and then we wanted to talk about the third quarter which represents data through march 31st of 2020 catching us up to that final quarter quarterly report before we do the afr the annual financial report and the fourth quarter report will will be presented to you in early october so to begin let's see here if i can get this to work so it's on there we go okay so um as a reminder uh june 30 is the end of the fiscal year but there's a 60-day encumbrance period that goes through the end of august so though the though this is data represented through june 30 there is a lot of work that still continues uh in july and august so the final payment of invoices of product that was received prior to june 30. there's a lot of journal entry corrections and movement of expense in and out of various funds final revenues are received from our federal grant funds based upon the spend through june 30.
final i'm sorry final revenues yeah federal grants and then as well as property taxes so we collect property taxes for fiscal year 20 through the end of august purchase orders are closed and encumbrances are released and then finally we pay many of our certified staff members through 26 pays through the end of july and so all of these payroll runs are reflected after june 30.
okay so just to take a look at some of the details on the funds maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital are the two notable ones there was a slight increase in spend in that final month reflecting a little bit lower available balance than you saw at the end of may in unrestricted capital the same situation occurred we did receive some products and unrestricted capital prior to the end of june allowing us to make sure that that encumbrance stays there so that we can pay those invoices during the encumbrance period these are very small changes the other thing as i mentioned we are now in that stage where we're closing purchase orders where the unneeded the unneeded encumbrance will be released and so we very much expect that the available balance and maintenance operations as an example will go up after all these purchase orders are closed the most notable example would be in the fuel line where our transportation vehicles did not run through the third quarter but we still had maintained the fuel encumbrance that would be an example in which we would see additional budget balance carry forward and maintenance operations secondarily i really wanted to talk about federal grants a little bit note that the available balances are quite high again due to the covid pandemic and the federal government cares act these available balances will be able to be moved forward into 2021 so we will not see any decrease in any of those available fund balances which is good news for us going into 2021 the other information is standard we still feel very comfortable in these available balances in both food service and community schools in spite of the loss of revenue during the third quarter so we're still looking like we are in pretty good shape in those two enterprise funds and there's nothing else notable unless there are any questions that any of you may have okay great thank you so going into the third quarter financial report i just wanted to remind you that when we're looking at the quarterly reports are references from the same quarter a year ago so the comparisons are going to look at the third quarter march 31st 2020 in comparison to march 31st 2019.
it's a different reference than what our monthly reports are looking at so first of all revenues just wanted to share here you can see that the source of our revenues whether it's federal local state or county they stay pretty much the same on a percentage basis each year however when you look at how much revenue we're expecting in comparison to how much we've received you would expect that we would have received 75 percent of our revenue at this point in time but you can see from these graphs that the expected annual revenue is um and versus how much we've actually received we've actually received closer to 57 or 58 of the revenue expected and the primary driver of that is the state aid rollover that was legislatively required where we do not receive our final state revenues until july 2nd 3rd 4th something like that any questions on that uh miss bats the state aid rollover that goes back to the previous crisis the great recession correct where they rolled over and didn't pay schools in order to make their state budget balance that's correct that occurred in either in 2010 or 2011 yes okay so we still haven't corrected those cuts yet that's interesting that's fine i mean i i just want to remind people that we still haven't recovered from the great recession as an education institution we're not whole yet from the previous cuts that's true so the operating revenue by fund go ahead mr carr miss beth thank you to clarify that that's not and i agree with what uh mrs humphries is saying it's not a cut it's a timing issue so this is a cash flow issue not a revenue issue that's correct we are limited by budget not by available cash in terms of our ability to spend that's correct so the result of that is there could be scenarios where we're getting cans and so on to advance that cash if it were needed that's correct and so there's still expenses associated with that as we are incurring debt and are obligated to pay that the interest on that debt whether it's through the tax anticipation notes or through the line of credit from the county okay so so moving on to the operating revenue by fund the year-over-year comparison you can see that in maintenance and operations we were at 130.5 million after third quarter back in 2019 and up to 134 million in 2020 directly related to the increase in the state formula associated with the legislative action back a year ago other notable is medicaid so we've been driving the medicaid reimbursement through the special education department and through transportation and that's notable as well as that has increased over a million dollars year over year which is also very good news and medicaid is a very flexible fund giving us lots of abilities to spend that in various ways going into 2021 and then also notable is capital we did receive a big bump in unrestricted capital that we haven't seen in a very very long time and that's representative um represented at the 2.2 million dollars in comparison to 0.5 million dollars a year ago okay so items to note again operating revenues budgeted for 2020 are expected to increase by 8.6 over fiscal year 2019.
capital revenues again last year partially due to the focus on cash reconciliation etc we did not have the revenues posted appropriately between unrestricted capital and mno that has been corrected and then again report shows 55.2 percent of expected annual revenue received by third quarter again not 75 percent of the revenue expected due to that stated rollover of 32.5 million plus 4.7 million property taxes are playing a role there as well as i indicated the encumbrance period is through august so we are receiving property tax revenues through august for the 2020 school year any questions on the revenue conversation ms betts can you just remind me the expected increase of the operating revenues at 21.3 million is due to increase in state aid primarily due to increase in state aid due to the governor's 20 by 2020 in addition as you know we did see a very significant increase in in our student account yep student enrollment uh as of the 100th day last year both those things contributed to that increase and again remember too that the operating revenues are not just maintenance and operations we're talking about all of those operating flexible funds that we include in the operating fund listing every month so it's not just maintenance and operations okay thank you for the question so expenditures operating fund expenditures year-over-year comparison again you can see that on a percentage basis by each of the categories whether it's operating dollars for supplies whether it's capital whether it's salaries and benefits it stays fairly consistent year over year again we are at 85 percent and 87 percent salary and benefits in gilbert public schools operating fund expenditures expended encumbered versus actual expenditure this gives us a little bit of visibility on the actual spend versus what's encumbered and it's not it's not always the case that because it's encumbered it will be totally spent as i indicated as we release encumbrance as we're finishing out the school year during the encumbrance period we will probably um see that encumbrance release additional budget balance carry forward so you can see in all those categories that in the salaries for the third quarter expended in 2020 as an example were encumbered 160 million but we've spent 110 million 160 million would represent what we would expect to spend through june 30 on salaries and benefits just as an example okay this is just a reminder that everything that we've shared in this quarterly financial represents year-to-date the monthly financial report that we presented to you back in april for the end of march so the totals are tying back together so that we have again that same reference so again that these are all of your operating funds you can see maintenance operations classroom site from the teacher salary medicaid e-rate school plan civic center indirect is a large contributor so just an example of all what we would consider operating funds and then the expended year to date items to note so we were up 13.3 million dollars or 5.6 percent from the prior year again as you remember we did award a four and a half percent pay increase to teachers and three percent to all other employees all that is contributing to that increase in expenditures benefits interesting situation with the benefits as you know we have an expected sick leave buyout at the end of every year as teachers and staff members are separating they're able to buy back some of their sick leave and that's considered a compensated absence due to the pandemic and the the closure of operations pretty much in mid-march we we did not encumber that payout but we did in the prior year so this is a timing issue that reflects the benefits decrease quarter over quarter but the same dollar amount we have actually paid out those uh compensated absences now for 2020 and it was about 900 000 which is very comparable to what was actually paid out in the prior year just a reminder our total compensated absence liability is just under 9 million operating capital increased due to increase in additional allocation so we did work hard to make sure that we were putting more money into capital for athletics art music and pe which hadn't been done in many many years due to the cuts to the district additional assistance yes so that's all that we have today on the financial report board members any additional questions for mrs betts just to comment thank you i mean this is very clear and and appreciated and i really appreciate that this is the first time in over in eight years that we've been able to put that money into athletics and music and art that's really exciting to me so i hope we can hold on to it through this next couple years thank you mr carr any additional questions i i would just have a comment to mrs betts again i i thank you numerous times for the quality of your reports and all that you've done with as many people watching this i just want to acknowledge how far we have come in the last several years and i think the reflection of that is the report earlier on the bond sale that we had a historic low rate on those bonds saving our taxpayers significant money and allowing us to put more of those funds directly into the assets of the school district to address the needs of students that is reflective of several years of efforts but especially the last couple of years that have that were commented earlier in the rating and so on so thank you for your team's effort and thank you for this report thank you mr carr mr jetty anything ms woods anything no additional questions from the board again i echo the thank you we moved item 5.02 a presentation of the governor's executive order dr mccord and i had a lengthy conversation and felt it important that we take the time for him to report and give us the opportunity to have a conversation and or dissect what we understand from this executive order so dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members um just to reiterate what you just said dr santa cruz i just wanted to to take a few pieces of this and and have conversations about it let you know what i believe to be true and and possibly what is um the interpretation from some of our attorneys as they as this was rolled out last thursday and even from the um maybe even from the ade so let me just start with as you i'm not going to go through all the whereas and all that good stuff i'm just going to go to the first item and talk to that a bit and that is uh the arizona department of health services shall develop public health benchmarks for the safe return of in-person teacher-led classroom instruction and make them available no later than august 7th 2020 these recommendations shall be informed by the centers for disease control prevention guidance and may be revised as necessary to reflect the most current public health standards and then it says each district and or charter school shall consider these recommendations guidance from the county health officials community needs and available resources determine when in person teacher-led classroom instruction can safely be available and school districts and charter schools shall refer to the mitigation strategies as outlined by the centers for disease control and prevention to adopt a mitigation plan prior to opening school buildings for on-site services or in-person instruction and essentially that is that they're going to give us the matrix to help us determine when um schools will reopen and as all of you know they have until august 7th i don't know if they'll come back to us sooner than that i have a lot of personal questions related to that in terms of what are they going to use what will be the standard of measure and when does the clock start ticking when we get it in our hands or does it if there's a downward turn do we look back x amount of days i don't know the answers to those questions just yet as i sat in a meeting with several superintendents from the east valley yesterday they had some of the same questions regarding that so i don't have any specifics related to that i don't really have a lot of specifics related to some of this but i just wanted to let you know that um those should be forthcoming and once we have them in our hands we will definitely let you know and we'll have to conversate about what that looks like how we report that out how often do we report that out and you know in my head i i see things on our website that we can utilize to inform the public of of what those measures are and how we're tracking those and i don't know if it's on a daily basis every other day i don't know there's there's a lot of questions but i just wanted to point that out to everyone at this time going to number two each school district and charter school shall begin our teacher dr mccord would you [Applause] yes sir would you prefer we hold questions or ask oh no you go ahead one of the two questions related to number one um and the first question applies to much of this section some of the past executive orders applied to school districts charter schools and private schools this executive order doesn't mention private schools so are we on a different footing in that case and then the second question is uh we're told that we will have guidance from the county health officials we know we're waiting on the criteria but how does that look like who is our liaison to the county health department and how do we make sure that we're receiving that information specific to our district those are actually great questions mr carr that you know when it comes to private schools i i don't have any of their criteria what criteria they're supposed to be under um blowing in the wind i heard that they can kind of determine what they want to do because they are private institution and probably don't accept any public funds or very few public funds so i don't know the answer to that the second piece is who is our contact i have uh our director of health services jennifer frost here somewhere back there you ready to come up um she can just let us know who her contact is there and who she has conversations with on a regular basis as a regard to guidance as well as gilbert public schools good evening dr santa cruz so i talked to dr nurse teresa crowe she has been appointed the head of the kova team for schools she's the liaison we speak every other day at least she works with dr sun and shine and we're working on a consortium together excuse me and we're also working with the other district health directors thank you um to make a a collaboration between the districts to make sure that our hopefully that our information is similar and congruent as we go forward so they would speak with us directly one of my biggest concerns is i don't know if the data that they're going to give us is going to be community data or if it's going to be for the state or the the county our community has very different rates than other areas and so i don't know how specific it will be i'd like to add to that as well i think we have about 10 zip codes within our school district boundaries and we have to be mindful that maybe one zip code takes into two percent of our population um so when when those numbers are coming out i'm hopeful that um those we parsed out but i'm sure that they probably won't be and so we'll we'll we'll rely on some of the mathematicians within our district to be able to get that out and again what they're going to measure um i'm not sure there's there's been some standards set forth in other states and other countries and i don't know if they're going to utilize that or what they currently utilize now when governor ducey reports out so i'm there will be more to come when it comes to that anything else on that all right number two each school district and charter school shall begin teacher-led distance learning instruction by the first day of school by the first day of the school district or charter school's instructional calendar submitted to the arizona department of ed the school district or charter school shall submit its distance learning plan to the ade or the arizona state board of charter schools no later than the start date of the distance learning instruction or august 14th whichever is earlier as required by executive order 20 2041.
to the greatest extent possible schools should offer synchronous learning where teacher provides instruction in real time instruction provided via distance learning shall count towards the minimum instructional days or an equivalent number of hours required by asrs 15-30 341.01 and 15-901 consistent with executive order 2020-41 the state funding for students receiving instruction via distance learning on either full-time or part-time basis shall be treated as a student receiving instruction via the arizona online instruction as prescribed by asrs 15-508 or 808 school districts and charter schools that comply with provisions of execute executive order 20 2041 executive order 20 2044 and this executive order will be eligible to receive grant funding for the enrollment stability grant program to address any potential funding shortfalls so long story short we we do have an online program we have submitted and again the the question comes up do you have to be approved in order to start no you don't you just have to submit just so we know that and that kind of goes back to what we've discussed earlier in the summer about an online program other than that i think that um we're in good shape bonnie is there anything you'd like to add related to funding related to that portion of it i think it spells it out pretty well but is there any questions related to the funding related to that i have a question okay how difficult is the grant funding going to get we don't know yet because we have i don't think there's an application for that portion of it just yet so um the training that the asba gave through one of their webinars was that it was going to be a significant amount of paperwork so that's just what they said yeah it it usually is um so was it an option or their choice between either applying for the grant or receiving a guaranteed was it 98 right no i think if you you automatically get that and then if you want to apply for the gap that's up to you is that what you're referring to i think so i thought there was i thought somewhere there was an either or provision in one of those things yeah go ahead so my understanding is that initially we expected that it would be an automatic that we would have at least 98 percent of the prior year as our guard rail and the understanding is now that we have to apply for that so however the governor as part of this order did add another close to 200 million dollars to that enrollment stability grant so it's closer to 400 million whereas in the prior executive order it was about 200 million we are we still are anticipating that the commitment is there um i don't know what kind of hoops we're going to have to to go through to get the dollars but i do believe that the money will be distributed appropriately and will be used to make sure that our enrollment the funding associated with our enrollment is is at least stable to the 98 percent of prior year okay i think that's if i can clarify the way i oh go ahead the way that i had interpreted paragraph d was that if our students are going online they'll be funded at the aoi rate and then we have to apply to make up the differences is that what we're saying that's um that's my understanding and what's not clear for me is i don't know whether we have to apply to get to the hundred percent or whether we apply to the delta between what we actually have to the 98 from prior year so the bottom line is we are going to make sure that we have all the data and apply for as much as we possibly can my understanding from the webinar that i watched is it will be a hundred percent for online once we apply for the grant and then um a little bit more for those who do in school actually go back and open schools that's our understanding but this has changed so often that i don't know where to hang my hat just yet so so the other question that i have related to this does the funding still function on the 100-day enrollment so somebody were to start online but transfer the quarter of the semester and then be in person 100 day do we apply them as being in person 100 day just for that day right so um in my conversations with our student count professional she has indicated that ade's intent is for the let's just say that we're the first 10 days online their intent would be to have the aoi funding the first 10 days for those students at the 95 percent or the 85 percent she also indicated where the 85 percent is part-time she also indicated that that we can expect that probably 90 95 99 of our elementary schools will be considered full-time so we would receive the 95 of that enrollment for the first 10 days and then they will switch it for the 100 the um 10th day through the 180th day for the for the extra 170 days and separate those out i do not know how they will be able to implement that so those are the questions that we were asking regularly we're supposed to hear more within the next seven to ten days from the department of education on how that's going to be realized so this could have a major impact on cash flow if we're funded short and we have to wait for a while to then apply for the grant to make up the difference i think that's very possible and as you stated earlier in the exhibit that would be made up by borrowing on the line of credit from the county yes any cash flow needs would be made up though we are entering the 2021 school year with a very positive cash balance so it would probably be no earlier than the end of october before we would need that if we need it thank you anything else on that all right thank you i'll move to number three each school district and charter school shall begin offering free on-site learning opportunities and support services for students who need a place to go during the day as required by executive order 2020-41 and shall begin august 17th 2020 as prescribed in order 2020-44 let me go through a couple of these a school district or charter school that has not returned to physical buildings for teacher-led classroom instruction in accordance with paragraph one of this executive order is still obligated to provide on-site learning opportunities and support services under executive order 2020-41 b says on-site learning required by executive order 202041 3b includes in-person support services such as student supervision and strategic support for students in need during standard school hours which may include teacher-led or paraprofessional support for students with distance learning instruction a school district essentially may adopt procedures to ensure maximum protection of students and staff based on mitigation strategies for distance uh for social distancing um so let me kind of in let me give you our attorney's interpretation free on-site learning and support services include but are not limited to student supervision nutrition health services strategic support or teacher-led paraprofessional support for students participating in distance learning on-site support services will be available to limit our students with specific needs and does not require traditional teacher-led in-person classroom these services allow students who need a safe place to go engage in distance learning away from home schools may develop procedures to help recommendations of course neither the governor's office or ade have defined how school districts are to meet the operational requirements of free on-site support services of course we may employ non-certified staff to supervise schools operating learning labs may do so at limited school locations school districts may set building capacities there is no requirement that school districts transport students to the on-site support services and then the on-site learning provisions in this executive order course is confusing ade intends to issue additional guidance on this portion of the executive order in the near future the intent of the requirement is provide a place for arizona's most vulnerable student populations to learn during periods of remote learning if you go back to part of this executive order it talks about students in need it says again supervision strategic support for students in need during standard school hours that's pretty vague and you know in my head am i going to determine of 34 000 students i i'm sure they're all in need of something so how do i determine where that starts and stops and so we will be looking for more guidance as it's related to that again ambiguous at best but i i can appreciate the fact that they they understand that school districts may make different decisions moving forward and we do want to help the most vulnerable but um we don't have a plan in place for that necessarily at this point in time because of direction that is needed again in conversations with superintendents yesterday uh nobody seemed to have any kind of firm grasp of what that looks like and what that will be moving forward dr mccord one would assume then devoid of any [Music] identifying metrics for those items under three that it would be logical to assume that the district would determine who those served young people would be and there are some logical places that one could go but that may or may not be what's intended is that that's correct i think they did leave it open-ended to a degree for districts to be able to determine who those students are but again going back to my previous statement i don't know where that begins and ends and i don't want to eliminate students from help that they may need but is a student in need because both parents work and they don't have the support at home sure is is a student in need because they're on a 504 or an iep of course is a student in need because they won't have the proper nutrition available for them at home of course but what does that look like how long does that look like during a day is that a regular school day is that a couple hours those are a lot of different things that that we need either guidance on or to put a fence around so we ensure that we're capturing those students that deserve or need that service but yet at the same time it could definitely look like schools just open again and and that would be difficult to explain uh to the to the greater masses out there about are you helping students need are you just actually running school again so uh we have to be careful with that dr mccord and this is hypothetically obviously with i think which is about everything that we're doing right now um let's say that that we decide it's title one and special ed children that need services so we would possibly open up three or four sites through the throughout the district and we could control the numbers in the classrooms and we would have if we were not in school let's say we would have the space to be able to do that correct well it depends well if we're not in school let's say no again that depends because if i have x amount of students but yet i have teachers teaching online in their room okay you see what i'm saying yeah so that's difficult too okay the the second part of the question i have on that one though and and once again i don't know that you can even answer this question what parents that are paying for vik um could they conceivably say they would qualify for this i'm glad you brought that up um [Music] so is mr ryan back there so we will be having um he's there but he's not there did i wake him up um the um we will be having because this order starts on the 17th we will have daycare at a cost up till that point but i'll let mr ryan explain to you a little of the interpretation that he's gotten from other school districts as well related to this uh governing board dr mccord thank you um yes it's a confusing time as we're all discovering every day as of right now what is laid out is a child care plan gps child care kindergarten through eighth grade as well as preschool child care opportunities leading up until the 17th registration has been open for that along with some employee child care options to assist our employees there on their campuses it poses some challenges as teachers are wanting to be in classrooms and certainly wanting to teach from there but principals have been fantastic and looking for different ways and different locations of those students to be the challenge comes on the 17th so obviously huge difference if we return in person versus not if we don't then we're looking at before and after school options for families we know many of our families are working both adults are working and they need options for their families and to dr mccord's point and i think what dr santa cruz is referring to as well is where do you draw the line 504 iep traditional student with two parents working and what not so we're preparing for for everything staffing is starting to become a bit of a concern with relation to the number of employees we have folks working today to identify support and staff members to be working in the classrooms with students obviously ten to one ratios spread out throughout the campus when the child care portion of the executive order came out that's led to a number of questions if if we're looking at four or five six hundred students falling into a category coming to a particular elementary school while we're asking teachers or teachers are wanting to work in classrooms and educate students from afar does that then send them home while their kids are on campus and it certainly leads to a number of scenarios but we're planning and sbik will be offered before and after school for families is an option we've had a number of questions come in as you can imagine depending on the the particular schedule of families if they're doing the if they chose online do we have things still particular days for them if they chose in person do we have before and after and so we're we're planning for all of it and we'll adjust accordingly given either governor ducey's direction or the governing board can you tell me how you came up with the ten to one through the course of the summer that's what we've been operating at was was ten to one um space in a classroom we could um we could move a little bit further in terms of the six feet by six feet in social distances that's also part of the executive order is to maintain social distancing within within the child care environments that we're providing it also allows us to with adults to to have an adult stay with those students and for us to not mix kids and so a goal summer has been and as we move into the child care component of this or portion of this is to not have different kids on different days and and it's been slightly frustrating for some parents as that's a little bit different than previous years where they've had a bit more of a choose your own adventure and which days you want we just feel as though it's it's something where when we're bringing more students in with the 10 that we're already in the classroom we're just exposing them to more so we've chosen over the summer to limit that do you mind explaining the protocols that you're using sure so a number of of pieces have been put into place including each morning we have staff members that are being monitored and tested for fever any sort of temperature by nurses that are on campus so they have a procedure they go through each morning parents as they drop off we have curbside drop off and pick up going on so to alleviate numbers of people coming in and out each day parents are also kind of a testing if you want to answer or say describe it that way but three questions that they answer related to their student having a fever any sort of symptoms and whatnot deep cleaning in the evenings albert and his crews have been fantastic and we've actually had further dialogue today ms betts was with the group today and discussing future protocols and and what we'll be putting in places numbers you know potentially grow on our campuses and the size if a student or a or a staff member or anyone ever reports obviously they don't they don't come and they don't work if there's a classroom that we believe could have been compromised in any way that classroom is immediately deep clean by albert and his crew operations comes out we remove those students so there are a number of pieces we put into play into place that i think have been really effective and a number of things that have given us some good information so we can plan moving forward so we're excited to be able to have portions of what we were doing this summer in place so we could learn and i think we're gonna we're in a better position now thank you dr mccord and mr ryan have we evaluated the possibility of utilizing sites where the student population is small the regular student population is small as particular target areas where we might place programs of this type or services of this type and i also know that we know the percentages of people who are served in special ed of the 34 000 students the percentages of folks who are on free and reduced lunch percentages of ell students percentages of on and on and on we we know that information uh if it's determined that those constitute the special populations of folks who need to be served yes that data is available and and we'd be able to make those decisions based on that criteria uh based on those percentages so those are those are factored into correct the conversation the decision making you know i'm looking at several of our elementary schools that are uh not near it at capacity uh in terms of a student population and there there is room there but i don't know how practical that is it simply is a thinking out loud yeah and many of those that aren't at capacity serve special ed kids to begin with with self-contained classrooms so many of those rooms are utilized and also depends on location you know we definitely don't want something coming from the desert ridge area over to houston if we can avoid that just because we don't want them traveling that far if need be thank you mr martin actually was able to do some great work in the last week week and a half as well and found funding mechanisms to support our title students so speaking of particular pockets of students and locations to help support whether it's child care in the first two weeks or whether it's beyond that if if there's a necessity and so he's done some great work there which i think have given some families some opportunity that maybe um we're struggling to find that opportunity before thank you sir i i have one question sorry um is for those families who are concerned about the cost between those first two weeks what would be the process if someone was needing child care but concerned about the cost what would they need to do and who would they need to talk to sure so a number of families have reached out individually based on location based on school campus demographics sometimes families are qualifying we've we've put lists together um ann brielin and the group over at community education has put together a list of students uh christy odell's been working on the same thing where we're actually identifying and communicating with those families to inform them that they qualify even before they have a chance to reach out because sometimes we just don't know other times they reach out individually certainly if they if they get in touch with myself or anybody in the front office of community education we don't want that to be a factor that has children in an unsafe environment or on an unsupervised environment we certainly work with those families the best that we can okay thank you thank you if i made dr sanchez dr mccord sorry go ahead i'll go ahead um i just have a struggle philosophically that we are going to divide students up and decide who has needs or not and assign that you know by different it's like that's a struggle for me as a parent it's a struggle for me as a superintendent it's a struggle because like i said how who am i in school to determine who is really in need and who isn't it's definitely not by the car you drive because yeah i've seen plenty of people with very nice cars that are in need i don't know what their particular situation is and so that's difficult that's why i'm i am looking for some more criteria from ade before i get saddled with making that type of decision thanks dr santa cruz dr mccord i was going to express something very similar to that you know and as i read through this executive order it really doesn't limit it to need as much as a those who need a place to go and that is a very broad interpretation that is both parents were working and they'd be left at home that's an iep 504 all the things you know all the things that you mentioned and i also don't see where it limits or gives us the ability to limit i mean it basically says we can limit at a site but we can't limit in totality so we'd have to keep opening more and more schools and it refers to two other executive orders but i can't see the either of those executive orders clarify or limit who we can accept or not accept and mr carr just as a matter of information becomes even more convoluted as at least in an interview with the state superintendent public instruction that there was a comment made at least that you don't have to have programs to serve these students at every site right you can limit the sites well i'm not sure how we would do that either well we also can partner i mean it was made very clear that you could partner with outside organizations like the boys and girls club i mean it was left pretty open for the districts to decide which i think makes it hard mr ryan did did anybody test positive or get infected this summer so uh throughout the summer we had a matter of fact we checked this this morning for the positive results that were submitted so there are 11 staff members some on site some not there were some working in offices that weren't on site and there were some on site of the ones on site about 70 percent of the of the of the of the ones on site were on one campus um as well and we had discussions related to um what was potentially occurring on certain campuses in terms of social distancing and how we're running meetings and whatnot as well there was one student who reported positive that occurred after a parent had tested positive and they went in to have their child tested after that and may i ask 11 out of how many employees we had 85 working over the summer probably more than that when you consider offices and whatnot as well so that number is the span we actually had seven on our campuses which would have been out of the 85.
and if i may ask are they doing okay absolutely they're all back to work um i think we have one that is still within and i'd have to check to verify i think one that's still within the 14 days and hasn't returned all others are back working mr ryan do we know if any of those employees contracted it from students or if the student contracted it from employees or if the employees caught it from other employees i can't speak to that certainly it's something that um through miss frost we're communicating with the county anytime there is a positive case there's a report that goes for tracing purposes and trying to figure out where came from whether it was on a campus or outside of the campus in in some way shape or form we hear different whether it was the the teacher that we've all heard about a different part of our state that may or may not have been an on-campus thing same goes with ours it's really a challenge to tell and to know for sure so i wouldn't want to be able to wouldn't want to speak to that without knowing absolutes anything else continue dr mccord thank you mr ray all right uh number four is um each school district and charter school shall take the following steps to ensure parents and guardians are notified of school operations post the distance learning plan um by the first day of distant learning instruction notify parents guardians of requirements and the minimum level of contact required to maintain enrollment as indicated in the plan post its mitigation plan on school district charter school district or charter school websites prior to that post on the district or charter website the details of their plan provide free on-site to provide free on-site learning opportunities and support services which is what we just talked about and make direct contact with families of children enrolled in the free reduced lunch program students disabilities english english language learners and those in care of the arizona department of child safety including foster care i think this one's pretty straight forward does anybody have questions on that [Music] all right next is all school districts and number five all school districts and charter schools shall develop and implement a policy to require face coverings such as face masks or face shields for all staff and students over the age of five until the arizona department of health services determines that face coverings are no longer necessary or recommended to contain the spread of the virus policies shall include exceptions for instances when students can socially distance or are outside in playground settings with distancing and shall allow breaks for students to take their face coverings off and safe environment uh schools shall incorporate other restrictions and exceptions consistent with the guidance from the cdc and cloth face coverings should not be worn by children under the age of two or anyone who has trouble breathing is unconscious incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance so i think that's kind of straightforward as well we will be bringing to you probably august 11th i think it's policy j llc or jlcc one of the two i can't remember off the top of my head we'll be bringing an addition to that policy that just covers face coverings for this and so we won't have to write a new policy we'll just have an addition and we will be looking asba is supposed to be coming out with some guidance on policy related to that so my hope is that it's there we have it before the 11th just be able to look at it dr santa cruz may ask wood so this is a change from what we had previously said though to parents that it was six and older and this has now said five and older so basically everybody oh wait it even says preschool doesn't it where does i think it says nobody under two so it would even be preschool right okay so that would be something we need to um let our parents know as well yep definitely all right dr santa cruz if i may go ahead and square i just want to clarify you know we've gotten a lot of emails a lot of communication people saying i don't want a face mask we don't want kids to require face masks etc our previous policy we are a subdivision of the state we are obligated to follow the law whether that's statutory law or whether that's administrative law and the executive orders fall in that as did the county ordinance our previous policy that we adopted followed the county policy as we are required to do this policy that we are now talking about will follow the governor's order as we are required to do so we recognize that there's a lot of opinions out there we appreciate there's a lot of opinions about masks but we are in a position that at the subdivision of the state constitutionally our authority requires us to follow those laws and so whether we like it whether individually or not whether the public likes it individually or not we as well as every other school district every other charter school out there if they're following along complying with their legal obligations and their existence they're following this policy that's great i think we would agree with you mr carr all right dr mccord will we have some kind of something written in or maybe asba or our attorneys can about and i i need to use this term carefully enforcing that will there yeah i see what you're saying i'll only be let me i i just came back from montana yesterday and i watched kids both in two airports and they were with their parents and i was like oh my gosh if this is what teachers have to do and principals have to do it was i mean it was unbelievable yeah and they were with their parents right we will definitely look at hopefully there will be some language that will address that um because i think you're you're also talking about you know policing it right and what's that yeah well it's it's and that's that's a 64 000 question you know i what i don't want is is people disappointing kids all day because of masks and and teachers and administrators so if this is still in place by the time we come back which i assume it will be we have to send the message very clearly that this is this is almost like a law because it's an executive order so um we'll address that okay section six this one says as a direct benefit to the state it's public schools and arizona families and in furtherance of the public purpose of ensuring that properly trained qualified and experienced personnel continue to be available when in-person classes resume arizona's public schools may continue to pay their employees or classes of employees including hourly employees during periods of school building closures so long as the public school determines that such payments are necessary to preserve the properly trained qualified and experienced workforce it serves the public purpose of protecting the public schools investment in its workforce and the public school has sufficient revenues to continue such payments due to school building closures that is as determined by the governing boards of each public school and b to be eligible for payment the employer remains committed and available to work during the employees normal work hours or during periods of school building closures whether the work is to be performed in personal remotely or the employees given an alternative work assignment for which they are qualified to perform and so i i think that is somewhat straightforward but i also think it's important to point out that and we have a resolution related to this um i believe that's number 7.04 that basically adheres to the executive orders gives us the ability to pay employees our certified staff of course contracted and ready to go support staff is at will employees with set amount of hours per week and several of our support staff have been working and will continue to work because of whatever positions that they hold you're talking about paraprofessionals who work during the day to with students primarily on a campus uh we will definitely have some assignments for them to be able to work as dr dr ryan i'm sorry you didn't get that doctorate yet um but it sounded good didn't it mr ryan um has alluded you know to help with child care having paraprofessionals help out with that and and work with them i think it's important to know that um there are several duties and things to do within this district that have to be done especially as you read through some of these orders that we're required to do um and we will need the help of the paraprofessionals we also have food services as well as community education which are revenue generating departments that are self-funded and that revenue is not coming in or won't be coming in as strong as it usually is in a normal school year so we have to be mindful of that within this order we have the ability to pay them but we also have the ability based on finances to not pay them or furlough them based on uh how we are standing financially we have to be mindful of that i mean i would love to pay every employee every single day for their whole contract time but that was the struggle even before this came in because you know we can't gift public funds without something like this and so we have something like this but we also will have needs we've had we've had people tell us that they don't want to do a certain job well that's not necessarily going to be options for people and if they decide that they don't want to do that they'll have options to either use their personal or sick time uh to be able to make up for that which most of them don't have or they can be furloughed and so um those that's that's an that's a that's a word we don't like to use but we also have to understand that part of this executive order part of that resolution states that you will be available during your work hours you will come and help when needed or we will give you assignments during the day that might be similar but not the exact same as what you've done in the past and so that will be our expectations moving forward related to this i think beyond that too dr mccord it's an opportunity for the district to maintain its workforce because some of those positions of which you speak uh require some kind of license or some kind of training so we have made an investment in those employees as it relates to their training and we have the option to assign other work to them while we're paying them and i think that's a benefit to them i agree and i think you know you've heard from some special education teachers this evening and during the spring several of those paraprofessionals that work within those classrooms with those staff members also got online to help out and it was it was very necessary and extremely helpful so we will also have things that schools that principals are clamoring to utilize their paraprofessionals for uh whether kids are there or not and and can you like and that's to help support teachers in a lot of different ways and so and we will do trainings for our um our transportation department and we will utilize them in any way shape or form that we can so our principals and directors are are thinking as creatively as possible but again there may come a time where uh we're not able to do that and so we may have to make some tough decisions related to that and as a cabinet we've had numerous conversations about that because that's my our support staff is the backbone of the school district and i appreciate and admire what they do on a daily basis and the last thing i want to do is is cut them free from um their livelihood i i don't want to do that but i also know i have an obligation to the school district as a whole and moving forward we have to be very strategic and how we are utilizing these dollars because there is some unknown as we move forward not just this year but the following year and maybe a year after that and so we have to be as creative as possible but also as strategic as possible any questions related to that any additional questions i guess i have one so with perez you mentioned you you're fine to have them on campus with students how do they feel about that some some are okay with it some are not just like our teachers right so i'm just like sure work remotely from home because of the online platform whereas a paraprofessional maybe they could too working online with that teacher from home but we also may have some things on campus that we're going to need assistance for just like we have for operations and custodial that have been here since march um and many other people so um it it it's not a pick and choose type thing it's a supply and demand of what needs to be done and who do we have available to do it so anything else doctor saying can you find a comment go ahead mr carr first i want to echo you know if we go back to our last school board meeting much of our discussion about when to start school contemplated our desire as a board to pay all of our employees um so i want to be very clear that all of us want to find a way to retain our employees and value them but as dr mccord well let me first say i recognize it in the private sector oftentimes we retain employees for the skill sets that they have and we pay a retaining fee to make sure that they're available nevertheless that's not a an indefinite payment in the private sector so i very much appreciate dr mccord's explanation yes the state has recognized our need to retain these employees and the problems that we have in retaining them and their skill sets with the gifting law so i'm grateful that the governor found a way that we can retain those employees but as dr mccord stated that's not an indefinite thing it cannot be we need to pay people for providing services and adding value and i hope that we can get back to regular school sessions and so on as quickly as we can safely do so and are allowed to do so so that we continue to pay these employees and have them when we need them so i appreciated the balance and the delicacy with which dr mccord expressed that it's not indefinite but we're doing all we can to retain our employees i'll just do one more i think the rest of them are pretty but this has to do with preschool says notwithstanding the provisions of this order executive order twenty twenty forty one and twenty twenty forty four developmental preschools which provide services to children with disabilities may provide services in person consistent with cdc and adhs public health recommendations and just to clarify a developmental preschool program typically serves both students with and without disabilities often an individualized education plan for a preschooler with disabilities will include interactions with typical peers to enable learning via peer modeling this order does not appear to limit school districts from including typical peers within developmental preschool programs so i think it becomes a school district decisions of course we will need to follow the cdc guidelines if that's the case and so um just wanted to hit that other than that i think the rest is is self-explanatory unless somebody else has a question i just thought it was prudent to go over it with you in in some of the things on how we've interpreted as as an administration how you interpret it as a school board and how uh attorneys in arizona department of education and even the governor's office interpret some of these things because some of them are are similar some of them con conflict a little bit and i think there'll be even some more information coming out soon with further and clearer explanations so this coming out thursday while i appreciate it i i know several people step back and go well wait a minute what does all this mean and so we're still trying to figure some of it out and that's okay we will as we go but we will also continue to work towards august 5th making sure all of our kids are educated starting on that day thank you dr mccordle and i appreciate that we continue to seek additional clarification uh just as a hypothetical if one or two return to full-time in-person schooling with everybody back in their appropriate positions then this executive order evaporates in so far as the dynamics of how the operation is moving it is constricting only if you're doing something different correct this order as as it stands extends through the the 2020-2021 school year and ends june 30th of 2021 but like you said if if wow we're just back to normal and and life is the same as it was before we left in march then i don't see anything needing to apply but we'll see how that goes so it's an interesting dilemma that has been woven for us any additional commentary questions no if not then we will move to dr santa cruz may i ask for a five minute break okay then we will before we move to item six we will recess for five minutes we'll return [Music] at eight forty four oh yeah you look like your timeout over there that's all you gotta say hey i guess i could it should be uh you're not speaking into the mic yet i am okay we'll call the meeting back to order okay [Music] thank you moving back to our agenda we are at item 6.
item 6.01 is approval of the consent agenda items is there a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you ms eugetti is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion um i i just wanted to point out that one of these uh consent agenda items is the approval of participation in the arizona diploma sales program and i believe that has been going an ongoing effort for at least a couple of years i don't remember the specific i know there's one for music mrs newman what are the four areas that they can get that seal on their diploma i just want to congratulate us because we've worked on this for a long time arts saleh by literacy sale of civic literacy and seal of personal finance okay thank you that i just think that's an incredible opportunity for our students and i just want to point that out thank you dr newman any additional questions commentary hearing none then we will vote all those in favor of approval of the consent agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed all those pose the same motion carries five zero we move to action items item number seven item seven point zero one athletic trainer services rfp 210108 25 dr mccord any introductory remarks there yes sir just a few uh it is recommended that this rfp for athletic trainer services be awarded the following and responsible and responsive vendor dignity health is recommended for the award based on their qualifications experiencing cost and performance evaluations the rfp evaluation committee was comprised of ford members of the gps athletic department the evaluation committee met on july 8 2020 to discuss and score the proposals dignity health dba mercy gilbert medical center offered the requested services for nineteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars per trainer in year one the cost will increase by three percent per year to a total of twenty two thousand two hundred twenty eight in year five total cost of gps over the five-year contract is five hundred thirty thousand dollars dignity will contribute sixty percent of the trainer salaries and benefits for a total of eight hundred fifty thousand the trainers provided will remain employees of dignity health throughout the contract in addition the award of this contract allows for the continuity of athletic trainers for district athletes as dignity health has provided training service for gps for the past six years the contract will be in effect for one year with the implementation beginning september 1st 2020 and includes an option to renew for four years estimated annual cost is 115 000 and this will come from our m o fund we have our district athletic director uh mr steve mcdowell here to answer any questions if you need it mr mcdowell just a question for you could you uh outline the benefits of our association with dignity health because i know we in the past hired certified trainers who are actually members of the faculty how has this transition helped or are hurt or enhanced to what we're doing thanks dr santa cruz board members dr mccord we still have those trainers employed since we entered this contract with dignity health six years ago now uh the training you know world has changed a lot as far as trainers in high schools you don't find a whole lot of full-time trainers on campuses anymore many of the districts around us have actually transferred over to where they just hire someone to come and do after school work as we see that possibility in our district this contract will give us a chance to have a blended model as we have as trainers would leave or retire or move on the dignity dignity health is willing to have them continue to teach training classes for us if that's what we need most of the trainers could be cte certified so for us it solidifies safety for our athletes um in a pretty dynamic area right now as far as trainers and high schools it also adds thing to that it also adds the ability for us to have trainers at auburn junior high athletic events which we haven't done yet in our district so and we are one of the few districts who has an association like this with a major health center in their community is that right yeah we were the first to do this um we were lucky because we were first it was free for six years i was going to say i i remember them doing it for us for free right um especially back in the day when we didn't have the funds to pay we're in a better position now so yeah i appreciate that and and other districts have been paying you know a quarter of a million dollars a year for this service and so um but because of that relationship with us there can they want to continue that and they're willing to still you know shoulder a majority of the cost to keep this going i i have a question if if you just want to explain a little bit more for somebody who's not familiar with what an athletic trainer would do i know we have classes sports just explain a little bit more absolutely we have sports medicine classes um that vary you know vastly some of our trainers teach full-time all day because they have enough classes to do that in other of our smaller campuses or shrinking campuses there might be only two classes for them to teach so principals and registrars are left with trying to find a blended assignment for them to be able to get a full fte besides the teaching they provide they help the athletes with injuries they also have relationships with local doctors to help bring them in to help diagnose injuries and stuff mainly doing rehab and performing services that our athletes would have to pay a lot of money for if they want the private sector to get it all right thank you it is actually an exceptional service that is provided by the school district to our athletes in collaboration with a major hospital in our area so thank you mr mcdowell for pursuing that and solidifying that for us absolutely they reached out to me originally so i can't take credit for that board members any additional commentary questions thank you mr mcdowell that having been said then item 7.01 is before you is there a motion so moved thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr jenny any additional commentary all those in favor of item 7.01 please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero i didn't get my eye in i'm sorry i i heard it anyway okay item 7.02 discussion and possible revision of policy gccg dr mccord introductory remarks uh yes sir dr santa cruz governing board members at our last board meeting when we were having a discussion related to pushing the date back or starting online on august 5th the um the question came up and i i believe everybody was in agreeance with it or had the same thought and idea was to ensure that due to covid we were able to provide some additional sick time for our staff members and so dr or mr mcintosh added to policy gccg professional staff a voluntary transfer of accrued sick leave he added an asterisk at the bottom and it states for the 2020 2021 school year if an employee has exhausted ffcra due to covet 19 and the employee contracts covet 19 for a second time they may request up to two weeks or 10 days 80 hours for a full-time employee or for a part-time employee the number of hours equal to the average number of hours that the employee works over a typical two-week period of paid sick leave from the medical leave bank membership to the medical leave bank for coven 19 related requests is waived for the 2020-2021 school year so we asked for your approval moving forward with that board members 7.02 is before you is there motion so moved thank you mr jetty is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any additional discussion i i have a question so this is this is this is in addition to the 80 hours that was provided by the federal government yep that that is the ffcra that's what that's referring to so i had an additional question um my concern is not so much if someone might get it a second time and and that could happen because we don't really know um if immunity would last very long but what if someone is sick for a longer time i mean some people have been sick for quite a long time with code 19 and have not recovered quickly so would this also cover that person that type of situation it would cover them for up to 80 hours okay so if if there were different circumstances related to that so based on that they would be given through ffrc and then the medical leave bank that's 160 hours so that's typically four weeks um you know they could raise they could go to the sickly buyback bank and and apply for any help but in this situation we are not saying that they necessarily have to do that all they have to do to qualify to reserve that uh to not reserve that is to actually have a qualifying coven if i read i read a lot of information and i'm a little bit on information overload but if i read it correctly also and i know we'll get into this discussion after a bit the arizona risk retention will cover it under workman's comp if it's if it's been contracted at school correct i believe so um and we can get we will get into that a little bit later with um bonnie but um i believe it does mr carr did you have something um i just would ask similarly uh what about long-term disability would that kick in at some point mr mcintosh 90 days he said let's hope they're not that sick that's a long time any additional commentary question none the item is before you 7.02 all those in favor of [Music] the item please signify by saying aye aye all those the same motion carries five zero item 7.03 discussion and possible action regarding the reopening of schools for the 2020 21 school year dr mccord any introductory commentary not necessarily just other than the fact that i think the uh item speaks for itself this can be a discussion or possible action there is nothing specific in there other than the 2020 2021 school year i i know that there are thoughts and ideas related to this so i think it's important that as a governing board you have this discussion and if if there is a need to do something different and in terms of pushing the start date back or keeping it the same i believe that's an important discussion to have for the school district in the community thank you dr mccord in order for that discussion to occur item 7.03 is there a motion i have a mission i move that we begin schools online august 5th as we've said and then look to reopen schools as allowed per the data and metrics to be outlined no later than august 7th by the health professionals in ade and governor ducey his order basically according to the order and the resolution so you're saying just let me clarify make sure i understand the motion yeah that we begin online august 5th and that when we receive the metrics august 7th then we look at those and see if we can when we meet those metrics then we reopen schools without a specific date right okay is there a second i would second that thank you mr carr it's been moved and seconded floor is open for discussion i would like to ask i go ahead mr carr go ahead mr craig i would simply comment we've heard a lot of commonality in the conversation of the desire to be back in person as soon as it's safe um i think the parental comments that we've received via email that we've received in person the teacher comments that we've received via email and in person have all centered on that that we want to get back in person we recognize we need to do so safely and i i haven't heard for anyone other than that from my perspective we would be asking arbitrarily to pick a date in the future and where where both the teachers comments and the parents comments are to use data to drive our decision let's wait until we know what the criteria is according to executive order that should align with cdc guidelines which is the same things that the gea called for the same thing that parents are calling for and that enables us to get back as soon as possible and we're going to assume that the cdc guidelines that we followed we're going to assume that health experts within the department of health the state department of health and the county department of health are going to advise us it removes the political politicization of this discussion and that enables us to move forward as soon as practical and safe to do so i found it interesting as i went through many of the online comments uh i started tracking uh the last several days of comments and just found it interesting that we had several people who self-identified themselves with various confessions amongst those if i find those in just a moment we had seven who self-identified as physicians and er physicians mds etc six of those seven who are working in the field of medicine six of seven said it's time to go back to school we had two who self-identified as nurse practitioners and by the way we could add two more doctors who spoke publicly tonight we had two nurse practitioners and and to clarify they didn't say it all cost they said let's go back to school as it's safe we had two nurse practitioners say the same thing nothing that opposed going back we had 11 nurses again self-identified as nurses in their emails nine of them including two who identified themselves as school nurses and several who identified themselves as nurses working in a covent environment nine of the eleven said let's go back to school as soon as possible um you know if we're going to listen to the experts then let's leave ourselves open to doing that as soon as possible rather than pick a uh rather than pick a a uh arbitrary date that is not based off of data and again i am not suggesting any of those comments that we go back before we've met those metrics and before it's safe we want people to feel safe based off the data thank you mr carr let me reiterate as i think i understood the motion is that we begin online on august the 5th as previously moved and approved and that we await the metrics as they're delivered on eight 7 or or before whenever those metrics are delivered and respond accordingly to the metrics utilizing them to open when safe according to the metrics when we meet those metrics so if just as a supposition here if the metrics come back and say in order to open for in-person instruction your area or whatever is identified as your area could be the county could be the state needs to be under five percent positive or at five percent positive then until we get there we're not open we continue to do online but not in person that's the intent of your motion okay i i think i understand that i didn't hear miss woods or i didn't hear miss wood's response but that was my understanding of what we second what i said and her response was that was her intent so is that everyone's understanding of that motion any additional commentary i i do have additional comments i do understand the motion um one of the concerns i have is the um other people have put out parameters of what they think it might what would be needed to open school safely and a lot of what i've seen depends upon the state one of our speakers mentioned it you know a decrease in the positive rate to five percent right now it's about twelve and a half percent according to the the department of health website today another is having a test turnaround time that is much faster than it currently is because we do have a huge backlog so a lot of it is on the state to do their part so that we can test contact trace and quarantine people to bring the spread of the virus down the other part is on us to have a mitigation plan and plans in place that can help keep students safe i spend a lot of time looking at the data over the weekend and i think it may take quite some time for the state to bring or the county to bring down the spread in our area in a way that i would feel safe about and i'm i'm open to looking at the governor's metrics but i um as a board member i want to really understand those and if i don't feel like they're sufficient i want us to be able as a board to add additional items that might make people feel like we're being doing our due diligence and being very safe about reopening i i can understand that i want us to be safe but then then we would be strained from the data and the experts which we've been charged to do several times so i just want to keep that in mind as well well i'm not that i would be estranged ourself from no you're sick but you're saying we should then make it more stringent according to our opinions compared to what they've said so i think we should start with let's at least start with the metrics see what they are when they come because that is as has as was mentioned by many people tonight which i agree with um and we've had sent in many uh emails and i do want to actually sorry to interrupt real quick but i do want to thank all the staff the parents community members who are here tonight who spoke tonight who emailed us who are participating online and who have great investment in this and care about this i appreciate it so anyways we have heard from many that please use the metrics please use the cdc please use um you know the aap please use those guidelines to guide our decisions so i i say let's use those just let's use those well i again i i would want to look carefully and ensure that those metrics meet my expectations i i did spend a lot of time looking at the data and one of the things i looked at is that when we closed schools on march 13th we had 12 cases today we have about a thousand eight hundred cases so one of those metrics that i would like to see um and i'm just saying i i don't know what the governor's going to put out but i wouldn't feel comfortable until the number of cases comes way down per day um more perhaps what they were in april about 200 cases a day some somewhere along that line because a lot of people tonight spoke about other countries that have opened their schools again well those other countries have 50 cases in the entire country and we are having 50 000 cases in our country per day so we have a lot of work to do both in arizona and in other parts of the country to bring down the spread of the virus to a point where it would be safe to open schools and to tag along on that i think in my this is my own personal opinion every thursday when there's a press conference we hope that there's going to be something that comes out but it doesn't seem like much changes and that's my greatest frustration but before we talk about that could we talk about two other things that i think are really important and then we can get back to that if that's okay with everybody um the discussion is open it has to do with this let me just add this piece before i yield to you mr eugenie and that is that idea of metrics i think it's incumbent upon all of us to recognize that it is not one singular percentage it may be a a myriad of two or three or four different kinds of headings or or areas that must be in place before you open so i wouldn't want us to confuse folks by thinking it's just a number it may be more than that miss you jetty okay i i would like to ask the question that um and i think it's i'm not sure dr dr mccord who's going to answer this i'd like to ask about the information that came out from the arizona risk retention which is i believe all but three districts in the state of arizona belong to it and they have come out saying that they will not cover any kind of a lawsuit or under certain circumstances could we go over that please yes we can i'll bring up mrs betts to have that discussion about that and this relates to district liability is that right arizona arizona risk retention which would be our life you know how we get served for playground accidents and things like that yeah there was a lot of that was published i think ktar put something out and it was all over social media and we saw it a little bit before that and miss betts would have some more specific information related to that so i have some very um recent information uh regarding that so so first of all um the uh the thought would be that the state of the federal government would come out and would hold school districts harmless for any liability related to the coronavirus pandemic as that has not yet occurred then the risk retention trust went out to their reinsurers to find out whether there was any possibility to provide liability coverage the the thinking initially is that well this is a a communicable communicable disease that is extraordinarily difficult to determine where the individual who has it got it whether it came from the schools or from mcdonald's or from costco or from walmart and so being able to prove that that it was due to the school district and also the fact that our liability insurance generally we cover a claim in the event that the school district failed somehow to protect the the community or the student or whatever we failed to fill a hole in the parking lot as an example and somebody tripped and broke an ankle anyway so that was the initial guidance the reinsurers would not provide any coverage related to this and so at that point in time uh the risk retention trust administrators got together and they have scheduled a meeting for the 4th of august regarding a possible option for school districts throughout the state of arizona and this option would require the school district to at least have everyone fill out the acknowledgement form there were two forms sent out one was a full waiver of responsibility of the school district if their children come back to school and the second one was an acknowledgement form indicating that they understand that there is a communicable disease out there and that the school district has has in many cases little control over whether it's transmitted or not so in the event that they would provide coverage it would be at a fee for every school district and it would be um it would be as long as those acknowledgment forms were filled out by every parent who's sending their child back to school and what happens if the parent refuses to to sign it and then under those circumstances it is the idea would be that they would be encouraged to go online the parent would be encouraged to go online but under those circumstances and we haven't discussed this so i am on the risk retention board and we have not discussed this as a board and so it's going to be discussed and decided upon on the 4th of august those questions of course will come up right now the answer is that that the um that it's possible that the insurance would not be provided so we won't know anything until after the 4th of august or past that time correct right it's there the good news is they think they've come up with a possibility um the other thing that's that's i mean it's well and good that you can say it's a communicable disease and there's no way we can control whether it's transmitted or not or where it came from in the school but the concern that most school districts have is just the number of claimants that would at least come out and claim present a claim and then the potential legal costs associated with having to defend numerous claims associated with this so those are all of those things that are playing a role in what the board will do on this particular issue on the on the 4th of august this is this once again is one more thing that we don't know and we're being possibly forced into making some decisions when we don't have all the information um yes we don't know the um we have not met as a board on this at all it's they've just been working behind the scenes to come up with some options and and in the event that the trust is not able to come up with some options and cannot offer liability insurance because no one is willing to ensure that then we as a district will be liable to pay those claims if the person suing would win in court and i think it's probably a little bit different than that so it's not the paying of the claim for purposes of a damage that was due to to do to the student that attended school it would be more of the legal costs associated with actually defending it and not knowing how many claims and i think that was the rationale behind the waiver initially and some of the lawyers i've i've talked with staff and some of the lawyers are yes the waiver does have validity and others are no it doesn't have any validity so so it's it's there's a lot of things we're juggling um in the air right now does that include uh staff as well that would have to fill out that no the um the staff is covered under workers comp so you asked the question earlier again it goes through the same process though did the is the workers comp claim due to something that occurred on the on the work site versus from some other source all that investigation would be done but that would be done now regardless so would they have some kind of contact contract contact tracing to figure that out will they set that up or how will that work um they that and i i and i i don't know what the the legal ramifications would i i'm probably asking you questions you can't answer because you haven't been at a board meeting yet and i apologize no no that's that's okay but i think these are all things that we have to take a look at for what could possibly happen to the district based on the limited information we have right now yeah and i think the biggest fear of my understanding the biggest fear from fellow school districts throughout arizona is just the potential legal costs associated with defending a claim that something occurred um due to some negligence on the school site even even if it happened at costco somebody can still sue us correct i think that's the i think that was the point miss butts so is there still a chance for a hold harmless cause so my my uh my information from staff is that they continue to lobby for having the state legislature um put put out some sort of legislation indicating that the school districts will be held harmless for it's it's sort of like it's sort of like having the measles at a school or chickenpox i mean i don't think it's been in history that anyone has submitted a liability claim against the school district because their child got chickenpox at school or perceived to have gotten it at school so this is a very weird time with this pandemic in the kona virus and it's my understanding is what is that it has to be legislatively you know it has to go through the legislative process in order for the hold harmless to really be effective it definitely has to be through the legislature though the federal government's talking about it as well but nobody's done anything no one's done anything yet could that be addressed in an executive order no because i think it's a legislation it has to be the legislature has to has to pass a law i don't know that for sure but i know a lot about the two trusts which i'm going to ask the next question they were working on that before they um gave up the session in march because that was one of the laws that didn't get through with that hold harmless clause so so our legislatures live let's just left us in a pickle too not just the governor the legislature so anyone who wants to write an email please email the governor and the legislature because if you got them to do their part you wouldn't have to email us [Music] mr jenny something else not for mrs betts but from unless somebody else does i do have i'm going to put mr mcintosh on the hot seat now go ahead um mr mcintosh as you know um i have been on the insurance trust since since the inception um which was in about 1986-87 there thereabouts when our district self-insured so that we put our own money into the insurance trust and then we contract out with blue cross blue shield and so on and um having had a very dear friend who was one of my teachers at my um at gilbert l when i was there quick her husband went through 30 days 21 of them on a ventilator and now having to go through a lot of therapy i had asked you to get me the information we have x amount of dollars that we put in every year correct correct okay and then if we get to a certain percentage or a certain point 300 or 325 thousand 350 000 50 000 so so up until 350 000 of an of an insurance claim we pay for it correct and then we then after the 350 we have an another company come in and take over but we pay a huge premium for that and it's based on how many cases we have correct on how many hit the stock yes each year yeah so if we have a whole bunch then our our premium goes up okay so from my experience it seems like we have about five a year that hit that and it's usually a cancer or something like that correct correct okay how much just ballpark figure would it cost for one employee who is hospitalized and for so many days and i i know you can't answer the ptot question or whatever but just let's say one employee ends up in the hospital um with 20 20 days or whatever with coven so i asked the question to our consultant at meritain and he said a conservative number with an employee who would contract covet and has comp some complications has to be intubated for 30 days would be about 250 000 and that's just for the hospitalization not not for everything that happens afterwards correct okay so how often do we get to 250 000 can you answer that we haven't yet okay we have had 28 of them no i'm just i'm talking about just in general do you how many employees do we have to get to 250 000 i probably should have asked you that question um i i shouldn't ask you that now my point is let's say we get 15 employees that get to 250 000 or more right what would happen to the trust would be 15 employees times 350 000 so whatever that number is and what would that mean for our trust well right now we're sitting on 14 and a half million at the end of the year and then we would start the year over you know with the 27 and that would be that would be just in addition to then everybody else that would get sick has to come out of that 14 million so it could conceivably really do damage to the trust if we had a large population of people who had to be hospitalized it would be a large number um we're fortunate so far you know we've had 28 employees with it um 21 of them were members of the trust we've paid 13 of those claims for a total of 35 975 dollars which isn't we've only had three hospitalized so far and then how much for testing we have had 453 members tested at a cost of about 90 000 all right thank you thank you if i could ask something sheila just and not to be insensitive in any way truly but um those employees could get this even if we're not at school you know absolutely seriously if you look at charts there's other things besides just being at school that are even more risky which is like going to a restaurant it's like normal things that we do every day so i'm just saying so it's just one of those this is just a really really difficult time for us and for our employees for all of us it's we're just trying our best to figure this out but this is there are lots of implications yeah definitely so going back to discussing your emotion one of one of my concerns about this motion the way it's currently worded and i totally agree i want to get back to school as soon as possible but there is a lot the state needs to do and when we're looking at our current numbers i think it would take us some time since i don't know what the governor's metrics are you know i would like to think that you know maybe in eight weeks things would be a lot better and we could get back in school i don't know what the metrics are and i don't know how long it's going to take to bring us down from you know maybe the number of new cases that we have today into a number that's acceptable or how long it's going to take to have testing in such a rapid fashion that it would actually um prove useful instead of having to wait for 12 days if you have to wait for 12 days to find out whether you have a positive result that's not very useful to figuring out whether someone is sick with covet or something else so i'm i'm concerned about leaving it open in that way because i think it's going to take some time and i i just wonder about the thoughts of putting a particular date on it so that we at least know okay we're going to to get to this point and if if we can do it sooner we'll do it sooner but at least at this point we will reevaluate and then make a plan because we all know this is changing very rapidly that we'll then make a plan to get you know to the next point which might be another quarter on it might be two months on or something i i mean i just wonder if having some sort of a date would be helpful to people then could i offer the day after labor day to evaluate if that's what you're saying because it's going to depend on the metrics is what yes people have asked us to commit to to the metrics so i don't know how that's how having a date if it's not if we're not ready by those metrics then it doesn't matter and if we are beforehand then we can go back to school before that so i i truly am committed to the data and the science of those metrics that's when our i think that's when our staff will feel safest to go back whether it's in three weeks which would be a miracle or in nine ten eleven weeks and hopefully like you said hopefully the governor this will encourage all of the things that need to be happening to you know to get us to where we need to be to have these kinds of things this hopefully that will encourage that well i i do think i would like to see i mean this is one of the things i felt was positive about the governor offering metrics was to say um to our community i mean this is the frustration here we are we should be opening schools when we close schools in march and we stayed closed over the summer wasted an opportunity as a state in the numbers that came out in june and our highest number was june 30th and it was 5400 and something it was june 29th or 30th i'm sorry if i get that off a little bit but that was our highest number if we had continued where we were at the end of may and were to bring that down we would be perfectly safe to open schools so one of the things i would hope that we get with metrics from the governor is to encourage all of our community that we're in this together we can't it's easy to make a decision oh i'm gonna go see my friends i don't have to wear a mask but all in all each one of us has to take that personal responsibility to help bring this spread down by doing those things that keep us safe and keep other people safe wear a mask wash our hands social distance i've been home so much since march i've only been out one day on a hike in payson and i only saw four people while i was there so i mean it's it we we need to consider that this is a very different time but it's definitely something where we as a community need to work together in order that we can protect our vulnerable elderly citizens and i looked also looked at the ada ade website it's not 65 and older who are getting this it's our 20 to 40 and 40 to 59 and actually the graph the line for youth there are 10 coveted cases for those who are 0 to 19.
so it's not the elderly who are getting this it is the younger populations that are getting this and so i think it's all of us in the community working so that kids can get back in school and so that we can bring this spread down and i i would be willing i i would almost want to look at it earlier than the day after labor day so that if we did things well we could open schools the day after labor day um but that would be just a checkpoint because we just don't know how things are going to go but i mean maybe i don't have a calendar to look at what the date is previously but you know i i think people need i think once we get to where those metrics are made i think we need a couple of weeks for people to pant to plan i mean if we're pl what i would say let's plan that we're going to be online and when those metrics are made met or when we know they're going to be met we have two weeks to help transition from what we've been doing online to going back into the classroom whatever that may look like i'm hoping it will look a lot better because i think when we get into the classroom if it's too if the cleaning and the protocols get too difficult to deal with i think people are going to get tired and lax and that is a huge concern for me because i want our community to be safe jesus would would you be willing to to um to say let's do it for the first quarter and look at it again on labor day or even sooner because it to me we we should make the decision work with it so that teachers and everybody know what to do but we can you know if everything gets better we can it we can immediately you know just if we say the commitment is to this date and things get better why can't we go back to school why then why say that day i would prefer sheila that we would i would prefer that we would wait till we see the metrics on august 7th so like the first week of school basically online and then have maybe have a special meeting the 11th or something or that next week and it since and by that time we'll have more information from the trust as far as liabilities and maybe a few other things like that and then from there maybe maybe we would say there's no way this is going to happen before the first quarter i just don't feel comfortable saying the first quarter students need to be in school as soon as possible as my thought as soon as it's safely and i know you i do and i know our teachers are saying the same thing so do you know i just think they need to be able to plan any teachers i know this is frustrating i know they need limbo is they've been it's been horrible i know and and we all have though it's been we do have plans in place and we do have plans to go back sorry go ahead mr craig mr carr go ahead i think if i if i may i understand the concept of setting a date and pulling it in but to me it's the exact opposite of the approach that all of these so-called experts that we've been asked to rely on have suggested the cdc the american academy of pediatrics and the national academy of sciences engineering and medicine as well as the uh i'm sorry i forgot to name the the john hopkins university as well as harvard have all suggested that we as policy makers should start with the concept that we should be in person so let's start with the idea we want to be in person and if we have to delay it based on the data we delay it that is a communication to our parents that we are trying to get into school as quickly as it is safe to do with taking the opposite approach is a message to our parents that we're willing to delay and if we're willing to delay i can tell you from my personal conversations i know at least a hundred students who are planning to homeschool elementary i know several high school students who are planning to start a community college and skip their get get their diploma through community college we are sending a message where we will permanently lose these students and the support of these families if they know that they're getting the message from the board in the top that we're trying to support them they're willing to support us but we have to meet the expectations and we have to do it safely i mean this approach versus the alternative approach achieves the exact same thing but conveys to our parents and our families and our teachers that we value their safety and we're going to do it as soon as we can let's not forget that regardless come the 17th we are still obligated to follow the executive order with those special populations that is correct so throw that into the mix because we're going to get the metrics hopefully before that and if we get them we'll have to evaluate them and determine what we're going to use or how we're going to use them and then decide on when it's safe based on those metrics and it could be very soon after that it could be fall break it could be first quarter it could be labor day we don't know but we're still obligated to the 17th i think it's and i want to go back to just a question that keeps swirling in my mind when it comes to the data is and i don't know what people are assuming either in this room online or anywhere out there of when those metrics and and that data when do you start counting it what day is that is that the seventh can you are you able to go backwards and start at a certain date do you see what i'm saying because i would assume that there would have to be everything that i've read in in metrics that people use is that there's a 14-day trend right so that automatically puts us if we started on the seventh and we let's say we had a downward trend that automatically puts us to the 21st at minimum and so those are just some questions swirling in my head as it relates to that as well i don't know when that starts or if they'll allow us to start it earlier i don't know so i i wanted to make a comment go ahead dr santa cruz um i i disagree with mr carr i feel like if we that setting a date that's too early is disheartening when we have to move it back and discouraging to families i almost feel like it would be better to set it back a little bit and then if we can bring it up that's to me more encouraging but just okay because i did look up a lot of data and i looked i i mean i just googled things and looked at websites so this is theguardian.com and they had a a wonderful map where you could see that because what i was looking for was the number of cases per hundred thousand residents to be able to compare us because at one point i think when we were around that high day of june 29th or june 30th we were the worst in the world the worst in the world per 1 000 residents or sorry 100 000 residents number of cases and today um we are currently second in the united states in number of cases per 100 000 residents louisiana was ahead of us at two per hundred thousand residents we are second at two two thousand two hundred and fifty one cases per hundred thousand residents and new york is third and florida is fifth new jersey is fourth so we are ahead of new york congratulations so when we're talking about setting a date to go back to school let's be realistic about where we are we have a long ways to go before i feel like the metrics would be safe to return to school and i'd i hope that would only take six or eight weeks i mean we've had a drastic downturn but i'm not looking just for a downward trend because we do have a downward trend for the last month but we were the worst in the world at the end of june so i need a downward trend and a minimal number of cases to feel safe about reopening schools that is kind of my point i i can appreciate that ms humphries but i also think again if you're going to say we're going to rely on the data and the experts then that's what you have to say that's what you have to go by you can't and i would qualify that with then deciding not to and putting an arbitrary thing on it so that's my concern with i guess my concern is right now i'm not trusting the governor very well that's my problem well but how but and how are you putting apologies and your feelings first how are you qualified then to to be well to discern the data i'm just i'm just trying to i'm looking at some people who have put out those sort of plans and when i get the governor's plan i'm going to compare it to what some other people have suggested other people who are also experts i'm not i know it's i know it's my feeling but um it's also my objectivity the governor has not led in this pandemic and helping us to get safely through and he hasn't always followed the data as well as he should have the open ema is a great example so um i am grateful that the governor has set aside his own opinion and delegated this to experts in the arizona department of health and i hope he gets it right so she's trying to set aside those politics and follow the experts which is what our teachers have called for and our parents have called for let's use the data and put aside our feelings please i am using the data mr carr and what i'm saying is the data that i looked at says we have a long way to go before it would be safe to go back to school i mean as far as the number of cases per day that's the data i'm looking at the number of cases per day and the number of cases per 100 000 residents that's the data i'm looking at and and miss humphries what expertise science or medical do you have for setting that criteria in lieu of deferring to those who have expertise and work for the department of health because right now we're put i'm saying i'm willing to put aside my feelings my preferences my politics and follow the data that's what i'm asking us all to do i'm not taking my opinion of when it's safe i'm deferring to the experts as we've been asked to do and i think that we're all saying that too mr carr it's just that we don't know when that's going to happen and as i said a little while ago let's possibly come up with a date we can always backtrack on it would it be a problem and again respect respectfully go ahead sorry no go ahead and finish your thought as i said i think we would get to the same thing but i think the message to the community is the wrong message and that's that is my opinion my feeling um not my decision making would it be appropriate miss wood to suggest any emotion that as a concluding thought utilizing the data to determine the date that is safe to open so would your intent be that we come back after we find out what the metrics are a week after and have more of a discussion or what i don't know what you're saying i absolutely that's what my my thought is is that always the data to open just to add the copy out because when it's safe to open and to determine that time frame oh i like that okay can i clarify this and dr santa cruz i absolutely go ahead please dr mccord well i just i i for everybody out there so does that negate the august 17th date because that'll be question number one as soon as we close out this meeting so do we go back to school on august 17th or not i think that it needs to be clearly stated that now there is no date specifically and that data and metrics will determine when we open is that what i'm as i read it and as i hear it that would be my interpretation and that's that's more or less what i was going to say i think the reality is i hope that we can hit august 17th i hope that the bell curve shape that we saw with a very very steep increase is followed and we get a true bell curve and it decreases at that same rate i think the reality is that probably not going to happen and i'm willing to acknowledge that but only the data and time will tell us that and i'm willing to follow the data on that but yes dr mccord i and dr senecer's i agree in all probability the data and the metrics that are released are going to require a push out by all schools and i think that but our goal and go ahead i was going to say i think that's pretty well been articulated as i listened to the last press conference by the governor and superintendent and uh the director of health services i think they they kind of echoed that sentiment as well that the 17th was a moving target to begin with what is the wording of the motion as it currently stands i don't want to put words into it you see miss wood's mouth other than the last three i said yes i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then reopen schools per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals ada and the governor but what did you say dr santa cruz i thought in your motion you indicated metrics as as a part of that yeah per the metrics i said the data and metrics outlined by the to be outlined by the health professionals and the ade and the governor to determine the opening date for this school year okay in person in person yeah so should i not say then reopen the schools i believe i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals and ade and the governor determine the in-person opening of schools everyone understand just go ahead yes help us out i was gonna say i i'm not sure that's exactly how we worded it so may i suggest that we offer a substitute motion and word it how we want it to work please is is that okay with you dr santa cruz that's okay ms wood is going to accept your amendment okay yeah let me see i i i hadn't written it down i was going to go with what she had just said that was pretty good i saw him looking up at the sky like sorry i just was acknowledging that it wasn't worded exactly the same and since we didn't have it maybe we offer what she just said as the substitute motion i don't think it needs to be a substitute motion i think it's substantially what she offered to begin with so unless we want to tweak the wording it doesn't need to be so so basically we right now we don't have any idea when we'll go back to school we just have to wait well we do know that we'll be online i think i think no well you don't i don't mean to interrupt you sorry i i think maybe what we could do is add something that we will be online until the public health metrics are met and we will provide a what a two-week window where we can transition from online to in school that doesn't mean that we have to wait until those metrics are totally met maybe if we can see that it's coming we can announce it or something like that so so that would be a completely different motion than what you had because that would be just an open end and we're not going back to school till the metrics are met correct that's what she said that's what she is that what you're saying yeah that's what she said you're saying when would you feel safe to go back when would our teachers feel safe to go back i mean we can choose a date but how do we know it's it's horrible as i recall and i'm not sure if miss wilson captured the exact wording but as i recall the original motion was included august 17th or as the metrics allow because it did i did have the date in there and but the reality of the situation as we're acknowledging is it's when the metrics are met you stuck the 17th in there and that at least for this dull mind has confused me yeah well and that's again maybe i'm recalling incorrectly what i seconded but my recollection of the converse of the original motion was that it was that it included august 17th or when the metrics were met i don't recall that so we don't recall now okay then i recall it as being she has it written down well scratched out a little bit so i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then i said reopen per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals in add but then after i talk to you okay i move that we be i move that we begin schools online august 5th and then per the data and metrics to be outlined by the health professionals in the ada and the governor to determine the in-person opening of school that sounds horrible which again that could be indefinitely okay and can i just just uh i'd like to just i do have some some statistics here um four days ago dr deborah burks stated that it's still an open question how rapidly children under 10 spread coronavirus without this knowledge um it it could be a very difficult reopening and as of today according to the arizona department of health services the fatalities are 47.41 deaths for a hundred thousand in the zip codes eight five two nine six and eight five two three four and i believe that somebody said there's nine zip codes or something i have all the cases for yeah we are interested yes there's um 101 to 500 cases per 100 000 and um according to the today's data we we are in an area where cover 19 is widespread um congregating people during this time frame could accelerate the spread and schools could become super spreaders the harvard global health institute rates ten cases of infection out of a hundred thousand as a threshold for a stay-at-home order that's ten cases our infection rate maricopa county is almost five times higher than that our positivity positivity rate is 12.7 percent the threshold to an act suppression and mitigation measures wearing masks hand washing social distance etc is 5 we have more than double the positivity rate in our community at this time health experts advise stay-at-home orders above five percent positivity and in our community we are more than double that with a positivity rate of 12.7 percent and i i think those are the metrics you're talking about except for what maybe the governor might change them a little bit is that correct i'm saying whatever he comes out with with in conjunction with i don't know what he's going to use i have no idea because positivity rate has some amount of i mean i can go through and explain exactly why that doesn't matter that much just like the doctor did everyone is going to get it we need to i mean we want to have that many people get it the positivity rate means that people who don't have it aren't being tested so at some point if we all go and get tested that would drive the positivity rate down those of us who got tested and didn't come back positive did you see what i'm saying so i have no idea what exactly the governor and this um health officials will use to be those metrics but there will be something like that that will give us guidance that will say when it's less when it's when wearing our masks doing the things that the cdc say says having as much distance as possible in our classrooms which i saw on the um american academy of pediatrics that they feel like three feet with with um students is enough with mass there's other guidance i'm just saying we'll do all those things we'll put all those things in place and we'll screen we're going to be serious about you can't come to school sick i know that that's been different than in the past we have to do things different now this is this is what we're going to have to do so that we can come to school but all of those things in place plus when the governor's metrics which basically is part of his executive order that i think we're going to have to abide by anyways so i guess i don't know where i'm going without sheila i'm just i'm just still concerned about the limbo with the teachers and not having you know are they going to plan for this are they going to plan for that you know and and i hope there's probably never been a time in my life that i would hope that i'm wrong but i don't see that this is going to happen anytime soon you know so if it's open-ended i think i can probably live with that i would just like to say i would i would you know my preference is say okay first quarter with the if we meet the metrics then we can go back i just i agree with mr carr though that the idea is it's about the metrics not about determining a date and that it's about we want to be in school yeah that's what we're saying we want to be in school so i know it's just it's semantics at some level of what we're saying but i think it does send a message and it's a difficult message i i'm we're going to have disappointed families at this point i think some families would prefer to hear exactly that the first quarter so they would leave and do something different so you think people are willing to just you know like wait it out well what choice do we have our we have to wait till the data says and right you know that's the same but it's to me it's the same thing because you know we're saying okay we we plan on it we'll say the in the first quarter but if there's a miracle on on september 5th or whatever then we can go back you know it's me i think it's it's easier to go back to school and i i i can ask the experts it seems to me it's easier to go back just to say okay you know everything's good so we can we can go back i think it's easier if if we had a date that we can move it up then move it back i think moving it back is discouraging and i don't i don't know what that date would be i mean what do you mean what do you mean by moving it back i mean i mean if we set a date like the day after labor day and we have to push it back to october right i think that's very yesterday moralizing to people whereas if they okay we're gonna work for this date in october and we're gonna stay online but all of a sudden look arizona's doing great that's my point and a month early we can announce hey we are going to be back in the classroom in two weeks because we've met those metrics so in two weeks guys instead of waiting till fall break at the end of september or the middle of september we're going to be back in the classroom i think that would be a relief to people whereas if you in the middle of september you say well never mind we're gonna go to october people are going to be very discouraged and i understand that that means some people will leave yeah i i i don't think um i think what i would say to our community is when i talked about the five c's before we talked we i talked about children community common ground consensus and constraint tonight i would want to talk about common ground and consensus every email that we received said i love gilbert public schools i like all the things that my kids get to do i like the extracurricular activities i want them to have their teachers and the academics if that's what you love if and we i think we can all agree on that the consensus is we want to make it through this trying year this pandemic and be able to keep that intact and in order to do that we need to keep people enrolled in our district because when we start having to cut budgets and i've cut budgets more than i've enhanced them when we have to start cutting budgets then it gets really hard because we start losing some of those wonderful things that we currently enjoy and so the way i would want to encourage our community is okay i know and and frankly community college is going to be online too because they got the same problem but if you really love what your kids had then stick with us so we can get through the trying time and stay with us so that when we get on the other side of this they can still have that and that's what i love about public schools is we can be the best option for all kids and that may mean we have to you know work a little bit in this online environment to make a better education for some of the kids that struggled it may mean we have to consider special ed how they are educated because there are people that online isn't going to work for but we really need to think about how we're going to make that online part work really really well as we move forward because that is our we've got to have our connection to our community we've got to have our connection to our teachers we've got to have that academic part we've got to have you know i've been trying to think how do we do the extracurricular activities can kids come and they can be outside and maybe we have band practice in their way spread out or football practice and they all stand in their little circle but at least they're there together or choir practice is all you know in the outside so they're singing but they're like 20 feet apart so nobody gets any particles i mean we've got to be creative and make this online part really really good and i i i mean frankly what we need is the metrics for the governor and then we need some direction about how long what they're going to do to help us meet those metrics because most of this is on the state in the testing and contract tracing and quarantining so those numbers come down to where we can feel safe about bringing kids back to school that i can bring us back to the target it appears that we are at least in consensus with most of the motion that's been offered the sticking point is a what uh the end of it a date open-ended and there there's where we're stuck if i'm uncorrect please correct me but i i believe we're in agreement with everything up to the point for about when we open when we actually go back to in-person instruction uh i think i i don't know that we'll know that if i may hold on miss you jetty has the floor let me let mr carr needs to go ahead and finish okay i i think that we we we can't come up with a date but i think we can come up with the date and then change it you know and i think i i think exactly what you're saying but i just i just don't think everybody should be in limbo and i think teachers need to be able to plan they need to you know if they're going to be on online let's give them the opportunity to to make that the best experience they they have they can and then if we ch i don't think there's a teacher i've talked to and i think you'll have you'll be hard put to find anybody that believes in brick and mortar schools other than probably you and i and i'm not saying anything about the rest of the board but you know i spent 38 years of my career in a public school 17 years as a teacher 21 years as a principal those were the best years of my career and that i i loved every minute of it well mostly every minute not always everywhere let's be honest but but you know we are an unprecedented times and so i you know there's i want us to be back i want our kids to be back i want it to be normal and i'm an old lady you know i mean i i i want the whole world to be normal but right now kobe's in charge of the world we're not and so all i want us to do is plan give people a date that you know we're going to target let's say like i said first quarter and then if a miracle happens mr mccourt dr mccord how i mean how soon could you get if let's say september 17th or 15th or whatever it was a friday could you could we get it be back to school on monday i think i i well could we yeah we could would it would it look real pretty probably not so i think could you get in a week could you do it i would i you know we could probably turn things around in a week i mean we have we would have to do something some things administratively on our end um i'm sure and then we'd have to determine my hope is what we have to figure out is who's going to stay online who wants flex because a lot of people are going to change their mind probably tomorrow and so we're going to keep trying to backfill that so it would take a week maybe two but we'd work real hard but people some of the people that are going online right now knew would probably choose to go back to the classroom if the if the conditions are such the metrics are such that that they would that everything would be okay correct and they would feel safer right let's realize that this isn't going away no i mean i'm concerned about even october i mean you know the way arizona is but mr carr i'm sorry you have the floor thank you and i apologize for interrupting there's just enough of the delay on the phone that sometimes i think i'm speaking in a gap and i end up speaking over somebody no problem i apologize to my fellow board member look i i recognize that we all want the same thing we want students back in school the state metrics whether we like it or not require an open date regardless of which approach we take any date that we choose today is an arbitrary choice we're picking a date out of the air and regardless of what we think we're misleading we're misleading the public if we get the date that's too soon and we have to push it out then we yank the carpet out from under parents and students we set a false hope and because we move that date on them if we set a date that's too late we send the message to our parents that we aren't desires of opening soon and has been as has been acknowledged by other members of the board in our recent in this conversation and as i stated parents will leave they've already told us that many have that leaves us not only with the impact now but it leaves us cutting budget next year when they don't come back this year we're protected by the by the executive order but even this year let's recognize that if if our numbers decline we will be riffing and that's something that none of us want to do we're not going to keep teachers on with decline numbers even though we have protected revenue so we're not protecting our teachers we're not protecting our our staff if we make a decision that leads to people leaving and we will be facing the difficult decisions that we so often hear about of cutting budgets i would suggest we and i've tried to make this case multiple ways i would suggest we send the message to our our parents we are doing everything we can to open as soon as we can we don't know until the metrics come out what date that will be but we want to make sure that we do it as quickly as possible knowing that it's safe based on the health experts you know i will share with you over the last three weeks i have purposely spoken to 11 gilbert based pediatricians that i know now maybe this isn't representative because they're people that i know but i asked all 11 two questions i asked them if school would open up will you send your child back all 11 immediately responded back yes i will send my child back in person then i ask them is that what you're telling your patients and i will give a kind of a generic summary answer because of what that what what the consensus answer was and their answer was no i don't tell my parents that i tell them they need to evaluate their own individual situation is their child at risk are they at risk do they have someone else at home at risk make an informed wise decision you know that's that's what we need to give parents the option of doing making an informed and wise decision and we need to let them do it as soon as possible and if we send the message that we are that we're going to pick a date out there in time that isn't as soon as possible we will find parents homeschooling and not coming back i know i've already talked with three groups a week ago i talked to three separate groups that contacted me one of which had already bought curriculum they want to come back to our elementaries but they're willing to not come back to our elementaries if we're not willing to give them a message that we're going to open i've i alluded to earlier in the conversation i've talked to numerous parents who are already prepared to send their kids to the to community colleges and call and universities early we're going to lose these parents who want to support us mr carr i would prefer to speak more positively i want to encourage people to stay i'm not going to talk about who's leaving i'm going to say why you need to stay and what the reasons are for staying that's going to be my message to people we have a great district and we have provided for over a hundred years through the great depression the great recession world war ii world war one we have provided a great education and we will get through this pandemic and i'm going to encourage people that this is the best place to be even if you have to be online for a little while with your kids and i have a great book you need to read before you go back to school with those kids taming your spirited child is the best parenting book i can recommend please get it read it so that you can work with your kids and not have power struggles and that's what i want is a positive message i'm not going to talk about i'm worried people are going to leave i'm going to talk about why there are reasons to stay when we're not willing to talk about both sides of the issue then we're not going to make a wise decision i think if i could say one thing too i think another concern that i have and you mentioned you talked to other superintendents in districts and nobody has everyone's kind of just waiting right now or everybody's planned to open or what is the pun because that does kind of make a difference sure right now everybody is in the east valley well no let me rephrase that that would be inaccurate mesa is has never set a date to go back so i think they're playing the wait and see tempe l has pushed it back to [Music] their fall break kyreen starts their digital online i think today or tomorrow and then they're planning for august 17th as in person and flex but that was as of yesterday and then chandler already pushed their start baked the star date back for online to where we are and they're at august 17th we're the queen creek is at august 17th online on the 4th or the 3rd and higley has already started online and they are august 17th nobody i don't know mesa i think maybe has a board meeting tonight i don't think anybody else has a board meeting right now or this week or nobody alluded to that i didn't check that so everyone indicated that they were sure that would be a topic of discussion moving forward so that's that's like i said that's what i know as of today i may be inaccurate in a couple pieces but i think the 17th is where most we're at and that's for in-person face-to-face learning in person you know whatever options they're out there giving but in person utilizing their options including face-to-face correct if if they can do that under the metrics the governor gives them on the 7th correct so it could be open ended there too i i still think we need a date and then we can move it back if we have if we well maybe we just need to vote because i i'm not i don't want to set a date i don't even open ended so i guess we'll just see where it goes i guess okay let me see if i can please state them figure this out here and interrupt me and correct me if i'm misstating here begin online on august 5th and reopen for person learning once the data and metrics have been evaluated to determine a date for full in-person learning and do we need to put the are we all do we need to make it specific about the metrics basically that are being released by the uh the governor included data and metrics in there you did but do when you say that they're just not any data and metrics it's whatever the plan the governor or the per the governor's the arizona department of the arizona department of health services and health services right gabby did you get most of that most of that will include department of health services in that and that's been moved and seconded that's not a substitution that's as close as i can get to my understanding of the original motion are you okay with that ms wood well really i pref i wish that we could go to school sooner in person but i think that that general consensus has been met i think every one of the board members would like to go to school as soon as possible yes but just as many of our parents but in late in light of that so is everyone satisfied that they understand i understand the motion yeah i i just i just wonder to me this is this is very difficult some people will need a date and some people won't want a date so how do we make a motion that satisfies both because i mean i i really think what we have to do is pour our energy into online learning and make that the best possible and when the governor releases the metrics which um you know august 7th i i think we should at the earliest opportunity when the administration has had time to look at that and can present it to us and discuss it and i mean to me a lot of what has to be met is it's what the state has to do it's not on us it's on the state and i'm not sure that's my concern about the governor's metrics because it's got to show people that they can feel safe and that the virus is under control we have a governing board meeting on august 11th that um we we may be ready to to have the disguise depends on what how it's delivered to us and what comes out but i would do everything i can to be prepared to talk to it on on that date okay that would be the the work study and brief board meeting correct okay and i i would concur with you with relative to the online learning and i think we have to acknowledge our teachers at this point many if not all of them have already done one or two trainings on the platform that's been presented to them and many of them have reported very positively on what it is that they have uh received via the training and the platform itself uh i am less concerned than i was the last quarter of last year regarding the electronics and the use of of that online platform and i i'm just confident that that's that's in place it is not their preferred mode that's acknowledged but am i correct in that assessment dr newman she's nodding approvingly so those of you who couldn't see her she has indicated that that would have been a true statement okay and and mrs wood i in all due respect i totally understand what you're saying and and i agree that we have to have the metrics in place i just think we have to have a plan and so please understand that that's where i'm coming from from i just think teachers need to know parents need to know and then we can make changes if we need to but i totally appreciate what your emotion is all right the motion is before you my assumption is that you understand it as much as i do and uh we're ready to vote and i won't try to repeat all those in favor of the motion as presented please signify by saying i i all those opposed the same nay hey huh i i have to say nay i hope we can come up with something a little better i don't know what that is so i guess we go discuss some more but um i i really i understand why you don't want to set a date and i i hope in if we're going to have a different motion that we we certainly emphasize that we will look at the metrics and return to school at the earliest opportunity that we feel it is safe for everyone i mean i think we all want that it's just how we communicate it that is the sticking point here um well then make a motion please we are open for another motion i am perfectly satisfied just as a recommendation with the verbiage on the previous motion with the exception of ending it with evaluation of a 4a date of opening i would like to move that we plan at this point on opening or going back after the first quarter going online until the end of the first quarter with the uh with all of the and if we get the metrics in place at any point in time between now and then that we can then automatically go back have an emergency meeting or whatever you give them direction give the give them direction right now i don't know if i'm making sense well let's keep it simple i know let's just make a mistake you make it now i'll second it okay okay well i'm i don't have anything written down because i wasn't planning to make the motion but okay so this is the motion i would make i motion that we have we have we work for exceptional online learning and meeting student needs through the first quarter looking towards meeting the metrics set by the governor and reevaluating at the earliest opportunity to get students back in school second and don't ask me to say it again i hope somebody wrote it down i might be able to recall it if i have to but i hope you got it gabby okay the understanding there is and gabby if you got it i'm um you're so can someone summarize that in a shorter phrase because i didn't follow all the work okay so so what i what i said was to focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs through the first quarter and i get i don't know what the date is that the first quarter ends so somebody give me what is that date um you must and re-evaluating um as we get the metrics as as we get the governor's metrics to open schools at the earliest opportunity can somebody tell me what date the first quarter ends and i can put that date in but i just don't i don't have a calendar quarantina i gave up my calendar um october 2nd so we're suggesting we return to school on october 13th yes that would be the end of the of the fall break day or second semester statement my what i said was that we would focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs through october 2nd with the with the message as we're going back to school october 13th yes yes but with the understanding that if the metrics come through come through and we meet them that we can go back to go back into earlier if we were metrics and unfortunately if we are still in a world of hurt we would have to push it back that's i i'll be candid here if that were the message and my kids were still in school i have loved gilbert public schools i've served every year at the global public schools and if any other school district opened up the day before i would take my kids to that school that's that's the message i'm going to give and i and i hate saying that but i'm being candid well and i hear you it's just that i feel like for one if if we can really have a focus so people don't feel like they're being pulled in 20 directions and we're not the only district that has set that date i mean deer valley phoenix union i i know there are at least half a dozen districts that have have used that date so we're not the only one and within with all due respect mr carr i totally understand what you're saying and i think that the biggest concern i have and once again i'm going to say this i hope i'm wrong i think any other school district that that goes back without the metrics is probably going to end up online anyway well i i do think we have and i miss you jetty i i don't disagree that that's a real possibility i really don't but the message that you've sent to our parents with with that date is that we aren't focused on opening in person i don't think we said that i think we said yes we're going to as soon as we can that was that was my question if i can interrupt my question was going to be embedded in the motion although it's not clearly stated and i think if i'm anticipating what you might want to want to say mr carr is that if the data and metrics right are such that we can open before that date we will that we will do all we can to begin in-person learning once the metrics have been evaluated honestly i feel like we need to all go to communications class because that's not what the public is going to hear the public is going to hear we're not going back till october 13th the rest of it is all going to be fluff and if we don't recognize the message that we're sending to our community we're going to lose it and and i know that's not the intent i'm not saying that's intent i'm just saying from my perception that's the reality of what's going to happen okay what if what if we reword it in an english major what if we put the rest at the beginning saying when when we meet the metrics set by the governor we will have in-person instruction until that time we will focus on exceptional online instruction aiming for a return of october 2nd if except i left off i don't know right i need to sit in an hour and i would support i would support i would support that motion if we were if we write it that way but that's exactly what we just said and we voted 3-2 and against it we didn't say october 2nd she just said october 2nd i the only thing the only thing i disagreed with the motion that miss wood mrs wood said was to have a tentative date and maybe we can even say it's a tentative date because that's all it is i mean frankly it's taking me a month to get here because when i saw the letter put out by several board members that was my one disagreement i thought oh my gosh i don't want to tell people that i'm not we're not going to go back to school the whole first quarter but looking at the state of things today and looking at the data that we currently have on new cases and the number of cases per hundred thousand people it may take several months to get to the point where we can open schools i mean that's that's just my and i i'm not an expert i'm just looking at it to say how fast have we come down and how fast can we do it so is there a way that we can word the motion include opening as early as possible meeting the governor's metrics and includes something about online learning so so parents and teachers know that that is our focus and a date of or end of fall quarter is there something you can suggest that we can all agree on mr carr are you opening the door for a substitute motion for mr carr i i am asking for a substitute motion or i am asking for some help in wording the motion in a way that would be acceptable that he feels i mean i understand that we we want to the most important thing needs to come first in the motion and the most important thing he's probably correct the most important thing we need to tell our community is that we will work hard to open our schools as early as we feel it can be safe for everyone for everyone and the meeting the metrics hopefully he provides good metrics that will make us feel that way first we're not going to meet that if we're if we're going to say safely for everyone as long as disease exists as long as we're in a pandemic it's not safe for everyone and i said that statement last time there's always going to be risk the question is how much of that risk can we mitigate and that's exactly what the metrics are intended to do um and and the idea that we can guarantee the safety of people i think is a is a fallacy i wish it weren't so the the question is how do we move forward the best we can in a pandemic world um i simply would again i mean my preferred languages were going to open as soon as we possibly can safely and we're going to measure safely by the by the arizona department of health's metrics the experts we're going to rely on them um if we've got insist on a date for reevaluation i would rather reevaluate sooner than later let's let's come back and say we'll evaluate september set first and you know at that point we look at that we have the metrics we've had the chance to look at them we had a chance to measure them it's a minimal time um okay can i make this suggestion sorry i'm making motions out of my head is kind of hard so i'm trying to write down um how about if i word it this way i don't know if this is an amendment i mean it would be a slight change to the wording we will open as soon as we possibly can when we have met the governor's metrics and we will focus on exceptional online learning and meeting students needs and i have one that possibly could work okay if you want i'm trying to write i'm just trying to figure out how to put with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue online instruction until october through october through the first quarter unless the governor's metrics allow us to do so sooner with and we went using the words with the intention of opening as soon as pos as on as pos as possible read it one more time please share with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue online instruction until october whatever first quarter unless the governor's metrics allow us to do so sooner but when we started out with the intention of opening soon as soon how about if we if we put with the intention of opening just read your first phrase with the intention of opening with the intention of opening as soon as possible we will continue after we have met the governor's metrics comma we will can we will continue online learning through october 2nd unless we can open sooner does that work but i think i think if we start out with the int you know using the word intention yes opening can i go ahead i'm just listening and i'm trying to put it into words and i could be as confused as everyone else how about we will continue to learn online through the first quarter or the data and benchmarks provided by adh determine we can open for in-person instruction sooner um the reason we need to change that so that i i'm understanding mr carr's reasoning if we can put the first part the second part first and then put the online learning second so what people read first because if you think people are only going to remember half of what you say we want to remember that we're working to open our schools and in the meantime we're going to do exceptional online learning so could you i'm sorry if i had if i had 15 minutes to write this out i could figure it out but doing it without sitting in my own little desk in some peace and quiet is rather difficult we're still we're still working so let me offer let me offer this and you may want to add your first quarter thing here but it is similar to miss woods initial shot at it begin online learning august 5th and open schools as soon as it is safe to do so period utilizing department of health services data and metrics to determine the date when in-person learning will begin dr sanders can you give me just one minute go ahead i just want to write something down i think we're all just kind of i would second balling here can you can you repeat that dr sentence can i suggest maybe we just take take a two minute break or just not even this not even a break but just give everyone two minutes to kind of think through their wording and suggest it not a problem is everyone okay with that yes yes okay charlie right now [Music] um you know the reason why tokenization came into place with federal government was getting higher uh canada industries help with getting tired of people having the final cabinets for putting a credit card information on the sales president and literally having all of them walk away and just start looking through okay got one okay okay if we can reconvene we apologize and appreciate your indulgence those of you who are watching and those of you who are in the audience with wording for emotion that we can discuss and work through we've been doing that for the last almost an hour we're still in that mode we now have a need for miss eugenie and mrs humphries to cancel remove their previous motion so that we can open for a new motion sorry i remove my motion from the floor and i remove the second and then i have a new motion mr jetty has a motion that she would like to read mr carr you still there i am still here thank you okay gilbert public schools will begin the school year and remain online until the arizona department of health services guidelines have been published reviewed and met at such time the board will reconvene if the board votes to reopen the after the metrics have been met parents teachers and administrators will receive at least a one week period to plan and implement their reopening strategies we will open safely either by following the metrics or at the end of the first quarter whichever comes first except we have to meet the metrics no matter when that comes i'm a little concerned about that we will open safely either by following the metrics or at the end of the first quarter whichever comes first but it i mean that that could be a moot point you want me to put well i think it's important can i share this one and i don't want to be a competing motion i just want to share what i worded um because what i was going for was um mr carr made the point about messaging and putting the part about reopening schools first so um i just want to share this and then if we want to change some wording or something sheila we can do that um so what i came up with is we will open schools after we meet the metrics established by the governor and department of health until that time we will focus on exceptional online learning beginning august 5th and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met and i don't have anything in there about time to plan but i feel like in the time that is there we would know you know i mean this is pretty predictable we can say you know we're going to open schools in two weeks because we can see the decline and we can see that at this point we'll be ready to open so i don't mention that in the motion but i i do agree with mr carr's point that we want them to remember that we're working to open schools and put that first so i don't know if you want to will you repeat it please okay sure we will open schools after we meet the metrics established by the governor and department of health until that time we will focus on exceptional online learning beginning august 5th and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met that way we don't really give a date that we're opening schools we're saying we're going to reevaluate if we need to at that point and it would be prior to the end of the fall semester so that everyone could know before we left school on october 2nd what the plan is for when we come back i i can that i don't think i can second the whole thing okay what do you want me to do if i may i i've got something somewhat similar okay drafted well let's listen and then we'll decide which one will your credit or rewrite and i will give credit to a a teacher who emailed this in as a suggestion that i've been modified but gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online that that doesn't give us anything about the first we will reevaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met we can just add that last sentence and then it gives us it's not a date we're not saying we're going to open but it gives us a chance to talk about what our strategy will be if we continue without improvement can we can we add that to it mr carr yeah so if i add if the guidelines are not met prior prior then the board will re we'll just discuss august 2nd something like that if and re-evaluate prior to october 2nd i mean you can put the governor's metrics first we will reevaluate prior to october 2nd if the governor's metrics have not been met so it just gives us so it gives a kind of a it gives us a date but it's not a date of opening schools it's just a date of consideration why don't we consider like every week until we open well because what i want is to give people some stability by giving them i know i again so i'm back to i feel like we're not taking care of students we're opting for stability for adults compared to meeting the needs of students first and i guess mine would be to table it until we can hear the um metrics by the governor august 7th start back in school august 5th just go forward like we have planned table this and come back august 7th or the week after that august 11th and move forward after that i think we offer the compromise of pulling that date in to the to the day after labor day and that way we're at least meeting more frequently to reevaluate well i i think i'm certainly happy to reevaluate it um after labor day and look at where we are but when i'm putting out a date for our community i i want to give a date that is far enough away that that we have a very i would say if the state can get its act together and if we in our community can take the responsibility of doing the things we need to do on our end to stop the spread of the virus wear a mask wash our hands etc etc that it is very i would hope it's realistic that before october 2nd either we've met those metrics or we can reevaluate in a way that we know where we're going and i'm i can kind of see that towards labor day but i don't want to have to move this date back i would rather move it up and say okay look we did better let's do it now then move it back and say oh we didn't quite make it i that's my concern about labor day i'm going to encourage us to either accept and second the motion read by monsieur jetty accept and second the motion that's read by mr carr or accept and second the motion that has been presented by mrs humphries i i will withdraw mine mr jetty is withdrawn hers uh well let's let's read each motion again and then mr carr go ahead and read yours again and then we'll listen to miss humphries line reads gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online and then we've added per ms humphreys the board will re-evaluate october 2nd if the criteria has not been previously met um i withdraw my motion i will go with mr carr's motion with the addition of the august second october october 2nd yes and i'll second it okay mr carr has offered a motion and it's been seconded by miss eugenie and mrs humphries and if you don't mind just read it repeat it and we'll read it one more time and please forward that to mrs wilson i will forward this to mrs wilson gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online the court the board will reevaluate october 2nd if that criteria has not been previously met okay can i just add a couple words prior to october 2nd just that we need so that we have we meet prior to that and i maybe we can even give a date um september is september if we're going to modify that i would i would love to move that data in okay can can we move it in do we have a business meeting on september 29th or september 22nd i think we do i think we can evaluate it as yes on a weekly basis when the governor comes out with things without without even well i think we can but again i'm just trying to put a date in there and and the date i'm trying to put is that by the end of fall by the end of our fall quarter by october 2nd we will have looked at this again if we haven't met the metrics and we will know where we're going for the next quarter um and so i i could pull it in i mean i don't know what okay is that two that would be a week well actually you'd have you'd have a week or plus a fall break but we they need to have fall break off we don't well yes but they would have so if we if we could look at making a decision on the 22nd that would give them almost two weeks before fall break so i would be willing to put the date of september 22nd to re-evaluate to re-evaluate and notify the community of i don't know is is that okay instead of october 2nd does anyone well i still think we need to october 2nd but we can reevaluate re-evaluate on september 22nd i'm still 22nd september 22nd that would be our regularly scheduled board meeting would it uh and again i'm maybe i'm pushing this we're trying to find a compromise but would it make sense more sense to do it with the grading period would be the grading period yes the end of the first quarter oh sorry i'm used to the mid mid quarter grades but uh you can do it grading more at the end of the grading period i don't think that makes any difference does it dr mccord it could be the october 2nd or the end of the first quarter okay we have listened okay so the date so the date we the date we decided was september 22nd correct okay so just read it again one more time to make sure we've we've got it the way we want i mean we've worked really hard to get to this point and i need to hear it one more time gilbert public schools sorry gilbert public schools will begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement the reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online the board will reevaluate prior to september 22nd if the criteria has not been previously met okay you can take out prior to and just say september 22nd does everyone have enough information to vote or is there still a need for additional discussion i'm going to accept that as you're ready to vote okay did we have didn't mr carr made the motion did somebody suck i seconded this has been moved and seconded you have heard the motion miss wilson will receive it via a forward from mr carr it's been read three times we will now vote all those in favor of the motion as stated by mr carr and adjusted please signify by saying i i i all those opposed nay nay and i recognize that that's my motion i just strongly feel like putting that date in there sends the wrong message to parents okay but i recognize it as a compromise and we will all work towards making it work okay motion passes 3-2 and we have something in place we will now move to item 7.04 approval of resolution regarding governor ducey's executive order dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members um before you i have a resolution that i'd sent to you before the board meeting and essentially it just resolves the fact that we will follow through on the governor's orders so it's essentially what i talked about in the presentation thank you is there a motion summit thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr jetty any discussion well i just want to thank our administration because i know they're going to have a lot of work ahead of them to implement this executive order so thank you and and i had prepared a statement i'm not going to do the whole statement but i i would also like to echo that i'd like to thank dr mccord and the cabinet and all the other wonderful people that have dealt with the pandemic pandemic over the past several months just when they have a plan in place to handle the situation something unforeseen occurs at this point there's absolutely no handbook to guide them and they're superheroes in my book okay i think that needs a round of applause thank you mr jetty any additional commentary my only comment related to the resolution is that the executive order makes the superintendent responsible for a great deal over which he has no control and we need to recognize that fact and embedded within the verbiage of the executive order and even to some degree the resolution we need to understand that that's there and this coveted issue is so unpredictable and so volatile that i will only say i appreciate that dr mccord and the cabinet staff and as we move towards online and reopening schools our faculty and staff and all of the work they will do to try to mitigate this disease and to try to move us forward in the best learning mode possible so thank you all for that diligence and that effort and dr santa cruz if i could add to that yes go ahead just the parents who will actually be sitting with their children at home as well in this extended period of learning which we forget sometimes but absolutely they're going to be doing a lot of the heavy weight and i think they should be acknowledged as well so absolutely and that certainly goes without saying and i appreciate you're adding that so with that the motion is before you item 7.04 approval resolution regarding governor ducey's executive order yes sir sorry i'm i'm sorry i just was looking through it i had discussed with uh dr mccord earlier today and was still reading through it to see a conversation that we had talked one thing that i would like to modify it on that is that the resolution needs an expiration date although it implies that it is for this school year it does not state that clearly and so without an expiration date uh it uh you know 10 years from now someone could find it and say hey i still have all the authority to do all of these things okay i i think we can add the date without too much without too much consternation there this resolution expires on on july 29th let me look at the executive order um this order shall remain in place for the duration of the 2020 2021 school year that ends june 30th 2021. okay does that is that what's your car was that what do you think about that add that language to the end then yes i i think that's perfect thank you thank you okay so with the addition of the language related to the date of expiration you have the motion before you it is time to vote all those in favor of the resolution with the appropriate expiration date please signify by saying i i those opposed same motion carries 5-0 item 8 item 8.01 any request for future agenda items nothing to verbalize at this point but if you have something please make contact with mrs wilson so that we can add it to our next agenda dr sanchez i was going to bring this up during 7.03 but we kind of got long-winded there um so perhaps if i can put this on for uh either recommendations from the superintendent but i think related to the opening we need to have a conversation about extracurricular activities in sports right now aia is moving forward we're not meeting in person i believe the aia assumption is that that they are letting practice to start based on that august 17th date and we'll have sports etc barring a change um we we're kind of leaving our athletic programs in limbo without any direction and then the other thing that i'd like to add related to the opening of schools that this is a suggestion that came from a parent who has several elementary schools boys and she said is there any way that with the school's opening on the fifth we can at least open up the libraries so that we can continue to have our children read and so i'd like to have a discussion on how we can facilitate that type of thing and do so safely and then we also at the last board meeting highlighted a couple of policies including the attendance policy that we thought needed to be suspended or amended for the year and we've not yet discussed that so do i hear you correctly that you are suggesting those three items for the august 11th meeting but if if we i mean if we want to throw two of those in there and to tonight i i think it's part of opening the schools the first two but but yes otherwise we're going along tonight so well your preference would would be to open that discussion at this time i i'm a little hesitant particularly the sports you've already voted yeah particularly the sports in the library i think i think we need to give direction but we need to do it as soon as possible well i understand that mr carr but i'm a little concerned that while that is part of opening schools that's not specifically in our agenda and in an abundance of caution even though i think it would be a good idea to discuss it tonight i think we should wait so we can agendize it because somebody who's interested in libraries or athletics would maybe want to comment or send an email or something and so that's my concern it's just that it is a part of opening schools but it's a little bit um beyond the discussion and it wasn't on the agenda question dr mccorden mr mcdowell do we run a risk are we in any jeopardy by not acting on mr carr's suggestion this evening this evening no i don't believe so um and i'm thinking probably more about athletics because they can start practice on august 17th uh august 11th we we're cutting it close but um i think we'd be able to provide you more information if we feel that um we need to meet sooner for that specific purpose um i will alert you and we'll alert the board that maybe we need a special meeting related to that and just for your information mr carr i had a very brief conversation with mr mcdowell just about the general things and the aia is still unresolved in a lot of its approaches am i correct there mr mcdown [Music] if you could just repeat what he said i could not hear i'll help him i'll have him cut my microphone i apologize um yeah mr carr is correct as of right now the aia is starting or planning on starting sports on august 17th that would be all false sports um obviously with decisions being made tonight in boardrooms across the state that could change at any moment like anything else but as of right now august 17th is a date pick to start fall sports and we are scheduled to meet on august 11th according to dr mccord that's cutting it close but we could meet that agenda item and all of the nuances related to it at that time does that work for you mr carr yes thank you all right then we will take your agenda items if you'll deliver them to mrs wilson so we don't forget them for the august 11th agenda dr santa cruz real quick could so do we continue with that plan for sports in place until we discuss that or what yes yeah i think we might okay remain status quo okay yeah i don't think the impact is negative towards our sports program at this point and the 11th will validate and confirm with the information we receive at that time fair enough with that we have some agenda items that mr carr is now represented and asked to be placed on the august 11th agenda any other items seeing that there are none we'll move to item 9 board committee reports gilbert education foundation 9.01 mrs humphries we had a board retreat virtually and had a discussion it's a challenging time to figure out how to connect and have that community engagement when we're all trying to stay six feet apart um so we're just working on some ideas for fundraising for gilbert education foundation thank you mrs humphries 9.02 city of mesa liaison mrs wood nothing to report thank you ma'am 9.03 and 9.04 town of gilbert liaison mr carr and if you'll follow up with 9.04 finance and audit committee just the mayor mayor daniels communicated with me today and expressed the town's desire to support us in any way possible as we consider how to restart and how to serve our students we live in a great town that wants to support education and the audit committee has suspended meetings for the time being so no report there thank you thank you sir item 9.05 insurance trust representative miss eugenie nothing to report nothing additional to add and 9.06 legislative information nothing to add at this point from me item 10 meeting dates dr mccord our next meeting date will be august 11th which is a board work study and brief board business meeting august 18th is a policy meeting and august 25th is another board business meeting thank you mr mccord this has been a very long engaging and i think relatively productive meeting i appreciate the indulgence and the work of the board tonight in trying to wordsmith something that might make sense in terms of the reopening of schools and all of the hard work from staff and those who are getting ready to begin their online learning item 11 is adjournment is there a motion to adjourn summit thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you ms eugenie typically no discussion unless anyone sees fit that that needs to happen otherwise all those in favor of a german please signify by saying i i i i those opposed the same we are adjourned
well good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomas in roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr thomason roll call good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order we might take a pause we have a little good evening echo i'm going to call this meeting we might take a pause we have a little good evening president kaler members of the board please let the records show we have all five board members present tonight thank you very much okay we're going to have a moment of silence hopefully followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda second any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries five 5-0 upcoming events dr thomason superintendents report president kira members of the board we are still in the throes of kovid so there's not a whole lot of exciting things coming up but we do have two board meetings and uh in the month of august on wednesday august 12th we'll have a board meeting right here at 5 00 pm and then on wednesday august 26th we'll also have another board meeting right here at 5 p at 5 pm so with that that is all we have coming up at this time for the month of august thank you for that usually it's a big kickoff to the beginning of the year so it is sad to see okay board comments does anybody have some comments mrs wilson i just want to thank everyone who's emailed us in the last few days especially today i have been reading them up until around four o'clock so if you emailed after that i'm sorry but i do want to thank you all because i know you're all watching this board meeting and trying to figure out how we're going to open school also thank you to all of our teachers admin and staff especially those at the district office who did a little different kickoff this year back to school especially darlene who um or mrs ritch who made us awesome shirts and worked on her awesome shirts and but just thank you because i know this isn't the year that we thought it was going to be the kickoff we thought it was going to be so building that plane while we're flying it has really taken part so thank you anyone else i agree it was a strange kickoff back to school my kids are doing great had a lot of great things to say about being online so and i have gotten a lot of feedback from social media that i've sent in and also yes we have received a lot of emails today and we are reading them all i promise even if we don't respond to each one of them this afternoon i know we received quite a few so all right we are going to go on to 5.0 i move that we approve the consent agenda items questions comments or concerns this is really i just wanted to briefly go over what we i was able to meet with dr thomas and mr holland um regarding some expensive vouchers and i just wanted to kind of go over that real quick with the board i don't know if other board members i know it came to us in questions regarding our renewal of our insurance last april the board approved to go with the mahoney group what was brought to the board was a cost of 904 thousand speaking with mr holland and dr thomason and dr foley today there there was a clerical error in that and the actual cost was 9.45 945 000 and then um there were two additional there were two additional add-ons later in after the board had approved that which ultimately um brought our total cost to just over 999 thousand dollars so the voucher we have that is for a renewal of 1 million 77 000 in all actuality for me it's not as great of an increase as it as i thought it was based on what was presented to the board and what we approved back in april but there was two additional add-ons throughout the year um that just came to us in vouchers and the board wasn't made aware specifically of those additional items so for me the increase at after learning this is nominal i was concerned initially and dr thomason dr foley mr holland we discussed that we perhaps need a change in our policy and process there so i know that they've both made notes of that so there will be time for that to come back for the board to discuss what kind of process practice and policy that we would want for the future in that because that was a large increase from what i knew and so i was concerned about that but i wanted to share with the rest of the board that that was literally information we just discussed my other question and hopefully dr fowler i know we did send some questions we have vouchers on here for furniture for our student unions you were able to respond and let us know that this is a down payment um i still have the question do we have at all a final cost on what because this still doesn't include this was a down payment it doesn't include the technology piece do we have an idea of what that final cost is president kaler board member or vice president reese so as far as the furniture the requirement was paying half of the cost up front so the there is a finite price to the furniture and then in terms of the technology um the price for the technology um so far the quotes have been really really high and so we have not come to an agreement yet on anything that's reasonable and i will bring back to the board a recommendation once we have one that's reasonable to bring back so so the answer is i don't have a price for technology um the prices that we've seen so far are astronomical and so we're trying to find something that's reasonable and we're not there yet okay and i'm sure it is because everybody is trying to get their hands on technology right now um because that's primarily how people can function um i would just like to ask that that if at all possible come before the board with the cost estimates with instead of on a voucher so we can have that discussion so we can get more of a well-rounded cost for the changes in our student unions yes and we we've had a quote from troxell a company that we've worked with before and then this week we met with the principals in the architect in an online format with another company called imedia so we should have their quote this week and then we'll at least have two to compare with but but um i'll have that to bring back to the board i'm hopeful hopefully soon thank you thank you mrs reece yes i think that um dr thomason is even talking about bringing back at least an informational item on our mahoney group and so that the entire board can get an update um since we did just sign another year contract so i do hope you can do that maybe soon president keeler will make sure we get that on the next board agenda and then bring the mahoney group in and talk about some of the coverages and the policies and costs for those areas thank you and i agree mrs reese we have to have a policy in place that um moving forward and i'm sure that's going to come back to us as well and president taylor one last item on the consent agenda um i'm going to kind of go back to what i said at the last meeting um regarding the amendment to policy dkc because that is in our consent the expense authorization and reimbursement i'm not comfortable with this and kind of looking at what we've just learned and what we went through that thing's just coming through on vouchers and after the fact just it just raises a little more concern for me so i i don't have i'm not able to support the the expense authorization and reimbursement at this time thank you any other questions or comments on my board go ahead mr glover thank you president kaler well i don't know are any of you guys else waffling because i can talk about why i think that that this that the reimbursement is is uh is worthwhile i mean we talk about but i think what happens to a lot of teachers is they go and they're spending their own money and they just you know you lose receipts or you just you know you pay with your your phone you just don't have the receipts and i think this is just a nice way to do the paperwork ahead of time i think it does save paperwork after the fact but this kind of guarantees that they're not out of pocket they can be they can get this they can probably get it ahead of time before they even travel or know how much they can spend and get reimbursed so i like the idea i think it's good whatever i do believe there's a cap too for each type of trip so it's not like it's just a free-for-all expenditures there is a state statute that we follow for each trip whether where it goes what it entails so i'm i'm comfortable with that too president killer members of the board that is set by the federal government it's the federal government reimbursement amounts uh for each state or country or even whichever city you're at that that we follow and that's that's a capped amount for each individual area depending on the cost of living in that area yeah you're not you know you might get one semi nice meal for that amount of money but the rest of the time you're scrumping and save it's it's not much okay all those in favor aye aye aye those oppose nay motion carries 4-1 okay we're moving on to 6.1 and let me scroll down a little bit there curtis i move that the governing board approves a rollover amount of 232 772 to fy2021 for the renovation of williamsfield auditorium second and dr fowler i think you're going to give us a little presentation on this please yes thank you president keller members of the board i'm bringing forward this item tonight regarding the ongoing renovation at the wingsfield auditorium it was brought to my attention yesterday that the board was not aware of this project i apologize for that but i'm bringing forward those details tonight and then i'll answer any questions so beginning with the auditorium we've we've had some ongoing discussions there's been issues with auditorium for for many years it does go back to issues related to construction at the campus that i don't need to spend a lot of time on i know the board is well aware of the ongoing issues we've had but most recently this past fall we had some discussions with faculty some key faculty members in administration about some concerns and the need to upgrade make some upgrades at the media center or sorry the auditorium at waynesville and so we did reach out to some vendors and um specifically got some quotes on details related to needs in the auditorium and they were really classified into three major areas that would be the lighting the flooring and the curtain replacing the curtains including the cyclorama for those and i wasn't aware of what a cyclorama was before my experience at a school it's the the blank sort of white um kind of canvas that's at the back of the stage and it's very critical to theater operations because they project the light on there and and if you have one that is is in in disrepair um it does it really impacts the ability of what they're able to do in the auditorium and the one at williamsfield um over over the years had really um was in bad shape and and one of the lights had left on and it actually had a hole in it and so it was it was really in need of repair and so when when we reached out to these uh different companies and got the quotes um we felt that the the prices were high and a lot of them it was the it was the general contractor that was going to be making some profit in and the decision as a group we talked about was reaching out specifically to vendors that we knew to to get prices for replacement and those came down to for lighting urban energy and i included some pictures um much much of the house lighting at the auditorium in waynesville was not working properly and uh was was very inefficient lighting and so they are more than three quarters of the way believe they're just on their last bank of lights in there um and so that that was something that was a critical need and you have some pictures there you can see that that work is is getting close to complete they're just on the last bank of lights that's closest to the stage over the auditorium area so urban energy is a company that we have worked with in the past and felt very comfortable with with them the second is the flooring um the flooring is circa 2010 or sorry 2007 8 when this auditorium was was built and uh it's in need of some refreshing in terms of the floor and that would be replacing that carpet with with new carpet and then the polished areas um that exit stage right and stage left as well as the actual stage itself was all part of the scope for wholesale floors again another company that we've had a lot of success with and have worked with in the past and then finally the the the curtains and there's a couple areas in the curtains that um were challenged but one of which um the the fire marshal requires a certain level of of fire retardant uh ability with those curtains and the the curtains that we had were had not been maintained and the fire retardant had exceeded its its useful limited so um costing all that out it was the best just to replace those including the cyclorama which is brand new as well and so that that all of those items were done and that work began certainly right around the time as we entered this uh and i wanna and i'm using it certainly tongue-in-cheek the wonderful world of kovid um in that in that process so that work had been started and typically what happens um in terms of rpos when they're issued if the work is not completed during that that season and it's really hard for our department especially because summer is is when we get most of our work done well the fiscal year ends on june the 30th and the new year begins on july 1st and uh there's it's often very difficult to complete projects before june 30th and so typically what happens then a po is issued prior to to the june 30th deadline and then what is paid out um is paid out in the previous fiscal year and then those items that aren't completed or rolled over and then paid out in the new year and in the example that's listed there you can see that only the lighting portion was completed part of the lighting portion was completed during the last fiscal year and the remaining lighting is in process and then the flooring well the the curtains were just recently done again that happened this fiscal year so that payout would be coming in this fiscal year and then the flooring was the last thing to occur and that is the last item to happen and so that flooring can't happen until the lighting is complete and so i will answer any questions that the board may have regarding this item president kaler members of the board um i'm intimately familiar with this project in a couple of different areas because we did have some life and safety issues within the auditorium for both lighting and for the the curtain that was in the in the building the floor lighting for the theater where the steps go up that was completely out and was not working and uh some of the emergency lighting too in schools uh when you turn all the lights off there should be an emergency lining that's on in one corner of the room some of that was burned out and taken needed to be replaced in in that aspect too so we thought with repairing all the life and safety issues it was time for a nice refresh and upgrade for the auditorium also so we completed everything all at once since they were already going to be there for the for the the projects that needed to be taken care of for life and safety it was actually to the point where um the gilbert fire department said that the curtain needed to be removed from the auditorium because of the fire retardant that had not been replaced for so many years and also with the curtain there had been a fire in the auditorium prior and about a foot a foot and a half of that curtain was cut off to to utilize the still the same curtain and save money but it was also not a great opportunity for theater projects and band and orchestra projects that were on the stage too so replacing at the same time just seemed to make sense thank you that just i was just about to ask the question that it was my understanding a lot of these repairs were due to safety issues and so thank you for going through all that yes thank you for the clarification dr fowler um and just moving forward i think we've all stated that we'd like to see these before and more in depth prior to them coming in this kind of fashion because it's already been started but thank you for um the clarification and again being safe we all wanna that's you know so important right now so thank you for that president caleb yes go ahead dr fowler and dr thomason because we we did talk about these being safety issues and um i know dr fowler you have worked really hard on getting things on a rolling repair list uh will these things now be added to that so that we are looking at that lighting and we're looking at the curtains not at you know both of our auditoriums and not getting to the point where like you said the fire marshal says yeah you can't even have this because it's just not safe are things like this now being looked at and adding to those refreshed lists president keller board member reece yes that that item along with others we're identifying and and um identifying a list of items to to be on a constant refresh piece so we're able to to stand on top of those items so have we looked at our elementary schools and their curtains as well because i know we do have a lot of elementary schools with curtains and if there is a fire hazard with high school maybe those elementaries we need to make sure that there's not a fire hazard president keller board member wilson yes um ben b holtz my um our director of maintenance he works very closely with uh with the fire marshals and has it has an and that's part of our preventative maintenance process that we're involved with yearly and so i don't have that information right in front of me right now but i can tell you that he's gone through systematically with each school and uh knows the age and the status of those curtains so i can get a detailed report and include that in an upcoming um superintendent's report if you'd like thank you i just want to make sure that we're not having a fire break out in an elementary school and i'm sure you guys do a great job with that but just for some peace of mind that all those curtains are handled i know the fire marshal comes in regularly i make sure that everything is sprayed with all the fire retardant things on all the cloth but i just want to make sure that that's also because i never thought about the curtain i thought about the bulletin boards but i never thought about the curtain thank you any other questions comments or concerns okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero six point two i move that the governing board approves the payment of longevity pay for 2020 2021 school year and the amounts listed for years of service totaling 86 500 any questions or comments for mrs martin we're all in favor i think of this one so all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 thank you and what everybody's been waiting for this evening the opening the reopening update of our school update of reopening our you could say it all different directions and at this point i'll hand it over to dr foley foley thank you president kaler members of the board we're excited tonight to talk with you about lots of things and so as the powerpoint comes up here we will get started on on almost two sections to this presentation we're gonna we're gonna start off and now that it's up we're gonna start off by saying we are in our third we finished our third day of school unlike any way we've ever started school and we want to start with these pictures of some of our beautiful students in their their home learning one of the things that we are really proud of is our families and our students for how hard they are working together to embrace the start of school very differently than any of us have ever experienced we also have some beautiful pictures here of our beautiful teachers who also have been working hard and differently than they ever have and in talking with our tina and june this week our t hea representatives we're we're proud of our collective teacher team and how hard they've worked together with their coaches and their administrators to embrace this differently so we start off by saying we are we have started school and we are are proud of that tonight we're going to talk about there's going to be two parts to this presentation we're going to start by doing some updates from our last meeting that pertain to school right now school that's happening right now some questions that we brought forward and are going to address what we're doing and how we're doing that from attendance to athletics we'll talk a little about do enrollment we're also going to talk a little bit about facilities because one of the things that we have spent a lot of time about is curriculum and instruction and we're going to talk about what have we been doing with our buildings and updates from when we first talked with you then we're going to transition over to some updates and we're going to talk about guidance that's come to us from the governor from the executive order last week and we're going to talk about some important things we need to come together and understand and work forward moving forward and so tonight we'll go deep into both of those but we're going to start tonight with right now and then transition into next steps and now what so we're going to start with some attendance updates because if you'll recall last week you asked or the last meeting you said so how are we doing this attendance thing so where we've done it now here uh for day three we've got it figured out so we're gonna transition here for a second to talk a little bit about what attendance looks like in elementary and what attendance looks like in secondary right now okay president kaler members of the board cabinet and community we're excited that we've had three days of school doesn't feel like it to me i'm missing those kids our teachers are in there working hard they're taking attendance every day there are multiple ways they can account for students participating and attending so within our virtual meetings within teams and canvas and sometimes zoom they are able to use a roll call feature a chat feature sometimes kids are typing here or their name everybody's doing their own little thing parents and students can also email their teachers which counts as attendance when they complete an assignment or assessment that is also recorded is they're here and they're working and then parents can email to verify their kid was working and logging on so one of the great things is these kids can complete work in the evenings if they need to which is helpful for our parents that are working so teachers literally can verify kids the following day in elementary so we're looking pretty good our registrars are following up on any kids that haven't shown up but our teachers are on top of it as well so i think it's going well it's a new process so it'll get better you had a chance today in our questions we had provided with you where we were just in the first few days and so you can see that attendance confirmation connection with our students anticipated enrollment has been very very high which is a very positive sign at the secondary level attendance looks a little different president kaler members of the board so when at the secondary level the the ability for a student to be counted present we're taking attendance every period and the same rules apply as the elementary does but what we're doing a little bit differently is that at five o'clock every night we're sending out an email to parents if a student was unverified in any one of the different class periods that they were supposed to be at now we understand that kids do this school at any time and the idea is not to say hey why weren't you there it is really a means of communication that says we noticed you weren't there today in order to be accounted present please just respond to us that you have worked and then our registrar's and our attendance people that are able to count them as president if we get that email response so we've been able to automate that system and so that email goes out at five o'clock every night and what we do is we ask them to just send us an email we created four different email accounts that literally say you know wf attendance for williamsfield and you know sms attendance and so they can just send an email that verifies that their student has been able to work at any different time during the uh during the day and so that's just a little bit different process we're trying to do that no we're not trying we do that every day at five o'clock from the attendance during that time this would be a great time to mention that it was above 90 for our community members and honestly i was not expecting it that high and i was really impressed with our registrar's and our teachers for getting that number dr foley do you know what the actual numbers i know it's above 90 but i don't have that email pulled up okay exactly i'm like i know it was above 90 i think it was even higher than 90.
all right mrs lebron we're ready to go great thank you eric so good evening everyone my name is melissa labrocciano and i am the principal of huckleberry hill elementary school and i want to thank you all for joining us this evening this thursday night to hopefully get some of your answers based on the questions that you've asked through our google form that dr burl shared last week prior to starting our presentation i do want to do some introductions tonight on who's part of our district leadership team and also members who have contributed to our reopening plan so we have this evening dr maureen ruby our assistant superintendent of schools miss deb farias our director of curriculum instruction miss terry cavanaugh our director of human resources miss gina wygonic our director of special education and pupil personnel and also we have anna laforgia who is one of our nurses at wisconia middle school but she's also our nurse supervisor for all the district nurses in in the district and we have dave pipsoski who's listening in our assistant principal at huckleberry hill elementary school and last but not least we have mr eric cochlin our director of information and technology and without him none of this would be possible so thank you all for joining us tonight right so if you want to share the screen eric i can talk about the agenda great so as this is our q a for huckleberry hill elementary school based on our 2020 reopening plan eric if you want to just go to the next slide great so our agenda for today's meeting so we have come together in collaboration and also to provide you with some answers at either a district level to address your district level questions or to address our building-based questions that you have asked you can submit additional questions this evening via the google form that was shared with you last week dr ruby will be our question moderator and if we have chance at the end of the presentation to answer any additional questions we will be happy to do so but that's really truly our agenda for tonight the purpose to provide parents with answers to their specific questions regarding the school reopening plan and our goal is to really create a coherent and consistent understanding of the current status of the district reopening plan and i will say that we have received probably close to 300 questions so far and all of building leaders and district leaders have gone through those questions and we've really truly done our very best to succinct those questions together and the best way that we can because many of the questions we received were very similar in nature just asked a different way so our goal tonight is to truly try to provide that clarity for all of you and for you all at home to get a little bit of a better understanding of our reopening plan and i believe dr ruby you will begin our presentation this evening to talk about the brief review of the planning process and to answer some of our district level questions that's correct thank you miss la brasiano so welcome and before i begin i just want to thank everybody who's here tonight representing um the school district and also to thank all of the people from the district who are not present who have been working tirelessly for the past it seems like forever now but the past several weeks um to develop the plan that was mandated by the uh the governor and the commissioner and was due on the 24th of july which we submitted and i want to just reiterate uh some of what dr brill's been telling people in our other school meetings that what we're presenting to you tonight in terms of responses to questions that were submitted are based on the the situation as it is today and that while we are going to be presenting the most current information we have things are subject to change as melissa stated we had well over 300 questions and what what we did is exactly what you said we called through those questions even as they were coming in right up until this afternoon looking at uh at themes so that we could provide in a a succinct hour-long presentation answers to those most frequently answered questions asked questions that we have the answers to and we don't want to give out information that's half baked there are some questions that um some parents have posed that we are still working on and we're not going to make up an answer for you we are collecting data and we are working with our health consultants we're working with the uh connecticut association of public schools superintendents we're working with information that's coming at of cea and aft we're working with a variety of of collaborators to get the the actual details of the plan in order so that we can do a written response to the questions that have been asked we will answer every single question and that document will be available on our website so i i know it's disappointing to have an answer in there and to be in a situation where you're waiting for that information but we are going to give you that information maybe not all tonight but the information we give you is going to be absolutely up to date with the details some of you have expressed that you needed so as you know we did an initial parent survey and to put people as minds at ease that survey was for us to get kind of a dipstick of where folks were feeling about um whether they were sending their students back to school or not because we were asked by the the governor and the commissioner of education to gather information um we've been asked to give a lot of information so that the state could have an idea of what was going on in the towns to kind of get their finger on the pulse of what was going on in districts throughout the state so a guidance document was issued by the connecticut state department of education that required us to develop a reopening plan that was a tripart plan there were three parts to it we were required to develop a plan for 100 of the students in 100 of the time a hybrid plan and a complete remote plan and these uh reopening plans were due last week and we developed them we submitted them to the board of ed presented them to the board of ed and then after the board of ed reviewed uh the plans and unanimously voted on it we submitted it to the state department so now as we explained we solicited questions from you and we are going to present as melissa said district level answers to questions that pertain to the district and then melissa will do just as the other principals did deal with her constituents parents from the huckleberry school and give you answers to questions that are specific to huckleberry sometimes talking about what we what i'm going to explain to you from the district level and then how that plays out at huckleberry um it's no surprise that some of the things that we have to do are have a cost attached to them so the state department required us to submit costs to them in terms of the um the additional personnel the additional materials that we would need to safely open and the board of finance the board of selectmen and the board of education are collaborating to work out the financial arrangements to be able to procure what we need to open schools um we will be um sending out uh probably the the earliest friday or next monday or tuesday i'm i'm hoping by monday um a a survey document to parents of all the students in the district and in this document you are going to be asked um what your intentions are for your students so the options which we'll explain more about what option means but currently we are our plan consists of a 100 of the students in 100 of the time that's what we're preparing to be able to do however parents have the option of having 100 percent remote learning for their student for a variety of reasons some people may be uncomfortable with sending their children back there may be extenuating circumstances related to student health parent health or uh other folks who are living in the home's health and that you don't have to disclose what that is um but you're going to be asked to commit for each one of your children to one of those options we are obviously a a organization that's very dependent on human resources teachers make it happen the paraprofessionals make it happen our secretarial staff we have a number of unions and everyone that works for us is critical to our operation running smoothly and safely so we um just like every year we expect that everyone's coming back and we are sending out a welcome letter and uh folks who are not able to come back for whatever reason are um to contact human resources so we'll be getting that data and that will help us be able to plan for opening school we're going to communicate every single procedure and protocol that we will be doing and that students will be expected to do to everyone in the district all of our employees all the parents and all the children and we have an extensive pd planned for our teachers typically we have teachers back or three days before the beginning of school to get everything done that really is like spitting 13 days into three days but this year we did some changes in the calendar at a board meeting so that we would have five days and then following that decision the governor and the commissioner changed the number of required school days from 180 to 177 so that districts could have three extra teacher days so we will have eight full days of professional learning opportunities where we'll be working with all of our staff to make sure that we're all at the level that we need to be in terms of procedures and protocols for safety for safeguarding health or using a variety of new teaching modes that we will be using in the classroom and so i just want everybody to rest assured that we're going to be well prepared in terms of the professional learning opportunities and then as we'll talk about later students need to learn these and so we're not going to expect that our students are just going to come back to school and be able to function in the new environment as a part of this planning process we are planning for how we are going to teach and support our children to adapt and to function well in the new environment eric so i've talked about this but this is laid out because this is going to be available online we're going to post this recorded presentation for you and you'll have be able to look at this and and see and be able to read because if you're like me you hear it and you want to see it as well so this is what these are the scenarios i just described 100 in person experience a hybrid per uh experience which is 50 50.
uh mr zesky can we have a roll call for quorum sure mr grippo here ms hallon here miss ham here ms harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol asks that uh we stand for the pledge of allegiance i assume jeff you're gonna show up the flag i will [Music] let's rise for the pledge all right pledge of allegiance your head's getting cut off well uh good evening everyone thank you to the board for attending this evening uh mr solomon miss milano carol mike uh knows a lot going on so i appreciate pulling me in together pretty quickly last couple days especially with the updates on reopening before we uh dive into the agenda just want to apologize we're a few minutes late a few of us were uh in a prior non-meeting uh at the high school of all places and we had to uh beat but 10 traffic to get back here in 10 minutes so apologize if you all been out there waiting and uh mike when you get a chance during the meeting if you don't mind texting uh or messaging how many people we have watching uh before jumping to the uh actually before we actually jump into superintendent's updates do we have any correspondence or anything from the audience at this point uh jeff to the covet 19 email address we do we have uh quite a few emails uh to cover about covid19 yeah i'll ask uh we can certainly go through those now or if you feel that the majority of those emails really corresponds to your update yeah there's there's really one that doesn't um that i need to address um it's kind of tied together but i want to address it kind of separately it's from the cheshire change coalition which is exciting it's a group of uh cps graduates uh most of them graduated like between 2011 and 2016.
i think we were 98. between 99 to the lowest being 96.6 so you can see here unless i missed a lower number that we have gotten our families and our teachers and students are connecting with each other and we're talking about handfuls of students that we are still making connections with i think it's just important for our community to know that we are educating kids and they are coming because that was a problem in the spring and it seems like they're coming so thank you mr lotzenheiser tell me about how we do this attendance on our wednesdays please so on on wednesday because we have open office hours that we are not required to do attendance because we're not having that time where they're meeting directly with their kids so on wednesdays we will not be recording the attendance so the attendance will be monday tuesday thursday friday but we still have 180 days of school so it still counts wednesday counts as a school day it's wednesday still does count so is it like a remote learning kind of attendance how are we sorry no is that how we're wording it i just want to make sure that we're getting those all 180 days in yes and it's called remote learning is the code that we're able to use uh within the system within the synergy system so the next slide is actually an example of what this attendance letter looks like this was built before we had the exact emails put into it but the nice part is one email goes out from the district and it includes all four schools so parents can just respond to that from the secondary level so i know you guys had a lot of questions last time about athletics so i'd like to give you an update of where we are in terms of athletics with the governor's announcement last week immediately after that the aia came out this is their twitter post but at the same time this was an announcement that's saying because there was not a change into the start of the in-school day that august 17th is still the first date of practice so they have not changed any of their guidelines of going forward so we're going to continue with the plan that we had put in place once again we have a group of the high school athletic directors principals and myself that are monitoring this situation meeting weekly to determine whether we go on to the next stages and moving forward into what it looks like for our athletics and activities and so right now this is a tentative timeline that we are looking at you can see this week we are considered at stage two following the process and procedures that were developed at the beginning of the summer after two weeks we will be moving into a stage three well this would be our second week in stage two so we would move into stage three on next monday and then would be at stage three for two weeks and then the week of august 17th when the ai says that resumption of full in-season practices begin that's when we would allow that to happen right now the tentative start date for competitions is the week of september 7th i do want to say there's a caveat the aia has sent out a survey to all schools within the state it's due on the 31st all schools are providing guidance back and we're expecting that aia will breed for providing some other guidance for us we don't know what that guidance will be yet as soon as we get that guidance we will reevaluate and see what happens there's a lot of questions on our seasons being moved back or are we even having seasons a lot of those different questions as of right now they have not changed what their stance is if they do change their sans we will resume our committee to look at what our next steps are and we'll be able to communicate that to you once we have that information so who makes the decision in reference to moving from one stage to the next so it's the committee of the group that we have together the athletic directors the principals and myself have been the group that have immediate have met we are using the metrics about what's happening on our campuses and that's actually what the next slide is in terms of taking a look at do we have contact or incidents about what's happening so so are you um looking at the statistics by zip code of our schools that come into our area as far as what the what's happening in our community we are getting a daily update on that from with the community as well sure you know what i think that you know as we talk about these things um i just looked today and i looked at our zip codes and the zip codes that come into our schools and as far as the numbers um as of today it's 3538.
that model we talked about earlier in some communications that is a model where fifty percent of the children are in the school at one time rather than a hundred percent and this would happen um based on uh changing health data and recommendations or if we were not able to secure the building's safety in the manner that it needs to be in our 100 plan because as i said the plan requires us to procure things uh more materials some of those materials are desks because we don't have desks in all of our classrooms we have tables where we have children working together that's not going to be permissible with social distancing so a 50 50 model could be triggered with changing health data it could be triggered if um supplies were not able to be procured to ensure a safe environment then the remote learning model if there was a real spike in um the the incidence of cobit in our community where it was no longer safe to have children in school um we have a plan to be able to go to a 100 remote model so we have all three scenarios and as i said earlier our goal is to have 100 of the students in 100 of the time and you have as a parent the um that choice what's really important is that we all understand that there are only at the two choices that are presented the 100 in or the 100 remote there's no parent option for the hybrid choice that hybrid choice is a model that's triggered either by a health situation or a material situation but it's not a choice but we as a district because of the the details that we've worked out in our plan are prepared should anything happen to go from a 100 model to a remote model 100 model to a hybrid model a hybrid model to a remote model or a hybrid model back to 100 model that's why the state had us do that so that we would be able to be fluid based on the needs of of the community depending upon the variables that i discussed eric so remote learning we the state is using the term remote learning in the spring they use the term distance learning and i think that the change was made because the remote learning that we are prepared to engage in is not like the distance learning that we were doing in the spring in the spring i think i was quoted as saying it was like an amputation i mean we were just cut off from being in school and so our our faculty our and our administrators i i were heroic in how they were able to overnight just get get our act together to get something that we had never done before up and running and as you will recall that was an asynchronous model where content was put online in google classrooms and um that's not what we're doing other it's going to be synchronous and i'm going to talk about that in a few minutes but this remote learning as defined by the state is a temporary option that's being offered by the state for parents because they're sensitive to the to the needs of of parents and families and so as i stated the district will honor this parent option for as long as the state of connecticut allows us to offer it um and as i stated before you will be able to inform the district on the survey of what you choose another another um statement that i need to go over that's kind of fueled by questions that we've been asked is about transitioning on in terms of parent choice people have asked us well if i choose to keep my child at home and remo learning um do they have to wait till the next semester or can can they ever go back into the classroom and so the answer is absolutely yes parents have the flexibility to change their their choices about the model that they're in however you can understand that when we have to engage in uh implementation of social distancing and other precautionary measures in school we need some time to plan for that so if a parent wants their child to come back we there there are things that we need to do to accommodate and ensure the safety of that child and the other children that are in the class so parents who are going to be asked to give a two-week written notice to the school of an intention to have their child come back into the 100 in class model um and then in order to to give us time to prepare we would anticipate having that that child come back into school the first day of school in the following months so for example if on september 17th you say you know what things are going great i really want my child to be in school send a letter to to the school following the protocol that we'll provide and the school will initiate getting that your child's classroom ready to receive your child and they would come in the first day of school in october if you send your child you elect to send your child to the 100 in school and for whatever reason we don't need to know what your reason is you decide you know i really need to have my child at home that's not a problem uh we still need a written notice we need to keep track of where kids are there's documentation that we need to do with this date on attendance um but that can happen immediately because you can understand the school isn't needing to do anything to prepare for your child to leave the classroom and go home that's kind of on on you what you do at home and that's your business um so you know as long as this is permissible by the state as it is now brookfield is ready to honor um parent choice on and and transitions if you change your mind eric so remote learning i hinted at this before it's remote learning it's different from distance learning and the fact that it will be a synchronous model so that means that the children who are at home will be getting live instruction from their teacher along with their peers their colleagues in the classroom um so the school day for somebody who is in remote learning is exactly the same as the school day for the student that's in the classroom and you might be thinking oh my goodness does that mean my child is going to be glued to a computer screen all day not necessarily that's not our intention um the teachers when the teachers are delivering their lesson it's you know a focused lesson and that will be delivered live through zoom or through other technology that we are currently working on to find the the best most affordable um way of delivering live teachers we can deliver live um uh instruction that's on a whiteboard or that is on a video through zoom but we are going to be having live instruction that's happening in the classroom um there will be down time where your child won't be on the screen where they'll be doing their own individual work uh there will be breaks there will be mask breaks there'll be you know obviously lunch and other things so it's not going to be like on the screen all day although you need to understand that that we are using technology so there is going to be a considerable amount of screen time necessary another thing that's really important to understand is that attendance is mandatory so if you opt into 100 remote it's not a la carte like i think i'll do um remote learning from 9 to 10 30 and then maybe i'll hop back on at 1 30.
and it's particularly exciting for me because most of them were students when i was a principal at cheshire high school or at the very least it died before that and they are committed to supporting the district's efforts to build on diversity uh understanding of multiculturalism and positive change anti-biased anti-racist curriculum so today as a matter of fact unfortunately i had a meeting come up at the 11th hour today and i couldn't meet with them uh the way i had planned and i'd get into that in a minute but um kevin hanlon met with them our k-8 curriculum coordinator and they had a few questions for the meeting that really fall within that domain of equity that i want to address outside of the all the other covid nuts and bolts so what specific ways will reopening plans address racial environmental disparities in under served communities i don't know that our plan necessarily addresses that [Music] in as much as it you know the next two questions really speak to it how will you account for working class families that may not be able to work from home or hire help to supervise children remote learning um last year last spring that was potentially an issue for people but certainly mitigated by the fact the vast majority of people were home if we go to a remote learning environment i think it will be again because the viral spread is so high that unfortunately we may be looking at that scenario again but we'd have to go to you know that would have to occur before we got to that point again and i think this next one is how does your plan specifically for a supporter assist families that may not be able to afford proper required technology for remote learning um and it's a good question as you know we provide a one-to-one device for every single student in the district at no charge is part of their educational experience here last year we made substantial efforts to reach out to families and provide hot spots and technology to those who may have needed it or additional support to those who needed it we had a student through a unique arrangement who was actually living in bridgeport we drove technology to their home like we go above and beyond to make sure that everybody has access to to learning and that um you know your your economic conditions should not impact you here and we uh we definitely live by that so those are good questions we appreciate the group sending in thank you and uh for the board members what jeff is referring to uh leoroti is a spokesperson for the petition and cheshire change.org has been uh great reaching out to us and uh looking to get something stuck with the board soon and have a discussion around equity and so forth so we're gonna work to try to plan that out but you all have the uh email um from writing on this with the content behind it um adam you had a question i did uh the uh dr solon's uh comment about the student bridgeport sort of set off something in my head i know that in years past we've talked about um the uh uh participation we have with uh new have the new haven school system right a lot of times and um do you think that you know going forward once covet has passed i know that you you've always said that we have a kind of a high dropout rate not a dropout rate but the uh high school students tend not to attend cheshire high anymore when they come from new haven and uh i would just like to for you to consider unless it's something you've done already perhaps that um uh those types of students could perhaps uh attend remotely that could be a consideration for the future to sure to allow them to continue to have access to our school system if they yeah i mean thanks it's a good point adam obviously we'd love to have them in person and i think that one of the um the challenges just in my experience at both dodd and cheshire high school has been that the older our kids get the earlier they have to get up to take that ride and it's that's really prohibitive so um it's another consideration as we move forward but i appreciate you talking uh thinking about that and sharing you know another strategy for us to make sure that they remain included in our schools thank you and i i know the rest of correspondence at least what i've seen is all related to uh school reopening ideas and concerns so uh we're going to address those during the course of stupidness update i also remind uh those of you watching that you can submit questions concerns complaints that they have some to the cbs covet 19 at cheshire.k12.ctus and we'll get to those um as we get through the superintendent's update so that being said uh dr sullin we're in item four which is your superintendent's update okay so there are quite a few items as tony mentioned related to um kovid 19 and our reopening for the fall so this week has been a little bit of a roller coaster in the sense that on monday the governor announced plans to really allow districts more flexibility around planning for the fall particularly around high school and the rationale is that high schools we're finding across the street the state are very very hard to integrate uh some of the mitigating interventions for the spread of the virus so one of the things that you know we talk about is social distancing um a real challenge with bigger people the data says you know the older you are the more likely you are to spread uh so our 18 year old bodies look a lot different than our eight-year-olds um so that's a another consideration being able to cohort is near impossible without scrapping all a tremendous number of classes and academic options which is really not palatable for students that are trying to you know gain admission to various colleges and universities and so there are a number of factors lunch is a huge factor given the size of schools you know i work a lot with meridian wallingford and southington southington's high school's 2000 students we have 1400 at cheshire high school getting them through lunch in a socially distanced distant manner it would start with brunch at you know eight in the morning and run through one um to be able to provide it within the space that we have and these are problems that are not unique to cheshire high school but across connecticut and so the governor and commissioner at that time said you know we really need to look at flexibility particularly at the high school level tuesday the commissioner was on a conference call with numerous members of boards of education from across connecticut and reiterated that districts will have flexibility today there was an emergency call i got on at three o'clock and was told well you know we really haven't defined what flexibility means yet and we don't really have a plan for um you know if what percentage of the community is covered positive do we go to hybrid versus remote i know new york and massachusetts both recently released their plans so now it's back to that state of limbo [Music] and evaluating this to a great degree i really am concerned about at the high school level our ability to mitigate risk and still deliver a high quality educational experience with all students all day clearly that is my preference to have all students attend all day every day i think that's everybody's preference [Music] our worst option is all students remote every day and i'm worried that by not taking precautions we're going to accelerate our our transition to an all-student's remote everyday situation so at this point i've asked dr gad and the team at cheshire high school to examine various options for schedules if we were indeed to go to a hybrid model one model we looked at had half the students coming in the am the other half in the pm um the benefit of that is that all students have contact every day some of the drawbacks are that it's a very short window the periods so in the morning uh half the school would meet in four periods uh in abbreviated periods they'd all come in get their their instructional time leave in the afternoon grab their lunch or whatever the other group would come in and those students would go to the same four classes in just a different part of the alphabet they teach the same four classes tomorrow you do the same thing with the other periods now the cost associated with that is fairly astronomical if we were to do this by alphabet split the groups by alphabet the cost for transportation alone would be about five thousand dollars a day on top of that we have a number of shared staff members between the middle school and high school particularly with world languages and they couldn't teach all the classes they teach and unfortunately they're languages that are hard to find quality certified people so you talk about french german latin those classes would be really compromised and i'd need to hire additional people to cover that schedule tweak alternatively we've looked at um having all students in every other day so you have half of the group in day one the other half day two and they just alternate every other day in that scenario we really have very limited conflicts and there's zero change in cost the benefit there is we've exp we expand out the period length so students are in classes longer we'd still divide up the periods students would have a little bit more time in the class during that day but we call that the collegiate model where students basically are attending their classes every other day um and so on their off days between their live instruction they are engaging in additional the work that the teacher has assigned them for that day as well as you know checking in with support staff during that day uh to support their work the following day they come back to school very much like a collegiate model where the classes are a little bit longer in length but not meeting every day either way our we would have to institute something for a short period of time this is not a long-term solution we would be looking at you know doing this probably until early october and then do we commit how is it working do we commit to this for another period of time do we alternatively uh pursue a different option but at the end of the day this whole thing may be a moot point if indeed the governor says you don't have that flexibility that all students must return based on the data that we have so um i just want you to know that that's what we're working on at this moment um how we're approaching it uh to try and again provide the best educational experience we can in a way that um makes sure limits the risk of spread i can never make sure i mean the only way we could do that is stay home and even people who stay home aren't always great i'm sure you have neighbors or friends that are out about with no masks or whatever but it's critically important at this time we want all of our students to get back all day every day i encourage our community to wear a mask when they go out in public and to be vigilant about you know not taking that mask off when you're in close proximity to others and please you know be smart if you're traveling to a hot spot area because you need to when you return you need to quarantine this is the best way that we can make sure our students are in school every day um if we can and then we got to continue to do those good things that have been helping our our limited spread so with that i just want to pause and and give people the opportunity to ask any questions on on that piece of it i have one that comes up uh and some of our communications are received which is the eight foot six foot distance that um in the presentation game last time asked about you know uh three to six foot spaces between kids our classrooms city connecticut six places what was if we were to go back school and we can't keep kids in the classroom uh further apart than three feet does chester got given us the green light to do that just that's the email on that like who's gonna yeah give us confirmation that three to six feet is allowed sure less than three feet is allowed actually when you read the state guidance it says that schools should quote maximize social distancing they do not give any guidance as it relates to the distance apart that students should be now the the three feet and the six feet guidance that's how far people need to be away from each other at least without to not be wearing masks depending on your age and size um with a mask and the reason we mandate the at least two-ply mask if not up to you know n95 is like a single-layer bandana the viral aerosol distance when people speak is about three feet on average when people are wearing a two-ply mask it's two and a half inches so that's why we're being pretty rigid about the type of mask that people can wear because it dramatically reduces the viral spread i'm not saying it's safe to stay stand three inches apart if you have a mask obviously we want to have the the greatest distance we possibly can but the state has given zero guidance in that respect they've said just keep people as far apart as you can so one of the things that we've explored and i would talk about this in another part but is uh tense outside uh our buildings to provide more space in rooms that may be more densely occupied or rooms that you need to just get outside and take a mask break and maybe the sun or the weather is not conducive to that we want to have shelter outside for people to do that or if there's you know a dining situation where we need to you know get people outside for that then you know it provides us more options and we've we've tried to pursue those um but you as you know with the restaurants tents are a little harder to come by these days but we do have why thanksgiving i asked some other questions but let's get it to the end so basically to recap the update so far on the governor's comments on the hybrid model what you're saying is the focus is now uh until we hear otherwise or get it confirmed especially at least at the high school we can entertain a hybrid model but we're not necessarily entertaining that yet for the elementary school elementary school is that correct that's correct right now the data doesn't support that and we have mitigation strategies at those levels uh that we can't employ at the high school cohorting as i said is is near impossible at the middle school where we initially thought we would be cohorting in groups of approximately a hundred uh they've done a tremendous job to narrow that down to get it to closer to 25.
um reported cases in our school district so um i hope we're watching these numbers and not just okay because this is important this is here okay it's not somebody else's problem it's it's our concern okay please watch yes we will if you take a look at these were the um two different high schools and the number of participants it seems really high because a student who attends all five days is counted five times so this is really the daily attendance so we don't have 212 coaches that's i i should say it's sessions and so some of our some of our camps and clinics only went four days some went five days some only went two days but that's just the total numbers you'll see that we did have an incident where do our health screening protocols one student on one of the campuses was sent home and so this is something that we're really working on with our athletic directors and our coaches and being very diligent about it including the taking of temperatures every time that a student comes to a practice or a camp and we're recording that and tracking that through the athletic directors and through the schools can i just ask a quick question on that so this was last week correct and we know that with covid that there's a incubation period and things like that so um with the kids returning to school this week how are we following up with the kids that attended these camps to ensure that no one's sick this week so the idea of the camp is almost an ongoing process so the majority of the the students who attended camps this week there is camp this week and so we're continuing to see them all of the time and so it's not like they showed up and then we haven't seen them again this is ongoing and will be until season starts and will be until we're back in place did i understand that question correct i think so so while the these were camps and now we've resumed schools but they're still practices and and things happening so these kids are still coming on to our campuses and participating in groups um so can we are you gathering information from one week to the next for comparisons like i said we know that there is an incubation period and and a delay in what we may see in illnesses so um are you each day looking at comparisons to make sure that we're not having any outbreak breaks or are you just looking per day uh we are recording it every day and if there's an incident the athletic directors are contacting myself and a jillian our nurse if that if something happens so that is happening on a day-to-day basis so they're coming in and so we're recording that information and should there be any incidences we have our our plan that we follow and notifying the district nurse that we go through if there's any questions or concerns so this is kind of happening on a rolling yes day but not we're not just oh this day this day we are going back and looking like for instance the one who didn't pass the health screening you know that were going back and making sure okay that was i'm throwing things out here that was on thursday that this happened so we really need to be looking at monday and tuesday at the students that perhaps i'm not saying that this one was out because of that but those are indications so that we're looking at monday and tuesday the kids that were in this group were good we're not having anything like that so we are looking at that kind of rolling so to ensure that we have that incubation period covered correct and i don't have it in here but we met this morning and we have not had any more incidents from the kids who have been back on campus on monday and tuesday of this week and now that the students that we've had previously in the students that we have even this week these are our first quarter sports these are our athletes most of them these aren't just the camps but they were actually our first quarter athletes that were not formally practicing but doing a camp before the season is that correct when we use the term camp because it happens in the summer cancer clinic even though right now year-round practice is allowed the aia doesn't have any restriction on these are actually all of our athletes from not just first quarter but all the quarters i need to touch base with you about middle school athletics our middle schools are part of an organization called the east valley conference the evc is composed of chandler queen creek and higley schools and um there was a vote made not last week the week before that that as an eevc they decided to suspend first quarter athletics given a lot of the different uncertainties that were happening especially with the fact that if they follow the aia schedule by the time they would be able to compete we would have a three-week season and so as a as an evc there was a vote then and that and from that came the suspension so what they're currently looking at doing is we understand that those sports are important for those students what is the feasibility of putting those sports and combining them at the same time that we have in the second third and fourth quarters provided we're allowed to be back uh in person and putting those through the evc has not made a decision on that yet but that is an opportunity that we're looking for there are different challenges that come along with that because we know at the middle schools a lot of our coaches coach first quarter second quarter third quarter fourth quarter and so how do we fit them in to make sure we have coaches another issue that we're dealing with is the availability of referees should we have to combine different sports at different times those are logistical things but those are things being brought up and then we're considering for our our middle school students i've been seeing across the country a number of schools around the country are changing or moving their fall sports to spring so um are we kind of keeping an eye on what's happening on the national level in reference to this or are we just kind of doing our own thing in arizona here i i think when we take a look at that there's a lot of discussion and different things that are going on in terms of the aia level about what's happening there's different proposals out there uh currently i know one of the proposals is to keep the let me use football in this example keep football but move this beginning of the season to the end so there would be different overlap there have been proposals out there floated by other districts that said yes can we move it to the spring and what does that look like a lot of different conversation but honestly no decisions or anything going forward saying this is what we're going to do yet okay another question that you guys had last time was about dual enrollment so i wanted to give you a really really positive update on this i know that we talked about a liaison that's funded by the chandler-gilbert community college and our liaison's name is jasmine mercado and i had the good fortune to meet her last week she came in even though her official start date within higley schools wasn't until the 27th and as you can see from the slide her goals is to be that build that relationship with the teachers and the staff on the campuses she will be housed both on williamsfield and higley's campus and so she has an opportunity to serve the entire district and so there's a ways that this liaison is really going to be able to help and be that direct conduit to chandler-gilbert community college and so we're very happy that she's going to be there right off the bat her first goal and progress was to create a canvas page to start opening communication with parents and with students about the processes for dual enrollment and so i'm excited that we have that person in place i think when we take a look at dual enrollment and how that's going to work there's still going to be some questions about what's going to be able to be offered online and what is not and jasmine is going to be able to be there to help us navigate some of those situations in terms of allowing students to take it online it is going to boil down to what qualified staff we have and how that's i call it the split how the split happens between the in person and on the and the online but we do have an available resource that will be working with us uh mr craig pearson uh is also the lead at the district who's working with the dual credit and working with jasmine and the high schools to help streamline that process i know from experience one of the hard things as a parent sometimes when you do this enrollment period right here at the beginning of the school year making sure that everything is good and then we have communication with our parents and we're excited to have her on board and to help out with dual enrollment will we be seeing an email as a parent will you be seeing an email from her going out or will it just come from the school staff how does that normally work as of right now i believe it's coming from the school school staff until we can truly have that built in and to go forward i know that the enrollment typically starts around august 4th and goes into september so we have about a month where we have kids to be able to enroll and i think that parents want to know these how we can be able to do that and communicate with that and i think there's still a lot more questions unfortunately that we can't answer yet but we will be discussing those options thank you president kaler and members of the board so we just wanted to kind of go over where we've started off the new year with obviously very different for us as well we've partnered up with the transportation department working with josh has been very easy going his team has definitely been able to help us provide food we are currently um providing food at all 13 locations so we're at each school we are offering food between the hours of 7am and 1pm for any of the parents or the children to pick up their meals we're also doing 24 different bus stops so that nobody has to cross any major highway to get the food we did that based on just overall where students lived according to some of the demographics they had through transportation department the pricing is not free like it used to be so it is definitely a little different than we did the summer program with a summer program everything no matter whether you're a member of the higley school district long as you lived here you could get the food now it is the regular price food so if you qualify for free or reduced or the pay amount is how you're doing it we've definitely seen some drastic numbers changes um we are currently averaging about 100 breakfasts and lunches per day versus the thousands we were seeing over the summer program um if monday was our first day we did 132 lunches 127 breakfast uh yesterday was 96 lunches and 94 breakfast today was 103 lunches 96 breakfast so a little bit more we know it's going to take some time to get the word back out there we're also trying to figure out what we can do to try to get more food into kids hands we have got some great feedback from the parents who are using the program they're very excited about it we're looking at which bus stops and which schools are handing out more food and for the bus stops we've definitely noticed a big difference i mean of our bus stops two of them account for like 80 of the 24 um for handing out food so there's definitely a little variation and we we're not seeing the as many freezers we were hoping for but as far as we're concerned we're just happy that we're able to provide food for everybody that we can at this point um if we saw that we did send out both letters and emails out to all parents josh worked really hard on that as well he added maps with the letters we actually put the closest location whether it was a bus stop or the school in addition for safety reasons we now have added student id cards um so we're scanning a raise id rather than having them do a typically we'd have a keypad this way nobody's touching anything um most the parents and students have been really good about their cards i'd say we're about 70 so that's not bad because it's new for them um but even if they don't have it with it we are able to still search their names and things along those lines um there's some technology issues we've been having but we've been working through that they're very good about just writing down the information and making sure we give the food the kid and we'll in the back end will take care of that charge because we're not as worried about that as we are to make sure that they came for the food that they we are serving them the food are we able to hand out applications to those parents for the free and reduced lunch at that time or not is that allowed are we allowed to hand out applications to a parent so yes not allowed it is allowed so there's a couple different things we did that we did include the link on all the mailing we do provide it on all the bus routes as well as the schools we have a stack available for them so we had had some questions about that and then we've asked because we've had the transportation people working at all these locations we just told them that they asked any questions about it go ahead and hand them the application and so they've actually had some turned back in at the sites in the bus stop so then they return to us and we move it forward to rebecca cook and stuff does anybody in the room know when those applications are due because it'll be a new fiscal year correct we have that little at the beginning of the year we get to use old last years correct and then we get a new year correct absolutely so last year's i believe goes through october 6th it carries through um but as you add on we can always add on to it but anybody who is in the program last year automatically stays in it i believe it's october say it's early even something close would be good so just as a reminder to all our community it is time to maybe you can already start your new application if i'm correct so you can start it and get those turned back in so then we can have you on that program we have some updates on device distributions so president koehler members of the board we're excited to let you know that we've been able to approve as of today devices we are working with the ratio for every two students one device and we would love to be one to one but we're not totally there yet we've also been able to hand out 44 hot spots so this has gone up in the past two days in addition um i'm going to give a shout out to chantel perrine who's our district department secretary for ed services and i can't even tell you how many hours she's put in matching requests to students and families working with the sped department to make sure kids with ieps have what they need and even families that kids stay with the mom part of the time dad part of the time she's worked through that to ensure they have the technology they need so we're excited about it and we appreciate your support with all these requests good evening president kaler members of the board my fellow cabinet colleagues human resources update so when we were last here i had talked to you in terms of the communication that we had had related to our classified as we were preparing to reopen schools and what that looked like um you know just as we've continued the theme you know things are fluid so when we first type this together to the governor issuing his executive order um and having new information today and then getting some additional information from our various attorney groups that we use ural shumway and gustin rosenfeld from this past monday on the 27th um so i'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide but i'm proud to say with the collaboration of all of our various administrators both at the sites as well as to the departments we were able to reach out to all classified employees prior to the start of the school year and find additional assignments for those who were looking for additional assignments and for those who were okay with waiting and staying until in-person instruction began we were able to record that information and data also i will say we had a few hiccups but a few hiccups is actually not bad considering the number of people we were looking to identify to discuss meet with and find assignments and i'll say that um you know everyone really pulled together and did a lot of great things and making sure that we were able to accommodate those individuals and their various needs not in all situations were we able to fulfill their full fte but we were able to get very close to it if we weren't able and in some situations as ben from food services mentioned you know we had a lot of transportation employees helping us with the food service the delivery the purchasing um so instead of having it switch you know in some cases where we had some employees work a couple hours have a break another couple of hours there are some employees who probably got a little bit more than they would typically get for their fte just because we didn't want to change one assignment for one day to four different people so we had to take that into consideration as we were planning out our different shifts and our routes so that was wonderful and then we get the information from the governor on the 23rd last thursday so if we go to the next slide before i talk about that i also wanted to bring up information related to the family's first corona's response act in a little bit more detail i think when this first came out last spring and it had an effective date of april first and it goes until december 31st a lot of the emphasis and for lack of a better word focus was related to our classified that were here and that were working and maybe had incidents where they had symptoms or were exposed to individuals with symptoms and so as our individual certified teachers have returned i think that's kind of opened up a broad new component in relation to this i reminded my colleagues late last week that part of the family's first family's first corona virus response act it's a mouthful um ffcra um this is the only federal act that we have related to leave that actually keeps employees in a paid status every other act that we have that's come from the federal government is unpaid and employers can utilize or have their employees utilize various vacation time or sick time to keep them in a paid status so this was certainly a shift for us when we got this information last spring and i will say that in relation to the human resources employees particularly our benefits area an individual ms isabel castillo who's doing dual roles as well as our district nurse ms julian fulton has really been able to help this in these areas in making sure that we get the information out to the employees and they know what their options are in terms of whether it relates to ffcra or something else that the district offers but a reminder that i want to revisit that i talked to my colleagues about was the fact that in the spring and it continues until the 31st because you know this is federal it doesn't just apply to educational institutions or educational communities this applies to everybody there's a component in there that talks about if your children's schools are not opened or their entities in which you send your children for their child care is closed you can utilize this and get paid leave time it's an expanded family medical leave act fmla and so you can get up to 10 additional weeks actually if you include the first two weeks you get up to 12 weeks for this in the spring individuals who applied for this and wanted this particularly had to give your employer information related to proof of your care or your child care institution being closed interestingly enough probably interestingly enough in consulting and talking with our attorneys as well as some department of labor individuals it has actually become more lenient so i as an employee can say i don't believe the options that are out there is the options i want to provide for my child so i can provide you my own written statement to say i don't believe those are acceptable options as a result i want to apply for the ffcra and they can qualify for two-thirds of their pay and i share that because as we were unsure at the time of this whether or not the governor was going to create an executive order i wanted all individuals to know the impact of that in terms of what options and flexibility we give our employees in relation to potential remote work particularly our classified as our certified we already gave that option too and knowing that there is an option for those individuals that could get paid and at the time we were looking at approximately 20 25 employees in our classified area that we're looking at this option that number has since reduced i got an update and that number is now about a dozen employees who are interested in this so one thing that we're going to be bringing to you because i give you this history is related to this executive order that the governor passed and the additional information that we received in terms of guidance this past monday as a district we can decide if we would like to create a resolution that the board would approve to where we could pay our employees who are available to work and then they would be committed to being available to work and this is different than the spring in the spring when the governor issued hb 2910 that allowed us all to do that and we didn't necessarily have to decide on the option this one gives the district the option and i think it's in the district's best option and something that we would like to do after talking with my various colleagues in cabinet dr foley and dr thomason at the next board meeting offer you a resolution in which we could hopefully get past so we could keep all of our employees in a paid status and it benefits us in multiple ways it benefits us in the context of um that will help with unemployment numbers because if we do end up furlowing because it's not likely that we could have these alternative assignments for long periods of time we would be responsible for the unemployment and then we risk individuals leaving us and then it would be hard to then fill these positions when it is time to come back to in-person instruction not knowing when that exactly is going to be so if we have these individuals available to work and give them as much work as possible then hopefully they'll stay with us and be committed to us when the time does come and we continue in terms of that process as well as the fact that in some of these areas it's hard and challenging to find individuals to fill these positions for example our transportation and our paraprofessionals in our transportation area you have to have the cdl and we've known in the past that higley has struggled with maintaining tenure for lack of a better word with some of these positions because they could go elsewhere and sometimes get more money but with our successful compensation study that we had that was approved and done this last school year we've seen a lot less rollover and turnover in all of these positions in terms of our custodial our transportation our paraprofessional range so we want to keep that successful momentum going and i know that might be a struggle for some individuals but as i said the other dynamic of it is we have work and we have alternative assignments we just probably can't fulfill the full fte on all occasions but we're going to continue to work and continue to be creative in making sure there are other things that we take advantage of doing that maybe we couldn't in a regular academic year because of the business and the rush of everything else that is going on and you'll notice on there on the slide that it also pertains to our preschool area you know as part of this our preschools were not able to start we shared the last time that our preschool teachers were helping with kids club and making sure that for those students that were enrolled in kids club during their live portions of their study that started off this week those teachers could help support them so this is a dynamic for them too not knowing what all is going to happen in relation to the executive order and when preschools can start up and more information was given to the preschools in relation to being able to do developmental preschools certainly being able to offer services to our children with disabilities but then also looking at offering them to others because there's a peer modeling that's involved in that so the guidance that we got goes into more depth but those are other impacts and considerations that we have too that we want to take into consideration president taylor miss martens since we're talking about what we've already covered previously i was just wondering if you can try and help um help me understand what communication has been put out to our staff regarding the expectation i know we talked about the flow charts on excuse me on if we have positives and staff and things like that what what communication has been put out to our staff on expectations of returning to work and when they can work when they can't work have we done that communication last friday we sent out additional communication to all of our employees letting them know we've been calling it our guidance chart that julian fulton put together when we first started early on quite a few weeks ago and it lists in there in regards to if you have symptoms if you don't have symptoms if you test positive if you don't test positive when you can work when you can't work and then to call us right away and we actually you know in the update that we provided the last time we funneled a lot of the communication through our district nurse so there'd be one point of contact particularly as dr thompson had mentioned at the time because she's been the one that has been in contact with the arizona department of health services too and i can confidently sit here and tell you that every week it has changed every week we have sent out new information in relation to the guidelines and the exceptions and what has to be taken into consideration so every week when i'm answering a question i literally have to pull up the sheet in front of me and make sure i have the right week so i give out the right guidance additionally from that we heard from our administrators particularly at the site level this past monday that employees want to hear more in depth beyond their own illnesses what would happen if there is a positive case that is not involved with them directly so i had a conversation with dr foley and miss richards earlier today so we had had these um lack of a better word uh checklist for our administrators and so we actually are now actually going to provide that to our administrators to provide to our employees and we just had to update it and make sure that it had the most recent guidance and part of my hesitation i will be transparent that we didn't hand it out beforehand is because it has changed weekly and making sure people stay up to date up to date and so we felt in terms of the administrators they were the best ones to operate with those checklists and have that information readily available but they're concerned and feeling as though their employees need more information so we are going to provide that if i just got the updated sheets probably 30 minutes before this board meeting so we'll provide that if not later tonight tomorrow or friday i did think about what day of the week it was there for a second i'd just like to share with you maricopa community college has a wonderful manual for their employees and it's like everything that you as reese just said the first page says if you have a report of a positive and it's an intense shows and so you might want to take a look at their manual it's online and i think it's important for our staff to have this online for them to refer back to so just absolutely no thank you mr rutovich make sure to take a look at that and see how that could apply for us so thank you for that information ms martins there's a slight concern out there that they're i don't know if it's misinformation miscommunication that staff members have been told if you're sick you come to work until you have a positive and i'm like i do not want you at work if you are ill in any fashion because we have a waiting period um on test results and things like that so um multiple multiple multiple teachers and staff communicated that to me today and so that's why i'm asking like what has been out there and what have we communicated to staff directly what has been communicated to administration because i know anyone sitting in this room anyone in any of our schools would not be okay and that would not be acceptable for us to say come to work sick and it's i think everyone here mr glover can agree we actually have to reiterate to teachers do not come to work when you're sick because it is inherent in a teacher like i can get through the day so when we return to in person you know they're like oh i'm not feeling good i can get through the day that we have to reiterate do not do not do not you know and so i'm really concerned that this information is out there somehow some way coming from administration from site um site admission in the administration and staff meetings in um group meetings and chair meetings so can we make sure that the information on these flowcharts mr witovich said you know things like that can we make sure that this comes from the district office to all of our staff and um make sure that that's being addressed i i find that very concerning that anyone would think that that's okay um i know there's lots of staff members who are very concerned and upset that that would be our expectation and i reiterated that would not be okay that would not be our expectation and i can have a follow-up conversation with you guys but we need to make sure as we've talked about before that the information coming to our teachers our staff all of our sites is very clear and concise and cannot be misunderstood in any way shape or form so with with those checkpoints with that checklist with with all of that if we can make sure that we try and get this out and i i totally understand we have daily updates sometimes twice a day i mean let's just be real some things can change from the morning to the afternoon and i know that there's hesitation to communicate in that aspect but i think when it comes to things like this and again i think our our community our staff and our teachers will all know that things can change and make sure you have a numbering system that hey did you check version 20.5 i mean because it can literally be that but i think when we tend not to communicate at all then things can be i don't want to say made up because that's not what i'm trying to say but someone may perhaps use their own thought process and communicate what may make sense to them which may not be reflective of our district no thank you vice president reece i'm if you didn't notice i had a look of very concerned surprise because we have sent people home even when they just had a headache so i'm really surprised that there's a perception that individuals are to come to work when they're sick because and i'll certainly look to my colleagues but i feel as though we have reiterated on numerous times if you're sick at all you stay home one thing mr rotovision mentioned is that what we have been doing is every time things have been updating we have updated our faqs which are housed in our intranet so you do have to log in but it's behind the scenes big on our staff web page you go to the staff link you log in and all of the information has been there with their respective pages so we'll make sure to communicate that out too that if they can't find the email that they reference back to those pages within visions uh it's a platform in blackboard too in that larger perspective because that is concerning um you know a couple weeks ago cdc said as long as you have one symptom you stay home you know before it was multiple symptoms now it's one symptom and so you know every time that i've been involved or i've heard and i've had almost daily updates and touch bases with uh miss fulton you know we've talked about what's been going on what the cases are and people that have gone home just you know for a headache because that's one of the symptoms that's listed or um you know if somebody's had another component where they had a new loss of smell for that day we've sent them home so the perception that you're providing i would like to seek some additional clarification because i i'm uh at a loss to where that perception would have come from um and i don't know if any of my colleagues can call president are members of the board too the information is is definitely concerning i'm not sure exactly where that's coming from but i think we need to follow up on that it's even part of our login process every time someone logs into their computer we have the the checklist there if you have any of these symptoms please do not come to work please stay home and please contact your supervisor so in every aspect of the word for any individual that logs into a computer on a regular basis they should be able to read that and understand that this is this is no joke if you have any of the symptoms the police don't come to work so the information is concerning and i will follow up yes separately after this meeting with you because i agree um that that has always been our our stance but as you said with these checklists and and the flow charts you know i just want to make sure our communication out there is very clear and concise and so i will follow up but i was very concerned by that and i know the hours we have spent in this board meeting or in this board room and the hours you guys have spent that was not at all what was being communicated through this forum so um but i i wanted to make sure because that's concerning to me and i know i don't want people coming to work like that you know if they're ill they're ill and like i said for teachers that's a it's a new mindset because it's i can get through the day and it's we don't want you to get through the day feeling bad if you're sick you need to stay home so i'll follow up separately with you well i just had our question is this the end of the presentation to reference the human resources aspect or are we going to have some conversations in reference to um on-site discussion with staff this is the component for the human resources as part of my update i was not planning in regards to on-site communication with staff i do know um you know through last week a lot of the administrators remotely and maybe sometimes in some small in-person groups did have their kick-off meetings with their teams and the employees on their sites to talk about expectations to talk about processes and procedures but i've not i've not received any concerns so if there's any particular concern mr tovic that yes i do and i think um mrs reese brought it right up up front in reference to there needs to be some type of manual some type of document because we're having one school saying this one school's having a meeting another school's not having a meeting uh one school the teachers are asking well you know i have some concerns oh and and they're getting responses like well we don't know the answer to this so so like they're at a loss out here i mean it's it's it's like nobody is is bringing everything together for them to look at and said you know what if if i have some concerns that i do want to continue with online teaching this is what i do they're getting answers from their their administrators we don't know what to do we don't know what the process is and you know so i mean somebody needs to bring this together um from district so so we're all saying the same things at each one of our schools because i'll tell you right now it's not happening and your staff out here are very frustrated um they're concerned because they're not getting the same information like i said you're having a variety of meetings out there and they're not getting the same answers so like what mrs reese says just in reference to this this needs to be done now because you're having meetings uh this week with the staff and i don't know what they're going to discuss but we're not having the same answers here so so certainly mr rotolo yeah i do know that in terms of our online component um we have not figured out all the details there and there's other dynamics with that we've been communicating that with our principals on our site administrators again i'm referencing the meeting that we had just this past monday in regards to the higley online academy the processes related to that so until we get some of those dynamics set up but i don't want to speak um or step on any toes from my colleagues here but we have not identified completely who all is going to go online what we did communicate prior to the start of this year and what we had communicated in our last meeting was that everybody was going remote and once we identify what the numbers look like for the higley online academy or higley virtual academy then we would be able to decipher other additional needs that we need for online and we're still identifying and working with mr holland in regards to budget what we can afford how we look at that ftes what would that look like at the secondary level versus what would that look like at the elementary level so there is still some processing that we have to figure out there you know i'll certainly work with michael pardon my colleagues to make sure that we're communicating that well to our administrators and making sure they're asking the questions so they can communicate some of those items they're the ones that are the first touch for a majority of our employees and they should be the ones that are the first touch for our employees and then coming to us afterwards but you've brought up some concerns that we'll definitely make sure that we look at to an address in the bigger picture for sure thank you thank you just real quick one more hr question sorry yes i know poor miss martens right now um has there been any discussion that we have accessibility to testing for our staff i i know that there's a huge liability issue especially when you get into students things like that but um i know they're supposed to have backlogs done but we have seen the length of time for receiving test results and i know for me for my policy as if my staff members have had the need to be tested for whatever reason multiple symptoms direct positive exposure whatever the reason being is that they may not return until i have a test result even if they're feeling better that i still need a test result because they were tested is there any conversation i know obviously in times like this new opportunities come up there's places that will come do on-site testing have labs things like that as well as test kits and i know dr thomason and i had talked about one um that could essentially be self-administered if you will um can't verify the accuracy of that or anything but has there been some conversation that as we move forward because testing's not going to go away that's going to be around a long time just the same as kovid's going to be around a long time has there been some discussion to have on-site testing vice president reece we did look at dr thomason provided me with the flyer that you had provided him and we did take a look at that and as you said we questioned the validity of it if that was something that could be done especially because as we look in the news and what we hear not only from the news but what we've heard from governor ducing his press releases and press conferences as well as our weekly call with the arizona department of health services is that there's a shortage of tests and you are correct we've had some employees who've gotten tested and they're told that they're not going to get the results for two weeks and then their for lack of a better word incubation period has really surpassed and so according to the guidance they can come back because they've already waited 14 days since the um onset of their symptoms and they still haven't received their test results back so there's that dynamic in relation to that um i'll say that we have to my knowledge not looked at anything else other than what you had provided dr thomason but we can look into that i'll be honest and say that i think it's going to be hard to do given the shortage that's out there because some of our employees what we're hearing back at when they're having symptoms and they're going to see and their doctor and or if they've wanted to go to urgent care some of them have received information that they will not get tested unless they get a note from their medical care provider who says that they need to be tested they're just saying wait it out and others are saying that higher priorities so depending on the nature and severity of your symptoms they'll allow you to get tested or they won't allow you to get tested you know and one thing that miss fulton and i discussed i don't believe it was last week i believe it was the week before was that we had an employee that went to a site and they said you know we're not willing to give you another test you know and this was when the guidance was you had to have two tests in a row negative 24 hours apart and they said we're not giving you another test because it's going to still be in your system so there's no point to give it to you and then you're still going to test positive and so then they came back to us and challenged us which was very frustrating for us because all the guidance said you had to have two negative tests in a row to be able to come back to work so then in conversations with the arizona department of health services they then ended up changing their guidance in regards to when you could come back so um it has been a you know going back to that coveted roller coaster comment i made last week it has been a roller coaster we can certainly look into that and more i'll work with our district nurse so then to see if there's anything she's hearing we are very fortunate that between our district nurse chandler's district nurse and gilbert public schools district nurse arizona department of health services has relied on them quite a bit in regards to conversations consulting with them and having them draft work you know they did share we may not use your work but they have worked together to draft and they've been utilizing each other very well in terms of the collaboration and discussing what's happening at your sites how are you doing this is this what you're hearing this is what i just heard so that's been helpful for her to have a support system through this roller coaster too yeah maybe it's just something we can look into and through like you just said chandler gilbert queen creek um that there there are independent companies out there that can do it not beyond what i provided there's other independent companies and and things like that we already realized we're gonna run into a sub shortage and um we want obviously them to be well when they come to to work but if they are well but we're waiting on results that could run into some issues and and things like that and so perhaps there's things out there in checking with our district nurse and department of health services may obviously be a good option but maybe that's something that we can look at with multiple districts for services just for school employees certainly and we'll look at the cost and the dynamics of that too thank you i flipped ahead for a second from to this hosd mitigation plan because i think this is something that will be a tool that addresses the very thing we were just talking about the issue of communication all being in one same place and and bourbon botovich to your point about in a handbook one of the things that came out this week in the executive order that we're going to be talking about a little bit later is this idea of a requirement of a cdc cdc-aligned mitigation plan every and and again currently the ade is in the process of giving us a template from that for that for every district and it's kind of built on their pandemic preparation document that came out in march but one of the things we did in hindley that we started this last week we started on friday when we read through the governor's orders we went to the cdc document and took that version as an outline for us to start our own mitigation plan which compiles if you will answers to what do we do when we get sick what is our process where you know yes we have some of that information and faqs yes we have some of those information individual documents but it pulls it all into one document of the mitigation plan this is still in draft form but this will be one of the things that we have to have as a one of our pieces and you know we're going to talk a little bit later about the governor's executive order with additional benchmarks one of the things that every institution has to have are these a mitigation plan that what works through these things and i think that this will be one of the things that will really help with our communication and our documentation that we're building and putting together with links where we can continue to update it so you don't have to go looking through your faqs or forms that you'll go to that part in the mitigation plan so again this is in draft form we've already started compiling all these things when we get the official template we'll put it in that format but we use the cdc's guidance to start compiling that and i think that'll be helpful so this may be one of the things you'll see the draft of this obviously this would be an essential component that we would have as part of any communication for returning but includes all these processes and would help clarify that so i think this is one of the things coming and that we're working on and have a draft for that we can share with you even a board report to begin it is still um we're going to have more components added to this absolutely necessary but this mitigation plan is a big piece that's part of what we have to have as a district that kind of came out in that executive order as well so when we talk about that mitigation plan also includes what do facilities look like because again we've talked very heavily about curriculum instruction work what does the work look like right now transitioning into what do facilities look like what are some improvements or updates have we had since we first talked with you about preparing facilities and so dr fowler is going to give a few updates on some progress things and then we're going to transition into so now what president keller members of the board just wanted to update you on some of the things from the support services area um certainly this is our motto all the time but um it's heightened in the uh coveted environment that we're in um cleanliness and safety of our campus campuses of utmost importance and we want to provide the safest environments possible for staff and students this summer we have we have had additional time to to prepare our facilities and uh our staff has been engaged in in in full deep cleaning activities which is typical district-wide during the summer we just had some extra time this year to complete that in addition each summer and throughout the year our our staff performs preventative maintenance and that has been done and continues to happen in the mechanical systems plumbing electrical and air filters that has is always ongoing as a board you may recall approving an rfp for water treatment services the company that was successful in that it's called vantage and that's for all school districts um that's the closed water loop the water that feeds our hvac systems and so think of the the air that you breathe that's converted from that water that system that's a closed loop is being treated now by this company that's going to increase the efficiency and the quality of that that water which makes our air cleaner also in looking at what we currently have and making some improvements that that aid in in the air that we breathe um our standard air filter the merv is the term used and to show the level of of filter and our typical filter has been a merv 11 a merv 8 and we're transitioning the higher the number the better so we're transitioning to the merv 11 filter and we'll continue to value evaluate that but that's an enhanced filter to provide cleaner air throughout our district question i was doing i looked at the merv and i see we're on merv 8 presently right now and i see we're moving to merv 11.
there you'll have the schedule and you have the child has to be engaged when the instruction is going on some other questions that we've received about remote learning is how will the teachers engage you know with the students and how will students have interaction with their peers and this is possible teachers will be receiving more pd building on what we did in the spring and learning how to efficiently and effectively use break rooms breakout rooms in zoom so if eric conklin is a student in my class and he's um he's at home he's doing remote learning and melissa is in my class and dr ferreira is in my class um i can have eric actually working in a breakout room with melissa and dr ferreira and i can be in that room as well looking in on what they're doing giving feedback i can look in in the google classroom at documents that they're working on and talk about that and the other students in my class so i have anna and gina and and terry they're in my class and they're either at home or in the class for live and they can be working in another breakout room on an assignment and that would be going on within the classroom and through my computer and also by walking across the front because i need to be socially distanced i can i can work with individual students so we are going to work very hard to master the um the technology that we have to harness the power that's in that technology to be able to be as interactive and inclusive and responsive as we can be but we'll be honest there's nothing like how it used to be um but we're not there right now um so i i think we can go on the next slide um face covering so cloth cloth faith covering and masks um everyone who's in our buildings will be required to wear a mask unless there is a medical reason that's documented for them not to be wearing a mask so parents and guardians are will be responsible for sending their children into school wearing a mask we will have masks available if there is a loss of a mask which won't happen because they'll always be on their faces except for mass breaks or you know stuff happens so uh we will have for emergency situations some backups um they'll wear them in the buildings in the classrooms and on the buses we will have mask breaks so many questions what's a mask break mass break it will they will be given um throughout the day our teachers are very much in touch with our students and they will be able to tell students will be able to say i need a break the teachers will be very responsive to them as they always are children will be their desks will be separated um this librarian will be explaining that and they will have um a a desk shield and so they will be safe when they when they have their mask breaks um i'm not going to go into any more details i know that melissa will be talking about that um i can move on um parent pick up and drop off we've had a lot of questions on this so the superintendent has been collaborating with the police department and with our transportation provider which is all-star and we are working with the um those two entities and the principals and each school is developing a system for drop-off and pickup and this is based on ensuring that we have safety of everybody involved you know safety of the children getting in and out of the vehicles safety for the parents not getting into um intimate situations with other cars in our in our parking lots and then also providing for the safety of people who have nothing to do with the schools and just want to get to work get get by the buildings and we want this to be in a safe and orderly fashion so all of the i do not have the details nor does anybody else right now because those plans are being worked out you can imagine how complicated it is going to be and it's going to be different at each school and we are going to communicate to you exactly what the traffic pattern is so we as as it says in the fourth bullet we want the buses and the cars to peacefully coexist we also within this um this drop-off situation and as well as the dismissal and pickup we need to be very sensitive to social distancing and so there will be scheduling of how children get out of the buses how children get onto the buses and um we are also sensitive this is a question what if i have children at multiple schools we are taking the schedules of the um the arrival and the departure of children from the schools into um consideration i'll say big time so that we're not put putting parents or students in a situation of anxiety and rest assured we know that stuff happens and if if there seems to be a little traffic jam at one school or another and you have a second child who's waiting at center or huckleberry or whisking air we will take care of that child while we're waiting for you to to get through we just as anything else in the beginning there may may be expected bumps in the road not to make a pun when we start um in the beginning of the year but we are planning for it to be as smooth as possible and we'll all cooperate and get better as we go along next slide hygiene another big question we are planning for the cleaning of our facilities um and for bathrooms they will we're thinking about a three level um cleaning program which is the full cleanings where everything is top to bottom that's obviously clean top to bottom that's obviously not happening when children are in school um because it would shut down the bathrooms and we can't afford to do that um an intermediate clean which is a more a more extensive clean than what would be a high touch clean where you're going people are going in and cleaning um faucet handles um sink basins and um parts of the actual um bathroom where the children are going um desk cleaning lots of questions about desk cleaning the desks children will be eating their lunch in their classroom and the um that they will be the only child in their desk so there should be some comfort in knowing that it's very different than going into the cafeteria where somebody was just sitting there before you even though the tables this is their desk their shield and they're eating their lunch at their desk and so there will be opportunity for children to clean up after themselves um and they will not be using any harsh chemicals we follow the materials safety procedures that come with all of our cleaners children will never be using cleaners but we will be providing what is called neutral cleaners for children to wipe their own space so it's not the same as sanitizing or disinfecting like we do for all parts of we'll be doing for all parts of the building um as a part of our cleaning protocol because it's the student's desk they will have hand washing breaks we are our um facility staff is going through all of our um all of our facilities and we know there were some questions about faucets that didn't work all they are all being addressed but we are also adding hand sanitizers throughout the school those have been ordered i think that we have ordered twice um and the principles will be working with folks from facilities to identify exactly the um spots that all of these will be placed in so that they'll be easily accessible and anytime a teachers or building administrators have questions about hygiene we have our nursing supervisor who is in touch with our medical advisor and the the our um health advisor from the town and we are we've been able to get answers very very quickly from doc sullivan dr ferrara so anna is in touch with them health and wellness i talked to a little bit about the transition between um 100 hybrid and going remote and that has to do with the uh incidents in our local area and sometimes in the state if the governor decides that we need to transition because of what's going on in the state so a low incidence is when there's less than one percent of infectivity moderate one to five percent and substantial greater than five percent so those are the parameters that the state has given us um our health department in town monitors the um transmission in town and as doc sullivan has said on some of our other meetings they're finding that the transmission is really uh family-centered it's um we don't have you know a person here and a person there it's it's been spread within a very localized unit and in brookfield it happens to be the unit typically of the family so in order for us to to prevent the spread we need everybody in the community to keep doing what they've been doing and that's social distancing using face coverings or masks frequently using hand sanitizers and washing your hands using what's called respiratory etiquette you know um teaching uh children and and yourselves to sneeze into your into your sleeve and not all over the place um question on are we taking temperatures in school the answer is no and i know that that's been um uh something that's caused people to to really question like why we're not doing that um there's a lot of reasons we are being having parents do home assessments you'll get more information on that checking to see taking your child's temperature before they go to school and anything that a temperature of a hundred or more would mean that your child should stay home um the reason one of the reasons that we're not doing temperature taken is just number one the pragmatics of it number two we have found from a variety of convergent data that it's it's in a school situation it's not really valuable data there are too many false positives kids may have been on a bus you know hot it may if it's a hot day just taking that temperature scanning the the forehead we can get a temp we can get a high temperature that isn't associated with anything other than the environment and so um we won't be taking temperatures our our general messages if you're sick stay home this is not the time to be a hero we don't want our faculty and our staff coming in if they're sick we want to err on the side of caution so um fortunately if children have symptoms that require them to stay home we can arrange for them to participate in school through remote learning cohorts you've heard us talk about cohorts cohorts is keep the idea of cohorting is keeping groups of children together and not having them mix in with other folks to the greatest extent possible a lot of people don't like that term to the greatest extent possible but we just want to be totally transparent we have our principals and our teachers are developing schedules that are designed to limit the contact of students to to a group we've been asked well why are you doing that uh well we're doing that because it's very very important in a pandemic or an epidemic to be able to do contact trace thing so god forbid if somebody did um test positive in a school we we would not first of all we're not announcing that you're not going to get an email that says oh mrs wygonic is positive for kovid um because that's a violation what will happen is the health department not the school system will do contact tracing and they will find out because we will be able to tell them who mrs white got sorry mrs wagonic who mrs wygonic was in contact with and who those students were in contact with so then the health department can do their job and and inform people in appropriate ways and do the tracing so that's why we're going to have cohorts and schedules in you may if you have a student in wisconsin you may have heard mr renda last night talk about sub cohorts and so a sub that you meet saying oh another flaky educational jargon thing they're trying to fool us we're not trying to fool anybody but there are children that are in a cohort and then there may be some other children within that cohort who need to go for some specialized service so we are it we're like the the building principles are like engineers in how they're working with a variety of specialists to to develop these cohorts so that if we have an unfortunate situation we can immediately contact trace in a very effective way we will keep families cohorted together if we have to go to a hybrid situation families will be cohorted together so that's a question if if we go to a hybrid and i have a child in one school and a child in another school will they all be going on the same day the answer is yes uh we're going to be doing that by alphabet another question that came up is well we have a blended family and all of our children don't have the last name don't worry about it even if we made an error we will correct it we will keep families together in a cohort um we will let you know what cohort you're in as soon as all the details are worked out don't worry next slide i'm going to turn this over now to gina wygonic who is not positive for covet i'm sorry gina to have picked on you to talk to us about special education thank you dr ruby oh thank you for all of you who are here tonight um i just want you to rest assure that the special education department with the building principles and district administration are planning for the special education population we are following the guidelines and the requirements provided by the connecticut state department of education we we will be following all of the idea provisions for free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment we have students who are special education and other special populations and we will be treating them as general education students first for the cdc guidelines the two special education supervisors are working very closely with the building principles to maintain the cohorts that dr ruby had spoke of to the greatest extent possible with safety in mind all of the time some of you may have questions pertaining to your individual students children's programs um i'm not going to answer any of those questions or give you any information tonight on that but melissa baldwin who is the pre-k5 supervisor or myself you can contact us with any individual questions that you might have about your child's program and we would be happy to have a conversation with you privately about your child's program or if you have any other questions about how we are cohorting et cetera et cetera so please rest assured that we are working diligently with the building principles and district admin to make sure that those cohorts um are are put together with a lot of thought and safety and again if you have any questions feel free to call me or email me at any time or melissa baldwin who is at huckleberry as a special education supervisor thank you dr ruby thank you thank you very much we appreciate that and now i'm going to turn it over to eric conklin since he's our tech guru thank you dr ruby um so just a couple quick high level things on technology that we want to cover there's going to be a lot more information coming out in august um in the first couple weeks in august as we um start to receive our our equipment uh hardware and and and start to set up and configure and see how everything's going to look around the district um i've already talked about the one-to-one and byod program for the grades eight through 12.
so you know that's a dramatic difference and so with those conditions we feel much better about being able to offer full day instruction again if the data stays the same as it is now and that's the wild card variable in all this we could plan hybrid we could plan a full day in august 20th rolls around and the data explodes and now you're all going remote anyway so what we've tried to do is develop three quality models with the idea that we may very well be using all three at different points in this year thanks jeff uh question from adam and then andrew hi jeff um so just as a quick recap so it's going to be at least to start assuming that the governor maintains the flexibility point of view that he had yesterday and not necessarily today but yesterday that it would be full open for elementary and full open for the uh junior high for the middle school and then uh we may be looking at a hybrid situation for the high school which looked to be an ab day which means that every other week the days that you were on and off would alternate from a monday to a tuesday is that is that kind of what i'm thinking there right because of the day okay so it'd be a so basically a two-week uh period of time the days would alternate in such a way that the high school student would be at school one day and then remote the second day or was it like you're doing homework the second day i didn't quite it's more like doing homework but we are pursuing check-ins for students through first of all uh special education is an obvious place where we would be looking at check-ins we have math labs uh writing labs uh reading instruction those folks could do check-ins um and we are looking at is there another way to to connect more with students who may need that support um it it does require students to be more self-directed unlike the remote model though you know where it was easier for a student to check out because they never had to check back in now you check back in you know the next class and that's where you know there's more accountability in that that respect and so it sounded like you're trying to make up the class hours by having longer classes during the days that they are there is that right okay so like okay like a collegiate model okay like an hour you know that's part of why we call it the collegiate model i you know and i think we're trying to make some lemonade out of lemons here too that you know we respect that the data says the vast majority of our students move on to two or four-year universities not that all students have to or need to but a number of students do and so this is a a brief period in their four-year history please god where they are engaging in this form of learning and we think it may be advantageous for them when they're through the high school to have had that experience with the additional supports that you would receive at cheshire high school that you may not otherwise get it at the you know collegiate level uh could i ask one more question that's okay finally yeah okay um um let's see which one will i ask that too all right um disinfecting i guess so originally you had a plan where it was like two days on a day of rest two days on where there was a day where you're going to be basically scrubbing down the school for a day and now it looks like the school be occupied every day um so i'm so that there would be no disinfecting during the week or would you be thinking that maybe there would be some uh self-direction where there'd be spray bottles in the class and okay class spray down your desk and then let's get class started or yeah i don't know sure let me let me clarify that so when students leave the room and again this is the since the other day the data hasn't changed right like i mean it's not dramatically different it may have gone up and tick or down a tick i can't even tell you that but today which is weird because usually i do know every day but um the data is still in a place where you might be able to argue that full day is a good idea i and i i think reasonable minds can differ i am very concerned however that i do not want to be backsliding into a remote everyday situation and we do know of other schools in connecticut who probably will go all day every day and i would probably rather let them be the canary in the coal mine to be frank with you and allow us to transition back to this in a way that supports um again provides that lemonade from the lemons provides a unique opportunity for them to get that collegiate experience in terms of the cleaning either in either any protocol that we have where kids are in school at the high school level they will be asked to wipe down the desk after they're done the student who follows them if they have concerns may wipe down the desk as well we will have wipes in the room the rooms will all be disinfected at the end of the day every day so that is still there um yes this is different than our hybrid model um that was the yellow model for the high school that we introduced initially and uh i don't know yet given the fact that this is two days that we've been exploring this if the data means that we have to go to hybrid we may go to that model that yellow model that was in the in the plan and i can't tell you that definitively today but we are we would explore that thanks can i add one more piece to that just for clarity um and to be thorough so yes there will be disinfecting every night and there's also will be disinfecting of all bathrooms and all high touch surfaces um during the day at least one time so we will have a crew that's disinfecting intraday at all the schools so you know we're going to be disinfecting on a on a pretty consistent basis midday and every night regardless uh you know which model other than remote thanks vincent uh andrew and faith sure jeff has there been any um information that you've heard or is there a date certain that we'll be able to draw the line in the sand and come out with a plan to send to all the district parents um understanding that numbers change and it's kind of a moving target but people are trying to desperately plan their lives starting in september and um sure you're hearing this from other districts and other superintendents i mean at what point do we just say these are our plans send them out to the community and right moving yeah i think that's you know a great source of frustration for superintendents for parents everybody alike and um our plan is by next wednesday to have our principals send out basically a day in the life video of what life would look like for students including you know pictures or video of classrooms things like that in addition at that point we'll ask you to make a commitment one way or the other to in person or remote whatever the case may be hybrid maybe at the high school and then um we'll have clearer data about where students are going um and what you know the the parent can then plan at that point we can better plan at that point uh it is frustrating to be a moving target though to hear that plans are changing and governor may or may not change them at this point we were told two weeks before school he'll let us know well before two weeks before school is different all over connecticut depending on what your birthday is so i don't know what that means necessarily so it's everybody's in a tough spot right now okay and one other thing vin where are we install the technology in the classrooms uh well they've they've been moving through the schools with the initial install of speakers so i know chapman highland i think they were at norton today so it is progressing you know we we are expecting it to be installed in time for school to start and um they've been moving at a pretty good clip they're getting five or six classrooms done per day but they do have to go back and install the um they're doing the microphones and the ceiling speakers first and then they'll go back with the cameras and do the wiring and all the other components so it's tracking which is great to hear and how many classrooms district wide for those listening 56 60 i mean depending on 56 classrooms though okay thank you okay uh faith in manhattan um okay so jeff i realize it's been um a long time since socrates and i were in college together but as i remember um we had our schedules were very defined very limited courses and i think of a high school schedule as being very diverse so what is this going to do to electives if we go with this route right we have to concentrate on the course and are we going to set up a hierarchy of courses and how do we balance it because it's six hours max in a day right yeah that's that's a great question faith uh and we are very much committed to providing a well-rounded educational experience which you know well core content areas are certainly important we also feel like you know elective classes are equally important and they could be really the reason that some kids come to school that day like you know maybe i'm so passionate about cooking that that's why i get up to get to class that day so we're not eliminating any classes in this model and they're given equal time in the model um and i can show you a sense of the schedule uh one you know one version that we're considering here you know in that collegiate model you though day one a day you'd have period one two five six b day three four seven eight so you still take every class in your schedule um the nice thing is that with half the students in the building it allows us to limit you know attendance and commons cafe and east gym to be able to feed people from roughly you know 11 10 to 12 30 throughout the day which is a certainly much more natural lunch time than we'd have to consider otherwise but it is really important to us that all students receive all classes next year we don't want to you know that's part of why we're doing this is to maintain a high quality educational experience so that's what we're we're aspiring to could i follow up with one other thing just um if we're going kind of the collegiate model um would it i and i actually this could span the entire k-12 experience um perhaps a syllabus that outlines objectives so when kids are off days or you know if we're god forbid we're going remote again either the kids or the parents know what the objectives are for the year for each student um because then that way it could save the teachers you know just being harassed and not harassed but being questions day in and day out if the parents know where those kids need to be at the end of the year right well we've definitely committed to google classroom as a anchor point particularly at the high school level for where our work will be focused so it should be crystal clear what learning expectations are for students on a day over day basis in terms of plotting out an entire year the biggest challenge we have there is the bouncing back and forth between particular models so if we're going to school as normal the syllabus would probably look one way if we're every other day it probably is going to roll out even different than if we're remote but you know i i want to give marlene the chance to chime in on this in terms of you know creating a syllabus for classes hi everyone so um very important points that you're making faith i think part of that information is communicated at open house and those open houses will happen even if they don't happen in person they'll happen virtually and there's quite a bit of information that's given out to parents at that time when you think about a classroom teacher this is what we're covering these are the expectations for this year in grade three math and in etc and then when we have those parent conferences again those are revisited for the half year along with you know progress reports all the way through so we have a couple of places at each really each level where that is done um in addition there are um links and things that we send to parents so that they can clearly see curriculum-wise what we are covering for the year um and certainly we're monitoring and adjusting that based on last year and this year as well okay thanks see we have adam and tim [Music] well me and tim back to back there should be a flurry of questions i i have three i don't know you can cut me off at any time tony um so uh firstly uh as we've seen with the professional uh athletics uh at least certainly with baseball uh where their model is traveling um where the other sports so far are going to be in a bubble we still haven't seen how that's going to be but it looks like testing has been successful there um is there a possibility now or at least where we've seen where one athlete could could uh take down an entire team in the locker room has there been any discussion with the ciac about uh postponing or canceling fall sports or athletics in general for the year and if so i know that's been one of the major talking points as far as uh starting times go as far as school start times if athletics were eliminated would a later start time be considered since there wouldn't be that need to coordinate with other athletic events and schedules that would normally start after three o'clock uh so that's question number one that's a two-part question adam but anyway oh i'm sorry the first part of that is the ciac has not yet made a decision on athletics for the fall they've been very deliberate in their rollout to my knowledge there have not been positive cases associated with high school athletics to my knowledge um but i certainly am not familiar with every athletic program across the state but i have not heard of any uh the other part of that if fall sports are cancelled the challenge in changing our school start times would be transportation if we're providing transportation to all schools so right now the runs are cascaded one on top of the other so if i backed up the high school i would need a lot more buses to run dodd at the same time which we haven't budgeted and given the budget overruns we'll have through covid this year i wouldn't necessarily recommend uh pursuing that option although you know i do think there's benefit to a later school start uh this isn't the time to try and tackle that i'm afraid thank you jeff um let's see secondly so with the with the hybrid model um for the high school and then with full open for the the other levels um is the opt out still a consideration at the high school level absolutely yeah the opt remote learning is a consideration at every level no matter what we do um so if we're you know all in or hybrid then you can opt to go remote if we all go remote then obviously you're remote already um and the the last option would be to withdraw from school completely in home school or private school i guess you could pursue but they're all kind of the same but we are and finally uh with the hybrid model and i guess well with all the the levels um has there been any commentary from the teachers about um their feelings on the full open and or hybrid model it it does run the spectrum i will say you know there's probably there's anxiety among some at all levels there's you know a desire to get back from everybody but different people have different concerns this week met with about 75 teachers so far in meetings throughout the day so what we try and do is talk about here's providing more clarity around what the plans are and then talk about what concerns or suggestions do you have so for example yesterday a concern was raised about a unique uh educational environment within the district that all right that's a unique challenge vin met with those teachers with a special ed uh supervisor today robin and kerry and they tried to brainstorm about how to solve that so we've encouraged a lot of dialogue between our teachers and our administrators and we try and collaboratively solve problems everybody wants to be in school everybody wants it to be safe how do we work through that is definitely a real challenge but our teacher's been really good about it thank you uh thank you tony uh yeah so i've got a couple of a few different questions but i think they should be quick answers that's my hope um adam asked a minute ago about the ciac is that a state agency a quasi-state agency it's not a state agency it's a it's an organization that it's like the ncaa it's not that's not a national organization that is overseen by anybody it's it's more or less a body that all of our many across the state belong to in order to participate in sanctioned state championships and things like that they don't have any uh official authority other than to say that they're gonna cancel championships or whatever but because it's comprised of athletic people from all over the state i mean it's it's self-governing if you will okay but they don't they don't take direction from the state necessity they probably follow guidance but they don't okay all right um number two uh the second question uh marlene had mentioned uh the open houses yeah and um so i'm just so one thing that i've heard from some of my friends who are teachers is they've said and this is not just in cheshire this is in the area where they've said to me bluntly you know the remote learning didn't work as well as as in classroom learning and so they're expecting whereas in a normal year they probably take a few days or a week to sort of gauge where students are and sort of catch up on stuff they're thinking it probably will take a little bit longer this year to do that and so my question is simply in relation to open houses and the timing of them um typically i think they happen within the first week or two of the year uh do you believe that do you we don't even know when school will open necessarily right now at least at this second in time right is the idea to have the open houses occur after teachers are comfortable that they've gauged their students and where they are um no not necessarily because we have two different i think objectives one with open houses is really to provide a more generic overview uh marlene was talking about using that time to highlight what it is that we're focused on learning the expectations of classes things like that now a teacher conference is different that's where we're talking more about individual student needs we anticipate at this point in time i think it's pretty safe bet that we're going to be doing all of these things remotely and so yeah the generic overview is more that that open house and then the parent conference it gets into more of what you're talking about we haven't considered pushing that back yet but that that's later in the year anyway toward october okay yeah parent-teacher conferences okay yeah um we have 50 we're getting 56 classrooms are getting the cameras correct how many classrooms do we have in the in cps uh several hundred uh more than three hundred okay all right then do you have a count on that yeah it doesn't need to be specific i was guessing more than three hundred it's 300 and 400 if you can every learning space that includes libraries and other areas okay so we're getting to maybe 20 20 15 to 20 depending on how you count it okay yeah and with regarding uh elementary schools and the cohorting goal um it sounds like you're talking about moving toward a full reopen for elementary schools um it seems that makes total sense to me uh in terms of the ability to cohort but i'm just wondering uh in terms of the non-standard classroom stuff so lunch specials that being library art music is there an idea on that would those teachers be going into the classrooms with each of the students would they be canceled i have no interest yeah marlene you want to talk about that sure tim great question i'm glad you asked it um a couple of things i believe and don't i don't have the exact statistics for every single school building but when last i talked with the principals on this topic it sounded as though most of the schools were going to be able to provide art music library pe in their original spaces when that is not possible those special teachers will go to the classroom to provide that so each of the school principals will be putting together that day in the life or like that one pager of what recess will look like what specials will look like where will they have those um where what will that look like so they're busy working on all of that to send out to principals along with um a video to kind of show what spaces look like thank you thanks tim uh just for a little change of order how about faith and then adam sorry adam okay just real fast follow up on tim's question all right so we have 300 rooms we're obviously not going to win the lotto tomorrow so what is a good number what we have 56 that's clearly um what is what's the goal and how do we get there well you know first i just want to be clear that there this is so unique in that we don't know what sort of environment we're going to end up in i mean if we were to go to remote learning tomorrow because the data said we had to and we don't return to full-time and until we get full-time instruction everybody's back for three months or four months or something let's say worst case scenario we just wasted a boatload of money on ppe and our goal has been to be very conscientious about the money that we're spending um and be very judicious in how we we make these decisions with the best case scenario being that we purchase something to cover us in covid that has residual value after cobit as a matter of fact you know in the case of the audio systems and technology in the room it doesn't just have residual value it has an enhancement after the fact which is why we've been more eager to pursue that uh intervention than you know other other options for example so yes we have 56 classrooms we would love to do more to do another 30 would cost approximately a hundred thousand dollars and as situations evolve you know i i right now the company uh r b enterprises is doing for us exactly what they can with the materials they have available what we've committed to them financially they're working as quickly as they can to get these things in the room for the start of school it's going to take them a month to really do all of these spaces we have in that time i think we should know more about the data and where we are and i don't want to just run out and spend the money because we can and i know that's not what you're suggesting but by the time they get to the end of the installation process we'll know more to be able to move forward on more i'm thinking that you know based on the current trajectory i i think 30 more would be a responsible number uh to cover highland is a very big school right now they only have one in every classroom or one in every grade level excuse me i think they could certainly benefit from more dodd in the high school could also benefit from more if we're going hybrid if we're committing to a hybrid model we'll know that in a few weeks and what does that mean at the high school in terms of the remotes do we need so i think waiting a few weeks is prudent here but in the projection we're looking at about 30 at the cost of a hundred thousand dollars and then we'll you know we'll talk about that as we get closer to the opening of schools okay thanks yep thanks great jeff i want to do some quick recap and then one last question so we started a meeting uh michael posted around 6 35 at 83 viewers as a 7 16 that jumped up to 221 which is great and i think it goes back to uh the obvious interest in the reopening which you know no doubt it's a big it's a big deal for us and parents and all stakeholders also going back to what andrew said earlier you know about having a final plan published so for folks just tuning in a quick recap is um jeff gave an update on the recent changes or at least communication that came from the governor's office uh literally monday that a hybrid model is being considered for the high school specific for due to space limitations so uh dr sullin did walk us through that um what that would look like in terms of a days b days i won't rehash it so but that only applies to the high school and we're still uh awaiting official confirmation from the state department education that that will be an option we can't pursue there's the reason i bring it up is uh we understand that and from here are the boards that a lot of boards have been preparing hybrid models in the hopes that that will be a go-to model but that has not been made official yet and so we're hopeful that will be right now it's going to recap it only seems to be for the high school that's being considered as far as for the rest of the schools uh jeff uh it's still the option of going back full time synchronous or asynchronous learning you know that's still open to all the schools actually so that has not changed so the question i have around that regard is will you be sending out a survey soon um to pull the parents again uh on yeah i guess similar to the last one a little bit more detail around the options that to consider and see if the percentage has changed at all since this yeah yeah so our plan is uh by next wednesday we've asked principals to put together that video that i was talking about where kind of go through a day in the life of a student so that our parents have a better sense of exactly what our kids will experience or their children will experience and with that video will be the survey and we'll give you um our plan right now is to send that out wednesday and ask people to commit by sunday night whether whether they're going to pursue the plan for that building or they're going to um choose remote that you know that'll give us better data and better ability to plan thank you we've had some uh parents and our stakeholders i think got the emails to offer their uh their assistance and helping draft the next survey you know that a little more detail around this so if we need anything that a pulse probably one or two more i guess as things change but uh with regards to the 56 classrooms being set up with the audio and video is it is it safe for me to assume that the the classrooms being targeted are or degrade just to say are those grades or class rooms where the space um is constrained for a full class for the social distancing guidelines therefore those are the best candidates for the remote learning to help not necessarily the rooms um within a grade level within a school are generally pretty much the same size so what we've done is you know work with teachers to identify volunteers and those that are a little bit more tech forward to facilitate again this is very intuitive technology you don't need to be bill gates to figure this stuff out but you know we work with the teachers to identify appropriate folks and our goal would be to try and assign more students who are remote learning to those teachers got it would it um be helpful if uh i know i asked uh last week i know vincent is working on this but at least for the board to see all the classrooms uh square footage how many kids will be in there just so i have an idea right you know it's it's three feet gonna be too close to some cases six feet and i'm wondering if it'd be helpful for parents to see that maybe if their child is gonna be in the classroom where they feel well yeah they're all the same size but if my my my son or daughter has 30 kids in a classroom uh they maybe may feel comfortable making a decision knowing that to keep them at home and synchronous right right or the level of detail but it might be helpful and that might that might uh be answered when uh you started doing the walkthroughs of the classrooms i know you talked earlier marlene talked earlier about the videos from the principles that'll be gone to the parents soon walking them through the day in life for a student just so they get a visual of what it looks like i think that's something some parents will want to say got it but i don't feel that comfortable yeah you know i often send them in but i'm gonna start off at home at first and see how it goes but you know i just but the point is there's options for all the parents still we haven't taken anything off the table yeah other than is now a hybrid option at the high school we're trying to get confirmation on that and lastly just to recap you're not advocating the board spend 900 thousand dollars retrofit all the classrooms with technology at this point uh just in case folks tuned in and didn't hear that um i think that's prudent and i think we discussed at last meeting that you know at the early grade levels you know we don't know how effective it's going to be um so as things change and evolve you'll bring to the board conditions whether or not you know like 30 or 40 or 50 required right spending all the money right now right and it turns out we're full remote learning and we have technology saying the classroom is unused right i mean yeah as much as it would be a benefit to have all the rooms outfitted i realized that our resources are finite you know they're not absolutely unlimited and even if we wrote a check tomorrow for a million dollars for this company to do every room they couldn't do it over the course of even you know the next six months probably just because of availability materials the rooms being used they can't get in there and stuff like that they couldn't even actually facilitate that the other reality is that these um systems take some bandwidth when we're running google me uh across a big part of the district it eats up bandwidth and i would be afraid that if we went to every room we would crash the system if we had that many people accessing it at home so you know there are a lot of considerations in this and that's what's make this summer really challenging is we're just talking in such detail about the tech you know we think we have to go to this level of minutia for lunch for kids walking in hallways for bathrooms for transportation for staffing for it's just outrageous and that's why if we could get a clear destination of what we're allowed to do it'd make life a little bit easier yeah one last thing and i know you have more to talk about um you well two things you accidentally slipped the name of the company doing a technology install so i know my fellow board of chairs will be uh probably calling them to uh yeah whatever we've got a lot of inquiries but it is hard to come by number two though what about costs you you alluded earlier to the fact that we are going to overspend on some things do we have an idea yet and i'm assuming that the 56 classrooms that money um is it being paid for out of the two hundred thousand dollars to set aside is it where are we where do you project us to be in quote-unquote going over budget as things stand right now and what could the potential be if you have your crystal ball uh down the road for that cost only because at some point i know we're doing the best to absorb what we can in our budget but at some point we would like to get in front of town council town manager tom financial planner again you know where we actually going to be with your opening and if we need help if any i don't know yeah given up that there might be some things discussed in the course of the year as far as our expenditures just have an idea they can question and maybe plan for i'm not saying we're there i just i assume we're gonna have something that's another great question that we ask ourselves every day about like oh my god what is this gonna cost us and you know we are very sensitive to that we're not you know shorting things uh we're not shorting safety because we're worried about the money but we think about the money and when do we ultimately have to go back to the town and what is that going to mean so right now i think you know the short story is that we're too early to absolutely know like i said if we went to remote and we weren't using any ppe we don't have to keep eyeing it but i'm gonna ask i mean i would expect that a few weeks from now as we get close to the start of school we'll keep buying the things that we need to ensure public safety and educational you know uh progress within reason um and if it's a massive i like we wouldn't pull the trigger on a you know 30 more cameras without talking to the board but we're going to continue to purchase ppe and the things we need to open school safely and move progress of education but i'm going to ask ben to talk about where those areas are from tents to ppe um that we're focused on um we may not even be able to give you clear numbers on each of these areas right now but you can get at least the sense of what we're doing thanks all right good evening everyone again um i'm sharing my screen really to identify these are the pressure points that we're going to be watching closely in the budget so this message that you see on the screen is you know this was a message that we uh spoke to the administrators about at our meeting this morning but you know the budget obviously we're asking for extreme caution this year we do have a 40 expenditure cap in place until further notice so you know all the principals with the accounts that they have responsibility for all the department managers that have uh budget responsibilities cannot exceed 40 of their approved budget again that's the way we typically manage the budget normally at this time of the year we allow 60 percent we're at 40 percent those bullets identify those areas that we're going to be managing against and as jeff is alluding to there's some variability like cost of um right now we're in the middle of looking at what furniture needs to be removed from all the classrooms and whether we're disposing of it moving it into storage and then we'll have to move it back so the longer that the items stay in storage the more it costs and i you know the we have a vendor that's going to do this for us the second bullet is the um item i mentioned earlier we're going to be disinfecting sanitizing and cleaning the buildings intraday we're hiring a vendor to do that so that only goes for a month it's a lot less than it goes for 10 months and the advantage of using a vendor to do this is we're not hiring and adding staff we're going to have a vendor who if we don't need the service anymore we can just discontinue it with you know just a week's notice really purchase of things like the ppe sanitizing wipes paper towels sanitizing and cleaning products all going to be a variable cost the longer we need to continue to buy those items the more it costs additional staff we're being really careful not to add staff but we know that we're going to have to add staff hours simple example if we had a lunch wave at an elementary school we have to bring in our teaching assistants that lunchroom playground aids earlier the food service staff would have to come in earlier or possibly stay later depending on the schedule student transportation we do have a budget for that but as jeff mentioned earlier if we go to a and a different schedule at the high school where we have an a.m and p.m all students in the building that's going to cost us you know as much as 5 000 per day or as little as 2 400 per day for the period of time in which we do that and the twenty four hundred dollars is simply um one hour of overtime per bus which is a hundred dollars times the 24 buses will need to meet that schedule we talked about the classroom broadcast capability that's about two hundred thousand dollars the last bullet is the tents that jeff mentioned so if we install tents at the schools there'll be a cost associated with that and it varies uh it's a monthly cost so the longer we keep it the more it costs and the last item which is the one bullet up from the last really is not related to covid but it is something that is breaking news that um our transition students normally we would provide services until age 21 there was a court ruling that requires us to provide services now for those uh students to age 22.
why didn't we go higher up to like the 12 or 13 there was additional things on that would take care of things i looking at the 13 it's a whole doubles almost is in reference to that the other question i have as you're talking about these i mean we're putting these filters in who's going to be changing these filters so we we have our own hvc staff that engage in filter changing throughout the district as well as the platform and at each campus are responsible as well and typically the cycle is once a quarter at the very at the or at the very least three times a year the filters are changed the difference between the merv 8 filter and the mirv 11 filter the cost is about about double and moving from an 8 to a 13 the the cost is about four times the cost and so we felt it more prudent and reasonable working within the limited budget that we have is to transition this year from an eight to an eleven considering that most hospitals use a 13 or higher that we would look at that in and try to plan for increasing that in the future but we thought going part of the way was better than not at all so that is true though the 13 is is more desirable but the cost comparing the 8 and 13 would be about four times the price so we opted to do the 11 for right now so how many filters are at each one of our schools oh i'd have to get back to i mean it's it's thousands and thousands of filters okay so so if there's let's just pick one with schools let's make chaperone okay just to pick a school so how many filters would be at chaparral i i can't answer that yes president kaler members of the board um the one where i'm going at with this question is if this we're spending a lot more money going from 8 to 11 which is cost more who's going to be cleaning these and if we're talking a lot of filters we need to have additional staff which brings me to the part perhaps in your next slide that we're only bringing a part-time employee into the building with all this work that needs to be done you're bringing one part-time employee when we're investing in thousands of dollars on these filters and i don't know how you're going to change all these filters if we have thousands of filters president kaler members of the board the the filters that that were changing are the same as the filters in your house there is no more extra labor in changing the filters than there were in the past they are a higher more extensive filter but the actual changing of the filter is the same thing we've done over the last several years i can tell you from when i was in dr fowler's position six years ago that we were spending about a hundred thousand dollars on filters and now going from an eight to eleven that would at least have doubled by then um to two hundred thousand and then if we go to a merv for 13 according to the information that dr fowler just shared that'd be four hundred thousand dollars but the actual changing of the filters uh mr wittovich is the same thing that you do at your home it's the same thing we've always been doing with the merv 8 filters so there's no extra labor cost in that but it's something that needs to be stayed upon regularly and continue to be done on a regular basis so so the person changing the filter i just got to refresh my memory here is also going to be the person the maintenance person in the school correct is that who's changing i would i would defer to dr fowler on that we had a different program back when i was in a position so who's changing the filter on a site-by-site basis i'll be the plant foreman so the plan on site yes this is an addition to all the cleaning that we're having them do now as well correct well the platform has numbers of responsibilities but you know they support on the cleaning side as well but their main job is facilities not custodial also as it relates to district-wide preventative maintenance and this is a recommendation that we've completed as well through district sites and through through all of our campuses is just a flush of the water systems and this is something that is required anytime during the summer when you go long periods of time without running the water and just a flush to clean those systems out in addition you'll notice plexiglas has been installed in the front office spaces and we're continuing to deploy those at each site specifically we are running into some issues with plexiglass and i can draw the um same analogy as how toilet paper was in march plexiglas is now and so we're working hard to procure more plexiglass we have been able to supply that at all of our front offices and we're looking to install more throughout campuses as that becomes available can we make sure when the plexiglas is installed that it's high enough because i've heard from some staff that it's kind of low and people are able to over it so if we could just yes yes i know that there's probably some plexiglass shortage as you mentioned then that's probably why we cut it that way but maybe just that might be a thought to make sure that it's tall enough for the tall people i don't have that issue but for other people they may have that issue yes president killer i board member wilson yes that that those points are well taken so there's just a picture of the bridges for example you can see it's harder with the reflection but on both windows there there's the plexiglas that's hanging down down there and we're looking um you'll find that that's at the very least at each campus at this point in time also i want to just bring a little bit of information regarding a company called mckinstry the district reached out to mckinstry and there are an outside agency that has been providing support for maintaining buildings and and keeping facilities comfortable and healthy over the years they performed a free evaluation for our district in the area of indoor air quality building controls occupant engagement um also looking at our mechanical systems and our plumbing and and we received um a detailed report from them on july the 6th there and i just pulled a few highlights from from their report that higley is ahead of the curve when it comes to its readiness for student and faculty to return to campuses they also noted our upgraded air efficiency in our operation of increasing our ventilation is in addition to the improved environment and the equipment um that was all in action that they saw when they came out to investigate our sites and they also noted that our staff was busy changing air filters cleaning equipment and performing the maintenance preventive maintenance operations that i referenced earlier and that they felt that we were on schedule to have the education and support facilities ready for occupancy now mckinstry did provide a report with some additional recommendations i've just highlighted a few of those one would be turning off the ceiling fans the disabling of automatic air controls that is based on co2 levels they also added the assessment of projected occupancies which would allow us to adjust the air handler units to make sure that we're addressing the minimum amounts and that those are maintained they also suggested the ability to increase humidification in large spaces and also the opportunity for them to work with us in terms of self-funded energy efficiency improvements now with their recommendations obviously some of those are things we can do ourselves but they did provide me an extensive list and a cost associated with that to work with their company and so i have those documents and i'm bringing them back at a cabinet level to discuss and will certainly bring recommendations um at a future time for the board to consider so in reference to the projected occupancy are we going with the occupancy that we have now per classroom i mean we're where is this discussion going on the occupancy to if school opens up how are we going to determine the occupancy for these classrooms in reference to the recommendation for the air control well president keeler mr mitovic um our we do have a a very um already high technologically based air control system and there's already preset temperatures uh in each of the classrooms and they're based on occupancy and so the the load in that particular space has a sensor and when the when when there's either movement or temperature that causes that center to kick in and that um so that load depends on how many people are in the classroom and so it it does not kick on as quickly if there's only one person in the classroom but but this company would would also work with us to review each of those to make sure that they're working efficiently efficiently many years back we worked with climatetech and installed those sensors in all of our rooms and so we are able to to get a pretty good sense of how efficient those are but um just in terms of of their process they would come and and kind of walk us through each individual one so to answer your question um the the rooms are based on temperature and sensor controlled and so a room that doesn't have the temperature rise by bodies and or movement um those units won't kick in um and they would kick in then obviously when students return with that increased activity and then also the temperature in the room with the ventilation system with that being said is each room in our school independent or is there three classrooms tied into one um i'd have to come back on that i think in most cases the rooms um operate independently but there may be some cases where where they're they're shared spaces and so i'd have to go kind of facility by facility but for the most part rooms operate independently okay i'd like you to let the board know and reference to it to see what sure numbers are in reference to what how many rooms in our schools are being shared in reference to the uh the air quality in each of the classrooms i will research that and have a response for you in a superintendent's report update just a quick question dr fowler where are their ceiling fans that's a great question i'm not sure to my recollection if i can tell you but that was part of the recommendation so if there was any out there that they were recommending that we don't use them gotcha cause i was like i'm trying to recall any room or any place i've been in the district that there were ceiling fans and it could be that was one of their boilerplate recommendations and so it may be a moot point also i wanted to share share a pilot project that we have begun at two of our schools the global plasma solutions is um it's a gps technology and it generates ions that helps to in effect clean the air in those spaces and we have that deployed right now at two of our schools and we're waiting back for some data to show the benefits of this um once i have that i'm gonna be bringing that back to share as well yeah so dr oh sorry go ahead president kayla go ahead well just is it piloting in the offices i mean obviously we don't have students so how are we going to so well the units the units themselves we've we've ordered the the sensor to test the air and so we've deployed them in in five different spaces in both of these campuses the front office the nurses office the cafeteria the gymnasium and the media center and so we're going to take some readings in those schools and then compare them on sister campuses with similar makeup and and try to show some differences there and if we're able to show what the technology is saying that it does then we're we'll bring those results back and make recommendations for other campuses yeah i just i'm like anytime there's a crisis in america in the world there's these opportunists and profiteers that come on i'm like super skeptical of this particular thing so i whatever results you have i'm fascinated to find out what this particular one actually does or has any benefit yes and so we're we're not um we're being skeptical in terms of we want to see that it does deliver what they say it delivers so that's why it's a pilot and um you know if if um they're they are doing what they say they will be doing you'll be hearing that from me and well i'll report either way but but um we'll bring that back when we have that data also want to talk talk someone i know mr tobich has referred to it already improved sanitation throughout sanitization throughout the campus and we have we have begun hiring and in many cases filled um currently hiring three 13 part-time custodians uh to provide an increased school-wide disinfecting um as an additional defense against the copa virus really having that that person specifically be responding to high touch areas our initial staffing looked at 5.5 hours per site um i i have had discussions and i'm working with with cabinet to recommend possibly increasing that to full time at the very least at the secondary campuses just by the sure size of those facilities um as we work through that and so any changes with that certainly will bring that back to the board but um the idea is this person would enter as a particular campus the front office area and they would sanitize all of the high-touch areas and then make their way throughout that building or that campus uh door handles restrooms and and do that as many times as they can throughout the day also understanding that that particular campus would need support for sanitizing during the lunch hour during the cafeteria and possibly some some areas outside as well i've been traveling to schools these last few days and last week identifying particular concerns and needs at those sites as well and working with each site principal because each campus is different and has specific needs but the idea is that that high-touch person would have clear clear direction and uh and and work at being very visible but working their way through the campus and and trying to sanitize as many times as reasonable throughout the day and i'm still working on that with each individual site to have that and when i have those details i'll bring that back in in a report or certainly share that with with everybody uh and i don't i i don't want to let this moment pass uh i know your you guys are probably aware but um the idea and the notion that we would pay somebody part time to be on the very front lines and not give them health care uh i if if i had my way i would say hire like five full time they'll be around but when you have somebody who's working like 20 hours a week they probably have a job somewhere else because you can't live in gilbert on 20 hours a week at you know 12 bucks an hour so you know our to you know no note to our teachers you know sometimes when we give you raises these are all sacrifices that we have to make in a budget and uh you know if it were me and you asked me you know this past year okay you don't get a five percent raise would you take a 4.75 or 4.5 so that every campus could have another full-time custodian or secondaries could even have two i would say yes so i'm not going to be around for the budget next year but maybe that's something that you could discuss with uh with our with our staff um because our custom i mean i someday i think america's gonna look back and regret the fact that we got 18 year old kids feeding us and cleaning up after us or people for 12 an hour and uh and i think i think higley could do better i really do and i hope that we do so full-time i i would be more in favor of that anyway and they'll stick around more as well i think i agree with mr glover on that and that's been my questions for the last couple board meetings was the increase in staffing of all the things we are asking to maintain these buildings to make sure our staff and our students are healthy and to bring a person in part-time is ridiculous i mean this this things are not going to get done i mean if we have to walk the walk or talk whatever that saying goes i mean we need to invest in this and get these things cleaned and my question to you is okay you're talking about the doorknobs and things in the hallways what about the classrooms between classes who's who's even looking at that i mean we have you haven't even talked about that so who's going to be cleaning making sure classrooms are picked up in between classes president keeler mr bermudovich i will i'm going to get to that in my presentation as well thank you um and so we've we've also made some specific changes to to the daily custodial duties so um honestly you know just like our facilities um and and support services um plan and even our district plan there's not one person that's gonna be able to manage the the issue with rid of the covet it's going to be a team effort and everybody's going to pick up and work together and so on on our campuses we already have maintenance staff and custodial staff and so their duties are also going to change as it relates to addressing this issue and we'll i'll talk further um just an example of some of the high touch areas that we talked about that as a sample that that person um will will work through also certainly with the increased sanitation uh sanitization needs per site we'll look at what cleaning is done in the evening and and our focus on on what that looks like as far as the classroom and mrs richtoben response to your question we we have added um additional chemicals per class and this is for each teacher in their classroom a bottle that has the disinfectant again this is provided for teachers for their voluntary use the cdc actually recommends this in in their report per classroom and so that is a peroxide based multi-surface cleaner that doesn't require ppe and can be used and sprayed and would kill the their neural virus in 45 seconds um and you can use paper towel to to wipe it as well you know that that we're providing that per person all that you're expecting the teachers to clean their classroom between classes really i'm not expecting teachers the teachers should not be cleaning these classrooms and first of all these chemicals you're going to be spraying chemicals between classes it takes 10 to 15 minutes for these chemicals to dry for cripes sake so so classes in high school are what five minutes so these children are going to be walking into these classrooms with chemical sprays so so mr teachers it's not the teacher's responsibilities to clean these classrooms between it is not is there any training for this are we training the teachers this is how you're going to spray this is how you're going to wipe i don't see any manuals there's nothing been presented on this this is this is ridiculous remember president keller warburtovich the the cleaner for the teachers classroom is provided for their use voluntarily um as you know you'll know right now each teacher's classroom typically when the back to school time comes teachers request wipes and sanitizer a lot of the cleaning supplies many teachers already have cleaning supplies and and use them already this is an addition little thing that we're providing for each teacher um are we requiring it no it's provided for them voluntarily in terms of expectations to clean between each class period i agree that's probably not realistic so for teachers maybe it's their prep hour maybe it's um after before or after or just before recess or during their lunch period again this is something else that we're providing each of these classrooms are going to be completely sanitized each night with the new protocols and with the people that we've hired but this was just an additional item that we're providing for teachers if they choose to use that they can but we're not requiring them or saying that they have to dr fowler is kind of what i envision and i hear you mr rotovic um but i also feel my opinion is that we're all responsible i mean everyone's responsible so um it is our everyone's job who's on that campus to keep our campus clean and safe and i i'm not at all pleased with the time we're in but how many i'm assuming there'll be multiple because honestly what i envision on a campus is a security guard walking around and having us one of these bottles and a cloth or napkins with them and that anywhere they go any opportunity they have that they're spraying this and anyone who's walking the campus custodian or not is going to have this and that that's just going to be on the forefront of their mind oh here i'm walking by let me spray and wipe this and that's it's not a pleasant thought but it's our world right now um so i'm assuming there's going to be this made available to more than just the classrooms it will be in the office and in the media centers and like i said i envision our security guards as they're going around that they're going to have some type of cleaner with them president keller members of the board even here at the district office now as we utilize our restrooms district office personnel are responsible for spring after they've used the the restrooms it is not a good situation it's not anything that anybody wants to be in but i'll be quite honest with you if we don't have extra help and support when two thousand kids at the high school change classes and we better not open that's just the way it has to be because i don't believe without extra help support and everybody kicking in to help out it it is possible we we can't have a custodian or our five custodians clean 80 classrooms in five minutes it's just impossible dr fowler on the previous slide curtis can we go backwards one disinfect all outdoor drinking fountains are we going to shut off i mean i i've noticed that a lot of places closed down the drinking fountains except for the refillable water ones is that are we going to keep them all open president kaler the direction on that has been mixed and i've seen districts going either direction so we will sanitize those um as frequently as we can and certainly we're encouraging students to bring their own water if i'm directed to do so we can shut those down as well but at this point um i haven't you know it's it's it's a mixed a mixed direction there certainly those that have the refillable water bottles we're encouraging that and we will disinfect those multiple times a day um but but i'll i'll certainly take direction if if i'm directed to do that we can certainly make that change but but i've seen it go both ways so so that that decision was still open at this point doesn't all of our campuses have the water available as well most of them do yes most of them do if from my understanding based and i know that we're not in normal times but based on the arizona department of health and regulations that we have to have drinking water accessible so unless we have the the way for them to refill it i don't think legally in arizona we can turn those off the other like when you walk into lowe's and they have them all covered they're allowed to do that but schools have to by law have water available for their students so i mean obviously everyone bring your own hopefully everyone's very well aware of that and want to bring their own but i don't think we can turn off the drinking fountains legally and then just want to touch a little bit on custodial training um we do have ongoing training provided by waxy uh recently we had a training for our plant foreman and our night leads with the custodians and typically a campus the the plant foreman and nightly really kind of control what is happening and communicate what's going on during the day and during the night um this was just a refresher for all of our people that are we're currently employed now with the new employees that we've hired we're going to continue to to improve that training and working whether that's needed on a site-by-site basis or certainly bring back training and if his staff need it as well as it relates to the chemicals that we're using also i wanted to just touch on the kova 19 critical response team we have we have employed this group a number of times and it's a group of five employees within my department that have been trained and have the ability to use the electrostatic sprayers if you've seen those that are out there and actually i'll show the next slide has a picture of that there's also a backpack version we're able to go into a facility and completely sanitize uh these facilities using this special disinfectant and we've been been able to to really accomplish this task in about an hour and one of the things that i wanted to share as well is we've been able to purchase one of these for each campus as well so each campus has the ability to utilize these to help with sanitizing be that the during the lunch hours the tables um or other high-touch areas and or also outsole in the playground between recesses and those types of things and so uh just to let the board know that we have um when we've had us as a suspected case or the potential of any infection we've deployed this team um a few times and been able to um effectively go and completely sanitize area so that that is wanted to bring that to your attention as well and that uses the pure tabs which um you you put in the in the machine and use it and it's very seamless um josh crosby amazing director of transportation actually has had this piece of equipment for a while and it was using it during cold and flu season in the past and now they actually have a number of these and although we don't have a transportation update right now for you if you remember in our last presentation we talked about transportation and this is actually what they're using to sanitize the buses as well as some other chemical that they're using to sanitize after every bus run the buses are sanitized and so uh so um that that is important for the board to know as well with the same gun or like the same it's not a gun but um sorry i'm like oh no that's not the word i meant to say no the sanitizer the electrostatic sprayers we don't have enough to sanitize every bus every period every day i mean every week the buses would be used by that but there's a a spray chemical that that disinfects and dries within a few minutes that they use on each of the buses okay between routes and the drivers that's part of their i didn't know if they're probably 13 more for transportation because i couldn't only imagine that we would need 13 more yeah we'd probably need about 65 of these that's what i had once so yeah we use it on each bus but but more like each week not daily thank you yes and then finally just to update um i do have one question in reference to as i'm listening to this all the chemicals that we're bringing into those buildings um we're talking about a spray we're talking about the teacher cleaning the room we're talking about you know like like my concern is if you're going to be giving all these teachers all these chemicals in the classroom who's going to be modern this so when you've got 30 students in the classroom in first grade somebody doesn't get over there to the chemicals and drinks or spills it or something i mean i'm just nervous about all this and now you now and my other nerd that i'm nervous about is all the chemicals i mean we're spraying here with the spray thing here the classroom here again it this is a lot of chemicals we're bringing in with these children and it's just uh i don't know about you i i i hear you mr witovich and then i go but what is our alternative not to clean what and and again like what where where what do we do we cannot not clean president caleb we cannot clean but my thing is i guess there's procedure in place that would make me more comfortable like okay if you're going to have these chemicals in the classroom they're to be locked up okay if this is going to be used in this school this is where it's going to be so so if somebody gets a hold of this we have a procedure to know how to address it okay that's that's what i'm like and my other thing too is and i talked with dr foley that secondary is such a beast and so her and i sat even talking like so how does this look changing classes how much time in between each class is it is it the teacher handing out a wipe to each student to wipe down their area and then they go i mean there's so many different options out there and it's um and i understand what you're saying because then within a few minutes there's another student coming in sitting in that wet chair i mean it's just so overwhelming and and i and i get your concerns completely president keller members of the board this is also a very heavily discussed topic within the cabinet in group two and and i want to let you know that dr foley and dr fowler and and david and sherry have really discussed this and we are spending extra money and extra funds to make sure that the chemicals that we buy are the ones that don't require ppe are the chemicals and and the supplies that we need that are the least toxic as possible it is costing us more money and they're very very difficult to get a hold of as a matter of fact we were very afraid that we wouldn't have enough spray bottles for when school may open back up and those just came in this week because all these things are are very difficult to get a hold of and so you're right mr wittovich it's this is not a perfect situation but i would tell you that i can tell you this team right here is taking a look at everything dr foley has been an absolute rock star and making sure that even though it's not a perfect situation it's the best we can do in the times of covid mr ratovich i i hear you because i'm around kids and we have chemicals and um and i i'm all for we do need to have procedures and i have no doubt waxy could provide those or or easily typed them up but i agree there has to be some processes and procedures so that we use them appropriately because if we don't then either it can go really wrong or we're not doing it's not doing what it's intended to do so they do have to be used appropriately but i appreciate this and i'm not big on the chemical thing either but what scares me more is somebody sending or a kid just doing it coming to school with their own something that scares me more like oh maybe they made their own wipes or something and they're coming in and cleaning their own desk but we don't know what that is and um that i'm more afraid of that um and as long as we can reassure our families that we have these items available we are training people we do have manuals to use them correctly so that they can do what they're meant to do um if there was a magic wand that could take that we could clean with that had no chemicals and i don't know i i would love that but um i completely agree with you i think there does has there has to be some processes there because otherwise if we don't use them appropriately it may not do what we're intending you know the questions i'm asking you today it's not it's not directed at you okay um what my concern is i'll just be honest with all of you here this evening and who's ever watching out here um i had a parent to ask me a question today they said you know what's really interesting is that um the last stimulus the first and last dimensions we got in there that um we're releasing federal prisoners back into the communities and back to their homes on home confinement for their safety okay and yet we're being told to send our children to schools and we're expecting you as educators to figure it out that's what i get upset about here today so how dare we bringing criminals back in and then we're expecting our children to come back into the schools so that's that's my frustration and with that with appearance i have a total yeah at the at the end i have a total rant about this as well so you're not alone sir mr wu tovic you're singing to the choir okay well and i just want to reassure you i guarantee you we literally sat around reading labels of clorox wipes wet ones we were looking at what can what can be used that is effective that can be wiped off so that you're not walking into wet and sitting on wet and finding that there are very few options that had that capacity for cleaning that didn't require gloves goggles or would be you know toxic harmful so it has been we hear you and the concern about what is in those chemicals and the long-term effects and having those specs and and knowing only what we know today i hear you and and know that there has been a lot of conversation about what and how um and and and not being happy with the outcome of any of those but the best of the worst that we can got for you right now i just applaud you for what you're doing because it's not your job to do this and whoever thought in our lifetime this would happen like this but back again to to where we're thinking you know i just i just you know i'm not comfortable with everything that's happening and i see these criminals coming out and and we want our kids to go in it's just okay president kayla members of the board too i can tell you that this incredible rock star team has also called our neighboring school districts and peers and we are leaps and bounds ahead of them on some of this safety and some of this cleaning processes and that aspect too i mean they've really done an incredible job of vetting the process the ppe the chemicals and and what needs to be done to try to safely bring back students as safely as possible when it's safe and just to finish with with my piece um just a credit to our warehouse staff they've been working very very hard and trying to find as much ppe and to stockpile as much as we can reasonably so we're prepared for four things and there's still still some needs but we do have a good supply of a lot of items um also i want to give the print shop credit which also is part of the warehouse for the the uh directional markers and the uh the the circles that you stand on with the logos that we're adding at sites and uh um schools that need signs and the posters for wear a mask and all the things that we're realizing that we need to add um they've just been doing a great job with those but also creating them in a way that it promotes school spirit within each of the individual sites and so you get a chance to to to say say well done to the warehouse people they've been they've been doing a great job job as well i was going to say dr fowler there's one uh business that has done really well in covid in that sign making i've never seen so many signs go up so quickly with instructions per the company in the business it's mind-boggling to me so thank you to the print shop just to leave you with a picture kind of sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words so just some visuals of of uh supplies and dr thomason referenced the spray bottles on the right i have to admit i was pretty nervous when we're about to deploy and needed the spray bottles to all the classrooms and our order of about 3000 had not shown up yet and but unfortunately that it did come thank you for explaining what the picture on the left is because i looked at it and i couldn't quite figure out what it was and now i know oh it's the markers um i was like what is that those are the peeling sticks so those are the stickers great thank you for explaining trying to promote physical trying to promote physical distancing so president taylor i i want to acknowledge curtis because he designed every one of the school stickers or markers very nice we were just talking that it looked like twister up here but um that's aging us so curtis doesn't even know what that game is okay so now let's talk about some executive orders and i think before we start talking about the executive orders and the information that's been given to us today i want us to take a second to acknowledge each and every one of us has received some very very thoughtful very passionate very detailed perspectives on their concerns many oftentimes divergent views on what we should do and how we should do this together i think one of the things i want our our our community here is that we hear you we understand you when you actually understand even when you have equally opposite opinions we can relate with where you're coming from on both sides and i think that one of the challenges that we have together that we're going to talk through tonight are some of the executive orders that have come to us and some decisions that have to be made and they're out and the responsibility that we have as a district on making sure safety security happens as we as we implement these executive orders so i want i want people to know that we are hearing them that we understand them and that we want to do the very best by them and so with that i want to go into some of the things that have come to us as things that we have to do and some decisions that we need to interpret together one of the first things that and again the executive order said several things you heard you heard that governor ducey say arizona is open for learning you heard things that 180 days are not going away you heard that that the perspective of there's accountability for for learning this year one of the things that came out of the executive order and you heard mom talk a little bit about tonight is the idea that one of the things that they say is it's essential for us to retain our workers and our teachers and our highly qualified people who are amazing and our higley employees are amazing so that we are ready to resume school when it when we are able to do so one of the things that you also heard the governor say was that he was no longer going to be talk we had been talking about a date obviously there had been an order that had closed in-person learning in arizona until august 17th we had been hearing as we talked at the last meeting that there would be an announcement of perhaps a moving of that age or information what we heard in that meeting from him was that they were going to allow decisions on a date for resuming a full in-person in on-campus learning to be made at the local level and then in the executive order came some specific dates that we need to be aware of one of the first dates that was shared and the executive order was that that the arizona department of health services has been directed because there had been a lot of of concern about schools if we're going to put this responsibility on on local governing boards to make decisions we need to give them some metrics to make some decisions so they have shared that by no later than august 7th we are to receive some recommendations that are from the arizona department of health services to help us use this the executive order says that we shall use that we shall consider these recommendations one of the things specifically i literally feel like i could recite this executive order to you verbatim because i have literally spent this much time with it but what we what it also says is that each school shall have these um mitigation plans like we talked about earlier that are aligned to the cdc prior to opening so that these are things that in addition to your mitigation plan you can and should consider these recommendations that are coming obviously we've been speculating what might these benchmarks include i mean we are currently already monitoring our zip codes by a daily basis our own internal data on a daily basis what are the metrics and pieces that all of this is going to be very important to us can i point out that we are given this data on or we'll give this on the seventh and then the date back is the 17th and that includes two weekends so they are giving us five days five work days for our employees to figure out for us to interpret yesterday so i just want to make that very clear that five work days for all of you so just to our community something to think about five days when you start putting this on a calendar one may begin to have heart palpitations just a little bit yeah and president caleb members of the board i know this team they'll be working those weekends so one of the other things that was part of this is while we were told that you decide you use these metrics and you decide when you feel that you can safely reopen buildings and and there are districts around the state who have already identified dates um and and many now are now talking about those as well one of the things though that was part of this executive order um is the requirement that if you are to be eligible for the funding and and all of us can acknowledge that that you to be eligible for the funding you are required to begin on even if you deem that the buildings are not ready for everyone to open and even if you are still considering your metrics that on the 17th we are obligated to start to provide on-site learning opportunities and support services for students whose families have determined that they want a place or need a place for their student to go during that day and that shall begin on august 17th when we talk about what those services include those are in-person support services that include supervision that happen during the school day and and they refer to two other executive orders in this one they refer to 41 and they refer to 44 which are basically saying that regardless of what your schedule is that you are obligated to offer this monday through friday from your normal school hours as in previous previous years they do indicate and again these are just i'm pulling these these are um summarized from the exact executive order bullets the other piece was with that while you can you can adopt policies to mitigate the physical distancing you cannot re it cannot result in refusal to provide it and the only way you cannot have something again the way you cannot have something is if there was deemed by the arizona health department that you needed to close for instance or it was deemed due to an outbreak you can apply for a waiver and you then would not have to offer a site for for families who who needed this now that is from the executive order now udall shumway and dustin rosenfeld have been working together to help support districts on the interpretation of what this means and arizona department of education also is providing some additional guidance to help us understand what we that what that means and one of the things that they've said is that it's important to note that these that the offering of this on-site service does not mean the return to regular classroom uh school it can mean uh it would mean that you'd have online learning or remote learning continued that it may or may not be teacher-led that it could include paraprofessional support but in either case however you choose to staff it you need to provide supervision and support for those families who have identified that they are in need of those support services and that starts on the 17th so one of the things ade has also said is that this was intended there's there's two parts what's in the executive order and the interpretation and the intention the department of ed is saying that that safe place for students to come is for you know again students who are deemed at risk special education students students or children of essential workers and that again um so while it's saying districts you determine which populations you open you offer it to it's really you can it's not it isn't saying only those populations it could be for anyone who said i i want a place for my student to go for support services so that one piece and we're going to talk a little bit more about the fact that it's important for us to begin to get an idea of regardless of what happens with when we determine when we're going to open for in-person teacher-led instruction we also need to be able to anticipate and find out from our community who is planning on taking advantage of that because we need to ensure the safety security and staffing for for our for those students the other piece that was part of this executive order is a an executive order that says we shall as a school district develop and implement a policy to require face coverings or face massacre shield for all staff and students over the age of and this is right out of the executive order that you see here on the thing then it also says that there will be exceptions that there will be um uh breaks those kind of things that are supposed to be embedded in your policy and so this is one of the other we must do it with with ensuring a safe return to school so what that leaves us with is discussing some scenarios here so obviously we are a couple things that we now know one we need to determine a date for when when in-person learning can happen there are very important metrics and tool up tool that is supposed to be released to us by the seventh to help us determine if we can meet those metrics that regardless of whether we do or don't open schools or what our metrics are telling us that on the 17th we need to provide some kind of in-person support in that however that might look and that we must wear uh have a mass policy and implement that so again so here's two scenarios if we are able to to determine that we are we are able to open on the 17th and again that decision would be based on our our mitigation plans our a guide that's aligned to the center for disease control whatever these metrics are that and again we don't even know to what extent we would be utilizing um and again county and health officials and our own data and resources to determine we are able to do this or or scenario two which is we are not able to or we need more time or and at this point if we aren't able to remote learning would have to continue for all students until we were able to open in-person learning so those are our two scenarios one of the things that we need to figure out and one of the things we're hearing from to be to to do to do this well and to do this right as a district we need time to figure out how to match and marry and understand what parents want for their child and and our staffing of that we've received communication from parents saying i am not ready to make this decision and i completely understand why they are not ready to make this decision because they too want to look at these metrics one of the things that a lot of other districts did that we decided to wait until we had a better idea of when might in-person learning come because again we were anticipating maybe a date um to work with was other we've other districts have have asked families to identify if you had to make a decision today would you want an in-person learning opportunity or do you want an online so that they can staff appropriately we cannot staff in a line overnight that is something i mean truly truly even if parents ended up changing their mind if we had a good understanding of what you think you want for your child if you had to make that decision today and knowing that there are metrics so that we can begin to anticipate how many teachers students on campus that has an impact on our rooms our physical distancing it has impact for staffing online those purely online and we need time to align and make that match so one of the things that we are talking about doing is is and you see a sample of some writing there is asking people to to just to to share with us at this point if you had to decide not because we want to make you force you to have an answer right now but we need an idea of what our staffing might look like because there it can change and you can change your mind but if we don't know if we don't know how to anticipate we can't align for that and it can't happen overnight this is going to be a multi-multi-week process and even that is going to be really pushing it and so if we delay we can delay but it will delay us further being able to align and make matching happen for staffing dr foley yeah so i think you guys probably get all the same emails i get i got about half a dozen people already just this afternoon saying look we don't you can ask me to make a decision right now i'm i want to wait until august 7th when we know what that criteria is so i just want to pass that along i think you've got cc'd on a couple of them anyway but that's fair it it is it is fair and knowing that if we choose to wait to send a survey out until that point we were going to need to allow time for us to to to get that information and align and and at some point too we're so far in the semester there's a you know changing one model to another is is a challenge and yet at this moment we're we're all remote learning and we started the year remote learning for that purpose so and dr foley with that we're not holding any parent to what they might say in their survey either and they can absolutely change their mind but you're trying to get like sorry a majority of our parents today to give us an idea of what they would prefer because it will help us with help us with staff to helping us with staffing decisions and it's going to take us some time to note to know that and again it and and we're going to have to use that to help us with making sure we have adequate coverage for all of our classes so again not wanting to commit one way or another knowing that there is option to change that is one of the things we need to know the other thing in this survey that we would have been asking and you see in a sample there an example is we want you to tell us what you're thinking knowing that you may change your mind and but the other thing is is we're asking you if you are going to be requesting support services with us clarifying what it isn't um we need to know because i we we need a safety and security situation on our campuses to anticipate and plan for who's coming um and where so that we can adequately respond to that so that's one of the things we really need to know so even if it is even if the decision or the guidance here is we need to we need to know what what people are wanting not that they can't change their mind and i saw there was some very thoughtful uh emails saying can you add a suggestion that says i want in person i want in person after i've reviewed the metrics you know i want online only right now again however we choose to do that we need to get a sense of that um for staffing perhaps we can ask i'm i will return i mean like you said we've got emails all day today um and not just today throughout this there are people who my kids returning in person as soon as those doors open they're going and then you have on the other side my child will not be returning they will continue the online at least until i determine it's safe and some have even flat out said for the entire year they have no intention of sending their child to school at all this year and that's you know those are choices so maybe on the survey that we're asking these questions you can get the i will so yes i i will send my child back to school on the reopening date and then have the i'm somewhat likely to return them to school or i'm somewhat likely not to return them to school and that kind of it should give us the definites um these ones are for sure not these ones are for sure are and then kind of where the ones that are teetering a little bit like you said um that they want to wait until they see what these benchmarks are you're you're asking me to make a decision and and i totally understand we're all having to make decisions and these everyone has said it not binding decisions for our families but we're having to make decisions with not all information and so if we if there's someone whose mindset is you have this mitigation plan you meet the benchmarks whatever they may be because we don't know yet we don't even know what they are more or less are we close we have no idea um so someone's thought process may be with this mitigation plan and i think you guys have spelled a lot out tonight and with meeting these benchmarks then i am likely to send my student back to school or i just still don't know but i'm not ready to make a full decision on it well what it does is it allows us to at least get a sense of where people are feeling right now knowing that they that obviously the more we know and again just like we've learned all along that was one of the reasons why we said we're not going to keep asking people because literally what we felt today changed in three days because more information continued to change and i think that that is the reality this is the reality in the heartbreak um the us uncertainty and the not knowing and then not being able to plan we're also hearing that in our voices saying i just need to know so that i can plan and we're trying to but we're also trying to be responsive to the information that we get at the moment and be responsible with that information so um never in a million years what i have imagined as i saw my son phil himself fill out his uh august calendar and his i it just hit me when he wrote first day of school with on the 17th with a question mark you know when in the world would we not you know know these things but dr foley i i read this executive order over and over in my head and this support services like can we dive into that word for just a few more minutes like exactly what does that look like and maybe explain to our parents that are watching what what does that really look like in this executive order well what it means is that we are not required the the 17th does that mean you have to start if if you have a space to come it isn't like you're returning to your your classroom like you did when we were all day every day what it would mean is that it could be a teacher it could be a paraprofessional it depends on the number the thing is is this always goes back to how many and who and how are we going to cover that that would work with those students now let me give some examples there are some specialty populations so some of our special ed classrooms our students who are extreme programs where this is an opportunity for them to come and to work with their teacher so those so support services as intended for our for those populations but in general this is someone to work with your student to facilitate their remote learning at that time if you are not back in full in-person learning so it doesn't mean come to the school building and school is it like it was it is you come and you'll be in a face mask and you'll be working with someone to support you during these times and there would be lunch food services provided there would be support there would be interaction obviously but how many students and would help us determine how we're going to have to staff that and so it could be perhaps one or two classrooms per site it might not be every site so it's very up in the air based on what we get our feedback from our and i know that again i heard the emails i've read every single one that i could possibly read before the board meeting started tonight and i hear the hearts of every single mom and father and grand grandparents writing us god bless them um yeah but we just kind of got to get a number we need to know we need and that's one of the things that needs to be part of the survey is again we're not we want to hear what are you thinking and i and i feel that if adding that piece that says in person if you know again says i'm if it makes you feel better not to have to commit but it gives us a ballpark for staffing is important but in addition to that if this executive order expects on the 17th there is something and there are specialty populations this is intended for but it doesn't exclude we need to be able to know you're intending and needing this service so that we can so that the site administration can follow up with you to make sure you understand what we can do and how we're going to staff that we need time and that's one of the reasons why we would need to send a survey out like we need to send it out thursday friday ask it back from you by monday which is tight turnaround but that gives us two weeks to figure out who how many where how much and how to support that date while we're waiting for other metrics to help us understand this so again not ideal timeline but this is the reality of the information that we have and the things we need to navigate through i mean we need obviously you know here we are we're having this discussion for the first time as as a collective on interpreting what does this mean obviously we have some work to do we need to take a look at where we're required to have a mass face covering policy asba has put those out we need to take a look at that that would be again one of the things that would be pretty common across that most east valley all the state districts who are usually using this but we would need to adopt that regulation um we really need to yes know where parents are but we also need to know who is planning on taking advantage of that and helping under them understand that this is not um return as normal if we aren't full fully back in the buildings and again there are a lot of things we need to as discussed tonight for a safe return to the buildings there's many things that we have got to work through and think about so this will be two questions on the survey will there be two questions okay i'm like just thinking this out like as a parent taking a survey there will be one question that looks like this one question that looks like this right the truth there's two things i kind of gave a sample for you to look at yeah there's two things there would be sort of an explanation that and it would be a communication to uh junior members that basically does this it says let us for those for those who are not watching let us summarize for you exact exactly the three main things that are part of this executive order that that leaves us with two scenarios because again you you and i are all hearing from people equally please delay and we're getting as many you start as soon as you can possibly start and so we're seeing we're hearing both sides very very clearly i also have some executive orders and some decisions we have to make together um so the idea is we're saying parents here's the executive order here's the scenarios we're going to ask you to do a survey and in the survey you're going to to tell us this because we need to this is going to help help us with staffing because this is going to take some time here to align the other part is is that this also helps us to know how many kids are we looking at providing in safe and secure and appropriate support services for starting on the 17th as per executive order dr foley i um just i know that many people um you know and it's you know we live it and eat it and drink it all day long all of this stuff but there was so many of our community members and our staff that didn't even realize that we are being mandated to open up for these support services on august 17th that's right we were not given that choice right so and then it was but it was vague it was it was clear as mud what that looks like for us you know and so this is why we're challenged right now with getting this survey out is because of that in the executive order that many people didn't even know existed yeah and it does i think that it was a tale of two two two two tales uh a tale of two cities the best of times the worst of times you heard you that we're not going to give a date and yet in the executive order there is a date for some some very tight expectations so that's a reality we're navigating through and that's why we're talking about this tonight and why we need to hear from our community on what are you thinking especially and especially the component about the 17th and helping us anticipate and appropriately staff so and understanding that nobody is going to be held to to whatever i choose on this survey today does not mean that more information in several weeks from now i can't change my mind but if if if our administrative team has the ability to have an idea of what those numbers are we can begin leveraging appropriate conversations and staffing to ensure the best and most appropriate transition when we are able to safely say we can return to to school to return to in-person learning and so the second thing i showed you is kind of an example what that survey would look like it's it's two sets of questions it's a tell us what you're thinking now again if with feedback we've give given is kind of an option one and one one a one b which is yes i'm interested in person but i'm not willing to say that until i have seen the metrics and to nope i'm pretty and we have heard from families too who said i know i'm not planning on returning and let us know that now so that we can begin to adequately staff for that appropriately particularly now that we are really working through the as you have been so wonderful to support the the beginning of our online academy so here's that is our our our next next steps we need to also work with our employees to inform them of these mitigation plans which are still in that draft form um that we're getting guidance on what needs to include but are the very documents and and components we talked about earlier tonight um we need to also survey our our staff members again and say tell us again what your what your preference is now that doesn't mean that we can meet everyone's preference but where are you and how are you feeling about this and then we need to kind of look at what does this mean for us and moving forward so i think my clicker decides this stuff will these go out per child the survey or family okay i know some kids in the family may want to go back and some do not so actually in my own household that's how it's going to be right so i do see both sides of the emails that are coming in very clearly so i want to make sure that each child gets the survey not each family yes no this will be pertailing and and and board member wilson to your question question about should we send this through survey through synergy do we do this as a separate form well we have exhausted our our capacity in um synergy is not very survey friendly and so one of the things we found to be able to get the information is that it's going to go out from each site in a form of component per kid so that we can monitor it more quickly and more efficiently and yes it means that they're going to end up meeting put their student name and id number but honestly the the challenges with the other were not were not less than ideal so this is the more reliable tool to use for this purpose is what we've learned so we need to know your child's name and id number because we need to know what site they're at i've forgotten that question that a couple parents were concerned about putting their child's id number out there but we need to know your child's name so we can link them to the appropriate class it also helps us make sure we've gotten every single student at that campus and so you can see from the attendance we monitor closely who our kids are our our building leaders want to be able to touch and know what their parents and kids are thinking so that we can staff appropriately so when we look at dr foley i'm sorry on this survey and i know it it might add just let you all chew on it but are we going to put a place for comments or no i know that that has been a conversation that i've had with parents and a lot of them want to put a comment and i know that makes it a lot of work for us to read through them but hey we we are not wanting to not provide an opportunity for for that and so i think we can easily add a comment okay thank you you know and maybe we can separate it out we can have a specific questions and um other comments and that way it will help us you know begin to look at what's actionable for us to help respond to so yeah here's the other thing that so so so what do we do and how do we do this when we start putting this again going back to the timeline of this um obviously july 29th here we are tonight we are talking about this um one of the things that we were wanting to do is send out this communication to two parents with some based on some feedback that we've just talked about adding maybe a comment section maybe adding a part about when i have more metrics at least to just get us that information to ballpark it um for us to be able to staff appropriately and to anticipate who's coming on who's think who's thinking they're coming and requesting support on the 17.
um so i'll skip that one for now but um thanks to the board of selectmen board of finance and board of education in supporting us you know we were able to purchase an additional 300 chromebooks on top of what we purchase every year to support our students and we will be making those available to students throughout um pre-k uh grades pre-k to seven um how those will be distributed and how that will look uh more information will follow on that again it's as we um get the devices back that that we had um given out in the spring um as we replace ones that need to be replaced and um as we uh as we uh determine our final counts um and start getting those out to the buildings um for those of you who um maybe have a student or or um are listening and were previously in fourth grade you know that we piloted a byod program starting in january at huckleberry for the fourth grade unfortunately we didn't get a long period of time to pilot that um but in in the um light of the need for devices um and the more using of technology we are fully supporting a byod program this is bring your own device we are allowing students and families to provide their own device for their student that will be supported um with internet access and the necessary applications and programs most of which are web-based these days um and uh and our it department is ready and prepared for that um should uh families have choose the option to bring your own device um parents may choose to take this route uh more information and and and some agreements that we um we share with families will um be forthcoming in august um with the influx of devices whether it's chromebooks that the district's purchasing or the byod that families choose to send their students in with um we are i.t department among many other things um is very hard at work um on wi-fi upgrades um we have our new wireless access points arriving early next week and we'll be going around the district and adding those in um and and beefing up if you will um our our wi-fi uh to support um all these new devices in all of our schools um there will be a lot more information um on technology in regards to devices for the remote option should should parents choose to do that and then how it's going to look in school a lot more information to follow in august but i at least wanted to start with this please feel free to reach out to me with any additional questions um regarding technology um along either by contacting me or on the q a form um and that is it for technology so i'll hand it back to dr ruby or i think we're moving on to mrs little just go to the next slide please so now um melissa lebraciano is going to take over for the rest of the program until we at the very end and tell you about specifics for huckleberry thank you thank you dr ruby and i also want to welcome dr ferrara who joined our meeting this evening so eric if you want to just go to the the first slide that'd be great so i want to begin the conversation tonight just on developmental approach appropriateness for our students who are in second third and fourth grade um and i apologize in advance as i may be looking down at my notes because there's so much information that i want to get in this presentation and i don't want to miss anything i want to be able to share everything uh with the families and staff that are watching this evening but pause is embedded in everything we do throughout our day we teach our students from the very moment they walk into our building that we practice kindness act responsibly work hard and show respect the ruler approach is also implemented throughout the school and in every classroom students are not only learning how to recognize their own feelings and emotions but their peers too coming back to school after such a long period of time of being away our staff are aware that there are going to be social and emotional needs and we've already begun talking about that very important work and how we're going to address those needs with our students teachers are already meeting and collaborating on how to implement instruction in a thoughtful and meaningful way as always teachers will continue to provide explicit instruction through modeling and also visual supports assessing will still occur after a period of transition to being back at school and assessments come in many forms especially for our youngest learners teachers will provide feedback whether that be oral or written and we've begun discussions with teachers about having students upload assignments and assessments using google classroom at the beginning of the year having students use the platform to check their homework or daily assignments when they get home each day after school we really want kids familiar with google classroom and the technology so that it's really intertwined in their day and even when they get home so that if any moment we are back to remote learning the transition will be easier for our students children will be taught about safety topics as dr ruby mentioned whether that be masks hand washing how do we social distance covering our sneeds with our elbow the district school just the school nurses are collaborating and creating lessons and nurse warner and nurse kelly our amazing nurses at huckleberry are ready to support our students and staff children will also be taught about appropriate social interactions and awareness whether that's saying hello from a distance or sharing from afar kindness feelings mindfulness self-regulation which is also part of our ruler approach our school social worker and our school psychologists will be ready to support students and staff in addition we know that it is very unrealistic for our elementary students to be stuck at a desk all day wearing a mask and even our adults even the adults in our building will need mass breaks mass breaks will be throughout the day and i want to encourage families to start having children their children practice wearing masks at home whether they're wearing a mask during a board game that you're playing or when you're out in public try to keep those distance keep expanding the distance or the length of time that children are wearing masks because more the more that they practice and the more they're comfortable the better they will be prepared when they they come to school wearing a mask i can speak on a personal level i have a rising third grader and a rising fifth grader that are going to school in the fall and you know they are so comfortable now with wearing their masks that there are times where we are out in public and then we go into the car and they don't even realize they're still wearing their masks five minutes later so the more practice at home the better our children will be eric could you go to the next slide please so i received a lot of questions about what a typical day will look like at huckleberry and and i want to give a big shout out and thank you to miss diamond the principal over at center school because she went first doing these q a sessions and i loved her format of her slide so i want to share that our daily schedule will look very similar to what it's always been we will be adding in our schedule and embedded into our day like i said mass breaks and bathroom breaks we will continue to have ruler activities movement breaks recess a daily special sometimes two in a day and a break for snack each day our curriculum and curricular resources will remain the same teachers will continue to use my math open court the smithsonian science units teachers college for our ela instruction st math the list goes on all of that will stay and be consistent what is different is more of the physical layout of a classroom desks will be on average about five to six feet apart at huckleberry and as dr ruby mentioned cohorts a cohort is a class at huckleberry so whether that's 18 students 21 students 22 students depending on the class that is a cohort at huckleberry we're not planning on splitting up any of those cohorts that it would be a classroom cohort i will also share what's different so students will remain in their classroom for the majority of the day students will keep their backpacks outerwear and personal belongings with them at their desks each student will have his or own set of manipulatives and tools students will eat lunch in their classroom small group work may take may be done via technology and virtually so even if you have a student that's present in sitting at their desk they may be meeting with a reading teacher and with several other children in the building through a zoom breakout session and classes will be assigned to use specific bathrooms and be scheduled for bathroom breaks i want to share two you know specials such as pe physical education library music art and spanish will look a bit different classes will be scheduled for the same special for seven to eight weeks and specials will be held in the classroom so that is a change for example your child may have mr martina our music teacher monday through friday every single day for seven to eight weeks and the rationale behind this even though it's not ideal is that it's really about the safety for everyone involved instead of mr martina working with 520 students per week he will now only be working on average with six to eight classes per week there is a chance as we are finalizing our schedule that your child may have an additional special each week but advice as i've said it's still being determined as we finalize our schedule and we be we start to build in our teacher planning and collaboration time some of your children may already be familiar with this process if they attended huckleberry last year those were the days that they may have had two specials in one particular day and as all this information comes forward that will also that specific that being that specific will be shared with you at this time we're still getting information about band and chorus i was in communication today with mrs fitzgerald and she has some really great ideas for band um so we will be working with her on that as well so lunch will be in the classrooms children can still purchase lunch i know that was one of the questions and munch will actually be brought to the classroom by their specific lunch monitor and lunch is 30 minutes it allows for our teachers to also have their 30-minute lunch and during this time a lunch monitor will stay with the class just as lunch monitors did when we had lunch in the cafeteria lunch monitors will provide will be provided with the appropriate ppe and we will be able to help stu and will be able to help students during lunch the monitors will also be cleaning each desk after finishing eating and during this 30-minute block students will also have one of their daily bathroom breaks i have received several questions regarding allergies and food in the classrooms and i know anna lafarza who is our district supervisor for our nurses has been in contact with some of our medical advisors and anna i don't know if you want to speak to that of what was has been discussed or has transpired really within the last 24 hours sorry everybody i was unmute okay so we know that huckleberry students are going to be eating their snacks and their lunches at their desks with a trifold desk shield as far as allergies we are discouraging um classroom celebrations with food right now due to the pandemic and we're asking for parents to supply a safe snack for their child and also supply lunch or you can purchase lunch and purchase a safe lunch for your child if you have a food allergy the children again will be in cohorts um just remember the desks will be wiped down after lunch after the children will eat the desks will be wiped down the trifold desk shields will be wiped down the children will wash their hands and then place their masks back on so we have a lot of safety measures in place and we have a lot of the teachers will assist the children if need be if you still have any questions regarding your food allergies with we recommend that you discuss with your allergist or your physician and if you feel that the measures that are in place need more options the teachers will and the nurses will discuss that with you know that there is an emergency action plan in place the nurses are in constant communication with the teachers and the teachers know who the students with allergies are in their classrooms those teachers will be in their classes all day the children will be in their classes all day so the teachers have can monitor their children closely again this may change as time goes on but for now our plan is that the children will eat in the classroom desks will be cleaned their hand they wash their hands the trifold desk shields will be washed and that's really basically it and constant communication with the nurse and feel please feel free to reach out to your school nurse if you have any other questions regarding food allergies thank you anna thank you anna and i also want to just add on to that that you know even though the classroom teachers are not eating with the students during their lunch time these school nurses go over all the student medical plans with anyone that has interaction with particular students so staff is prepared they they recognize the symptoms of students who are having allergic reactions and in addition to that there are actually even plans in place for students who may not have originally an unknown allergy and all of a sudden now is showing allergies type symptoms um in the classroom i also wanted to share two that last year and and mr cochlin you kind of mentioned this as well is that our fourth graders participated in byod which was bring your own device and it was successful this year we are encouraging all students to byod and of course it's completely optional we will be sending out information regarding byod with grade level student supply list soon so that's going to come together in conjunction to get in an email from you eric if you can go to the next slide so i did receive several questions about bathroom usage at huckleberry and classes will be assigned to use specific bathrooms classes will be scheduled for several bathroom breaks over the course of the day one coinciding with their scheduled lunch time as i mentioned students will be encouraged to use the bathroom during scheduled class breaks but they also can go whenever they need to we know that it's not realistic for our second third and fourth graders to only go to the bathroom during scheduled times and we're working on our plan on how to manage students who need to go to the bathroom outside of that time so basically having conversations or instruction around if you are going to the bathroom and you notice there's already a class waiting to go what do you do and and we'll have those conversations so that students are prepared with those types of situation and as i mentioned classrooms will have bathroom breaks built into their daily schedule prior to the start of the school year grade level teams will determine when those breaks will be best for their individual schedules and teams will also be cognizant of times to avoid too many classes using the the same bathroom at once eric next slide so i've received probably the most questions regarding recess movement breaks and mass breaks so i thought i would lump that all together into one students will have recess daily for approximately 20 minutes recess will be outdoors whenever possible just like it is now with the exception of rain or extreme cold or heat as always please make sure your children dressed appropriately for recess outdoor recess will be mass-free students will be able to remove their masks for outdoor play unfortunately this year our playground will not be used social assistancing will still be expected and we will collaborate to develop a variety of choice activities that students can engage in in res outdoor play i you know for us i think the biggest change in recess is that students will not be able to use the playground and recess will be more structured classrooms will be assigned specific areas outside for recess to ensure that classroom cohorts stay together during their time recess will be more structured and the classroom teacher will be organizing games for outside play to ensure that students maintain social distancing through structured play teachers will still encourage movement and socialization in the classroom there will still be plenty of movement breaks as i said we've always done movement breaks even during a typical school year um you know we teachers use go noodle and other movement activities for students and so those opportunities will still happen except this time instead of all of everyone being together on the rug they may be doing these movement breaks standing behind their desk and as i mentioned there will be multiple mass breaks throughout the day in addition to when students aren't wearing masks already for snack recess and lunch so there will be plenty of opportunities for children to be able to take their masks off for short periods of time to get those breaks that they need indoor recess unfortunately um potentially may not be as much fun but we will do our very best to get students still engaged and have fun during that time students will remain in their classroom with their masks on we will probably incorporate some type of mask break regardless during that time and we would encour we would just encourage students to be able to play games that are more geared towards individual students such as coloring reading drawing card games and games like that thank you eric so i did receive several questions about drop off and pick up for parents um and i know dr ruby also mentioned that there may be adjustments as well to staggering schedule which we are still in the process of figuring all the information out but for the most part a parent drop-off is not going to change except that it will probably be more staggered uh parents should drive up past the front entrance doors to create a car line parents don't get out of the car they've never have before students have always exited through the passenger side door to avoid going walking into oncoming traffic and there are always many adults to support students as they're walking into the building and i think that's the most important piece so as students are getting out of the car we just have to make sure we stagger that so that we don't have a cluster of children walking into the building at the same time but again there are plenty of adults that will be able to assist with that parent pickup will be very similar to what it's always been as well parents will park their car in the parking lot spaces parents line up outside the upper gym doors the upper gym doors are the doors located closest to the front main entrance we ask that parents maintain social distancing and wear their mask and please bring your own pen and a photo id because there will be a sign out for you to um sign out to so that staff knows that someone has picked up your child and a staff member will bring your child to you and then um as always parents will not be coming into the building to pick up students just like we've always said in the past you know as we've been saying through this whole entire presentation is that we just ask for your patience because we do know that things are going to take a little longer we don't know necessarily how many more children will be dropped off and we don't know yet how many more children will be parent pick up at the end of the day so will things take longer yes are they still manageable yes but we do ask for your patience with that okay eric so i have received a handful of questions regarding incoming second graders and truly the only change this year for our incoming second graders was we were not able to have our incoming second grade huckleberry visit when second graders are still at center school in first grade they come over and they spend a little bit of time in huckleberry kind of touring the building and unfortunately we were not able to do that towards the end of may i shared with all incoming second grade families our second grade orientation materials and additional information as well please let me know reach out email if you did not receive any of that information already incoming second graders will be escorted to their classrooms whether taking the bus or parent drop-off this is a practice that we've always done at huckleberry and that will not change there are plenty of adults that escort the children to their classrooms and that first month of school in addition to that if a second grader is walking and they don't know their classroom teacher because they forget many of our staff members even have student rosters so all they have to do is look up the child's last name and they know exactly where the child needs to be so none of that will change for our incoming second graders so i don't want anyone to worry about a second grader being dropped off at school and not knowing where to go i promise you we will find them where they need to be and they will get there okay safe and sound second grade teachers will just still do some type of scheduled tour for our second graders what that looks like we haven't established that yet but we're still planning on doing some type of tour so the students get the lay of the land administration and staff are planning to do for uh virtual ways for students to connect with their teacher and to see their classroom prior to the first day of school and i would also say administration and staff provide our incoming second graders with a lot of support and help to really aid in the transition to huckleberry all our second grade classrooms are located at the lower level of huckleberry so it's a very easy layout especially since children aren't going to be using the upper cafeteria or going to any of the specialists at least the beginning part of the year as the specialists come to them it really will be okay the transition will be fine and that's all i i got sums up many of the questions that families asked i don't know if we have any additional time dr ruby if we got any questions that came in well i wanted to talk a little bit about the questions that came in um some of them are very specific and we wouldn't they would take a long time to answer here and i'll give you an example we had several questions about ventilation in the buildings and ventilation filters and the care of the hvac system and those are there are very detailed answers that need to be given for those questions and those will be written up and provided um in uh the q a document that you'll have actually will be sent out through messenger it'll be on the website so the fact that we we had to figure out a methodology for delivering this information and as well everybody may not agree that um that they like this method that we chose we chose what we thought would work best for um all of our administrators and for the the community and so well it was not the type of q a where when we're in a classroom or an auditorium you get to raise your hand and you know ask your question it wasn't an open zoom which we are not going to be doing um we felt that having the um the administrators and the experts uh go call through the q a document and collate questions so that we could give answers that to the most frequently asked questions would be the most expedient and efficient way to do that promising that the questions that you send in will all be answered one of the questions before i we're a little over time but i think is important is a question about um there were some questions about will my children if i um homeschool well they still have access to all the um the tools and programs um that the school provides and so i want to take a little bit of time just to briefly explain the answer because the answer is no why is the answer no the answer is no is because home schooling doesn't mean the same as remote learning or distance learning homeschooling as a term means that you you have decided that you as a parent or guardian are going to be responsible for the education of your child and home when you homeschool your child you actually legally withdraw your child from the school so your child is no longer a student in the brookfield public schools when that happens that triggers a cascade of financial elements where they the child is not in our school census is not counted as a student in the school by the state any funds that come from state or federal count that the money is divided by the number of people that are enrolled in school so when once you've disenrolled your child and are homeschooling you then that child no longer has access to um the materials in the school so not to be harsh i i just wanted to make sure um that people understood the terminology and that because because we could say homeschooling when we meet remote learning if your child is remote learning yes they have access to all the materials for their or their classroom there are a lot of questions about bus transportation and things like isn't it kind of silly that we're doing all this um distancing and whatnot in the classroom yet the buses are not as treated in the same way and there are so many opinions out there about that um the bottom line is that the the guidance from the state is that the buses can be filled to capacity rest assured our buses are not likely to be filled to capacity given the fact that so many people have already told us on our what i called our dipstick survey um that they were going to be driving their children to school that we're not anticipating that we're going to have um very overcrowded school buses and we will be getting more information on that form that i told you that you'd be getting through a survey where you identify your option for individual students because not only will you be asked are you 100 in or are you remote learning you'll be asked are you going to have your child take the bus or drive to school and when we collate all that data we'll be able to let people who want to know um you know just what the density on the buses is going to be um there were questions about um the notice that the governor gave on monday the surprise notice that where he started talking about um hybrid learning was going to be allowed if districts needed to do that um so people have many people have asked you know now that this hybrid thing came about are you going to do hybrid as i said earlier the plan that the district has is for and that hinges on us having the funding to buy all the materials that we need and the health data staying staying healthy the way it is right now so currently today at this moment our plan is not to go to hybrid but as you've been able to you've been living it things change from moment to moment so i don't want anybody to misconstrue if suddenly we have to go to hybrid in three weeks that he said we weren't doing that um currently we're going to 100 if anything changes the superintendent will let uh families know immediately every single other question that's on here will be answered um i do need to just as an overall response to questions about personnel there were questions asking will we be informed if a staff member gets coveted what will happen if a staff member gets coveted how many days do they have to those those answers are not ones that we can provide you those are um uh issues of personnel and um just like nope if you worked anyplace else if you worked at dunkin donuts they wouldn't send out and put a notice up in the window that you know the person who works at the window from seven to ten has covered you know that's just some not something that would be appropriate so we won't be sending home notices of names of children names of of um staff or teachers um that will all be taken care of through the department of health and the contact racing and i don't mean to be flip or you know like you're not getting the information but it's just not appropriate and i just don't want people to think that that's forthcoming because those questions are going to be answered that this is a person a personal personnel issue so i just want to thank all the people that put this program together because i know how hard you worked on um dealing with all the questions and i want to thank the parents that were able to tune in if you have friends that were not able to uh mr conklin will be posting um this uh the youtube video so that people can access it and the other videos from the other schools are up if you have children in those schools and weren't able to access we didn't get to hear from dr ferreira tonight but boy that looks great that picture if you'd like to say hello to everybody um we're so grateful to um dr ferreira and dr sullivan and uh anna for like helping us through this um very tricky time so uh dr farah so all your we sign off yeah i've been i've been hiding out but i will i will tell everybody who's listening that um you know we've worked very very closely with the school system and i have to tell you that the teams who have pulled all of this together for you many of most of them are on here have done an amazing job my son is actually in high school so he'll be a sophomore this year so you know the plans the the things that have been put together are really sound on guidelines from the cdc and i think the reassurance that i have for my son and my wife right sending him back to school is that i know the work that everybody has put in and i know the commitment all the teachers and the staff that the school system has to take care of my son while he's in there in their hands so i have no reservations i think it's a very well thought out plan certainly if there's clinical questions that ever wrote you know that come up out of tonight's discussions we'll be happy to address those with dr ruby and this team and we'll get get those answers to everybody in the community but you know again i would have to say from my standpoint thank you to the whole school district because it really is a phenomenal effort educating the community and doing the hard work that they've done over the last several weeks well thank you and thanks for all the help that you've given us because we would not have been able to do it without you and dr sullivan and our nursing supervisor anna so we're going to sign off um if you have further questions please put them into the q a my understanding is that that will be shutting down um soon because we need to collate that data i think dr burrell said that it will be shutting down sometime um following this meeting to allow the um parents and guardians from huckleberry who were watching um to be able to enter some more questions that may have uh cropped up while you're watching this hopefully we didn't confuse anybody dr ruby i think we'll put a safe time of dr varela and i i spoke earlier i think we'll put a safe time and say that um you have until 10 p.m tonight um and then we'll we'll shut down the survey so that uh the administrative team principals and all parties involved can uh can really focus on getting these questions answered for everybody okay so great those thank you very much i'm very proud to work with all the people who work so hard in brookfield and uh have a great night bye