on the finance committee yet i know unless we worked it out from monday that we could do it you know what i mean oh right we could do it first third or four yeah yeah when i go back to school i get my schedule for the year for mondays so why don't we just leave it at this oh you muted yourself maureen mike do you have issues with monday i i could do it monday but it'll have to be later like around you know 6 6 30.

Salim mentioned earlier that if we're going to be able to get into these classrooms within those guidelines classrooms are going to look very different and so we've had an architect give us some feedback on how those classrooms would have to be reconfigured on to make sure we can get you know up to 20 22 students 24 students in a classroom which in our case would mean removing a lot of other furniture to make that happen I'm going back to the social-emotional support we will be planning to work with staff in the beginning of the year and part of that priority I'm sorry part of that priority will be the plant experiences to ensure that schools place play Student Wellness first by step establishing positive safe and supportive learning environment and so in our elementary schools you know that could mean morning meeting that can mean you know sitting down and and and working with with students talking about their day their weekends what I'm talking about feelings but it's really more about non academic focused check-ins with students and making sure we have a plan at every school to make sure this has happened in a systemic way at the same time we'll also be working with our administrators to do something similar with staff recognizing how important this is for everyone during these times and then you'll also see at the bottom you know for staff and it's important I think that you know that we'll be looking - to make sure we're support our staff so that they can be in front of your children again so you know that they have the support that they need and so an employing assistant program will be available to them for any support they might need outside of the constructs of the school day and so facilities and operations on this one was a big one for us you know we need to ensure that all of our schools meet high cleanliness and disinfecting standards prior to to reopen in a school and we'll certainly be doing that you know we've been working with our operations department classrooms have been cleaned early in the school year given that you know we didn't have students in the building that has provided opportunities for us to begin to move extraneous kind of furniture from classrooms so that we can adhere to these guidelines expectations and those expectations dr.

Wilson and mrs. Anderson's that as we're able to it would be mr. Wilson and Miss okay so what I will do with both of you is all week shopping at a time that we can come together and go through the thank you all right so that kind of took care of be since that was discussion so that brings us to business item C plan for the 2021 school year so what we will do is we'll have a motion on the floor first and then we'll open it up before and discussion with board members and then I have some cards here people from the public that want to address the issue and a little tiny is there and there also there's some online okay so so what I'd like it if is get the borders of cameras I'd like to kind of share with you where we are and what what's going on in here okay so do we have a motion to bring this item to the floor we have a motion about mr.

can you find that page 4 number 1230 this says that any school provided to k-12 students during school hours and from midnight to one half hour after school shall not contain or you know it's talking about the negatives i would like to insert the language any school provided to k-12 students by the district because i don't think at midnight you're going to be in my house uh monitoring what my kids get served and the way this is written it doesn't make any sense to me okay let's let's go to where that is on there it's under the nutritions you got it not yet yet very last thing about nutrition so you're on page three you want to go to page four okay and go down to the bottom okay what right there see that any food provided to k-12 students from midnight to one half hour after school we're only in charge of what we provide and that language doesn't say that so that's the insert i would like to see so you would like it to read any any food provided to k-12 students by the district during school hours okay okay does anyone have any objection to that insertion no i'm surprised that it isn't clear that that's what's meant because i i worked for several years on um this uh policy and and i know that that's the intent so if you can make it clearer by adding those words i support it okay um is um is that clear to um erica okay you got that all right um just just to clarify this is ed code so to clarify it we will need to put it in parentheses but um that will be i think that clearly we can't change egg code but we don't know what the meaning is yeah i think putting it in parentheses is fine um so long as it's just uh you know to clarification um okay so do i have a motion then to pass this so move okay motion by dr kaiser second by eileen robinson um i i guess we had a roll call vote before so i think we have to do one again um eileen robinson kaiser i griffin eye all righty that passes unanimously uh since we are not live we're going to not do the items from the floor any further announcements okay seeing none i will adjourn this meeting thank you all very much for being here yeah you guys worked incredibly hard

box the State Health Department Director says and I know no one is moving I should have the right to tell the kids okay now you can have your mask off if you so choose if you're coming up to me thank you if you're coming up to me the procedure will be please put your mask on or if I'm going to a student we have enough sense to implement that I also like to say that we mr. Gibney has said this a few times we are the only school district that has the work required in this proposed plan it's no no secret to anyone this room how much money we have lost over the last year due to enrollment and I will say that using the word required is going to lose students that creates a snowball that creates a snowball less students less teachers need it now we have teachers out of a job we need to be mindful of the decisions that we are making and trust the educators trust us in the classroom I have enough sense to know when social distancing is not feasible if we're doing something together then they're going to have to wear a mask but I should be able to say you guys are safe you can take the mask off if you so choose so as as the union president you're you're not getting pushed back on teachers willing to accept that extra responsibility so mass issue is very crouched controversial and so I have people on both sides so I can't speak from that perspective as far as this is the stance that Union takes this is Kristen Hamilton stance but I mean even I sta issued guidance that they wanted the governor to mandate masks well the powers that be decide of that that doesn't mean that more than 50% of the teachers in the state of Indiana agree with that what I was being and then and then what do you do when if Johnny refuses to wear a mask are we sending kids home because they refuse to wear a mask to me as a parent that's ridiculous send him home well what do you do what about what about kids you can't wear masks okay okay well yeah okay yeah it's not supposed to be banter I am expressing this but I am saying we need to think about the numbers safety and health of children are number one but we also have to look at how the unenroll mint is going to follow suit I understand that my point is we are the only school district with that word in the county so if we that is my point so so if we leave it as written that gives flexibility to win social distancing is applicable if I'm taking my classroom outside today social distancing can be had if you require mass at all times and you take that out that eliminates any time for a mass to be made and some of the people that were up here talking with their masks on or labored to breathe so just put yourself in my position in my new schedule of 35 whoppin minutes with my 30 kids and I'm talking from sunup to sundown I am NOT going to be able to put a mask on it 7:00 a.m.

it's um general fund expenses of 28 and twenty 625 cents and then a town article for three thousand nine hundred dollars any questions okay um and that was it i will say lee i know this is such a weird time to be a new principal in a new school and you're like five minutes on the job and drinking from a fire hose every single day so we will at some point have a normal pelham meeting and kind of introduce you properly but i know everybody is just sort of trying to get through the day so we really we're so happy to have you don't let this really terrible welcome make it seem like we are not thrilled um but when there's the appropriate meeting we will kind of welcome you and really look forward to kind of hearing from you about your thoughts about the school year and but just also want to give you some time to breathe and sleep and those things so that that's coming um all right with that said i will anything else all right i will take a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second second okay um oh and we still have to do a roll call vote okay um hall i ron monina why sarah best kenny i margaret dancer all right okay thanks so much everyone we will talk soon and i'll be in touch about the next meeting okay thank you take care thank you you

[Music] well why don't we do why don't we figure this out offline because everybody doesn't need to you know be involved in this if we can defer just this meeting is that okay with you rosa yeah figure it we figure it out amongst us and then let you know next time we meet because yeah thank you maureen because rosa um i know we can approve the the september to december because that's that was at the last meeting the the dates for the rest of the committee so we could do that with the exception and then revisit okay you can get that established through december the the rest of the subcommittees um okay and then we can connect the the um the four of us can connect and figure out something that works is that good that's good we can zoom okay um well we do have a motion actually on the table now um does that need to be amended at all all the motion is is that we're continuing our discussion the motion that was tabled was to approve the schedule as uh as published and i think we taped so i think now that we're continuing it we're either tabling it again or we're approving or disapproving i mean i think we can i think we can approve it sounds like you know the cape committee can come up with some kind of resolution right so i mean the makeup shouldn't change you think no okay okay well then uh the challenge is the challenge is once you approve the standing committee meetings they become your regular meetings and and that becomes you know you know all the whole uh foia rules about the difference between special meetings and standing meetings um you want to establish your standing meetings on the day that they're going to have right so if there's still an open question on the day of the week we're going to do the the meeting i think we ought to table it again okay yeah i don't think we should approve until all committees are set dates for the meetings right we can still do that on august 18th because july um the summer ones are approved the dates right we can move through and we still have time in august to approve september through july so that can happen okay but the way this motion right now reads is not a problem we can vote on that then right because it's just a continuance of the discussion yeah right okay oh yeah it's a continuance of the discussion just reopened the table the table thing so what's really on the table is the prior motion so i think we should vote to table it again i would i would move that we table the discussion for until our next meeting okay i'll second that all right all in favor aye aye all right okay um so cape will just get back to me and let me know what you guys decide um okay before we go on can i just ask my screen is still seeing the error eric you don't have to share your screen anymore okay i didn't know if that was i didn't notice that it was frozen sorry about that thank you i have it sorry that's okay thank you all right um so up next we have the new school building project update um right now the inland wetlands commission has decided to they had a a public hearing that they have they continued at their at one meeting they continue it again um regarding the building site one small issue that was raised that you might hear there was concerns about certain animal and plant species last fall just that you guys are aware tecton coordinated with melanoma mcbroom to identify and record all the areas and species that could potentially be affected by the project they went even further by hiring a botanist to confirm those findings and deep had confirmed the that the proper safeguards for those that the protection of those were in place so the inland wetlands commission is right now just in the process of reviewing those documents and the public hearing is still technically open and the next time that they will meet to discuss this is monday july 7 27 sorry so um and that's pretty much it that's what's going on with the new building project at the moment john did you have an email sure rosa just just two items this friday is uh you know the uh the monthly advisory team meeting with techdon the nbc et cetera and they continue to do their progress progress updates and planning uh in addition to that next week we have scheduled i think it's on tuesday late morning we have a site an actual site walkthrough again with uh omg and tacton uh about you know getting ready for the initial uh digging into the ground in the back of the school um in april of april march or april of uh 2021 which is uh that'll be fast smoking as well and then the project will really be underway so those are the two immediate items that are coming up any questions on the new school okay we're at three main points finally there's a lot to talk about tonight so i'm not even sure two obvious ones are establishing the committee uh for uh that we did and then the second has got to be reviewed this the the precepts of the reopening plan with the detail plan being next week right so i think you gotta really play those out happy i i think the discussion of the school calendar should be part of the school reopening point i don't think it needs to be together so i was wondering if you want to mention the board of finance approval of all the new laptops that's a good one you don't look excited no no i'm actually just going through our agenda and i'm like just reading just this double check that we've covered everything but yeah that sounds good i think we have to make sure the school calendar stands out though because that's like a big deal for people to realize the kids aren't going back till after labor day we just go but however we communicate yeah that's a huge deal well do you feel like that should be its own point i do so i'm fine you can leave with the school calendar going to reopening and then into the established subcommittee yeah okay you might be able to even if you wanted to add you know something about the laptops you could probably work it in somehow to the reopening plan thing it's part of reopening so we could put it right yeah and debbie the the powerpoint speaks for itself so it doesn't have to be a long narrative we can just put the link right in there and let people look at that and we have this okay good okay thanks great amy we don't have any upcoming events do we i do not have any upcoming events now summer yeah i will mention that the consent and review period is open so parents can get onto the point power school and update all that stuff that's got to be done before you can see those kids schedules yep good point all right uh anything else that anybody wanted to talk about tonight all right so we have a an executive session right after this um i sent you all a google meets invitation for that so unless there's anything else this will conclude our publicly broadcasted portion of the meeting do i'm gonna make that motion yes please okay i will move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing strategy and negotiations as it relates to collective bargaining and unaffiliated salaries second thanks bob all in favor all right bye all right thanks everyone everybody thank you

Salim mentioned earlier the the American I'm sorry the American Academy of Pediatrics has released guidelines recently that that suggests that three to six feet that being socially distanced within six three to six feet will will certainly help us will certainly help us mitigate the spread of the disease and so we'll we will be using those guidelines to help develop and put in place I'm sorry to put the architect together for our classrooms and we'll be working with and have worked with the Health Department and our school nurse as we've as we put these classrooms together you certainly there will be plans in place for appropriate social distancing within the classrooms but also in our hallways at arrival and dismissal and in common areas and so this is why you know we're again we're mindful of the rules around you know large gatherings and so you know the typical traffic rules that we have when driving would be but will be implemented when walking in the hallways on the right side of the hallway looking at stairways and see if we can have just upstairs and downstairs so kids and I'm making face-to-face contact and and last but not least for this page reviewing and looking at because we're mindful that also that windows are gonna have to be open doors will have to be Pro propped open for appropriate ventilation within our classrooms we've also been informed recently that we will not be able to use fans at this time because that will just further compromises will compromise our classrooms and so you know we'll certainly be working with staff to making sure windows and doors are open for appropriate of insulation on our spaces and so I had mentioned this earlier but technology and access is another big item for us we worked really hard before the year closed out to make sure we supplied students with Chromebooks before the year ended we have an inventory on hand and the event of damage and loss of stolen devices but also a plan to supply any new students to the district with Chromebooks as well of course the district will be provided a model in which all students will transport devices safely to and from school our academic plan when we come back to school will require an ongoing ongoing plan that will continue with a you know a component in which students will continue to be engaged engage whether we are fully back in school or not or in a hybrid whilst expectation will be teachers and students will still engage virtually in the lab with the Chromebook and so you know as part of the expectation students will be bringing those devices to and from school and walk with look exploring plans to make sure that could be done safely because we want to mitigate any accidents or issues with braking devices broken devices and last but not least of course we continue to work with families will continue to survey families on whether or not they have adequate wireless internet access and an ensuring that everyone has a one-to-one device on as a community we have to prepare to make sure that in the event where we have a researchers in a community and we're back to full-time distance learning on that everyone is connected if and when that happens and so health and wellness of course for us is an important area for us we've received a lot of feedback through our own exchange and also from our surveys our community our teachers families expressing concern about about this area so families should know that any event there is a confirmed case in one of our schools or if our students or staff for that matter or experiencing or experiencing any of these symptoms as per this state we not only have to have a nurse's office in every building but we also have to have a designated isolation room and so in that isolation room staff and students will be monitored by a school nurse students certainly you know they will be reviewed and monitored and the expectation is we all have to part of our partnership with families the expectation is you know we will need our families to come pick up their children immediately you know certainly another expectation for our families is that they are also I'm doing it typical screenings before they send their children to school and so if they have a fever if they having any of the symptoms of kovat 19 or common cold we are expressing we're encouraging families to keep their children at home of course we're doing the same thing they're requesting the same a staff you should also know that as part of what we have we're going to have to be we're not gonna have a choice but to be really strict with our visitation policy and so I know for some of our families particularly our younger parents who have in years past who have come into the building to drop their families off principals would be working with you to come up with a protocol where you're dropping your students your kids off at the door because in again to help mitigate the spread of kovat will be we will not be allowed to have visitors inside the school and so in the again in the event of a of a positive case in the school the superintendent and the the health department including our district nurse we will be communicating with the community and so if if a teacher a staff member or a member of the household is tested positive for kovat 19 immediately contact tracing will be put in place and with contact tracing for those of you who are not aware it's literally tracing and so it's you know one of us do Goods appears to have had as contacted Kyle Kovac 19 that parent may have been exposed and then all the other students who have who have been around this student you would have to identify and reach out to those families any other staff members that may have come in contact with this student or it could be a staff member in any case we would have a responsibility to to to inform families and then that also triggers another response and so in a district we kind of have a decision tree around these decisions we work with the Health Department we work with our district nurse we've confirmed if there is a case and if there is a case there's a procedure in which we have to determine whether or not we're closing down classrooms we have to determine whether or not we're closing down the school for a couple of days or will determine whether or not we have to close on a district for a couple of days and right now the guidance suggests that you close the school down for two to five days assess make sure you communicate to your families and then after that assessment determine whether or not you're going to be isolated in quarantine for 14 days or you'd it's safe to come back to school and again those decisions will may remain with our district nurse and our local health department before I go into the next page you know we our our district plan is not only kind of set up in a way where it highlights all the expectations but it's really set up as a checklist and so one of those checklist items is to make sure we have adequate PPE equipment in place for our staff and and then make sure we have backup materials you know any event someone forgets forgets their PPE equipment whether that's students or staff so that's going to be very important for us you know some of the questions that were also asked if we have students who don't have them if we have students who refuse to wear them to make sure we have something in place protocols in place to make sure those things are in place makes make sure that they're worn at all times I mean certainly we will be working with our families to make sure that their children understand this expectation because it's going to be important to ensure the safety of all of us and you continuation of health awareness health and wellness the Superintendent of Schools has a procedure in place for the for the closure of schools for the length of time based on a positive case of Kovach 19 and of course as part of that assessment we'll be looking at the risk level within a school the community and that will be determined by the local health officials and that was something I was alluding to earlier on you know these are the things that help inform that decision something that I did not mention earlier but I want to make sure I make this clear certainly the district has a team you know as we develop this plan but but but this this plan gets it gets further looked at and reviewed at every single school and so there'll be an expectation that every principal has a leadership team that also has an implementation team because as mentioned earlier just you know just just a delivery of food alone will look different from school to school based on how the building is a resource and the population of the school and just what the capacity is for lunch etc and so every every principal we will be working with every school individually to come up with to put a team together number one but then make sure that they have a plan to respond and make sure they have protocols in place you know consistent with the district play know we put so family-school partnerships again I know I mentioned this in the opening but it's going to be important for us to remain connected to our parents and to the community during this time and so you might recall prior to this year the school ending there were there were ongoing communications with our family families and and although we hope we're not going to be closed again any time soon we certainly acknowledge the need to stay in constant communication and so you should expect ongoing communications as we reopen schools as well and so I know many of you are wondering what the models for learning are going to look like in the fall what is school going to look like in the fall what are the options that are going to be before us in the fall and so before I go into detail about this page I just want to make you aware and I and I will refer back to again making aware that we will be sharing a survey with you as soon and probably no later than Monday Tuesday next week in that survey slash program selection we're going to start asking families and that in the survey will be available for three weeks to a month but we will be asking families to with the information that they have right now to begin to make a commitment about on the program they want their child to participate in for the next school year we need this information to begin to inform our staffing decisions in sort of two areas that you see reflected right now in person learning and distance learning what we essentially have to plan for district of two different systems and so if all of our students are going back in the fall we also recognize and I'll start here our families you you have the option of choosing between having your child come to school full-time or you have the choice of having your students participate in school through distance learning which looks different for k5 and 612 and I'll explain further but if you're choosing to have your child in in-person learning you should also know as that and this can help inform your decision and in the survey you will be asked are you willing to are you looking to have your kid participate in school learning in person learning if the answer is yes please also know this is a traditional schedule of health and safety expectations as we have went through an hour point students would be expected to attend every day with all state guidelines and expectations in place on classroom learning and instructional activities are just as certainly you know ie on social distancing the classroom may not look the same that it has in years past and here's something that I was alluding to earlier I think this is a very important point for all of us to keep in mind although we will be an in person learning we will maintain our digital and blended connections because it's going to be important because otherwise we will not be ready for a move to a hybrid model or move to a distance learning and I just want to talk about hybrid model should there be an increase in a number of cases in the community we may have to either move to either a hybrid model two days a week or three days two days a week in person in three days a week distance learning and so going back how we opened up talking about some students coming in on Monday Tuesday another group of students coming on Thursday Friday Wednesday's are for you know additional disinfecting and cleaning or if there's an increase in a number of cases in the community we could be in full distance learning in this model special education students and bilingual students can be a violin person up to four days per week in the hybrid model not the distance learning model but just being mindful that if we end up if we are in a hybrid we may have to prioritize those populations or certainly as we invite students and in the hybrid they would be they would be part of our priority as we as we and my students and as Purdue stated plan and so the first choice is in person learning the second choice is distance learning distance learning students and parents engage in distance learning with materials of support from a school this is the blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning and so it's in person with someone you know watch it is working with you on a screen in person but they also may be learning activities in which the teacher is not there in front of you so there will be a cohort or distance learning that has voluntas voluntary option there will be an August cohort that will start and they will we all recommended that if you choose this selection that you stay in that in that model for at least one semester and so in the next page is just a little bit more about your program choices and kind of what this looks like so just kind of review should they be an increase in a number of Koby cases in the community we may be required to move to full-time distance learning regardless of what plan you choose I just want to be clear about that again on going from left to right if you choose in person that is a traditional model I mean we will continue to maintain the digital and blended connections in the event that the that the community there is an increase in Copa cases in the community we could move to a hybrid model but that's still in person so that's why we're calling that one choice the second choice is distance learning and it adds all the way to the right and in a distance learning model at the k5 level this would mean full-time remote learning from home and which a Danbury teacher will be assigned to dilute to deliver instruction using our standardized content and then at the 612 level this would mean that students will be assigned digital courses using a computer based platform and students will work independently in a self base and a self-paced learning that mirrors their current schedule as closely as possible and so in in you should also be aware and I'm and I know dr.

Connick do we have a second second by mrs. cope mrs. Anderson Anderson bell chimes Oh mr. Pope votes aye mr. hunt mister have that side chair both side all right okay so I wanted to share there's a couple a little bit of misinformation in our board meeting to two months ago the board had given me specific direction to ensure that the any big changes to staff hurt on staffing to the school structure that I came back to you with that and I wanted to clarify there was some misinformation in the media today that the 13 County super super super intensive Sacramento County Public Health came together over the last few days and in concert previous to that and determined as a superintendent that we wanted to make the recommendations to our our boards that we would start the school district in distance learning because there is a high rate of infection based on County Health's information plus the testing scenario that we're in right now is very long it takes about eight to nine days to actually get a test result back and therefore as we looked at it we started seeing we're going to have we're already seeing some of our own staff members they are kind contact would need to be quarantined before we know it we are going to be out anyway we wanted to look at this as a directive to say spend the next time with staff to make sure we improve significantly our business learning because we know we left on March 13th we were all thrown into something that I'll be honest it worked in some cases in other cases it did not work and we are committed to improving that process so as a result of that we did have our gear packet tonight the recommendation to go to plan two which was our hybrid but we are adjusting that recommendation through staff to say that we would like to start the school year in the distance learning model which we know will be significantly different we've already started making plans mr.

and not take it off till 4:00 so so I agree completely the teachers are the experts I think that's one one of the things that I said earlier you know you guys you guys understand and so I just want to clarify for myself and we're talking about wearing masks of course when there's opportunity to take those off we want to do that even if you know we've talked about going outside or all these all these different things so do we need to wear masks all the time just because no I mean I wear a mask when I go to Kroger but I don't worry when I'm driving my car by myself right so so I think we need to you know as we talk about that we have to consider those those type of things how can we get creative to get kids outside or do some different things with you know inside the school or different spaces is that you know taking a class to gymnasium or whatever utilize these spaces like this or I mean there's there's a lot of options not well there's not a lot of options but there but there are options right so we have to we have to get creative with with all of those things and and I and I think that you know we're doing that and I've heard some you know some things you know from mr.

Tsao had mentioned this earlier we have petitions to petition to the state to start the school year in a hybrid model not to be confused a hybrid model is not an option as you know specifically as a standalone we have we have petition to the state to start with entering schools at 50% capacity versus up to a hundred so just just want to clarify that last but not least of the two choices that that I just reviewed in person and distance learning as always our students all families also have the option to home-school but please understand if you choose this option this means you are withdrawing your child from school from Danbury Public Schools and so all the instructional materials that will be afforded to support families in distance learning are not are not available for families on the homeschooling so I just wanted to clarify that as well and so some critical next steps for our families as I mentioned earlier we will have a program selection formed ie survey that will be released and available for you next week but no later than Tuesday in that survey it's going to ask you for a lot of information your address your phone number your Sudan ID number it's important that that information is filled out correctly again we are aligning this as we get this information this is helping to inform district decisions around staffing in in in district decisions around the materials that will need to be ordered to support students in those two different formats and so that's why we will be asking and requiring this information I'm also asking our families to continue to review the danbury the Danbury plan and review the Danbury website look at the Danbury Public Schools website for any updates regarding regarding the plan certainly after we have a board meeting next Wednesday on the 22nd at that board meeting that current draft plan will be updated and we'll be looking to incorporate the food back where applicable and appropriate in the plan including necessary cleaning up to make sure it's ready for the board in the community as a final document on addition as as dr.