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on july 23rd the rhetoric changes a bit while both the illinois state board of education isb and illinois department of public health idph agree that in person is the goal it may not be safe or feasible to fully uh resume input in person learning so as you can see the tenor of isb and idph has changed as the guidance has changed and that's also understandable in june when the guidance was came out the covet positivity rates were at their lowest and there were high hopes and expectations of returning to in-person learning now in august the positivity rates are climbing and both organizations understand that what they put out and in june is a little bit different for august in the new guidance from isb they have also now recommended that remote learning have 2.5 hours of synchronous instruction which our current remote by choice plan does not have it's important to note though in june and early july when we did our survey and remote choice was it was not mandated at the time and but we felt at that time it was important to include that piece um and as i just mentioned the new guidance requires remote to be an option uh as well as a recommendation for that 2.5 2.5 hours of synchronous time the next slide depicts the data of the students and parents that made their selection of the two learning options so we had 12 798 parents and families that made the selection before the deadline we've had lots of people that have made it since then as you look at the very first row that's the number of students selecting remote by choice 2056 at elementary 1052 at junior high and 1120 at the high school level the next row is just the percentage of those students that actually did complete the selection before the deadline the bottom row is of the entire students that were enrolled and what that percentage chose the remote by choice it is important to note that after we had created our remote learning options and our described it to our parents on july 23rd the state said now remote learning by choice must have two and a half hours of synchronous instruction so this changes the impact of what is available for our students and families to even choose from it's also probably important to note that i got lots and lots of emails i'm sure that you all did too that people really are saying that they wanted to know and wanted to vote for remote for all and it was not an option that we had given them at this time there are certainly thousands of others that made the choice and like some of the choices that were there the fact is that those choices now are not available due to the new requirements from the state so this is a we did all of the data to look and see what it would look like to remove teachers to do the remote learning by choice what that looks like at the elementary level is we would need 73 teachers if we were to do the remote by choice 24 teachers but that was the ingenuity option which is no longer an option and then also at the high school those 40 teachers just wanted to make the board on the community aware that we had done the numbers and looked at what that impact would be and i want to remind all that that isn't how we would lower class size because example at the elementary level i would take those 73 teachers and have them teach remote by choice and then i would have to combine all the other remaining in-person classrooms to have teachers and class sizes that would be more what we would usually have in person during regular times this also is the results our teacher union sent out a survey on 77 percent of the teachers who took the survey and those are the raw numbers uh we're requesting at that time for the district to go to remote learning for all i also wanted to talk about the number of staff taking leaves or wanting telework we we last talked we had about 170 staff members that were interested in that we had 72 that completed it the paperwork that was necessary to do that by the deadline and then we also have 25 staff that are asking for a leave of absence completely so those would be staff a lot of impact on staff available to do our teaching of our students i asked human resources to look to check on our substitute pool to see how many of our current substitute teacher our subs would be interested or still willing to come back to the school district uh in person for this year um as you can see as of july 30th we have received feedback from 303 of our 409 substitutes about their intent to return and as you can see from the information there 221 confirmed return 9 responded as undecided and 99 declined to return so at this time we have confirmation from a little more than 50 percent uh that they plan on returning for the fall you know during the regular school year um that pool 409 many times doesn't cover the number of absences that we have on a regular on a regular day you know during the year and to only have confirmation of half at this time definitely raises a concern for us in regards to being able to fill staff absences during the year i'm theresa comedis director of communications and public relations and i am here tonight to share with you some of the new and conflicting information that we've received from a number of health authorities i'll start by introducing the idea of where we get our information from so the school district looks to the kendall county health department as our primary source of information and in turn they look to idph for their guidance they are feeling the same level of frustration that we are in getting conflicting information getting changing information not being able to put our finger directly on how we could create a flow chart how we could create scenarios and know exactly what we would need to do to keep our students and staff safe and be in compliance with all of these new directions that we've received over the last week so when i came to you at our last board meeting we had just come out of a meeting with our regional office of education and a number of other superintendents in the area along with the health department and we were told about a conversation that the health departments had been having with the state in regards to potential changes coming down the pike things that maybe would make doing doing the quarantine and isolation requirements and tracing and all those kind of things in a school environment possible because as many of you have mentioned this evening and as we walk through some of this you'll see that many of this is nearly impossible unfortunately those are still only conversations they keep alluding to the health department that there will be additional faqs or guidance issued by idph but to this point we do not yet have any so that being said we are going back to our original more conservative guidance that was issued by idph it's the only thing that we can point back to in writing and so the health department has told us and given us those resources and we've tried to map that out and we'll share that with you this evening so i've pulled a couple of examples for you on what some of this conflicting guidance is cdc issued their information just shortly after isbe released the information july 23rd the cdc as some of you have mentioned is one source of information and as many people spoke this evening we all are citing different sources of information and they're all correct but unfortunately many are in opposing positions as to what we should or shouldn't do at this point one example of this cdc is saying that they're not recommending universal symptoms screening at the school levels this is primarily because young people often present asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic at school so the feasibility of conducting those kind of screenings and what ultimately we would catch is pretty low however the isbn idph guidance instructs us that we must conduct those temperature temperature and screening symptom screenings daily for every student staff member and visitor entering our building and if we opt to do the self-certification it would also be a daily check occurring at home and then being reported back to the school so a huge project we'll walk through that in a little bit another example is the exclusionary measures so again in this case cdc is coming out and recognizing that students have sickness in school we all know that we have policies around fevers and vomiting and other things in the school system and they're saying that if if someone in school has one of those illnesses that we should um be looking to our existing policies for those sicknesses and not necessarily looking at every single potential covid symptom as a long-term student absence however in direct conflict with that is the isbidph guidance which is saying that someone who either tests positive or shows any sign or any symptom of the illness needs to stay home and not just stay home but they're home for 10 days from that date that the symptom appears and when they come back they have to be fever-free for 24 hours without the use of medication this document is referred to as the crosswalk document this is issued by the illinois department of public health and was provided to us by kendall county health department it was last updated on july 20th to include a couple small things that were issued in the last round of updates so if we start on this left side of cases right off the bat you'll notice this is where we get stuck and trying to define what is a case when you look at the difference between isb idph and cdc they use different terminology like someone who is symptomatic someone who's a probable case someone who is suspected of having covet and they all define different things and what we're supposed to consider a case in order to follow through these guidelines so for for example here we'll just walk through a case in saying that we know that someone is positive so if an individual is positive for covid there's a timeline shared in the second section here this is the time-based strategy for release from isolation so from the date of onset of symptoms so a student becomes ill staff member becomes ill they would need to quarantine for 10 days and when they come back out of that quarantine they also have to be feeling well and be without a fever without those fever-reducing medications for at least 24 hours before they could be released from that isolation or a test based strategy which allows that isolation to come to end sooner would require two negative covid tests in a row 24 hours apart from each other at this point this is not the recommended strategy availability cost of the testing as well as the time frame associated with getting those tests versus waiting the 10 days in most cases the isolation strategy is what is being recommended so if we go to the right side the close contacts this is where we begin that tracing so someone who has been in contact with someone who has covet that is a close contact a close contact is defined by anyone that was in contact with a positive person for at least 15 minutes within six feet beginning two days prior to the symptom onset or the positive test so if we have someone who has close contact with someone who has covid but they're not going to be in contact with them any longer so a co-worker classmate someone that you can quarantine away from you would be required to quarantine for 14 days from the last date of contact if you have close contact with someone that you live with but you could avoid further close contact which means you're not sharing a restroom you're not sharing a kitchen you're actually able to be away from that person then again it that that time clock could start as soon as you um discontinue that close contact but when we talk about siblings parents that could be staff members spouses someone that's living in the same household this clock on the quarantine could be significantly delayed before it starts so if someone has a known case in a household their 10-day quarantine starts that first day that they're symptomatic or they get that positive test if you're going to have continued interaction and sharing the living quarters with somebody who has coveted your 14 day quarantine can't can't start until their 10 days ends the idea is that you have to wait till they're done being potentially contagious to you and then you have your 14 days to wait out to see if you become symptomatic so as we talk about potential close contacts and not available uh idph further illustrates in their definition uh that of their they released on july 20th that again anyone who has close contact with someone who has coveted would quarantine for 14 days from that last state of contact and it's defined within six feet at least 15 minutes two days before the symptom onset so if somebody is a positive case and not experiencing symptoms it would be two days prior to when that specimen was collected for the test or two days prior to the time that the patient became symptomatic when we talk about covid symptoms it's important to know that this is a pretty exhausting list it's fever of 100.4 or greater chills cough shortness of breath difficulty breathing fatigue muscle or body aches headache new loss of taste or smell sore throat congestion or runny nose nausea or vomiting and diarrhea as we look at the population of students that come down to the nurse's office on a daily basis in our student population it's a significant number of individuals that normally would have perhaps received a quick once over from a nurse but encouraged to go back to class for something very minor maybe not even visit the nurse those now would automatically be sent home would be subject to that 10-day isolation period so we'll walk through this as a scenario so we're going to use mary who's a high school student we're going to say that she developed a fever though we could replace that with developed a headache muscle aches congestion any other things we just talked about while she was at school and this was on a wednesday she was sent to the nurse since she is sick she'll be sent home she'll first have to be isolated in the school environment from all the other students while the evaluation is happening and while we're waiting for the parents to arrive to take her home once she's sent home she'll be asked quarantined for 10 days and be fever-free until she returns unless she's released with that two negative covid test 24 hours apart that testing strategy so for this case we'll say she's positive though we don't yet know if that could also include probable or suspected cases which might mean just symptomatic and no actual clinical test but if she's positive any one of her close contacts within six feet for 15 minutes or longer will have to quarantine for 14 days however that clock started two days prior so now we have to look back at where mary was on monday and tuesday before she became sick on wednesday if any one of the individuals within her closed contacts become symptomatic and they are now a case then again we would restart this at the top and trace back all of their contacts and anyone that potentially would be impacted in a quarantine as we think about this from what it could look like for a high school student she would have attended seven classes while she might be eating lunch with a smaller group there could be up to 50 people in that room she may have rode a bus with 49 other individuals this could require hundreds of students to quarantine from one patient or one student excuse me experiencing something as mild as a runny nose headache fatigue while in school addition to those quarantine requirements there is also a daily symptom screening requirement that is spelled out in the isb guidelines this requires that schools must conduct this daily temperature and symptom screening or require a daily self-certification and verification for all staff students and visitors prior to entering the school building what this looks like is that somebody has to verify that they are not experiencing any of those 11 coveted symptoms that we discussed earlier that they don't have the presence of a fever greater than 100.4 degrees fahrenheit and they haven't been exposed to anyone who has cova they're not caring for anyone who has it they haven't traveled to any of the areas out of the country that are hot spots for covid they have to verify all these things on a daily basis so the guidelines spell out that these symptom and temperature checks should be done prior to a student boarding a bus so what that means is we would be requiring all parents to self-certify that they have in fact checked their students temperature that they have done the symptom screening prior to sending their student to the bus prior to those students being dropped off at school each day or else the school needs to conduct that symptom and temperature check according to the guidelines prior to boarding a bus at minimum before they enter the school building the self-certification would likely be an electronic form or an app that would have to be completed for every student every day if the student does not have that self-certification done it's the school's responsibility to pull that student in and do that symptom and temperature check for those students in a district our size that could be hundreds if not thousands of students on a daily basis that would be pulling away from potential instruction time in order to conduct these symptoms we did go as far as trying to get creative with getting around some of these um requirements and trying to allow for some of our older students at the junior higher high school level to potentially certify upon arrival that they're well and that they coming in this building means that you aren't experiencing x y and z to try to move this along and make this work in the school building we were advised by the general counsel at isbe that in fact only parents or students over the age of 18 or emancipated minors would be allowed to do the certification so we cannot have the students certifying their wellness upon arrival i'm going to talk quick about the covid rates i just wanted to let you know that today there was 1298 new known cases in illinois and 10 new deaths today the governor did announce this morning that yesterday there were four counties in the state that were in the warning level that as of today there are now 11 counties that are in a warning level that means that they have two or more risk indicators that have gone up in illinois we have infections 7526 fatalities we are part of region 2 there are 11 regions in the state we are part of a region with a couple of counties that are experiencing some significant rises in cases and positivity rates when we look at our region positivity rates are measured daily and if we look back for approximately a month the positivity rate in late june was 2.6 the last published rate july 27 was 4.3 it's important to note that especially at the beginning as we first experienced the covid surge there was a lot of talk about how it wasn't impacting younger people this is part of the current surge that we're seeing in cases if you look at kendall county's numbers of all positive cases in kendall county are in persons under the age of 40.
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the school board needs to realize that every day off and every half day every delay in the school year puts a tremendous amount of pressure and stress on the taxpaying families of the district many of us do not have options to watch our children when they're not in school next one is from jeff why are the board meetings not video streamed and only the agenda is shown especially if this is something you want your teachers to be doing when school begins the longer it takes to make a decision the more time that is wasted for teachers who could be preparing for how they will be delivering their lessons parents still are not able to make plans for child care with so much unknown at this point the district does not seem like it will be prepared to reopen with all safety measures and kinks worked out if we cannot keep major league baseball teams safe even with tons of precautions how are we going to keep keep teachers school staff and students safe with basically no precautions it would be much easier to start out all remote so that when we do return to in person all safety measures can be successfully put in place and daily schedules made so this is not disorganized chaos next one is from julie arnold for the board meeting monday i'm fine with my question being part of a group request for cross-country information will pk and central middle school cross country be competing this fall now that the iesa has reversed their position if so when will practices start next we have a comment from michael lafleur 301 edmond and school board members most of us agree that remote learning for the general population is not as good as in-person learning but the measures we need to take to keep students and teachers safe in our schools this year would eliminate most if not all of what makes in-person learning so great collaborative group work nope one-on-one conferences at the teacher's desk no partner discussions nope active learning now you get the idea normal learning is not on the table this year and asking teachers to teach in a hybrid model simultaneously with the students at home and the students sitting in front of them is unfair to all i assume student and staff safety is your number one concern focus on a remote learning plan and make it the best it can be for all students if we reopen our schools right now we will be inviting covet 19 into the classrooms along with our students as jeff gregorich a superintendent at arizona says he had a teacher in his district die of cover 19 this summer when she worked in the classroom with two other teachers for a virtual summer school program all three were masks had temp checks didn't share anything her brother got it and died her husband was hospitalized the other two teachers were positive and had it bad for the next month there were three responsible responsible adults in an otherwise empty classroom and they worked hard to protect each other we still couldn't control it that's what scares me these kids could very easily catch the virus spread it and bring it back home it's not safe there's no way it can be safe if you think anything else i'm sorry but it's fantasy kids will get sick or worse family members will die teachers will die i'm sure you have had many sleepless nights over this decision but i cannot imagine the guilt you would feel knowing you put your employees and students at risk if you chose to physically open the schools i'm sure you're aware that in the past couple weeks of schools and camps opening there have been numerous outbreaks of coca-19 among school-age populations there have also been more studies revealed that show how school-aged kids spread the virus as well as how children may carry high levels of the coronavirus up to a hundred times as much as adults i believe the safest and most equitable plan is full remote learning for all if you are still considering sending staff and students 301 into the buildings please consider the following number one you're sitting in a meeting limited to 15 people how can you have schools open with hundreds of students and staff present two you mentioned in the last board meeting that you didn't offer any sports camps or practices this summer for your athletes due to the liability involved you mentioned the lake zurich sports camp outbreaks these are mainly outdoor events with limited students are you really ready to open up your schools to all students are you still concerned with liability number three you should meet your employees safety's needs before you can expect them to be productive and effective with students i would like to board an admin to take full responsibility if a hybrid model is chosen when it fails please do not project the failure of this plan onto the teachers who had no say in the model chosen and can already predict the faults of it it is unfair for teachers to take the verbal abuse from the parents who are most certainly going to call the start of school a failure just like they did with spring e-learning there were things mandated by the state that a teacher had no control over that contributed to its failure might i add i saw no failure in the e-learning that was implemented in the spring number four you did choose any model that has students going back into the buildings i would like to ask all board members and administrators to sub at least one class each week so you can see what you are asking of your employees and students thank you next is a comment from rebecca franta hello i would like to submit the following question and comments to be read during the public comment portion of the central school district 301 board meeting on august 3rd what is the district's criteria for determining when it is not safe to conduct in-person classes as reported in the news positive code cases continue to rise in king county across the state and across the u.s the king county chronicle reported on friday july 31st that daily covet 19 cases keep rising in king county with five days of positive positivity increases the idph reported on july 31st that king county is now at the warning level for new cases per 100 000 because we have passed the threshold criteria when schools closed in march to prevent the spread of coven 19 there were 405 new cases reported across the united states according to the cdc there were over 68 000 new cases reported on july 31st as kids have started to return to activities such as summer camps sports camps and even in-person learning in a neighboring state the results are that when children are gathering in groups they are contracting the virus and testing positive for covenant 19.
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i know districts have already announced their plans a lot of different a lot of districts and doing different things uh you know we're responsible for the five of us these five committee members are responsible for ensuring that the safety and the well-being and the education of students at the donald public school um so i think that's important to know and i'll stop talking for a minute because i know some of my colleagues have some other things that they may want to share so i think dr jenkins you had your hands up first yeah so chris mr oliver i definitely support the idea of us going out and taking a look i'll also note that ms mckinley who's on the board of health had messaged me recently saying that in ashland they had done it sort of more broadly they invited they had the whole school committee they invited the select board they invited the board up they invited some town officials um there was an article i can send it to dr gifford they rode the bus right they had officials they took a bus and socially distanced people on the bus so people could understand like this is what that's going to be so i would definitely love to do it but it might be something that if we could post i know this is going to be tight to post it now for a friday or whatever in advance of monday's meeting but it would be nice to invite other people along to whatever we set that time for i would like to ask a question later but that i'll let everyone else comment about i i would be on board if if we can get the timeline met and if uh mr kylie or dr gifford's available uh maybe put something together for thursday or friday um with the uh the posting time to just post it and do it officially and then there's no issue with the amount of uh school community members i'm fine opening it up to some other town officials i wouldn't say let's go crazy with it but you know maybe a couple from each ward um border selectment of the board of health but i'll hear hear you some other thoughts mr news yeah thank you mr chairman uh i think that's a great idea uh if we post a meeting for thursday or friday personally i would prefer it just because all together as opposed to meeting i mean we don't have to discuss anything or we can just see everything there but we're there there's five of us or four of us however many any more than two uh it's our responsibility to open these schools and make sure that they're safe in our opinion we're the ones that are uh elected and chosen and given the responsibility to make sure i think we should all do it to reap my reasoning for thinking of doing it all together is that we hear all ourselves our comments and we hear the comments you know at the same time you know from the administration and mr kylie whoever he has that mr ferrera the custodians etc type of deal so but to uh to post a meeting for there is the friday i'm available and works for me thank you mr newman's uh mrs amarillo and mrs white anything else i would just uh i'm in support of that i would like to um to john's point we don't have to discuss anything we can you know all of us going i think it's really important you know you think about the changes i think about put my special ed hat on again those little kids who don't have any of the fun stuff in that classroom who have desks now and good luck to them so i would like to sort of experience it and see it for myself as well yes yes oh i'm sorry i uh completely agree i mean i think that everything that the school leadership team has laid out is fantastic you know but i you know they are saying you know we're going to do our best but here are certain realities and i think the five of us owe it to all their hard work just to see it in practice you know to even see the isolation rooms you know what is that actually again we're picturing our brains but what is that going to look like what is it going to look like for students coming in you know they're excited about their first day they have a certain vision you know what what's the reality going to be and then i think that we can bring that back to the table to you know weigh the remote plan versus the hybrid which i actually you know i am in support of the hybrid and i'd like to see that come to fruition for all the reasons that um dr jenkins and everyone else has said you know just there's so many pieces but it's tough it's a you know it's stuff all around that i respect our staff and our you know families needs so but um again thank you dr gifford for everything that you and your team have done so that being dr jenkins i i just thought of one other question as we were working through this and i mean it's everything is really hard but one of the things i'm having as a parent of a high school student i'm i'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around high school and middle school um i know that there's often the guidance counselors don't come back until a week before school starts and then there's often some churn around schedules right i know for instance we were planning on that that we need to talk to a guidance counselor how is that going to work are we going to bring the guidance counselors back earlier or what are we going to do are students stuck with the schedule they have because before you just move people around but now that has sort of really significant ramifications for everything we're doing lots of good questions yeah we're we're actually in the process right now the high school's been the first one trying to break up those cohorts and look at the numbers in classrooms and we do have some issues at this point so we're going to be doing some more intense work but i'll have a conversation with them about what might be a good way especially since this is crazy times um the extra effort to try to uh reach out to families and get the i'll give them the opportunity to reach back out to the school so i'll i'll have that conversation with the high school and see what we can do about that and um as far as the visiting school so mr kylie and i will coordinate that um i don't know if it would be i'm looking at my schedule and i know i don't have to be there per se but um we'll see what mr kylie says whether friday morning or whatever is best for him um and to get the couple of the schools anyway to set up a couple of classrooms and do kind of what we did today we looked through what the dismissal might look like what the nursing area is and what a couple of classrooms look like thursday at 1 p.m work for everyone just out of curiosity sometimes sometimes thursday early thursday afternoon that works for me i can do that i don't have enough time to put do we have enough time to post also you post an emergency meeting emergency okay chris quickly go ahead mr news megan just you know just following up on somebody that just made the comment but how about for discussion purposes you know instead of one more so in the elementaries i would think that they're kind of all going to be the same but how about if we made plans to visit you know the high school of middle school and an elementary school just instead of trying to schlep through the whole town just to you know i don't think we would have enough time in the aft in that type of time frame but if we just you know visit at the high school the middle school in an elementary school just to get kind of a lay of the land i think that's reasonable what might be helpful though i'm not sure if this is possible dr giffin or mr kylie if the two elementary schools that we do not visit maybe they're at least one of their administrators could be at the yellow elementary school so we can at least talk to them because i want to listen to i want to listen to all the building administrators i think it's important from the school committee perspective that that we listen to challenges we listen to everything uh mrs amaral uh ma uh of course once again i think it's really important that we keep quinn on the list because uh i also you know obviously preschool you know but i do want want to make sure that we get to see you know the place where most of the programs kind of exist and the higher needs i think it's important that we we get in there as one of our elementary schools i think i think that's reasonable i think that's very reasonable and essentially located and it has all of our programs this is wait um yes thank you chris um another question i had this these questions are going to keep coming up i'm afraid but um the band and course since we know that we have limitations there with the ability of the course to actually practice inside and actually from what i understand i think the course space doesn't even have windows you know that's at the middle school um so what would be their is there are your thoughts to have practices continue for those outside i mean you know what are your thoughts i know that the band is doing some practicing and they have some virtual competitions what are your what are your thoughts there dr giffrey can we kind of talk about that too when we go on our visit maybe that's something we can talk about yeah yeah and i actually um mr kylie and i are actually meeting with ian our new director of music tomorrow morning he said he had a plan uh he was developing um so we'll be talking with him about that as well as what the practices are looking like um so far how that's going and as you know i believe mr news is probably much more in tune to the cancellation of the fall competitions already and the idea of different kinds of performances if you will so anyway we'll meeting with him tomorrow morning we'll have more to say about that yeah the uh the mesmer circuit has canceled for the year they were just going to be doing the month of october instead of starting you know the middle of september nesma's cancelled for uh for the year the u.s bands you know when we're going down to connecticut and giant stadium that nothing has happened there yet but they're part of everything being virtual how they're going to handle a ritual we don't know yet but that's what we're hearing at this point in time so what our virtual competition is going to look like i have no idea okay thank you very much and then um i hear i see a little chat here from mr parody that they can work with dc tv to uh stream all the performances live gotta love mr ferrari and always trying to think out of the box um so yeah that right that sounds good um so why don't we plan on uh one o'clock on thursday um i don't know if we want to meet at the side of the middle school or a quince that's somewhere in there we can um whatever works if you want to talk to the administrators mr kylie or dr gifford just let us know what you guys prefer um i'm sure we'll be fine with whatever you decide we can set a schedule for you great thank you very much so that that being said um just some other things and i know that um it's you know i've read about it it's been the long 55 page plan but let's just be clear that if we do go to a hybrid if we were open open to a hybrid uh what are the scenarios and i think the public it's important for everyone to know about uh the what happens if someone tests positive um or is symptomatic and does that automatically mean we shut down the schools i think these are all things that are important that the vm public should be aware of depending on the place if we do go with a hybrid plan right and as you know the document that came out offered many many scenarios the what-ifs um to give us some kind of a threshold we're also waiting to see if any more information comes out over the next week about specifics a little bit more help on what to do but i think at that point and we did have this conversation with chris mishu at the board of health um the minute something like that happens we're obviously in contact with each other and determining the best course of action at that point so unfortunately there's no one right answer one size fits all right yeah but we will be uh as i said working with the board of health and if we need to shut a classroom down or whatever their guidance is with contact tracing etc etc um that will help guide our decision sure no thank you thank you uh dr gifford i just know that this is just a real real tough thing to wrap for us to wrap our heads around in addition for the administrators the teachers the faculty the staff to wrap their heads around too so thank you again for all the work that your folks are doing and um we'll look forward to meeting up on thursday to do some walkthroughs of the building and have an opportunity to speak to some of the building administrators good okay any other questions on the reopening plan for my colleagues perfect well thank you everyone uh next up under new business we have the formation of the equality and diversity committee so as you remember last week we had a conversation around um some of the issues uh that are you know not unique to dartmouth but it's more of a national scale with um you know equality and diversity and we know that we can always look to do better for our students and our faculty and staff in the community as a whole in dartmouth that being said let's re we had talked about thinking about what we're looking for for the makeup of the committee and uh we've asked to come back um tonight at tonight's meeting and kind of talk a little bit more about it and what our thoughts are keep in mind that i know that a lot of the banter a lot of the meteor attention has been centered around our dartmouth indian logo but keep in mind that that is not the sole task of this committee as dr giffen and i have spoken a number of times and at great length is that we have uh there have been concerns over the you know over the years of equality and diversity issues uh in the darkness schools specifically back with high school um and i think it's time that we look to um improve and address uh what we can as a as a school district and as a school committee and one of those things uh which i thought was a good idea i hope that my colleagues continue to agree is that we're going to look at from my point of view i look at this as an opportunity to educate myself um and learn a little bit more about what goes on in the schools as well as the history of the garden of indian because there's clearly strong strong feelings and strong passion on each side and i welcome that i can appreciate that but just keep in mind that this committee is not solely about the dartmouth indian it's about equality and diversity uh as a whole in the government public schools i am uh more than happy to take some questions uh i'll start with i think uh mrs amaral had your hands up first um i just wanna uh i agree with everything you said there but i i just wanna say that what i would like included um in this committee is a voice it doesn't have to be myself but i certainly would be happy to sit on it um in terms of uh representing uh uh students with disabilities in our thinking and in in interweaving that within um what will come of this i mean uh i think back to the healthy dartmouth committee that when dr gifford came uh started as our superintendent sort of uh brought back to life for some time uh and honestly i i i don't we had a lot of voices at the table but i don't know that we had um much to do about diversity um which is unfortunate but you know we we did what we did and and and now we can do better obviously forming this it's it's it's really i think crucial uh that we do this for our community for our students of color and for all of our students and our families to enrich our us as a community so i just would like to make sure that there's representation for students who are often marginalized to be on this committee it doesn't have to be me but if it has to be it shall be thank you uh mr zamworld dr jenkins i was just trying to save poor miss townsend to say we might flip the order of the agenda but since we're into it i see the pictures over three cute little children here and feel so bad that she's been patiently waiting but we're into it now so i guess she's just gonna have to wait some more sorry i tried beth i really tried to flip that um i would i think maybe what might be a good idea is to sort of decide what the composition of the committee could be and maybe give them a few items right we we do we have asked them i think we agreed last time to look at the issue of the mascot uh miss amber all has brought up you know needs around special education um we can look at sort of ours the climate in our schools and maybe give them a rough idea of just generally what they might look want to look at but then also to to to give them sort of the leeway to make their own charge a little right at one of their first meetings so we can give them some things but they can change that um i would say that that you know maybe there should be a couple of us on the committee i don't think we want more than two because and we've got to post meetings and that sort of stuff right um i think we'd want maybe a few people from the school right um so two from the school committee two to three from the schools because they know what's going on right and so they would need to to be there to provide information um you know i we've had a number of high school students indicate that they would want to be on that i'd like to see some high school students on there but i also think that we should strongly encourage the high school to maybe form a subcommittee of just high school students that could report back to that larger committee um and then i also think that maybe we should invite some community members to be a part of it right so those to me seem to be the sort of like the four stakeholders the school committee students the administration and teachers and staff and community members i would say maybe i might be missing buckets i'm open to that maybe two to three people in each of those buckets two in the school committee bucket um and two to three in those other buckets was what i was thinking uh mrs wade thank you dr johnson yes um thank you chris um just to add on to that i just think there's been some conversations around psychologists as a possibility so i don't know if we can find some school psychologist one of our staff members who may be able to sit and you know speak to the host of issues that you know might tie into the resolutions or you know issues of diversity and you know self-identity and self-esteem so i think you know if we can find someone you know again from our staff i think that would be a great contribution to the committee thank you thank you mr news thank you mr chairman um just like a a couple of things number one i think we've got to be careful that we don't get this committee so that it becomes unmanageable and i say that in all seriousness i mean i'm not sure if you want to you know keep at the 12 you know john we lost you i think john we can't hear you okay am i back you're back okay sorry about that uh i'm not sure where i left off my one of i just as you said that chris my computer gave me an uh an update uh seriously i think we need you know 10 12 people 14 at the most because they're going to have to meet by zoom and it's going to be very difficult to do that type of deal i mean i think this is almost like a regular committee so somebody may have to you know i know we don't have a we've got an acting town clerk but you know is this one of those that there are going to have to be uh you know agendas posted in that type of deal well if we have two school committee members on it could theoretically be a subcommittee of the school committee so you you know so does but those you know would have to be posted in that type of deal so i just don't even get concerned with that and and personally uh you know i think it you got to make it sure it's fair and equal and i for one would just like doesn't batman's residence on this community okay so that's my that's my two cents we might make an exception for for school employees right it might be someone working with well i 100 agree with you without exception i'm i'm good i'm good with i'm good with a school employee that lives out of town i'm good with that but you know joe smith that lives in buzzards bay that wants to be honest no if you understand what i'm saying or lives in new bedford no this is a diamond issue i'm a dartmouth resident of personnel that's my two cents i respect that john thank you all right so so that that being said what i'm hearing is two school committee members uh i'm calling it two faculty staff from the batman public schools um two high school students i don't know if we want to you know and this is a question for maybe you dr gifford a middle school student i don't know or we just keep it at the high school but i have two high school students two dartmouth community members and then i'm also thinking about um either someone from your off like uh administration administrators and someone that can um take on like a moderator role or a chairperson of the committee role and i don't know if that's maybe one of the school committee members um but i'm just trying to keep this as diverse and as um you know respectable as possible um so i'm thinking if around 10 people is that reasonable to everyone shannon my only concern is that right particularly this is why i suggested that perhaps we asked that um group to create a subcommittee of students that the two students on the left can because you know you think camera was talking about we want to have i'd like to have a student a special education student you know we'd like to have you know students of color right we can talk about gender race sexuality right all of this which we're not going to be able to do to mr nunes point because then we'd end up with a committee of 30 and that's a train wreck so perhaps we might create a structure where there's a couple of students on this committee full committee that they then go back to the high school probably and maybe the middle school and create some subcommittees in each of those schools that give the students and the teachers in those schools a seat at the table because i do think we really want to have a diverse set of viewpoints from the students in particular um on this issue and i want to make sure that they all feel that they have a seat at the table and a voice in this process because it is their school so i agree that we need to keep the bigger committee sort of tight and smaller but i would like to see us create some possibilities um particularly the high school level maybe the middle school level depends on what they think but um particularly at the high school level um sure gotten some applicants from the high school these students are very passionate about a lot of these issues um and so i don't want them to say only we only get one or two of you like let's be inclusive with those students is everyone i i'm perfectly i'm on board with that i think that's a great idea um we have we have two student reps to the full committee but there they'll be tasked with with reaching out to different members of the doc of dartmouth high school with their students and really trying to develop a a diversified group amongst the student body um and then they they can come back and report to this committee um just just to keep in mind i know you know hearing this and that this is something that's not gonna you know happen overnight this is gonna take to do this right and i think we owe it to the community and owe it to the students and uh and faculty to do this right um this is going to take some time and some effort to make happen and really have good conversations around this especially during a pandemic um you know that's not to say that we can't do it it's just going to take some time and it's going to take a little extra effort is the news yeah mr jammin just kind of following up on on shannon's comment and idea about having high school students and and and such uh through you to dr gifford are we going to have we normally have a school commitment excuse me go ahead we know about that we normally have a uh you know school committee rep at our meeting that gives us an update as to what is going on and i'm just wondering if you know the high school does is able to get this you know small core cohort together and such if you know that student rep can always report back to us as to what's going on just a thought yep sure yeah that would be a good idea you're welcome so that being said um how are we with um we have two faculty but do we want to include i think those should really be like in the classroom teachers um people that work directly with the students do we want to have an additional administrator or two which would bring the total up to ten um is everyone okay with that yep okay so if it's if the committee's okay with this and if we can move forward let's plan on you know we i don't know if we want to take a formal vote to establish this committee and let's ask for anyone interested um in serving on this committee that they sent a letter an email letter of interest to um kate uh is that all right with you uh dr gifford if we send everything over as we have yeah she keeps good records that's perfect i'll make that i'll make that motion mr chairman thank you so we have a motion by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins so on the motion just to clarify this is to establish a equality in the diversity committee that will be tasked with looking at these issues within the public schools to include the dartmouth indian this this committee will be made up of two school committee members two faculty teaching staff two high school students two members of the community and uh two administrators uh building administrators central office administrators um and that's it any other further discussion yes dr jenkins you add to the sort of as a friendly amendment your point you did say the mascot but they're also going to be looking at other issues it's not just that i just want to make the official motion reflect that it's among that is one of the things yes absolutely thank you uh for clarifying that yes um if i didn't make that clear that yes there's just like i think we stated earlier there's uh you know dartmouth is not unique uh we have our our own set of issues and we're always looking to improve uh how can we do better as a school district as a school community and as a town and that's to look at all types of issues across the board um you know effect whether it's uh special education whether it's race whether it's um just equality um i think it's important to know so any other discussion on the motion this is wait um and uh mr chair if i could also because we had um community members who emailed us specifically upset that we weren't taking on the mass resolution this is where we are taking on that resolution that this is going to be discussed and addressed too so if that just just to kind of reassure those community members that that is going to be addressed we've set this up um and that's part of the plan yes as far as the mass resolution um yes that's i think that was discussed at the last meeting and that's going to be brought down to policy subcommittee where if he was going to continue talking about i think the piece of that was a lot of the uh curriculum piece and making sure that we're gonna put that we can follow through uh with the curriculum and all that on the uh resolution yeah more just is this specific to the motion mr newton well this is just a follow-up on uh mary's comment but that masc is going to policy not this committee am i correct or am i missing something at the last meeting it was i don't think it was an official vote uh maybe it was but the last meeting we decided that we would have uh push it down the policy subcommittee so they could review it uh before you know before tweak it if necessary yeah yeah okay and i totally expect i fully expect that to happen and be brought to the committee back to the committee that's fine okay that's okay and before we finally vote you know um we'll plan on everyone sending any letters of interest um and we'll see we'll keep this on the agenda for the next meeting see if uh miss gentler gets any applications or any letters of interest i would fully expect the committee to kind of get off the ground once school gets off the ground um because we want to make sure that uh our students are back in school in some way shape or form and then at that point you know once school is officially reopened we can then uh get this committee off the ground because i think it's important that we do so if there is no other discussion uh all in favor we have to roll college i'm sorry roll call please kate chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amarill yes mary waite yes john nunes yes thank you very much miss gentler uh next up on under new business report on parent surveys specific to special education uh dr gifford here we go miss townsend is now on hi hello how are you it's so nice thank you so much for inviting me this afternoon it's nice to see everyone on the screen um i'm gonna share my screen and hopefully this works hold on one second i'm just gonna go slideshow i just wanna make sure this the slideshow is up and running and then i can start okay uh all right is everyone seeing it from their end got it okay wonderful um so i have a short powerpoint here just to highlight some of the pieces related to our special education parent survey we did send out uh via email it was a google form that the survey was created on where we asked a few questions to uh parents who have students with ieps the survey was conducted the same week that our district-wide parent survey was done and i think for that reason we were able to get quite a few responses we were you know pleased with the number of responses we received in the week that it was open so i'm gonna see we can just talk a little bit about the survey details we sent the survey out to all parents who have children with individual education plans um if a parent had more than one child that had an iep we did ask that one survey be completed for each child because the needs are unique even if you have more than one child with an iep we wanted to get that individual information in total we received 221 surveys and that is a return rate of 39.7 just shy of 40 return and we really had a great distribution of responses across buildings and across grade levels and asking what school does your child attend as well as what grade will your child be entering we really had a pretty even distribution across the six buildings and all of the grade levels so these are just a couple of slides that i just pulled right out of the survey in terms of the data analysis one of the questions we asked parents was with safety precautions in place how do you anticipate your child will be transported to school this fall um and so you can see here it's a you know 67.4 said that they would use district provided transportation and 32.6 percent said that they themselves would transport their child to school so we had um just under um you know three quarters of parents saying that they would use the district transportation we also asked parents to to thinking about those three plans for reopening we did keep it open parents were not asked to just pick one we asked to check all of those that they would be willing to access so giving parents in-person instruction with precautions a hybrid of both remote and in person and a remote only instruction you can see here um both the total number of responses and then in parentheses the percentage um 81.4 percent of parents um said that they would be willing to access the in-person instruction with precautions 58.4 percent saying um a hybrid of remote and in person and just under 30 percent said they'd be willing to access a remote only instructional model again obviously these numbers do total well above 100 because we ask parents to really weigh in on and check as many that would apply so some parents to choose all three or one or two of those we also ask parents about team meetings um as uh i think some of you or all of you know we did hold our team meetings virtually um in school closure in the spring um due to obviously the governor's order and so we gave parents again options you know asked what would they be comfortable participating in so first the remote zoom meeting which is what we used in the spring the second was in-person meeting with social distancing measures applied and the third was calling in for a phone conference and participating via phone and so again parents were able to click all three if they felt they would be comfortable in any one of the three so you see here almost 80 percent felt quite comfortable with the remote zoom meeting for me i felt really great about that that return of 80 because we did hold so many of them in the spring um which was new for everyone new for staff new for parents new for all team members um but overall you know in general they went really well and we were really pleased with the way in which we kind of conducted protocols that worked and um you know i think parents that were able to participate um in the spring in the process you know had really great feedback um again slightly more 84.6 percent um said they'd be willing to do an in-person meeting and the third was calling in for a phone conference just over 50 percent um we asked parents during their distance learning how often they interacted with his or her special ed liaison and or related service providers so as you can see um you know quite a bit um were either almost every day or frequently over 50 percent um and then when you consider sometimes it actually um is over seventy five percent so kind of three quarters that were um either sometimes frequently or almost every day communicating with their special liaison and or related services um with the once in a while or never combined representing about 22 percent of those that responded so we asked parents to just weigh in a little bit on if you did answer that it was not uh that you did not have as much communication what were some of the barriers and so i've kind of articulated here some of the common themes um every parent had their own this was an open-ended question so parents each parent was able to type um something specific to them but when you really pull out the common themes the first was the challenges with zoom or google me if if that was the platform being used either way video conferencing is a platform there were difficulties understanding how to use it both parents and students students had difficulty focusing on their activities or they had a lack of interest in the zoom meetings um parents did speak about their work schedules making remote learning difficult um with uh you know essential workers or two parents who are out of the home on their work schedules that that made it difficult to participate in remote um there were some parents that reported their child had some anxiety about being on camera of course it's you're not typically you know in a traditional school environment you're not expected to kind of be on a screen in this little box and that did bring on some anxiety um again difficulties navigating and accessing google classroom there were some reported technology issues either through lack of devices and or poor connectivity although that was not that was not a high number of responses there was a very small pool that represented that some parents spoke about the completion of physical or hands-on activities being difficult on on of course a computer screen or zoom and we can all see how that that's um that can be seen and you know parents speaking that their students needed more direct support daily so um so i wanted just to as i think about all of these things that you know i feel re-energized although the challenges are great and we are still um very much trying to navigate the details of this um we know that when the special ed guidance from the state was issued related to the fall a lot of these pieces um are addressed you know through what does he's recommended for our schedule in our learning again really focusing on a more robust special ed service delivery model even in times when it's remote really making sure that those services even if they are on a screen that they're happening um a little more within a services model as opposed to kind of a support model um so we're really excited about that i think that will definitely assist with some of that um that direct support or lack of direct support that parents were feeling also we're working really hard to kind of put together some professional development or cheat sheets or tasks um guides to help parents and students with google classroom with zoom that i think will make things um a little more manageable so we're kind of excited about that and think that that would have some some positive impact and also um in terms of the student anxiety we definitely as a department are looking at all of the social emotional learning supports that are going to need to be in place both for students with ieps and those without around some of the anxieties related to the school closure so we are absolutely addressing that concern through our professional development service um kind of meeting with others articulation with a providers and between teachers so um then there was kind of the last question was more of an open-ended other consideration so parents could really share um and so some of this is similar to the slide before um but you know some really good questions about how to complete remote learning in child care parents who their student if there are remote days as part of their day in the fall they would be maybe cared for by someone who doesn't have the technology access who might not understand how to engage a student in remote learning um there was a request around students who are deaf or hard of hearing needing clear face masks um which i do want to say that that is a consideration that has been ordered i know mr kiley mentioned the masks um but he as part of those masks i do want the committee to know that we have ordered those that have that clear face mask so students can read lips if they need to again students having great anxiety about returning we're really focused on that social emotional learning piece both in our department and in the general education department to provide whatever supports that might be necessary because we know that's going to happen there was a request for more structured live lessons we hear you and we are doing that so we hear you parents and yes there will be a lot more of a structured day as it relates to special ed services in the fall so um so again students needing direct in-person instruction we obviously know um that that is you know the ideal model and so we are balancing that against all of the different things that um the committee shared earlier during this meeting in terms of safety for all and making sure that everyone is kept safe there were kind of a couple of comments around students having difficulty in wearing masks in our social distancing we have accounted certainly for medical disability related needs students would be exempt if they you know due to that um had uh a need to not be able to to wear a mask we also recognize that even if it's not the mask that's the issue um it would be difficult to social distance sometimes if a student um if their particular need is to you know be close to others or seek out others we certainly understand that that would be difficult so again we're we'll have to consider that in our protocols and really have to think long and hard about how to mitigate to the extent that we can um again there was another comment about more structured remote learning and just a comment about ensuring uh thorough cleaning um with the use of thorough cleaning protocols which i know mr kylie spoke a little bit about already and i know that's a consideration that is ongoing when we consider how to um how to ensure proper cleaning throughout so i leave you with this quote uh early in the quarantine i as you know i was on a maternity leave um i had a baby in january of this year so um right before i got ready to come back in april from my leave i made a video with my children um which you know was kind of their own foray into technology and so this is this is the quote that i had my oldest who's eight who has her own anxieties about um you know returning to school and mask wearing um you know she read at the end of the movie life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass it's about learning how to dance in the rain and i just really love that quote um it it's something i say to myself every night before bed because obviously i just like all of the administrators central office directors and all the teachers kind of losing sleep over how difficult this all is but um just if we can try to learn how to dance in the rain so i'm going to stop share which i think will put the screen oh boy i don't know if i want to be this big on my screen oh okay um but if anybody has any questions i'd be happy to answer them thank you very much and we appreciate that presentation anyone have any questions for elizabeth townsend uh yes this is amarillo hi um i asked a lot of questions before so i promise i'm not gonna really uh but i do have um let's see we surveyed the parents and um i'm sure if we survey them in for in two weeks there may or may not be some different answers but we've got a general kind of idea um were you able to meet with staff uh and talk about some of the the the challenges and the successes that they've experienced during this time specific to you know all students who learn differently um to see to see what what the were there any themes around similar to what the parents expressed or absolutely as a matter of fact so again there's there are so many different subgroups there's layers of subgroups within our department um but i was uh fortunate to co-chair committee that was a sub-group just related to special education as part of our remote learning task force and um as a matter of fact we're meeting again tomorrow but we had met a couple of times as we were developing our plan for the state and that was our number one question which is what worked well and what what needed and i have to say that yes i think overall we're all struggling because you know we certainly know um even from a staff perspective that in-person instruction is the best and we know that that's what we want for students and um to kind of balance that out with the safety needs of all the students you know always keeping that in mind students and staff um but yes i would say there were definitely some similar things like the clear mask came up even with staff um things like um you know making sure that you know the remote learning maybe had a little more of a you know robust uh feel to it that was all it was very similar and i want to repeat something i said early on just in my own experience you know uh with remote you know not working much at all but but those those staff that did what they could do to to to to the best of their capacity really made a difference in that you know those students you may feel that you're not they weren't they didn't feel they were reaching potentially were getting something even if it was just um the reminder of the expectation or the familiar face and so that really goes a long way one other thing that's not necessarily uh directed to you but it kind of is in a way because i might have meant to say this earlier but we're talking about kids with the medical exemptions and um not having to wear the masks and so those small subsets of high needs kids and those sub separate programs the staff are going to be protected in in a higher level way but in in the return to school guidance and i'm just so worried about kids coming back to school in general who you know you've got those kids all kids with the medical exemptions you've got those kids in special ed with the medical exemptions um and then you've got those kids who might take three four six weeks to kind of get used to the to the being able to use it i i could speak again my own story never did i think my son would put a mask on except when we met mike his papa at dick's parking lot i mean so he knew that he needed to wear a mask if he wanted to go in that store so it's amazing kids are very resilient but my worry is those students who you know aren't aren't able to wear it and in the documentation it said something about those students would be put into like online remote learning so those students say who special ed aren't and they're going to be different students there'll be kids who are doing it to be defiant or there are going to be kids that don't want to wear it because they're not used to it and they're going to be kids that don't want to wear it for a variety of reasons i i worry that we jump to sort of uh you're not welcome here scenario if if if by chance we could so is there any kind of loophole around or expectation around thinking of those students that come back who just might need elect extra cueing to keep a mask on or or um the routine of it on versus those who are exempt because of the medical medical need yeah i don't know i just worry about kids again so you unmute did you want to address it did you want to be yeah the the line about the remote learning plan was really directed to those that are just absolutely refusing like any other discipline issue um not the student you're talking about we actually even had a conversation with kyle over at quinn today exactly what you're saying that they would work with those students and do what they bet do best at like especially the elementary level okay so that was my response kathleen was that it's my understanding that is not who that that line was intended for at all we would not be no okay i think that's all i have though let everybody else thank you uh mrs amaral dr jenkins so i'll just add and this isn't necessarily towards the our students with you know different needs and the medical exemptions but to miss amarillo's point our children are remarkably resilient but they also take their cues from us um and so one of the things right we really need parents i mean this is going around social media but it's important to say how your students approach this is going to be largely based on how you're reacting to this so we need it's like a really a partnership for our parents to be i know we're not going to make everyone happy i know we're going to make lots of people angry but please try not to share that with your kids try to make them enthusiastic about what's happening and then also write practice right to kathleen's point like you might be surprised with what your kids do but practice helps right and so if you ask them to not wear a mask at all at home all of august and then all of a sudden they're having to wear a mask right if you know there's going to be an issue right that's a real partnership where i think parents can help out and you know in order to do this safely everyone's got to do their part and help out and so i think that's really super important for us to to emphasize to the community that may be watching us that we all have to do our part to make this work thank you excellent point yeah great point anyone else well thank you very much for your presentation and for sticking around uh for all this time thank you for having me i appreciate it no it was very it was very thoughtful there was a lot of good information uh that you were able to share out with not only us but the uh the young public as well and for those those people to go back and watch this so it was definitely uh very much appreciated thank you thank you i appreciate the opportunity thank you so have a much night have a great night thank you enjoy thank you next up we have a superintendent's update i have nothing i have nothing else mr mr oliver i think um the entire focus has been on the plan so that's about it right now we're sticking with the plan perfect uh for the report of the chair is every i know uh email went out about next monday the 10th to have a meeting um is everyone on board with that any concerns issues time restraint good with me perfect so uh the next meeting of the uh batman school community will be uh monday august 10th at four o'clock chris yes mr news uh mrs kathleen has her hand up oh yes kathleen there are more uh public comments all right perfect we'll uh get to that in just a second yeah yeah i just wanted to open it up to everyone i just really want to say thank you to the um the athletic department has been doing it mr chris fully has been running this they've been doing the strength and conditioning outside um it's been great they've been doing a great job of you know keeping everyone informed keeping our kids active and so i just want to send kudos to them because it's been really well done great thank you very much i agree uh mr news yeah just one quick question uh mr chairman we all got or at least i had in my email likes from masc a whole bunch of new uh or updated policies or something is that something related to us that the policy subcommittee is going to be having to take up and look into i'll have uh miss roy will be looking at those mr nunes seeing something we need to address yeah yeah okay thank you that's all i have mr chairman okay i appreciate that uh at this time all right let's go ahead and um what do you have for additional comments or public comments eileen pereira writes if dartmouth high school opts to have students go back full time or to do the hybrid can parents still opt for online working with desi um learning management platform for their children we have one of three students with underlying health issues thank you very much um the the next uh individual jessica kudo writes good evening i wanted to thank you all for the hard work and dedication that you exhibit each and every day one concern that is at the forefront of our minds is the mental health of our students how are the cohorts cohorts going to be formed many of our students anxiety is who will i be stuck with how are cohorts being decided is it the location of the home academic performance ability thank you for all that you do next we have oh mr fernandez a backup um or an additional comment can you please make clear that the establishment of the equality and diversity committee does not mean that the school name and logo will be changed i also had a follow-up comment from kathleen baldwin regarding cares act monies dr gifford said it was not school specific can she elaborate what that means also how many months of supplies do we have in stockpile and um we received an email from heather noyes and she writes can you have dr gifford clarify the alternating days does that carry over to the next week so it isn't the same days each week for each cohort and she gives an example of a b a b a week one b a b a b week two and so forth thank you okay well thank you very much for miss gentler um some of those are are good questions and maybe uh at our next school committee meeting on the 10th um you know some of those will probably be uh discussed in further detail um and also give dr giff and her team some time to um to respond and also come up with maybe some answers uh so that being said uh let me go back to yeah there's nothing else so with that being said our next meeting regularly scheduled meeting of the dartmouth school committee is a monday august 10th at 4pm in addition uh we're going to have miss gentler post a meeting for us for thursday at one o'clock a place to be determined where we're going to conduct uh walkthroughs of the school buildings to see how ready uh we are for the re-opening yeah this is mr jim a quick question yeah you who through you to either talk to gibbon or mr connelly there's going to be no public involved in this walk-through because of the situations in the school am i correct you are correct with all due respect to the public they're not going to be able to be part of this walkthrough thank you no no uh would this be an emergency executive session no no okay anything else yeah mr germany will you turn into executive session for the purpose of collective bargaining with union personnel i second that not to return to open session i second that i have a motion and report by mr noon second by ms samuel on the motion any further discussion roll paul please mr oliver yeah shannon jenkins yes kathleen admiral yes mary wait yes john nunes yes this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone have a wonderful night you
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where did i get those numbers we every year we do a salary survey and that salary survey goes out to all the districts and we usually get a good representation back i'm looking at the document right now in terms of maricopa county and we do this by size of districts in maricopa county with the district your size you're right on the border line here because we do 2500 to 5 000 and then we do 5 000 to 7 500 students if we look at 2500 to 500 to 5 000 the low point is one third and the high point is 150. if we look at 7000 the low point is 150 and the high point is 180. so you're kind of in the middle of that because you are higher than 5 000 but not that much which are smaller than the 7 500. so i i took those and i weighed those numbers and i looked at the averages and in maricopa county the average for a district between five thousand and seventy five hundred is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that was last year now um 2020 we haven't we'll be doing the 2021 here in a couple months um and then the the 2500 to 5000 was 135 to 150 with the 130.
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and i added all the way up to the age 49 if you take into account anyone under the age of 50 68 of the cases in kendall county are in persons 49 years old and younger so if you look at our age of our students and our teaching staff and our staff that are in our buildings there could be some potential impact both for the people impacted by covid and those around them and all of the quarantine requirements i'm excuse me christy tyler chief financial officer and i'm going to talk about uh the additional costs that the potential additional cost or estimated additional costs the district would incur for one semester of in-person instruction so first faith mentioned that we would need additional certified staff additional teachers to keep class sizes down at our current levels and that would be about 280 000 the cost of sanitizer for a semester that's hand sanitizer and disinfecting our disinfectant protocol for desks and things like that comes to just under five hundred thousand dollars for a semester the substitutes that number is uh pulled from fiscal year 19 because that's our last full year of school that we have data from that is one semester and that's 800 000 however we would expect that to increase additional equipment needs this is not a semester cost this is a one-time cost some of that additional equipment are serving carts to distribute food or meals at different points in the buildings air purifiers for the abandoned choir rooms things like that additional health aids that is just for what theresa just went over just that's for conducting that those screenings to make sure that everyone has who has self-certified to check them off and then to pull the children out who have not self-certified before they got to school as well as to help with additional sicknesses or different additional students who will be sent to the nurse just because of all those symptoms that she listed the custodial staff would need to increase because just of all the sanitization that needs to be done after every class leaves we would try to sanitize as much as we could as in addition to lunches and things like that so we would estimate that to be about 43 additional staff at a million dollars for a semester transportation that is the net the net between the expenses incurred for transportation and then what we receive from the transportation reimbursement claim other staff those would be staff like crossing guards playground supervisors things like that that would not be needed if we were in a remote situation utilities that is our estimated savings if we are not running our hvac equipment at 100 capacity for one semester classroom supplies those would be the reduction in what we would normally purchase for classroom materials copies things like that and then finally ppe supplies and that is primarily for our nursing staff and our health aides as they require additional ppe beyond just a face mask or face covering and so that grand total comes to just about 4.7 million and again that's for one semester can i ask a question here sure so miss tyler i know we talked about this uh the other day um you know the part i'm still struggling with is you know we i get it we talk about utilities being an actual savings over what we would do if we had the buildings open but if kovid was gone and we were in the buildings and we'd be spending that money so i i guess my my comment here is if someone's looking at this quickly and we're adding this up and we're saying oh oh my goodness 4.7 million dollars well some of that was already budgeted for correct it is budgeted for correct and and i would say the same thing about the substitutes if we were if code was gone and we were 100 in the classrooms we have a substantial budget for substitutes because of the size of our teaching staff correct that is correct some of the additional things that are covid related are the sanitizing disinfectant those kinds of things custodial staff and health aides those are probably primarily due to covid all right so if i can make a recommendation here it's going to be that it would be nice to see the actual additional cost above budget that is required right and and i i mentioned this before i'll mention it now when we get to the point where when we can go back into the classrooms and and even if covet is um pretty much gone i think we're still going to have requirements on sanitation ppe etc and so my point is we need to be making plans now for finding the money if it's above and beyond the budget because hopefully the disease goes away or is better maintained but we're still going to have increased operational costs this year and we can't plan on 4 million dollars in cuts but we need to know what what does that number really look like yes you're correct that covet is going to cause additional strains to our budget this year have you begun looking at what those are going to be yes well so the budget you'll be presented with a tentative budget during this month actually because you'll be asked to adapt the budget by law by the end of september i understand but for the purposes of this slide this doesn't look like an accurate number from what i'm hearing from you so i'm a little concerned that that we're not getting an accurate number these are based off of what i presented for the remote was it the remote for all right the remote for all remember i presented those as monthly and uh annual so these are taken those costs are these take these costs are taken from that information so these would be some of these would be savings if you will if we went to remote first semester as long as we went for the entire semester which is not guaranteed so that's not necessarily this this whole thing isn't necessarily relevant and i would like to say that i'm sorry i'm sorry we can't have public comment during open session except during public comment so last time we presented them by monthly and this time we just presented them as a semester so but i'm not sure we'll we'll have to clarify further once we're done here because the numbers that i'm seeing from this are are not what you just said would be the financial impact on our budget so i think what we're looking for is that and i understand that there's a general timeline but we also understand that for making decisions based on money you might need to speed that timeline up i would i would drill it down even simpler so the ones that are directly related to the conversation the sanitization and 43 extra custodians so that's about 1.5 million do we have an extra 1.5 million in this budget to cover 1.5 million plus the 280 uh additional certified staff did we have the 1.5 now million dollar surplus i mean i i don't need yes i i get the big picture but look at two line items we we don't have it and then and i would like to clarify something that i asked about when you presented this um is there anything up here that counts for the liability of even one person getting actually sick or dying there's nothing for the cost of that and then i don't know mr miller if you can repeat the numbers you gave us as far as if a staff member's out for a day versus if staff members hospitalized versus if a staff member is in icu i guess what frustrates me about this is that brent and i went and sat with administration through this and went through this and asked a couple of questions and pretty much said what everybody here is saying that we just want to see the numbers for for covid and you know like a lot of this stuff is still up there like classroom supplies we're gonna we're gonna if we were in class we would need subs we would need because either way we need more custodians either way we have transportation you're calling it a savings but you put it up here as not a savings so i understand what you're what you're saying it's a savings from whatever it is but like on for my own personal i just sat through a two and a half hour meeting where i made a bunch of suggestions with my colleague here and none of it was taken into consideration so that's frustrating for me so i think we have some clear direction on what kind of numbers we're looking for from you yeah going forward thanks but can i so but is she expected to and so i'm just wondering is the best way to get at that by looking at a month to month like like she had presented a month to month because we don't know when we're going to be coming back so we could say give me until august october 1st and that but that's a moving target so are we looking at a month-to-month kind of number so that if we go back in october or if we go back in december at all we're looking for the numbers the the budget when we budget for a year it's usually budgeted month to month so we're not looking just for those numbers we're looking for the total budget which we have coming up in september but we're looking for that a little bit sooner so that we can understand the ramifications in a little bit more thorough away but i think also what heather's saying makes sense is that is if you have a monthly count on what it is then you can figure that if we go back a month earlier this will all change because this is by semester right yeah that that but that as part of the overall budget and you know yeah i i certainly think that's important to look at and good to look at i i'm sort of with matt and i um i'm adding up two and a half million and i know that that's not i know that's an assumption of semester and i know we're kind of discussing what's the savings and versus what's this and that the other thing but i'm looking at about two and a half million and i don't so i mean i'm not so concerned about the i i'm concerned about the final numbers and concerned that we're being fiscally responsible um to me though can i get my answer from kenneth miller i'm not sure if he's allowed if that's a open or closed session item that's is it open he said he said it in open session last time that's why it took me a second lori but i remember him saying it out here absolutely and when our benefit consultants need a microphone when we had a strategy session with our benefit consultants they informed us that their actuaries have projected that it is approximately four hundred fifty dollars in medical claims for every mildly symptomatic infection of covid19 approximately one thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars for every moderately symptomatic infection of coven 19 approximately 35 000 dollars for every inpatient hospitalization due to a severe infection of covet 19 and approximately 72 thousand dollars for every intensive care unit hospitalization that occurs due to covet 19.
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on july 31st the cdc reported that over 250 children tested positive for covid19 at a summer camp in georgia according to the cdc children between the ages of 6 and 10 had the highest rate of infection at 51 percent followed by teens between ages of 11 and 14 at 44 percent this was the latest among several reports of children contracting the virus at summer camps including 85 campers at a ymca camp in georgia and 82 children at a summer camp in missouri in july 36 lake zurich high school students who were attending sports camps tested positive and at the time the health department warned that the number could be much higher as the community awaited results of testing for many more individuals at greenfield central junior high school in indiana this past week a student who was attending the first day of in-person learning received a positive coven 19 test result on the very first day of school many school districts in the area have decided that in-person classes are not safe at this time and will begin the year with remote learning including district u-46 which serves families in 11 communities including eligible south belgium and bartlett school in bartlett sorry school district 300 which serves 15 communities including hampshire pingree grove and algonquin and school district 158 which serves families in huntley gilbert's lake in the hills tony sanders is the superintendent of school district u-46 so the loss of a student or staff member as a result of the decision to reopen schools is unacceptable please consider the fact that remote learning is the only option at this time that will guarantee that not a single life is lost due to the school-related exposure of kova 19 for students staff families and community members thank you for considering this question and the information provided next is a comment from marlianna wozniak hello central district 301 i have four kids attending elementary school when we filled out the survey for returning back to school we chose that there's enough space to do it a four-day option with every wednesday remote learning two of our older kids actually did pretty well with remote learning and were independent in getting their work done without much of our help however our younger two kids who have ieps truly struggled and did not want to participate much with the video chats and it made it very difficult for me as a mom to get them to want to speak with their teachers and helpers on the video chats my two kids with ieps not only needed to video chat with their main teachers but also their speech therapist social worker and their special ed teachers it was extremely difficult and overwhelming as a mom that i needed to be fully present when they had to do all these video chats with their teachers helpers that is why we chose the four-day option of in-person schooling because i feel that my two younger kids especially will benefit in having their teachers teach them face-to-face even if it means having to wear a mask my question is depending on what gets decided as far as returning to school especially if the district decides possibly to do all day remote learning will kids who have ieps be expected to follow the same schedule like non-iep kids for the whole day or even need to be fully present for live instruction the district decides to start the year with all remote learning will the teachers be teaching remotely from home or will they be at the school teaching the kids remotely the reason why i'm asking is the teachers happen to be at the school is it possible for kids with ieps who get speech therapy occupational therapy and possibly help with math or reading can they go to school in person to receive help with these areas thank you for your time i think that concludes public comment um before we go on to information items i wanted to say something to give some thanks and give some information so i'd like to express my sincere gratitude for the hard work and support of the administration and staff for the tireless hours that they have dedicated to leading the district through this crisis in response to the ongoing challenges the district formed eight committees to assist in gathering data and planning for the reopening of our schools these committees include the governance committee the wellness committee the post-secondary committee the instruction committee a facilities committee along with the facilities subcommittee the school operations committee and the special education english learners committee thank you to everyone who has dedicated your time and supporting these efforts i would also like to thank our district 301 community and ensure everyone that the board hears and shares your thoughts and concerns we appreciate your cooperation and continue to encourage constructive feedback i am personally extremely proud to be part of the district 301 community and i'm grateful for the collaborative efforts of the whole district over the past several months our nation has experienced experienced two crises the collective responsibility of the board the administration and our educators has never been more prominent is that heightened awareness in this time of uncertainty that demands we identify new approaches acknowledge setbacks and embrace constructive discussions to develop and adapt to ever-changing circumstances i want to assure the community at the health and safety of our administration teachers students and families in addition to getting the education of our students back on track as our primary objective while our goal remains in-person learning the reality is that intermittent closures may be unavoidable as a board member taxpayer and father from a two-income household i appreciate the challenges that every family will need to confront the uncertainty and frustration that this may cause the plan for the 2020-2021 school year has required working through the comprehensive guidelines established by the state isbe and idph while also coordinating with the teachers and support staff to address the challenges safely returning students to school all recommendations will honor our local community acknowledging that district 301 is separate and unique from the surrounding areas with the support of our teachers we are hoping to develop innovative instructional practices that will reduce and hopefully eliminate the learning loss experienced by all students while acknowledging and working to meet the needs of our most vulnerable students educating our children takes on a whole new meaning during these unprecedented times and it will require fiscal responsibility flexibility creativity and embracing new opportunities while at the present we cannot return to the way our classroom operated in the past this can be an opportunity to develop skills and identify meaningful new ways to communicate and convey lessons as we enter a school year unlike any before confident the administration board teachers and staff that work together to seek opportunities to identify how to best serve the students and to meet these unique challenges while in-person learning remains the goal the board continues to support the establishment of flexible learning options that emphasizes face-to-face interaction and authentic and differentiated learning opportunities to help students stay connected to teachers and classmates while there are no simple solutions we are fortunate that district 301 has worked closely with the local and state government and health officials to adopt a transitional schedule that will provide both remote and blended learning opportunities district 301 has always paved its own path towards success it is our collective hope that the district will now set a new standard to meet the quality education and experience our community expects and deserves schools are an important part of the infrastructure of a community and they provide critical services to families the cdc the illinois department of public health and the illinois school board understand the unique and critical role that schools play by enabling students to receive both academic instruction and support as well as critical services we have worked diligently to plan for and adhere to part three transition joint guidance from the illinois school board and from the illinois department of public health we're doing this for the return of school this fall part of being able to return to school this fall is to have proper ppe and disinfecting protocols in place director of buildings and grounds dan polloway is joining us tonight to outline what measures we have taken and continue to take to prepare for the reopening of schools dr mongan and our entire administrative team have poured over the data that we've received from our surveys and looking at the request appearance and we're willing to she will lead us in guiding us through the process of how we examine that information the various options and our recommendation for the reopening of schools tonight so mr powwey would you please update us on what measures you've taken and continue to take to prepare our facilities for the return of students thank you dr stern thank you board for allowing me this opportunity to share with you uh the plans that we've put in place that we've worked very hard on for safe return for our staff and students i first want to share the hard work that all of our buildings and ground staff does every year and did this year to make sure that our schools were prepared that we were our facilities were ready to accept the return of students whether it was full or part-time we strictly follow the recommendations of the cdc in the illinois department of public health we utilize the guidance for cleaning and disinfecting as our our protocol standard and the cdc's readiness and planning tools have been intricate in how we plan and how we look at opening this school year in particular a few things that we've done differently for this year is we've made some modifications to our air handling equipment we added a disinfecting process to our cleaning coils on our rooftop units to just enhance the cleaniness of the cleanliness of the air that's brought into the buildings we've added additional filter changes to the systems and the uni ventilators in the classrooms as well as low air handling systems we've upped that from typically three times a year to five this year and then we also through our our control systems we're upping the amount of outside air that we bring into our schools typically nine percent is what's recommended for that air exchange we're increasing that dependent on the building building by another three to five percent um to just increase the volume of air that's running through our classrooms nine nine percent is the recommended guideline we've also added some additional uh disinfecting equipment and i've just kind of brought an example of the electrostatic gun that we're utilizing for disinfecting we started utilizing these last school year and it was a great process we used it in response to a flu outbreak to any kind of you know particular issue in a classroom and we would bring in what we call a deep cleaning process and that's what this gun included so we've expanded the use of that we'll be over 35 of these units in the district plus a backpack sprayer and the whole idea is to try to have every second shift custodian have one of these available in their disinfecting process nightly as dr stern mentioned we've added an increased amount of ppe for our staff and having equipment available for teachers as needed like masks safety goggles the sneeze guard partitions movable partitions just to name a few things we gloves things like that as as those stockpiles become available we'll we'll be able to get them we work with multiple vendors on making sure we have access to all those supplies gloves and n95 masks are something we're requesting we do have a small supply to start the school year but those obviously are secured by the medical professionals and we'll get them as they're available we also added a alternate disinfecting product as we kind of looked at the needs and how we're going to have to function moving forward we added an additional disinfecting product that has a shorter dwell time and it's going to allow us it's a food grade sand sanitizing product that we'll be able to use in the classrooms in our food prep areas and cafeterias to allow us a quicker turnover for staff and students so we can make sure that they're disinfected and sanitized and available for the next group our our typical product the alpha hp has a 10 minute dwell time to disinfect properly so that didn't allow us the time that was needed so that's why we went to an alternate product this product's a little more expensive and not as available but i think it's going to be very helpful and transitioning in the ways we need to to get students and staff back in the building we've also added we we're also we've also purchased additional signage we'll have a lot of signage communicating the necessity for masks social distancing hand washing hand washing isn't going to be a big focal point we are going to have hand sanitizer available which up until now has not been allowed by the roe alcohol-based sanitizers we've not been allowed to use those we have worked with the roe to be able to make that available we have a stockpile of that that we were able to get access to so we'll have hand sanitizer available but again we're going to really push the hand washing process and and talk to students and staff about the the necessity of hand washing signage will be um we're looking at directional signage for hallways and stairwells in so traffic's not crossing paths we're going to be marking off bus loading and unloading areas to keep social distancing as a reminder especially for the younger kids and then also staff training we do staff training every year on a multitude of topics our staff in particular is fond of hands-on training that's that's the way people in our line of work learn so we've done a lot of hands-on trainings but we brought in some some vendors and we actually just did the training today on on specifically on the sanitation and disinfecting process and what the difference is in those two terms uh the term disinfecting is actual killing of germs so that that's the process where you need that dwell time sanitizing is strictly just the wiping down of a surface not allowing that dwell time where you're killing a great percentage of the bacteria but you're not killing everything so that's where these guns come in handy our processes there's been a lot of questions about what our processes will be and the difference between those mondays and tuesdays and wednesdays we will we will clean every night cleaning of our buildings is is a priority and a necessity before we can sanitize you have to clean the surfaces before you can sanitize them so our monday tuesday thursday friday process we'll be cleaning the full clean of our buildings as we normally do and then the last part of our staff shift will be the sanitation process so they'll utilize we'll we'll be going we'll use overtime we'll use extra hours to do that during the week where they'll be going through their sections and highlighting definitely all the classrooms and all the student occupied areas common spaces hand rails all the high touch surfaces that will either use the the bioskew on a microfiber cloth or we'll be utilizing the disinfecting guns so there's we will disinfect every night the conversation about wednesdays and and saturdays is that with that flow of students and and the occupancy of the building it's just challenges to give us the amount of time that i i think we could use so that's why we we got into the conversation of utilizing those wednesdays and saturdays where literally every single surface in the building on wednesday and saturday will be covered by disinfection not that they won't be during the week but with traffic and people coming in and out of the building and everything there's a little more challenge to that but we are gonna to do that to to the best of our ability but wednesday and saturday we will focus staff hours um on specific disinfecting of of every single space so that's kind of the difference in those in those two days with with teachers being the building on those wednesdays that allows us less cleaning time less time that we have to spend cleaning so then that allows us more more time to focus on disinfecting we've provided these to transportation will be utilizing these on the school bus on a on a regular basis we worked with that staff on on the sanitation and disinfecting process so they understand it we've talked to the food service staff all of our support staff is is been made aware and and shown how to utilize these things so every area of our operations can be disinfected and maintained so it's a safe environment for staff and students this this particular chemical the bio skew would be what we would provide and utilize in a classroom on a regular basis it's a food grade sanitizer so there's no necessity for ppe to utilize this um it has a shorter dwell time and a quicker kill time so that's why we started demoing this in the driver's ed vehicles and we'll be utilizing this in classrooms and food prep areas um that was a lot in a short few minutes i believe i covered all of the questions i believe i covered all the questions we're taking questions from the community this is the board meeting so board members if you have questions we already had public comment and i have a couple of questions actually yes um i mean firstly thank you for all the hard work you put in over the last number of weeks i mean i know it's it's a it's been a task and a half right um one of the concerns obviously i mean and the the concern for everybody sitting around here is is maintaining safety for all right and that's going to involve not just an initial batch of work but an ongoing amount of work right as you've outlined um and one of the biggest areas of concern is disinfecting objects between use in particularly high touch points actually around the building during normal normal school day um particularly bathrooms um and whilst i hear what you said there's there's always been an ongoing concern that perhaps the maintenance department hasn't had enough resource historically in terms of personnel do you have the people to do that yes what we've what we've set up and put in place again utilizing these these type of tools with the staff we have our day staff will be closing down washrooms on a regular basis to do a clean and disinfecting again we got to clean before we disinfect so isolating bathrooms working on schedules with building administrators to maintain bathrooms on a regular basis our day staff will do that and then they'll be walking the building utilizing this product with the microfiber and cloth covering handrails we're going to look at some options for for holding doors open so we can alleviate traffic in those touch points but our day staff our day staff understands the the role that they play in this process of getting students and staff back in the building and they're going to be a very active member of that process feel comfortable we have not just enough people to actually do this on a daily basis but you have coverage in case of sickness or absence or we we have what we call sub staff on full-time staff we have to we're still looking to hire two people for the night as our subs but we do have a staff member during the day and we utilize our other departments we utilize our grounds department and maintenance department to help support during the day okay for the for when those needs they're gonna be they're gonna be trained up in the same places as everybody else all of our buildings and ground staff has been trained the same yes on the question of the overnight cleaning um prior to staff and students coming into the buildings the following morning i'm assuming you're doing an inspection there's an inspection process is that correct correct our our my supervisors and myself will be doing random daily inspections we don't have a documented inspection process at this time but we will be doing regular inspections with our staff working collaboratively with our staff our staff has been trained our staff knows what the expectations are so we'll be following up on a random inspection process i mean but you but your staff will be actually doing a full inspection in their own right correct do they have the um is there an active process of approval prior to the doors being opened every morning saying yes we're ready to go not a documented approval process would that be an issue if you put one in place it would be something we would have we would have to talk and look into how how myself and my two supervisors could do that at each building but i but i no no you must understand me you have your staff in each building um should be obviously they're making their own inspections and obviously they they're the ones who are actually there at the time so they know what they're doing right okay they should be able to say to you yes we're good to go the doors can be open so what's what's ironic is we utilize that process in the summer so every one of our classrooms has an inspection sheet that's attached to the door that could be something we could we could implement in the disinfecting process our subcommittee of facilities is made made up of our buildings and ground staff we're working on what that task sheet per se is because we work off of a task sheet what that task sheet would be look like in the disinfecting phase so we could definitely look i i mean personally i feel that it's very important the fact that there's a positive yes we're good to go as opposed to nobody said anything so therefore we assume it's going to be okay and whether that's a checklist or whether that's whatever approach that is and with the people on the ground should have the authority to be able to say no we're not only the doors we're not ready right absolutely that's done at the end of the second shift right when the building's clean and closed for five hours or six years correct says yes we're good to go we can unseal the door and and also be able to say no we're not good to go we're not there yet which i know it's a big decision right well we we would expect if that was the case that our staff would reach out to us and we'd have that conversation before we get to that i would just say it should be a positive process rather than just say nobody said absolutely right absolutely um and again i'm just asking you one more time i mean is it is there anything else that you you don't have that you think you need you mentioned gloves you mentioned 95 masks that you think would be helpful in terms of any other resource that you feel that you would need to actually do the job properly i think all the res hand soap we stocked up on hand soap when all this happens we have a good supply of that we're modifying paper towel dispensers to make those easier i think all of the equipment that we need we have available or we will have here before this before staff arrive because i would say with that equipment whether that's personnel whether that's time with that input whether that's whatever it is i'm sorry but this is actually the most important part of what we're talking about right now we actually solicited the input of our staff knowing we're going to have to have some overtime so we utilize that survey process to survey our staff and almost 90 percent of our staff would be willing to work overtime if we could work with them to schedule it so we've already broached that subject with them that that may be a necessity and you haven't had any pushback from the administration at all in terms of anything you've asked for so far no no we've we've worked all of our committees all of our committee groups we've been sharing information back and forth from the instruction committee to operations to facilities all those committees have been working collaboratively on this plan right thank you appreciate it any other questions dr mangan would you like to start covering the data that we've compiled sure first i want to thank all the committee work that's being done the collaboration we've had with both uh cea president chapman and ca vice president kira gravitt as well as many teachers who have reached out to me other grade levels that have reached out to me music teachers have reached out to try to come up with some solutions to some of the more challenging elements those conversations have been very very beneficial as we looked at this i first want to give you the raw data of the parent results that came out so you know what we were working from to us i think maybe not surprising to parents we had most of our parents select the four day option we had one thousand eight hundred eight parents uh select the four day option um we had 1 324 parents select the a b schedule 59 parents in our district chose to not attend central 301 for next year 649 parents selected remote semester one 156 parents selected a full year a remote and then we had 459 undecided and as we said last board meeting we'd move the undecided up to the a b but even with that the four day option went out at 1808 in the combined was 1783.
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i don't know what your current superintendent makes that's a factor also uh catherine do you know what your superintendent makes yes um with the increase from the two percent um for the fiscal year 21 because we did a two percent raise um for all our administration that base would be um the regular year salary would be 158 340. 158 okay so uh so 155 maybe a little high for you then i don't know if you want to start somebody that close to where you you're losing and it's been there for a lot of years um but you still want to be competitive i would maybe start somewhere between maybe 135 to 140 ish as a low point and i go up from there to maybe 1 65 maybe maybe 170 but you know as you were saying steve you know we we have a superintendent with a lot of years of experience here and if we're doing the search and come across somebody that's got three years of experience as a superintendent i wouldn't want to place that person in a position with the salary that's pretty close to what a seasoned superintendent has been getting i think based on what you i just learned about where your current superintendent is i think if you picked a number of 140 and went 140 to you're probably in the ballpark for a um a new person coming in and the 160 would be an exceptional candidate um do you i don't know what the assistant superintendents make in our district but i would think that would be a consideration too that a superintendent would come in definitely higher and i don't know what kind of what percentage higher they would come in at but i don't know what they'd make as i said well could we do 140 to 165 because if we've got a superintendent with a lot of years coming in i mean if we get someone with convertible i mean if we if we get someone that's a 20-year superintendent that's just decide they're tired of living in chicago and want to live somewhere sunny and they're fantastic i mean you don't have to give that but it might like i agree with dropping the minimum i'm just not 160 just feels nothing why don't we do 163 i like five oh good with the 140 to 160.
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okay i just wanted to bring that up again so basically the the long and short of this slide and then we can go ahead and move on i'm sure is that this is going to be above and beyond a far more expensive year than a typical year that is correct yes and so one of the reasons why we do this in a semester is because to put them into the five-year projections five-year projections obviously based on an entire year so this is the five-year projector projections if we had one semester of in-school and remote by choice so some students would attend school some would be remote by choice and if you look in the yell the first yellow surplus deficit column you'll see that in fiscal year 21 including all of those items we just listed that would be an 8 million dollar deficit for fiscal year 21.
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so it left us with quite a challenge in a dichotomy of okay this is what our parents want what can we do is this feasible and so as we work the data and i've given to the board kind of the data that i've crunched by building at elementary because that's really our most expensive because we have four of them um to see what that would look like and if i gave all the parents that what they requested and if i granted that request it would cost us over two million dollars to be able to function uh just in staff alone so unfortunately that's not an option there's just no way fiscally we could add another two million dollars to our budget to find staff to actually teach i think one of the teachers who spoke an open comment said that we were expecting teachers to do all of these at one time we've never said that we weren't quite sure what this was going to look like when i ran the numbers i ran the numbers a b four day remote all requiring a teacher all requiring a section because it's very difficult for a teacher to be able to mix all that up together so i talk about the two million dollars i'm not mixing any of those that's teachers for an a b schedule teaches for a four day and then teachers for um the remote section only which we're looking at right now so that's not an option so then i said well what do you think todd what if we try two sections in each of the classrooms so we said we give everybody two sections in the building for every grade level that we had enough for um and that still was at a million dollars so again really not feasible so then we looked at well can we at least give one section of four day and there's a lot of conversation here because we recognize that students with special needs we'd like to see them in the classroom we'd like to see them into school each day if possible and then it came the question of well part of the challenge of special ed is that you want to make sure they have their general ed peers as role models so if we wanted to do that you'd almost have to have a full section but it's it's even more difficult than that because it would depend on the number of special ed students you had at each grade level in each building and then making sure you had enough general ed uh students to be with them to pair them up so it was least restrictive we kind of put special ed off to the side and said okay well how much is it for just one section of four day in within each building and that came to 625 000 which is a pretty large cost that's just for elementary for the four elementary 625 thousand dollars so the last option we looked at was removing all four day options at the elementary to see what the cost of that was and that's still a cost of 250 000 dollars you might ask why um it's because we're trying to maintain class sizes that match the contractual requirements splitting them in half to make sure that we don't exceed what we can put in a classroom to keep that six foot distancing that the guidelines are calling for and so when you try to establish that we're looking somewhere depending on the size of the classroom somewhere between 13 to 15 or 18.
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yeah okay you undo 160 beth steve does that seem reasonable i mean does that sound like we would get a good amount of candidates interesting i think so let me tell you what what when i say you have to be competitive i think that makes you competitive but i will tell you that there are districts out that are really stretching to the stars i had a district that i worked with last year about a thousand students they went up to 170. now that's out of the norm and there's always somebody there i don't think you need to complain but understand that some districts do that i want to you know just so you know but 140 to 160 looking at the numbers um i think is still competitive because like i said if you were 5 000 to 7 500 students the mid-range is 150 right now well 140 to 160 puts you actually in the mid-range of the next group higher the and you are technically in that group with barely 5 000 to 7 500 so that's competitive um okay so janet's was 140 to 160.
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that would bring our fund balance down to 9.3 million at the end of 21 so june 30th of 21 and then if you follow that bottom yellow acro all the way across to fiscal year 25 and i know it's hard to see up there uh we're basically bankrupt at with 94 in the bank which is not even a day's worth of expenses moving on to five year projections if we went one semester remote for all that brings our deficit expected deficit in fiscal year 21 to 3 point just under 3.3 million bringing our fund balance at the end of june 30th 2021 to 14.1 million and bring that then across to fiscal year 25 is just under 5 million or about a week's worth of fund balance christy can i just have you clarify that the reason for the the massive drop particularly thank you i'm sorry um the reason we are will would be in a deficit situation in fiscal year 21 is because the state has only has in their budget has allocated flat funding for evidence-based funding the model the evidence-based funding the act itself indicates that the state would increase that funding level by 350 million dollars every year but because the state is experiencing financial strains just like just school districts and villages and things all across illinois they were only able to commit flat funding for their in the state budget for evidence-based funding we have budgeted or projected a 4.3 million dollar increase in our evidence-based funding for fiscal year 21.
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at the high school we have something contained 17 or 18 when we looked at them so i diced these up i really had to keep within the class sizes that we have in the contractual requirement that we have as well as i try to maintain that lower class size so that each day so that we had we could manage to keep those six feet distancing that's why you've seen the cost of 250. additionally the guidelines require that we offer remote learning to all parents that's the requirement of the guidelines from the state board of education and if we're going to do remote learning separately having a separate teacher for those remote students which i believe is best practice than having a teacher try to mix all that together it's going to come at a cost of 250 thousand dollars for the elementary school along with the data then we looked at the middle schools there was the opportunity to run um one team of four dayers and then one team of a b at both middle schools we could have probably managed to do that the problem became the number of classes that we had classrooms that we needed and we don't have the number of classrooms that would be required to do that additionally if we couldn't run it at the elementary school level i didn't think it was probably equitable that we would run it at the middle school level but i provided for you at least the cost of that for a four day with the ab at prairie knolls would be another 390 and at central middle school will be another 261 thousand dollars you can see we're back up to a fairly substantial almost a million dollars if we kept just one section at the elementary plus these a little over a million abs are pretty neutral we were actually unfortunately we would probably reduce the minutes in ela and math currently they do 66 social science do 44 and we would be moving everybody to a little under close to 40 41 including math and ela to pick up additional sections which would leave us with some teachers who could then absorb the remote only kids so some could teach their content part of the challenge at middle school and high school is that they're content specific their licensors don't cover the whole span they're very specific to math or ela or social studies or science so we have to make sure that we have enough content teachers to cover the teacher or the students that we would need them to cover so at the middle school level we maybe have to have teachers do both a b a section of a b or two and maybe a section or two of a remote just depends on how it would break down by schedule at the high school level in talking to kim when she's able to get all of the students rescheduled in what their elective courses were in an a b maintain class sizes and where they need to be as long as we may have to shift some teachers from one classroom they're used to to a classroom that could absorb a larger size we're trying to make sure we have one classroom to every teacher i'm not sure yet if we can get there we'll have to report that out she's kind of checking that out with kerry mccaslin our recommendation is for all districts to go a b only and remote um and drop four day at this point in time we just do not believe it's feasible for the district to do that and then special populations but for special education special populations a lot program life skills lead star those are our self-contained independent classes we would want to have them come in all four days then there's another population out there that have a lot of related services that go with their academics so a student might be very high need they may get math or write reading they may get writing they may get speech they may get otpt they may get social work services so a lot of their day might be pull out related services so if we only gave them two days a lot of that might be related services so we looked at our population of special education students who had severe needs or a lot of related services and we have about 16 students that we would want to pull in as 4-day as well based on having high needs in those categories and the reason we took 16 or we took that route instead of all special editions there's no way we could fill all of the classrooms based on where they're all sitting and some kids are pretty much either collab you know they're they're just getting ready to exit special education they're doing well in a general education classroom they made you go to a remote setting and so we did not pick up those students and mike and michelle are the ones that selected those students based on that criteria so based on our analysis based on what we looked was attainable achievable sustainable as dr mangan said we're recommending the a b schedule for all levels with an alpha split so a k and one group all through z and the other with one group attending on mondays and thursdays and the other group attending on tuesdays and fridays and middle school high school um changing to a start of 7 30 to two middle school be 208 just because of transportation to pick up kids elementary being from nine to three thirty um for their their time frame uh transportation can accommodate all those um i will say though in the in the midst of all this and since the last board meeting to now there's been some pretty creative solutions and i think you heard a parent uh mention that she wished we could do something with k1 and one of the solutions that we've we've talked to uh kieran dave about is maybe kindergarten being half day you know and coming in so ada k would come in the morning l to z would come in the afternoon and they'd be there all you know so they would be there every day and have the experience at the um elementary and whether we worked on it or not so then when uh kieran david worked with us again they said well hey could we maybe think about that for k-5 you know could it be an option that early childhood through fifth grade could do something like half day for a k half day for lz so those are some ideas we're still having i don't know what the board's opinion of that would be or what you think from a parent's perspective i know it could be daycare larger daycare issues than the two days because it's half day every day but those are some things that we've been kind of batting around as we're trying to work on solutions and meeting the needs of some of our younger students who have are learning literacy and numeracy and some of those skills that are really really important as they progress into the education system those are very valid points from one question i have is how are we going to keep the classrooms clean between the shift of kids there's an hour and a half okay so if you did a 9 32 or 9 to 11 30 11 30 to 1 would be a break one to 3 30 would be the second shift and talking to transportation because that's first thing right can we get the buses cleaned they felt they need an hour and a half to transport pick up transport and clean buses the maintenance would come through with their guns and we'd work on a schedule with each teacher so that when they went in it would have that dwell time that they would need teachers will have the products one of the things you know kira i talked about some kindergarten teachers talked about is some of them will wipe off products that they know like they're working on a blocks they would wipe their blocks themselves take care of some of that stuff um kieran knows what she'd need for the next period she'd take care of those things but the primary classroom stuff we'd come through with the um guns or the wipe down to do the kill okay in the time frame for that hour we broke a schedule up 8 30 right i talked to dan how long you know i said to daniel how long would it take dan to go in there because i was thinking 10 minutes he said no literally it would take you know them to go in and spray a minute two minutes and then it needs that dwell time of 10 minutes so a teacher would need to be out of the classroom um when they're doing so work on the lunch or whatever they need to do to kind of rotate those teachers out while it's dwelling and drying um to get those cleaned the two things that stand out for me from a just a curriculum standpoint so you know this idea of having you know our teachers with teachers and this just our feedback from the teachers you know different three five right then k2 especially so you know would they teach the same content afternoon and morning and then the same kids would have their reverse you know like online where sometimes math might be remote and then math might be in person reading might be remote reading might be in person and how do we prioritize that well one of the things we're thinking is that we would do specials as remote so the two and a half hours would be all core maybe specials would be remote so the pe art music would so if a morning class is coming in for the core construction in the afternoon they would do their specials the pm class would do their specials in the morning and then they would do their core in the afternoon when they come in so math ela socialist and science will be handled in that two and a half hours that they're there part of the challenge is two and a half hours part of that loading a bus unloading bus taking bathroom breaks washing hands you know some of those things so you're probably down to maybe two hours of instruction but it's still direct instruction with the classroom teacher and so i just i you had a i think about a two week two weeks ago i think you had a rough schedule for nine to three i think it was roughly six hours on the clock if you will and so in looking back at that you know or kind of the way that some of our existing teams do it obviously i know hbt and so thinking about how many minutes of our six hours and 25 minutes at the elementary level you take out lunch recess specials roughly are we looking at three hours of existing core science math readings studies so you're looking at an hour and a half of ela 60 minutes of math and 30 minutes of social science but they alternate those so it's three hours a day roughly okay of direct instruction we're losing a good percentage of that but i would argue the same way right that being in person especially for our littles is is a good option um what about i mean again we get fifth graders who you know from my perspective you know very different than our kindergartners who need movement breaks in there but can we expect fourth and fifth graders to have one five minute break if they're only there for two hours and 15 minutes i would argue yes that developmentally they would have the capacity to do that with moving around the classroom very clearly um and so you know how do we kind of flex that one thing and talking to dr stern last week was you know provided this is something we're able to make happen as safely as possible and as effectively as possible you know do we take advantage of neighboring districts so if we had if we have for instance district 300 and they have buses and is that a cost that we're willing to take on and say hey can we get some extra buses does that help get more classroom time if we don't have to spend all this time loading and unloading buses if we have more buses so the routes aren't as long and we can cut down i don't know but we actually talked about this i think i think the challenge there is that they're only most of the districts are saying quarter one so they're not going to give us buses for a whole cement right so they're still depending on those buses at some point right sort of to to lock those into us probably not going to happen uh yeah it's probably not feasible so that's why we're kind of locked into busing uh the other challenge we have at central is you know 85 percent of our students robust we're the only district that has that maybe cainlyn i don't know what their number is but we're very very dependent on transportation to assist us in that um so if i have a question but i'll since we're talking about this right now i'll just make a comment so i've heard it heard from um somebody works and works with teachers in other schools not in our district but another district but they said that they in the first kindergarten first lower grades it's very if the teachers really would like to have those at least in this neighboring district would like to have their students in class for those reasons at least to start the school year because of relationships and relationships and things like that so i certainly would be open to listening to that my other question was as if as if money and district or classroom space wasn't available would we even be able to find teachers you're talking about like a ton of extra staff people oh the two million one yeah late in the year and even defined elementary yes um middle school in high school gets a little bit more difficult when you're looking specifically at content sciences are very hard chemistry physics some of those uh elementary though generally speaking yeah we can usually find elementary teachers and that's what a b only with remote if we did that elementary's the only space we would need teachers according to this that's correct yes we would need five teachers across all four buildings i was able to put in four teachers in the cares grant so um we were able to cover four teachers through the cares grant for the year okay i had a comment regarding the half day thing um you go two hours of teaching you know it's 10 hours a week they had two days i think it's actually a little more it would seem and then the other thing for the community there's been a lot of outcry on daycare so we did the alpha split but now if you have five days a week with a half a day i think that's a lot more difficult to find child care for a half day compared to three full days or two full days or something like that and then if the older sibling is going to school you know thursday friday then the half day when normally they would be together you know a remote that's gone yeah that's correct right daycare is definitely with the half day is definitely um one of the issues um with that in terms of parents but i think academically um i think the argument that i heard from the kindergarten teachers um because other ones i spoke to mostly about this this was kind of their their idea at first um was they felt that if they could have them as a set time not being interrupted with encores or specials which they are in the full day remember that part of that time they're being pulled for specials they're going to lunch they're doing all these we're not talking about serving lunch for these kiddos either we're talking about sending them home no lunch being served at school um in the two and a half so you're not giving up that time that you might do in that longer day they also felt for that age it was much more appropriate for the wearing a mask not to have them all day a shorter period of time but they felt that they could get more covered because i asked the same question them they but they really felt they get more covered in that set amount of time uninterrupted than what they could do in the course of what they would have for a full i day see it for kindergarten the older elementary we used to do kindergarten anyway yeah we did and they said they hated to go back to even talk about that because they fought so far to get further so we're not looking to move it so when do you anticipate i mean if if there are still logistical things to to figure out about this whether that's the classrooms i know you guys work diligently over the weekend and again with these two uh in the back you know with ca of course to figure out like what we need uh or or getting feedback obviously nothing's gonna be unanimous um you know it what did we look at we have another board meeting in two weeks or three weeks yeah we don't we don't have time though i mean our recommendation tonight but we have a recommendation is to go is to go a b um although um you know we have a lot of logistics we'd have to work out on the other one with both the union making sure teachers were on board you know all of those elements um so right now as we sit so people can make a plan our recommendation would be to go a b remote learning special education for those 16 students outside of the program special education students um so we can service the ones that are the highest need and i think then as we look at other parents that maybe you know mike and michelle can work with other parents that maybe feel like they didn't make the cut for whatever reason and see what they come up there we're kind of trying to develop a specific procedure for that yeah that was something i was going to mention earlier i would just assume that we're going to have parents who who would feel like their kids would not only benefit but require based on that and you know i think if i had if i would like to see early childhood in kindergarten come every day if it was my you know that than everybody else uh a b but i i don't know that we can get the transportation for kindergarten and we would need to definitely work with cea to see if that was doable so we've given our recommendation which is the either a b schedule elementary middle school and high school or full remote for the parents that want it those are really the two options that we're moving forward at this time can we clarify this question of before we even talk about anybody coming back do we have the resources in place to make sure and i keep banging on about this but for example do we have the nursing staff in place that we need we have a nurse in every building yes is that sufficient yes okay we also have an administrative assistant where we are putting in a secondary administrative assistant uh temporary to assist in some of the paperwork to help reduce the workload for both our secretarial staff and our nursing staff and will that person be trained in terms of what to do in the case of yes okay and the the other the other big question that i keep hearing a lot is what happens when there is a a student found with the code virus what is the process we follow the cdc and idph guidelines which are very uh kind of delineated they're also in the book that we have and we have to update that it's in the opening plan okay on what the guidelines are there they did change it they actually reduced the time they actually cdc went from 72 hours to 24 hours so their time frame has reduced in terms of how long somebody needs to be out of the school okay i'm in there last guideline so we have to update the opening plan with those new guidelines under what circumstances we would be required to close there is no there is no specific percentage cain county will not give us one idph and cdc will not give you one um it's really monitoring what's going on it's up to a local decision so what do we do so you work out you work with the kent county health department on those individual outbreaks and then you follow the guidance that that is recommended but if they're not giving us guidance no it's going to be based on situations oh i see what you mean right situation they will consult essentially on a given circumstance right status correct it's situational based on the circumstances of that case of that outbreak that makes sense because i think this that's that's one of the areas of concern obviously for parents and staff and everybody right what happens when it's in the guidelines of what what cdc has told us they did they did make it much looser uh which we will update um but we'll be following the guidelines there okay is there any recommendation anywhere in the united states from health departments that um that school districts do temperature checks of students or staff the guidelines require us to we get pre-certification so we need to require every parent it would take you all i mean imagine putting 40 000 kids through a thermometer check and how long that would take before they get a school bus our concern is to make sure that our bus drivers are safe as well so we want to make sure that we're entering kids on our school bus with 85 percent of our kids riding a school bus getting entered into a school bus after parents have pre-certified them that they actually have no temperature and don't have any of the coping symptoms do you feel like that's a reasonable expectation to put on bus drivers it's a a lanyard with a plastic coating with they could they should be able to see the check marks very easily one quick look that came out of the operations committee recommendation loading of the school bus also because if anybody's at school when you unload or get on it is a massive crowd we're using multiples we're using multiple entry points now so bus loading will be in multiple locations in each of the buildings okay um and then we'll have uh six six mark six foot markers for students to walk on we'll have signage to control flow one bus at a time a bus okay so it's gonna be more of a bus at a time okay that was my question well it won't be a mass unload anymore okay yep perfect that's why i say it's gonna take a little bit more time to load and unload buses for sure how much time have you allocated for that extra time we haven't we don't know we're gonna find out but we don't i mean until we do it and each building will be different we don't know what that will be any guess i'm guessing because you know if the kids have to go what six feet off it could take 20 minutes for them to exit the bus well we first of all we know kids are going to have mass on the buses and we know they're not going to take six feet off the school bus i mean let's be real right they're gonna light up and they're gonna come off the school bus we're gonna try to walk them in and train them to go six feet but they're on a school bus together they're gonna we know how students are gonna do our best to teach students how to to do that but that's going to take some some training faster no no well i understand that but you know that's logistically it's going to be a nightmare for a while yes and i understand that and that's going to be a stack up and what kind of training and can you do that training before school starts send out videos or anything like that oh we could we could have uh our drivers work on some videos and those types of big fifth grader oh man you want to be a big fifth grader happy to be a big fifth grader i'll let pam portal know that yeah we could work on that has there also been discussion about i'm assuming as a parent there will be more parents dropping off and picking up until i know that's something i'm thinking and planning on just the i you know is that is that something that's being discussed because i'm even thinking traffic flow because i know like pk gets crazy and there's nowhere for pk to go it's the way it was it was built yes that's why you kind of wave way around something that's been just i know you have so much time is problematic ct is problematic for sure those are our two issues when they were built you know they were not built in a way that manages a large traffic flow primarily because we felt that most kids would walk at perennials and we really have much more parents dropping off kids at prairie house middle school than we would have anticipated um in terms of we know that those will be separate entries in the buses so buses will be different locations the the parents will be at a different location but the managing of pkms it doesn't matter what year it is not even just pk all the schools in general because i just think there's going to be at least at the beginning i think people will probably do more maybe i'm just wondering if you get our parents are discussing it apparently they said they would send their kids on buses so i don't know maybe that's it they didn't seem to be a substantive difference from what we're already seeing at the building level not according to the survey but again when it comes closer you know and hpt would be a non-issue because we'd have half the high school is there anyway so we'd have that front lot that we could pull teachers to and use the other lot to snake around the exit that they already go out of now it will take longer for sure in all areas loading the buses unloading the buses it's going to take more people to supervise i know the middle school has worked a schedule out for teachers to supervise and some of those things to make sure that we're able to get those kids in and out safely the recommendation obviously is that is is a b a b schedule for everybody other than those who've and then others that go remote basically right um uh special ed special ed we all of our programs leads a-lab star those are programs that are self-contained kids in a specialized program those kids will come to school every day and then we have about four days they'll come four days four days okay and then our students that have severe needs with a lot of related services about 16 of those students that'll always be fulfilled 16 students will be coming also four days okay and those parents will be reached out to by michelle and mike and you're looking looking to make a decision on that when which one on the whole plan as it stands right now today that's our recommendation okay and then when will the only variants i would like to consider if we can get it worked out uh with uh cea um and ourselves and we can come to some kind and the teachers it would be to allow early childhood and kindergarten specifically the opportunity to come in at half days four days a week because there is not a mandated time frame by the government for either one of those populations kindergarten's really a choice right you don't have to come to school to summon by law um so i think there's some option opportunities there um that we could we could take in on especially for early literacy and early numeracy um for that population i would like some leeway that i could adapt to those two grade levels if possible so we we i mean we all know this stuff this i mean people need certainty in terms of their own planning we know that right yes um when are we looking to review this situation we're currently in talks we're in talks all weekend but once once the decision is taken when we when are we then making a further decision at the end of the year first of january oh no uh all for this year we believe these days for the entire school year we don't know where we're going we have to plan in staffing we can add it we're going to make adaptations to people who are remote only that want to come back at semester which would increase class sizes which could be a cost to us to increase that we recognize that um but overall we would like to stay with this plan for an entire year so make a decision for the years home okay i said two weeks ago um i'm glad we got the extra two and a half weeks to start this year um but i also people need to know what to plan for and so we know 40 percent of people aren't going to like whatever it is that we recommend and certainly you know put our backing to but i think that having a decision is better than no decision i appreciate the creativity that kind of came in at the end here with the half step i mean i look i mean i'll be honest i would love it if my kids could have two and a half hours a day at school but i i agree with jeff on this one that logistical nightmare for for parents that are already stressed about what is going to happen for my kids when they're home all day if it was five half days so that that would be i think even more challenging and cumbersome quite frankly and so i think you know maybe we can still do some creative things with specials for our kids that are in there two days a week and how can we have more classroom learning time with our team i don't know i mean we have i know we have our minutes never how do we get creative with that yeah the guidance requires that students get uh five hours of sea time right um now five hours of seat time includes specials but it still would require some activities to be sent home from their two and a half hours of instruction to be done at home um to get that five hours required and if we do a b with remote would the the in-person kids be on our exact same time schedule as last year or would there be noticeable tweaks 10-minute tweaks to a start and end of a school day for remote only for you know for our kids when they're at the buildings i mean is that the same as last school year uh middle school and high school would go 7 30 to around 2 208 and then our elementary would go 9 to 3 30.
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um scott how do you feel about that range yeah i'm good with that 140 to 160. well let me ask you one more question steve um has it been your experience that um if a candidate is interested in the location really wants to move to arizona really likes this location uh would they come back to you but has a problem with this range would they come back to you and say i really am interested um and they're super qualified do they ever come back and say will you go back to the board and see if they'll give me you know whatever or is that just strictly salary negotiation time well first off once you set the range you need to stick with it okay the benefits are what are negotiable because you're sticking with a range of 140 to 160 then you've got a negotiable benefits that's where you can play with it a little bit because you could talk about a 401k you can talk about performance pay you can talk about you know they get a district vehicle to use that that's your that's your playground but once you set the salary you need to stick with it have i had somebody come back and do that yeah and i had a i had a board very interested in a person until i said well let me just go back and make sure that this person is solid uh with what you um you know what we've got here and i i we took a recess and i went back to the call first and i said look they're interested uh are you still interested and that person said yes but i won't do it for less than 165 and the board the board had um i think set a high range of 145.
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we that will not we will not receive that we will receive what we um basically what we got last year so that that alone would be a hit to our budget um even in um even if we didn't have additional sanitization custodial or staff needs so christy can you just clarify really quick that that 4.3 million dollar increase what is that so the people at home can kind of understand what that is it's kind of like a cost of living adjustment every year to the district because the state is supposed to be increasing their funding or is that because we're only at 63 percent correct they're supposed to be increasing that even though last year we stayed at 63 percent which was a flat percentage it was still an increased number dollar number correct so the goal of evidence-based funding is to get us a hunt to 100 adequacy by the year 2023 or something like that 10 years what year 2025 thank you 20 years yes and we're in the third year or going into the fourth year irregardless but yes the goal was to get us closer to 100 adequacy we have been hovering like you say around 63 despite the additional uh revenue every year so realistically we will probably drop in that percent right yes yes so when they calculate next year we should be lower than the 62 percent and i think you know lori's point what too was that um the 10-year plan that they had they stated for adequacy is not was not something that they're we're able to achieve um and so we were looking at maybe 20 years to get to that 100 but obviously we know correct correct it was never attainable in 10 years but in the third or fourth year already they're exercising their hold harmless and thank goodness for the hold harmless because else we would be in the same position we were in even so it's beyond frustrating that every budget cut we've made 43 million something like that in budget cuts over the last four years to see that wiped away it'd because of six months it is with the enormity of the restrictions and costs being placed on us it is i don't even think i've got words i i'd like to i think and i think they're still as in everything there's still a lot of uncertainty because this also what we're looking at is an assumption that starting in fiscal year 2023 the state's going to start up again and give us our increased dollars as we have been get had been getting um so there's that gap year and and i don't i mean none of us that's not guaranteed that's not a guarantee so none of us know one gap year right and also the 4.3 million that we lose this year we lose every year because every year we would have gotten 3.6 million on top of that 4.3 right new editions um can we can we afford choice just very simply can can our school district can we afford do we have the money to do choice instruction with all the requirements that are put on to us at this point isb is making it very difficult to to have choice so they're not only financially funding and increasing the restrictions right financially and in what they're expecting staff to do or how they're expecting children to arrive at school so we're being told sorry this is ruth croner again we're being told that by the state we're going to leave it up to the local school districts to just make their own plans and do their own thing however really they're telling us you can't do it because they're making it impossible they're taking away the funding to do the things that they're requiring school districts to do right and and just the requirements themselves are just unattainable ridiculous for the amount of funding that they've given us so far which is uh 980 000 for the cares act and the digital equity grant that's part of that also but that 1.6 million is not going to cut it for our district now the cares act and the digital equity grant those are federal dollars not correct from the states yes that's correct i have a question for teresa if we're able to jump around and now go ahead and based on this just for clarification because i heard the presentation tonight different than i did last week and i want to make sure i understand um and and that was the basis of me really saying no we can't do this it's impossible um the presentation i heard tonight was all based on a positive student a positive case scenario last week when we talked about this it was nothing to do with positive whether somebody had covid became positive or not the the directive i understood from from kendall county via idph any student so if if student a is complaining not feeling well goes to the nurse's office has a temperature that student is going home for 10 days as well as the closed contacts and that went for any of those 11 symptoms not necessarily that there was a positive test involved so this goes back to the frustration and identifying what we consider a case and you're exactly right we've received information that conflicts from the cdc as well as isb and even with excuse me as well as idph and even within idph we received some information from an epidemiologist that was telling us that this would be a clinically based positive and when we asked okay so if the student doesn't go get covid tested because they had a runny nose we aren't going to know so is that considered a probable case a suspected case is this um who makes that qualifier on whether or not that symptom is to be suspected as potentially covet or not and that is where idph has answered us kind of on both ends at this point and has openly admitted that there is disagreement between cdc idph and even within idph and so in talking with kendall county they share in that same level of frustration for us that we can't get anybody to give us a definition because when you look at these it's someone who tested positive or is suspected of having covid but we don't know what suspected means because if you follow the quarantine requirements a suspected case can be someone who has one of those 11 symptoms who's being sent home to quarantine for 10 days so that's one of the things that we just don't know i mean simply sending home all the students who come in with a runny nose a headache a fever any of those things it's hundreds of students across the district if we add to that that anyone that experiences those every person around them for the last two days has to go home our buildings would be empty in a matter of a few days and that verbally has come from our health department verbally they have spoken that statement that they will be going with suspected cases i'm with matt that's exactly what i heard over here it's two different things and i understand the frustration but we need to hear what you need to be on the same page so are we going probable or a positive test and that's that's not our decision to make where are we at right now our kendall county department of public health has told us that we must go from what i understand conservative route i need to hear you say that though so what what they are saying and talking with them again on sunday is that there is not a definition in specifically asking idph who are we supposed to put in that bucket of probable or suspected or symptomatic who are those people supposed to be that we're supposed to follow down and so people listening hear this was it tuesday that we spoke yes tuesday each of us spent about an hour on the phone with the director at the kendall county health department and the conversation was we are remaining very conservative yes and it's probable based on one of 11 symptoms right then on sunday it's changing again well your conversation is saying that now they're walking that back again because this is a change every week so what we need to know for the purposes tonight is are we required to follow the guidance that that they've issued that a suspected case has to be quarantined we just need to know that the best to your to the best of your ability right so um so it went yes no yes no and yes as you mentioned it's going back and forth every couple of days in my last conversation with rhiann from the health department and talking with them again over the weekend is idph is saying they hope that they'll have a definition for us in regards to who falls in that suspected probable category at this time they don't have that the last published evidence that we had from them and the from the state and from the isb guidelines right it's quoted right up here it says an individual who tests positive for covid or who shows any sign or symptom of illness should stay home and the guidelines of those who are suspected of having covid whether tested or not have to follow that fever reducing medications and the 10 days has to pass so again the last written guidance we had was incredibly conservative and as far as we know we don't need the we just need to know the the what you're telling us we need to follow publish yeah dr sparlin is telling us we need to follow i don't need to know if it's conservative i don't need to know whatever it is i need to know what we're following and that is what you're telling me you're following which is the written crosswalk is that what we're following this that quote right there is directly from the isbn idph joint guidance that was published on june 23rd which is still the most accurate information that came out from those two agencies within idph they have given us conflicting information since then but we don't have anything in writing to the contrary that's what i needed to know so see i i'm still i know okay bring me to the water okay let's go to the scenario okay mary because this this this scenario of mary i think it is different from last week uh last week it was if mary had the fever and went down that alone in and of itself initiated the sequence of events with the students on mary's bus the students around mary in the classroom possibly the teacher and this is and it's still conflicting here on this slide if positive or probable assuming that the fever the cough the aches are a probable case right and that's where the state is saying it's not the school district's responsibility to qualify any of those 11 symptoms as whether or not they're from covid or not we can't we can't make that qualification at the school level so they're telling us that anyone that has it anyone that's symptomatic of any of those 11 symptoms anyone exposed to it or anyone exposed to someone suspected of having it needs to follow those quarantine guidelines where we can't get the clarification and solid writing from them is who's going to decide of that list of 11 symptoms because right now our written guidance says anyone that has any one of those would be subject to the quarantine guidelines who's going to decide that so-and-so's running knows if the parents choosing not to get tested because we cannot require a test so if a symptomatic individual is at home is that individual a probable assumed suspected all of the different conflicting words that they're utilizing in their guidance we need to know if that individual is going to be considered a case in the crosswalk document right now the conflicting information that's gone back and forth would tell you yes in some places and no in other places but in the isb guidelines that came out on june 23rd it is very clear to us that that would be everyone that came in contact with a suspected case which a suspected case by definition would be someone that is experiencing one of those 11 symptoms at this point now again verbally they've been told by idph there could be additional faqs and guidance provided that may make that less of an impact in the school as far as quarantining for close contacts of probable cases however going back again to the initial piece there is no question around whether someone's going home for 10 days if they experience any of those symptoms so within our schools we look at that we're estimating hundreds of students on a daily basis being sent home from the district just as a potential case regardless of any of their close contacts and every time we send one of them home they're out for 10 days potentially their siblings could be out for another 14 on top of that for 24 days well how i'm reading this is close contact is all of their classmates and their teachers too so in this scenario mary is home for 10 days but all of her classmates and teachers are home for 14 so she could potentially come back to school be the only person there correct and again she could she could get tested and come back negative with those two tests and come back to school after several days right but how long you can't use the rapid tests yes so that adds another layer of fun to this and that there's two different types of tests there's a rapid test and there's a clinical based test and the effectiveness of one versus the other is prescribed in here so this would be the crosswalk requires um that the testing be the pcr testing and it has to be two tests so and the pcr testing just to clarify is the clinical based test and that takes on average of how many days to get the results vary by location of where you're at give us a range typically one to three days so they would be at six or seven days very potentially with that test which is why they're not recommending that the test-based strategy be enacted in most cases they're suggesting that the isolation be the case so that means that any of the children that are symptomatic the first option would be for them to be home 10 days i don't want to con confuse myself i i think what i'm hearing is this i'm just going to be very very simple and just tell me yes or no if mary and we're going to take fever out of it because we all kind of know if you got a kid's fever you should stay home not irregardless of the fact that there will be parents that send their kids with fevers because there always are mary's at school and it's hot and she had an early morning cross-country practice so now she's sore and she's hot and she goes to the nurse because she's sore and hot mary is now home for 10 days all seven classes with 25 to 35 kids in each class they're all home for 14 days all seven teachers are home for 14 days she rode a bus with 49 kids and a bus driver so that's another 50 50 people down not to mention she was at cross country that morning for practice making her sore and hot and now we're not talking about 100 plus kids we're talking three or four hundred and we have eighteen thousand students what's your best guess on how long we'd last would we last a month if we're going by the definition we are going by the definition that we are hearing we are required to go to that's that's the basis of this right i need to know if that's what we're going dr sparrow maybe you need to answer this yes just like teresa just said no what are you saying i want to know that what you're saying is that we're required to follow a specif a specific suspected case with one symptom that's what we've been told that's all that's that's what i need to know so how long are we gonna are we gonna make it a week it would be a very short period of time yes well and and additionally one thing we haven't talked about is the work with the contact tracing and trying to figure this out so for each student that comes down to the office and goes home symptomatic and for each student that's called in sick from home that is symptomatic oh the called in sick called in sick also counts so you called your kid in sick for a sore throat they're out ten days now we're contract tracing them as well so the work alone with tracing back the number of students that could potentially be in the nurse's office being sent home and excluded is tremendous since kendall county we we can we know what we've been dealing with locally nice people but just nothing in print nothing formal referring to idph they're conflicted within themselves as well so the only other agency out there above idph is cdc who has actually put something in print with recommendations based on this why are we not allowed to go then to the higher authority above idph the written guidance that came out as the joint guidance on june 23rd is a joint guidance issued to us from the illinois state board of education and idph and so our governing agency would be the illinois state board of education and so we need to follow the guidelines that were published in that document and they stated we need to follow that is what that direct yeah that direct quote was out of that they don't give us the option of choosing between idph and cdc no in any way no in fact it goes even further to say that we should be consulting our local health department for any guidance for how we would implement these type of things within our school system and in all of our conversations with the health department they are going back to idp which is the primary source of information they don't they are not taking that information from cdc they are following idph as their authority on one thing that i noticed on here that i think it didn't get updated there was some information on here about kendall county is now in warning area also of cases so kendall county is one in one indicator yes isn't a warning level there are 11 counties that are in two or more risk indicators in the state as of today that's up from four yesterday and to and we only have one in kendall county and just to be clear even though we technically sit in three counties because our primary location is kendall county with the district administrative office we follow kendall county numbers correct can i switch gears for a minute pull up slide 8 in some conversations with some very fantastic people it says substitutes available and i want to just revisit this for a second because we did i did ask this question earlier and maureen can clarify if we expand the substitute pool by allowing anyone 21 or over with an associate's degree that's based on a board decision so that actually opens our pool up to candidates who could sub in a time when we are low in subs correct yeah so just something you know to consider and then if you look at slide four in slide five slide five my only question is we have all these teachers who have asked for time off i wonder how many of these teachers are very good with technology and would be great additions instead of hiring five technology people who could be trained to do technology not only to do technology but also to go out and teach technology so that's my comment on five and then on question four just to clarify for people at home um and i got an answer to this i'm not sure where i'm at with it but so anybody who chose remote by choice are they still remote by choice or are we automatically feeding them into remote for all and i asked that question because on july 24th i know my big question because i have athletes um was the ncaa was not at our last meeting the ncaa had not taken ingenuity but on july 24th they did accept it so for anyone who was thinking about that they did clarify that on july 24th that they are extended they are accepting on a limited basis but they are accepting those so are the remote for choice people automatically going to remote for all remote for or can they still choose because our intent is to get these kids back in school right like our intent if if if we clarify all this what you guys pardon me what we've all been arguing about for the last like the definitions and and once we get actual clarification once they excuse me get their together but once we get better definitions and once we can actually you know start to feed these kids back into the buildings with the teachers that's it's going to be scary for some people and some people who picked remote by choice picked it based on medical needs of their family which i appreciate some of them picked it out of fear again like i can appreciate whatever your reason was for picking it my concern is that we now have a bunch of people who picked remote by choice whom who will want to stay remote by choice if our intent is to move didn't they change the guidelines though on what remote by choice could look like that would make a genuity annuity doesn't mean right but it's but that's just a standard right it's just a suggestion i don't know right so i don't know if you're taking six classes and we can prove that these kids have been online for these for two and a half hours then theoretically we meet the requirement since well synchronous means that you're live with the teacher too not just that it's two and a half hours of instruction right but is it just a requirement or is that a new is it's a it's a strong suggestion um on what it means to do that so the with the edge annuity piece so really the remote by choice versus remote for all is much different at junior high in high school than it is for elementary because elementary it's about the same schedule but it's taught by teachers at your home school which everybody really wanted anyway that we're filling out the survey right which is ironic because you're getting a brand new teacher which is not really a teacher that you know but that's a whole so then um at the junior high and high school piece we would not be doing that because we can have everyone taught by sd 308 teachers and supported that way the other reason to not offer ingenuity right now is it locks us into a semester of all of those students not coming into school because that is completely online where now what we are building is possibilities for remote by choice that would be more flexible that we could come into say in october and still give parents and students choice but if it's edgenuity i cannot go back and forth between their in-person classes of what they have for eight periods a day and then do pick up edge annuity courses because as you know a lot of our ingenuity courses don't perfectly line up with our regular courses and they're much more selection for our sd 308 courses than there are through edgenuity and we're wanting to provide that instruction by our sd 308 teachers while we have that flexibility and that will allow us to pivot and change with the new coveted rates or if there are new state guidelines to meet those needs so just to make sure i'm hearing it right so we're going to take all the remote by choice and they're now remote for all correct and we're going to work on some way for those families who picked reboot by choice for whatever reason to stay remote by choice even if we get back into the classroom correct and have it taught by sd 308 teachers i've we've been really busy in the last so like this is just the beginning is what i'm hearing because now we've got to be building out to allow for the fact that we had been preparing people for remote by choice and now we really do need to factor that in um in addition we're looking at a presentation the presentation that we had on right july 20 july 21st was that these were the scenarios and if we end up in a remote for all situation before the start of school everybody was remote for all right but it wasn't what about staff what do you mean about what happens if i have staff who who can teach in a remote environment and we have some staff with legitimate concerns right right so they're okay doing remote for all but you know the guidelines get clarified we can start bringing kids into buildings and now all of a sudden we've got a bunch of staff who that's a very good are in a full out panic because i you know i could have done this or i could have done this or i you know should have requested this so yeah and it's not for tonight that's not a tonight question i know but i just like i just want to make sure that this is something that we are considering like so will you have better clarity on what that will look like for us next week at our board meeting or what the uh say that we when we reevaluated in october and if things were more aligned to come back to school well i mean ideally what we'd like to see is that this isn't for a whole semester even though we're seeing whole semester numbers what we're looking at is we'd like to reevaluate this in in the end of september i understand that with this big we can't be changing every week we simply can't we're getting short i have heard on here not much about the fact that we were looking at start dates here and i didn't see that in the presentation i don't think tonight um we have some remote instruction days available five i believe what are are we looking still at in august 19th or 20th start date no no we would be looking at uh anywhere either august 24th or august 31st and will you be able to tell us that by next monday yes will you be able to tell us by next monday um so some districts are going back and forth between requiring staff to be teaching remote in the buildings which i think is is a really important thing um we'll have clarification on that as well yes and then we'll have some initial budget numbers from mrs tyler on what this is going to look like for this year's budget what else do we need to ask for for next week if we're putting a wish list or some some answers if following that train of thought with remote in the classroom being able to follow um the guidelines set forth does that enable a teacher who's and if i understand this correctly our remote for all is going to be the normal uh building classroom teachers with their normal assigned class load that they would have been in person online does that enable that teacher then to have some schedule time in the building throughout the day or the week when they're not live to have time with two to three students who are struggling failing falling behind need one-on-one support and could we please find out if the union is okay and it's not going to be a big deal with the union rep left make sure it's okay that a teacher is comfortable in the room with a couple of students three at a time throughout the week to make sure that they're not falling any further behind that is the biggest concern that we have as brent said we have an obligation to educate students and we're going to lose i'm telling you we're unless i just i'm a terrible parent and man can i ask what you mean by in the room do you mean on zoom or do you mean physically sending two kids to the school we're talking about teachers working via remote in their classroom so they're in the classroom in the building instructing remote not from home but in their classroom like eventually we'd like to phase in we're not going to be able to just open back up right you can't just like realize a thousand kids back at school we're gonna have to do some kind of a b split you guys have already thank you for already talking about a b k 12.
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so fairly close about 10 minute difference okay they get out about 10 minutes earlier and much earlier at the middle school but they also start later they started 18 they're sharing right was are they sharing transportation they'll be sure that's why we need to do it in order to get the buses turned around to get the middle of the elementary yep on the question of self-certification right we raised this the last meeting we're relying on parents basically to be very honest about the whole process right um but do we need to change any of the the handbooks to yes we're working on that right now that i'll come forward in two weeks currently we are looking at every handbook and updating everything we need as well as board policy coming forward that'll be happening at the next board meeting and we're clear the fact that should there be sort of deliberate um uh mistakes being made by the parents should i say that um there will be that child will get full remote because they can't be trusted or a period of that in the handbook underneath discipline so if a child isn't wearing their mask for example right now we have if we have medical reasons why a child can't wear a mask they have autism sensory issues some of those things that'll be in medical documentation and we'll work with those students in some other means otherwise students who can wear masks and do not wear them they'll be disciplined appropriately and we will warn them the first time called parents second time they'll come down the office we'll call parents to have them picked up and the third time they will be home permanently for remote only okay and the same if they're self-certifying incorrectly uh i don't i don't know how you'd prove that um that that's a that's a tougher one i'm not sure you could i mean i i short of them not having a temperature and yeah there would be no way to discipline further it's a tough one but i don't know that we could honestly give a an honest referral on that one what about a possibility of a spot check purchasing an infrared thermometer and we have the random children that come in the door we have the ability that if someone's displaying any type of symptoms or you suspect they may be displaying a symptom even though they did the self-certification maybe something starts to occur during the day we have all of the equipment there to to um do a symptom check temperature check and if need be isolate uh with appropriate protective equipment but again i think it's just worth stressing the fact that this whole system only works if everybody actually goes into it with good faith yeah and if they don't then realistically wood's putting everybody's health and one of the reasons we chose to do pre-certification the way we chose to and we're one of the only districts that's requiring and i know you know eric said it could be kind of laborious right for a parent but we want them to think every morning that they're signing off that their kid is healthy and they have to fill that form out every single morning and sign their name on purpose we want them thinking every single day and making a decision that my child is healthy enough to go to school same thing with our teachers every one of us us included we will be pre-certifying every morning that we're healthy enough to come to school would that be on the our building administrators i'm assuming to track the teachers will be filling out a form every morning before they enter the door and principal's retracting that our district office people will be tracking or we're tracking every day and then students uh one of the reasons we wanted that other person for administrative will having them taking them collecting them once they come off the bus and then we'll be tracking every student to make sure we have pre-certification this has been a current expectation for administrators that have worked all summer long in district office um that has been opened uh non-stop since the beginning of this pandemic we self we self-check and self-certify every day so it's just a continuation of that for for all levels yeah good luck that thanks for that i think things have changed society wise too that if you're not feeling well at home it's okay to stay home now you know where before it was like i you're fine just you know the child doesn't feel well they can stay home and jump into that remote learning for that class you know not the other one but you know there's an option i think that's easier you know so hopefully you know all we can do is have faith in our parents and kids yeah and i think it's important for parents to know that we're still going to educate your child if they're asymptomatic or they just aren't feeling well leave them home let them go on the remote let the teacher know they're absent but they're not missing class they're going to check in on that remote piece right so they're still going to learn from home same thing for staff the staff is ill call in let us know one of the guidances that we're waiting for is we believe in the past you could not leave a parapro supervise a students without having line of sight there is guidance we hear that's coming out that's going to allow you to let a parapro in a classroom to monitor students while a teacher is teaching remotely so if a teacher is sick they don't feel 100 but they don't want to take a sick day they want to teach from home because they feel they're good enough to teach remotely from home we can try to figure out if we can work on those types of things um those are some things we still have to kind of work out and okay what's going to happen with this so how does this look these are things we still have to talk about um with both cea uh best you know all of those groups as well i think there's some solutions to that we really want them to stay home i don't want them to be afraid that they have to come because they don't whatever right so we want to be thinking creatively about those solutions as well so yeah i think your recommendation stands unless anyone has any i think that's the best of a lot of not great options based on our limitations with size especially with our buildings the way they are right now um and i support that option at this time let's do it [Laughter] i definitely think there needs to be some time spent on instruction for the children before they get to school on mask usage and how to use a mask and look around the room you know your nose and mouth are supposed to be covered by your mask there's a requirement we do gcn modules and in the gcn module there's actual requirement that they have to watch one on covert 19 it's a new requirement so every staff member will be viewing the coven 19 within the first week of school first day probably we'll be talking to kids as well about some of those things that's another requirement that we have to do is to make sure we're educating students on a proper hand washing proper way to wear a mask you know those types of elements so we'll be teaching you know kind of showing them that in every building wherever the stations are at are located we're going to need to walk them and show them in a classroom somehow so that they know where they need to go if they need to put hand sanitizer on where they can find it those kinds of elements as well every building has its own issues elementary is being self-contained middle school is staying in homerooms teachers are moving but they're still going to move somewhat in terms of specials so when they're going their encore class for pe because we want to get them outside as much as possible or art or music or foreign language we still want them to experience those experiences those things in middle school as well uh so they will be going to those classrooms so they need to know where they need to hand sanitizer going in and out we call it foam in foam out they're not really foam machines but you know they need to sanitize in and out it's just training them on all those protocols but that's all part of the the new way of educating our students and there's got to be a lot of that content that's already been curated anyway about the cdc oh yeah and other things we surely can you know spend some time finding what we think are the best for our students videos for like hand washing use of masks things like that and i know i'm the only one who's taking my kid outside of the house but i teach them to use a mask and use sanitizer and go out too so yeah my kids remind me if i forget getting out of the car you know got maeve always correcting me she's ready to go we we haven't addressed the question of off the school athletics programs so athletics have been shut down by ihsa and iesa with the exception of cross-country can run as well as golf for the high school so and tennis so middle school will run cross-country high school can run the other three um everything else has been pushed off i'm not quite sure they said they'd push off every other sport until later they're going to play football in the snow i'm not quite sure we'll wait to see what ihsa has to say with that uh we'll see what those guidelines are the building um in terms of activities um i think again that's a conversation we need to have with ca leadership to figure out what that's going to look like and we haven't gotten that far yet for things like you know scholastic bowl or you know some of those other elements may have something i could do homecoming floats this year because there won't be a homecoming float um or dances so some of those things we we have to still talk about and do we have a time frame expected or the expectation of time frame to actually be making decisions like that uh we're working with ca consistently so as we continue to work with that and we get uh you know somewhere an agreement then we'll push information out how about music and band is that under the same guidelines uh music and band so our music teaches elementary school have been very very creative um so they have a lot of ideas that i think are pretty creative again it'll depend on how we're going to do things there and what that's going to look like for pushing in instead of them actually singing we purchased some things that like rattle you know the kind of shakers it was like an egg shaker kind of thing to teach and beat and those kinds of things so they had some pretty creative things for kids to use and still enjoy music um and so i think they've got a whole spreadsheet of stuff they've got ideas of speakers to go outside so they can take the kids outside and still do the music with some speakers that are all fairly inexpensive so we'll be looking to purchase some of those supplies to get them up and going the middle school again has been working as well they have some pretty creative solutions so i've got quite a few spreadsheets and i know the principals have been talking to the middle school music people more than i have i've been doing much more at the elementary in high school of course we know we lost jeff nesseth which is a huge loss to our district severe loss to our district for a course many kids have been touched by him dramatic you know i can't even talk about how many kids he's touched in his lifetime here in his tenure within our district um so that position we're going to need to fill um and so it's really jeff nesseth and i've i've talked more to the pianist the keyboard she sent me some statistics and some research and some studies that have been out there which have been pretty interesting um i know that marching band is a staple in our community um so we just need to be talking to jeff i mean to jim to see what his solutions are and ideas one of the things he sent us which i told carrie to get a price on was they're like mass for me for musical instruments kind of they're going to wrap around the bottom of a trombone so first spit and then they said to use puppy pads to drop the spit in you know when you empty out the spit things so i thought those are some really creative solutions that maybe quite the visual you made for everybody at home we could use that in our science class and we could bring it full circle people we could do testing but we do feel confident i think that there's um there's community members i think that are worried you know about the future of the fine arts due to kovid we're committed to continuing the fine arts in a safe and effective way and we'll work collaboratively with the with the teachers to establish how how we can best accommodate that well somebody who for when i was here i was here for jeff's first year in 1996 and the first year we had corral was the first year that we had had a kind of a top tier choir uh it was extremely important to me while i was here and theater was extremely important to me while i was here and i was in all the shows when i was here and hopefully that i helped the community you know there's people that care about it and i was extremely uh involved in that it was a really important part of my formative years at the high school in particular so uh it is not forgotten we just sounds like have to be really creative i think yep it's and it's they're pretty creative that crew is very very creative they come up with solutions they're very solution oriented so i'm sure we'll get to a good solution there so we're going to move forward then with the ab schedule um and the other plans for the other groups that we let out great excellent are we doing this is there anything else emotion and second to adjourn into executive session yes yes yes yes hi yes thank you everyone thank you thanks so much thank you thank you oh yeah they might want it's almost two hours well they have them electronically but we didn't have
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
well right then that was it i went back to the board and i said yes but and the board said next and we moved on we've had it happened once it is not good practice for a candidate to do that that is very poor practice okay steve do you have any idea of how many other openings there are in the state right now yeah it's limited right now i you're the only one i'm working with right now other stuff i've seen several over the last few days come in but i haven't seen anybody else in arizona at this point okay what one of the things to keep in mind like with dr burdick part part of her compensation also includes we're paying for her medical her retire well you know we paid her retirement but she's also got um car allowances and you know so when you add up all of the the benefits that 158 000 actually adds up to a lot more than and as steve was saying that's part of the negotiation because originally dr burdick's um car allowance was much different than it is now and that was it was changed several years ago to um [Music] sort of add to the bottom line for her so i think that if you do receive somebody that you're interested in from out of state they're likely to ask you for some compensation for moving expenses that's all negotiable also yeah and see those are all things that are gonna that play into the cost of the employee because the cost of an employee is more than just the salary you know what's in the paycheck and yes you know as an employee you're concerned with what's in that paycheck but all of these other things are are they impact the employee and they're important to us for our bottom line that we need to be cognizant of jim what are your thoughts i think right now we've got um if i'm right just not if i'm right i've got janet suggested and scott has agreed what is your thought on the 140 or did you also agree to the 140 to 160 i already agreed to okay beth what was your yup okay okay what i'm going to do then is i'm going to change this to 140 to 160.
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you know what i mean like we have to make adjustments and the plan is not the the plan's not done and the plan's going to change 50 more times and it's going to irritate about a thousand more parents on a low end right but it's going to keep changing because the requirements are going to keep changing right so first of all you have to understand that this is not normal right and at some point kids have to be back in the buildings and teachers some of us are going to be okay with that and you have to bring them in by populations like i need first like so if i'm getting my wish list i want i need kids first i want i want my special ed kids so you'll have some kind of idea of what that can look like for us for next week so i um unless there's anything else higher level that we can ask for tonight make sure that you please get your wish list in on things you'd like to make sure that we discuss next week go ahead one thing that i know people would like to see is what does a phase what does the transition plan look like what metrics will be using um and when will we be at what points will we be evaluating um whether or not we're ready to begin in person those are some details i know that people are interested i have another question and that is i'm sure there are lots of parents at home who are extremely frustrated right now and they want to know what what can we do um we heard a lot about conflicting guidelines between the cdc and the isb and the idph so is there any value in in parents trying to contact these you know illinois department of health officials and saying putting pressure on them to please align your standards to a more realistic measure that lines up more with what the cdc is putting out like is there value in them doing that and how can they go about well i know that our local health department is advocating on like a daily basis with idph to try to push them and they again are getting that answer and likely parents would get the answer that there's additional guidance coming out soon but it never has a date on it that's been coming for a few months now pretty soon so um i i think what i'm hearing is yeah we probably i mean i i feel like this is an obligation as a citizen in the state to say get your act together and let us figure this out this is a real issue affecting millions of children they're cutting and when you throw it in there throw in that maybe we could use some money to pay for it too i'd appreciate that i'm sure everyone else would like to to make sure that we have the funding to pay for these things but this is this is this is a failure of our state board of education i'm not i'm i don't have any other way to say it other than this is a failure to all local school districts they are taking away a local ability to provide what their local community asks for which is a choice this is a failure in funding this is a failure in their recommendations and in their policy and shoot i'd say yeah maybe maybe you should probably get in contact can i can i just say one thing because i know that faith you guys have been working really hard i don't i don't think it's realistic to ask them to not only get us going but to also come back with this next week with a plan on how we're going to get back in like i i think that we have a i think we have a really good start right on on how to do the remote until we get some answers and like i realize that we have to also we have to we have to do that well but i don't know i don't think asking them in a week after us changing it already us changing it the state changing it the idpa is changing it like i don't think it's realistic like i i love so a wishlist idea right but that's not and correct me if i'm wrong but that's not a realistic timeline well okay so we don't even need to go into that too much further because i think that there's there's definitely some agreement there i think what we're we're talking about this evening is very simply we need to readdress this issue the end of september in our meeting we need to be looking at this again there is no way for us to keep going back and forth with all of the moving pieces it's it's a waste um so barring a massive shift that isn't so equivocal that we have to ask a thousand times for just say yes or no and there's no yes or no barring anything like that massively changing we're looking at the end of september that we'll revisit this as uh what you can present to us for phasing back in if we're at that point at that time absolutely is that reasonable to everyone yep yeah and yeah i wish we could give everybody an answer today i'd like an answer today too well and i i think i just want to um for for all of the viewers out there and there are many um i know that there was i mean i've seen all the questions and all the concerns we've read all the questions and concerns and there's a lot more nitty gritty detail that parents want and i think people were thinking oh we're going to get more information about that you know what is iep you know what do ip minutes look like and what are the options for a b and c and um and so that's not part of the discussion tonight but it doesn't mean that those that this is what these people have been working on for 12 to 16 hour days so questions that you have are coming they're coming patients go slower than facebook right there will you know there will be i was doing some video recordings and things um in preparation before the board meeting there will be work that i will do tonight um when we get home to be able to put things out on the website okay so tonight wait a second stop don't burn yourselves out that ended months ago i'm awake i'm aware so what what what i think i'd like i'd like to ask you to focus on is making this remote for all plan as concrete as you can so that we can get our community answers about what the first day of school is going to look like when is the first day of school what are they going to do with all the school supplies they purchased are we still asking them to make school supply purchases because the stores are about to put out halloween and who who has the technology they need at home these these are just please i i know how how much you want to please everybody right now and i know how hard we're all working and you are working all of you in our administration way too long of ours but please don't worry about the end until we make sure the beginning is really great well but a lot of what i was talking about is just communication on the beginning and you know knowing that here's when we're going to set up meetings with our special ed director so that people can have you know live time and get questions answered um how are we going to set up tech help where when is the faqs coming on on all of this it's just that it's not all going to happen in the middle of a board meeting right and now we know that the first day of school is for students is not going to be the 19th it is not going to be the 19th correct it will be pushed back at least one week at least to the 24th possibly the 31st we'll have that determination this week great thank you does anyone else have anything they need answered tonight for us to be able to move on to item 8 or can we follow up with questions as normal through email item 8.1 i'm not going to even ask if there's any more questions about this item for remote for all plan can i have a motion to approve i make a motion to approve the remote for all plan as presented on july 21st 2020 for the beginning of the 2020-21 school year second miss morgan aye mrs croner aye mr lightfoot no mrs moyer aye mr bowman i'm principal i'd like to say i would vote no but based on the information we've had the conversations that i've had personally it has to be yes mrs doyle yes mrs swanson no motion passes 5-2 can i have a motion to table item 8.2 please i make a motion to table item 8.2 second mrs croner hi mr lightfoot no mrs moyer hi mr bauman aye mrs swanson no mrs doyle i miss morgan aye motion passes 5-2 item 8.3 i make a motion to approve the proposed technology purchase plan as amended second is that including and i think they have direction to include did we give direction to include we i thought we did current staff first i'm just making sure i mean if they're qualified for the positions of christ sure what was the amendment or how how was the amendment i think was just the wording and um i think there was some confusion police purchase or it was also it's a lease to own and that we made that adjustment right okay so you made the motion second there you go mrs doyle hi miss morgan aye mr lightfoot all right mrs moyer hi mrs croner hi mrs swanson aye mr bowman aye motion passes seven zero can i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn all in favor hi hi thank you everyone for coming and thank you all for staying
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
keep in mind you haven't voted on it back is the draft you'll take care of it then the other part of that page is just to be filled in under the search timeline that's a discussion in a later agenda item i just put those things down as placeholders so ignore those for now once we get to the last agenda items then we'll talk about the timeline and then actually we go back and i'll fill that in uh on the on this document and also on the search agreement other than that the rest of it's just up to us to fill in the blanks uh district website and such so i think we've covered it now and i already have my instruction can we take that from coconino county yeah maricopa under additional information says coconito county and um oh my it should be maricopa maricopa yeah that's where my editor has to help me america absolutely now do you do you at all i know a couple of districts uh up in your area have you go into your do you have a pie north of you at all no it's all it's all in maricopa okay yes okay okay okay good now we're ready to move on man okay thanks scott for catching that yep thank you now can we back up a second as far as i i maybe i wasn't listening correctly as far as timeline are we we're going to cover that in a later item and then he'll backtrack and put it okay okay because we've got to approve those later so that'll get filled in with the tweaking um sorry okay so item 3.4 district specific questions for the application so this is specific questions are specific to us that we would want to add to the questions the applicants are going to see so this isn't from the advertising this is from when they choose to apply with us this is what they're going to see so mr hyland would you like to that is correct the nine pages you see there are our that's the blanket uh application and we stick exactly with that because of fair labor practices make sure we ask all the right questions the opportunity you have if you'll go to page nine of nine there's an example there and here's the um here's really where you need to make a decision and you're not going to write the question tonight we don't you know what you need to do is tell me what you want me to write and then i'll take care of it um but you need to look at your district in terms of what is maybe one of the biggest issues you've got right now and then tell me what it is and let me formulate a question and if you've got two or three that's fine i'll give you an example and if i've told you this before i apologize but it's it's the example that sticks out in my head there was a district i worked with in southern part arizona surrounded by two other districts did i have mentioned this to you before uh i don't believe the news this district was smaller than the others well they didn't have the high school programs in particular that the smaller district did so what happened open enrollment took third of their high school students away so the question that they wanted to ask they only had the one and that is as our new superintendent what are you going to do to ensure that we keep our students here in our district and we get back as many as we can that have left under open enrollment now that's not your question but there's got to be a question or more that is really on your mind as a board that you really think ought to be asked on this application so we can embed it in the application and we can ask them in 300 or 350 words or less answer this question and then it's important for you to read those very specifically because it's going to give you some tremendous insight of who who these folks are so i would ask you to open it up for discussion topic wise what is the one two or three questions that you're just burning to ask these folks when they apply well your first question that you have on this page nine of nine the second half of the first question what do you feel you offer the district that separates you from other applicants that's pretty open-ended question and it will draw out a lot of information because from how that person answers the question you will be able to determine where this person's passion lies and it's this question is designed to bring out a lot of different traits would you like that more as a like a narrative question where it's more you know would you like that to be the bigger question rather than just part of a smaller section up above it that it doesn't really matter it's just i think it's an important question oh no absolutely i just didn't know if you wanted it somewhere different or just maybe i mean as long as it's on the application it's there so it really does that that stays where it's at oh that's part of the fair labor one that's kind of normal it's part of the whole big picture of our application that one stays where it's at so yeah and yes that is correct that does open a lot of doors to a lot of you know responses but with that first question i would eliminate the first part why are you applying for this position i would i would take that off and just use the second half because if this person how this person answers the question will lead to either why they're leaving their current position or it will open the door for very good questions at an interview was that part well i guess yeah that with the questions to answer not the narrative questions but those above is that part of the ones that we don't tweak because it's fair labor or are those the ones we can okay let me what i'm going to tell you is this the whole picture of the nine pages addresses in part and parcel the fair labor laws that particular question is not specific to fair labor it's just an open-minded question that we always have on our applications now are you wanting us to look at specifically at page nine of nine or it's the narrative part no i what i'm asking and i think it's best leave the questions as they are the way they are give me additional questions yes that you want me to include and that one under where it says narrative question 250 words or less is just an example so the rest of it should stay just like it is and then from that and then when you when you look at what you want to add tell me what you want to add and it will embed it in the uh application as a narrative question or questions so is there a topic um is enrollment a topic is is uh student achievement because budget and finance a topic where where's your hot buttons on things that you just want to know right now about that person when they apply i'd like to ask them how they uh participated in their current school district's reaction to the pandemic because that'll give us an idea of how they operate in a crisis management mode wow how proactive and and how efficient they are at organizing um the individuals that work for them yeah that's a good one that's excellent yeah and i think it also covers some finance because this whole thing with the pandemic isn't just structure it's you know particularly in our district finances are always an issue and that has been a big part of that so yeah i think i think the reaction how you handled and how you how you made it work in your district or where you were in your district now i think that's a good yeah i can see that as a practitioner i can see that being covering a lot of things it's like how are you handling the academics how are you handling the teachers how are you handling the cost how are you abiding by the state laws and the federal laws that may or may not apply to this i think you could wrap up i think what you could do is actually say have me write it so that there are um all of those components that you're asking them to address and just say you've got you know 500 words yeah how did you handle it i have a lot with that one topic yes to include those those various components um that you just mentioned and uh you know going from that going forward from the pandemic as i look ahead to the next year or two my prediction in the education world is it's going to be uh rough uh i think teachers are going to leave they already have i think more will leave districts may have a tough time finding teachers um so you've got that with the state funding from the state because a lot of people are going to be going to them for money to cover the pandemic that's just in the education world the business world is going to be the same they're going to be going to the state for money to recoup money from as a result is pandemic so school funding to me uh is going to be even worse than it is now well do we want to put that in there though like you're saying because i got to make sure we don't go too off topic because we're just talking about the questions like what you're saying where how did you handle it and do you have a plan going forward understanding that there are going to be finance and staffing ramifications from what we from the pandemic we've experienced because that would also cover the finance going forward the staffing going forward because it's going to be it's going to affect us for years so we only are can we only ask just one question because i actually have two that i would add to what jim jim said we could we can ask more than one question um i don't want more than three because that's i mean then you're getting into like college application like yeah if you to write too many essay questions is asking a lot but to kind of maybe wordsmith your question because i liked your question beth but to maybe ask it in a sense of on the back side of this pandemic what do you how do you see education you know what what is this person seeing as the aftermath of the pandemic are they seeing it you know we're back to business are they seeing it as you know we're going to be now more digital learners whatever it is and how are they going to adapt the district to a new environment they're stepping into uncharted territory so how are you going to be able to adapt in these different areas of of staffing and curriculum and finance adapt to the challenges and opportunities yeah because it's it's an environment that nobody has any idea of what to expect i mean we can all speculate and yes there's going to be teachers leaving we already have a teacher shortage but is the classroom really going to be the way we've known it up to march of 2020 or is the classroom going to become more of a distance learning hybrid kind of a thing nobody knows what really a year from now education is going to look like and so you know it's important for whoever we hired to be able to be somewhat of a visionary to be able to look to the future and have ideas of of some place to go and not be a reactionary person and in the process you know be be grounded in in you know bringing in issues that will pertain to financing from the state staffing issues because staffing is going to be a whole different bird and curriculum and the delivery of it is going to be possibly very different than what we've all experienced to this point and this person no doubt will will be no matter what capacity they're in right now they'll be um involved in that at the moment with wherever they are too oh of course and you know but with that i'll go under james's thing like we're just you know in my mind how did you handle it and how are you how do you see the challenges and opportunities going forward you know what do you see is how you're going to have to adjust i see school financing is separate because the school finance i mean it is clearly with the pandemic we've already had we've always had a problem with school financing in the state for years because of our government and so in my mind that is a separate issue to include overrides and bonds if necessary so i would like to know how comfortable an incoming superintendent would be um in all those capacities dealing with the state government with finances uh and uh in passing bonds and overrides because that is existing constantly like that's some of that stuff is more of like the interview questions yeah i'm wondering if maybe we just like like the narrative is if you look at like that example i mean that doesn't apply to us but if you look at it's more of a like a big picture type thing because i want like i understand the bonds and overrides and that stuff's important but i'm wondering if that's more when we start getting into the finalists do you see what i'm saying like we're hoping you know how to do it i do i do and i and i get what you're saying as long as we can include those kinds of things and and this you know where we had all the questions yeah i would i would totally go for that because i think the narrative i think what jim has is like it shows how creative are you how have you handled unbelievable stress you know have you handled we kind of get an idea of that person and then if we have it kind of that one broad topic when we get to the interview stage that's when we go into the nitty gritty and plot well what do you think is going to happen with finance what do you think is going to happen how do you see the classroom of the future after this so maybe keep the narrative a really broad that hits with this and then maybe then at the interview levels where we start getting into the really because if we started into specifics we could ask you know 40 questions oh we could have how many narrative questions do we have to have well i'd like i think the one and maybe that also gives us a hint of their personality well like it was a super bad struggle we're like oh great but i think that jim's question is very timely and very relevant and you know when you're applying for a job you know you're looking at the application and it's the same sort of questions you know from employer to employer to ask us you know questions that are rooted in our current environment it makes it very relevant and it is it conveys the message that we've taken the time and we've tweaked this to make it absolutely relevant to where we are in time we haven't pulled an application off the shelf and said here go fill this out and it speaks to a lot of the things that i think you all are very interested in having in the superintendent and so i'm good having that one and then bringing in the quite other questions in other areas through this process how do you guys feel about that because i think it nails it's a one it is new it's not like something you could have pulled out from you know so and that opens us up to when we get into the interview process we can dig into more of how they adapted and that gives us so this is an idea of the person are we good with like the one you know has that jim presented and just having the one because it's a big one how do you guys feel about that i i will agree with all of you um but i somewhere in this interview process i really do want to dig into not what his vision is but what are they prepared to do in terms of bond override dealing with the state uh how willing are they to be aggressive in those ways because i think that's something we do in like the interview interview and as long as violent would you agree that that's as long as that's one of our questions to ask directly uh yeah i'm i'm would go with one question in the narrative what do you think about jim's i'm i'm fine with that i think that's i think that's a very timely question and we will probably see lots of good replies and we'll probably see some replies and and say oh nuts how come we didn't think that um and then i think for the interview process the more specific questions that uh member hatcher is asking about i think is where that comes into play because you know we need to have enough questions for i think steve said a 60 to 75 minute interview so there'll be plenty of time to ask questions um and then you can always i know we've got that handout that was sent to us with possible interview questions so just make your notes on that document and then make sure we circle back around to catch all your concerns so i can take uh jim's initial thought and the thoughts that you've all presented and establish a pretty good question out of that uh one of the one of the characteristics of asking or one of the criterion of asking the question is you don't answer it for them so i open a door for them to address a lot of different things and then we'll see if they do address those things you know if they only address the here and now they're not thinking to the future so i'll i'll write the question so it gives them an open door but again doesn't answer the question and you'll see how thoughtful they are if you have somebody that answers that question that jim presented in uh in a hundred words thinking ahead is that so that that's a dissertation for any any of these these non-fill in the blank kind of questions the the subjective questions how they answer it not you know in addition to the content but how they answer it speaks a lot to who this person is and it's things that it's subtle things that you can pick up on which say a lot more than what someone could say in an interview sometimes did i hear we were gonna and make that 500 words or less i think 500 considering what we're asking i think we should up it to 500 to let them because we're wanting some i mean that's a big well so steve do we need to do the same thing where the motion needs to be similar to 3.3 if you want to word smith that motion because it's going to be something that you bring back to us at a future to just i will do that and then um we'll talk about the timings of it so just on the next agenda item so just same same basic motion that you instruct asb to come back with a specific question related to uh response to the pandemic uh that we will embed in the application as presented somebody wants to say so move that's that's enough so moved second okay now going back to the nine of nine uh further up on the above where it says questions to answer are these all questions that are they're going to be on the application yes sort of they're etched in stone so we don't modify those at all right everything up to that point is in stone you've modified by your one question okay because that first question is really two questions and it's asking a lot and it really should be broken up into two separate questions so why are you applying for this and then what separates you from other from others uh applicants those are two totally separate questions it can be yeah yeah you you know i could write i could write it either way if i was an applicant uh both aspects so i think are important why are you implying is it just because you could or do you have a real reason and why are you and so what separates you why do we want to put you why do we want to put time and effort into bringing you in for an interview i mean if that's if we need to leave them the way they're written is that are you i mean but that's that's not really a negotiable i i would like to but if the if the the board nod if you as a board nod your head and say janet's right then i'll change it i but the content is going to remain the same though well i'm just saying the question it's the same two questions it's just separated into two questions instead of run together as one you're gonna get you're gonna get just you know multiple answers instead of just one answer and if you separate it into two questions you open the door to get possibly some more information as opposed to okay i'm i'm reading this question why am i applying for this job and what separates me okay all right let me just answer this as you know what makes me such an amazing candidate for this and the piece about why are you leaving well you know maybe our district was going bankrupt or something who knows um it could possibly leave out some other details that could add to the integrity of the application you're just saying just go like have first one why are you applying for this position insert your response next question what do you feel you offered this district exactly exactly i'm fine with that do we have nods thoughts on that where we're not eliminating we're just making it two separate answers yes that's all i'm asking jim yes beth yes that's i i mean that's okay we didn't do that okay all right so we have a motion that um has been a first in a second that covers the um specific question question related to the pandemic that we embedded as well as changing um that one question from one question to two so that's the motion we have and we have a first and a second so um remember rich hi i'm in i remember hatcher i busby hi brown i just for clarification my understanding is that what you approved is that you've asked me to change that which i'll do i don't have to send that back to you but i will send back that question for approval once i get that exact approval the way i've written the question or you rewrite it then i embed it and then we move forward correct yeah because the other one's just moving yeah got it okay item 3.5 addition of work study special meetings to the 2020 22 on governing board calendar that's presented by me um i'm proposing i'm actually going to add one more after the discussion we've had tonight that we would have um august 17th um we come back with those items that we need to see again um because we've sent them to be reworked but we would do the final approval there so we need to have a meeting then and then october third would be the screenings that's going to be long that's going to include lunch we're going to be there a while simply because we need to be there all day and and that's i've looked at other districts there they generally do saturday screenings um week off october 12th would be the interview that'd be the first round of interviews the week october 26th would be final interviews and mister we were going to discuss um in that week of october 26 um adding a um oh gosh what is the word for it at the community event the community forum potentially wednesday october 28th and then having interviews after that so we've been able to disseminate from there so right now we would have august 17th so it's going to be a minute august 17th october 3rd week of the 12th for interviews week of the 26th for final interviews and the um community forum and final interviews so my motion or i would suggest we approve the addition of the special meetings to the 2020 2021 governing board calendar as i presented with that edition of august 17th second um any discussion on that yeah catherine i can't the 17th it poses august 17th that poses a huge conflict for me i'm already committed to something that i cannot get out of that monday yep are you available tuesday uh hold on let me check oh yes okay can i then suggest and remember rich you can tell me can i suggest that it becomes the august 18th or third the 12th and 26th would that be something you're okay with me adjusting that by day on yes okay and remember buzzfeed you're still second on that with the tweet yes yes okay any discussion um now back on one of these other items we had a search timeline right is this where this is coming back in life hey mr hanlon do we need to go over the the search timeline and add that into uh i will have that on the um on the uh application and you can look at that point what i need to do is take those dates and work backwards to give myself time to prep and have everything ready for the board so uh we will close we'll actually close the search about 10 days prior to october 12th we'll close it around the first of october i don't go with that specific date but i once i look at my calendar i'll work backwards and i'll include those opening dates and closing dates to be consistent with your board meetings what about the vacancy announcement is that is that affected by the fact that we're having you come back on the the 17th or the 18th or do we just is that just saying there is a vacancy and keep your eyes peeled is that what that is what i will do is we will we will post either tomorrow or the next day that on our website that this position is uh going to be opening soon to open is the way we put it and then um we'll have all of our work prepped uh if you give us the information back on the 18th as long as you don't make huge substantial uh changes that's a tuesday we'll have it posted by thursday at five o'clock so we would open it thursday at five o'clock uh that'd be 1920.
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if you give us more then i would suspect you would it could take us another day and then we'll keep it open at least until around the october 1st and i'll i'll delineate that on on the uh application that i send back to you so you see it so you would tweak the deadline for applications and screening dates as well yeah i'll have all of that in there okay see that on the 18th or is that well because we need to have that before we so we're going to see that on the 18th and after we approve that that's when we can post the job correct i say that again so when you come back with these numbers on the 18th we approve those dates will be adjusted and then that would be when we're able to to after we approve that i'll have i'll have that all for you so you can see it on the 18th yes so for those dates that's still something that's going to be adjusted later so should we table this until the 18th so that we know where we're going from there because right now we've got to wait till the 18th for information to come back and depending on you have the we have to have the dates on there at least to well and we won't have definite dates because based on what happens on august 18th will dictate going forward if we have to modify or edit or make any kind of modifications it can throw this timeline off so until the 18th we don't really have anything that we can say this is actually what it is because that date is going to dictate how we go forward like that's what i've understood from throwing it off by what a day or two let me let me let me clarify um the 18th will not affect the 12th or 26th unless you don't approve anything at all on the 18th if you just if you prove a few little quests or tweaks to the documents that's easy katie can put that together and it'll be online if you don't approve on the 18 it could have could change the 12th and 26th i don't suggest that that'll occur and keep in mind these are fluid anyway uh so we can always change it as we move forward so i wouldn't be i wouldn't be good question but i wouldn't be worried about it at this point now some summon jobs are posted as open until filled is that not something that we can do with this you can because yeah i don't know talk about that right i mean do we need to talk about that when he brings everything back because this is just dates we're not talking about that the problem that occurs with open until filled is what you have is you're interviewing at the same time you have the position open and that leads to a lot of confusion because when are you going to decide then to interview and then you still have people applying at the same time it it's kind of cumbersome but i've seen districts want to do it that way we don't yes that's right but the the thing that is concerning to me this is kind of off season for doing a superintendent search danny we can't talk about that though we can only talk about the dates we've already approved the search right now i understand that i i am talking about the dates but if you don't want me to say anything i won't no i don't see we approve that we've been given a timeline this fits in the timeline i don't know why we're trying to to make it more open-ended than it needs to be let me let me i have a conflict with the week of october 12th the entire week i've gone out of state from the 15th to the 20th and that that that trip is probably still going to happen well then we could at least keep it to the 12th through the 14th okay just just to let you know yeah so definitely 15th you're out so i mean we wouldn't do that yeah that's absolutely 15 20th and that's just good knowing going forward so yeah that's not an issue so i'm going to call the question so we have a motion it would be august 18th october 3rd the week of the 12th um knowing scott's limitations starting the 15th so that's definitely not going to be an issue in the week of the 26th so we have a motion and a second to approve member brown can i just make a statement on that real quick but i've called the question so i'm gonna allow one statement but then we're gonna vote on those weeks of the 12th and the 26th we already have board meetings scheduled for those mondays so we're going to work interviews around our scheduled board meeting yeah we are it'll work may i may i jump in here um am i hearing right that you have a board meeting on the 12th no i don't that's the second monday yes it's on the website the 12th end of 26th we have already scheduled board meetings well then we could do it on tuesday or wednesday yeah i don't suggest you do a board meeting and interviews the same thing well no we wouldn't do it on the same day but that gives us flexibility the 12th we have the 13th and 14th we can make that work and then the weekend weekend on sunday scott what days were you out of town 15 to the 20th well can't we do it like the 22nd couldn't we change it to like the 22nd why would we want to do that because that's a week we don't have a board meeting nope we can't there are um we are out we've got something a board meeting shouldn't affect it yeah so right now the meeting the week of the 22nd that's a thursday make a wednesday the 20th i know but i'm saying or the 19th well no scott's gone he's gone until the 20th so the 21st a two-hour board meeting shouldn't impact now the motion we have is what we have so i'm gonna call the vote and vote as you wish remember brown i remember busby which states are we voting on we are voting on the night the 18th the third the 13th or the 14th and then the week of october 26 but not the 26th so just that's just the week of that's not the day those are the dates we're voting on so remember brown isn't i remember busby i hatcher i i'm an i rich hi okay we have no old business do i have a motion to adjourn no you've got to go back to item two oh my gosh you're so right i'm sorry for being quick sorry um next superintendent search meeting overview um and that is presented by mr hyland and and i apologize for being so abrupt but i if you motioned i know you're right we couldn't have done this um we have we have now two items three items or so that we need to address we're going to on the 18th okay you're going to have an agenda item that will address the um approval of the question to be on the application and the approval of the draft position document then on the 3rd of october we have a that's a saturday by the way if you didn't recognize they have a very lengthy agenda we will talk about initially [Music] information related to how to search how to do the screening that won't take us too long 15 minutes maybe but then you will motion to go into executive session if you choose to go into executive session and you'll have an executive session whereupon i will have files of all the people that applied and we'll have to have you go through all of those now i am really hoping that we can do that one in person because it become very cumbersome if we don't but we'll have to see where we're at statewide and what guidance we have and how comfortable you are we'll have to find a way to to to do that whether it's remote or hopefully together so you screen applicants depending on how many applicants you screen that process alone could take four or five hours if you've got 10 applicants it won't take that long if you've got 30 it'll take longer and then you come out of executive session and you discuss who you're going to uh bring back or who you're going to invite for a uh interview and you're going to then at that point instruct me to invite candidates one 8 and 15 or whatever with that then we need to once that's finalized and we need to talk about the interview process there's a number of ways to do an interview it's not just a matter of necessarily asking a question getting an answer and saying thank you there's other ways to do that um once we have talked about that then we have to talk about the questions now this is always an interesting issue because state law does not allow you to define questions related to an interview in executive session and if you define the question exactly in the open session then you've already given it away and somebody who is got maybe a local person in industry personally i don't know the questions so i will present a couple of different ways to do that that we don't have that occur and then we'll discuss also at that time the community forum and by then we'll have an idea whether we can do it in person or whether we're going to have to do it remotely we'll discuss that and then i will like i'm doing tonight i'll explain what the next agenda item will be during interviews and also as part of that piece on i should have said this earlier on part of that piece about the process of community forum at that point district staff and i'm not sure who that would be is going to have to talk to you about what they can do to get the word out for the forum and give you a little idea of what they think uh how they can spread the word and then you need to give them input about specific things you want done uh at the community forum to get as many people there as possible so that is uh kind of a very quick version of a six to eight hour meeting next time we get together for when we get together for the screening do anyone have any questions about that screening meeting which day is that that's october 3rd okay [Music] i i i just have a general question what what is the rush to get all of this done in october what if it gets pushed out until november i mean if our timeline would be pushed out to november what is the problem with that well all the dates are flexible well that's not quite the message that i've been getting and i i that's why it's all like the week of you know it's just there's a flexibility built in is my understanding well that that's kind of not the message that i've been getting it's like it's got to get done in october it's got to get done now and this is just the discussion of the overview it's not the timing we've already approved it the only thing we're talking about now is what he is going to go on in the meeting on october 3rd that's all we that is the only agenda item that we can discuss that's what is up for discussion not the timing all we can discuss is what's going to be on the next meeting agenda on october 3rd so do we have any questions about that how large how large of a facility or i mean it's just going to be the governing board and and immediate staff right so we can do this in the governing board room if we're allowed to are you talking about the screening meeting yes the october 3rd meeting generally the screening meeting is just the board in maine i think the only thing like what we would have to temporarily turn it on because we're briefly in public session we'd have to have that video briefly but then once we go into executive session keeping in mind what we've got going on we would need to turn that off so we could stay in the bigger room generally our executive sessions are in a small room but that's probably not going to be advisable but you would need to have because we're in we're in we're in a public meeting briefly at the beginning and correct you are and then after executive session you go into a public meeting which means you will have to have somebody taking minutes for the public meeting but you you know as long as your administrative assistant is there for the public part and then i don't know how you do your minutes for uh your executive session whether a board member does that i do that the vice president does that are you saying if we could stay in the governing board for that so you're you're covered then well if it's a public meeting wouldn't that be possibly open to the public no we would have to they could be in for the beginning and then they would need to leave because we need to stay at this point in time we would need to stay spread apart they would have to leave for the part when we're in the executive session and then they could come back later okay but they would not be able to be in the building if we're staying in the big part of the and that's the logistical thing but they would not be able to be in there while we're in executive session now right okay it could come back [Music] and you might think about where you're going to do this do you have the best accessibility to space to keep people spread out so that's a local decision what best facility you want to do this in well we have plenty of room in our governing board meeting room it's just a matter of if we're able to use it okay we should be able to socially distance there okay do we have any other questions about the agenda okay so now do i have a motion to adjourn so moved okay member brown i busby hi and i would like to say steve thank you for your time and your efforts catherine thank you for your leadership we're getting there hey it's all good we're collectively we work together we'll get there okay so you did a good job tonight wait we haven't we haven't escaped hatcher i i'm and i rich all right okay all right and we we did not go the full five hours so or four hours so congratulations guys um congratulations so make sure you click out and turn off
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good evening i have with me today dave merrill the president of the blue ridge unified school district school board as you know we had a meeting scheduled for tonight but that was postponed there's a lot of information forthcoming required to make good decisions and so i'm going to turn some time over to you dave and i know you have some questions and the community has some questions and that was our purpose tonight to try to get as much information as we can out as quickly as possible i appreciate that right we uh we did have this meeting scheduled and it was a week earlier than we normally do our board meeting because we anticipated needing to make some good decisions before school started but all the information necessary to do that's not here so we're going to postpone that meeting until next tuesday night so this is just a question and answer period i have some questions have been put together that you know i'd kind of like to just ask you so absolutely some of that information that people would like to know absolutely i hope we have some people listening tonight just to make sure we are social distancing we wore our masks in here and these are cool masks by the way these are uh super awesome blue ridge face masks and we are social distances we're six feet maybe to the inch so left right i'm going to ask you uh some questions that were spurred by a newspaper article today sure and the white mountain independent the first one says how do you teach both smaller in-person classes and the internet classes how does that happen that's one of the things we're trying to work out and there's some confusion with the governor's executive order and what the arizona department of education or the ade has issued and that guidance is is conflicting in some areas some believe that the governor's executive order means that anybody who wants to come to school can that's not what it means the arizona department of education just as recently as yesterday helped outline that there are primarily three groups students that are receiving special education direct services english language learners those that are acquiring english language and also anyone that is is in need of those that are in foster care settings and need constant supervision we're going above and beyond that though and there's a group obviously of healthcare professionals single parents that have kids that have to work make a living and they don't have daycare and so there's that group and i think the spirit of that executive order was to make sure that all the kids that must be supporting park and so we're still working through some of that and there's still a little bit of there's still some clarity that lacks what needs to be done and we'll know more friday and certainly by next tuesday but that's one of the questions we're trying to resolve because obviously teachers aren't going to be everything to everyone so we're trying to make sure that we have the various responsibilities and duties organized and assigned appropriately so what you're saying basically is that for those people that have a desperate need and for those specific categories probably we might be able to accommodate their needs of special needs plus those special needs students will have mandated accommodations here at the school absolutely and in order not to outstrip our capacity we need to prioritize the support that we may provide and are able to provide and that means the special education students and ell and also those that are in foster care settings they have the top priority we also recognize however that working professionals and hardworking people and logistics that are you know driving truck or whatever it may be single parents have no other options they are and they might need a place for even their junior high student to go we're working to make sure we can understand what is our capacity and then we'll work with the community our intention is to try to be as flexible as we can however we are not in a position to have someone pull up and drop off eight kids and say you know it's your job to support it that's not that that's not that's what i was gonna say we're not a babysitting service we are not we can't take care of that like if you homeschool your kids you're doing your kids at school and then you try to drop them off at school i mean commit to one or the other right yes so pretty much that's that's exactly there will be some flexibility there will be some will need uh to have child supervision once or twice a week others will require it five days a week we're gonna do our best to accommodate those needs or we're breaking into new territory aren't we good education it's it's uncharted waters some of it's exciting some of it's scary it is i think there's some scary parents out scared parents out there that that quite don't know how to make the next step and i hope we can answer some of those questions i agree and those fears are are well founded this is a very unusual situation where you have among other things a global pandemic and economic meltdown high unemployment civil unrest a very hotly contested presidential election these are not normal times and so people rightly so are frustrated some are becoming angry and some are frightened frankly and when people are frightened or angry and frustrated they behave in ways that are sometimes out of the ordinary right just so people understand we we are here as a school district to get the best quality the most care the best provided overall educational experience a child can have and i think we have the faculty the administration and the staff to just take care of that i have great confidence in the school district and what they can come up with thank you let me ask you another one of the questions it says do you ask a teacher to spend all day teaching then go home and interact with this with online students if you do where do you get the extra teachers i think the first point to raise is there are not funds available for extra teachers even if you can find funds aren't available for extra teachers we we must meet the needs of our students on great kindergarten through 12 within the confines of our budget and the covet care now the care funds will fund principally the curriculum and the computers that are needed to do it we've just ordered if you remember maybe uh six to eight weeks ago close to eight hundred thousand dollars worth of computers for about six hundred thousand dollars and we had an advance of that a store of probably 1.2 million computers and technology most of our expenses are in areas like that and in getting our campuses and facilities ready and having the equipment there to make sure that we can implement some reasonable level of social distance in our physical distance we are not in a position to hire additional teachers and we are not going to ask teachers to essentially support three different groups of students that's what we need to iron out we're still working through that um and the case the junior high in high school it's more difficult because you're not you're you're supporting a content a subject some teachers support two or three subjects and there's going to be some crossover but we our administration is aware of that fact and are engaging with our faculty members to determine what's an appropriate way to do this i'm confident we'll arrive at a good solution but it's it's going to take a lot of work now by the way teachers do teach all day and they go home and grade papers yeah and they prepare for the next week so that that's not out of the ordinary they the biggest myth is they're working four five six hours a day they have all summer off and it's the easiest job in the world i think people are learning it's not an easy job and i've had a scores of parents some of my own relatives have said it it's much it teaches a much more difficult job than i had given a credit for and so i think that's part of the energy around we've got to get our kids back in school and by the way outlet no one wants our kids back more than we do teachers administrating schools without kids feel weird it's like an empty shell we don't want that no it is it is it's not preferable however we believe that we must do certain things in order to protect our students staff and also our community but we will be prepared but those those are some of the details that are difficult we have to work through yeah i know experienced teachers that just recently retired and said boy i'm glad i don't have to deal with this this is tough there's a lot there's a lot being thrown at a lot of people that when the rubber meets the road is where the teacher is supporting the students and we're asking them effectively to make that transition in in a learning modality teach an old instructional modality over not overnight but over a period of six months and so i'm confident in our teachers ability and desire to help and i know they will be successful but they will be putting in hours that reflect that but that doesn't surprise me this is a question about turning back to face-to-face class in october it says uh if you decide not to resume in-person classes until the positive test rates industry goes down below five percent what happens if you cross that threshold in october do you abruptly shift back to in-person classes back from in-person classes to online good question the answer to that is it depends just it depends first of all there's not a there's not a threshold that's been established that's part of the problem part of the delay we're having to say let's wait and see what the criteria are before we move forward and the data will drive our decision making and based on what comes out of the department of health sciences from the state of arizona the director of the director superintendent of education public instruction kathy hoffman and also uh that local county will provide us data i mean currently we as recently as yesterday met with jeff from navajo county health services and he said they coped virus is widespread i would not be we were asking my opinion today no i would not be opening recommending anybody open school today based on the current levels what the landing point will be on one of those or any of that i am unsure but we will defer to the professionals if the health department says in coordination in concert with the arizona department of education these are the criteria by which you must measure and consider before you we'll do that that's good and that's that's kind of one of the reasons we postponed this meeting tonight until next week so we get some more of that hard data in front of us this is just a question that a lot of people ask me when will our youngsters in elementary school when will they get to learn who their teachers are and how will that relationship grow with that teacher online that's a good that those are all i think questions that are pressing on everyone those assignments will likely be made by friday if not certainly by monday but i would say by this friday at a minimum the youngsters will have we'll know who their teachers are and that first week's going to be used to onboard for teachers to get to know students students to get to know their teacher and also become familiar with the technology this is a completely different modality of learning instructing so it we're not expecting kids to turn on a computer teachers to launch lessons and start 100 miles an hour day one we we don't expect that those we're expecting progress not perfection that those expectations would be unrealistic and not to mention impossible we're going to use the first week and perhaps part of the second to make sure that teachers are well acquainted with their students there is a pent-up demand for people to connect and kids to connect with kids and teachers to teachers and and at the elementary school these are the teachers that are in closest contact with the kids frequently the lower the grade level the closer the contact so we are providing space and time for that we don't expect kids to be on computers eight or ten hours a day and i will mention this despite all of our best efforts we the the effort and the result of last spring did not reflect online net that's not online education that reflected a lot of people working really hard to fill a gap that was created overnight and i do mean overnight we have taken the last several months to thoughtfully and over the period of 18 months consider the curriculum with asu prep digital and understanding its capabilities and also for the last three years have been prepared getting prepared from a technology standpoint to make sure we could launch online learning knowing that education is going to have to change this copic's going to change a lot of industries and i would imagine public heads one of them yeah i doubt we're going to go right back to the same way everything however being looked and felt and rolled will i give a better term pre-code that i think it's going to look different we're preparing ourselves to be a better version of something that we were we're already doing a very solid job we could do better we will do better i know we will we have the people to do it here just a question that came up to in in my mind well in this first quarter until october will there be opportunity or will there be a period of time when the class will get together on a limited basis that teacher's class will get together maybe with six students or ten students on a face-to-face basis to get to know each other in different group settings will that happen we're providing teachers a lot of flexibility with how they interact yes and there are going to be some and there have been requirements established between what's going to be expected of our teachers and what is expected of our students another thing that i think was a pretty common problem was that some students participated daily and for hours a day and others never even logged on and so there are expectations associated students that do not participate if they are of the age appropriate age 16 or older they'll be dropped from school if they are younger grades they won't be promoted you cannot miss 10 days in a row without a medical condition or some valid excuse so daily participation will be required for the kids we don't expect them to be on computers and devices all day high school students about four hours a day now honestly if you're an advanced placement student and a high performing they may spend up to six hours a day it's really not advisable but you can't keep them away i mean they're going to we know that's going to happen we do not expect our young babies and these little guys in kindergarten to be on the computer four hours a day they may be there 30 minutes or 45 or an hour and a half and there are lessons arranged and interactions scheduled to allow time to teachers to get to interact with kids there's there are office times established and by the way all this information will be posted on our website no later than tomorrow the close of business so there's a lot of ways that teach you we want it we don't want to hamstring our teachers and be so rigid that they're not able to share what they know and to reach out with their students in appropriate ways we do know however there must be a certain amount of organization and a construct created within which everyone must work in order for this to function so they're trying to strike that balance we will with elementary kids what what's the expectation of parents being able to assist or will that child be able to sit in front of the computer screen and interact with this teacher or would the parent have to help that interaction what do you what's the expectation for that the ideal setting is where you have high parental involvement and direct oversight now having had four kids my own and having eight grandkids that's not realistic parents are gonna be around they're over their kids shoulder four hours it's not gonna happen however the younger the student becomes in those primary grades especially kindergarten it's going to be critical to have a parent or not that grandma somebody's got to be there to help out and if you have a a kid that's in the middle grade and they're super responsible and you're having people that are that are you know friends and family and that are there to support or supervise the kids that's a great setting too this is an opportunity for small groups and cohorts i've seen these foremen in local neighborhoods and churches where there's small groups of six to ten kids and parents are taking time helping provide supervision those are great solutions to what otherwise would be a complex problem so those would be those groups would be encouraged they are encouraged and i just was at my oldest daughter's house she just had a new baby she'll be 35 in december and she has a brand new little baby she has a boy going into kindergarten she has a second grader her hands are full she's got all of them at home now and i and i understand she's tough dude she's organized and smart and well intended we recognize that there are certain gaps created by this one of the things people can do is and one of the positive things i think i've seen if i'm taking away what i've learned from copen is that there are resources around us once we tap into our community and our friends our church groups social groups and extended family there are people that are willing and able to help a lot of times a kid just needs a little encouragement the younger kids however the more encouragement and direct support they have the more successful they'll be this is an important point because it's just made by one of our concerned parents and also a principal within 30 minutes how's my kid going to attend we're not capable of providing daycare that would be contrary to the state law we can however supervise kids if we're superintending a child and they're at school i can't teach them at the same time they can be on their computer and if they're middle grade and older they're probably open up to keep up and they'll be fine but the younger the kids are it's really important parents can find ways to have them home and receiving educational support and stay in and lock step with the rest of the kids they'll find that that's that you're going to have a lot more continuity in that instruction a lot more support it's not going to be possible with some some moms and dads have to work some single parents have a choice go to work or don't pay your rent can't buy food we understand that i don't have the answer to how are we going to meet the needs of everybody in the lower primary grades when we're supervising them and they're not in that class that creates a problem however we'll find a creative way to address that we might have a teacher or two who has lower grades that will provide more direct support for the younger kids but as long as they're old enough to support themselves meaning i'm in a group of no more than 99 is the biggest group you can have in a large gym and i'm sitting in front of my computer and i'm mature enough to handle that that that would work out and of course they're not going to be sitting there the entire day without breaks yeah it's not like a school period or no eight to six i mean eight to three in the afternoon that's the instruction part but they will have to be at school if they're choosing to say we want to be considered for supervision we agree we can provide that and it's needed they would be there from 7 35 in the morning and by the way they must be on time and they must be picked up by 2 15.
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