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hi i'm mike morris i'm the superintendent of the amherst and pelham public schools and thank you so much for joining this town hall this afternoon we really appreciate you spending time with us we know it's a beautiful day outside uh but what we'd like to do today is share a summary of a very long document that was emailed out last week we submitted based on a school committee vote a document that was over 100 pages describing our plans for fall and we want to be able to share about 10 slides or so so that people don't have to get lost in all those pages about academically our facilities our health and safety approach transportation all those types of things we're planning it's 401 right now we're aiming to finish our presentation by 4 30 at the latest and have at least half an hour for question and answer afterwards a couple other quick notes if you are looking for a live translation in spanish korean portuguese or some other languages that are listed on the chat there's a website listed on that chat and both you can access translation on there as well as ask questions in whatever your language you're most comfortable with in most comfortable in and it'll be translated back and we'll be able to access them uh on this if you are watching via this youtube channel again the lower right hand corner has question and answers we're going to go through our presentation and then get to the question and answers later but we're just appreciate appreciative of our community being so engaged in this question we know we've sent lots of surveys we've sent lots of information and we wanted to try to consolidate where we are on august 17th so with that i'll go around the the room and people can introduce themselves so i'll start with you faye good afternoon i'm faye brady and i'm the director of student services for the district thanks for joining hi good afternoon my name is lee whiting jones i'm the principal at pelham elementary school hi everyone i'm sarah hall and the chair of the pelham school committee hello my name is katie richardson i'm the coordinator of ell and dual language programs good afternoon everybody my name is jill consolino i'm the nurse manager for the school district good afternoon everyone my name is derek shea and i'm the principal at crocker farm school welcome welcome everybody i'm diane chamberlain the principal at fort river school hi everyone i'm nikki affy the principal of wildwood school good afternoon i'm joanne smith i'm a specialty administrator and i work primarily with pre-k through eight thanks everyone and so uh we have a large group and some of that's so that we can present and some of that is is really about answering questions that may be specific to a school or an area after uh the presentation so i'm gonna tell the group i'm going to try something a little new with how i'm sharing the screen hopefully this works well and there we go i'm going to make it hopefully a little larger for everyone there we go and so again this is a brief uh slide deck it's also on our website our fall 2020 website so if anyone's interested they can view it there as well and it's a summary of uh where we are today and what our plans are moving forward okay so just a couple quick facts uh the majority of our students and staff at the elementary level will begin the year remotely our in-person learning will be introduced on a phasing plan i'll get into in a little bit and a set of public health metrics which i'll share in in a couple moments will guide the opening of school as well as the movement between phases so while one of the challenging things in this time is we are making plans but our most important thing is following the public health metrics and making sure that we are able to implement our plans and another important point is that all families have the choice of full remote learning or in-person hybrid learning for their children if you are a parent of a child in kindergarten or first grade a preschooler with special needs or you have a child in one of the intensive special needs programs or special needs programs at the elementary level you should have received a survey last week and a reminder today that is asking for that choice for students who are going to be or families of children who are going to be in later phases that survey will be coming soon and this is uh the phase reopening plan so the groups i just mentioned as well as students who do not have a permanent residence there are priority groups and they're we're looking for them to start on actually all students would start on september 16th and september 16th students either would start in person or in a virtual environment and you can see the metrics we use are very conservative metrics they're more stringent than the center for disease control the world health organization other states like new york and other states around the country recommended but the harvard global health institute recommended them and with all of our safety measures we are trying to take the most conservative approach possible for students in grades two at pelham actually they are included in that first group of students who would be attending based on some unique characteristics of that school in october we'd be looking at students in grades two and three entering and um and in november that's after indigenous people's day so thinking about roughly a month after the first group starts and after veterans day in mid-november we'd be looking for grades four to six to start and the metrics for those are very similar it's just also we included a metric to make sure that we're not seeing a rapid increase in either percent positive of covet tests or in terms of the number of cova tests uh no number of of people with covet in our communities and so that's the phase reopening plan i think so many things we will have answers for and other ones we we were still working on but i think we wanted to show a chart of when students return would return and also the metrics that they would return by if we're not meeting those metrics we would slow down our piece we could even go back a phase depending how that goes right now our metrics locally in hampshire and franklin county are well below those the limits that are set but we don't know what the future will hold we have a different school calendar this year so the state has agreed that there'll be 170 school days instead of 180 school days the first 10 days are for professional development for our staff and that's why we're starting as late as september 16th another difference is we will not have snow days this year that we will just flip to a virtual days we extended the the school committee decided to extend the december break it's a little hard to see but you can kind of see these blue days and that was really the thinking was that as people visit people family members from out of state we want to have a long period to support that so last day of school would end up being what will be june 24th someone raised well what if there's an electrical outage and people can't access their wi-fi um i think like everything else that i said the other night is every time you peel an onion on this you just keep on going deeper and deeper and deeper but our plan now would be to end on june 24th so it's just a summary of facilities things we've done something not on this slide is at fort river and wildwood we'd have significant work done so what used to be known as quads are now uh halfsies i don't know if we've come up with a better turn if nick and diane have one they'll be able to share it but essentially they're 1900 square foot rooms each with their own ventilation system and venting system the work is coming to its conclusion the rooms look fantastic i was at boat schools and it was a fort river another time last week and that's something that we knew we had to do from a facilities perspective we've also updated cleaning and disinfecting protocols we're having a shortened school day we'll talk about that when we talk about the schedule but much of the thinking behind that is allow for enhanced cleaning and sanitizing both after students leave in the afternoon as well as back in the morning all of our classrooms are outfitted with hepa air fuel fires with uv disinfecting light there's one right next to me that's it's got a quiet hum but that's what was recommended to us and it really turns over the air much quicker than other solutions in terms of proving our hvac system bathrooms other high touch services door handles cleaned multiple times we've invested in other cleaning techniques and materials we've school committee agreed that we would have six foot distancing in spaces between students and staff that's the kind of outer edge of the state they said no no fewer than three feet and our school committee felt from a safety perspective was important to follow the cdc guidance on that we have tents they're going to be going up pretty soon at our schools to promote and allow for outdoor education and hvac we've hired an hvac company that's going to look at each of our rooms and particularly at the phase one rooms to make sure that we're getting recommendations as well as an accurate reading on ventilation um just quickly health and safety considerations ms consolino is here and she'll be able to answer questions on these uh at the end so all students are medically able to be expected to wear a mask that they will provide in the state has encouraged families to provide them we have backup pairs uh they're available we've purchased ppe we did that a long time ago so thanks to our team for ordering that well in advance we've also have special face coverings it's specifically for deaf and hard of hearing students and ell students but more and more we're thinking that even for primary grade elementary students these are ones with clear panels over the face and so being able to see an elementary teacher's mouth is really important for oral development so we are trying to figure out the right ppe to fit the right age level and student characteristic group transportation the buses will be much less full roughly about half compared to last year and that's one of our questions about whether families are able to provide transportation and uh are willing to we know we've gotten a lot of feedback that um that that's important uh and entry and exit will look different um to be much more control than it was in the past um i'm gonna turn to nick yaffi who's going to start talking a little bit about the draft elementary school schedules we'll start with the in-person schedule and then head over to the virtual schedule so nick i think you're unmuted so you're ready to go yeah so thank you mike so this is the in-person schedule and there's some similarities between the in-person and the virtual schedule based on what we see and what we believe in our heart of hearts is that during this time we're going to prioritize our what we would call student agency and engagement that after being away from school for so long in person the most important thing will be for us to connect with each student to build up strong student relationships to focus on their social emotional well-being and to go you know create joy in the classroom and so when we talk later about the draft of the virtual that's the same but in person we want to as well as virtual i'm realizing now the first time i've done both schedules at once that there are these similarities and so we'll be developing routines because we've all been away from each other routines that will help children feel safe in this reality of staying distance but at the same time as we're in person that we can still greet each other we can still connect with each other and we can still create our classroom community and what we're going to be doing is this is both of them are really it's a framework and we want our teachers and our staff to come together and enliven this framework in other words for figuring out ways to integrate the arts to have students really engaged in what we would call leading their own learning so if you look at this we focused on the main areas of english language arts math and then what we call unit study or science and social studies and we also put in social emotional learning as well just as a as a placeholder to say this is something that we're going to include in every day of our school so the one way to look at this is like the children come in there's a sense of connection and greeting with our classroom teachers and then at the end of the day we're checking in with students and we're reconnecting with each other so that's a brief overview of the in-person elementary schedule and then if you look at the virtual schedule like i said there is some similarities there except this is as we've been saying this is a new way of doing we want to go deeper into our knowledge and our understanding of doing online learning in other words how can we keep kids engaged how can we keep kids motivated how can students share with each other and i would say that in the virtual schedule what we try to prioritize is the connection with students in small groups so in other words the asynchronous or the recorded lessons are there to deliver instruction but then in small groups students and staff will connect with each other and that's when the personal learning will take place um mike i don't know if there's anything more for me to say or or whether we should just allow the questions to guide this let's look at your colleagues i don't know if any of your colleagues says anything you did a beautiful job but if your colleagues has anything they'd like to add then they're certainly welcome i see uh people just waiting for the comments afterwards and we'll we'll do it that way yeah just take it just to tie into that i know it's in the comments but clearly it can divert in the in-person learning um we're going to be prioritizing and having students go outside on a regular basis and having movement breaks but spending outside because we know that that's important in terms of the health factors as well and and we also believe it's good for kids i think this will this will highlight that for all of us it's like wow the children are doing better because they're going outside more often yeah yeah i agree with that and i'll just i see there's some comments in the chat about kindergarten and and uh for students who are in person we are planning for a again it's an adjusted day it's a shorter day um kindergarten but for students who are attending [Applause] sorry that's okay um uh for students who are attending kindergarten virtually uh we got very concerned about screen time like and so you will see that the this draft virtual federal for kindergarten which was on the prior page uh is a half day schedule um you want to be realistic about five-year-olds who have not been to elementary school before and we feel like we can provide them with short lessons that get at the curriculum we also know that elementary excuse me also elementary students but particularly kindergartens really need small groups uh to be successful on google meets and synchronous calls so by doing a half day that halves the class size which really will contribute to some important um i think differences and and enhancements of their experience um and so i think there's a question that i'm going to keep on going but i think it's it's related to something nick said that uh the the entire day is not asynchronous there's multiple times throughout the day where you see small group literacy small group independent math small group science those are all synchronous blocks for the core subjects so as nick was saying it starts with an asynchronous lesson but then moves into synchronous learning and i do want to note also we are still in negotiations with our association so these are draft schedules and we hope to come to resolution and be more clear with that in the future i'm going to keep going with the slides because i know there's questions that people have so i want to get through these i'm going to skip the secondary schedules because we did that this morning and this is actually our last slide so we're doing very well on time um ms consolido do you want to speak to at least a couple of these really important points about what families can do to prepare for school this fall sure thank you dr morris so this um pope this paper is posted on our website right now and it's a quick um ten things to do um this summer to get ready to get your kids ready for the school year um the first thing is to practice hand washing and hand hygiene every classroom that has a sink we will be utilizing those things for hand hygiene and trying to reinforce with the kids a 20-second rule practice with your kids you know singing a happy birthday or the abcs um in any classrooms that don't have running water or sinks we will have hand sanitizer available in those classrooms we'll also have hand sanitizing stations scattered throughout every building the second one which is going to be really important for our younger students is to have your kids practice putting on a mask and taking off a mask and this is going to help with our younger kids to build mass tolerance i know some of the principals are probably going to email out an article which helps describe this and so it's to get your kids used to wearing a mask or a facial covering for a longer period of time during the school day um social distancing we're we're aiming for a six foot distance between kids during the day and this helps to um keep kids you know i know we can't keep every kid apart but when it comes to a virus like kovid when we look at close contacts and we have to identify somebody within that six foot distance if we can keep kids apart it helps to make that job a little bit easier we number four we will be asking parents to screen students every day before sending them into school we're going to be using an online platform so parents can submit um a self-certification for their students and staff will have to do this as well every day and information will come out to you um before the school year starts so that we can track anybody that's symptomatic for the virus and then next steps from that what else do we have on here um immunizations are a big thing this year the state is not backing down um relaxing the requirements so just check with your providers to make sure that your kids are up to date on immunizations um recommendations from the local pediatricians are once the flu vaccine is available to have your kids get it um and it's because the flu mirrors covered very similar with a lot of the symptoms so if you can get your kids vaccinated for the flu hopefully that'll cut down on a lot of the visits that were that we're gonna see in the health rooms um number six um oh i'm sorry um extra masks so we're gonna ask every family to provide masks from home we will have some on hand um if the mask becomes unusable during the school day um and those will be a disposable mask like dr moore said we are looking potentially at an um an alternative mask for the younger students that would be about a better fit for learning and in-person learning so more information will come if we decide that we want to go that if we're going to proceed with that information for you guys and water bottles have been purchased for every student in the district the schools that do not have bottle fillers the fountains will stay operational for filling but the ones that have bottle fillers those fountains will be turned off for drinking purposes we want every student to use their own um bottle so that we don't have to do worry about cross-contamination and that kind of stuff um and the biggest thing is number nine is your emergency contacts if your student becomes symptomatic with any symptom of colvid19 they will be sent to what we have is called um a medical waiting room in every building and we will be contacting you to pick them up for further evaluation um so it's critical that all the building nurses have accurate contacts for an emergency person to pick their student up and we're going to ask for that to become in to happen in a timely manner um and then number 10 there's websites that we have linked on our planning website um as well as our own district replanning website that will update that we update on a regular basis with all of our planning documents and if any questions come in you can always reach me through dr morris or one of your building principles as well and i'm happy to answer to the best of my ability great thank you um there was a question um you mentioned in the other uh the secondary workshop about the program around thermometers and supplying the families so i am actually looking into a program that um provides free thermometers for families um i'm just waiting for information to come back from this company it's a um sponsored i believe by lysol and another company that when families opt in they will be provided with a free digital thermometer for home use um and so once i get this information um it'll be sent out to every family and then once you opt in you'll be provided with this this thermometer for home use great thank you um so let's see if i can stop the sharing um and um miss hall i know you were going to facilitate but i see a couple questions right away um that are about chromebooks so i think maybe i can address those ones um so we we do have chromebooks um first of all if you have chromebooks hopefully you got an email from jerry champagne we are collecting them for them to get updated there was a big question outside the office today i saw dozens of them so we thank you because they do need to be updated like a lot of technological devices these days if you don't update them they will eventually stop working we have ordered more chromebooks to be able to provide for families we know some families really rely on them other families chose not to accept one but we're trying we're building our library of chromebooks so that we can have one for one in the past in the yammer schools we had uh we had that at grades three to six we bought some last spring we have other ones coming in two and a half weeks so that we can support that at the kindergarten level we are looking at ipads that's based on a lot of parent feedback and also some of the programs are the touch screen is very works very well for that um program so i think miss hall um if you went mine um i know you were looking at the questions coming in there was a lot of them and uh if you could sort them and listen to us and we'll go from there yeah so i'll start to take them in order i'll also group them so if i skip over a question don't worry i'm trying to group them into obvious areas um so there are some questions on masks one is this restorative justice approach and what happens if a student does not and then just general there are some questions about protocols for the younger grades and keeping their masks on so can you talk sure so i'll start with the restorative practice and maybe miss consolino can talk a bit about or miss chamberlain i know was talking about it earlier about um strategies to support students so on that um so when it says we're sort of justice that doesn't mean we we ignore it or we don't um follow up when students aren't asked what we don't want to do is penalize students for needing a mass breaks more often or building up their stamina at the beginning of the school year we're talking about five and six-year-olds and seven-year-olds primarily at the beginning of the school year who probably haven't worn masks as much as they're going to need to and and that's miss consolido talked about and i think mr chamberlain can speak to uh working with families to try to build up that mass tolerance we know it's not going to be immediate and what we want to do is a collaborative approach between families students and staff so that we can get there and we can build up that mass tolerance you know we're that's not really about students who don't want to wear masks it is a requirement to be in school but what we know is with children it's going to be a process and we want to be supportive of that process as we move forward miss chamberlain do you mind sharing a little bit of something you mentioned earlier sorry uh i thought it was really uh an interesting one so if you wouldn't mind sharing that are you talking about training while um so i read an article recently in edutopia which is a fantastic educational resource if you're looking for quick articles that are evidence-based but they talked about really trying to encourage families to do a quasi-training program at home to lead up to more and more tolerance of mask wearing where you start for an hour at a time for a few weeks and then for a few days excuse me and then the next couple of days try for an hour and take a break and then another hour so it's two hours total so you can help condition your child to be more mass tolerant as well and then to piggyback on what everybody's saying the requirement will be for kids to wear masks in school and the thought process behind that is so that when you're wearing a mask it's going to protect the people that are around you from exposure to the virus and the ones that are around you wearing a mask protects you individually um what we're finding now is that a lot of carriers of the virus are actually asymptomatic or they don't actually have symptoms so by wearing a mask it actually it's going to help prevent the spread of this regardless if you have symptoms or not and we know that younger kids you know it's going to be difficult initially and so we're going to hopefully they're going to hopefully build up that challenge to it i did see a question about the bus and as part of the transportation all students will be required to wear a mask when they're riding any any of the school provided transportation um can i just interrupt for one second which is say our translators are requesting that we i think we see so many questions and want to get to them but that we really want to slow down our speech patterns for us presenters um because they are translating fast and furiously but uh we want to just make sure and as i joke before them it's not i'm not the best at that but uh we will uh if we're speaking slowly please uh for the audience know that we're trying to make sure that the the live translation can occur at that pace can i jump back in there mike just to think about the restorative justice approach that part of restorative justice and restorative practices is teaching the child what the expectations are so we'd want to make sure that as they come into school and as our teachers are reaching out to families to get them ready for school that there's clear expectations about how and what to do and how to request a break and how we can help facilitate them feeling comfortable in the classroom with both using the mask but getting their needs met when they need to as well so that's a direct thank you um we there are a bunch of questions about outdoor learning specifically what is happening in the tents how many students will be there at the same time um how much of phase one will occur intense and then just generally with windows open um and intense what we're thinking of in terms of inclement weather so can we talk about the outdoor learning element yeah i'll start with just the size and then i'll i'll let the principles jump in with some of the other uh thoughts so um in terms of the size they're 30 foot by 30 foot so 900 square feet so it's slightly larger than the average classroom that we have across the district um certainly larger than most of the rooms at pelham and definitely larger than the old quads by a considerable margin about the same size as some of the rims at crocker farm although they don't have the cubbies which block the way so full classes can fit in there safely and easily with six foot distancing especially because they don't have furniture within them and you know i think there was a comment i saw too before that it's not that that's the only place outdoor learning can happen it is the case that on drizzly days or days where the sun you know may be a barrier because it's so bright we've had a number of those that it really offering shade really helps with that um but it's not the only opportunity for tents and it is nice that we have a relatively small cohort of students starting at the beginning of the school year because they will be able to be outside both with the weather but also with the tents up more frequently um but i don't know if any anyone any of the principals or anyone else derek mr shea excuse me yeah this this is derrick shape crocker farm just a couple a couple of quick things i'll try and speak slowly sorry um uh so last week um i had a meeting uh this is just a good example i had a meeting with our crocker farm pgo members actually a couple of weeks ago and then we met again this week and one of the things we were talking about was this notion of um finding a way to make sure that every one of our students who come to school um have um and real support to make this happen just have the the the right gear i'll call it to be able to go outside um let's say even when it's raining a little bit right and so you know we're very lucky here in this part of the country where we get a lot of sunshine and good days and um i would say i come from a part of the world where it's raining a lot and you said i'll learn to go outside a little bit more um so we're going to work on and i know the other schools are working on this too is thinking about how do we make sure that we'll get the proper gear in school so that you can go outside on a regular basis because to answer a couple of questions i do think we're going to be able to get more than one group out in the playground that time because all of us will get fairly um pelham's a little bit different but we'll got fairly large um properties and and i think there's a way for us to to space out um students particularly in that first cohort that come in so um i anticipate we'll figure this out closely at the time like when teachers get back august 31st but anticipate it has been outside it doesn't have to be pelton then we rain but um we'll make the most of it um and we will certainly go outside a little bit more than we normally do okay something i put in the chat just it was a question about mass breaks and and if you look closer at this schedule i should have fast forwarded the slide when mr yaffi was talking sorry about that nick um you can see that at the elementary school there's schedule there's mass breaks roughly every hour um kind of like the finland model of you know that there's some concrete instructional time where that's inside or outside and then there's a break and and so we're trying to follow that model both educationally we think it has a lot of merit as well as um in terms of getting mass breaks and getting kids outside which is the safest place for the mass breaks to occur all right great um so there are a number of questions about either children who will be in person for phase one and opportunities especially for kindergarteners to meet a teacher in person or see the school and then also for children who will be all remote if there's any opportunities for initial in-person meetups outdoors and other ways essentially i mean i think what a lot of folks are asking is ways to establish connections before starting either in person or virtually yeah and i can start with that one so um the guidance we've received from public health folks is the only individuals allowed in the building are students and staff members so that's really hard for us we usually are doing the opposite encouraging families welcoming families and we want families in our building and this is a really different um a really different challenge that we have so we are exploring ways that we might be able to have for instance kindergarten orientations things like that whereas peace people can be near the school and and see the teacher in that way because we know how valuable that experience is but it's not necessarily something that we can scale um and so that's one of the challenges i think the other challenge uh that we face is again you know we want to be outside and we can plan something and then if it's torrential rain even under a tent there's some limitations to uh what's possible but we are trying to think of active ways you know in fact the elementary principles took um the course and one of the things was even for the virtual students students who won't be coming into school what are ways that we can creatively make connections with families even if it's not inside the school building so we want to we're looking at creative ways again to do that we learned our lesson last year where we were in emergency situation and we had some success stories and some real challenges about making those connections and we're in a much better place right now whether it's in person or in virtual to be connecting frequently with families having those check-ins in the ways that work for families we know that everyone's schedule is really different than it was a year ago or we imagined it is from for most people and we want to be able to be respectful and responsive to that okay there's also a whole group of questions about the remote learning some concerns about it's a lot of going on and off of um of meetings um that it could be a lot of screen time a long virtual day for students and what supports there are for caregivers who are overseeing that um and then um then also questions about with the virtual and in person is will will children who are learning virtually have the the same teachers and will there be consistency there yeah um so i can start with some of that i think um so we roughly think if the elementary schedule works out to roughly two and a half three hours of being online um we felt like once we maxed out more than that that was too much last year we heard the feedback loud and clear that it wasn't enough it wasn't sufficient last year the focus was on resource delivery at the elementary level so if you had an elementary child you you saw every week you got a distance learning plan which is a set of activities and resources that was the primary piece and this year the focus from the state of expectation is direct instruction so we've seen some districts do it different ways what we experienced last year is long synchronous sessions online for elementary age students weren't successful that students didn't have um after about half an hour 40 minutes the ability to stay attentive and to do work on a synchronous call was was not very high and so really what we're focused on is two things one is having small groups on those synchronous calls we found that to be much more effective than uh in general than the large group and the second is to have some opportunity some direct instruction asynchronously as nick talked about some follow-up that synchronous to support work some independent work that that may be on or off screen and then a break and so we are cognizant that it is something we're going to have to do a lot of work with caregivers and caregiver trainings as well as students to be able to manage those transitions but the alternative having long stretches of students online from a learning perspective we didn't feel like was effective when when folks tried it last year for the best of intentions students weren't able to maintain themselves elementary students but even including secondary students we can't simulate school just being online it really is a different pedagogy and i actually wanted to comment i saw a question of you know are virtual students being like synced in or is there a camera and um in our in our experience and our judgment that's not a very effective strategy because you use significantly different pedagogical um or instructional models or be really different online than they would be in person and from a teacher perspective it's just very distracting to be following the in-person plus looking at a computer for what online students so really what we're looking at is for emerson pelham to be collaborators on that i know some districts have um paid licenses for like the state system for curriculum we haven't done that we're going to work within our own staff to find out the best teachers to support our students but i probably forgot a bunch i'm trying to think of what else you ask ms hall and if there's anyone else who'd like to share anything um i will i did just miss there was one very specific one related to that were there resources to provide tutors or other support um for for families i mean i think it sounds like resourced by the school so i think that's probably a no but just didn't want to ignore the question yeah so i think what we're trying to do in terms of that is really work in small groups with our classroom teachers our special educators our ell teachers which i'm going to get to ms richardson in a second because i meant to do that 20 minutes ago and i forgot um and our title one and intervention teachers so that people are able to maintain that small close-knit group and make those strong relationships that really can't happen in a virtual environment with 20 even 15 students on a goal we find even administratively that when we have six or seven people we can have real discussions as administrators as adults and when we have our larger team together which is 20 students 20 people it ends up being very monotonous with one person talking for long stretches of time but i forgot to come back to dr brady miss smith and miss richardson which was my script that i made a mistake about just to do so if we could pause from the question and answer for uh just a couple minutes uh so i'll start with mrs richardson who can talk a little bit about english language learners in english language learning education and then dr brady and miss smith about special education my apologies so in general the plan that we are operating under now that was approved has us inviting our beginner english learners back for in-person learning should they choose to engage in that way and that's really based on our guidance from the department of education that we should be offering for our students with more complex needs to to have that opportunity we know that language learning is requires a lot of engagement and certainly our team is really well prepared to meet the needs as as best as we can in remote learning but we know that the opportunity to learn all day with peers and interact and use language is a really different experience when we're able to be in school so the the hope is that for those students who do choose to return we'll be able to provide their language instruction for a large part of their day in person with those teachers who are able to be there with them and that they'll also connect with some staff to access the same content that other students would be accessing in terms of their math their unit study that we call unit study for science and social studies to make sure they access the same learning and from there we'll be working really closely across our english learner teachers with our content teachers to co-plan and you know find all the ways that we can help make the content engaging and accessible for all of our english learners based on whatever it is that they need at that time so that's just a brief overview thank you and dr burger ms smith so um so thank you and um i saw a couple of questions in the chat that were related to special education as well so i'll try to touch on those but um in the models that were shared the schedules by the principals i think it's just it's really important to know on a um overview is that um all the special education instruction and services that are on a student's iep will be planned in the scope of whether it's the remote day or um the hybrid day or or whatever it may look like that will all be planned within the context of the student's schedule and communication and collaboration with families will be essential to um so that everyone knows what that daily schedule looks like for their child um the other thing and i think this goes along with what miss richardson just said was that in our phase one opening plan we have um planning underway for our students in our specialized programs um to be entering for in-person instruction as of the middle of september and um ms smith will be able to talk more about preschool if people would like to hear specifically about that but the intention is for some of those students who have higher needs from the very beginning we will be having our teachers and our related service providers working in person with students for their iep instruction and their goals to be able to get their education that way that being said we know that some students will have classes that they attend that aren't in person and we will be making arrangements so that they will be getting support while in school to access those classes remotely during that time so i don't know if ms smith wants to add anything about preschool though briefly i saw a question in the chat regarding the preschool schedule and the preschool schedule relative to the in person will be consistent with much of what preschool does around morning meetings exploratory times group lessons story time related services and and certainly outdoor activities so i would say it's consistent with additional time built in while preschoolers are not required to wear masks their students will be encouraged to and what we recognize is it'll be a significant transition for them into the public school for the first time or back so be anticipating spending time just engaging with them around um physical distancing and social circles and some of the good rich preschool curriculum they already do so um relative to the schedule and the opportunity um i think we're well positioned for that could i just add there i saw a question while smith was talking about iep meetings and although that doesn't apply to everybody who's watching right now um in a letter that was sent home that we do at this point intend to have our iep team meetings continue to be held virtually i think the health and safety guidelines and ms consolino speaks to this frequently is to have as few people in the buildings as possible so iep team meetings will be held virtually yet they will be held within the expected guideline timelines okay all right thank you um there are a couple questions about report cards and how assessments will work yeah so um this year the expectation of the state is clear in a couple things that were quite different than last year one is that report cards assessments will be offered and that feedback which is a critical part of students teaching and learning needs to be part of the educational program it's also clear whether students are in person or virtual that they have to have 170 school days and the time on learning requirements will be the same so that instruction is that it's is at the core no matter what method of education families choose for their children so that that is it's a really good question last year the state waived the time on learning requirements um and we weren't teaching new instruction at the elementary level for most of the spring and that is markedly different in terms of expectations we have for this this fall and this school year um a few more sort of protocol questions around this um one of them was on bathroom cleaning protocol and the frequency of that and then also if someone is needing to quarantine would they then just switch over to virtual during a quarantine time yep so in terms of bathroom it will be cleaned multiple times a day and we're developing working with our facilities team you may see a change in how many custodians are there during the school day versus after the school there before the school day because we know that that's a critical need for that to happen under multiple times throughout the day um and so that they are itemizing which rooms particularly at phase one because that's where we are now will be in use and which rooms they are so that's on their regular routine um and then the second part of your question i'm sorry i missed a miss hall um that was on if um if folks need to quarantine either because of exposure or potential exposure would they switch to virtual during that time yeah so there would be uh the opportunity you know for at least the asynchronous lessons if not more to be accessed by students who are you know out for any reason and that's one of the reasons we want to have asynchronous lessons throughout is that they're easily accessible for any student whether they're in school or not in school in general if families start in an in-school environment and for whatever reason they feel like that's not working for their child it's pretty easy to transition out to a virtual environment going the other way is more difficult that because it requires space and planning and so that we're trying to think of very deliberate moments in time which are generally around the quarters which is kind of november mid-november mid-january mid-march to the end of the year so that we can manage that we can make sure we have the space and staffing to support those transitions so going one way is a little easier than going the other way because of the health and safety requirements i do see one that maybe ms smith or dr brady would like to go in on would uh jump in on which is what is going to happen with 504 iep assessments that were started before school closed but weren't completed i thought that's a good question great great so i'm happy to jump in to answer that so um there were some assessments that were started and not finished and there are other ones that haven't even been started yet so um our special ed admin assistant staff are already compiling the list of who those people are and people will be in touch to be able to restart um assessments that were kind of halted midway through and what that might look like as well as to schedule um evaluations that hadn't been started that could have should have been started in the spring so expect to hear from people um as school is opening about those plans okay great um a couple of school specific questions one was on the fifth and sixth grade at crocker farm and some outstanding questions about that so can we just talk about the latest there sure you want me to go derek or you like to go well maybe maybe just for the sake of switching up a little bit i'll say something first and then maybe just jump in is that i read in the chat somewhere and i know um mike will make sure that we're supporting this is that there is absolutely no plan for no plan for um crocker farm students to in five and six to attend school any less than their peers across the district so hopefully i'm saying that properly in terms of everyone hearing it that um and certainly as a principal i would be advocating that the grades five and six students at crocker go to school the same amount of time as students at the other schools and i think we're gonna have to figure that out um as we get a little bit closer down the line here but i think i mean the one thing i also want to say is and i love every single one of these questions because it's really helping me think about it as we start the school year we perhaps don't have the answer and i'm just taking a risk by saying this to every single question that's posted and so i don't know the answer how we're gonna do that but we will make sure that our five and sixes across the district attend school the same time that's absolutely true and right now one of the things that's a variable is how many students return um so you know at our phase one level uh we know that uh right now that number i think i showed on thursday night is about 71 72 percent of families are choosing an in-school return uh one of the things i heard actually from principals this afternoon is we may send another survey out in the next week for students in grades you know the intermediate and upper grades that may not be binding but it is something that we can start planning for because that number is going to determine what's possible at the upper grade levels and so uh you know i think it's a question we're getting a lot we're getting it from families we're getting it from staff and certainly i'm getting it from principals so if you do have children in the middle or upper grades be on the lookout the next week it's going to be a nine-binding survey but it's going to give us data that we can use to see what's feasible and what's not feasible because i think it is a really critical question [Music] that we want to answer but at this point we don't have enough data to be able to do that okay great i just have one more school specific and then i'll move on to another cluster of questions um so at pelham the second graders are going to be in the first phase does that change the um the grades in phases two and three at all or will it just be the same except that second graders won't go in phase two i mean sorry yeah we'll go in face two so lee i don't know if you want to jump in but essentially no we're maintaining the same grade levels really the second grade at pelham the difference was that we have a number of folks like special educators and other uh teachers who work because it's a smaller school across that grade level band we have some of those in amherst but at pelham it was really hard to from a service delivery perspective to imagine how we could do that particularly as it relates to special education and students ieps and meeting their needs um so you know the question is um no sure okay um there are a number of questions about teachers uh teachers who don't return or those who do um obviously we've just begun negotiations with the teachers union and so there's a number of things that we can't that can't really be discussed in this form but can you just talk a little bit about options for teachers and how this will impact them sure so um you know i think you've said most of it that we are actively working in negotiations so it's not something that i can um talk about in public um you know because that's that's really the location for those conversations about that uh we certainly want to work as best we can for staff members i think the school committee voted in past document that talked about staff members who do have health concerns on how to support them but at this point that's where we are we're working hopefully towards a successful resolution with our association and so i appreciate and empathize with the concerns of our families on that issue but it's not something we can address in a town hall forum because the the forum for that is is through uh negotiation with our bargaining units okay thank you um dr brady i know a lot of these questions really do relate to um the mental health and social emotional learning element and what's missed in the remote environment so could you talk a little bit about that please sure so um i think one of the things i wanted to share is last spring the district organized some full planning group and um principal jaffe principal chamberlain and myself facilitated a group of our personnel for talking about social emotional learning planning for the fall and i think one of the things that i just want people to to know that in the planning of all these schedules that's done within the context of the social emotional learning and the mental health needs of our students as a primary focus so um nobody plans to go right back into a math class without kind of talking about just and checking in where are where is everybody at and making sure that our students are ready to engage in learning by supporting them in that process so there will be a really intentional plan that is integrated into the school day for all of our students and um to keep in mind that we'll also have services for students who may be struggling um people ask a lot about what if people students aren't complying with wearing masks i think one of the things we will do is intentional learning no one expects anybody to walk back in and say gee i know how to do this now we're going to have to teach everybody and people are going to learn at different times for that and we're going to need different ways of being taught so we're going to really structure that and provide all that for students and i guess the final thing i just want to say is to really um be aware i read all these chats the stress that everybody is feeling um during a time that there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty so there's more questions than there are answers and um that sits with our children as well as all of the adults and um that is going to be a piece of our process and if we can all work together as we're kind of embarking upon this journey of uncertainty we have the best chance of really good outcomes for our kids and i think that's the goal for all of us so yeah yeah but well said and that's kind of a good segue into another question that's come up a few times sort of the stress around students in in different phases and needing to drop off one child for in person but start virtual at home and so i guess the question of is there flexibility around that to make sure that families can get their various children where they need to be and get started yeah and so on the virtual schedule we sent a draft but there are drafts with multiple time periods of when instruction will happen for exactly that reason so you know that's a sample but there are other samples that have gaps in different places we do have a long gap that's between for lunch and a recess block in the middle and some of that's because we know that there are food deliveries uh you know we are having food in school but we're going to maintain our food delivery system and so we want to make sure that families aren't making the choice between going and getting food and working with their child on learning so we are trying to be as flexible as we can be i think the the conflict with that is that families and staff and students at the middle school and high school level all desired more structure last year uh they wanted to know when things were happening on a routine regular basis and they wanted more synchronous instructions so we're trying to balance that as best we can but there are some competing variables um there could i say a couple quick ones uh miss hall um and um there was a good one on orientation for families and that is something we're actively planning and that's true for families who are starting the year virtually as well as families whose children will be starting the year in person we want to make sure that we're doing outreach to support families on both of those there was a question a while back that i know some of our principals would like to jump in on about um anti-racist work and cultural proficiency and that's been something while this show is is more focused on some of the public health and safety pieces it's not something that there haven't been hasn't been tremendous amount of work this summer on i was wondering if mr shea wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about crocker farm and some of the the team and the work over there i know there's been work at all the schools but i've just got an email from from some crocker farm folks with some of the work and i think it is really critical because while we've been out of school lots of things have happened in the world and we want to make sure we're meeting students uh where they need to be as they return so sorry to put you on the spot mr shea but i think your team's done a fabulous job and i wanted to give you an opportunity and anyone can jump in certainly it's not the only school that's been working on this yeah i think uh just an example um today is monday so perhaps uh and i know some of our teachers are on this this call perhaps thursday or so of last week i had the opportunity to um to join in in a conversation albeit remotely with 15 teachers from our school um who were meeting together obviously during the summer time to work to plan on um professional staff training uh for the fall uh during our regular staff meeting time the idea is planning um curriculums that will seep into the classroom uh probably sometime as we get into the fall in the spring i also know that there's been a fairly decent number for example at crocker farm of of parents who are working on on our social justice committee who have been working together in unity over the summer um again working on ideas um to present um books materials thinkings plans um to actually bring larger numbers of the crocker farm community together um to to again discuss uh anti-racist uh social justice matters in a very strong way jen smith's been doing tremendous work in this um we're going to meet on wednesday with um dorian cunningham who's our assistant superintendent who's also leading much of this work um so i think there's a there's a huge commitment uh and and we fully intend to stay focused on this work so anyone else who wants to i mean there's a lot of similarities at the other schools i don't know if there's anything else anyone would like to add to mr shea's comment can i just add one piece so um we've been having lots of conversations this summer and many of the educators in all of the schools attended a workshop on dismantling white supremacist culture in schools so this additional layer is on a lot of our minds to really examine our schools as a system and look at our policies and our practices through the lens of really dismantling some of the long-standing practices that have contributed to marginalization or the oppression of students of color so we're really putting forth a holistic effort as we move into the year to really be working at all levels of the school and thinking about all of the stakeholders that we serve thank you we have time for a couple more questions i don't know if miss hall i lost track a little bit of uh the questions i don't know if there were other ones that you had queued up sure i mean there were there are a few just about um notifications if someone does get covered and then related questions about quarantining and if one person has to quarantine does a sibling in the school also have to quarantine so just maybe that kind of data point so i think we'll turn to miss consolino for those ones so when when we're dealt with a situation such as covid we're i'm currently in the process of developing protocols based on guidance from the department of education on handle how to handle these specific situations um and the information will come from the amherst health department if it's a resident of amherst that's identified as a positive coveted person and then we will make the determination of who needs to be notified um as identified as a close contact um and those will be the individuals who will need to quarantine from school for a 14 day time frame the current recommendation from department of ed is those identified as a contact should be tested after about four to five days um for covid and then we'll handle next steps based on how the results come back from that test if someone if the test comes back positive then they become a case and then we deal with the isolation and time frame there um if we have a sibling that sibling does not need to stay home they are welcome to come back in school because the best way i can describe it is you're exposed in layers to the virus and a sibling would be a secondary layer to the actual virus itself um where the people we identify as a close contact is a first layer exposure to the virus which is um the student and then their classmate and then the sibling of the classmate is not directly exposed to the virus itself so the sibling is welcome to be in school parents can choose to keep their siblings home but that would be the choice of the parents um and then and what was the last question i forgot no that you got you got the whole thing that if someone is exposed and then yep you got it okay yep and then we you know we will make the communications as we need to um and when we need to do that um and for the elementary levels we will keep classes together as a cohort um and so those students will probably all be identified as a close contact to a positive case um and that will be handled on a case-by-case basis um a couple more quick ones should we do a few quick okay the uh question that's come up a few times is about am and pm kindergarten for remote and how that's selected so that it is that family choice or does someone get assigned so we'll ask for preferences and try to make sure we can balance that as best we can but there will be um an email sent out to families who make that choice for kindergarten so that they can make the choice i also want to say it's worth noting that we've had some families inquire um about not coming for kindergarten uh well we think our teachers do a fabulous job it is not required as opposed to grades one through twelve in our in the commonwealth of massachusetts and certainly families have the option of not of choosing a different option uh we've had some families who um who've inquired because they don't want their children necessarily to be um they're concerned about screens or they had another option at the current daycare which may extend up through kindergarten and so we work collaboratively with those families we want them in our district and graduating high school 13 years from now and whatever choice they want to make for kindergarten we want to support them as best we can okay um and then i think maybe i'll do one one last one and then we can sort of talk about where folks should direct questions that didn't get answered um just about attendance and there's been some stuff in the press recently about you know people um being contacted pretty aggressively about their children not attending virtually so can we talk about that sure so the commonwealth has set expectations around attendance uh we like we do during the rest of the year try to work collaboratively you know i think ms chamberlain did a really nice job talking about restorative justice before um and we're sort of practices and our goal is to start to figure out what it what are some of the challenges that families are facing for their students whether it's coming to school in person or coming to school online and problem solving with that family we are not interested in quickly calling and i saw some horrific i think it was the boston globe had an article if i'm correct uh in the last couple days around that and we also think that we want our if a student's home school that's different but if a student's attending school in person or virtual we want them attending school because our teachers do fabulous work to that support students growth and they can't do that if students aren't there so our approach is really to try to work and problem solve with families work collaboratively and try to figure out is there if there is um some concern or some barrier to attending school again in any way shape or form how do we support families to do that and and dr gamarta guevara who's um runs the family center i mean principals do a great job staff counselors but we do have an additional layer of support with family center which dr gubar runs and her staff that can sometimes provide a little more wrap around resources and not a little they can provide wrap-around resources support and make connections for families with community agencies to help support with that as well so that is our approach and and that's how we um we approach things as it relates to attendance we want our students in school we want them learning we want them making strong relationships with their peers with their staff with their teachers and para educators and they need to be in school to do that virtually or live and if they're not we again really want to stress that we want to problem-solve with them and partner with them for the betterment of their children okay thank you um so there are obviously a number of questions we didn't get to um so in terms of especially phase one families who have not yet responded to the survey and have outstanding questions or really for any families um dr morris can you just talk about who should be the best point of contact where those questions should be directed sure so um can you say that one more time i'm sorry i was just about who um we have to wrap up now where should people direct questions that are outstanding after this yeah so i think if there are questions that are specific to you know the phasing and there's some feedback um you can certainly always direct it to my address which i think miss figaro will type in uh which is morris m arps.org i think most people know how to get in with touch with the principles but i know there are some also some ones about health and safety you can send them to me i'll send them over to ms consolino so she can respond on our website on the health and safety part there's a i think 17 or 19 page document from the state of a bunch of different scenarios in terms of if if a staff member suspected or is confirmed to have covet same with students and there's a little bit of a almost like a flow chart and so we are following the state guidance and certainly we can talk you through that but that is um that is probably the best resource if you want to read on your own otherwise certainly send an email to me and i can send to ms consolino i think also the school committee at arps.org website if there's broader policy questions like i saw some that were focused on well at pelham should you know maybe fourth grade should start earlier based on staffing certainly that can go to the principal it can also go to the school committee as well and i think this is one of the challenges of our current situation is that i'd love and those of you know me know me well i think we collected we would love to be able to answer every single question about exactly what's going to happen 30 days from now and the reality is we don't know what the public health data is we don't know exactly the student return we're getting pretty close but we don't know all of that information that deadlines tomorrow so as we continue to get more information we'll continue to update our website and to update the community as we get closer and um but you know i i thank everyone for the questions they're incredibly helpful uh for us to consider and we'll answer as many as we can and we'll continue to answer them as more information becomes available oh and i'm sorry dr brady wanted me to mention that for students who are in phase one who are special needs uh dr brady would want uh those emails directly to her or one mind i should say um and it's bradyf arps.org to email dr brady and she can share them with miss smith as well okay all right it is seven minutes past five um so i think we will end this but again the conversation is not over so thanks to all staff and principals and to everyone who ask questions

good morning uh my name is michael morris i'm the superintendent of school here in the amherst pelham regional school district and we want to thank you for joining this town hall we've had some earlier this summer and as our plans develop we want to continue to update the community and our plans uh our goal today is to share an update on the plans that were submitted yes you know we either emailed them out and there was a very long document so we're trying to condemn to the key points but most of the time we want from this 9 to 10 today to be focused on questions and answers uh before we do introductions i just want to note in the um chat there uh we have put um interp there's a live interpreter live translation um and so if you go to that link you can pick the language and uh be uh able to participate uh both in terms of hearing this the live translation but also question and answer that someone will bear back with us um throughout that's also uh that comment box is when we get to question and answers where you can ask questions and a moderator will be helping us with that and trying to get um groups of questions answered so that we can be again communicating accurate information to our community with all that introduction i'm going to turn it over just to do introductions so we'll go in order so i'll start with to my right with principal sullivan hi i'm dave slovan the principal of summit academy welcome thank you dave miss mcdonald hi i'm alison mcdonald and i am the chair of the regional school committee in wisconsin hello good morning everybody my name is jill constellino i'm the nurse manager for the school district thank you and mr speak uh good morning tom sadie the interim principal of amherst high school and mr chairman good morning everyone my name is you ms richardson good morning my name is katie richardson i'm the coordinator of english language education and dr brady good morning i'm faye brady and i'm the director of student services for the district thank you so we took uh about 102 page document i think uh which was submitted to dassey we condensed it to about 10 slides more or less we're going to skip over the elementary because this is focused on the regional school the secondary k-12 uh seven through twelve schools this morning and uh we'll roll through some slides that again are the highlights and then spend most of our time in the question and answer today um so i'm gonna pull up those slides hopefully effectively um and okay so again this this plan was submitted a little over a week ago to deci as required about opening and reopening for fall 2020.

so here are some of the important facts about the opening of school especially at the regional schools the secondary schools the majority of our students and staff will begin the year remotely with a much more robust distance learning program than what happened in the spring last year which was really an emergency distance learning program in-person learning or hybrid will be introduced based on a phasing plan we'll talk about in a minute and we'll use public health metrics to guide our decisions at all times and really importantly all families have the choice of full remote learning or in-person hybrid learning for their children last week we had a very what i found to be a very informative session with four medical professionals who work in western massachusetts and i think one of the statements that stayed with me is the choice that you make for your child is is going to be the right choice for your child and we know that it's a very unusual time with the pandemic and with other factors and we're trying to give the most accurate information so families have the best information to make that individual choice and that's really what we're focused on today so what you can see here on the phase reopening plan is our school year for all students whether in person or virtual will start on september 16th and based on state guidance and what we know about who has better access or less access to distance learning we would start with the priority groups to be in person at that time and those groups are in that secondary level students who are without a permanent residence under mckinney-vento law specialized special education programs and beginner ell students and so those would be the only students the middle school in high school who would be starting at the beginning of the school year under this phase reopening plan and the metrics we would use would be that fewer 70 fewer than 70 confirmed cases per 100 000 people in our area and a test positivity rate of uh for covid below three percent in our counties hampshire and franklin county and i think it's important to note that the school committee and the staff really worked on this the metrics and what we would use for metrics to make this work and importantly we use the most conservative metrics that were recommended by reputable places this is below uh the expectations are more stringent than the expectations of the cdc in the world health organization and other states and so we wanted to make sure that we were using again very conservative members and so the second phase wouldn't involve the region but after veterans day when we get to november we would be looking for 7th through 12th grade students to return one day a week so it would be a hybrid model where they'd be have one day in and four days of virtual instruction and then assuming things are continuing to go well we can revisit that after the first semester uh to go perhaps up to two days for our secondary students the school committee did revoke a calendar um last week i think on thursday night um the first day again for all students in terms of education would be september 16th a couple important notes is that we would not have snow days next year we would just flip to virtual education school committee did decide to have an extended december break december and january uh winter break and that was really for people to be able to visit family we knew that they needed an extending extended time period given the current situation and the last day of school would be scheduled for june 24th and so i'll go over some health and safety considerations again there's a long long document uh we just picked on a couple of the most important ones that we continue to follow the cdc the center for disease control recommendations uh in terms of custodial protocols one of the things that we learned in conversations with public health experts was having a shortened school day schedule would allow for enhanced cleaning and sanitizing so at this region that means school would start at nine o'clock in the morning instead of 7 45 uh and and at the typical time it allows for sanitizing and cleaning after students leave as well as before they come so we have two shifts where that can happen all classrooms will have hepa air purifiers with uv disinfecting light that's been recommended to us really turns over the air in the room with fine grained filters incredibly more often than if we didn't have those installed bathrooms other high touch services door handles will be cleaned multiple times throughout the day we've increased our supply of cleaning materials and supplies to make sure we're keeping up with things one of the things the school committee early on suggested was while the state recommended at least three feet of social distancing that we were choosing six feet and and that really had implications at the regional schools uh we can only fit about 15 ish desks in rooms at six feet and that really drives some of our decision making but we think it's in the best interest of the health and safety of our kids to have that the middle school has a lot of rooms without windows and we won't be using those for student instruction we want to have rooms that have the opportunity for natural air flow and natural ventilation as much as possible we have purchased tents for all of our buildings actually three tenths of the high school and summit academy combined and one tenth from the middle school because while the weather holds we want to have as much outdoor learning as is possible we've also contracted with hvac experts to test all of our rooms that will be used in this phase one and then eventually more of those rooms prior to the opening of school and they'll start the this work at the end of uh end of the week in terms of health and safety considerations again there's a long long list we picked on some that we were the selected some that were the most relevant uh all students and staff who are medically able will be expected to wear a mask we've purchased significant amounts of ppe in the thousands i think in mass in the hundred thousands for the district based on the guidance we received from the state for some students we know that special face coverings for their staff need to have um clear mouths we've purchased those as well we talked about the physical distancing transportation will also look different there'll be fewer students on buses and vans and and we're getting feedback now and how many families in phase one will transport their own child uh but it'll be essentially once child to a seat as opposed to our typical expectations for filling up school buses bans entry and exit protocols will be different we won't have lots of students huddled if you know the high school you can if you go early in the morning you'll see at the front entrance there's students and this way will be a much more controlled entrance and exit uh for students and staff we also have each building having a designated medical waiting room that's different from the nurse's office for anyone who is suspected uh to have symptoms or show symptoms of covid19 to make sure we're keeping our schools as safe as possible this week i'm going to skip the elementary schedules i think i'll turn it over to principal sharon who will talk about the in-person draft schedule at the middle school so principal fern whenever you're ready you can walk us through this of course thank you so so i i guess i want to start by differentiating that um the the schedule that we've created for online learning is a bit different than the than the schedule we're creating for in-person learning and and a lot of that just comes from the fact that we have since we're going to be spending about one day a week in the school in november beginning in november uh it's important to us that that day the not only developmentally appropriate for our students but also one that's nurturing it really focuses on social emotional learning and so um so the schedule that we have developed uh for the where in the process of developing for online learning uh has the opportunity for students to take um take more classes than than you currently see on the schedule uh here in in uh in [Music] in for in-person learning and and and so um this is something that's in development and it's something that will be fleshed out uh considerably more but one of the things that we're looking at is having these long blocks of time being shared by multiple teachers so you see in the schedule for in-person learning that there is a humanities period and so uh that would be that would be shared by two classes but it may also be it may also and would likely include uh input from um from our teachers who might push into the class it could be input from the culture and climate coordinator who might push into the class and and do a a socially distant circle or some sort of social emotional activity that would support students because we realize that there's going to be a there's going to be a lot of things that students are learning this year and and and there are there isn't any place in the state standards for the kinds of things they're going to be learning which include this new environment of learning and being with one another in a socially distant space and so we really want to create a lot of room and support for those things uh so as mike mentioned the day the school day will start later which will allow for students to be arriving later but also allows for their teachers to have some time in the morning to be planning and organizing and and getting things ready so so you see on this schedule on the slide you see that the the year the classes go through the year and so that's one difference from the high school and that's because we felt that it was important that students maintain uh and practicing the skill development over the course of the entire year and we didn't feel it was uh appropriate for middle school students to be learning math for one semester and then to be dropping math for the other semester because we're really cognizant of the fact that we're working on that skill development uh and and we don't want to be losing those opportunities to be reinforcing and building uh new skills um and so and so that's basically the organization of the in-person schedule which is still very much under development and again the thing to remember what's most important is that it's a it's a schedule that will be focused around giving students initially what is one day a week as an enriching environment that allows them to connect with their peers for many of them for the first time in many months and to do so in a way that is supportive that is enriching and and that is is generally something that's helping to motivate them in their further learning when they're not in person great thank you and i'll turn to principal sadiq to go over the high school draft schedule and i want to just remind viewers uh we're intentionally giving uh an overview of these schedules as we will for the virtual schedules because we really want to leave time for for the question and answer pieces so we know we're answering some of the questions but we're we want to make sure that we're opening things up uh in short order so that we can have more interactive dialogue but principal zadek uh good morning everybody um so quickly so the high school schedule is based on a traditional blog schedule where year-long classes are short and taught in one semester the time on learning that would happen over the course of a year is happening over the course of the semester so we have longer blocks but only for a half a year um some of the reasons why we chose to do this are because to have fewer classes for students to focus on because we learned from the spring that it was hard for them to juggle all seven classes that were in their schedule in the past so the beginning of the day as principal sharon mentioned as well we have the beginning the day for teacher planning time and then we have i'll have three classes during the school day this schedule is going to start on september 16th and that will be the same schedule throughout the whole year so students won't have to um quit schedules when we start in-person learning in november it's going to be the same schedule i'm in the d block you see the bottom that is the time we wanted to put the schedule for students to access classes that couldn't necessarily fit into their three by three block schedule a lot of that is going to be elected classes that they enjoy some support classes again this is still in the development phase we're trying to figure out exactly what is going to make them sense to put in that d block right now those are some of our main ideas um in the b period block is when lunch will happen so if you look at the timing there's time built in there for students to beat their lunch teachers as well and then also trying for students to work on either some of their other distance learning classes or their classes in person or also to access supports or get extra help from teachers i know this can be a question they're going to want to kind of go over quickly and leave time for questions at the end perfect thank you mr sadika i just the only thing i'll add is you see ensembles are up there and we the high school has been very deliberate of thinking about some of the courses that may have a harder time meeting in person uh just given some of the health and safety requirements as well and i appreciate the flexibility that our schools are taking on this um this very challenging moment of thinking about what what can work in school and what camp uh principal sloven do you want to walk us through summit academy uh with an overview sure um so so you know summit academy is a phase one school and uh this we originally put this together it seems like years ago already but um a lot of what uh talib uh principal sadiq just talked about we tried to uh put into our schedule so we're a block schedule too and uh but we also wanted to add some of the things that are unique to to summit academy and uh part of that is a well we we haven't really put it in there but d period or our therapeutic time which has advisories and clinical uh groups um was added so you'll see that there's another period um to to the schedule um one of our our our major plans is to try to continually uh support students in their social emotional efforts to to be in school in this new kind of way and so you see a student check-in you see a student check out again our our in-person schedule and our virtual schedule are not exactly the same and that's still being worked out because we want to be able to transition back uh from from in person to virtual and and back and forth as easy as possible for students um [Music] so what we're trying to do and just like uh in the other schedules staff will be meeting early um and students will be coming in at nine so so a lot of the things that the other principals have said we have included in our schedule you know we we agree that that having less classes is extremely important but most importantly we want to support students where they're at and do it in a way that um you can do it social distancing but also do it in a very individual manner so that's really important to us that we are meeting students needs individually and that's how the schedule was created thank you yeah i want to note explicitly that um you'll notice in all three schedules that students are taking fewer classes and that's based on public health guidance um that the idea of having fewer number of cohorts is something that's been recommended to us both nationally and statewide and locally and so each school has a somewhat unique approach of how to do that but the idea of mixing students you know typically the middle school and high school we had a seven drop one schedule so i mean there were six different cohorts of students meeting throughout the day and that's not consistent with the public health guidance we've received um we're very brief so i would add one thing for us please that we we as a group of are really going to try to create quarters so that we um it will add up to semesters and it will be different but all our all our classes add up to the credits that students needs but we're really going to break things down into quarters which we think gives us more flexibility for students and gives them opportunity to earn credit in a certain way and also meet what they need specifically even if mcas comes along that we'll be prepared for that as well great thank you thanks principal sloven so again we're very briefly going to touch on some virtual schedules which is again how the bulk of students um will start their school at their secondary level so i'll turn it back to principal sharon for just a brief overview of the distance or the remote learning schedule thank you um so so the the schedule that we're developing for the middle school which is very much still under um uh still under development is one that looks at the making sure the students have the opportunity to work on their four core subjects in a way that helps them to make strides and and gain skills at this critical time in their development but also gives them the opportunity to engage in um in in in supplemental exploratory courses that are enriching and um i'm sorry uh dr morris do you have the slide up for that oh it's not it's i thought it's on the right bottom right side of the screen is it not showing oh yes that's right i'm sorry i apologize yeah um and so and so uh the way the schedule is looking right now uh is is that we're we're looking again at the time in the morning uh when students have the opportunity to get up and uh and perhaps engage in in some catching up or some uh some planning at the same time that their teachers are together planning but then there's an advisory period one of the things we noticed in the spring was there were a number of students who we weren't able to account for in daily learning lessons and so uh our advisory period uh in the morning is a quick check-in uh with an advisor cohort that allows uh students and and in in the small setting to engage in some sort of activity some sort of sharing but also a check-in that allows us to know who is engaged and who isn't and that way we can communicate with families and do interventions that will support that um and then and then in the course of this student's schedule you see that there is a series of classes that are scheduled throughout the day and this is not intended to be an asynchronous type of schedule it's intended to be a schedule that the teachers will work with individually in order to ensure um that there are opportunities throughout the week for the classes to meet both in a synchronous setting and also in an asynchronous setting but these blocks of times are created so that students have the possibility of working within those time periods on those on those courses material on the course material and the projects and those kinds of things and and there's also time allotted for a break for lunch uh and even though you know one of the comments that that i've heard uh is that um there isn't really time for breaks it goes from 10 15 right to 10 15 to start up another class um and part of that is because these are um tended to be slots for students to be working on things some of which will be synchronous and others which won't uh but in the course of a day it's likely that a student wouldn't have synchronous class after another so there would be actually time for breaks between those these are just general frameworks for of time to help students organize their time because we feel it's really important for their executive functioning skills to be able to develop a rhythm that's supportive and keeps them in the habit of doing work on a daily basis um and and there's also the opportunity as i said for exploratory uh and and elective courses within that that will be focused once again on on providing enriching and social emotionally supportive um activities for students to do with one another in groups and individually yeah and if i could add to that briefly just to piggyback on what you said it applies to all of our schools is that we don't think it's in students best interest to be on the computer straight in live classes for five or six hours a day there's no research or evidence and if you look at virtual schools that's not how they're organized it is the case that we will be expecting students to be present for their synchronous courses attendance will be taken grades will be offered so it's very different from last spring but it may be that there's a short synchronous mini lesson and then time for students to work and the teacher may be checking in with them in small groups they may be writing something submitting and getting feedback during that time but it wouldn't be that english language arts would have a 45 minute synchronous lesson straight to math for 45 minutes straight to exploratory that there's no evidence or research that suggests that's a good path but i also want to suggest that last spring we didn't have as much synchronous and and we got that feedback from all from students from staff members and from families about the importance of making those personal connections and having direct instruction and so it's trying to marry wanting students to have that direct instruction maintain those strong relationships with peers and teachers and staff members but not going 45-minute uh google meet from to 45-minute google meet um that's not how virtual schools that have been doing this a long time set themselves up and it's not how we would either um so just because of time i'm gonna i'm gonna ask uh mr sadiq and and miss uh mr sloven to you know just run through their virtual schedules i think it's pretty smooth at the high school um because it's so similar but if you wouldn't mind doing that and then we'll open it up for some question and answer okay yeah the the virtual schedule is intentionally the same as the in-person schedule you know um students haven't been on a schedule for quite a while and so we wanted to try to make it smooth everybody my kids include included like the nine o'clock start time better than 7 45 start time in the past so we want to keep that and want it again to have the time for teachers to talk and to collaborate as well because they're getting used to this different form of teaching learning as well um but everything else is pretty much the same again the d block is something we're still trying to figure out when to fit in in during the day um so there'll be more information to come about that thank you and over to principal sloven yeah so um here you see and i'll just go very quickly that 745 to 845 we've put in a synchronous and asynchronous supported learning that's going to be students connecting with probably paraprofessionals that are directly connected with them working on individual skills and class and and homework which is kind of great but um and we tried to build in some screen breaks we tried to uh make sure that again we had our uh b block there is um which is for us is a uh where we have our community meeting and therapeutic groups and uh directed support um and so uh i i think it's pretty straightforward this is different though than the the in person and that's something that we'd like to work out because i i'd liked it to be closer related to the high school and uh have um so so it's really possible that our person is going to look more like our virtual but but we're not yet there so that's what i would say thank you um and i'll turn to miss consolino just for a quick update she put together this really nice flyer which is on our website uh about things to do to prepare your student to return to school it's uh certainly a lot of these things are um talked about a lot but i really appreciate miss consolido's uh work to try to narrow it down to ten so i don't know if you wanna just walk us through some of the highlights miss consolino sure so like dr morris said this is available on the district's website for anybody to access at any time and it just kind of goes over 10 quick pointers um there's a few that are important for the upcoming school year um for parents to note um a couple that um that i'll i'll just kind of highlight is um the immunizations and physicals um the state is not um lightening up the requirements for immunizations going into the fall so if you um now is the time to check with your primary care physician to see if your child's or up your child is up to date with any of their immunizations um there's also a strong push for kids to get their flu shot this fall um because the flu does mirror the coronavirus very similarly and that was that was stressed as an important uh factor on last wednesday is town hall with the physicians if you have a child who has an asthma action plan we're asking that if they have an aerosolized treatment to talk with your provider about changing that mode of medication administration um because we will not be doing nebulizer treatments or aerospace treatments in school um waterfronts are going to be turned off in the district and we will be using water fillers or or um water bubblers to fill water bottles um the district has purchased water bottles for every student in the district um and if you choose to send your child in with their own but we will not be using water fountains to drink from from uh right and i just look at that i think there are some schools um that don't have as many bottle fillers and so in those cases we will be leaving the waterfronts on but only permitting the use based on uh the bottles which i'll happy to share with you i've got one right next to me and after we're done with the slides um i'll show it off but enough for purchase for everyone uh in the district um and then a couple others um we will be asking families to screen their students um in the morning and we're going to be using an online platform to um to check in with the schools and to verify that your child is healthy so my recommendation is to to get a thermometer that's accurate um i am looking into a program that the district can a national program to provide families with a thermometer and you it was it's an opt-in program no cost to families i'm just waiting for some information on that and as soon as i get it that'll be sent out to families um and then the other one the biggie um number nine is to make sure that your emergency contact information is up to date if your child or your student is symptomatic with any covet-like symptoms they will be put in our medical waiting room and they will be required to go home for the rest of the day and we will require somebody to pick them up hope and my intent is to have them picked up within a half hour to an hour's time frame um and then they will need to be evaluated by a physician the guidance i have from the state right now is anybody with covet symptoms will need to be evaluated and tested for colgate before the potential to be returned to school um and then the other ones you know hand hygiene practicing masks which a lot of people are doing now anyways um this the physical distancing extra masks we are asking families to provide masks for or facial coverings for their students we will have extras on hand just in case those become unusable during the school day and then any extra information you need there's a you know links to our um different websites on the school's replanting website so any any questions you can you know send me an email or get it to dr morris and he can he can get a hold of me all right so let me go back to our screen um and we've got a lot of questions so i wasn't able to see it while i was um displaying those i'll show off our water bottles thanks to miss figueroa so nice arps logo water bottles that are they'll be in quite shortly but i think i will turn it over to this mcdonald's who's going to help hopefully sort some of the comments that have come through and um we'll go from there oh i think you're muted miss mcdonald i'm sorry classic classic mistake um there were a lot of questions early on about the heist the high school schedule um i believe some of them uh you uh tell mr sadiq and and dr morris you've already answered but um i'll ask them again the questions about what's happening with d block um and and what that looks like um what's happening in between b and c block which i believe is the lunch um and then also questions about what about quarter-long electives and will they be offered in the fall as well as the spring and how does that work oh before i'll give mr sadiq a chance to think about that before he answers i wanted to remind folks that if you are on lexicate in other words you are accessing this material in a language that is different than the one we're speaking you can put a question in the chat there in your in your whatever language is the most comfortable for you and it'll be translated and they will upload it into the comments so i just wanted to if you're watching and not sure if that will work there are translators available and they'll translate and put it on the the chat so i'm sorry mr sadiq but i just wanted to i was reminded to share that and i forgot earlier so all right so um the d block question i tried to answer before this is kind of a vague answer to the question because we haven't completely figured out how it's going to work we know we want to have an extra um block during the day where students can access you know electives or support classes ensembles so it's going to be flexible i believe we'll have a mixture like the regular classes of synchronous and asynchronous time maybe mostly asynchronous and then a scheduled synchronous time for feedback and check-ins from the teacher running the d-block class now we'll give provide more clarity about that once we get closer to finalizing our schedule with the electives so they are going to be run in quarter blocks so half of a semester long they will be offered in the fall and in the spring so let's say in a period if they have math a period there may be b period the first half of the semester they'll have say an art elective and then maybe a second for eight or nine weeks and then that second eight or nine weeks of the first semester they could have um you know a different elective maybe a music production or video production type class and then their c block they would have another english class that whole semester and it'd be the same thing in the spring of course different um poor classes maybe a world language science class no longer semester long blocks and two other electives during one of the three blocks um and the the time in between you saw a b period that hour long is an hour and ten minute period that's not accounted for in that schedule that is a time when we're in person transition period and also a half hour for lunch and then half hour for i'm built in like directed study of study hall type of period again for students to work either on their current um adrc period classes or the check-in with their d-period teacher or a time for them to take a break and do something that's not disturbing other folks similar to a regular study hall not sure if those were all the questions i believe i think so the the quarter long courses also applies to um sorry the 11th and 12th grade english um that are semester-long courses would would they follow the same approach as the semester-long electives that's a good question so there are along with the quarterly english classes they're also the 12th grade social studies electives that were also a semester long so what the english department had and also the social studies department have have been talking to the department in combining those to make them a full semester class a combination of you know different um english classes will make up the one semester will be journalistic journalistic writing and african-american lit will be combined in a way to give the students a full semester long worth of english but um but it's going to be a little obviously look a little different than it did in the past but it's going to be combined to be one semester long and similar with um social studies and when we finalize all this we're going to send out when we send out the schedules we'll send out also an explanation of how they were combined and sort of the process of converting students current elect uh elected choices into their schedule so it'll be a lot clearer once we send it all out and everything is finalized so there was a couple questions i'd like to address in terms of public health metrics um so uh something that i saw um uh last week is that the state came out with a different set of metrics and they're no longer reporting things via like that the new york times is easily picking up on a day-to-day basis particularly as it relates um to number of cases per hundred thousand which is one of the common metrics they're releasing it what we're planning to do is every wednesday now they're releasing town by town metrics and for hampshire and franklin county we're collecting all 46 cities and towns in in hampshire and franklin county and we'll calculate those numbers on wednesday nights so the new york times is no longer unfortunately it's not their fault but it's no longer the viable resource for tracking this it's really wednesday evening and it's on the mass.gov website they release town by town information it's a little cumbersome because you have to pull it off and make an excel file of those 46 towns we have a pretty good system for it now to be able to do it relatively quickly but i saw some comments around that and right now the health metrics in western massachusetts particularly in our area remain well under the metrics that we selected again those metrics were the harvard global health institute's metrics they're more stringent than the cdc in the world health organization in places like new york state but we want to be as conservative as we can be with metrics and that was the kind of the most conservative metrics we found from a reputable place working with epidemiologists and that's what we did um so i wanted to you know share that i think um you know i also want to thank our state representative has been very active in trying to get us countywide data more readily and she's continuing to work on that so i want to thank her she's been in touch with us really often and um you know i definitely appreciate that part um i think there's a couple questions about sports um you know at this point uh it's uh and this is you can definitely jump in if he wants but it's sort of uh complicated who makes which decision uh right now we don't have a decision from the miaa which is the massachusetts in scholastic i think athletics association something like that uh they're typically the governing body for sports nor for nor from deci which is where we would typically get them we did get some guidance for youth sports um that that may apply but we don't have a final answer yet on sports it was one of these things that was promised to us i think mr sadiq two weeks ago something like that and i think uh there's you know looking at other states they're starting to come out with it but as numbers change i think they're still being um so still waiting for that piece we are still using google in google classroom google meet has been upgraded this year and it's um it's already working much better in terms of sound quality and more features are coming soon and it's security for us the biggest thing is the security protocols uh continue to be dramatically better than the competitors in the marketplace um trying to scroll down questions i don't know if there were some that you were planning to ask miss mcdonald um there were a couple questions about what the one day in person would be used for at the middle school in the high school and then related to that what happens um for students who are choosing fully remote learning throughout the year what will happen for them on the one day that in person i think that was a question for both um mr sadiq and mr sharon well i could certainly speak to the plans for the middle school with regard to that so the one-day instruction um the one-day in-person instruction day as i mentioned earlier is really meant to be a day where students have the opportunity to begin to connect or reconnect with their school there's peers and and in-person learning and it's really meant to be a day that's social emotionally supportive it's meant to be a day that gives students the opportunity to uh to practice being in proximity with one another even social distance uh and it's also uh meant to be a support for online for the for the remote learning that's happening uh the rest of the week um and and so that's it's it's not meant to necessarily be a heavy instruction day it's meant to be a day uh where students have uh the opportunity to uh to learn and and to get support on some of their learning in person uh perhaps in a socially distanced classroom with you know with instructions being offered from the front of the room by a teacher and explanations on the whiteboard and those kinds of things but but a different kind of learning than what they're used to and so it's gonna it's gonna be changing for for families who have their children or choose to have their children uh remote uh for the entire week they will still be maintaining their weekly remote schedule and so there will be times that they're scheduled uh for for doing coursework in different classes and and for that one day they will just be uh kind of they will maintain their same class schedule they'll maintain the same learning mode but for that one day they will be uh not involved with the same kind of kinds of physical activities and in-person activities that their peers are but but it's it'll be a smooth and easy uh thing that will be seamless for them in terms of their actual engagement in the academic program the high school version of the one day week in person is very similar to the middle school realized our main focus was really trying to get the distance learning really solid as we learned from the spring that it was a challenge for a lot of folks so the in person you know as principal sharon alluded to it's going to be a lot of it's not going to be a heavy instructional day it'll be a lot of teacher check-ins students being able to be in a room together socializing and then a lot of feedback on the the distance learning activities that they had done for those students remaining distance learning those days will be majority asynchronous teaching but they'll still share a little too they'll have their same schedule it'll be an asynchronous day for them and they'll have times the other days of the week when everybody is remote will be when the synchronous remote learning will happen um this is probably a quick question and there's a few questions about um when and how and when textbooks would be handled i can take this one um so uh we are thank you for all the people bringing in chromebooks um today even so we're collecting them because they need to be updated much like your phone and any other device these days uh there needs to be updating of devices and then there also will be a pickup and as opposed to last spring where our schools were really off limits um given the situation uh this this fall we'll be able to have pickup of chromebooks and with that pickup of textbooks and other materials so we will be able to do a little more than what we were able to do last year as it relates to that and i think that'll really help the distance learning so that students have access to a greater set of materials it'll still be structured it'll still be organized and done in a way consistent with public health guidance but there will be an opportunity for students to have their textbooks and have their materials to support their distance learning there's a few different questions um regarding uh changes throughout the throughout the school year um whether students will be able to add or drop classes um whether they're in person or remote and whether they can switch between um a full remote decision for the fall and um and in person in the spring yeah and so i tried to answer that a little on the chat um but moving from virtual to in person we're looking at people making decisions that last at least a quarter because of the public health implications we may have 14 or 15 students in class that may not be a seat that is readily available and we can't flip sections very quickly but the other way around could happen anytime so for students who are taking in person they can flip to virtual for any reason any time and some of that's just going to happen when students are out sick we want them to have access to some of the courses and mini lessons so that they don't fall behind and this actually has some potential advantages around some flexibility with that we know that students if they even have symptoms and it may most of the time may end up being a cold or the flu they're going to need to stay out as ms consolino said until they get tested and well we're lucky in western massachusetts that our testing capacity is in very good shape and the turnaround time is much better than frankly horror stories that we hear from other parts of the country that's we still don't want students losing learning uh during that time so there's a lot of flexibility from the in-person to virtual much more rigid uh from the virtual tim person looking at the quarters as logical times for families to be able to reconsider that decision okay um forgive me if you've also already answered this i'm reading scrolling through all of the questions here but there are a few questions um regarding um special ed and and the um the priority groups um what what their in-person learning might look like versus virtual learning and they say it's joint miss brady has joined it so um thank you for those questions and um the personnel in the programs are developing the schedules for those students whose family choose for them to be in person for their learning as they are prioritized for phase one and the schedule will include their special education instruction and services as well as those students to access their if they're um they're scheduled to be in an academic class or a general education class that is still being offered remote they will be able to access those so we are um planning on um kind of a large amount of spaces available so that we can have students be able to access whatever class it is that they have in their schedule and in their iep um i think the most important thing for um that i'd like families to know is that the planning for a student's special education and instruction and services will all be guided by their iep so hopefully that answers all those questions there was an earlier question also about um students that are new to the district um uh this this school year um will they have opportunities to to meet um teachers and peers so i mean i don't know if one of the principals will take it i mean i can say that this is this is where it gets a little tricky with the public health so um they absolutely will but i think when we think about the ways by which we used to introduce new students um oftentimes those ways are less accessible now unfortunately given the public health guidance that is kind of the core of what we won't bend on so i do think there's opportunities for that to happen what we know is that so far even for our phase one families we have the majority of students suggesting or telling us that they'll return and some students won't so i do think for students who are new it is going to be a different environment and i think there will be more openness towards that because everything is going to be a little different it's not going to be exactly what we were doing on march 13th in the morning lots has changed in the world lots has changed locally and lots has changed for children so i think all students will feel like it's in their new students because they're gonna have to learn the new protocols and and ways they can connect so i do think in some ways oddly there will be an opportunity for all students to have a reset and if they're new they'll be part of that experience so i see there's a couple questions without if i could um about uh when people can expect to get schedules and that sort of thing um knowing that school is starting later virtual or in person not the 16th so i don't know if any of the principals are able to um talk a little bit about what they're thinking about in terms of timeline for for those types of things knowing that it's a new schedule and and i want to be really clear too before you answer that this is also part of negotiating we're meeting with our labor unions and and especially at the secondary level any schedule does need to be bargained and we're working on that with with our labor unions but just any sense uh on a timeline um so i can start so um as dr morris alluded to there are a lot of things that still need to be worked out so we're hoping to have them out the families in the first week of september because we have to make the schedules now we have to meet with guidance counselors and special ed folks to make sure that everybody is getting everything they need in terms of graduation credits we've been trying to fit as many of their requests into this um shortening block schedule or shooting for the first week of september i i would just echo that that's uh the timeline for the middle school board wanting to be able to push out schedules both families uh and to students uh by the end of that first week um so i think that's uh uh uh that would be uh september 4th uh which is hoping to make sure to have schedules on all right we're we're we're shooting for the you know that first week too but it's all all variable related obviously our seniors and juniors that you know that's critical that we make sure that the schedule fits in what exactly they need to graduate to move forward and so that's how we'll become developing of that but the variables around students are are going to be up in the air as well as as what you talked about negotiations [Music] dr morris i'm seeing a couple questions about um about the metrics and and timing of bringing students back into the schools um so i think that's getting at our phasing plan decision so yeah we're happy to talk if you aren't but if you want to start so there's a couple about the state system that started last week and why we aren't uh perhaps utilizing that one and um the um i think i'm glad the state is taking on a more proactive approach towards that i think the challenge is uh three of our communities for instance pelham and chutesbury will almost always be white on the map because they're so small they don't actually show up and about two-thirds of the state continues to be that way in amherst some of the metrics are also hard to compile because we don't actually know how many students are going to be living here uh it's a very different year uh the other thing we know is that when we look at town by town i know i grew up in a different state and counties where like the metric that you i mean the the bit that you would look at and i think there's some value there especially for some of these small communities there's a small community near us not in our re not in our district that went from zero percent percent positive uh they had no cases to seven percent because they had two cases in one week back to zero and so it's it's very very sensitive for small communities it's also the case that again in amherst you know when you're doing per hundred thousand we don't know what our student population is so uh we think that the metrics that are being recommended that places like cambridge although their numbers are higher they're less stringent than ours that are looking at multiple counties end up being a more reliable data source um many of us live um you know we have a school choice population um you know when many of us live right next to you know there's a three-town run that i go on between amherst belchertown and pelham and and you know our borders are porous right there's not gates up that separate us so thinking about the 95 percent of students who live in probably more than that even who live in hampshire and franklin county and and while not as high the bulk of staff who live in those places it felt like a regional approach like new york to state is using is is the best one and i think in terms of phasing it wasn't exclusively because of our metrics or our numbers it was really easing in to make sure our systems were in place that we were able to manage and actively support students when they return instead of moving quicker than we felt like we could accommodate uh we again tried to look at the students with the least amount of access to distance learning who often struggled the most in the spring i know it's really disappointing because right now i agree with some of the commenters our metrics are really low um you know which is great um that we don't have the same challenges and you know we want to make sure we get robust distance learning off to a great start at the secondary level it'll look a lot different than it did in the spring and then easing students in you know with the six foot distancing it means that we can't fit our students in the middle of school in high school so the idea of a full return to middle school in high school with six foot distancing isn't mathematically possible we've measured it out and and again about 15 desks or so depends on the room is as much as we can fit in and that that's quite a bit less than what um our typical class size is at the middle school in high school so you know we know there are other metrics um you know in the comment my personal opinion and conversation we had last week with the school committee we feel really comfortable that we're moving forward with metrics that has a regional approach that is inclusive of a larger quantity of people and the way we know community spread works we may not need to be worried as acutely as what happens in georgia or even in the boston area but in terms of hampshire and franklin county the towns are very small and looking at it in the aggregate gives us a better read on what's really happening in terms of community spread thank you um there is a question um from the middle school um about uh will there still be teaching teams will they still be on teams and and then also sort of related about uh math flex for seventh graders yes uh so actually the teaching teams are really critical part of the middle school and how we're organizing our instruction uh one of the things we're depending on is trying to create interdisciplinary models that allow teachers and certain disciplines to teach together so that there's less actual it appears to students that there would be less actual classes that they're working with and more uh more of an opportunity to to take a a stem class instead of a math and science class for example or taking a humanities class instead of having in separate english and separate social studies class so that that's still very much a part of how we're working and and yes students will be in teams um and teachers will be organizing the teams as well um in terms of in terms of the math flex model uh and how that's worked in the past it's actually something that we're looking at uh changing a little bit and we're currently having pretty intensive discussions with the math department uh in order to try and look at how we can better adapt to the needs of our students and our community with regard to that and that's something that that is still in process but the 8th grade the math program won't be changing for the 8th grade uh we're looking at the possibility of doing uh doing away with with uh the way it had been in the past and looking at a more heterogeneous math grouping in the seventh grade this year um and allowing other um math electives or math special courses like the geometry portfolio class to still exist for students who are seeking those opportunities as well great i believe um scrolling through the questions on the um the question about six feet versus three feet that is a that was a school committee decision and direction based on um all of the guidance that we've seen from um public health um professional organizations such as the cdc the w.h.o harvard's chan institute of public health and um and other sources um and that was oh yes that the answer is the school committee uh we are at just about 10 o'clock so i'm just scrolling up to see um i think there was you answered the team's question i think there's some questions if the metrics stay good would we be looking to accelerate the phasing at this point that's not in the plan but again that's feedback and i'll put in the comment or maybe sasha or debbie can that people can always email me at morrism.org or at arps.org excuse me or the school committee as school committee one word at arps.org that's not in the current plan but certainly if there's feedback or thoughts that you have around kind of policy level decisions that would be the best people to communicate and share your viewpoints um so there's a question mr sharon about i assume that this is eighth grade teams uh there was some work done to look at um how the seventh grade teams were working and perhaps make some modifications to those teams in eighth grade um so i don't know if you have specifics to share on that particular thing different than the larger question about teams yeah so uh there were some uh changes made to last year's seventh grade teams in preparation for this year uh and those teams were really we're trying to get better uh and more more pedagogically appropriate balancing in terms of those teams and so we felt it was important if we were going to be switching some students around because of course the value of teams is that students have the opportunity to see familiar faces uh in their in their instructional staff from from seventh grade to eighth grade and so we also did uh we also made a few changes uh and changed some teachers around um and and so so so students will be able to uh have some other teachers be the same teachers regardless of what team they ended up on um but so yeah there were some changes made uh in in trying to make uh uh groups that were uh better balanced uh and between the two teams and uh and we had we worked on that quite a bit this year with a number of teachers and and really trying to look at those groupings being equitable across the board and those are some changes that will be included in the schedules when they're received uh this year but but against not only students but also some teachers have moved around so that so that all students will be able to have some familiar faces uh in eighth grade trying to think if we missed any items 102 so i want to be conscious of that um while you're looking at that i'll just remind folks um the email uh the superintendent at morrism.arts.org or school committee at school committee at arps.org there's also a lot of information including a lot of past slides um this draft schedules um the flyer from miss consolino um as well as uh these slides will be posted there as well on the arps.org website if you go to the fall 2020 planning website that's where you'll find all of these materials yep and i saw a couple more that maybe we can we can close with a really good question and if i missed it i apologize i know you've everyone's touched on it about i'm going to get dr brady back over here about social emotional programming for students um you know it's timely because we're the administrative team is having a session on that tomorrow and i wondered certainly if you could start and then anyone certainly can jump in and add to that but i think it's a critical question i appreciate it because what we know is that this has been an incredibly difficult experience for all of us parents and children and families and caregivers and that we really do need to think a little differently about the social emotional supports that students will need upon return whether it's in a virtual and impersonal in-person environment sure so i'm glad that people are asking those questions because it's in the forefront of our minds and um i think we were grateful um towards the end of last year that we had a planning group with a variety of personnel who created some guidelines for us to utilize in this planning and as schools were developing their schedules and i think principal sharon spoke to this directly um that we wanted to make sure there was time in each schedule that specific explicit attention to meeting the needs and addressing the social emotional needs of our students as they transition back into school um one of the things that we are still actively talking about is what that will look like especially in the first several weeks of school that although there's academics in the schedule i think all the teachers are aware that um without acknowledging and addressing how to support the students and their social emotional needs just moving straight into academics will not be productive so i would say when kind of i think of things as kind of a concentric circle i think of the social emotional work and meeting the needs of all of our young people is has to be the large lens and then everything else that we do whether it's a math lesson an ela lesson will be within the context of that so um as dr maher said we are working gonna be working with our administrative team as to how to lead that in the most effective way so that we can be communicating that to all teachers so they we don't lose sight of that as a primary yeah i think that was a pretty comprehensive answer so i think the last question and again if it was answered and i missed uh it uh i apologize but mr sadiq this came up at some of the live town halls we did uh over the last couple weeks too about college counseling um and i don't know if you could share that information because i know it was it was it was really helpful for uh folks to hear uh when we were doing some of the live versions of this all right so um we have a great college and career counselor prosthetic grade so the plan is to have again some synchronous and asynchronous work that she'll be doing also try our best to open up the building to help to have time for students to come in and receive in person so getting through some of the application processes that they go through in order to move on to college or prepare for life after high school so again it's not completely upset yet but the plan is to have a combination of three synchronous asynchronous and in-person help in the beginning so early fall all the way through the first semester and trying to help students really prepare for life after high school yeah thank you and i think something i added to mr sadiq's comment at those events and i'll add here is last spring if you remember we all felt so uh incredible amount of empathy for our graduating seniors um and uh it we always there was so many comments of like this is the hardest thing to be a graduating senior during this time and have the last spring of your school experience uh be reduced in terms of the in person and all the events that students weren't able to do in the athletics the spring season and prom and even graduation well i think went well was very different and so we all want to say that you know we acknowledge that particularly for rising junior and really for rising seniors they've been in this for a while and it's incredibly difficult uh to think through uh what the implications are and that's why you know miss duffy gray which mr sadiq mentioned coffee excuse me coffee gray as mr sadiq mentioned we're all really dedicated to making this work as best as possible and with particular attention focused on that that population um the two other things i want to share is what's next um so uh people um uh we are as we mentioned in bargaining with our bargaining units our unions and and so when things get finalized we'll be able to share those out but we have to be a little cautious even in terms of how much is synchronous we can say very clearly the state is expecting us directly in all states all districts in massachusetts to have direct synchronous instruction on a routine regular basis and that's really different from what occurred in the spring so people will see a difference within that attendance will be taken those types of things and structures in power school will will exist much more similarly to they did in the past but we'll be able to share more clarity as that that process concludes i want to give ms richardson who's our ell coordinator there weren't specific questions that came uh but i do want to give her just a quick minute to talk about some of the services and supports uh that we're thinking about for some of our ell students hi so um i guess there's there's a lot to think about of course and um similar to special education but looking from a really different lens we'll be looking to support english learners in as always building their language acquisition as well as accessing core content of all the classes that they need to participate in so for our phase one students we're looking to invite them to schools so that we can do more intensive english language development because we know that to provide the services that we're really being asked to provide by the department of education at the level of engagement that we'd like to see for language development we do really feel that there's a strong benefit for that to be in person certainly families will have the option to choose that or not but there's a different kind of support level that's available with staff and translation and all of the pieces that we need to make sure that they're getting the instruction and then also to be able to access for example a math class and get the support so even if they are participating in a class remotely that they're with a cohort and a team that's really supportive of making sure that that content becomes accessible to them that's something that we do you know work really intensively with our our staff and collaborate across departments to do when we are in person and we need to find ways to replicate that so as much as possible we'll be doing that with our beginner students as we transition back and then certainly we'll be looking for what are the extra kinds of supports that we can provide in collaboration for remote learning between our english learner education teachers as well as our content teachers so that's just a brief overview thank you mr richardson i appreciate it um and and i know this is getting translated and actually recorded um so people if you are watching this and someone couldn't make it uh this same link you're watching on for the english version will will go on uh indefinitely at there will be available indefinitely and we're recording the ones in different languages so we can uh be proactively sharing that out with families uh who for whom english is not their primary language um so you know 10 11 so we did pretty well on time um i'm going to put dr brady back on um i think there's a specific question about 504 plans and this will be our last one and who would be the coordinator for 504 plans at the high school level either either actually dr brady or mr sadiq might be able to answer that question so i can start and then mr speak um you know jump in if um there's something different than what i say but um that will not change from during the school year so typically at the high school um the guidance counselor will be monitoring and developing any changes to 504 plans and that will continue and i think it is important to note that the plans um for 504 will continue to be shared with teachers and the modifications or interventions that are indicated on that plan will continue during this time of remote instruction so mr sadiq anything to add to that i think you did a good job dr brady very good well again thank you thank you for all the kind comments that have come through in the chat we really appreciate you coming in to watch this and we do really encourage you to for people who couldn't attend at this time that this link again will be accessible indefinitely and and um to be in touch with us as more questions emerge you know we're about a month out from the first day of school and that's uh we're in a really different place usually we'd be thinking about school starting much sooner and not having as many significant changes but the thing i want to say share publicly is just how strong our team is and that's been really critical um for all of our secondary schools um and central office and rupert roy clark's not on here but he's does our facilities work and he's been added as well as other people assistant principals and others who have been at it uh you know we really appreciated the feedback we know we've we've given so many surveys we've gotten some critique of survey fatigue but you know we're going to keep doing that because we want to continue to hear from the community about the best plan moving forward and how to best support their children and so thank you it's again 10 15 so we'll end it here more questions please do follow up with us email and thanks for tuning in bye

the kids have to break my [Music] we just started mic check is good the new jersey open public business law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced service and of and to attend meetings of public bodies at which time any business affected their interest is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act and board of education policy 0162 the board of education of the borough of baton rouge as far as notice that this needs to be hosted in the bound uh in the boundary office and at founder high school and now for facts to the current news founder carol clerk southbound board of education anchor who is i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states [Music] here here here monster yeah martinez here morris here stevens here um i think we're i mean the biggest thing we're here to tonight came about after governor murphy amended how he said schools were allowed to open and then it caused a lot of questions within the board and we felt that the best way to deal with them was in person so instead of going back and forth through emails texts and so on for that it would be a better platform not just for the for us but for the public to hear and the discussion to be had as to do we continue on the road that we originally set out and that is what we're here to do and i hope if anyone has questions that you know by the end of today's meeting we have answers and we can vote accordingly okay so so there's only two times republican can ask questions of the board obviously uh the next uh opportunity will be for agenda items only which will be coming up after my report and then at the end of the board meeting when it's open to the public while the board is deliberating nobody from the public should be asking questions nor should they be interjecting while the board is having a discussion so with that i will start my part of my presentation so the first item uh the only item on the agenda for the board to approve this evening is the restart recovery plan so we approved that at the last board meeting and it was submitted to the county prior to our last board meeting but they did not get back to us with that uh changes that needed to be made um they came back to us um after i believe they're actually right on tuesday after the board meeting and the changes that they wanted were highlighted in yellow for everybody and as you'll see in the appendixes um the template always had should include at every appendices they wanted the word should taken out and only the word includes so that was the substantial changes to our restart recovery plan so um as per the account that's the one thing that we are going to approve tonight is those changes that were made to the restart recovery plan with that um i would like to go over the guidance that we received thursday on [Music] um the code health guidelines which do impact us quite a bit and we'll be answering a lot of questions that we are receiving because we haven't been able to answer these questions today but now that we have the guidance you can answer these questions so tom if you'd be so kind to put on the projector site to go over this powerpoint i greatly appreciate it because the board members would like to go sit out in the in the seats so you see the presentation feels great [Music] thank you that's what i was trying to say before so one of the things that the uh this health um piece that came out on thursday basically sets up um regional areas uh within the in the state and there's several regional pieces they also come up with a color code system for each of these regional areas green yellow orange and red for factors of the outbreak of coven and where we are in terms of how we're going to uh to adjust to each of these factors the website at the bottom um and i will put this powerpoint out on our website so everybody can have it they can go to these links later but that website on the bottom there is going to be where they're going to post their weekly um updates of what color of what region everybody's in okay so i will make sure that's out so for us we are in central west with harmony and mercer and somerset county so obviously one of the questions that we have which again one of the board members brought to my attention was we're on the border with middlesex and middlesex is in central east but we also our school choice district where we get roughly 35 students most of which are going to come out of union county out of plainfield which i believe they are in central east so again we have we have some some some pieces we have to flush out with the department on that so far everything i've been told is we're in central east go by central east do not worry about what's going on over in um i mean we're in central west do not worry about what's going on in central east regardless of where the kids are coming from at this time so this is the actual current report for the week of august ending august 8th as you can see central west we're already in modern we're already in yellow so just want to be clear about that we already yellow status already so if you look at the yellow status it says implement remote learning for students and staff at high risk of severe illness considered hybrid learning approaches and are fully remote that's the document that we received in response to covert 19 positive staff where students follow perfect exclusion scenarios that are attached with this particular document more importantly if you look at the orange implement fully remote learning unless schools can ensure complete adherence to all prevention and control measures if schools remain open for in-person learning in response to staff for students who who is token 19 positive or has code for 19 cents not yet tested folliclovic 19 exclusion criteria within the local health department to identify and exclude closed contacts according to cdc guidance so basically if we get if we end up in the orange we're going to close and go fully virtually so i have to be honest and tell you that right now if we hit the orange we're going to be all fully broken so again this is going over the different levels the different things that you have to do according to each of the uh the criteria um again from green yellow orange red then it give you these the basis scenarios so scenario one one confirmed case the school school remains open students and staff in coast contact with a positive case are excluded from school for 14 days two or more cases in the same classroom of an outbreak limited to one cohort school remains open students and staff in close contact with a positive case are excluded from school for 14 days recommendations as whether the entire class would be considered exposed would be based on public health investigation so in other words the determination would not be coming from us whether the entire class is going out for 14 days it's going to come from the local health officials whether the entire class goes out for 14 days two or more cases within 14 days but are linked to a clear alternative exposure that is unrelated to the school setting and unlikely to be a source of exposure for the larger school community example in the same household exposed to the same event outside of school school remains open staff students in close contact with the positive case are excluded from school for 14 days two or more cases within 14 days linked together by some activity in school but who are in different classrooms outbreaking involved multiple cohorts recommendations for whether a school closure is indicated will be based on the investigation by local health officials again so what they're saying is based upon that in this investigation there's a possibility based on those two cases that an entire building may be closed a significant community outbreak is occurring or has recently occurred large group event large local employer that has impacted multiple staff students families served by the school community consider close to school school for 14 days best upon investigation two or more cases are identified within 14 days that occur across multiple classrooms has a clear connection between cases or is suspected to be confirmed cases of covet 19 cannot easily identify outbreak involving multiple cohorts close school for 14 days so basically what they're saying is if you have two kids in multiple cohorts that are preferred coven and you can't back trace them to a local incident they're basically telling you to close through 14 days so you have to understand that two cases could literally close a school building for 14 days and then obviously the very high community transit rate will close schools until over 19 transmission rates decline so i wanted to go over that because those are the type of questions i've been getting as the superintendent in terms of uh parents learning about like um what are we gonna do if johnny c in this class has to get closing what's the protocols how we're gonna handle this we've been waiting for this guidance we finally got this guy so i wanted to share this guidance i will be taking this guidance along with this powerpoint i will put it up on the website tomorrow so everybody can review it at your leisure so does anybody have any questions about that [Music] um at that point yeah okay because i mean that's a little ambiguous i'm talking about in-person learning again at any point in time anybody who's in person that's going to go um quarantine to me you're flipping the switch you're just going virtual because you can't worry there's no transmission over internet live so again school's going to continue on on our normal calendar it's just a matter of who's in person and who's doing work if a student um for 14 days and they don't want to stay remote learning are they allowed back to school after the working day as long as they're cleared by a physician yes do we define the word cohort when it says if they're in the same code or not what does that mean exactly again that's why we did those surveys early on with parents because basically what we're doing is we're putting kids in a cohort right okay so they're in the same class that class is now the cohort so whatever class they're assigned to that's their code but high school high school is much different that's really what i'm wondering i get that that cohort will be the and my other question i don't think you have this answer but it said um the school that some point would close until the transmission rate declines did they give you a number of declines to what did they say i'm assuming that the high number is what the government constantly talks about is that transmission rate of less than one less than one okay okay so if there's no more other questions about this i'd like to move to my next topic [Music] so i have been as you guys know pretty much sending out multiple surveys to the staff my biggest concern obviously is um with the staff um i wanted to make sure that that we have our staff here when we open so one of the issues of that i relate to you last week during our meeting was the multiple different schedules that parents have to deal with um for their own kids versus hours and their own schedules and things like that and after this governor's announcement and the number of schools that are now going virtual has also made that not an easy um piece to deal with so i know as of right now we have 17 teachers with potential child care leaves um sitting in our human resources office 17 so so as you can see 71 staff members filled this out um and you see all the different scenarios that we put forth and you can see the different responses of the different schedules everybody else has so again just so many different schedules that everybody's running throughout the state so six staff members responded that they would probably need to take fmla or the child care leave depending on circumstances um related to child care 22 staff members stated that they would like help from the district so they can come to work for child care and as of right now uh we have 14 out of the 22 follow up on survey two for you know what grade their kids are in and you know other little little pieces that that we would need to know to try and help them out with child care so as of right now we have a total of of possibly 17 students this will be offered to anybody with children's grades one through eight and you see the breakdown it's great one in grade one five in grade two three and grade three two in grade four two in grade five three in grade six zero grade seven one grade eight so that's pretty much the number of students we're currently talking about i will tell you that number will probably change and go up okay the costs if the student if the teachers have to take the lead we're looking at probably 125 a day and substitute costs for roughly 12 weeks for the 14 teachers that we're talking about for those 17 kids from now until roughly december 21st we're looking at about 140 000 impact to the district so i went out and talked to work family connection work family connection to brought a program inside our district for our teachers um and roughly cost the district about 45 000 and we could roughly save 90 000 and it would be a great incentive to the teachers to make sure they came to work if we could offer them this particular um opportunity to make sure we can have their kids come to work with them have a safe place for their kids and let them get out of our wireless system obviously we'd have to work through some logistics of them signing off on some sort of code of conduct our technology use policies things like that obviously um but we're family connection would have the people there to see the kids uh make sure they're doing their class work we'd have a separate entrance they would not be coming in with our kids um we would probably use the uh cafeteria over at smalling so we just put the new engines in there so they can come in that way so they wouldn't be interacting with our kids um they can come in through that door they would use the bathrooms we obviously could feed them if we needed to and things like that and uh i think it just would be a good incentive to make sure our teachers come to work um and make sure we take care of both their kids and give them a peace of mind while we're making sure we're educating our kids so i'm just putting that out to you um as a possibility um i would like some direction on that when when the opportunity comes from you guys to give me some direction on that but i do think that this is something that i would like to uh to pursue for our teachers um you know just try to get them something to help get to the work and give them a peace of um if mind number goes up is it still 45 000 or is that based on only 17.

mike davenport here shirelle fuller here dan nicholas here terry pavich here rick pepinado joanna vazquez drexler president pledge allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we'll start with um an approval of minutes for the july 20th 2020 business meeting the july 27th 2020 special workshop meeting and the august 3rd 2020 workshop meeting with anthony mike thank you terry pavich aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye dan nicholas aye rick pavinato aye joanna vazquez drexler and nancy kupka aye the minutes are approved next is the reception of visitors the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience do we have anybody waiting to comment uh no we receive no comments we receive no comments receive no comments okay then we'll move on to recommendations and reports of superintendent returning to school dr all right so to provide the board and our public on returning to school uh just to review this is the timeline up to this point um a couple of things have happened since we met the last time including new well specifically the most important part is new illinois department of public health uh guidelines that were released last wednesday uh excuse me either but maybe can we turn him up or come a little closer am i the only person having trouble hearing him i'm having trouble here tim can you get my mic up a little bit spin how's that any better can you hear me now no he's got to say a little more a little more can you hear me now i can hear you now all right okay thanks tim yeah thank you okay so last week uh on wednesday we received additional guidance from the illinois department of public health we had been told that the friday before that we would be receiving information and when that friday went by we had seen that there was new rules fire filed by the idph that i'll just explain in a second that we thought was going to turn over guidelines to the dupage county health department instead we got these surprising 4 pm guidelines two to two work days before school was going to start which is not enough time to work through and i'll explain that process in a second so we ended up going remote today's the first day of school and we'll work remote for a little while here and i'll explain that process later on this evening but it's kind of how we ended up where we're at so uh the changes that we're really factoring in here is that emergency rule uh the new guidelines that came out last wednesday which results in us having this week one modified schedule remote which is really to get the year kicked off get to know students get to set up expectations make sure that students can connect online and be up and and working and then for at least the next two weeks we'll be in the remote schedule um and we'll go uh through that then beyond week four is still to be determined we're still going to work towards in-person learning i mean that's the ultimate goal is to be able to do that but we're still awaiting additional illinois department of public health guidance including metrics and i'll walk through that process in a second here so this rule that i was talking about what it basically breaks down and says that the occurrence of an outbreak amongst our you know inside of one of our buildings is consistent with this clause 690.30 okay and then closure results in shifting to remote instruction as imposed to in-person instruction so the old laws and rules around pandemics talk about physically closing a school building the new rules talk about shifting from in-person learning to remote as we did heading into today if we look at this uh control of communicable diseases code that it references back here all right so there's the reference 690.30 c this is what 690.30 c says this is existing language around pandemics and outbreaks so except in an emergency which is the key those first three words are the important part this is what we need to find through metrics from somebody from some health organization whether that be the local health department or illinois department of public health this is what many board members including dr kupka have been asking for all summer i had a meeting in july to talk with isb about getting these metrics with senator curran we're still waiting on them but uh this is you know the idea was that uh closing schools or with this new law move or new rule moving to remote instruction is done in cooperation with the local health department okay so what what it breaks down to well i thought i had this screen up here there's the there's the rules so accept an emergency right we don't consider closing the school except for is recommended by the local health department okay this has been there for years okay so the new rule points to the old rule and in the end what we believed last week was that we were going to get these metrics that idph through getting this rule passed kind of told the local health departments come up with metrics to provide your schools last thursday morning i was in a meeting with the dupage county health department that had worked for the whole week with health departments around the region to put together these metrics and then we were informed about an hour after that meeting that those were not what's going to be released because illinois department of public health would be coming out with metrics okay so just feel like the the goal just keeps shifting around between people and those of us at the local level whether it's those of us that are superintendents or those in the dupage county health department still continue to get late unclear guidance from the state levels and and this is just what has continued to happen all summer and is continuing to happen now into this week so we believe that the local health department would be providing these metrics and guidelines they were prepared to but then we're told not to what we know all along is that no matter what happens with the metrics it's really up to local superintendents to make the call as to whether we're in person or remote we'd consult with the local health departments but the way we understand it it's still up to the local superintendents to determine this we could argue all night about whether that's the right call or not but that's where it says ultimately what happened was last week we didn't have any of this guidance to go on but instead we received this whole new set of guidelines that none of us expected to see there was no advanced notice we got at the same time that the public got it as has happened with state guidelines also these are the major changes that were in there but we really only had two days to implement them any of these guidelines require us to review the guidelines with our attorneys requires to put processes in place communicate them to our faculty and staff and have it in place and worked out before students get here two work days before students are going to come back it was not enough time to do the legal review to to do everything that i just outlined uh so really you know we have all these major changes we know that there's more coming we expect that sometime this week those metrics and additional idph guidelines are coming it's totally i can't open school for in person unless i know what the safety guidelines are to do so so we need this time to understand it to educate people the medical review the legal review of these kinds of things and to build protocols okay so just a quick overview this one out in the message to the community but just to review in case any board members have any questions about it this is really the just to narrow there was a lot of concerns in that document that we have but the key concerns to kind of just flip the switch for the administrative team here to say we can't come back in person are these so this old guideline that in close contact was 15 minutes at a time now it's 15 15 minutes over the course of an entire day in a high school with passing periods and buses and common area areas and classrooms activities occurring after school it's nearly impossible i don't know how we could ask any student to tell us who add up all the time you spent with people who did you spend 15 or minutes more with three days ago i mean it's just not likely that anybody's going to be able to track that we'll we'll look and see if there is a way of tracking that but we haven't we haven't sat down to even work through it because we've been working on just getting school started the next one is documentation of assigned seats taking photos of assembled classes so part of the whole person of bringing a whole purpose of bringing students back for in-person learning is so that they can move around and do things in the classroom and somewhat interact with one another i don't know how we track every time a student moves in a classroom and run a stopwatch for every time they're next to somebody different it's impossible yeah i mean yeah these are very difficult to me the next one was uh two confirmed cases of infections occurring within 14 calendar days of other individuals within the same classroom would be considered an outbreak so that would meet that criteria then to go from in-person to remote learning the challenge we have in the hybrid model is to meet all those other requirements of keeping people six feet apart we have all of these intricate schedules of a b and kids that are there on different days so just because a student is positive for kovid and was in a classroom now we have to sort out were they in the a group or the b group were they both at school at that same time were they out of school so every one of these is now a logistical challenge to work through to find out if it meets that criteria are they together on the same sports team are they you know where could that nexus be at school tracking that is not something that we had worked through up to this point then there's a whole part in diagnostic testing this new requirement about anybody who displays covid like symptoms while at school needs to get tested uh well right now testing is a challenge and turnaround is a challenge it's two to four days on average to get a result back uh if you can get a test this is a challenge going to be a challenge for families that want to send students to school but it's a major challenge for us trying to keep schools staffed that somebody's going to be out for for 10 days or when a result comes back but if a result doesn't come back for four days they're still out for at least those four days you know it starts to become very challenging to staff a building this way and i might be wrong but they're asking for rt pcr tests they're not asking for a screening test i think in the guidelines which means that it takes even longer yeah i just know from the i don't know the intricacies of the testing i just know dupage county health department said best case scenario is two days in getting a return um so this one is if you have covered like symptoms but you don't have covid you still need a doctor's note saying that you don't have covid and that same negative test result this for some of our families will be a major challenge and for some of our staff doing that is a major challenge if you add on top of that if you have reoccurring system symptoms that are covered like you need to go through that same process but then have a negative test on a weekly basis to return to school i don't know how i'm going to staff a building with with that especially if you're waiting four days for a result every time you go in even if somebody tried to do this i don't know how it's manageable for any individual to go through that level of testing on a reoccurring basis how many weeks would this go on i mean if as long as covet exists so once you once you've had covet-like symptoms correct so if you have i now have to get a test every week for now till who knows when so who knows when so if you have seasonal allergies and you're showing covid-like symptoms you need a doctor's note that says you have covet-like symptoms or you have seasonal allergies and then weekly you need to get tested to make sure that that those symptoms aren't due to covid they're due to your seasonal allergies so seasonal allergies is going to knock out a third of our the student body has allergies from september so according to this guideline the only way they can participate in school is to have this doctor's note in a weekly negative test if they have ongoing covet-like symptoms even financially i would think that's going to get disastrous correct this is a pretty big burden on any individual staff or student i all right i'll let you finished going through all these guidelines and i have some questions this extends now to also household members so if a sibling comes home and has coveted like symptoms or a staff member comes home and their child has coveted like symptoms or spouse they are now quarantined for 14 calendar days you cannot you must be quarantined until an alternative diagnosis is made or a negative result is received test result is received so we're in that same kind of this delay so you could start to see for students it's going to be really difficult for teachers because you're gonna have kids on these rotating calendars of when they can leave when they can return you know i have six kids today i might have seven tomorrow and then three the next day you know there's gonna be in in-person learning you start to get to this is not going to be a quality experience for anyone if kids aren't coming back on a regular basis if teachers can't come back on a regular basis it it just becomes not a great experience for anybody um so this is when the administrative team took a look at these as they came out um we were already concerned about what the metrics might say about returning which we we still haven't seen yet but seeing these things we realized very quickly that this would be a challenge to me i discussed them with the dupage county health department after having a discussion with them i decided that the most prudent thing to do with two days before school started was to just immediately shift to remote learning and then before i take questions on these this is a common question that i've seen on social media and via email is that these are just guidelines that the state is providing but these rules when illinois department of public health provides quote unquote guidelines to a school they're not optional right they're the health experts i am not i have to assume that everything that they're telling us is designed to keep students and staff members safe that it's for no other reason than that for that reason to protect this the district and taxpayers not only just to keep them health healthy but to protect us from liability you know we don't want to end up being sued over this well first of all we want somebody to get sick and we don't want somebody also to come after us with a legal claim and cost the district and taxpayers a bunch of resources and time as a result of that so the way we look at this is that shoulds from illinois department of public health to come shalls right we must follow these guidelines these guidelines are essentially mandates and finally we still expect to receive additional guidance in the coming days we expect that illinois department of public health will release these metrics that we've been asking for all summer and i'll explain what i think will be in those metrics based on the conversations i've had with the health department in a moment we'll get additional legal guidance on interpreting the guidelines so yes we must follow them but our attorneys always provide us you know here's what it means to follow these things and to protect your students and staff we also know that there's additional guidance coming soon on data collection what we need to collect around students and staff members that are ill and then how those metrics will be used in determining if we can return to in-person learning and then finally some guidance on how superintendents are supposed to use all of this information to determine if we can and should transition back to in person from remote or once we're in in person go back to remote these are all things i hope you can hear i know i have a mask on but from the tone of my voice that have frustrated great me greatly over the summer and especially over the last week that is schools across the state are trying to return students to school we don't have superintendents don't have the information that we need to make those decisions in a safe and timely manner so mike you said you had some questions yeah um so it would seem to me that the department of public health issues guidelines for people to adhere to i've it it almost seems to me though that they've issued guidelines that are impossible to adhere to i mean i i i i'm not i mean and i just tell you i mean this was just devastating for so many families i mean we we so many heartfelt conversations we had here this board our staff trying to do the right thing for our students trying to find a way to balance the risk with the reward and we've we finally came to a consensus a unanimous consensus and uh then i have just all yanked away by these guidelines is it was this is devastating um i fully agree with the decision i mean i i don't i don't see how we could have decided anything differently because these shoulds are shells but i don't i mean is it even is it even worth our time now to try to try to figure out how to comply with any of these guidelines knowing that i mean just on their on the face it seems like a waste of our time um that's a fair question mike but what typically happens is this guidance comes out is that all the guidance comes out then there's webinars and meetings with the experts so we can better understand because maybe there's something in here that i that our team is not interpreting and superintendents across dupage county are not interpreting correctly so this isn't just you no you've been talking to once this came out the last four districts in dupage high school districts in dupage county that were going to a hybrid model we all were forced to move to remote as a result of this now you know hopefully the additional guidance will come out this week then hopefully we'll have webinars and those kinds of things where we can talk with the experts to better understand it through that sometimes we we find like oh well you know we said this but if you do this there's a pathway and this is how we spent our whole summer working to get to the point of the hybrid model would be okay here's the guidelines our team would sit down and talk through okay we think we could meet that by doing this we'd go to the experts and say all right if we do this thing can we bring kids back yes that'll work okay we'd go to legal and talk through legally we're protecting our students are we protecting for liability in this is our policy correct our instructions correct to protect us legal would sign off on it right then we eventually get to the board and have the board sign off on that that that for every new set of guidelines that's three weeks worth of work right you know so um i don't know you know we need three or four weeks to work through this this unfortunately it didn't come over the summer when administrators had time without students and staff here now we have to balance this work with students and staff trying to educate everybody at the start of the year so hank sorry so you know i'm the biggest one of the biggest supporters of a hybrid but to be fair with these new metrics and to be fair to our students and to be fair to the teachers and the staff i don't know how you can plan for a return this semester i just don't know if it's possible you know once we get new id ph guidelines once we get new guidelines from dupage once we work through all the legal issues you're talking a minimum of five to six weeks from now before they can go back at that point you're nine weeks into the school year with what six weeks to go before winter break and and the teachers sitting there not knowing whether or not they're going to be in classroom or out of class i just i mean i i share your frustration it's just very frustrating but at this point at what point do you would you recommend um and this is going to sound bad i don't mean it this way but i just don't have a better expression at what point you pull the plug in the semester with wanting to go back to school yeah that's i i share that same question here is when when i read through all this i almost felt like they should just make a call at this point and maybe they have nobody said because how does the administration keep wallowing through this week after week you know because now we're actually have started school right so yeah i'd like at least the upper i'd like at least the opportunity to see what the new guidelines are this week see if after they've seen this and seen how schools have had to respond to it if the you know if sometimes clarifications come out you know there's different stuff that comes along and give us you know another week or so here to see what the next round of guidance is and then from there make the decision especially because inside of that will be the metric pieces which i'll kind of explain what i understand those will work like in a second so i'd rather not throw in the towel today or this week i'd rather get the week started we we already were planning on remote for a couple of weeks give it time for the dust to settle on this and see if it if it's realistic no i was just gonna say for instance the one about going from 15 minutes to 15 minutes a day 15 minutes at one time to 15 minutes a day is there any explanation that's provided how we went from that measurement that metric to the other metric no the the guidelines did not come with rationale that's why because that's such a drastic change on the guideline it is a drastic change many of these are drastic changes okay this one uh terry i can't can you speak another one i'm sorry it still doesn't uh doesn't sound like it's can you hear me that yeah yeah i know it's hard to talk but um and it doesn't address that when the regular flu season comes into play because um you know all of those symptoms are very similar to the flu season symptoms and you know that's going to put us right back where we started from and that could start uh middle of october so you know that doesn't give us a whole lot of time in between yeah i'm really sharing uh dan's feeling on this i i mean you know the saying fool me once you know shame on you fool me twice shame on me i don't trust the state i don't i don't trust i don't trust that if they if we could even submit our plan to them and have them approve the plan i don't trust that they would you know we'll get right close to it again and they'll yank it from us i don't think there's some sort of nefarious role on the state i mean these guidelines frankly except for the 15 cumulative minutes are no different than a business or even a hospital for reason for uh healthcare workers the difference is the setting because it's easier to manage in business or even in a hospital sure it's almost a possible advantage in a conversation like a school right so why don't they just come out and say in those settings it's just not possible to do it your school should be closed because mike i think in some of the smaller schools it is possible because then you would lose like one class okay out of a school right in a smaller elementary school district sure this might be absolutely possible but in a big school district you know we were talking tomorrow we should have been bringing back almost 2 000 people to this building yes when you talk about the number of contacts people have and the number of staff it takes to run that setting yeah it just you can see how this falls apart here right if you're in a small school district of you know same teacher with the same group of kids in the same classroom all day long you might be able to manage that but in a big huge high school like ours these become too weighted well they put some metrics around the size of this yes they could have done no these are our guidelines if you are this big this big yo i don't you also have to think about the community so if you're in a school in the middle of illinois that is at a lower number of cases for 100 000 it's different than we're currently at 91 or 93.

uh so [Music] um [Music] um [Music] order agenda [Music] yes foreign i'd like to welcome turn strawberries um director for region 110 and along with our business manager we'll be presenting the budget which we share with the other cooperating districts we have a fiscal agent now for efe 110 something that we can be proud of i'd also like to thank the administrators that are joining us tonight we've had handbook changes related to the leopard school that we'll cover and of course director of facilities and following as we talk about our reopening plan now what is the ef t110 just for the people internet fu10 is for our career tech pathways that we um are in cooperation with with u46 charleston district 300 we also hear some public correspondence that i'd like to um this is on read of sharon white and her family uh months of her mother the board of education district office staff thank you for the flower arrangement and your expression of sympathy during this time your support and prayers are very much appreciated sharing white and family all right public participation i'll enter seven o'clock this evening because we have a full agenda there are times a budget and of course further discussion on the reopening plan i said everyone who speaks be respectful of everyone else's time keep your by chance we don't get to your comment please send me an email to the board or to the district office thank you for your cooperation and understanding so we've got things i'll call people here first to go to the podium there i think the lights on and you can say you're versus amanda um i have hearing aids and the only way to control some people that are soft is on my phone so if you see me on my phone it's i'm adjusting my volume so it's hard with a minute especially hard for me no problem i'm amanda reckinger i am a district parent and i just have a few questions that i'm hoping will be addressed tonight um first why does the board feel that for remote students receiving only 20 minutes of simultaneous live instruction from teachers is best practice under your 612 plan the new curriculum is expected to a new curriculum is expected to be taught every day through simultaneous in-person and online instructions yet the remote students may not have mastered the curriculum from the previous day how will the teachers properly educate students taking part at home remotely who had technical difficulties or simply didn't understand the simultaneous instruction provided that day why is it that early childhood through fifth grade is allowed to attend in person on wednesday now but that's not offered to the students in 612.

well good afternoon everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for tuesday august 18 2020. could i have a roll call please ms genter chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen ameral here mary waite here john nunes john nunes is he muted i'm here sorry i'm here i had muted myself i apologize we'll forgive you mr news this time this time only okay uh per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting the meeting will be conducted remotely members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be a rebroadcast and dc tv channels 9 and 18 in the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 00 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 00 am and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practice practicable this is the time in the meeting where we would typically take public comment relative tonight's meeting agenda if you would like to comment please email kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org and your email will be shared with committee members and available for review once tonight's meeting minutes are approved i would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the numerous emails in respect in respect to public comment that we have already received today the committee members receive them i believe uh miss genter acknowledges their receipt and she will email you and she will send the committee uh your public comments that being said i would like to take a minute here before we continue with the agenda uh just to go over a couple of things while i understand not everyone is happy with our decision nor did i expect them to be i will continue to respect your opinions and concerns relative to our reopening plan i can appreciate parents and guardians being concerned for their children and wanting what's best for them just like you i want what's best for my daughter who also attends the dartmouth public schools that being said it is the school committee and administration's responsibility to see the big picture in what is in the best interest for our four thousand plus students and staff here in dartmouth the logistics the metrics and recommendations from all stakeholders and were considered in last week's decision that being said ultimately i feel after dr gifford's presentation tonight it is my hope that the dartmouth community will find our plan is really not all that different from other area communities as of last week's meeting we voted to start remote with a transition to hybrid as soon as possible even with all the work dartmouth and other communities in the area and across the state have done these are only remember these are only proposed plans they are fluid and they will ultimately be dictated by covid19 statistics that being said i will entertain a motion for the approval of the regular in executive session minutes uh let's start with the regular session minutes of august 3rd in august 10th 2020 so moved by second so i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by miss amaral on the motion any further discussion you're hearing none roll call miss gunther miss oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amer yes mary wait yes john nunes yes thank you very much miss skenter thank you committee at this time i'll entertain motion for the executive uh let's i'm sorry i really should have taken the regular session minutes for august 3rd and august 10th together um but we'll um we'll approve the regular session minutes of august 10th at this time and then we'll take one motion for the executive session minutes for both dates i thought we did approve both the third and the tenths mr chair did i say that i'm sorry we're good perfect thank you mr nunes so i'll i'll entertain the motion for the executive session at this time so uh mr chairman with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete a second thought i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion uh roll call please miss gunther chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen emeril yes mary waite yes john nunes yes uh thank you again everyone at this time um under old business uh discussion pertaining to the back to school plan i am going to turn it over uh to dr gifford um so she can share with us uh updated information that she has relative uh to the reopening okay thank you i will be sharing my screen i hope let's see okay up let me get back to okay that's fine okay so as you mentioned mr oliver um we did vote last week for um to begin remote with with the promise of having a plan a tentative dates um and what our plan would be to move into hybrid so that's what we'll be discussing tonight um and as always like last week i wanted to provide some clarifications for some some of the questions we've received all of us have tried to answer folks um but also know that some things will be answered tonight and hopefully people will have some clarification so i just wanted to clarify that once again the june survey that we sent or it might have been early july was really just a temperature check unlike what some folks are thinking it was a vote obviously a situation like this we we can't vote what we think is the best um plan of action we can only use that as at least a sense of what people are thinking so with that um you know we did in the beginning obviously we wanted to uh get right into hybrid that was our intention right from the beginning but as data started to uh pile up and and some issues came up we did what we did and made the vote to start in remote um the survey that folks just received recently uh um that one is meant to give us more information as we are developing cohorts in our transportation plan for when we go back to hybrid i understand that some folks wanted more information i answered people that asked us that certainly they can still submit and change submit their information once they've heard tonight's presentation and even as we get closer to uh hopefully the chance that we get back to school it was as i said just meant to gather as much data as we could because some folks are pretty set already on what their plan is some do need more information and that's fine so we try to get a quick turnaround because we are planning our cohorts and like i said the transportation planning is um quite involved um so i just also wanted to say that well i kind of just said a lot of that um but we we also folks mentioned the governor's metric tool that he released i just want folks to remember that was released after our vote so unfortunately we didn't have that information and the friday before the governor's press briefing was about how the upticks had happened he had implemented a uh task force if you will to find people etc and that they decrease the number of people to be in in a group together inside so listening to that on the friday was part of the data we used of thinking geez what's going on and then of course we took our vote and tuesday we had the metric so going forward of course that will be part of our some of our tools that we'll use i also want people to be reminded that this is everything that we talk about here and that the committee votes on isn't is a proposal we still have an obligation to bargain all of the existing conditions of employment we are continuing those bargaining sessions we actually have one coming up this thursday um and as a reminder please send questions questions related to any of this to questions at dartmouthschools.org if you um comments such as the comments for uh tonight's meeting we continue to send those to ms genthner that's we're trying to keep that separate because we are planning to have an faq virtual meeting if you will after this to see what other questions are still out there to to continue to provide folks with information so i just want to go over a few things and there's a few updates when we consider moving into hybrid as i told you last time we have some enhanced cleaning protocols we are working to add hours and um during the day to maintain you can really get those high high touch areas and continue to maintain those and keep them clean we have got purchased some air purifiers and also mr kylie um has purchased those electrostatic sprayers which will be used nightly in the areas in the classrooms um and of course the the spray the chemical has is all approved and we did discuss this with the local director of public health as well we do continue to have sufficient and proper ppe and we do still feel that a slow roll into this really provides teachers and students with a chance to get used to this new model and to do it right we're looking at now the change in weather and the reduced heat i know when we did the building tours two weeks ago uh that was a concern in some of those areas i have to say we mr kylie and the director of public health and the town nurse did another building tour um i guess it was yesterday yes yesterday monday and um i was happy to feel that much more comfortable in the buildings of course we had that cool weather come in so that's part of our thinking when we look to um as you'll see the plan to move back into hybrid um still looking at the guidance about the the airflow the windows the fans with chris misha we did check those windows and um thought of ways that we could continue to enhance that airflow out of the windows that we do have we do con still considering staffing we know that's going to be that can be an issue and um we're looking at the idea of when we have teachers out whatever the reason it might be are we able to use them virtually um remotely and also much you know our tas do tend to cover classes for us um and we would hope that that would be a possibility as as things move along i talked about the nurses stations we did show the board of health that as well um we updated we have more information which we'll do tonight on the virtual platform that we'll hopefully be using and continue to monitor the guidance which i did um re-read today and the guidance for about those what-if scenarios if a person is positive if a person has symptoms etc we'll be looking at that very closely there's a lot of good information in there and a lot of guidance um so again i just mentioned the survey so please get that in when you feel comfortable with the answers that you're receiving for the families and of course we have the latest information from the governor and that metrics which we'll be using and watching what is happening with the other districts this is just from last week we know we have all of these the ppe as i said um nothing new here same safety requirements of lunches in the classrooms etc we did i didn't know if i mentioned last week that we have um we have storage bins on site now that we're emptying classrooms to make them uh use you know just keep the furniture that we absolutely need unfortunately the district because of the work that we've done over the years on collaborative model the collaborative model and project-based learning we have so many big tables that students have been using so it's been quite a chore to empty the classrooms out fill the storage bins and prepare them for students and staff i do want to mention that teachers are going to be able to keep those essential teaching items that they use in bookshelves uh we just don't want to take up a lot of space on the floor for lots of things but we have built-in bookshelves and so those manipulatives those books leveled readers etc will be able to maintain in the classroom people have some questions about that once again the only updates on the financial support is that the esser grant was approved and we bought technology and um ppe equipment with that grant so uh update on the virtual learning just a quick one and then i'll go a little bit more detail in the middle in high school as you remember we we kept waiting for desi to come up with a learning platform and um we've now made the they're very expensive i have to say very expensive and so we've we're working to secure the best the best model that we can the best platform um with um to try to be cost effective as well so we looked at all of these um i'm going to go actually i'm looking to the next slide in a second that has more detail for us but i do want to skip down to professional development plan as you remember the teachers will be having 10 days of professional development and we're working on that now as creating a framework and i just re-emphasize the spraying with the electrostatic sprayers with epa approved disinfectant and as i said already we're continuing to collaborate with local health agents and the town nurse so let's get into the virtual platform some people you know the state called it a learning management system what we have decided for our high school and middle school students is that we are contracting with a group called edge annuity we're very familiar with this because we have used it at the high school over the last few years for credit recovery and a couple of other individual situations we will be obtaining a site license so actually all of our students at the high school in middle school could in theory have access to this comprehensive library catalog of courses as you can see it offers everything that we will need for students that might choose to not attend dartmouth schools to come into the school we will we're not sure who what who well when or why or whatever but dartmouth staff we will either through a stipend we do have lead teachers that have done facilitated or supervised these students as they embark on this educational process so we will make sure that a dartmouth staff member will have a cohort of students if you will depending on how many uh choose to enroll in the virtual platform and as always we will have um information on our website about that and certainly we'll be able to answer questions as people decide to choose that that system for our elementary sister school system our elementary students excuse me we are still we thought we had one that we were um pretty set on going with which was the teca but we have been in contact with a couple of other schools that have are using the edmonton as well so we just found this one out so we're looking at that one why i wanted to use something different from the elementary is the the bundle of courses um are taught by a massachusetts licensed teacher on the other end in cyberspace if you will so students unlike the ingenuity which is a platform of a catalog of courses and students are more independently learning with as i said a dartmouth staff member supporting this this system would offer us a teacher who would teach live sessions and also present recorded sessions as well and but just like the middle and high school we would still have a staff member from dartmouth supporting these students making sure that they stay on track so basically we're not saying to the parent here's your platform good luck we'll see you in uh the spring or something we want to maintain um connections with these folks so we'll continue this one is not quite set and as you can see again it's it the range of car it's quite expensive i just wanted to update the committee a little bit on courses requiring as it says additional safety considerations and as you can see that's really about those um the theater the chorus the band the phys ed those kinds of things uh right now we have we do have the small groups of students with math socially distance outside practicing i was at the high school today and just want to let folks know that that is much different than a in class situation with the what we've um having to abide by the guidance it's much easier obviously to separate those students for these kinds of activities as we have been with the strength and conditioning so there are some there is guidance on that we are going to have to look at the course um as it says you know they have to um those are just classes we have to wear masks etc so we'll be looking a little bit more at that but i wanted folks to see that there is some guidance that has come out um and also the guidance about sharing of equipment so that is permitted we they encourage that kids obviously hand wash before using that of course sanitizing their hands we just said wearing mask and socially distancing and we always have enough supplies around to disinfect and i wanted to reiterate that at least for our elementary schools we are purchasing actually the orders have been coming in for the curriculum kits with various tools and essentials that the students will need in the classroom so they'll have their own box of tools and many of you may have heard that for sports miaa they have a task force that's been meeting with um jesse and from the governor's press briefing today we are supposed to expect jesse's guidance later this week so we still don't know what's going on with that so transitioning to from remote to hybrid and again this is um proposal as we all know anything can happen depending on the covet what's happening with the virus what's happening with staffing there are many many many things that we will be looking at we're continuing to look at the density guidance as we have here i am always watching the governor's press briefing we now have the matrix to look at and of course we uh consult with our local public health office as well so as a reminder remote learning right now is set for september 15th to september 30th this is now my proposal for tonight um we have created a robust regular daily schedule for students we already said this attendance is required and there will be grading what i want to mention to parents because i had a lot of questions on this is that while the students are receiving a daily schedule and it's pretty rigorous the teachers will still have the flexibility to run their classrooms like they always do they might direct teach they might then say to us to this class your assignment for the next half an hour like we do in brick and mortar read this book or whatever it is or or work on your your independent work let's come back in at 9 30 we'll we'll discuss what we just did there is project based it might be all of those things so i don't want people to think that a child is going to sit and stare at a computer for six hours there will be breaks there will be assignments that i want them to think that the classroom is running like the teachers do it but yes there is the connection with the technology of course people might remember we also have on our enrichment site and i'm sure the teachers will be posting things on their google classrooms um they had like pdf documents that the kids could fill right in if there's an assignment to be turned in things like that so i just want to make hopefully help people feel a little bit more comfortable that we're setting up a schedule to provide a block of time that creates structure so that they know at 9 30 is my english class or whatever it might be i log in i get my instruction and teaching from my teacher i might go off and now do my assignment and come back we have breakout sessions that can happen in the classrooms as well i don't know how to do it but that teachers do and then just to be also be very clear um on the goal the plan and with jesse guidance and legal requirements is that the pre-k students whose iep requires them to be in an integrated pre-k program our plan is that they attend all five days half a day it would be a 9 to 12 day with a grab and go lunch of course they'd be recessed etc but that's our ex that's our plan right now the pre-k iep that plan that requires them to be in our program the peer partners will not attend during this this time so no peer partners we are still planning and i know parents received a letter it was in my letter and i believe dr dale our new director of early childhood sent out as well that um um screening what i was going to say stressing i don't know where that came from freudian screening will take place we're looking at i think it was october 20 excuse me august 24th through the 27th so we're looking at securing um we need we needed one more staff member for that but peer partners those accepted and those who are on the waiting list will be contacted and they are able to be screened looking forward to the future that they will get to school at some point the same with our paths pals and past program those are students um with significant needs our higher needs students and we will be inviting them at this point um we were looking at five full days that may be adjusted as as things change but at this point we would be inviting those students to attend school during the remote um time so our our uh to start again not knowing what's going to happen and we will keep our eyeballs on everything that we've talked about and make that decision as we get closer is um in october and i've i've laid this out i'm hoping it's clear obviously more details will be posted so people have a clear understanding we're also looking to create our calendar with color codes so that cohorts parents will have a good visual of when their cohort of students is in so we're looking to transition on october one and two it is a thursday and a friday but we were thinking that it'd be a good time like an orientation day for these pre-k through two so that would be the peer partners that i just talked about pre-k through two are early learners readers who we want to get into school and not have to learn to read on on computers in grade six why we chose grade six after discussion was again another a big transition year elementary into the middle school this would give teachers time to acclimate the students to the hallways to the bathrooms to the cleaning to the mask wearing those kinds of things uh so so as i say so on october 1 the thursday the children who have been put into cohort a for pre-k through two and six would be coming on thursday and then cohort b pre-k two through six on friday they would then begin their first full week of school the following week and this is how we we um we are recommending that this run that the students go three days a week and then two days a week we checked about the deep cleaning situation that people keep mentioning it is not and if it is not i think and i'll i hate to say this like this but cracked up to be what it's people have really not defined it in in really they just say it so with our discussion with the local um health agent as well as following the guidance we've read it and re-read it with our enhanced cleaning plan as well as the nightly spraying of areas we feel we would have as good as a cleaning plan as anything else we also thought this was the best best model because we are keeping kids engaged on a regular schedule from our perspective sending a child to school on monday tuesday as some people suggest and they do not return again to the following monday tuesday seems to be a bit of a disengagement from learning so we're trying to maintain that learning from just get on top of the dehumidifier oh mr nunes and just an example their second full week just so folks can see how it works so week one the cohort a is monday wednesday friday next week they're tuesday thursday on their remote days i'll mention this well i mentioned that later let's finish this up okay so then we're thinking our next plan of action is the week that second full week that the first group is in we're now bringing in the second group 13th through the 16th we have group two those are the rest of our elementary students three through five and transitioning grades seven so the middle school now has um another grade level to orient with the passing through the halls the cleaning the how how those classrooms will run etc same thing because it's the 13th through the 16th if you look above where it says second full week cohort a once again both times is in tuesday thursday mode that week is a little different because columbus day so we're we're pretending it doesn't exist hopefully and then we're beyond it we stay in our flow but tuesday thursday and a wednesday friday so each cohort attends school for two days that week our final transition 19th through the 23rd is group three and same thing it's group it's um grade eight so we complete the high school uh middle school and the high school i do want to reiterate we are still working on cohorting the high school because of some of the class sizes we're having difficulty with that but we're brainstorming again tomorrow and um we'll come up with something how to make sure that uh all of our classes meet the guidance and our students can fit comfortably in the classes but once again cohort a would come monday wednesday friday cohort b tuesday thursday we are working very hard on our cohorts and we cannot take requests for this or that or the other it's too difficult we are trying we are considering siblings we're putting siblings together uh we're doing it acro because this is across the district it's not just this school for cohorts and that school for cohort so that the district team has been working with all of the principals to create these cohorts because that then lends itself for the transportation as well students will be assigned seats as we know so once the cohorts are established mr kylie can then work with the transportation and create the bus routes that pick up these students um sitting about 20 students on a bus during the remote days teachers would have assigned their students so if you attend school on a monday your teacher would have assigned you some whatever work it is a reading assignment whatever it might be you're expected to complete that work on that remote day preparing for the next day when you return to school i just wanted to mention that students who choose to enroll in a virtual platform like we just talked about the edge annuity we will have them remain in that platform until a semester break so we would alert them when that semester break was coming up so that it can have a smooth transition should they choose to come back to join the hybrid model so our next steps of course similar to last week we are continuing to prepare our buildings uh for that transition they're still working on cleaning uh classrooms out um some teachers were in i saw some yesterday working on removing some things and getting their classrooms set we are continuing our negotiations with the dea as i said before we have a new metric which is the one from the governor as well as the continued deci guidance in any updated governor information and i say that because they are informative and that does kind of give us the sense of where the state is we will continue to monitor neighboring school districts i hope they're very successful and that can give us some encouragement on their first few weeks of school and we're also um mrs oliveira was looking to work with some of our teachers to create some videos that might help uh parents kind of understand get a better glimpse into what it might look like i'm not sure if these might go up on our enrichment page because we're continuing that as well um we are scheduling our faq virtual meeting i think it might be the week after next uh just before school the teachers come back so that's why i'm asking folks if you have further questions to send them into questions at dartmouthschools.org so we'll be able to address some of those and once again please complete the survey if you haven't done so there's plenty of time so with that i'll just reiterate this is a proposal and certainly we'll hear the the committee's thoughts and i was thinking that we might want to take a vote of approval if that's the committee's wish thank you dr gifford welcome i know that you have uh you know constantly reflecting and talking to colleagues and peers and trying to make you know come to terms with what's the best decision and and how to how to make this a successful transition to hybrid uh that being said before i turn it over to my colleagues just really quickly one of the things before i forget is uh in regards to the videos that you're putting together i think what might be helpful um just so you know some parents or parents that are interested might be able to see what classrooms will look like what schools maybe may look like so i'm not sure if we can do some pictures or maybe a quick little video of the different schools especially at the elementary level the kindergarten i'm sure if i'm a kindergarten parent i'm extremely nervous i'm worried about my um you know what it's going to look like for my child right and to that point that's a good point and i'm also i must i didn't say the uh elementary schools are creating some videos explicitly for kindergarten uh so that's that would be nice again like a little or and i know a number of the others no that's just like the school base the middle school we do in like a virtual um kind of orientation but to your point also that idea of what might a remote learning classroom look like kind of thing right i think that's really important i'll turn it over to my colleagues at this time for questions comments concerns okay thank you mrs white hi yes um so first of all thank you i think that clarifies quite a bit dr gifford um certainly i know that you know having those benchmarks in place was a big ass from so many of our families so so thank you i'm i'm hoping we'll be in a you know better place now just to kind of you know move forward and uh be positive and engaged um and a couple questions um as we look at this you know new phased-in model the way i read it well the pre when we talk about the pre-k the preschoolers just are they they're not doing any remote that's that's one question that i have like are they just the way it looked to me that it would be kindergartners but pre-k aren't just going to go into hybrid without a remote model for them is that correct yes that is correct okay we just didn't think it was it was going to work with our pre-k students trying to get you know parents have to have i know i understand parents have to involvement with the younger guys anyway but right he was asking i think a little bit much okay and then um again i agree with you know the pictures i had a couple requests from parents who really wanted to find out about what the you know and this gets back to chris mr oliver's point um that they want to see again with the pre-k there are a lot of concerns are are they those children who are coming in going to have to wear a mess a six-foot distance thing you know what does that look like in terms of breaks you know so if we you know if we can provide those parents with clarification i think that would you know be pretty meaningful yeah it might be good along that lines once again to provide pictures even of the classroom but yes uh we are we are expecting really the same uh things that the little deaths have been spaced out um the mass of course uh students that have medically are medically exempted from mass and or behaviorally exempted um that's what we we have they they can but our expectation is that everyone wears them we are expecting mask breaks stretch breaks all of that hopefully getting outside being able to um run around without those mass etc but yeah yeah unfortunately that's kind of what it is these days okay and then you know just looking models too i had um and you know sorry dominate here but i know some parents had you know we're concerned in the elementary if they have multiple children across different grades that there are different lunches i understand that that's necessary though for specialists could you speak to that just you know to explain that um to parents exactly it does have to do with with the specialists um being able to then go into classrooms because as you might remember we share staff um we you know some of those specialists travel from school to school that's one of the reasons also that we want to keep the schedules the same whether we're remote or hybrid as well it's just a matter of trying to get fit it all in okay yeah and those and those um let's say art classes phys ed classes will continue within the remote model you know and those students will have the materials that they need as part of a kit or or is there a suggestion there for materials that parents might want to have or were those materials be what would you suggest on that yeah yeah that's a good that's a good question um we did send home to the elementary at least a suggestion for we know parents like to hit the sales early right i don't know how early it is right now but um recommending things that they do purchase rather than your basic binders or whatever it might be to have at home but i i don't recall that we mentioned anything about like artwork etc i know some teachers become very hap were very creative last time and had kids using rocks or rocks paper sticks but anyway but i'll um check with the um the letter go back to the elementary and middle of course whatever the the whole group but i'm not sure if we really talked about that piece that yeah okay um i'm sure i have more but i'll pass it on to my colleagues thank you very much thank you mrs waite dr jenkins thanks mr oliver um and thank you dr gifford and everyone on your team for joining us i want to start off by sort of um following up on mr oliver's opening statement um and really just reiterate that there are a lot of concerns at play here um i know a lot of parents are thinking about this from the perspective of their kids and their lives and i know it's very hard for families we 100 understand that but there are just so many issues that are unresolved now and there was a number of good articles in commonwealth magazine over the last few days facing these issues so for instance i know my university has a very extensive testing and contact tracing protocol in place that's going to probably cost us even with our de-densified campus hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars um people have been asking well why don't you test we don't have the money to test and the state and our national government has simply failed to provide a robust testing and contact tracing system and if you look at other countries who have successfully opened schools that is fundamental to the successful reopening of schools um testing and tracing we don't have it we're dealing with with buildings that don't have adequate air flow um you know we have to worry about um we have to keep our teachers and staff healthy right do we have the space to do that um there's all sorts of concerns that we have to take into consideration um you know that that that aren't just health metrics and we're starting to see i think a lot of um school committees speak up about this because it is there are a lot of moving parts here and i think the other thing i want to reiterate on top of that is um you know the the i remember this correctly right dusty has given us 10 professional development days um those must happen at the beginning of the year right they cannot be spread out over the rest of the year um speaking from experience as someone who is taught face to face and online these are very different styles of teaching um and it's not something that's just oh you just translate it you just do it right you have to learn how to teach remotely and so i think we partially want to be prepared for the remote teaching and use those professional days to train our teachers to do that so that we're doing it right and we're doing it well um if we never have to go back to a remote after the first two weeks that's great and i would be happy to have that happen but if there is a resurgent and we do have to go back to remote we don't get those 10 days back right those 10 days are gone and trying to move back online with a day or two of professional development is going to be a recipe for disaster so i'm happy we're going to use this time to figure out how to do our remote learning right we can learn from the experiences of other districts to make sure that we are doing this right and our kids aren't yo-yoing back and forth from in-person to remote to in-person to remote we want to do this right and so i'm i am very happy to to see that we're trying to do that um a couple of things i've been thinking of is in terms of sort of managing this for for families um and so one of my first i just want to confirm that sort of even though teachers have freedom to do their class how they want we're going to be using the same lms right we're going to be using google classroom so that families and whatever and particularly the middle school or high school where you have multiple teachers it's all going to be in one place because i know as a parent that becomes difficult to manage if things are all over the place so are we going to have some requirement that that the the one lms is used across the district yes we're using google yes google class and google me okay yes another big concern is is that i know we always have parents buy supplies and you know it's in some ways can be unfortunate um because that can be difficult for some families i am very deeply concerned that our expectations for supplies are going to be greater this year because we're going to be remote and doing some learning at home and i'm very concerned um about how um particularly our families who are in free or reduced lunch but even other families may be able to afford some of these things um are we going to be able to implement any sort of programs whereby if you qualify for free and reduced lunch or you need support buying some of these extra materials that we can use some of our cares money or some additional money um to help support parents and and set up a learning environment where all kids can con can succeed we other than what we've done with the elementary purchasing all the supplies for the classroom we haven't really talked about that to be honest and but we can certainly consider it it'd be good to hear from the teachers what they think you know will be needed of course and that's what we did with the elementary level i know the principals um got their information from the teachers and certainly we can consider that um yeah i mean i think i just i hope that we can be really sensitive to this yeah i mean last year in the spring i won't name names um but one of my children had to do an experiment that involved using food um which i thought was not particularly great right if you laid off for your job you can't get to the grocery store um and the experiment involved the wasting of food and i was like um you know um so i think we just need to be really sensitive about the economic conditions and the economic demands on our family um and to make sure we're doing everything we can to not put extra burdens on on family during during this time sure they've got enough we know yeah that's all i have for now i i'll go sure mrs amaral okay um although i don't have everything's kind of all over the place no crying this week i promised myself um let's see all right so thank you for addressing i i got a lot of uh questions as everyone did i'm sure about the um the length of time with the you know on the screen with remote and so i'm really glad that you um i sort of alluded to that and i sort of thought that that would be the case but i'm glad that you you sort of gave some framed that in a way that people can sort of understand that it's not necessarily right in front of the screen all the time um let's say sorry um i also heard from families around um and i know that there's hipaa you know concerns and and there certainly needs to be some some rules around this but for families who maybe have more than one child it was posed and i thought it was a good question so i'm going to ask it say for instance they are attending you know they're able to stay home and they're tending to their children and two different what if they missed a lesson in a different grade would there be an option i mean i know dusty talked about parent training and stuff like that but would there be an option for somehow a documented via maybe a video or just documented information to the families around what was capturing what was covered that day so that those families who might need to come back to it at the end of the day to review uh could have the opportunity to do that i don't know what that would look like because i i can imagine you can't really record the zoom with all the kids on the i wouldn't really want that to happen obviously we couldn't with with uh privacy but that was brought up so that's just something potentially to think about um the other um issue uh parents around the pre-k and uh you know i've sort of been an advocate for us enhancing our criteria around the the um knowing we're gonna face to hybrid sooner than later but just that while we're in the remote those kiddos were identified high needs as desi defined them and i sort of alluded that i would i wanted us to sort of enhance that if we could i understand that not all that can happen but a family brought to my attention and it was another great point um was that we have the pre-k for our our students who are in ieps who have in another iep the socialization with um the full day program uh but we're pulling then once we go back to hybrid correct we're pulling in the peer partners i'm trying to figure out how to phrase this i just wonder if there's a way that we could frame it so that we're not just looking at the peer partners the perfectly behaved ones who might not necessarily um everyone needs in-person learning but i don't mean to say it that way but there might be students who who wouldn't be targeted as peer partners because they're also kind of on the on the line borderline struggling might it be helpful to pick and pull in some of those kids instead of those kids who might not necessarily need it as much i don't know um if i'm articulating that correctly but but it was a good point in that if we're matching up some peer partners in a hybrid those might not be the one you know that wouldn't be the next on my list to get in after the high needs personally um let me see and then you probably heard this i've heard it from several parents and i don't think you touched upon it although i was paying attention but it's just none of this is family friendly parent friendly [Music] in in in identifying the the cohorts um some families have their own little pods of of socialization now with their neighbors who might be in the same grade and the question was posed and i don't know if this came to the full committee or if it just came through me from a few people they were wondering is there a way to identify on a survey that you know i live next to johnny and johnny's in the second grade and we really want to split our um the uh the teaching at home the care or that kind of thing swapping the days with the parents so that they could work a regular schedule or whatever um might that be something or would that be too complex something they would have to stick to but something that we could help people maximize their ability to make it as easy as possible i guess so that was brought to my attention i won't take much longer i think you covered this so stuck with the choice we make so i think you talked about if somebody chose uh the online platform that after the semester so you answered that um that's the pre-k one sorry okay and then i just had questions so we're um phasing into hybrid but while we're remote my understanding is that our collaborative is in session or they were through the summer and i don't know their schedule for their how that works if they're working in in in unison with the districts that they are a part of but if we didn't go back you know in person the classroom say we have in the high school would they have access to our building um during the time that we are still remote but they are in person um yes we back okay yes oh awesome good okay and i just made a note that it was really crappy that baker put that out the day after we voted um in regards to ppe it's not like a sticking point but it is sort of a sticking point though i just i just know how much ppa my family needs to use um we have ppe we have enough pp do we have more than a month and a half worth of ppe now i would love to have us have a few months of ppe mr kylie i think you said three months at least if i recall why okay that makes me feel better uh i love the idea that was brought up with describing the classroom for all of our learners but specifically for the the ants in their pants littlest learners kids who can't sit still the reality of what that's going to look like that is not going to be something easy for them to live with um so getting pictures out describing that would be very helpful um oh goodness i had some questions from families um and not necessarily in district but without a district placement i know dusty uh and i happen to be one of those families but not for this particular issue but some family i know dusty identified that the district that knows them best so the audit district is responsible for the learning and all of that but say some of our really medically fragile students who who have nursing hours and this might be better addressed with beth during the cpac meeting so if you don't have an answer that's fine but i worry i guess some families are without nursing with without that chunk of whatever it is 35 hours a week during the week now and i know too for my son with pca care mass health it's a whole other ball of wax but um it's worrisome if that i don't know if that can be something that they looked into as far as why that's happening or if there's a way to help that fam felt families get those kinds of needs at home um but again that's would you agree would you probably something for a special okay yeah i'm gonna let because i don't want to see anything that's not legal yeah yep no no yeah absolutely um and then there are so then there are those families that i can identify with that are just really struggling and just so afraid to commit to anything because they maybe they're receiving some um center-based in-person currently aba services and we all know how that works and you you're on a wait list for eight months and you finally get services and things are working and then you go back to school and then you lose that spa and then we go back to remote because there's a surge and those kids are left back on a waitlist for 6 8 10 12 months so that's just something worrisome that some families were wondering if uh something could be looked at individually around if they chose in person or they only chose two days if there's a these are the these families are the high needs families that i'm thinking of that i've spoken to um but it's a it's it's a reality and i think oh gosh oh you mentioned that you're going to be going over this some more but in terms of the quarantine for i was reviewing desi's regulations so they were saying you know that students who are in these self-contained cohorts so our high needs population that they would because they would be closer potentially because than six feet in those classrooms um they would have to quarantine for 14 days unless they elected to have a test and so then in lies would they go to a remote platform or would there be some system around getting some of their like the setting up for tutoring that kind of thing would it just go back to the remote or i think um obviously these different scenarios have to be studied really studied because we want to go by but um we've asked ourselves that question as well because there are so many of those individual things that do happen and yeah we in my mind i'm thinking that they would still receive something whether as you said through a remote service or but one of the problems we'll have and we'll have to address is the staffing just as a just as a for instance if teachers are teaching the full schedule and then let's say two students have to go out who does that because our staff's teaching the schedule it's it's complicated yeah it's just a mess huh yeah um thank you for everything everyone's one more question that you may have answered and i apologize if you covered this um but we talk about the pre-k um returning the one the those kiddos that are returning in person potentially right away and then skipping over i'm thinking of kindergarten through to kindergarten self-contain high needs program students on ieps those students who only spend a portion of their time in a sub-separate and and might rely on those hours of inclusion um would it just go so i don't even know what i'm asking i guess you're asking would you be like a cohort for them to kind of go in during this time yes we did talk about that and we've talked about the idea um we had this conversation whether we have um a ta that goes to the room that the teacher is teaching remotely and is there present or not or just sits in their room and so someone takes them aside for that inclusion piece so yes we have discussed that don't have the definite answer but it's part of our discussions and um i think i tried to cram that all in i think yeah you did a good job that that was probably missing a bunch but at any rate thank you i'm sure other people have questions so i turn it over to you mr chair thank you mrs amaral uh lots of good uh lots of good questions there absolutely so no worries uh mr nunes thank you mr chairman and again thank you to uh central office and all the building administrators and everybody involved in you know all the work that they're uh they're doing on this and in all seriousness too uh thank you to uh chris michael on the board of health and you know his staff for all their work and making sure we've got t's crossed and eyes dotted and you know being another set of eyes to see what we're doing and that going through the buildings you know yesterday and i thought they had some great questions and great points to uh to learn from so you know my thanks to them uh a couple of quick questions i don't have as many as everybody else i hope uh easy one first uh students and this is mainly in in the high school and maybe in the middle school you know some middle school too but in the high school if you know a parent is going to keep johnny or susie home for the whole semester doing remote uh are they going to be able to be an extracurricular you know bands sports uh the clubs that type of deal that's a great question and um we haven't made that decision but i know of some districts that have said no that's not my belief um i haven't i i think if they've chosen remote for good reasons like it could be medical reasons or anything we still want in my mind i don't want to then like punish them and say you cannot be involved with your peers and i know other people look at it differently and say well if they can't come to school they can't go to strength and conditioning or something but we haven't made that decision but um that's my personal belief that they should be able to participate great okay uh question in in general you know for all the grades uh with the remote learning what are we using i mean uh are there going to be any books for these students or materials to pick up at school before school starts to use or i'm just thinking sometimes you go to do something you know with a homework assignment or something and say you know boy if i had the book i could go back and reread you know that chapter in math or chemistry or whatever the case in point may be yeah most like i said most things we've been already purchasing but um and obviously the devices there'll be a dissemination time for the devices for everybody that needs it but um we the the buildings will make sure that happens whatever is needed yes yes okay thank you uh probably this is this this may be for mr kylie uh and i know i kind of mentioned it the uh uh last week the uh the lunch situation for uh mainly with i mean at this point in time as we start the remote and you know for the highest you know uh grade 8 and high school students as they go out almost that one month from school what are we doing for you know those that qualify for free and reduced lunch if we cross that bridge yet or that's we're still waiting for uh usda and everybody to figure something out well i can say mr nunes that we are prepared to cross the bridge and um we need some approval from usda some guidance from the state to continue a program that would be some grab and go program during the remote period and then during the hybrid period uh providing meals to kids on the days when they're going to be remote so our intent is to be able to do all that um and i don't see any reason why we can't but um at this point that's you know still a work in progress i think from uh from a regulatory perspe perspective of the overall program but i would anticipate that with so many districts doing models like we're doing that um all that approval will come in time um and that will be preparing grab and go's and and take with you on the day you're you know leaving school and not going to be there tomorrow um you know take food with you so we we intend to do that okay and last is just a kind of comment i'm going to make an assumption i mean of course this plan has got to be very fluid and as we go forward in seeing what other districts are doing and you know you know communicating with them you know what's worked what hasn't worked and you know any mistakes that they've made so you know maybe we can not make those mistakes and you know hopefully we have a smooth entry back in the school in october so thank you for everything thank you mr nunes i guess as i have some questions now i guess it's uh i'll take a take up a few minutes of time so let's start off i have i've actually have several of them let's start off with the uh the remote learning piece in virtual schools dr gifford one of the questions that i had was you listed i believe twelve hundred to twenty eight hundred dollars per semester um for uh i think it was techer or the other one that you just recently started looking at um that's for that specifically for the elementary schools correct because ingenuity is for the middle in high school correct okay so it's been a while but correct me if i'm wrong the elementaries have trimesters so is that is that price multiplied by three because you said per semester that's a good question and yeah that's that's a really good question um but i believe no i believe it's it would be for the year i think they just call it that yeah okay now with that being said i know that a lot of the virtual schools such as tech or greenfield academy um that operate out of the with massachusetts licensed teachers that once students are enrolled in those districts uh two things happen i guess one uh we transfer them uh with state reporting uh with department of education so that we're no longer claiming them as students typically if if a parent elects to attend a have their child attend the virtual school and then the virtual school will enroll their student and start reporting claiming them as theirs uh you know one thing that i'm curious on i haven't been able to get a straight answer with any of my colleagues as to whether or not um that's the case with this and we'll lose funding chapter 70 funding right and state funding for for these students yeah that's definitely and and i know we've had our tech people on phones and trying to get answers about these things that's why i said we're still investigating but we discussed that today as well and that's the case we have to go in another direction but there's no answers as of right now as to no no even to get a return phone call right now and i imagine they're very busy i i've heard that they're very difficult to get a hold of but that you know and again the ingenuity piece if we were to use that with elementary that's just extremely i think almost beyond what we could pay even funding um that's why we're trying to investigate these other programs as well as the fact i did like the idea that um at least teca um and i think the others as well do do some live teaching rather than just recorded lessons so we have more to do on that for sure okay thank you for that um i just wanted to folks to know that we had made progress and at least we know for the middle and high school we have a virtual platform that will be ready to go now that's that that's great to hear and i'm sure uh parents that choose to go fully remote with your students will be happy to hear that can we talk a little bit about um and as far as the protocols around um what happens once we go hybrid and once students start to come into the classrooms because as much as we received a lot of emails and concerns from parents that we weren't starting uh in person classes right away we also got a lot of thank yous that we were starting remote um and a lot of people felt that was the right idea um so and they were concerned about whether or not they would even you know send their students in a hybrid and maybe this will help parents try to understand a little bit what's the protocols going to be if a student becomes you know symptomatic and quarantining and not just them but their their class their their classroom their teacher um because the last thing we want to do is start hybrid or start in-person learning and then you know someone's symptomatic and they've been ex they've now been ex exposed a whole classroom full of students or even 50 of that classroom because we're only we're doing two cohorts um and now we've these students that have to quarantine can we just talk a little bit about that and what parents can expect do we have it do you have anything on that right now or maybe um in a future uh meeting yeah it the guidance that came out from desi and is really um very thorough and very specific to those different cases um in general so it'd be kind of hard to talk through all of that right now sure um maybe on a q a with the with the schools or with parents but in general um if if someone is symptomatic etc obviously the parent would come get them and we would then and i think i gave um the committee a wrong answer today because i re-investigated but um they would be they would be asked to get a test or they have to quarantine if they have those symptoms so those are going to be um some of the things that parents will be told in staff um then of course it goes to if there was a positive there there's this stuff happens and how close were they and for how long long of a time with the cohort i was like if you weren't in contact with this person 10 to 15 minutes and so it goes on and on to so much detail but i think one of the things that parents will need to know is that if someone is tested positive that goes automatically to our board of health they receive that information um folks are then of course encouraged and and they want them to tell us the parent to tell the school so that we can then have the appropriate procedure in place for contact tracing with across the voter health um it talks a lot about the agencies helping each other to figure out who's been in contact and then what the proper protocols but i think the bigger picture and we've all been we all know this that when these things start happening how many teachers do we lose to a quarantine or a cohort and those are big decisions and it just feeds into the whole um array of significant issues that we have but um we'll follow the guidance and and the other thing it says is that you would then let parents of those cohorts know we had a positive test or whether it's a staff member etc so we do have just just for we do have the guidance linked into our plan on the website that parents that want to read through that it is it is in there so we have a section in the plan that just talks in general a paragraph and then there's a link right to this guidance and once again where can parents find that link um it's it's in in our plan which came out the link for the plan it's a website it came out on my friday's update yep last friday um i'll ask our tech department to put the link to the plan right on the website to make it easier the parents might not have seen and then within the plan because there's a lot of drop down and links in there's one section if they download our plan um does we link away there's all kind of bunch more links and one of them they will see about covet scenarios how to respond and they'll be able to read this entire guidance perfect that sounds good thank you very much for that on another uh on another note here around um i was one if maybe mr kylie up doctor do you have something that specific issue of cobid in contact tracing sure people have been asking why are the high schools going back the last and that's partially why there our only group that's not really potted that's right schools are in pods the elementary schools are in pods they have one teacher or they have two teachers that's not true at the high school right cross potting right all of the kids are mixing and that's why because it is the most there's lots of logistical issues around special education too but from the high school it's that cross potting yeah because it's positive they're gonna in fact five six classrooms teachers and then those teachers are with other that gets really really complicated and so i think it's important to point that out yeah yeah no that's that's really true was that a new term you just came up with cross-potting or is that it might be i don't know i'm sure someone else has said it somewhere sorry to interrupt i just wanted to point that out into education thank you um mr kylie and in terms of transportation you know one of the things is logistics and the logistics around making uh transportation work for our students and families in dartmouth and i i could you just take a minute to explain to the committee and to everyone watching what goes into well first of all i got a couple questions as to what's the plan for sanitizing buses are we going to be looking to sanitize after every trip every day are we going to have bus monitors i know we uh the state is tossed around using the districts could use funding grants for for bus monitors especially for the younger the elementary students um and then what goes into you know me the hours in time um and the attention to detail and the just the feedback your these surveys that were coming out about transportation that it's no easy task just transfer never mind once the kids are in school just how do we get the kids to student school well i'm thank you mr oliver i'm glad that you recognize that it's not easy it's it's certainly going to be a challenge for everybody involved and and the state's guidance presented was an opportunity to place approximately 25 students on a bus but there are some factors that we've considered as we've gone through this planning process that will limit our capacity slightly to be slightly less than that but what the state has indicated is that it is acceptable for students to be um sort of opposite sides of each seat on each row so a student who is an on an aisle seat in one row there's a student across from them on a window seat in another row and it is a zigzag pattern all the way up uh all the way up the bus what we've done in dartmouth is created a a space at the front of each bus for a student who um might become symptomatic so we're sensitive so there's there was assigned seats on every bus but if a student were to become symptomatic or be boarding the bus and parents are not available to take the student home we would then be placing that student in the space where there is um no other student within six feet so uh masks will be required on the bus they'll be hand sanitizer on the bus um i've explained the distancing pattern on the bus it's challenging in our hybrid uh hybrid format once we begin that we're going to be covering the entire town twice essentially we're going to have two sets of roots um one for cohort a and one for cohort b uh double the number of roots that we've had previously wow so um our intent is that we are going to try and impact the school day as little as possible while still accommodating time to clean in between the high school middle school route in the morning and the elementary school route and then the afternoon the high school middle school route and the elementary school route be cleaning uh between each of those cycles so it's it is going to be a very difficult um process even though on a given bus we'll be transporting in some cases um you know significantly less than half the kids we would have had on the bus previously um we still are going to have our hands full and as you know um you know the third largest community in the commonwealth is um is very challenging from a transportation perspective it's a long way from the tips of the town to get to our schools so we're gonna that's i'm sorry that's actually a really good point that landmass wise you know that we are we we are considerably a large community land mass-wise yes it's it's always been a challenge and um you know we've always made every effort to keep kids on the bus as little as possible as short a time as possible but nonetheless have come close to an hour under regular circumstances for some students now we'll have less stops on each um each run because we'll have less students but um they'll still be they'll still be issues that we have to balance we in transportation don't have the cohort yet um we can't create the roots yet so as soon as we get the cohort we'll begin strategizing the roots and really it's going to be pretty much like creating them from scratch uh it's gonna be very different from previous years where we could use a base route and then look at oh we need to add this street or that street and um you know accommodate that this is gonna be totally different logistically it's and we um we purchased the new transportation software in the spring which okay i am uh i i'm not regretting it but it's um it's an interesting time to do all this so we're working on that um of course so a student who um does get on the bus if the bus driver is able to identify that they are um ill or presenting symptoms it's a lot to ask for a bus driver to do um but they will be given instruction as to you know the symptoms to look for if they're able to identify that while a parent is still present we'll ask the parent to take the student take the student home and go from there advise the school and the school can call the parent and let them know that they should have the student tested and so forth and go through the process if um if the student's on the bus then that student will be the first one off the bus at the school and the school will be radioed and no ahead and the nurse will um you know will treat the student and set really in this case if it's covered related symptom you know follow the protocols that they have and testing um let's see that that is the basic idea of of transportation in our in our um information gathering uh effort and asking parents we have asked that parents provide one morning and one afternoon uh transportation location it is we have uh traditionally provided a a great much greater level of service than that but it isn't possible given what we're trying to accomplish to um provide you know multiple locations we're trying to limit the exposure of kids and we really need to know where to go in the morning and where to go in the afternoon um so we're appreciative of the families as we work with them on that but um i've got a lot of work to do you do have a lot of work to do is it safe to so it's safe to say mr kylie that parents that like you said that may have been accustomed in years past to having you know uh tuesdays and thursdays in one location at the grand the grandparents house and then the other days maybe at home or maybe to a daycare that this year they can expect that it'll be one location monday through friday or through their cohort days that's correct okay thank you mr kyle i appreciate all your your work and your diligence on uh trying to this monumental task of uh transportation thank you all for your support um on another note um one of the things that i've i've heard come up is about um you know we're requiring we're going to be taking attendance um in our classes whether it's in person of course in person but even remote and correct me if i'm wrong dr gifford but that is that's not something that just dartmouth is doing this is the department of education requirement in which they will be uh collecting this is data that the state will be collecting through their typical collection processes of they want it they want to have a idea of the students that are attending whether they're in person or they're in remote so this isn't just something that dartmouth is doing correct that's correct that came from the commissioner that that's that was my thoughts too he wants to make his emphasis was on making it more robust of course and just as as enriching as we can so yeah okay and one one last question around technology i know that mr galashaw has done a great deal of work around um you know divide getting making sure we have enough devices for for any student that needs something and i know that the um our internet rate for households in the town is extremely high but we do have some families that have concerns about um internet connectivity or high-speed broadband um that being said uh is the district working is the district willing to work with families that may need access uh to you know the digital curriculum and digital resources because they do not have any internet whether that's through i know comcast internet essentials um whether if students uh um qualify for free reduced lunch families can get that can get internet for 9.99 a month um and i know a lot of districts are looking at um mobile hotspots or jetpacks through cellular companies to offer um using cares act funding or some other kind of grant funding um to help those families that are in need of uh internet access yes um we're working on wi-fi hotspots and com with comcast and also um we are waiting to hear about the tech grant that we put in for so we don't have that answer yet but uh we are looking at different possibilities in order to help folks yes so we're not just going to shut them off but we'll do what we can but more to come on okay great thank you dr gifford uh mrs waite yes i guess the penalty of going first is that i have some more questions sorry guys um so i have a question um dr gifford about ingenuity for the high school um platform and i know and i think all of us have gotten some questions from parents who said well can't we just start the year on that platform we know my my child is not in a position to go back to school and they're concerned that if they're starting ap chem program for example in the classroom you know on remote with their teachers from dartmouth and then they go on to the ingenuity platform that those what they've learned may not sync up and they've lost some time and you know couldn't they just start the years you know with their ingenuity platform so that that was a question that i've seen come across um from several parents you know just just worried about you know switching teachers midstream and content you know i don't know what you think about that i'm trying to think why not i think i think it's a good question um something we hadn't talked about but let me think about that and yeah let me think about that a very good question i think um the other question a couple other questions um i know we had talked about substitutes and when we talked about having a daily subs that would come in we don't want to do substitutes that are you know moving from district to district for you know obvious reasons we want to keep those substitutes in house um we do are you know there is talk in in a you know about tas that are going to cover some of that you know we have someone saying who knows um i'm sure this is a very competitive with other districts right now but we thought looked into hiring a few full-time substitutes that will go into the various you know one for the you know couple for the middle school younger college age kids or just out that are dedicated to our district have not explored it but it's come up in our conversation i do know of another district that's done that and um one of the things they also did was increase the subpay uh i shared that with mr kylie pretty dramatically i believe that was for haven that doubled their subpay i saw that correct yeah i do believe their plan is to do exactly what you're saying um so yeah because it's a big concern so we have to um and and we will be having another uh one of our next big discussions is about staffing and and the human resource the personnel piece in general there will be more but um and it's another good idea for sure okay and then i also had um just as we all have um some parents who are reaching out again getting back to the younger you know students who you know they have kindergarteners first graders you know i know that often you know children are don't necessarily aren't tested until sometimes second grade for things that are starting to show up maybe it's dyslexia you know or some other um you know something else that would put them onto an iep but they feel confident their child meet you know needs that special attention and and then you know in that same framework we also had parents who reached up and said in the spring you know i really didn't hear from and we know the spring was a mess like they're you know it's all over the place and you know in all fairness but they felt like they did not hear from their child special education teacher so i guess what i would hope is that you know seeing these children coming back they're going into a new platform you know whether they are an iep or they you know aren't you know they're your younger children but i'm hoping that the teachers if they are on iep that the teachers or or 504 that the teachers meet out and come up with a plan specific to remote learning for those children i think that that's something that our parents are really hoping for and it's essential and then you know also i'm hoping that you know our teachers are great you know and i really feel confident they're going to want to know their children they're going to ask questions but i think you know communication is something that you know we got to work on i think is you know just throughout this whole process and i think parents you know sending that information to teachers you know saying like you know you know i have little johnny and johnny's having a hard time at the screen he's really shy you know he he feels awkward if he's in class you know you would come up and ask him a question and i know he would participate but you know our screen is very difficult but having parents and those teachers having that dialogue so that they know that i think is you know something that those are some yeah one of the things um the special education teacher during those 10 days and i know it's just all difficult and even their schedules of trying to get the minutes in to service the students but part of their task will be to develop a learning plan for those students and um as as we did in the spring but um with this schedule that we've developed hopefully to be able to have more contact and be with with the students as you're mentioning and then i guess my my last question for now is um you know we're kind of embarking on this as a you know safe and smart slow return which i think is fantastic i guess the question i have is you know we're progressing and we know we're looking at benchmarks as a group are we meeting at regular inter like where when are we meeting to discuss okay we are ready to move on to the next i mean we have those dates you know if everything's in the same trajectory but you know if we have a co a student at the high school let's say who does test positive like what is i what is our threshold to say like we cannot move forward or you know what you know it isn't going as well as we hope when we brought in the the seventh graders there's some you know so we should slow down or we should step back that's just something i think we as a board it just needs to be ironed out and it's hard i i agree i mean as we've been saying this is so fluid and anything can happen that um we just need to have ongoing conversations uh throughout this entire process and i want to give parents enough notice if we do shift gears um to you know that they're prepared for whatever it might be so and thank you thank you mr chairman thank you mrs way uh dr jenkins so yeah there's commonwealth magazine articles suggested that many school committees are moving to a two-week schedule um in the fall to stay up to date on all these and to review metrics um and even though it's going to be in a lot more meetings for us i i definitely think we should um the other thing that i will say to follow up on miss waite's comment um we have personal experience making the transition from dartmouth schools into online learning if we can make it work those students should start out in ingenuity um even though even though the curriculum is aligned they don't they don't perfectly align um i think i agree like i said i i'm fine i was trying to find a loophole of something that would say you can't but i i have to say i think i agree with that and we haven't really thought of that but um i think it makes much more sense yeah great yeah well i want to thank everyone on the committee um for your your thoughtful comments and uh concerns and i want to thank dr gifford uh mr kylie and all the other administrators and staff faculty and staff in the school this system that have uh worked countless hours and a lot of them a lot of the staff just volunteering to be on different committees so i want to thank take this opportunity to thank everyone that being said um yes mr nunes unmuted it looks like you might better froze while he's trying to get in i just will mention we started project time today so our new teachers did come in live uh the high school library with their mass and and this aloe vera and staff did a nice job so it was good to see them and how many new staff are there this year oh gosh um about yeah about weldish okay kate's looking at me yeah great thank you yeah so we'll have an update on that soon perfect uh mrs amaral and mr nunes uh yeah can you hear yeah oh good okay so uh i'll go i'll go let's go to you mr news and we'll come back to you mrs amarillo uh in all services do we need a we need a vote to approve this phasing hybrid yes i'd like a vote okay so i'll make i'll make the motion we approve the phasing into the hybrid model uh as presented by the administration do i have a second and then we'll discuss second so i have a motion by mr nunes the second by dr jenkins on the motion there is discussion uh mrs amaral um when you brought up the attendance piece i just it just brought to mind so some of my work circles you know with that attendance desi wants to take the demographics to see who is where and what um i i in in my work circles we're just concerned about those students um you know who who there's some difficulty around getting on for whatever reason and having the attendance like typical when we what is it more than 10 days absent chronically absent yes yeah and so um in thinking about at this point in time especially with you know the hybrid that we're presenting is alternating weeks and parents are really going to have to scramble with child care and potentially having a family member hopefully they do or someone watching their children i just worry about those students who aren't able to maybe log on because you know grandpa got distracted or there's internet issues and that we i hope we will take it individually and look into these cases rather than assuming negligence on the part of someone not on logging in and attend for attendance purposes that's just a concern of mine i think that's a fair point uh kathleen and and i i would really hope that for students that chronically do not attend remotely that there's is some type of follow-up and communication from the student's teacher um to the to the family to find out you know what is going on yeah definitely that will be that support will be there i agree i agree thank you everyone so any further discussion okay so uh chair hearing none roll call please miss gentler chris oliver yes bannon jenkins yes kathleen amaral yes mary wait yes john nunes once yes thank you everyone uh i appreciate all of that before i uh give it over to dr gifford for the superintendent's update i am gonna have to excuse myself uh for a family matter is there do you no update uh dr gifford i think that was enough okay perfect so once again thank you um as far as report of the chair i know we currently have a meeting scheduled is it for the 24th is that what i saw um my thoughts uh just throwing it out there to the committee i know you know dr gifford and uh the entire administration is going to be busy next week preparing for the return of teachers in the 31st are um do we want to meet next week is it okay to meet on the week of the 31st so what's the committee's pleasure 31st for me okay is everyone else okay hang on it's fine 31st is clear for me do we want to meet on the uh i just want to be sensitive to the first day of school for faculty and staff from the 31st um do we want to meet on the tuesday instead the first uh mrs waite that's fine i guess at my only point and i didn't is dr gifford you mentioned the q and a's can you get that i just i'm worried that your parents will be asking questions in the next two weeks and that we won't be coming in next week i just there's been so many questions that i'd hate for those to you know not get addressed so i i would say if as soon as you can get those forms out with those you know dates and topics i yeah just so we know that those can be addressed would be great and then otherwise i'm fine i'm i'm you know i'm free okay perfect uh shannon that's all right go ahead kathleen um and just thinking like with the start of school and the teachers coming back would we then be moving our meeting um back a couple hours or are we gonna still well that's that's what i was yes good that's actually an excellent point uh so is everyone okay with the what tues the tuesday the first that works for me okay so if everyone's okay with that let's plan on that and then i would i would personally at that point uh i would like to see us back in person um so i'm not sure what that will look like um but i'm sure at the media center we can it's big enough that at the high school that we can um we can socially distant ourselves uh from one another yeah if we're doing in person are we gonna push the time back i think i'm not sure i can make a four o'clock in person i'm i'm perfect yeah i was gonna say let's let's i think once really that's that's what the week school was supposed to start um it is starting for the faculty uh so let's go back to our normal our normal schedule of 6 uh so 6 30 on the first correct 6 30 on the first dartmouth high school media center and what are what are our thoughts for public comment or for the public uh being attended i know there's all kinds of i i don't think we can do it um because of the parameters in place around um large gatherings um so i would say it'll be streamed uh the the whole public comment piece will be the same the only difference is that the dartmouth school committee will be meeting in person yeah i do we have some legalities here if dr gifford can check with uh yeah we'll check on that mr nunes yeah perfect all right uh thank you one other thing before i go and we end up and we end the meeting is just very quickly um i know that uh the the committee received a number of emails regarding our our focus in previous weeks around our the indian mascot uh that being said i said it right from the start that our our number one focus is the reopening of school and once school is reopened and is stable uh we will look to form uh that committee um but just just be please be cognizant that that's not going away um you know in the fall we'll look to that and that'll be under the committee's purview um to you know decide what we're going to do at that time as well as i support um dr jenkins um there was some some feedback we received around dr jenkins and um her attending in a forum by the naacp she attended on her own i don't i don't have a problem with that i don't think any of my committee members had a problem with that uh so um that being said you know we're all individuals we all make our we all speak for ourselves uh collectively we make up the dartmouth school committee uh as i was once uh as someone once told me the power of a political body doesn't lie with the individual it lies it lies with the full voting body um so um that that's really all i have to say about it um so thank you and we'll leave it at that that being said anyone else uh any any comments questions for the good of the committee of the community mr chairman yes yeah just just real quick and i know you've got to go in that but uh seriously just a a thank you to uh to kate our wonderful secretary with all the emails that she and everything she's been getting and she's been follow fo forwarding to us and to dr gifford and replying to them and everything else i mean you know it's yeah it's her job but boy the number that she's gotten is well uh way over uh way overboard type of deal so just uh my thanks to kate for everything that she's done and i it's appreciated thank you this is an unprecedented time that's all i have to say and the amount of hours that anyone in education is putting in right now uh kathleen yeah no i i just want to reiterate what john said the the amount of of emails that we're receiving and quite honestly um it just seems like a lot of them aren't coming from real like uh they seem like they're coming from an app you know like a disguised person and so the fact that we don't quite know who all of these people are and you taking the effort to forward them to us and us reading them despite the fact that they may or may not be coming from as large a mass as they they would like to allude to um that thank you for that that work because um yeah unprecedented time so that's all phone calls too she takes all right phone calls yeah oh i'm sure the phone's off the hook uh mrs way and then i gotta go yes um thank you mr oliver i just wanted to again reiterate um thank you ms gunther for everything that you've done and you know sharing all these emails um i also want to say you know i'm really hoping that now with this meeting i think dr gifford and her team did an excellent job answering i think so many of the questions and i hope our dialogue did as well that our town is having and it's my expectation that moving forward that we have a much more positive community response we all are on the same boat we want to get our kids back in school you know we want our kids to be safe we want to have a safe community and we want our teachers to be safe so it is my expectation that the level of dialogue in our community um is kind polite productive um and i think many of us you know we have those expectations and we want to move forward from from what it has been the last week so with all due respect so thank you chair thank you to all my school committee members ms ganther um the administrative team mr kylie i appreciate thank you at this time i will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purposes of uh update on collective bargaining with union personnel uh not to reconvene into open session i got a motion by dr jenkins second by mr nunes on the motion any further discussion roll call please miss gunther miss oliver yes and jenkins yes kathleen amero yes mary wait yes john nunes yes this meeting is adjourned have a wonderful night everyone thank you thank you enjoy chris thank you take care

i parked it at 45 000 and i ball parked it probably on probably about 25 kids so i'm thinking somewhere in there i will tell you i was kind of surprised i was kind of surprised with some of the phone calls taryn did yet um as of today with some people i didn't realize that never filled that either survey that all of a sudden have a child care issue um you know if the number goes up it goes up and i will come back to you and tell you that um and you know we can always talk about other options as well um you know you can always cap it at a certain number too but i just think you know i think the board right now you know the the staff is in a bad spot we're in a bad spot i think oh i think it's a wonderful thing i'm sure you already thought about it but just why you pulled it out because we're not using them right right so would lama be a better place for them to have the cafeteria and the gym and the bathrooms and then they're not intersecting with anybody or we just want to have nobody there i thought about that you're going to have to put custodians back in the building and everything else and that's what i was trying to avoid trying to rewrap that manpower over we really don't need to use the smaller cafeteria at all and it's a rather large space so when you go to six feet social distancing i could probably put 50 kids in there if i needed to social distancing models yeah but you know what we just put new bathrooms in in the in the new wing so we could probably use the old bathrooms that are right over by the principal's office around the corner there and with work family connection um having staff they would be the ones monitoring it so it kind of takes a little bit of pressure off our people um in addition to that you know obviously they would have to go through the the questionnaire the temperature attack they would handle all that with with the staff kids so we it takes a lot of pressure off of us for for the internal stuff that that would need to be done just having kids walk through the door right so it takes a little bit of pressure off of us i just think it's a great incentive right now for them um obviously you know i've spoken to a couple teachers and well what are you really supposed to do well that's that's what i'm saying because i don't really know what the answer is but but you also have to remember that the teachers right now are looking at their their situation is this if their kids want to go to school you know one half day two half days whatever it is they're scrambling to try and figure out daycare for their kids and now they're realizing holy cow i may have to pay 200 a month that i wasn't paying before and now it was a financial impact for them as well so it's like almost like a double whammy so number one we didn't have child care carefully before now i knew and now i also have to pay for it so uh work family connection would be making something for them to do if they're not online learning like their day off but helping them get on computers and they're taking care of everything i think it's awesome yeah and tonight the nice part about it is doing our before and after camp for us so they're they're already they're invented through us so they're just going to continue through the day which makes life a little bit easier for us as well yeah you know so those six um what's the people who are gonna have to know that you said are they no they're not definitely they're they're putting in just i i don't know if they're definitely i don't know if they are or what i'm just telling you that that's what that's are all six part of that benefit too or just i'm just trying to see if they were agreeing that having child care will help them finally help them go to work i don't know an answer to that because i really haven't i haven't i don't want this out for you guys i need your guys direction on this before i go out to them and give them any hope of this happening right i don't want to give them false hope and say yeah this is something i'm going to do and then all of a sudden you guys say no we're not doing it right so i don't want to do that to the staff so that's why i'm bringing it to you first if you guys give me the okay i'll turn around and i'll go out to the staff and i'll find out from there that's what i'm saying you have to remember it's 125 a day yeah you go 90 you're going 80 days for 12 weeks so 80 days times four days [Music] yeah i mean listen i got right now as it stands right now because i know the question's going to come up i have four teachers who are probably going to go out on flight okay and this is they're look they're quite frankly it's legit so i have no no no phone comment you know what i mean so yeah yeah i still think the bigger concern is you know our our sub pool is really it's going to be very hard because most of our subs are teachers who who probably don't want to come into a school environment right now so getting people to come in and fill in is going to be a little difficult for us right now so the more incentives we can put out to make sure our staff is here the better roles we're going to make in my thinking all right keep up ballpark for how many adults to children ratios the um family connections does i do not always top to my head but i can find out yes please and then also um how much like how they get compensated and then like benefits the onus of child care for one to another person where they also are like you know they they need employment and they want a job but just to make sure that they are getting fairly compensated for also taking on risky responsibility themselves [Applause] that we aren't hiring a company i mean you said they've already been vetted right so like how do we how do we know that i guess just that we're satisfied with the way that they also treat their employees right because but in the past we've had um you know we've had the substitute people and you know we had talked about maybe it wasn't the substitute people i don't remember when we were talking let me just take it back i just want to make sure that we're not going from that we're not engaging with your family connections in a way that they're you know treating them they're not compensating their employees as well yeah they've provided our um before and after care for the past two years probably it might even be three now and they're all over somerset county so they're well-known we've already made sure they're running the same program already as well so what they're doing is they're just staffed because they're daytime you can get um the kids the potential kids that work family connections are going to be watching um are they in five days a week like ours or is this are they on baby's schedule [Applause] the next piece is then reaching out to the staff saying okay we've now got an approval from the board to do this now the next piece is all right i need to do a survey what needs to do kids attack what times would they attack you know i would have to do another complete survey so i can get a whole nother data picture to share with work family connection and say okay this is what it's going to look like how do we staff it how do we make this work so i'm with the district because i don't think it was touched upon in the department of health's guidance would we treat them as a cohort and of themselves like i'm thinking of now you've got multiple districts wait no and the reason we the reason we're using um pork family connection is they're considered a day care provider so they have to go by the daycare provider pieces so they don't fall within under our guidelines or our health pieces they're going to fall under a whole different set of parameters which is the date carefully again understand like you know i had to reach out to our insurance company before i even brought this to you and saying to our insurance company okay what's our liability is our liability insurance going up what's the best way to try and do this for our staff if we try to do it in-house is there is it you know is it more feasible for us to do it in-house you know and then when i spoke to the insurance company we talked about liability and everything else and then have to then acquire like a uh the daycare uh approvals and all that stuff it just doesn't make sense for us to do in the house it became all right we need a third-party vendor and we already have it into this family connection right so it just became easier to say let's use work family connection at that point in time and let's just shift and figure out what the cost would be with them and kind of go this direction did the insurance company give you an answer on the liability for the most part yes the the problem really comes down to us we would have to go get an approval as a daycare provider which we don't have which is a very tenuous process and we wouldn't be able to get it and again talking with them if they need some things and we have to provide it to them you know again i i haven't sat down and actually negotiated with them fully yet either there may be some things that i provide them to reduce the cost of the district yes you guys can share foreign i know there's intermittent fmla there there are things you can do as fmla if you like i can have tyrion come to the next board meeting and kind of give you a rundown on that she's done a great job learning all the ins and outs probably explained it a whole lot better than i can okay [Music] can you repeat the question so how many teachers would have to be out for us to close i would say if we can't properly supervise a class of students we'd have to close so i couldn't give you a specific number i would just tell you that if we couldn't if we could not cover classes with staff we'd have is there a difference between high school and elementary school because i mean there's two teachers in every elementary school yes yeah high school high school is pretty much singled out because of their certifications and things like that high school is definitely a completely different uh different scenario high school um the way it works so depending on schedules right so some of the things you would do is um you have during any one period you're going to have roughly let's just and i'm just going to ballpark because i don't know the exact number off the top of my head but it has roughly 50 teachers right so out of the 50 teachers he may have 10 10 to 12 teachers that are not teaching every single period so they might have their prep period that particular time or they may have a duty right so if you have a teacher out that period basically by contract if we don't have a sub and um we can offer we can offer a payment for a teacher that's on a duty or a prep well not on the beauty but i'm prepped to go cover that class and pay them if they're on a duty we can just tell them instead of doing their duty they're going to go hard with less then you get to a point where um if nobody wants to do that for a payment by contract we can say we're in an emergency situation you now have to go cover the class and we can tell them they have to go up the classroom you can do that as well so the haitian school has a little bit more flexibility in terms of shifting some people around the staff to cover things right it's the elementary level they don't have that kind of flexibility because all those teachers are kind of accounted for so when they're in class they're all kind of in class so you don't have a pool of say 10 10 or 12 teachers that aren't teaching any any specific period you may have one or two that like you know uh mr gold is in his classes in phys ed and this depositors class happens to be in arts you may have those two on breath but that's all you have so if you have you're missing three teeth if you got a big problem right so it's definitely a little different so we've done our best to to kind of prepare for this a little bit so we've asked the subsurface to give us 14 14 building-based subs right out of the game so we have 14 people in addition to our staff and that's more for somebody's wellness staff members coming in and all of a sudden they have to have a temperature we have to send them home we want to have bodies there to immediately fill class right but you have those just in case you you have that particular situation you know most of our aides um you know are going to have 60 college credits so if we had to pull an a to go supervise the class and probably could do that um if we had a full administrator to go and specific class a supervisor whoever that may be we could do that right getting through a day um i would say comfortably we can get through that now you get 20 of your staff that's going to be out we're probably probably going to cover that right we have 20 percent of our staff out we have no ability to cover we're probably going to close and if you know we're going to have 20 percent of our staff out for a lengthy period of time and at that point in time you know this is the tricky part so everybody understands if we're supposed to be in person and we have to close we can't go virtual you lose the debt so you're gonna start burning snow days and then you're gonna start burning into vacation time right so just just so i'm clear on it the state doesn't allow you to flip-flop to vertical at that point that without an executive order wait say oh so if we have to aren't close because because teachers aren't showing up you can't flip to virtue right so then you're going into your snow days and then for us again we only we only put in four snow days so if you went through four snow days then you remember how our school calendar built then we start taking away days around holidays and then other days and then we start tacking out to the end of calendars things like that the the the new um executive order is if we're closed under a mandate of an emergency by the government for more than three days then we can pop the burden or we need an executive order from the government to go to virtual so ain't closure right doesn't mean we automatically go to virtual if we close for coven we can go to virtual he's already put that in his executive order what you said before right now right if it's coping we can go to virtual but if we're close because staff is not here or we're closed because we had a flood or whatever without an executive order from the governor we're burning dates just so i can be clear on that i don't want to be there any mistake about that what was that if the staff is not here it has to do with focus that's the thing no not necessarily is that her building like you have to close the high school you know what and that's that's another tricky question and i'll i'll go back to i'll go back to one real quick scenario michelle remember this so i called michelle like two years ago and i said michelle i think i may have to close the district she goes live i have a sewer problem over at le mans and if i close levon i think i have to close the entire district because how do i open how do i open five buildings and not six because how do i get the data count for 180 if i have one building closed and half of the other five gold so it becomes one of those tricky things where if i close one i may have to close them all don't know if i have an option on it other than undertoken yeah yeah but when it comes when it comes to something like a staffing issue or like a water main breed or power outage no i i have to i'm pretty sure i have to cover the whole difference i don't know i don't know if there was a special rule made but i don't know during sandy my district closed some schools and reopened schools one at a time and at the end of the school year just as an example i got married the day after my school year ended and my wife had to go back for monday and tuesday after our wedding so her school was always a little bit longer than mine so she had two extra days at the end that i didn't have to do it it can't happen but that's the one thing i've never had to deal with but i also think is your school district do you have um multiple grades in local like do you have more than one building that has kindergarteners in it more than one yeah see we don't so that's where you're going to run into like it becomes like an equity issue too like i can't just deny education to kindergarteners and close that building but everybody else goes you know i mean kindergarten's all over the district we'd be able to do that and sometimes like if um we're already in session and we have an issue in one building we're able to evacuate to other buildings but in this particular case because of it and you know social distancing we will be able to do that well a lot of it is under the guidelines right now for the reason we can't do well right [Applause] i think the hardest part and i think the most frustrating thing for all of us is is the constant change right this afternoon around five around five o'clock from the county office basically it was a telephone survey from the executive cabinet if you're just going virtual the government's office wants to know that he has every executive county superintendent called all auditions to find out what their intent is i said as far as i know our intent is we have a restart recovery plan that's approved for a hybrid piece you guys approved it and i don't see anybody before not doing that so my answer to you is is it's doing a hybrid opening unless you're telling me something i don't know that's the exact way i put it unless you're telling me something i don't know because again the question is bizarre like and it's the ever-changing piece was there a deadline that school districts had to hand in their uh recovery you know like yeah and a little before four weeks before you opened because you had to present it to your board and put it out to the public four weeks before you open so then they should have the answer to that right then the government but the problem was the government then went out and made the change that you can go full virtual right and now you have districts going full virtual so now you're you're in less than four weeks and you now have words of education saying no we can't meet the standards so we're gonna go full virtual did they have to have those standards approved a couple weeks ago [Music] because up until then it was you had to have in person but no when i read the article it didn't say that you had the option to go virtual it said if you could not make the checklist then you could you could opt to go to start virtual as long as you had measures in place to address your deficiencies and since our district didn't have any dependencies i'm not sure how we could um turn around and say that we do but until the latest executive order there was always that in-person piece right like it wasn't an option at all but there were those caveats of you have to show where your deficiencies are how you're going to fix those deficiencies and when you are going to hold them right so if we already have those in place then i'm not sure how we could justify not continuing on that payout yeah i think it was all the major cities like jersey city i think but i also know that the scadaway's numbers were about 35 of the kids coming in and they had about 65 kids staying home anyway so maybe i i don't know i don't know they have a special meeting on monday and as far as then numbers we say 55 of parents have opted to come have we done a great breakdown how about how that works out do we have you know by school how many numbers we're talking about like what are the class sizes for the high school if they are you know so do we have that all in place it's all in place the principals have it i don't have it at my fingertips but i can tell you that we do have um we have it all all done all the classrooms are 16 apart um what is the largest class because i think i think in the elementary school i think i can see how we'll be able to do that elementary is probably 10 to 12 in the elementary depending on you know like the new classes over the new classrooms over so only definitely get 12 in um some of the older classes over at lafayette [Music] so i mean again um you know we don't have the only school that has any any outside piece for phys ed would probably be smaller oh all right that's all i have if we can open this up [Music] as soon as i get all of the signage in and we have the sign posted what i'd like to do is i'd like to you know start right at the beginning of walking into a building going up temperature check walk through the door follow the one-way signs go into a classroom show how a classroom looks social distance pull up the stairwell come down to different stairwells things like that put that together put that out to folks um you know i think we're going to do that probably in other buildings i think that would be a good plan yeah and i think tomorrow we're posting um i think it's 12 12 tutorials for parents tomorrow um one more question about your report um michelle had mentioned that we saw the letter from i guess the county saying that we had met all the guidelines or we hit we hit all the checkpoints is michelle's comment accurate when she says that means we're really not eligible for all virtual is that i mean that's why i read it but i don't i don't know you know better than ireland exactly yeah i think it's before because the board told me they wanted to go full virtual at this point would be you would have to give me some direction on what part of the checklist that we're missing then i have to go back to the county and say yeah you know we have the letter you just sent us i'm just making sure that you'd have to say the letter you just sent us saying you hit all the checkpoints is wrong and here's why okay exactly okay just making sure it's clear all right so all right so we are now open to the public for agenda items only and i currently have 21 online um comments so i'll start with anybody from the public that has a just come up to them and then i'll then i'll deal with the online comments just give name address thanks uh thank you for all your hard work i know it's um i'm in a school district did the ppe come in for all the schools well sorry dana silva 519 um did all the ppe come in for the schools um because i know we're having trouble and my parents are stressed it's not all in i know you guys asked for masks myself i did go out and buy i don't know where we're doing eating it too or just donating towards kids school um so that's what like what if ppp doesn't come in time it's not going to change this decision uh currently all of the ppd that we need to open is it so we have all of us for all the teachers we have all the fake skills for the teachers um um so we ordered some um they're called fathers they're sanitizing guns um you don't have those you have to do anticipate them before september 10th and they're really more for the buses so they this way they can sanitize them [Music] for each of the nurses offices i really thought it would [Music] offices but we went out and purchased those anyway but those are the only things that i know of that we're waiting on um i know that you're requiring your students to bring in a wearable master bring a second claw mask and mrs fisher as always does a fantastic job [Music] you know she thought it was a great idea to just do another fast drive and uh she's got fantastic responses already so you know we're on top of that as well well my order to donate just eventually and then i have one question about the um they care for the is it a contract so if we go out with coded like are you stuck into paying that whole contract till december or it would just be like per vm it's going to be thank you how much sanitizer because the original reopening plan called for like cloth sanitizers that are epa approved how long do you think you've got a stockpile for on hand six months probably in six months we ordered years now but we you know i would say each happens on backwards so i'm going to say [Applause] has been pulled so uh i'm gonna skip anybody who's asking about false aesthetics yeah so as so just to clarify right now we are going forward with fall [Music] [Applause] sports yes a lot of people who are interested in sports paul sports okay mr brown falls in our schedules the kindergarten teachers will be provided we'll be providing remediation working with students in small group or one-on-one for assessment or instruction will the district be purchasing some type of clear divider or plexiglass to allow teachers to work closer to students in a safe manner um i mean we brought the teachers um plexiglas face shields for that so i think it does personally and some of the remediation will be done with students online uh okay excellent jacket ears do the air conditioning units have air filters that need to be changed if they do how often were they changed last year or how often are they changing this upcoming year they do have air filters they are teams on a pm schedule i don't know the exact pm schedule and they were just recently changed in the last four weeks jackie beers again uh it's the same question air filters okay marie alvarado okay chris schachter 5.3 why is this item being removed i'm assuming that's false it's 5.2 what revisions have been made to the district 3 star player highlighted in yellow uh chris schaffner thank you for the explanation of the changes to the open of the meeting i apologize for questions from the predominant jackie views superintendent report if we go all virtual the teachers still teach from the classroom or from home as well we will decide that when the time comes what would also depend on why we talked yes absolutely uh readathon does if there are child air force staff who have children under the 80 under age of first grade um because of our liability the answer to that question is not oh okay so it's gotta be someone who's school age children okay so that is all the agenda item questions that we have so we are done with that so here we go educational resolutions different high school you know before we take a vote on the uh reopening or would this be the time to bring up the because i don't want to vote on anything unless we've had a discussion about the lunch well i think i think we need to get a motivation okay can i get a motion to discuss lunch and how to handle lunch there's um approval of the revised all right um both as a teacher and and i think the thing that concerns a lot of teachers um is this idea that we're going to feed children in the classroom because i mean we don't even have indoor dining yet yet somehow we're supposed to do indoor dining with students while we have someone in there with them and i know as a teacher myself that's the one area of concern now new york city really doesn't care about that we're going through until two o'clock so i will be doing uh lunch with my cohort in a classroom however i know a lot of school districts in new jersey with their within their own hybrid plan and i believe correct me if i'm wrong it's dominant that lunch will not be done in school so they've sort of truncated their program to like say eight to twelve thirty so that you can get four solid hours of class time and then and then everyone would just take a lunch if they wanted it and then would go home with it and would eat it at home and then the teachers could do their prep and lunch after that and then go home i think you said south bank around 1 o'clock dominic is that yeah so their reopening is on a rotational first and fourth graders they'll be there for about four hours and then they like the first through fourth graders leave that they're eventually the fifth or eighth graders they get their lunches for two days because they're doing a new rotation and so if the big point forever the cafeteria people will get the lunch they'll deliver it to the classrooms know they'll have breakfast online for those for x amount of days but it's two days or three days and i'm gonna stay tuned right so so they're not they're not necessarily eating in the classroom i think i think as a as someone that's going to to be doing that i think that is the area that i myself find i guess the most worrisome because i don't like if neither governor has aok eating in person in a restaurant with 25 capacity i'm not quite sure how we can do that so i i don't know how anyone feels about amending the opening to take that into consideration where we have to say say yeah say i have a four hour school day from eight til 12 15 that gives four one-hour classes with time for passing and then i asked that question and you gave an explanation that i think makes sense so i think share that like what the what the committee's thought was why you did it that way like i think that's what we need to know like when you were working on this why did you choose so so again when we were working on this as a committee the hard part we had was obviously um social distancing kids at six feet we can't do that in cafeteria we can't rotate them through so the easiest thing was sleeping in the collection to do that the other thing was the fact that um we already have a yeah a learning gap with a good portion of our kids and the reality is that um our virtual program as good as it was in the in the spring we're anticipating that gap needs a little bit wider so when we went into this um you know developing this hybrid schedule our main focus was how do we get our kids in front of our teachers for the most amount of time so that would be a first whole day and and that was our goal was to try and get them in school for a full day and the only way we we saw this to be a way to do it was to serve those lunches in the classroom because obviously we can't do it in the cafeteria set because we just can't stop the distance at six feet so that was the rationale behind why we decided to do it in the past in the classroom at 16.

so there's just a lot of factors it's a move and it's moving well one of my one of my um one of my things i was thinking about through our whole deliberation and uh back in late june late july when i said i was leaning more towards remote one of the reasons for that was because i saw an inherent dependability in that you know there is a predictability everyone knows what we're doing we know that's not you know they can't take that away from us and we can plan on it and everybody can just wrap their arms around that know that's what's going on and and plan plan accordingly and at at this point um you know so i'm i'm okay with if we wanna another week or two or what have you and see what else the state comes back with but at some point here i'm i'm more comfortable committing to committing to something for the rest of the semester and just working on that one of the items in our in our board meeting tonight our you know goals in in you know the fact that we're not working on so many other things right now and so when we talk about weighing the risks and the benefits and all in everything that we're doing right now you know i'm i'm concerned about how much we're losing in terms of uh our educational planning and in reaching and achieving those goals because we're we're we're working on this you know we're building on quicksand here and and you're going to come up with another brilliant plan the last plan was brilliant i mean i i think i think our hybrid plan probably is a model for any anybody any other high school of our size to potentially use but knowing that we could come up with an adjusted plan and then have new guidelines come out and another couple weeks after that and then lose it all again that's what i'm afraid of is is it this constant changing and i i get that some of it is evolving right we have you know more information more data but at some point i think we just need to accept that that's the reality that we're living in and uh and and uh and just say hey we're gonna commit to remote for the rest of the semester hank at what point do you think you would be at what point should we be looking for that recommendation from you for the rest of the semester is it three weeks is it four weeks yeah i'd say the week after labor day we should know what we're thinking for that at least the short term through september so when is our next board meeting september 17th okay for probably the rest of the semester right because you should have some interpretation of the data maybe some new guidance that we can say yes we can work with it and maybe put a plan together or no at this point considering that at that point we're four weeks five weeks in the school that we should make a decision so i'm just trying to get you to a point where we could know that at that point we should be able to you know meet some kind of you know at some point yeah i'd also like to give the team an opportunity to work through what special circumstances it's still appropriate to bring students back we're still planning on following through with athletics and activities i mean those are smaller groups they're unique cohorts of people where it's easier to track and and follow these kinds of guidelines that are going on than what we have with a full return to school in the hybrid model so we'll continue to work through what those smaller group settings are that might still make sense and labor day is what the fourth i'm sorry today's labor day is the fourth labor day is seven the second the seventh so we'll be one weekend so hank um you're thinking that these guidelines would be okay to be used for t99 and for special education because that's more of a one-on-one type situation you know is that gonna really be a problem for us to meet their education so t99 is starting remotely and as they evaluate how they might be able to work through these in that setting we have to be careful when we use the term special education because there's students across a wide range of experiences within special education so um no i mean that's what our team needs time to work through is to figure out what scenarios still fit within these guidelines where we can maintain program uh programmatic uh instruction and which ones are just out of bounds won't work within these new things i just don't know that yet we need you know we immediately switched to just trying to get the school year up and running remotely i don't know if you've seen the pictures but ed and janice and their teams have literally thousands of boxes lined up and they're starting to pack those so that students can get their materials i mean they've been working non-stop to get all of those things pulled together so i mean it's shifting gears and focus right now we got to focus on that once we get the gear established up and running we can start talking about what kind of in-person might work and by then hopefully we'll have the rest of the guidelines the full picture to work from i think having a date like the 14th where we can let students let parents let faculty let everybody know you know i think that's i think that's a fair thing that gives us enough time to do that one goal [Music] well i also want to say that as much as i've lost a lot of faith in in leadership from above i have a hundred percent confidence in yours and in our team and i i think i think you've done an outstanding job this summer and and to get us to this point here um we've been very transparent and i know that that brought with it a lot of you know a lot of people getting to to see things and learn things as it was happening and it brought criticism along the way and comment and maybe made things a little more difficult but this i think you know our our team's done a great job hank and i i wanted to say that tonight all right so to just review a couple of things so this week is this week one modified schedule students aren't meeting in the full remote schedule yet right we're following that same modified schedule we would have followed this week to get to know our students all right so we're really focused on building relationships with students getting them set up into routines getting them their resources you know and getting the year started and then next week and the weeks after that all right well here it is you've seen it it's up on the website and then for the next two weeks uh oh i didn't change the line underneath we're always working on establishing relationships but uh then week two and three we work on establishing that remote learning schedule and making sure that that that works and is effective and that's uh in this more block style schedule with access periods in the middles of the day so students can get help when they need it so that's where they'll be for the next couple of weeks so returning to school considerations we talked about a few of these so these are things that we'll consider uh between now and september 14th you know how to meet these guidelines what those additional guidelines are in the metrics you know especially i expect that some of those metrics are going to be built around community outbreak and what that looks like in our overall community around dupage and kane county and also within our own school district so in the meeting many meetings that we've had over the last week around metrics these are things that we expect might be included in these this isn't by any means i'm saying that they'll be there but these are kind of terms and concepts that we've had heard tossed around in in all of our meetings with health leaders so the idea of incident rate so that's how many per 100 000 per day or per week type of metrics uh how many covid like illness hospital admissions that there are in your area a huge one is diagnostic testing turnaround all right as we talked to the health department they continue to tell us the fact that a student or a staff member that appears to have kovid can't know within 24 hours if they truly have it because then when you get to the point if it's four days later and now you're trying to truly contact trace it's too late right you can't remember all of that stuff by that time and as you've seen to get people back in a timely fashion we need under 24 hour turnaround if not quicker on these results and then what are those individualized school metrics that we're going to be tracking and what other localized conditions would be in place that would be factored into this so what that means is if there's community metrics that say what pick your whatever number it is but it's an outbreak in a couple of long-term care facilities that are driving the numbers up it's not necessarily in the population of students you're serving the health department will factor those in as we discuss is it appropriate to be closing schools or you know moving schools to remote learning if we were in in person so uh as i mentioned all of these remain with the superintendent in consultation with the health department and they would be making recommendations that it's okay to come back in person [Music] if or the metrics seem to indicate that right or they indicate that you should not be it should be fully remote or it should be somewhere in between we believe the metrics right now are pointing to somewhere in between which is why we're remote for instruction but we're still allowing athletics and activities in some shape or format to be here if the metrics get so bad we might have to cease those activities as well or if the metrics get better maybe we can open things up more but we're still waiting to see what those metrics actually are this is what we've talked about one of the key things that i've learned in my discussions with the health experts over the last couple of weeks you've seen the bullets at the top before but the last bullet is new and what we've come to understand is all of the safety measures that we've put in place inside of our schools are only effective to a point if community spread is too great in our community our safety measures will no longer be effective and a great analogy or a way of describing it that we've come up with with the health department is kind of the idea of your airbags your airbags in your car are there and they're built to keep you safe up to a certain speed but there's a threshold where if you're going too fast your airbags don't work for you any longer so if you're going 40 50 60 even 80 miles an hour your airbags are going to be safe and help keep you safe but if you're doing 125 down the highway well your airbags aren't going to do so much for you and that's the idea of community spread so with all the ppe and safety measures and social distancing and hand washing if there is just too much covet in your community those measures get less and less effective you know another analogy we use is like a hockey goalie right you could have the best goalie in the world and they could stop every shot on goal but if there's two guys shooting on goal your goalie is going to get less effective and if there's 3 or 4 or 10 or 15 eventually pucks are going to get into the net and as your community spread gets greater there's more shots on goal and it's more likely that one's going to get through and somebody's going to get infected right so and this is what nancy's been saying all along but you know it's been made more clear to us the effectiveness of these measures in a school setting early in the summer isb and idph many superintendents believed that as long as we were following these things community spread didn't matter right that these measures would keep you safe in a school setting regardless of how much covid was present in your community or at least they'd be safer in your school than they would be in your community but it's becoming more and more apparent in these conversations with the health experts that there's a threshold that it's no longer safe to bring students back to school and those are the metrics that we're waiting to receive a couple more things for you here so here's the ongoing challenges as i see them availability of testing the availability of students with 10 days and 14 day quarantines and those kinds of things ongoing symptoms the availability of staff for those same reasons the fact that we have new guidelines we know are coming and unknown metrics that are out there and that the rate of community spread definitely will impact our ability to come back in person for either small groups or large groups so the best thing that the community this is what the health department keeps telling us if the numbers go the other direction like they were in june early june we should have everybody back at school following the hybrid plan they said you know dupage county health department at least is would be very comfortable with students coming back the more that the numbers keep ticking up like they have been recently the less comfortable they get all right any other final questions on this topic all right our next item is 2021 school goals and as mike alluded to earlier this is usually the board meeting where you get to see all of those and i have none for you our goal all summer has been to try to get students back to school in a healthy and safe way regardless of whether it's in person or remote so that's all we've been working on once we get settled down and school gets settled we'll start looking at more long-term goals we're still continuing the things that we have been doing like our equity work our work around curriculum developments professional development all of those things our teachers are learning more faster than they ever had before because of the situations that we're in we have plenty of goals in which our district is going to continue to improve but we have not sat down and thought long term beyond that at this point we hope to be able to settle down and do that soon and then we'll start working on those and present them to the board including some long-term planning that was originally on the agenda for this year was to begin planning for a strategic planning process i still hope to be able to do that in the spring otherwise if board members have individual things they'd like for us to focus on or investigate this year please reach out to me and sometime in september i'll be meeting with the administrative team to start thinking beyond getting the school year started uh what we need to be focused on and sometime probably middle of the year we'll bring you a plan for those goals for the rest of the year and then through the summer and heading into the next school year so hank quick question and i don't know if it's necessarily in goals but i didn't know where to ask it sure what's the status of this year's student board members i think this year more than any other year it's really important we have the perspective of the students on the board and i know that that was delayed for a while but what's the status of that utter janus so hopefully sometime in september we'll have them up and going all right next topic is certificate and excellence in financial reporting this year is the 21st consecutive year that mark and his team have been recognized for excellence in financial reporting every year they get this nice plaque and we are running out of spaces to put all of these plaques so julie got to work on a project earlier this year and went out and got a brand new plaque there we go that has now on here 20 of the 21 well i i think or maybe it has all 20 all 21 on here now so and we have room for more mark so don't put up now um but uh mark uh is also been recognized a long time ago the monarch award which is an award that recognizes the top csbo in illinois he was supposed to receive that in the middle of kovid when this all started in the spring it was delayed till the fall but i think the board and i hope the community recognized that in mark we have one of the absolute best controllers and business officials probably in the country here uh within district 99 uh this type of recognition you know 21 straight years of this i joked his department can finally drink now you know they they've gotten that old i mean that that's uh that's a long string of doing it right uh and and great work on behalf of the taxpayers and the citizens of our district so mark thank you for all of your hard work thank you thank you mark thank you and giree is our bouncer out the hallway she's part of that team as well [Applause] that's that's something it's it's a team that does this and it's um it's drea is a big part of it and the hr department every department has to pull the other data to get this thing updated so it's a good good team project for us so mark you get to work with jim to figure out where to put this okay it's about 90 pounds and there's some open you've got some open spots that's good so you still got work to do that'd be great thank you all right so with that being said we'll transition into the tentative budget yeah in spite of getting the certificate the certificate of excellence is really in reporting it's it's putting together a document in the right format so that you can be compared to other schools but also to you can fully assess where a district is it doesn't mean that your district's in good financial shape doesn't doesn't say that it just as you can someone reading the report can determine what shape you're in in a fair way and it's done in with all the the international standards actually so um we've got a tentative budget here to to look at and in the 26 years of my being here it's been the toughest year and hardest year to even know where we're going with the education delivery model and putting some room in the budget for for those things that may come up more things that come up there you'll see some nurses that we could possibly contract for when we bring kids back into the buildings for support in that area a lot of little details like that are built into it but i'm going to hit the highlights um the the first thing i'd like to do is catch the revenues um crap and and you see right in the middle of it there's a nice green bond proceeds in fact if you can see that 10 million dollar bonds this is a working cash bonds that a couple of months ago is we started to realize this was going to be a problem we came out of last year and we were down in a lot of key revenues if you look at that column other than the property taxes which um one segue here is that property taxes are are this is why we use property taxes to fund education they they are stable in our economy there's we will have them if you have a an economy like hawaii for example is a perfect example on the other side they don't have a property tax they just have sales taxes but now people aren't going to hawaii there's no sales tax there's little money for schools so there's this having the stability of the property taxes is is key for us to be able to deliver a quality program to our students and be consistent um just about everything else is is negative that we can control and over you know we came off the 2008 recession and thought okay maybe we can start to build back economy was coming back and then now it's it's being crushed on us again the last quarter of last year and the projection in this budget we have 2.8 i'm sorry yeah 2.8 million dollars of reduction in local revenues interest food services registration fees other local and it's not really a reduction in registration fees and the amount but we expect more waivers so they think they'll be waivers of that amount just because of what's happening in the county with unemployment and we're guessing at some of these numbers we don't know how bad they'll be but we're trying to protect and get the best document we can in terms of the projection for our budget um so other than property taxes general state aid and federal aid are both up um aid really is just there's always we always talk about special education transportation and that the money that we spend out this year we get reimbursed in the following area well we had a really big year last year with special education transportation and so that's what that 250 or so thousand is that's all one line item pretty much it's pretty much the special education reimbursement that we expect and that's only if the state keeps it at the same proration level of about 83 percent um so they give us about 83 percent of what we spend in that area um and the condition that the state's in right now we don't know but that we're taking a hopeful they rarely do cut special ed though it's usually the last thing they cut from the budget in in the last probation that they make so we're optimistic that they might still do that um the federal is up only because we we did get or we have a grant or an allocation i guess of the federal covet money to our district the first one was about 308 thousand dollars and we're hoping to get some more this next year in addition we haven't received that 300 000 yet but so it's part of it's built into this year's budget and we also expect possibly another another round if they get to some kind of agreement politically is that federal money is that that's the federal money yes that's the federal bump so those are the two big things and and the revenue side other than taxes that look good everything else as i said 2.8 million dollars um has been hard and we were hoping to turn this budget around but um a few months ago we started talking about several months ago we started talking about working cash bonds because the district has always had some safety nuts it's always been one of the safety nets that i've known we could go to in a pinch the second one is more drastic and that would be actually to go back to the cash basis and start recognizing early taxes but that would be that would be the start of a downward spiral and so we don't have many more safety nets left other than maybe just another round of going through all the departments and trying to set a target value to cut expenditure side and try and do without and change and do things differently maybe slow some hiring do some different things that that will all impact the program we deliver and so we're trying not to do that right now we have when it's a september meeting i'm going to be bringing a five-year projection um which will show that in two years our our debt service transfers going to the from the operating funds to the debt service fund to pay for things that we didn't want to issue taxes for those will fall off and it's a two million dollar piece right there so we have that bright thing going on in the future we're some hope that we don't spend all the expenditures when i get to those we have some pads in there maybe we won't have to spend all that but um so we will the the real test will be the five-year projection where this comes out right now the cpi is trending towards a one percent um but that might be optimistic we don't know where we're going to be we still have a an election coming up in november that could change things too so there's a lot of pieces a lot of things on the table there's a lot of things spinning around so i'm just going to come through really quickly on the expenditure side sally's up to a total of three percent about about one percent of that 1.7 of that was for existing ongoing staff just the net amount after retirements if you know we were giving everybody just about 2.3 because that was the cpi factor for this year and it's up it's not as high as that because we have retirements that came up and offset some of that in existing categories and we have some new fte at 1.3 for any new fte um some will be needed because of the delivery model but so we have some room in there determining um until that's determined let me get to some notes here so i don't miss anything big i think the operating expenses is is expected increased by 2.6 percent or 2.8 percent overall purchase services i just discussed salaries purchase services are getting increased by 187 000 that's where we we have some 140 000 of that is for additional for nurses if we go into delivery with kids here when we do that hopefully and supplies well that's really where the big hit has been but a lot of that can be covered by covid which is on the revenue side we are still kind of figuring out what what the right amount of supplies are in some areas there would be some situations where we actually need full gown covering for some of the staff members that work maybe at the transition 999 t99 center where they're helping kids do daily tasks and daily things like toiletry and things like that so they want full full gown to for that then it's not you know they're not tremendously expensive but we're still trying to figure out what the right balance is for all these things um and and maybe some of we won't even know until kids are there and we we learn more about what what we really need on a daily basis that we never thought of before capital outlay is going to go actually down by 434 thousand we are going to lease some of the technology for some of the internet background and some of the things that out here uh we talked about that when we talked about a wintrust lease we had approval for that to lease some technology and also the um the chromebooks for this year so so we're seeing it in smaller pieces and capital outlay we'll need the lease amounts rather than the entire amount of the outlay and we had four four activity buses that we pushed off from last year and got the vendor to push them through to this year so we hope we get to use them you know because some of them were in pretty bad shape and so they needed to be replaced but we hope to that we can actually use them this year tuition expense is going gonna go up 3.8 percent five percent is the number that we've been told by our uh liaison schools where we're sending kids on a special needs student sign up for tuition on a tuition basis and they're they're saying five percent is their anticipated cost partly because of the same issues we're dealing with their additional costs of of working with the students and nursing and things like that that are required in their facilities but the actual count right now it looks like it's going to drop a little bit so instead of a full 5 increase it's about a 3.8 percent increase and that's a very conservative number meaning that we're anticipating that most kids that are placed will be there for the entire year that's not quite going to happen so i think we'll even come in better than 3.8 unless we get a new influx of more kids so and um that's it for the expenditures hey mark before you get off of expenditures um sure the only thing i didn't see in the notes that i would just want to understand a little bit better is what is the impact on our busing costs um with you know the potential remote or at least the first three weeks remote and if we go longer term but do we get any type of savings from our our bus we'll get 20 savings but here's here's the deal they're they're really in a tough situation right now because it's possible on the table it's possible we won't have any busting all year if things are made if the state changes our mind or the thresholds change and it's like okay it's like you're saying is the first semester already gone we don't know what this pandemic is going to do we we had a meeting with i had a meeting with the bus company along with our two center district the the business managers and last year they were they they accepted 40 percent of what the normal fee is to try and keep their drivers in place and at least have a majority if not all of the drivers needed to run our routes if we just picked up the phone and said we need them next week they would they would do their best to get all the drivers they need the reason that they were able to do it so low some districts paid 80 percent last year hinsdale i think were paid 80 last year um we held out for 40 because a lot of their staff were took unemployment and they they so they were on unemployment and could be called back pretty quickly that's running out and so they're not able to do that anymore and so now we're feeling the full 80 likelihood we haven't finished negotiations but that's probably where we'll be with the transportation and that's only we're going to get a list of the drivers that are assigned to us so that we know who they are and so that if we flip the switch and we say we need them that they better not have been unemployed for the last three months when that happens so we're going to have a verification of of what we're paying for so we're going to pay for 40 of their overhead costs of leasing the terminal that's not an owned company it's a leased terminal leasing the buses so all those things they're fixed costs that they've got to keep paying to keep them in business and then 40 another 40 up to that amount for the drivers to keep the drivers in place so that's a that's a and it pains me to to to pay for that for not getting any service but it also means if we want to really get kids back in the building at some point even if we do the hybrid method we need busing we need to get the kids that are out more than a mile and a half to get them in so we do need to i feel we do need to keep them how will that 80 percent number change if three four weeks from now the determination is made either by us or by the state that fully remote for the semester yeah if if it's done for the year we'll we will stop it i mean we'll stop it for this year because there's there's no way it wouldn't work even if we kept if they kept them through may they're not going to keep them over the summer and and as well so they'd have to start from scratch the next year i think and we'll have to work through that because if we're still able to bring back some kind of programming for athletics or activities or small groups of students coming in we still would have some busing needs so you know this is some of the stuff we still need to work through as we get the rest of the guidelines and you know there's still work to do here [Music] okay you conceivably need more buses than less yeah we could need more rather than less if we end up bringing students back and especially right with the protocol if it's like x 16 kids per bus or something you know reduced to your right you could end up with needing more for athletics or activities some of the earlier guidelines we saw this summer were 11 students on a bus and if our routes are capped at that size then you're going to need a lot of buses to even just bring in small groups of students rather than all of your students so do we have any feeling about the the solvency of the busing company they're the largest in the world uh which also means they're probably hurt more than anybody in the world right now but um that's why at least in illinois this has been the common you're somewhere between 40 and uh 80 last year and now everybody's getting pushed up higher um it's it's possible they go out but it's nothing we can really determine at this point if we we're doing what we can to try and keep this terminal open and uh they may be having some other terminals to close back so we'll figure if this one's solvent at least maybe they'll keep it running yeah i think there's a balancing act here right absolutely and because part of what we would be paying for is further you know there's there to be available buses down the road when we need them sure if if they go out of business we can't we can't do it without busing the the other big expenditure that's in the in the contracted service is food service and they're having a worse problem right so we are working with them to see how much how we can keep their program running at the lowest level and doing that through the pre-reduced lunches to to students and doing whatever whatever we can to get those lunches out and getting them preparing those lunches for us and helping us and we deliver them so how is that working mark i mean are they are they um is there some transparency are they showing us their books that sort of thing to justify i mean they're they're definitely i mean we're they're not gonna there's no no fad in what we're paying them actually we're paying them for actual sandwiches or we're telling them bill is for the we want to keep them solvent and yeah they have virtually no revenue other than what they make for us and those sandwiches for free and reduced and it was it was a fairly large volume of activity when we included every student under the age of 22 because that was and it was didn't it was not uh requiring it to be free and reduced it was anybody in the community well they haven't renewed that piece and so now it's right now we're looking just at the free and reduced group and uh we have approximately eleven hundred twelve hundred kids that fit that that you know that uh situation and we we need to get a good number of those at least half i would hope to keep them viable to keep some staff going here but i know they're making cuts and it's we may not see the same paces but hopefully they can get up and running when we need them but that would be not as hard as the drivers the bus the buses have to go through a cdl program it's a two or three you know it's at least a month wait for for them to get up to speed and before i i forget um related comment to busing our buses that we've purchased that we're not using right now the activities and and this would go for any of our vehicles i know is is jim got something going where those do get used every now and then just so that we don't incur damage from things sitting and not getting used um so they're gonna be brake problems other mechanical things we'll maintain our fleet yeah yeah and you mean just to keep them running so that there's no yeah from sitting yeah and actually we have a mechanic we have a mechanic on staff in the district and so this is when he makes up all the repairs on it and fixes the brakes and you know i know that protests themselves they need to be driven every now and then yeah just yeah take them around the block that sort of thing so we'll give them the staff to take home if that's the recommendation tank will be driving the minibus well the only problem is we forget that you're driving one of those when you're driving to a burger king and you take the top off it's a convertible um operating funds yeah so let's go to operating funds and that's this is the story that's you know this is why the 10 million dollars is in there and actually uh how how sad is this that the 10 million dollars with the current interest rates we'd probably earn 75 000 worth of interest if we didn't need it at all all throughout the year it's just they're really ridiculously low rates um but using that 10 million dollars and assuming we're successful with that ref that request non-referendum requests we would be able to stabilize our funds pretty quickly and probably through the course of the year if you look at the ad fund we did some shaping around back in between the funds in terms of allocating revenue so that would we would keep the other funds like the building fund transportation and imrf positive at the end of the year but the ed fund is where you know it all falls that's the biggest fund and that's where the largest negative would i'm just kind of condensing it for you uh to see where it is but we might be able to transfer somebody from transportation for instance or even operations of maintenance and not tap the working cash but ultimately we would probably tap the working cash for at least a couple million dollars this first year and my goal with the five-year five-year forecast would be to try and recover that that money that we're losing these years hope that the economy comes back hope that we get some normal interest years because just the weakening of those revenue streams the local revenue streams is really what got us here and and this that can come back we would really be good and i think there will be something that we normalize in our hopefully in our economy um that's a did i think i talked about everything on that piece the others did last hold on i do want to point out i don't think mark has have you ever brought a negative balance negative budget to the board i've never brought a negative to the board so 26 years he's never brought a negative budget this tells you what you know what kind of times we're in and also you know when you look at this you have the ability this this board and this community has the ability to tap into this 10 million dollars of working cash bonds that's 10 million dollars of 30 million dollars that's available to the board to use in the case of an emergency i think that these current times fit that definition there are many school districts that do not have this safety net to tap into so the reason we have that is the work that mark and his team have done for 26 years to build up this kind of capacity in the district so that when this once in a lifetime scenario comes along we're not in a spot where we are offering less services to our community we're in a spot where our community needs more services from us and we're able to offer those and i know a lot of people would look at a you know two plus million dollar deficit as oh my goodness what is the district done wrong with their finances what what the the citizens here in this community have gotten is unprecedented times in so many different ways right now and the ability for a school district to amp up services to meet the needs of the community because of decades of good sound fiscal management where other school districts are looking at how to do cuts we're looking at how do we support kids in the best possible format the way i look at this this is why people move into a community like downers grove and district and woodridge and district 99 community is because when these time these times come this is the level of service that we can offer our families and uh i think that this is not this is a success story of the finances in this district this is not a negative story of the finances that we have in our district and uh you know we always say that those kinds of funds like working cash bonds are rainy day funds or our case of emergency brake glass well it's raining and we need to break the glass and that's why we're we're going out and issuing those and as a result our students will be well served and i believe that mark will probably bring you a five-year forecast uh in another month like what he said where we'll get right back to that same level of solvency pretty quickly because of all of the other things that he's put in place to make sure that we're in a good good position so thanks well you know and actually we still have that exhibit up yeah this is an easy way easier way for you to see what's going on the gold line or yellow line that's at the at the bottom it's tentative budget totals the revenues of 105 million include that 10 million dollars of bond issue if you take that away it's roughly 95 9.5 i'm sorry 95 million dollars and and actually the revenues compared to expenditures without that 10 million revenues exceed expenditures by 300 000 so we're a little bit still in the green now the the loss comes from the next column where we're transferring money from our operating funds to pay for large capital things that we chose to do and that really were fantastic but knowing that okay if if rainy day comes we have the support of the working cash fund wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have that safety net for us to operate and the positive thing about the working cash and that that's what the debt service extension-based type of bond is it doesn't increase the tax rate it keeps it from falling okay but it doesn't increase the tax rate there's a there's a debt service limit that in 19 2004 i think it was 1994 as well um came into play that we were spending about this amount for debt service for working cash bonds at that time and that the amount was frozen for about 20 years and just recently they made it so that it will grow now by inflation but it was the same two million dollars for 20 years and and now we can it's it's gone i mean it's not it's it's available it's opened up again because we've been paying paying it off and been using it for different things in fact there was years when it was zero but we issued some life safety bonds and some other things like that and we use that without increasing the tax rate to individuals so it's it's not letting it fall i don't want to say it's not an impact to a taxpayer but it's it's not something new that a taxpayer is going to take on and if they were actually two million dollars is is about one-fourth of what our referendum was and it was 65 dollars for the referendum so it's somewhere in the 15 to 16 dollar per 300 of market value of a house so don't drop off their taxes that won't drop off it's in how many years not a lot of money they actually we're federating it over we won't see any of this impact until about three years out and then it goes from three to seven years so it's really spread over the next seven years is when we'll be repaying um for these bonds bringing the principal and issues on the bonds so it's a very nominal impact and it's a very smart safety net we could have gone 20 million dollars i think with it but if we use 10 million we can still go back to that same authority and so i i'd rather force this to live with just this amount right now and still have some more safety net going into the next you know decade or so so for clarity this bears repeating so if you own a home in district 99 prop property that is worth 300 000 a few years from now you'd see would increase in your taxes you would have seen you would have seen it drop by twelve dollars now that's not gonna happen yeah you won't see it we're filling in that stream and taking advantage of it for up through the next seven years and it's only like a couple hundred thousand the first two years because we have life safety bonds that are already taken some of that so the headline here is that your taxes are not going to be going up your taxes aren't going up and instead of dropping by twelve dollars in three years they'll drop by twelve dollars in seven years right but in the meantime the community sees no reduction in services as a result right that's the headline get back on track this will stabilize us i mean this is this is a beautiful thing we have any sense of what's going to happen to our costs well actually right now we're we're putting money back into the health benefit funds because we raised our the premium by five percent and it's actually we've had very few i mean maybe a lot of elective surgeries have been put off i believe or had to be so we're running at a positive right now and we do anticipate raising that next year maybe another five percent three to five percent and so in january it'll increase so now it just affects half of a year we already know our rate for for half a year and so it's it that's allowing for that but we're keep we're i'd like to just keep that flat you never know what's going to happen we might get some really big costs because we are self-funded for our largest plan our ppo plan so we we do have some risks there we do have some reinsurance it covers at a certain level um so that it you know we won't have a huge claim but we could get a bunch of little ones you know so yeah so the non-opera non-operating funds are debt service capital projects and that's what's up in the yellow that's those are the funds that i don't show you on the quarterly basis because they're pretty much they're so large and if we tried to average them out it would throw kind of the comparisons off but this is showing that for debt service we're going to have 4.8 million dollars sitting in account now from taxes that we've received we'll have revenues of new taxes coming in 11 11.8 million dollars we'll be spending 12.1 million dollars we'll also get some transfers in 2.7 that's coming from the operating funds that we saw on the the fund balance exhibit 2.7 million coming in and it'll have a little bit higher balance 7.2 million at the end of the year and this is just for debt service it's going to the multi master facility plan and all the things that life safety all those expenditures that are related to some kind of debt are paid through this fund and it's primarily taxes and the transfers in are the revenue stream for that capital projects that's the massive facility plan you know if you notice we've done a little work around these schools um for that one we're just taking the white company as a projection for me to tell me where they think it'll be they've been it's been kind of sliding up on us so we're we've been doing a little bit more because the school's been empty so we had to read you know we'd adjust some of our investments so we could you know have the dollars to pay them as it went through uh this last month was about nine million dollars of um work from the prior month so uh we we've been going trending around five million or so a month so they got a lot more work pushed through in the last couple of months and some of it is a lot of the the stuff here at south with the theater the the auditorium all the costs for those materials that were part of it as well so that's a capital project they're they're saying approximately 56 million will be spent in the next fiscal year getting us towards it that goal and getting it done the long-term debt on the bottom is just to let you know what we've we've done the the top one is what's paid from debt service taxes so that's what the taxpayers pay every year is uh for those for those bonds there's 119 million dollars most of that is a master facility plan of 136 million dollars but that's still what's outstanding at the beginning of the year this assumes we're going to issue 10.3 million for working cash 10.3 is because the 0.3 200 000 that is going to be needed for interest to pay off before we get before we get to the next tax cycle and then we have a hundred thousand dollars in there for issuance costs it probably won't cost all of that but that's what we we put into it um if it doesn't it'll come back to us in our debt service fund and then what's paid from operating funds is the bottom this is what we've we've done very few districts have have gone out issued debt certificates and done this out of their operating funds and this is uh next to the certificate of excellence maybe it's another thing i'm most proud about is that we pushed and found new ways the the extension for the norfolk road um science labs and up grades we you know we've done in the past without going to the taxpayers so i'm always very proud of that and and overall even though we're we're issuing the 10 million dollars in bonds our total debt outstanding is only going to go up by 2 million dollars because we're paying off other debt the uh so i know i've been on been talking too much but we're going to try and get through this last piece the other thing we'll do is with this budget we'll probably put this budget out tomorrow in this format but by wednesday we'll have it in the state format if it's approved by the board of education or you like to use that form it's got a line by line for each fund and some people like to go through it i don't think anybody's picked one up in a while but we'll put it in the state format and it has some some other sections to it that are this is just a high-level approach to it and we offer them to the libraries we've been told maybe they don't want them anymore because nobody's coming by to look at them but we'll try and push them out to the libraries we'll have one at every attendance center we'll have one at this asc it has to be on display for 30 days and it will make that so that and it will be posted in the newspapers later this week and in september we'll be asking for formal approval at the 21st meeting september 21st there's anything else you could let me know any questions tomorrow for me thank you i am i honestly um i was afraid things would be a little worse so for me this is kind of good good news um with everything that's happened at the end of last school year and uh and projecting forward um we're we're really fortunate to be in this position well every there's a lot of people involved in it you know the they come things surprise me sometimes that they bring us stuff that we need but they also surprise me with things that they don't need or better ways to do things and so we've got a great team here all right master facility plan update um you're sitting right now and here's one of the updates in the space you're in right now which is pretty incredible uh i think this is a an amazing space that we have to offer the community here as it's come online i think you can see it's unlike any other space that we have in the district up to this point and i i will say i pushed really hard for those windows over there with the board and i underestimated how how much of a difference it would make things if i knew that that would make this space look that good i would have fought even harder so it's turned out to be an amazing space uh other things going on south auditorium hopefully you've seen that massive structure being built on the other side of the building that's coming along really well fly tower is up and now they're going to start building the structure that comes out in front of that which is the black box theater the theater classroom backstage all of the the theater shop washrooms dressing rooms a variety of different spaces that come in from there south commons is on the inside of the building but the steel is up for that we have the grand staircase steel in place if you're able to peek out into that space you really get a feeling for how enormous that commons is going to be when it's in place for the start of the next school year the north gym it is gorgeous that that new floor is unbelievable the space is great the amount of natural light that comes into the multi-purpose room the gym the alley that commons area is pretty impressive and the culinary arts lab is in place the library has been redone when you open when you enter into the building now from the 4th street entrance one of the most drastic changes is that instead of looking up at the second floor and seeing some display cabinets you look up at the second floor and see this grand entrance to the new library and it is just breathtaking to see the change that that makes over at north high hopefully board members over the next couple of weeks you can reach out to me and i can get you on a tour to see all of these changes budget wise we continue to track pretty similarly to where we have expected to be for uh the last uh last couple of years the big number to look at is contingency 3.7 million dollars if you remember when we started the project we wanted one million dollars remaining in contingency heading into the last year of construction we're almost at four times that amount even with the changes that we've made to improve the campuses one of the projects we'll start working on this fall and one of the things that will be a goal that will bring to the board in this we had always told the community we would be touching a certain percentages of our hallways and classrooms as a result of the construction one of the things that we've always wanted to try to do was if we had money left there to be able to touch every classroom and make the the lighting the floor the paint the the writing surfaces what we call you know make it light and bright freshen up all of those spaces and make everything modern we also wanted to try to eliminate the feel that we saw in some of our bill some of the visits we made to other buildings where students talked about like the jetson wing and the flintstone wing you know where you know where one part of the building felt really old while another part of the building felt really new and students didn't want to end up in the flintstone wing right so we believe and we're going to work through the math and the exercise here this fall that within that contingency we'll have enough to have every classroom and every hallway match what you see here with the fact that it will feel like it's been a renovated space at the end of this project so we hope we hope we're able to do that we're going to bring a plan for that and then hope that we have that contingency sitting there or plan to have that contingency sitting here to do that work so uh one of the goals and projects we'll be working on i just i'll i'll voice some of my early support for that too um knowing that in our current situation i mean because the plan all along was that um that we would do those things but it'd be coming out of our capital and we would do it over a period of time correct and knowing the um knowing the unpredictability and the everything that covert has brought on our likelihood of being able to do that out of our budget going forward is is definitely reduced and uh and so it seems like it makes sense to take advantage of this opportunity because of course uh you know another alternative would be to not do those things and rebate the money right correct four years ago i didn't expect that this would be here right i expected that we'd have to work hard to keep a million dollars in here for this last year there's just so much that we've touched and so much is unexpected like at north high where we opened up the elevator well elevator wall and a steel beam is just running through a wall that nobody ever knew was there right well that comes out of contingency to fix that um but in the end we've done a great job of managing the budget in this project and uh i thought four years ago i'd be coming now and be presenting a plan to [Music] fix all the flintstone parts of the building over like you said a 10 to 15 year period right um but i think you know we're gonna have this opportunity now to just to finish off all the spaces also to give credit where credit is due um it speaks to the um you know the great job that our architects and engineers have done as well um because it's something i i pride myself on is and on our projects you know that we do for people i you know historically we've had something like a one to three percent contingency for our projects which is is kind of unheard of um because we do a lot of things on on existing buildings and uh they certainly had all kinds of things here that could have been unknown and they obviously did a very thorough job of documenting and anticipating work that needed to be done such that that work was part of the bid process which saves us money because every time there's something more that needs to be done you know you don't have as much leverage once the contract has been as you do so doing a great job and detailing and anticipating saves clients money and white has definitely done that for us here and so they deserve credit as well so i just want to put that out there um this is great to have we have this much left is really not the industry norm yeah we're we're out facing like i said where i expected we would be the other couple of numbers to look at are unwet that's the amount we have left to bid in our work you can see there's not much left it's only about 1.2 million dollars worth of work or products or those kinds of things to go out to bid and then in the next slide these are the numbers across the top you can dig into the report later but just the things i want to focus on we're still on track for that contract amount we're well within that guaranteed maximum contract of 122 million the contingency we have about 2.8 million dollars uh worth of furniture and equipment to buy that's to fill those common spaces yes that include so that 2.8 that doesn't include updating the flintstone no that does that that doesn't include yeah this includes all of those other spaces so auditorium and the commons which are some pretty big spaces with equipment and furniture uh that we need to fill and hank i forgot too i don't think that that remaining contingency includes time no you're stealing my lead mike right sorry so then the next section the remainder contract remaining contractor allowances this is that first level of contingency that remains that hundred and ten thousand in phase a is about ready to come back to us that was for sprinklers and fire alarm systems which are almost nearly complete across the entire district so that should be rolling back to us and then phase b work is wrapping up now so some of that 265 000 would be expected to come back to us and add to that 3.7 million dollars in contingency as well phase c is the work for the next year so i don't know how much of that will be available to us but some of it definitely will so it's at 3.7 million in contingency plus whatever remaining contractor allowances at the end come back to us so you're you're probably pretty close to four million dollars you know like i said you're four times what we expected to have when we started this project at this point um so we're doing really well so hank you uh anticipate completion by august of next year 22.

do you feel that we're able to properly clean elementary buildings on a daily basis but not the other buildings throughout the district i think we all agree here that all the students deserve equal opportunities to learn and in the current proposal some students as i said will be learning new material in person while others will get that same new material on their hybrid at home day in an online format why would it not why is it not considered appropriate to introduce only new material on the in-person ap days when the teacher can implement a rigorous approach with accelerated instruction techniques which is preferable to having some students attempt to learn online while their peers benefit from all of those techniques that make in-person learning more beneficial which student will learn more the infos and learner or the one at home in an atmosphere void of those extras that only in-person learning can provide between families who have chosen full remote and those off-site blended learners on any given day more than half of the 612 students will be learning remotely since we feel that more than half of that 612 population can receive a good education during remote learning why isn't the district starting fully remote for 612 so all students can get equitable education this would alleviate the district needing to cut 40 courses and revise at least 600 student schedules at the high school and students would receive the elective honors or ap courses they chose need or desire what is the resistance to implementing a return to school plan that mirrors our neighboring districts who are also committed to the education and safety of their staff and students and have chosen a mixture of blended and remote learning which does not entail simultaneous live instruction and if a majority of the educators in your district don't believe it's educationally sound to instruct two or three populations simultaneously why does the administration and the school board who do not spend time working with students in the classroom think otherwise thank you for considering those questions [Music] my name is dave chapman and i'm president of the central education association which is our district's teachers union my comments today are directed to the central community our district is planning to return students to the classroom on august 31st with a plan that is not safe equitable and educationally sound for our children last night the district changed course yet again and moved ec through to an am pm schedule this is something ca brought to the district's attention back in july we appreciate the district shifting course to this but we have to look at all the children not just half of them with that being said the plan laid out by the district last night for grades 6 through 12 still doesn't provide an effective and equitable education for our students whether simultaneously live instructing or pre-recording a lesson the education is not the same as the students who are in person students at home will miss out on critical discussions they'll miss out on uh really important interactions with their with their peers with their uh with their teachers and they'll also miss out on non-verbals um as educators we value the learning environment is a safe place for our students and privacy is a concern we pride ourselves on allowing students to be able to ask questions um to feel comfortable in asking those questions and we feel simultaneous live instruction we'll take that away not knowing exactly who is listening in on where students can are not exactly knowing who is listening in on class discussions removes this feeling of safety and privacy we understand students might have moments in the classroom they would not want to be heard or shared outside the classroom and there's no way we can protect our students privacy under this plan on top of that the overall feasibility of having educators instruct two or three different populations at once is a huge concern as educators we do our best to help each and every individual student reach their fullest potential it would be a logistical nightmare for an educator to essentially read or instruct two or three classroom populations simultaneously in the plan laid out last night educators could choose the second option of pre-recorded lessons for students having educators prepared both in-person lessons and pre-recorded lessons for students off-site would double our educators workload which would significantly impact an educator's ability to provide a sound education to all students the district will stretch thin its teaching staff who are already responsible for teaching missed learning standards from the spring ultimately your students learning will suffer the cea is still confused why the district would provide a model that isn't equitable you can review cea's proposed plan on our website at ca301.com under the return to school tab we not only need an equitable and effective plan for our students but a safe one and safety is still a huge concern buildings were not clean last year before the pandemic and this was communicated to the district yet nothing changed in our schools you had blood and urine left on bathroom floors for days you had no soap in the student bathrooms for a week at a time our teachers essentially became custodians themselves when entering back into the buildings this past week staff started noticing that their classrooms were still dirty we need more custodians to properly handle sanitation and cleanliness in our schools the demand on them is much higher the current postings for additional custodians has not been published externally even though contractually they can in emergencies students return in two weeks and we don't have the proper custodial positions well thank you for your time i just want to say time is running out and our students deserve an actual education i'm a teacher at the high school and i'll talk really fast so i can get through my three minutes i have several questions that i would like to ask the district administration and the school board first has the administration and the board of education read the comments from their educators survey where the word clean cleaned or cleanliness is referenced 85 times and safe or safety is referenced 143 times in relation to their concerns for safely returning to school next as mandated by the state why even today is district leadership buildings and grounds as well as office personnel not wearing masks when staff are present this has been brought to your attention on several occasions yet educators continue to reach out with this concern and feel unsafe in buildings even before students return next how will buildings be properly cleaned when necessary staff to ensure this has not been hired next how many custodial vacancies from the seven postings last week are still unfilled another question how many sub-nurses have you hired if any are they available on a daily long-term basis in case a nurse was in close contact or test positive for covet next are you aware of the new idph guidelines as of august 13th regarding close contact and cleaning requirements for possible covenant exposure under this new guidance more districts are changing their plan to a full remote as any in-person plan is impossible due to the adjusted close contact definitions for contact tracing student and staff school exclusion for coveted-like symptoms and cleaning protocols that will require school closure to carry out in the event of a confirmed case how are we more prepared than other districts when we are not fully staffed for custodians or sub-nurses and last why is there no clear safety plan is available to the public and why has the safety plan not been submitted to the king county regional office of education or the illinois department of public health which is a requirement other neighboring districts have met thanks for your time next good evening thank you for allowing me to take this time thank you for listening to my comments and considering its message i've been a teacher in another district for 32 years and a parent of three graduates of our fine district 301 schools i am concerned that your current plan to have teachers try to manage in-person learning off-site learning and full remote learners all at the same time is not sustainable a teacher simply cannot create true meaningful learning to the standards district 301 is known for in all three groups simultaneously no quality learning can come from this type of arrangement and nobody who has spent time in an educational setting would set learners up for failure using this plan my own district has dedicated specific teachers to class sections to teach those students who are choosing to do full remote learning the way to go about the instruction for full remote learning cohort is very different from the needs that are for those that are in a hybrid setting due to the unique nature of learning needs and instructional imperatives for each of these two models it is foolish to think that one teacher can serve both groups and attain the types of learning parents in district 301 become accustomed to teaching at-home learners at the same time you are working with in-class learners leaves both groups wanting you have addressed this issue at the pre through grade 5 levels by assigning specific teachers to teach the full remote learners similar solutions need to be worked out for the 6 through 12 students live streaming or audio only options will turn classrooms into dull c-span like experiences for those at-home learners teachers no longer stand and deliver lessons they organize groups they move through the classroom they guide individual learners and none of this translates in an audio stream to an at-home student as teachers we all want the face-to-face time with our students that a hybrid plan offers if you are serious about bringing students into a classroom for in-person learning because you want them to experience having a teacher interact with them in a one-on-one building a true relationship and you cannot have teachers tethered to a microphone as at home students each drop on the discussions i appreciate how hard the responsibilities of running a school district are and that many of the choices you are making now as board members are incredibly difficult this decision is not one of them this is one of the biggest no-brainers you have in this time of covet 19 education if you're going to move forward with a hybrid model then you must commit to doing the right thing i encourage you to listen to and work with your professional educators it is the only educationally responsible direction to movement thank you very much for your time [Applause] tonight district 301 admin and board officials i would like to thank you for considering the five day a week two and a half hour a day option you see my son and many other kindergartners need structure in their life they need routine and they need consistency this is the best option to provide them with structure and consistency short of coming back full time it will also help kids with ieps to receive service minutes to get their therapies in minutes my son did not receive during the pandemic i've been coming in person to the last few board meetings and during the last meeting i heard a member voice his concern about this plan and how it might not be ideal for working parents as a working parent i can tell you nothing is going to be ideal everything has been difficult from march but this would allow the best option for my son which is what i have to put first it would be nice if the parents in the district have the chance to be surveyed on the five day week half day option it also fixes a problem that's how to social distance in the lunchroom which has been a concern and would now not be needed i also ask you to decide quickly as our family and many others scramble to sort out child care school is beginning in just two weeks and we need to have a plan i know many many hours lots of ideas time and energy has gone into this option and i want to thank the teachers the unions the staff the administrators and the board members i want to tell you i see you i appreciate you and i'm thankful for you this is not an easy decision to make but i thank you for considering it as they truly believe it will help our youngest students another parent of a child with special needs our most vulnerable population it allows these children to be with their friends and their peer models rather than having 16 children in the district come every day which turns into more of a self-contained classroom thank you for your time and consideration next gen schleicher my name is jen schleicher and i'm a district parent thank you for listening to the feedback and working with the cea in transportation to make the half days work for the younger children we wish it could be for all of the grades even if you decided to go back full time for everyone there would still be parents left unhappy there is no perfect solution for this there are only solutions that are less bad and that sucks but there's no way around it i feel very strongly that we need to learn from this situation and evaluate what has been good and what has went wrong we need to be honest with each other and ourselves and to the board and administrators need to stop stubbornness and pride and listen to us even if it's bad feedback about you or someone you hired that reeks of incompetence stop doubling down on their incompetence stop being a denial you are not perfect i am not perfect nobody is i beg of you to have some sense of self-awareness over your own self-preservation making mistakes is okay if you can admit it and learn from it don't deny it don't cover it up i am not one to let fear keep me from speaking my mind so here it is i think the horrible and selective communication between the schools administrators and parents has been unacceptable different answers to the same questions starting planning in june instead of late march i think the way the administrators have tried to turn the parents against the teachers is disgusting just to take themselves out of the crosshairs you think you created the perfect situation one where parents want the kids in school and the teachers and cea have legitimate concerns because logistically the burden is mainly theirs but your hands are pretty much clean no matter what is decided you've tried to start a war when the world has given us a great opportunity to come together till you notice the best ideas and solutions come from groups that have a common goal that has unity you want us to turn on the teachers when over the last 157 days parents have personally realized that teaching our kids is not easy we have even more respect for teachers now i've seen some portray them as greedy or lazy with unwarranted rumors and comments online they just want to feel safe when you go into a gas station in a bad neighborhood the cashier is protected by bulletproof works because if they didn't do that to make themselves feel safe nobody would want to work there the teachers want to feel safe they want our kids safe and they just need the resources they shouldn't be afraid to ask for scrubs or cleaner building they need to feel like you have their backs do you want people teaching your kids when they're terrified give them some backups create a better remote plan together because when this turns into us versus them our children lose thank you board of education for the time today to speak before you i'm here to address the common desire we all have in doing what is best for our children what is best is maximizing in-person learning for the youth of this district while following protocols to keep teachers and staff safe this along with providing a structure of live availability of teachers for students working through curriculum remotely in a joint statement issued earlier this month the american academy of pediatrics american federation of teachers national education association and school superintendents association weighed in on this matter of students returning to school and the memo was stated we recognize that children learn best when physically put present in the classroom but students get much more than academics at school they also learn social and emotional skills at school get healthy meals and exercise mental health support and other services that cannot be easily replicated with online learning in this district there is clear alignment between parents teachers and administrators on this front eighty percent of district parents pull regarding their current preference have responded they favor in-person learning this holds true from the teachers as well according to a memo posted on the central education association website dated august 16 2020 that memo clearly states in the third sentence of the first paragraph we want nothing more than to return in person to start the school year finally this was echoed by district administration repeatedly through the recent plan submitted to start the school year we all understand the importance of in-person learning and the need to have that option available the good news is there are clearly established protocols passed down by the illinois department of public health outlining how to safely gather and maintain facilities these sanitation standards have been put in place at businesses athletic practices and social venues with workers accept them they must contribute to maintain the standard as part of their jobs i hope you have two active daughters currently attending school in the district outside of school they participate in activities which have been back in session for the better part of three months following the exact guidelines i speak of from idph through their cheerleading and gymnastics participation these facilities have followed the guidelines of sanitation mandated mass wearing and social distancing to safely bring students back to these activities through coordination between parents coaches and leadership these organizations have safely brought athletes back together to further emotional and physical health the guidelines do not make these activities easy but we all have the same goal in mind active participation for our children in a safe environment for all with that being said i challenge all parties involved to think creatively and act quickly to implement solutions these solutions involve compromise and common sense as an active pair in this community i do not view this as a negotiation the education of our youth our future is not negotiable we all have chosen our role in this process and we are charged with that awesome responsibility of raising these children through their formative years and beyond wrapping up here the responsibility extends to those we have entrusted overseeing education and education requires support engagement interaction interaction and important physical connection i support the current recommended district plan for in-person learning blended with remote learning which includes live instruction interaction from our trusted teachers thank you for your time this one's from uh again so i have a lot of pressure to make sure i get it right thanks for giving me the opportunity to comment at this board i have been a teacher at chs for 34 years i love my teaching career at chs this is my last year and i've had big concerns on how the schedule will work i teach ap which requires supplies adobe photoshop and lots of one-on-one work with the students it will be very hard to give remote ap students a valuable experience i introduce the projects and concepts and have the student work independently upon their work i need to meet with students individually for this tour having said that students would not benefit from me doing live audio every day because they would just hear me talking to individual students i would like to make my own schedule with my remote students my students always excuse me my students always very high scores on their exams and i would like to end my career keeping those high scores i also teach basic photography we use the darkroom and adobe photoshop most students cannot get adobe photoshop at home and it does not work on their chromebooks i think it would be best to teach my a day students and give them assignments to the next day that would not require adobe or the darkroom and repeat it with b day students this would solve the problem with the equipment issues i don't think making everyone do the same format is a good solution we are taught to differentiate in the classroom and you must give your teachers the power to do what is best for each students thank you next one is from megan reed dear board of education my name is megan reed i am a sixth grade math teacher at prairie knowles i previously taught second grade fourth grade and fifth grade all at prairie view and this will be my 19th year teaching in d301 i wanted to share you with you that some concerns i still have after last night's pathway to responding was shared with parents and why i feel the school board school need year needs to begin remotely first the plan states the board and administration believe that in-person instruction is beneficial to students provided it can be delivered safely i completely agree however i believe safety is a major roadblock for the district i am a member of the facilities committee for reopening facility operations is recommending that we leave classrooms doors propped open although i understand that we don't want students and staff being contaminated from repeated use of the door handle what happens if an intruder enters the building and doors are wide open fast safety plans have addressed that classroom doors should be closed and locked at all times if we allow doors to be open during the day aren't we sending a mixed message to our students and staff about their safety while possibly bringing them in danger i've heard from a member of the faculty operations staff these exact words we will have cases of coven it is our operation staff the people that are cleaning and disinfecting buildings are saying we will have cases of coven what does that say about how safe and clean our buildings will be kept and if all of that doesn't make a person think seven custodial jobs were posted on april august 11th we were sure at the last board reading that there was enough staff to keep the buildings clean and sanitary what has happened since then many questions still remain unanswered in faculty operations such as what are we going to do if we're short-handed this question was asked twice what will happen with the flu outbreak in combination with covet 19.

i do understand the concerns and i do understand michelle's point of view because again that's what i talk about it all the time about you know gyms aren't open restaurants aren't open can't you know gather one of the 25 people here for a board meeting but yet i could have 400 people in high school on september 10th so yeah like i said you know as far as you know there's a difference between sitting with masks on social distance as opposed to sitting you know like while they're eating then in a classroom what's going on is it who's watching that class you know in new york we're told that the classroom teacher will watch the class and supposedly be teaching them while they're eating that's what we were told so but then we were told to stand in the back of the classroom because that would protect us somehow but what whatever um i guess that's i think that would be my biggest concerns because once you take a mask off now we're not you know that whole idea of being in an enclosed space is is that the safest thing that's that's just my concern so i'm like silly question so with the students when they grab the lunch and go if we went with this would they just get that cold option to take with them that we gave our kids you know the best meals that we could possibly give them too right so let me do it this way even the kids that are at home could order a hot lunch i'll pick it up but if they can come and pick up a lunch why can't they take a hot lunch with them like if someone's at home and says i want hot lunch that day why can't the kids right like that to me like then take the hot lunch someone can come and pick it up and someone should be able to take it home [Music] like i can see that we can't do it at all where they can only take home cold i get that but if we're making an option for people at home to take home a hot lunch then why can't we have it go home that's my only concern is is the eating if michelle they might be they went home after lunch would they then resume no they would just be dancing for votes yeah i don't think you're gonna want i don't think i think four hours online is tough we also have four hours online so like to to to do that full day now those kids are doing full day virtual as well so that's that's a lot of time on a computer or in front of a computer so i don't necessarily think once they leave at 12 30 whether is that wouldn't help the teachers because then the teachers would be here if you have that i was trying to do something and then the kindergarten class is going to have to do 30 minutes online because we're doing two hour classes yeah so it's like afternoon but it's like [Music] we put the survey out for a full day we go to a half day well there was a thought process in the committee and it was discussed right and you felt like this was how long is the lunch period like let's say they do it in the classroom and they're eating how what how many minutes 20 well at the end of the minutes and then they're going year to recess 30 minutes out of recess and then you're having people come in behind the classroom high school high school is a little different those would probably be middle school they're doing it completely different they're doing their lunch the issue was for us also is that a lot of parents are not happy that they're kids because we don't have a full day their kids are just going to be in a school for five or six hours just sitting there while the parents are working because yeah once the air starts all right i'll just put it out there if we're okay with the way we have it then we'll just leave it back i get what you're saying in your concerns and everything but then there's like i think like whatever we pick if we do half day we do full day to lose listen you know i think you have to try something right so if it doesn't work we have to go about i would say this i would say that's you know it's always easier to start full day and and if it's not working go to a halftime yeah it's going to be much harder to start at half day and then try to go home i agree so you know if you if you want to play devil's advocate start with a full day and if it's not working we see some real concerns or there's something we can't we can't fix or address at this time this is what parents right banking hours right so if it's not working and if we get you know end of september this thing isn't working and i come to you and go okay i gotta go i gotta scale this down to a half a day that's easy for me to do it's not easy for me to go from from a half day to a full day right so i understand one of the concerns i guess with lunch is having all the kids with their masks off at the same time there's only 10 kids in the class you can have half of them eat and the other half have the mass on do whatever and then right because you have four teachers right you have four teachers amongst two classes right so two teachers are gonna go take one twelve two t well i guess two teach two teachers and listen as many questions as you come up with oh yeah right now there's gonna be a thousand more they're gonna come up september 10th followed by september 11th 12th 13th you know that's that's going to be what's going to happen is you know hopefully i don't go by me by october 1st you know but it is what it is we're going to do our best to be as responsive and click with answers as we can do people and try to do the right thing and make sure everything is done you know the i would shut down i will not ask for permission i will shut down list you guys have been around me long enough if i think something's wrong i fix it i don't ask for permission i'll deal with the consequences later because i'm not i'm not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna put somebody in here [Music] i only know one parent that's at my desk that wanted to go from virtual to person okay and they're on a waiting list because they couldn't bring them in because we're already maxed out and then i know i had to tell marisol who's the register as people are registering they're going full virtual for the first market period or the first trimester because they missed the deadline because we had to do this now the hard part for us is at this end of the first market period we're still in the same situation we're currently in we may the whole situation may change because we have more people who want to be in person at that point in time we may be talking ab days whatever that may be because we may not be able to do five days a week right the reason we can do five days a week right now is because we have 45 of our population out for virtual if that number changes the next time you put that survey out that changes what our plan looks like right so again i need to be clear about that our plan was based upon that initial survey when we put that second survey out those numbers change in any one direction it changes how our plan looks right and there was nothing from an executive order or anything that says like i just feel like it's unfair to go from old to an a b i get why it would have to be done but it's like i know when i because my guys are going virtual and it was for the first trimester like i would be okay if i you're still virtual next trimester to maintain you that's a chance but you can see that i think no but like the district said okay you're in order to maintain you're going to keep going virtually you chose it now again i think from our perspective you know you have to remember when we went out with our survey it was before the governor even singing new virtual again it was one of those things where i said i understand what everybody's saying but we have to give our parents a choice right so it gave the parents a choice before i was allowed to give a parent's choice at the end when we get to the end of the first market period at the end of the first trimester my opinion is still the same let's give our parents the choice and and based upon that choice is how we're going to react to our parents i'd rather do it that way then then try to force something because if i try and force something we all know what's going to happen right it's just not gonna work out and if we're continuing this into multiple marking periods and trimesters there's gonna be more guidance from the state that as we go so i'm not thinking about so now let me ask you that's another question if if a cohort of students present fever right and they get sent out all right um do they flip to virtual learning yeah at that point all right so now as a tea german as this if i'm a teacher and i'm forced out saying that they're sick or whatever and it's not kobe do you think is that still they have to use their sick dates even if all right i you know with the sports now that i'm very happy that we're gonna continue um but also not just sports but extracurricular and this is really more for middle school high school where there's more than going on i just um i know that part of the restore plan was about sports and those types of things i just want to make sure that we're thinking outside the box and giving the teachers the people in charge of those yeah the advisors um you know ways to continue it virtually because that's what it's going to have to be but you know i think they're really important to the teenagers social emotional honestly to me to me the absolute extra fertility advisor positions are easy those are the easy ones to improve especially now that we're you know multiple months into this it's more important it was one thing when we it was a short time frame but i think we just really honestly they still have some concerns but you know hopefully the guys will believe those those concerns um we'll see when guidance comes out but extracurricular you know i don't see a problem it was touched on briefly is the reopening committee what about the social emotional for the teachers you would said something yeah we have we have we have surveys and a number of things all set to go for them we do professional development a bunch of different things again julia and uh and the the the other two ladies that sally and um the new person we hired um you know they're really people i think we're to have a really good social emotional group there working with our kids and our staff so i'm really happy with that okay so i guess we need a roll call vote we're voting on the restart recovery um [Music] stephens yes yes mr valerie yes mrs yes managed to come before the board of new businesses anybody in the public would like to come up to the microphone any discussion i have i don't have i think i saw something that the governor put out that the schools are supposed to be closed on an election i don't know why we're closed if he's doing all mainland mail ballots but i think they're they're giving people the option mailing is not mandatory they're still going to open places yeah so i i should have people from the public all right so first question of the day michael oh my i'm gonna summarize this so let me read it for a second okay part one the of education restart recovery plan complete uh compliant with all health and safety standards set forth in the department of education's checklist for reopening of school 2021 the answer is yes you received a written guided item number two does the department of education uh the board of education claimed that if any cannot meet the components we already met so we're gonna skip that and sell the piece one two three four five six seven eight nine ten c d e f g h i j k l n and we're gonna go down number three number three the board of education claims it cannot meet any component we are in a medic so we'll skip number three and the subpieces of abc and date and number four with regards to sports that are permitted to resume pursuant to uh executive order njsa we are going to be filing those um so we don't have an issue with that one and did the issuance of executive order 175 make the board revise the restart recovery plan any less feasible or viable and the answer is no they just asked us to change some verbiage so that is the first one there is mandatory yes number two jennifer dombrowski uh full sports we already took care of that dawn fall sports but are they all right yeah i'm saying both sports are there some people that say that we should not have fall sports all five madam president board members superintendent and fellow parents my name is michael litt i am a parent of student boundary high school and in the interest of full disclosure i am married to dr camilla or the vice president all right for the purpose of expressing support for the board and administration during this difficult time not because i agree with any in particular that you have done previously or anything in particular that you are going to do rather i want to express my support for you because as i will describe in this comment i have a personal experience with extraordinary difficult burdens and choices that you must make with regards to code 19 pandemic i served as general counsel to the state agency with 600 employees that operate a week's water treatment facility as a critical infrastructure in industry we must remain in operation 24 hours a day seven days a week and i have done so during the entire entirety of coza 19 canada i am one of five employees that has made all policy decisions regarding operations since late february of this year it has been an enormous task it continues to be so on a day-to-day basis our group has made decisions about such things as reducing our on-site working population fixed problems obtaining ppe's from various locations around the world finding available hand sanitizer women to bring people back on site including employees contractors visitors how to deal with new jersey's travel restrictions and employees returning from out-of-state vacations and how to deal with employees who need time off due to illness or child care issues related to proven 19.

yeah by of the commons in the auditorium yes we're we're expecting that for everything yeah every that that's what's left out there over the next years really those commons spaces a couple of offices here and there and some other side projects um and then if we add in those spaces that weren't as originally you know inside of here the classrooms and hallways we'll have to make sure that those can fit and get done in that time as well we're on pace for all of our spaces here to be ready if we bring students back in a couple of weeks except for that southeast corner at north high which we always expected would be somewhere in october that those would be available that that was a major major project and ended up with a lot more unexpected problems inside of there than we we had originally anticipated so like i said hopefully board members you'll find a time and we can get you on a little walk it's actually it's a long walk especially north high julie went on it with me today bring your walking shoes because especially north i mean we only didn't touch what the admin winged this summer and maybe the fine arts area otherwise there was construction going on in every other part of the building this summer they they saw a lot of work done this year some people may be expecting that because the buildings don't have all the students in it that somehow the work could be getting done a lot faster but in fact probably the contractors are also dealing with covet issues and and that weighs into how much they can really accelerate well and that's part of it mike and that was part of the struggle this summer especially at north high you know rick has commented greatly about the the amount of truck traffic and how it backed up their uh by dan and rick's houses part of the challenge that we've had there is the number of people that we can allow access the building access to the building at any one time because you have to keep social distancing and you can't have people piled on top of one another as we've done in the past which just causes a backup right and it slowed everything down that's part of the reason why that southeast corner is behind where we had originally intended on the other side of that though is the fact that the spaces that we're working on are all standalone spaces so the auditorium and the commons we had anticipated would be being worked on all year long uh because they aren't spaces where students are going to be right so it's not like having students here helps us speed that up anyway because they weren't we weren't going to have construction going on around students during the school year anyway so um it might provide us a little more access but not a ton more than what we expected before otherwise i had one more thing to comment on and this was a great idea by board member pavonato by rick was to recognize our neighbors that we have inconvenienced greatly over the last couple of years at both north and south high a lot of dust a lot of truck traffic a lot of noise and our neighbors have been very patient with us so julie went to work on trying to find a neat and different way to recognize people it wouldn't be like you know a bouquet of flowers that would die in a couple of weeks right so we wanted something that would be as permanent as the structures were building so julie went and found a nice small company that is put together these cool little boxes you can see on the front is the building futures logo that was the logo for the project and inside this cool wooden box i'll pass around so you can see it is this cool hammer that inside of it has the district logos on it so i will be presenting one of these to every one of the neighbors with i'll write a little handwritten thank you card to each of them and uh we'll also put in a a coupon for some car washes since we've dirtied up cars quite a bit as just a small token of gratitude to our neighbors so we thought that would it you know it's it's something that's that's nice and will last last a while so nice moment memento for our neighbors and a little thank you all right that's it for master facility plan progress the next item is freedom of information requests we've had them and filled them and the list of those is available on the district website thank you that's it for superintendent's reports moving on to the consent agenda we need a motion for the board of education of the board [Music] there was a change in the financial pages i wanted to bring your attention because we were asking you to approve two checks tonight for the activity buses where we put uh those off we had put the the company off um until july and august to get paid for those we we have delivery of two of them and the other two are going to come in the next one and so we wanted we've added two checks to the financial pages we wanted you to see those and make sure it's added to the original financial pages you got was to pay for the the two two four activity buses coming that was updated today uh i think it was friday friday yeah so from when it was posted on so if you looked anytime late in the day friday on it would have already been in here yeah that's why it's a separate post both versions are there they're original and revised i have just a quick quick question i kind of part of the consent degenerate personnel report so i know that we had you know in our anticipation of going to hybrid we were looking for teachers to fill spots um is is that something that we put on the pause or yeah there are there's no additional hires in here due to leaves or anything at this point okay very good okay so we need a motion uh for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a personnel report either absent certified transfer physician classified appointment certified appointment specified the personnel report registration is classified and see the financial pages with you and just that very much okay terry pavisic aye rick pepinado joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye sherelle fuller hi dan nicholas aye nancy kupka hi the consent agenda parent says next week the recommendation for the action we need a motion for the board of education to accept the tentative budget for 2020 2021 for display purposes on the sale of 6 35 pm september 21st 2020 for the public hearing to be held at south high school thirty six months old school donors elmo shirelle and joanna thank you [Music] shirelle fuller hi joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye dan nicholas hi terry pavisic aye rick pavanado nancy kupka hi motion carrier [Music] these were presented last month uh the only person that had a couple of or only board member that had some questions was board member davenport uh answers to his questions were provided to him and the rest of the board of education mike davenport aye shirelle fuller hi dan nicholas uh rick cavanado and nancy kupka hi the uh [Music] but i'm going to just see if any other any other comments came in we can go back let me just look right now no report joanna assassination um we are uh in the process of improving the bylaws everyone has to send us uh approval because we're not meeting in person various reasons and um we're also working on a way to uh have pizza wars uh in february so it will look a little different maybe depending upon how things go but uh that's our our big fundraiser of the year so we want to make sure that we don't lose interest in that so that's what excellent that's good news terry [Music] yes the foundation is collecting for families in need due to covid related uh needs the it's on the education foundation website ef99.org and so far they have raised i believe over 26 thousand dollars and those funds are available for our principles to use right the principles help us identify families in need and then distribute those funds excellent big thank you to our community awesome uh mike did you i'm sorry terry what are you doing that's it okay mike i guess uh nothing other than you know as we all know the triple i got cancelled so there won't be a won't be a conference to go to in november i don't think is it cancelled does it remote uh the what i read was it was cancelled the the triple i conference in november that we have been cancelled and uh it's there's no remote uh sessions or anything like that it's just it's cancelled do we have anybody for the reception of visitors no no other comments for the reception of visitors thank you okay we have two upcoming board meetings september 14th we'll have a workshop meeting at 6 30 p.m where we'll be determined and september 21st we'll have a regular board meet business meeting again at 6 30 pm again to be determined in its location uh do we have anything else otherwise we will the movie adjourn mike second 10 seconds all those in favor hi thank you everybody you

if there is a positive test and we are short-handed how do we get that section referring to a contaminated area cleaned will life skills rooms and possibly vet tech rooms require additional or different cleaning as of august 3rd i've heard from a district parent that 42 chs students had tested positive for covid it is here and we can't pretend it isn't those 42 students account for approximately 4 percent of the chs population students are not even back in the building yet how many more students and staff will need to be fall ill before we move to remote learning which was mentioned at the july 20th board meeting by administration that it's not a case of if the district moves to remote learning but when i know 80 of our parents wanted in-person learning i agree that working with children in person is one of the best ways for them to learn however in order to learn in person school buildings first need to be safe and sanitary i fear that our schools reopen this will be the downfall that leads to remote learning and i feel that it would be the best interest of the students and staff to begin the year remotely to keep everyone safe sincerely mrs megan reads sixth grade silver team math teacher next one up is from katrina and i apologize every now this dexterous prozo for remote learning is absurd dangerous and irresponsible and it doesn't seem academically sound it seems as though families who chose remote only are being punished and overlooked by our district as it currently stands this is not 100 equitable education remote learners must have their own teachers who can provide educational experience with live lessons and video chats anything less is unacceptable next one is from jen bustos good evening i'm a high school spanish teacher the academic year will be my 17th teaching 17th teaching ap spanish i have great concern when we are looking at 20 minutes of audio instruction a day for my students that are online this is not an educationally sound decision those in the classroom would then receive nearly two and a half times longer daily instruction i have developed a rigorous and rich curriculum that leads my students to success how do i pick only pick only two-fifths of the material one it is all essential can we please find a way to give an equitable education to all our students sincerely jen bustos that's it for me can i get some horn honks for me or i don't know oh i did hey yay me dr sterner members of the board of ed i wanted to express my concerns about what has been proposed for remote learning only students it is vital that the remote learning students be provided their own teachers our teachers should not be expected to teach hybrid students and the remote learning only students simply cannot be done effectively this is not fair to ask of teachers nor is it fair or equitable for our students remote learning only students must have their own teachers so they can provide quality educational opportunities give students timely and meaningful feedback as well as building relationships with our students anything less is unacceptable those who sign up for remote only learning did so with the assumption that they would have remote learning teachers i'm also concerned about only providing them with audio lessons they must provide our students with video chat video lessons so that students can interact with their teachers and peers students must be able to have the opportunity to engage with their peers and teachers so they can feel as if they belong and are valued in the remote learning classroom community the use of audio only is not acceptable and will not provide those opportunities we must provide remote learning only students with their own teachers and utilize video chat slash video lessons anything less is not best practice if our district decided to begin the year with full remote as most of the surrounding school districts have it would be fiscally responsible utilizing current teaching staff less new hires etc and when it is safe to transition back to hybrid students could keep the same teachers by doing this there wouldn't be a need to cut high school courses this would also allow teachers to plan quality educational opportunities for their students and not be pulled into several directions teaching both hybrid and remote if we go full remote students with ieps 504 plans and ell students should be offered the opportunity to have in-person instruction as they need additional supports we must do what is best for all students in our district all students must be provided with the quality and equitable education should you decide to not provide remote learning only students their own teachers you must provide those families with the option of switching to hybrid we must support our teachers during this time to ensure that they can provide quality educational opportunities for all students thank you crystal solave next one is from kim paulus my name is kim paulson i have worked in central 301 for the past 18 years i knew after i left my previous district this is my destination district i love this district then and still do i did not know what i was going to say tonight and started and stopped many times i do not want to waste valuable time nor do i want to be silent i'm going to be as concise as possible to try and do both there have been only a handful of union presidents for cea with me being one of them the balancing act of homework and advocacy is hard very hard thank you to the board for all the time you give up to make our district a better place i understand this is a thankless job and no matter what someone will not be happy you make a difference in our lives you always do what you feel is the best interest of the students even when i disagree with your decisions i truly respect the time and energy you put into making that decision thank you for doing the hard lifting the current situation we are in has furthered my resolve for leaving the union two years ago i wrote to dave chapman when you became vice president i was hopeful that your intention was to learn about how the union operates and how our local functioned as a union president you have your own agenda that does not align with what is best for our local or best for maintaining a positive working relationship with our school board administration my advocacy in my tenure from building representative to president was always to uphold the integrity of the contract while fostering collegial relationships with all cea always has had a strong union and a positive and productive working relationship with administration on the board in fact to my knowledge ceas never had to take a grievance to arbitration and in at least the past 20 years never had negotiations reach an impasse you're always able to work out differences respect was at the forefront of all conversations and meetings respect unquote i hope that cea leadership realizes time to respect the process and the people with whom they should be working alongside to find new and creative solutions to problems during this pandemic we have all been stressed and need to find ways to bend not break our students and community depend on a leveled playing field and players that come ready to play next one is from sue reynolds good evening my name is sue reynolds well this is my 21st year teaching it will be my 11th year at prairie view grade school i'm hesitant to speak tonight yet i am compelled a deep sense of responsibility to follow teacher staff students and families of district 301 will not allow me to be silent in recent years the cleanliness of my building has been declining at a rapid rate we have repeatedly reported issues that have not been remediated many mornings teachers end up borrowing a district vacuum and cleaning our own rooms before the students arrive i was optimistic that the current health crisis would force some of these issues to be resolved surely clean buildings would be important and these concerns would no longer fall on deaf ears when i returned last week to move my classroom i was greeted with conditions that disgusted and shocked me i was also quite frankly angered i submitted pictures to the board to allow you to see for yourself what i witnessed last week in my building the most shocking picture is of the vomit that is still on the wall from the trash can above the trash can i was painfully aware that all the commonly touched surfaces the light switches door entry jams sink counter and closets were still dirty and covered with fingerprints there was dirt and dust on all of the surfaces the blinds and whiteboards hadn't even been cleaned perhaps most disgusting were the entryways to the student bathrooms which still had dirty fingerprints on the walls this means that those areas most commonly touched by students had not been clean since march in the building void of the students and faculty for the last five months it appears that nothing was touched much less deep cleaned i would not want my own children to return to a building of this level of uncleanliness i found myself feeling incredibly protective of the students and would who would soon be returning i left the building last week more fearful than ever we can't get this right in five months with no students or staff in the building how in the world are we to believe that surfaces will be wiped multiple times a day much less classrooms and whole building deep cleaning every night clean buildings are one of the weapons we have against this virus in the middle of a pandemic when all we hear about are health and safety measures and cleaning procedures this is totally unacceptable when the district talks about cleaning measures and safety those are mere words that sadly will not be put into action follow-through is essential it is simply not happening and staff has no confidence that it will it's a step in the right direction that the district finally acknowledged that we need more janitors and recently posted some positions however just because they are posted does not mean they will be filled our last custodial position was posted for a year and a half before it was finally filled so much of the district's plan leaves unanswered questions the cleanliness of buildings is just one and the most basic one at that this is not able to be properly addressed how are the other concerns going to be resolved while i focus on the most basic issue of cleanliness because it has so recently affected me there are so many additional significant concerns is appalling that our district's return to school plan is not based on any county health metrics the new information from the kane county health department is irresponsible for this administration and school board to consider placing our teachers faculty and students in harm's way by opening our school's doors do reynolds next is comment from meredith haring i'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the exceptional job of district 301 technology department that they continue to do brian jake matt roberto emily nick kyle and burt make up the small but mighty team that truly keeps roughly 400 central staff and over 4 thousand central students up and running back in the spring the workload changed in the blink of an eye due to emergency remote learning access to submit tech tickets for this team to address and resolve emergency sorry to address and resolve was open up to families in the district the quick and effective task management and communication allowed for one less obstacle to overcome during an extremely stressful time for all the five team members who are typically responsible for resolving these tickets were even going as far as helping to diagnose connectivity issues at families homes without the ability to access any additional information or testing on their end it truly went above and beyond for every member of this community the same group has spent part of the last several summers unboxing enrolling programming labeling and otherwise preparing each individual chromebook for thousands of students their summer work also entails running cable through ceiling tiles and cement walls and installing the latest systems and hardware in every classroom and every building the tech department's work is largely unnoticed because their service is one that is easy to overlook and under appreciate until something goes wrong they deserve to hear our gratitude and support much more often than they do so an enormous thank you goes out to them tonight with that being said i also like to bring to your attention that their work areas are not included in the regular cleaning of the buildings the apartment has an office on the west campus at chs which formerly served as a custodial closet there are no windows and the most cleaning that gets done is the garbage emptied some nights the floors don't get swept and their desks aren't wiped down cleanliness is the same at the chrome depot location in the lmc where one of two tech team members are stationed daily with a regular flow of students visiting throughout the day to report chromebook issues and check out loaners at the east campus of pk they have used the classroom at their office for a few years the same amount of cleaning is done there too this room is being converted into the ymc daycare room for staff members children for the upcoming school year so the tech team is being relocated into another closet with no windows and poor ventilation this time in athletic closet previously they were stationed in another windowless closet at cms too by no means am i blaming custodial staff for the lack of cleanliness i believe these spaces just have been excluded in the building cleaning plans when areas are divided amongst responsible custodians regardless of the reason our tech team deserves a better work environment and one that is clean regularly we are central and i know that we can do better for the vital part of our district staff especially as we are expecting to integrate their provided technology more than ever with the proposed plans for the upcoming school year i genuinely appreciate your consideration of this matter and look forward to seeing in what way the district will take action in support of the tech team this comment is from lee goldstein dear board members after reading the ca letters to the 301 parents i can't tell you how appalled i am about what to expect for our children during this reopening i am thoroughly disgusted to find out only that the lack of cleanliness in our schools last year but now to find out the children receiving remote instruction only receive 20 minutes of audio instruction i will forward our valid concerns that you supposedly discussed with the ca which have been ignored by the board the district is currently planning to reopen schools with an a b hybrid schedule ec12 this plan should really be called the abc plan because it divides our students into three groups under the plan the district would have three different populations of students a those who attend in person monday and thursday be those who attend in person tuesday and friday and see students who are full remote the district wants educators to simultaneously instruct two or three student populations this means the teacher would be instructing the in-person students from group a the off-site students from group b and the 612 the fully remote students from group c educators would not be teaching the same lesson two days in a row but rather but rather going forward with the curriculum the same way we would during a traditional school year as if all the students were in the classroom the simultaneous live instruction would be at least 20 minutes of live audio of the teacher's lesson students off-site would be listening to instruction the cea has stressed to the district for the past month that this plan is not equitable and educationally sound for students students at home learning remotely would not be receiving an effective or equitable education as compared to their peers in the classroom they would miss out on critical conversations nonverbals and interactions with other students and their teachers the privacy of our students is another concern as educators we value the learning environment as a safe place where students can ask questions and speak openly not knowing exactly who is listening in on class discussions removes this feeling of safety and privacy we understand students right might have moments in the classroom that they would not want to be heard or shared outside the classroom and there is no way we can protect our students privacy under this plan on top of that the overall feasibility of having educators instruct two or three different populations at once is a huge concern as educators we do our best to help each and every individual student reach their fullest potential it would be a legit logistical nightmare for an educator to essentially instruct two or three classroom populations simultaneously in the end the education of our students would suffer we also believe the district's current model takes away the purpose of having in-person instruction during the pandemic we know our students learn much better in person but the students in our classroom will not get the full attention of their teachers because we have multiple groups of students to help at the same time and the three minutes are up the next public comment is from elizabeth bruner as a parent in central district and a teacher in a neighboring district i am appalled at the district's request to require classroom teachers to live stream to students when they're at home in a hybrid schedule i am not sure administration is aware of the types of activities that actually occur in the classroom that would make this type of situation unreasonable for a student sitting at home listening because it is my understanding the live stream would only be audio how does that even help a visual learner private conversations with students students getting help from the teacher all while being heard from a distance also seemed to be a breach in privacy for students additionally teachers should not have to worry about technology glitches during instruction should their technology prove faulty the quality of instruction students will receive will go down for both students in the classroom and at home the possible solution to this would be synchronous instruction to students within the classroom setting delivered by the teacher while students at home receive asynchronous activities as they relate to the previous day's instruction another possible option is full remote learning for the entire district to allow for synchronous instructional activities to be delivered by the classroom teacher each day this would allow the teachers to feel not only safe but feel as though they provided more quality instruction to all their students it blows my mind that the district leadership would choose to spread teachers so threat thin they consider leaving a profession i know they love so much thank you next public comment jennifer santiago dear board members i am a teacher in district 301 this will possibly be my 21st year in the district i have a nine-year-old son at home that has been dealing with medical issues since birth and affected his breathing due to the pandemic we decided to keep our kids at home from school as we were given a choice at this time we heard nothing concrete from the district and were given a survey that seemed to point to us teachers having a choice too well i guess i was wrong i filled out a survey saying i'd like to teach remote as i did not feel safe working with 150 different students over two days in a hot stuffy classroom with poor circulation then when a second email went out saying some teachers would have to chance to teach remote i expo i responded again with the fact that i wanted to teach remote and would get doctor's notes for my kids i did send one in from our ent but it was deemed not enough and i was told that i i was on i will list you as a remote teacher this does not require a medical note i will be in touch i heard back today and my choices are come back or quit my initial reaction is that i read it wrong but no my husband interpreted the response the same way i i couldn't be more disappointed by the district and i'm quite embarrassed to say i work in district 301 this is not a decision i make easily when i came to clean out my personal belongings to my classroom last week no office staff or admin were wearing masks and they were fairly walking to school my room was still stuffy and very warm and had to and had not been set up for social distancing this did not ease any of my concerns i have i love teaching and to make a decision to stay or walk away to keep my family safe during a pandemic is appalling this decision will take a lot of soul-searching for me if i decide to come back i will do the best to put on a brave face but i know there will not be a hundred percent both physical and mentally how do you teach in fear and constant worry we do not expect our students to learn in an environment how do you expect us to teach in it i love your children and care for them like my own i have gone above and beyond to help them be better i have laughed with them cried with them listened to their struggles and tried my best to get through i hope as a district we can come together and actually think not of only the equity of teaching to our students but also the safety and well-being both physically and mentally for both students staff and their families sincerely jennifer santiago i do feel that i i need to make a comment that i do not believe that this is the true accurate characterization on what was addressed but i'm not going to go into personnel issues jill beamer hi pam many of us were given your email someone to reach out to for tonight's board meeting again we're so thankful for the option to have our kids going daily for many reasons that benefit kids and working families dear gordon administration my name is susan cheng i teach kindergarten hbt and have been in the district for 13 years i am also a proud and grateful two-time cancer survivor of 22 and 13 years during this pandemic i have been vigilant protecting my hope even i have stayed home limiting my errors and always men's stuff when i do leave my house i am not considered high risk surprisingly but my continued good health is very precious to me right now my health and safety are under my control however when i return to school next week i have to trust that the district will be doing everything they can to keep all staff and students safe in the buildings clean i am struggling with this last year at hbt cleanliness was a big issue we always seemed to be done a custodian this led to frequent empty paper towel dispensers unwashed tables and unacceptable conditions i followed the protocol i spoke with my principal and submitted maintenance tickets between february 5th and march 10th alone i submitted five maintenance cleaning tickets for tables that had not been cleaned a strong urine odor permeated the hallways from our boys bathroom floors in my room had not been swept were clean and the bathrooms that went from friday to monday without being cleaned with urine feces still sitting in toilets and dirty floors in february during the height of the flu season when teachers were averaging five to ten kids out each day my room went an entire week without being cleaned i have attached a photo that i took on the morning of march 13th the governor the day the governor made the announcement to close our schools due to kova 19.

i have a few things i've learned a few things along the way first there's never any there's never been a supply of issues uh coming your way for each decision that you need it seems to raise three or four more issues that need to be addressed as a result i'm sure you will experience the same thing secondly you must keep in mind that your decisions are not just theoretical they must be put into action by real people and for those people who have some legitimate concern third and perhaps most importantly your decisions must be directed by science and guidance from cdc and the state and nothing else you must remain this passionate [Music] that have polluted social media your job is not to decide the overall issue of whether new jersey school should be reopened at all the decision has already been made at the state level rather the sole question at hand to you is to address is whether school environment can meet the criteria for in-person instruction in a manner that compels complete propions with the speak with the new jersey department of education's checklist in rio de janeis if the answer is yes then in-person instruction must be provided if the answer is no then you must come up with a plan to remediate any deficiencies that you have identified and put forth i do not know it is one thing to be responsible for ourselves and our families this entirely different thing to be responsible for an entire group of people my workplace is back having approximately 500 employees on site every day plus another 100 to 200 contract contractors at any given time and my particular my particular responsible response responsibility for the health safety and welfare of each and every one of them while they are here regardless of what they have been doing or who they have been seeing when they are here it can be overwhelming but putting into place and enforcing rational science-based policies my workplace has had only one confirmed 19 case since may and that one person had spent the previous 11 days vacationing in florida prior to testing hospitals effort that many of us have previously put into our decision-making process it requires knowledge and acceptance that no plan is full truth just like there is no plan that guarantees shootings will never happen in schools it demands more attention to detail more rigorous enforcement of policy more more more rigorous enforcement of policies than perhaps but it can be done as long as you follow the science and the guidance and you make rational decisions based on the signs of gods thank you for all your service during this most difficult times thank you mr white okay thanks all sports all right next fall supports next one sports from mississippi okay so this one is from janet martinez i want to express my deepest disappointment at the way some district staff members coaches police the girls dress code by saying that they aren't allowed to wear certain shorts or tops because they are a distraction to boils the press the dress code should not be gained or forced with the idea that girls need to not cite boys with their clothing please do not condone them do not condone the boys will be boys mentality this is extremely harmful mindset that adam severally affects girl slash women okay giggy here i'm a school librarian at the elementary school i will be moving from classroom to classroom what are the cleaning protocols for staff that are traveling room to room i'm concerned about touching necessary equipment as part such as smart boards dry erasers pens and more there are clean supplies to every classroom you need to make sure are neat all right mary malloy the classes in second grade are 1415's in a class we have not been told yet how many are in are online for each class there are large cohorts that we had expected all right what's the largest second grade classroom we have right now in person should be 12.

this is the amount of dirt that came off my tables that morning when this pandemic was just beginning they had not been scrubbed so forgive me if i'm leery about the cleanliness we discussed beginning school during this pandemic and i do understand the district has put out applications for more custodians but that does not mean they will be filled prior to the start of school or at all hbt went almost entire year with two custodians because they could not find someone to hire i have also been uncomfortable over the last week as i have gone in to clear out personal belongings and furniture from my classroom while social distancing is taking place massbearing is not understand if you are a room alone with your door closed it may be safe to take off your mask the hallways workroom copier rooms and offices are public spaces used by everyone and should be a mandatory mass wearing zone from administrators to tech team members to buildings and grounds i have witnessed several people walking the same hallway that i need to without a mask on as adults in a school setting we are the role models and should lead by example i am wearing a mask to protect myself and others and would appreciate the same courtesy so again please forgive me if i am leery about my safety when returning to school it may seem that i want remote learning but that is not the case i miss teaching i miss seeing students every day laughing over allowed to read or hearing their little stories from home i love teaching kindergarten time is up to whom it may concern my name is melissa leisner i am a seventh grade ela teacher at pkms for the past 21 years i have been proud to work in the district and build relationships with students parents and staff for 19 of those years i was a proud cea union member and served as a building rep for several years two years ago i chose to withdraw from the union as the new leadership seems to be very diff very difficult approach on how the union should be run and represented a very different approach and how the union should be unrepresented and i cannot align myself with a group does not function in a way that feels right to me in my time as a district 301 teacher i have seen numerous cea union presidents work alongside administration our school board in a respectful and collaborative manner to make decisions oftentimes difficult ones that were in the best interests of our students staff and community sadly from what i've seen and heard that no longer seems to be the union's focus i am aware that ca posted on their facebook page just yesterday or rather lengthy link the explanation of their perspective and how returning to school should look while many people likely found that information helpful it is rather late in the game these details should have been revealed all along when members reached out today for clarity we are living in unprecedented times and we have to teach in new ways like all the other school districts will this year be exactly what any of us want it to be no we must all realize and implement a plan that enables us to engage and instruct our students there likely would be kinks with any plan because we're entering a time and teaching that we have never seen before regardless of what the school year looks like we need to troubleshoot and figure out how to come together as they arise to our community please know that the district 301 teachers are ready to get back to school for whatever whatever that may mean and look like so we can meet your kids engage with them and provide them with the best lessons possible i know this year will have its challenges as we navigate many new aspects of teaching but i am confident if we continue to partner and work together as teachers and parents your children will receive the highest quality education that you have come to expect from our district to our school board administration i want to thank you for the countless hours you put in to try and come to an agreement with the union as to what the reopening of our school should look like i understand the extra time you're spending in meetings means time away from your family and i truly appreciate that these are stressful times to say the least everyone is anxious to see what the school year is going to look like i think we can all agree that communication and collaboration are essential aspects of any working relationship as educators we teach our students how to work together to solve problems and how to communicate with us with their peers i hope our union leadership will model what we ask our students to do by working collaboratively with the administration and time is up we have time for about one more depending upon if you have a long one or not not too bad am i timing me or are you timing okay uh this is from amy rodriguez ever since i was in high school i have believed there should be cameras in the classroom and here is why i went to hoffman estates high school in district 211 there was a teenage girl there who was clearly very troubled and would target certain teachers and fellow students throwing desks at them as well as threatening and assaulting them having cameras in the classroom would have protected those teachers and students against repercussions from anyone saying they weren't doing their job or that this girl wasn't clearly troubled they may have gotten her out of school and into a better place suited for her sooner also i at hoffman estates high school i had an amazing privilege and experience to go to one of our sister district's grammar schools einstein elementary district 54 school for half my school day to help student teach within a classroom i was lucky enough to be assigned not just one like my peers but four first grade classes in two of those four classrooms it made it more apparent to me that there should be cameras in the classrooms as i listen to what those first grade teachers talk to their students and how one of those first grade teachers repeatedly called one of her students stupid as a high schooler looking at looking to be in the teaching profession for my future i was appalled i also believe having cameras in the classroom helps administration to review teaching styles and teaching standards because when this that same first grade teacher i mentioned above had the principal in her room to do an evaluation review was amazing to the kids she just called stupid several times the day before so the review was not an accurate reflection of the work she was putting out and the care she was giving to those children cameras in the classroom protect both students and teachers any teacher that doesn't want a camera in their classroom for privacy reasons has me concerned as to what they are teaching and want hidden i have read both the cea documentation that went out last night via various social media outlets as well as our own district's documentation both sadly not con had conflicting and it seemed a bit of finger-pointing information i'm frustrated and exhausted like most parents teachers and administrators over all this ever-changing information i am definitely for our teachers i've been in the classrooms with them and their job is not easy normally and these new times make it even more difficult i'm also definitely for the administrative staff because being on a few committees in regards to the opening of our schools i have seen the challenges firsthand that are being placed upon them however i really want to address the cea feelings in regards to the privacy issue regarding the student privacy in the classroom it is a public classroom there is no expectation of privacy in a public classroom no sure there be students do not sign a confidentiality agreement to be in a classroom and nor can they as their minors would not be liable is that time okay sorry it's time well we appreciate everyone's comments unfortunately we're going to stop public participation right now as we have other business to attend to um all of our emails are online if you feel free to send us any additional comments again to any of the board members administration or the district office so thank you again no but i haven't noticed to talk to admin about that and see if we can do that that'd be good i'd agree with that move on to action reports we need a motion a second to discuss and approve the consent agenda so moved second the revenue and expenditure summary reports are included in your board packet revenues are currently at 7.76 compared to 6.83 a year ago expenditures are at 4.46 percent compared to 7.14 a year ago this month the district did not receive any impact fees or transition fees since last meeting however at the last board meeting i reported that we received impact fees for fifty four thousand hundred ninety dollars for eight home starts and transition fees of ten thousand eight hundred fifteen these checks did not clear our bank until july first so they will actually not be counted in fy 20s totals because we're cash basis they will move to fy21 um so the fy 20 impact fees came in at 680 000 3.11 of the 700 thousand dollar budget and then transition fees came in at sixty one thousand one ninety twenty four of the fifty thousand budget um we received our land cash payment from king county the three thousand one hundred seventy five dollars that we were owed from many many years ago it finally came so that is the last of that process bill's payable report is typical for august and then we also just got approval from the fema grant that we can apply some of our expenditures that that qualify for fema grant money um we can take some of that expenditures for fema and then whatever is left we can move over to the cares until it runs out so um fema is very specific on things we can and cannot use it on we can't use it on any salaries but our ppe equipment is like the main thing so i'm gonna try to reclass some of the care stuff into the fema to try to help use as much money as we can great any questions for dan all right pam yes motion second are needed to discuss and approve the tentative budget second second give me one second [Music] all right the fy 21 tentative budget i got some keep some key points before i move into the budget presentation um the budget has deficit balances and four funds fund 10 the education fund fund 20 o m operations and maintenance fund 40 transportation and fund 60 capital projects being fiscally responsible over the past several years and our healthy fund balances reserves will help cover these deficits for the next budget year the state of illinois has projected that evidence-based funding revenues will stay flat with fy20 no new money will be given to any schools and the budget reflects those amounts even though they still could be subject to proration categorical payments have been reduced to two payments one owed from fy20 and one for fy21 last year we budgeted for four i reduced expenditures where possible to accommodate for some of the increases in expenditures related to covid that we're going to see such as extra staffing ppe equipment and different instructional supplies since instructional supplies can't be shared we had to purchase a lot of extra stuff so kids could have their own personal manipulatives and stuff like that and then these numbers are very conservative but highly realistic so let's get started tonight i'm presenting you the budget and asking you to formally approve it tomorrow it'll go on display at the district office and um it'll get posted in the newspaper the public hearing for um next board meeting on september 21st where you'll be asked to approve the final board meeting our final trans uh budget and then once it's adopted we'll place it on the website and then i'll distribute it to the roe and county clerks sorry i lost my video come back up there we go so for um reviewing our 1920 budget fy20 ended in a way we could never have anticipated we're still pleased with the outcomes revenues exceeded expenditures and all the operating funds except for o m which we intentionally were reducing our fund balance debt service and capital projects they're not included in the operating funds they ended up with a slight deficit just due to a timing of a bond payment our bonds are paid are due july 1st and in order for me to make that deadline i had to pay them in june so then they got pushed into the fy20 balances all fund balances ended up in an fy20 with positive numbers these fund balances have been built up over the past numerous years to help us for these next unprecedented future years when we say the sky is falling it it kind of is right now so thankful for our fiscal responsibility over the last years to to help us weather these storms we completed district-wide paving at prairie knowles central middle school the transportation hub behind central middle school central high school and hbt and then we also completed the whole district office renovation in this board room we're sitting in today in areas where there was some over budgeting or we didn't end up spending money because school shut down in march we compensated by paying some bills for this current fy21 year we scooted them up into june so that way we could alleviate some expenses that might that were owed and due in fbi 21.

what happens when a nurse comes in contact with a person testing positive does the nurse stand quarantined for 14 days and this so do we have a package in places if that happens well the nurses are going to be fully wearable their pte which includes gown coverings and things like that so they are well prepared to deal with [Music] when there will be more than 25 students in various rooms in september great question that was after the county superintendent and we got a very linking message about that i think i shared it up with the staff so you may want to check one of my last emails to the staff but basically the answer we got was because during the school day you're going to have people here we're going to be cleaning things and that we have done temperature checks and everything that we're doing in school is based on science i'm assuming he's asking because he's a gym teacher no but a going to take a chance that bigger one that used to be at the library there that might be able to hold more students now who's placing the desk because i know as a teacher i would always come in a couple days early and i would put so like the high school they placed them [Music] the teacher teachers that are going from room to room have their own sanitizing or their own dry erase sleep to address the question about from the librarian that she's probably one of the few that are probably going room to room i think what all specials are yeah so each room has its own set of cleaning materials can we give one to each traveling i'm sure they're going off too you would get the cleaning materials yeah that's good all right next question is from kelly cullman how will professional development be conducted this year will we be meeting in large groups or participating virtually from our classrooms i believe our plan is for you to virtually participate from your classes next one is maryam lloyd what happens if the teacher means to quarantine because of exposure outside of school will they be able to continue teaching the virtual portion of their classroom it's not who will take over um the answer is probably none we'll probably have to have somebody take over your class because we still have the kids in the classroom so i have to have somebody teach the kids because if there's two teachers in the classroom the person that shows up she's asking could she be the one she had to quarantine for some other reasons could she take over the remote thing instead of sitting in that classroom with the kids remotely that would be a county question because we were told um all right so then can we clarify that then yeah because i mean she might it's not that they necessarily traveled out of state now but if they just happen to get exposed i mean it would make sense that they would be able to the next question is from sue del conte who will be responsible for contaction will this position be added to the responsibility of existing staff the answer is very simple um right now christina martin has been trained as a uh initial contact tracing person but contact tracing will be done by the health offices of somerset county we do an initial form and we hand it off to the somerset county health people they do all the contract tricks next question alarm packs is the bo e aware uh where the high school will have rooms with more than 25 students at a time and could reach as high as 100 at a time um yeah i don't think that's accurate i mean in the past in the past okay that's all the questions i have i'm assuming any any room or we is there because we can put them six feet apart yes and if there's a gym you might be able to get twenty five kids six months [Applause] yes because i think those will help alleviate some of the nervousness questions and stress absolutely because like some of things like this is it the locker rooms no waiting room no equipment what's up i hope they like yoga calisthenics all right so we are to the portion of the german motion to adjourn second okay second mr battle there all in favor thank you everybody [Music] yes

and dana for those listening at home will this be posted um can it be posted yeah yep and it'll be on display the whole entire budget and i'm not sure why my thing's not advancing the tentative budget will be on display for review for 30 days what about the powerpoint presentation post that as well probably a good idea like you mentioned it's a new room gremlins are still here well it changed on my screen but it's like taking forever for it to refresh there goals the number one reason we're here is for our students education so providing the instructional materials and tools for students to learn while providing safe environments for all students and staff's our top priority other things around that revolve around it is we try to balance our revenues and expenditures where impossible and maintaining adequate fund balance reserves which help with steady cash flow so in march and april when our money starts to get low and these reserves will help us get through that it avoids borrowing at the end of the year so we don't have to do tax anticipation warrants and enter fund loans it strengthens our bond rating so we don't pay interest when we go out for new bonds we get a higher recognition at the state level for we usually get 3.8 3.9 out of four on that state recognition level and then it protects protects us for times like what we're in right now um i apologize that this computer is not working very well but um i want to try this puck instead and then we always try to be sensitive to our taxpayers with our levy when we do our levy in the in the fall and then remaining fiscally responsible with our purchases and safeguarding our assets that we do have well fortunately we have it dana so you can continue unfortunately for the audience they won't see it but i'd say yeah i apologize don't worry about that you can have my copy um it'll be posted the areas this one is the budgeting considerations these are the key points the most expensive areas that drive the budget on the revenue and expenditure sides top revenues come from our local property taxes and evidence-based funding from the state expenditures are the salary and benefits and then the instructional needs capital projects bus leases technology those are all the key things we also try to cover all of our operating costs our routine costs keep up with capital improvement projects and then any we try to accommodate for the covid stuff that we think we may be having but that keeps changing daily so this slide shows when it comes up is the various sources of revenue coming in future slides i'll show you the details of the local property tax and state state sources local revenues make up about 85 percent of our revenue that's where our taxes come from state is about 13 percent and federal is about 2 percent revenues are going to be impacted due to covid interest rates are at all time low so we won't be seeing as much interest if the kindergarten or k5 schedule goes half day then there'll be no lunch lunches at the school at the elementary schools and then at the high school there's no a la carte and surprisingly there's a lot of a la carte sales at the high school and middle school levels so those revenues will be lost athletics will have same similar pros and cons depending on what teams play if they get to play so we won't be having them we would be having athletic registrations if we don't have the support so we won't have the um so those wall be impacted and then not allowing outside rentals into our buildings will reduce the rentals in our buildings so we'll only have the rent from the seesaw and the farm rental you want to take a second to address that that would be fine because we've got another email that i think we missed that i can read aloud while you discuss or figure out the av equipment well it's it's looking like it's fine on my computer that's the problem okay we'll just this will take a couple minutes and then while you work on that we can do that that public comment is over um state categoricals and ebf so we're basing our state revenues on these assumptions here um we're budgeting differently than we have done in past years evf is going to stay flat if there's no federal bailout for the state of illinois ebf may be pro-rated based on per people counts so tiers 1 and tier 2 will get paid first we are in just barely interior two so hopefully we won't be affected if that does come to fruition but it's not out of the not out of the equation that they could still come back and say we're going to prorate that those dollars state categoricals are definitely going to be delayed unknown the time frame for the payments last year we received our four payments that we thought we budgeted but this is probably the only area that the state can control the money that they can promise that they're going to be paying it but they didn't say when they're going to pay it so conservatively we're expecting two categorical payments one from fy20 and one of the four that would be due for fy21 just this week we did receive that final one for fy20 so i might look to see if it would be realistic that we maybe be able to see one more of those payments this slide you can see the breakdown of our major revenue assumptions 52 million dollars in our tax local taxes state funding is about 7.4 million and federal is about 1.5 the taxes came in differently than they normally do typical years we get 50 percent in the fall 50 in the spring last year it was really weird we got 56 percent in the fall and 44 projected for next year so um we didn't get as much money as we thought we were going to in the early taxes in may and june um but i'm hoping it's going to make up for it this this fall so we'll see how that plays out um evidence-based funding i already talked about we're getting 7.16 million dollars with no new money state categoricals are the same we just spoke about those impact fees i'm projecting at 675 that's a little bit less than last year we were targeting at 700 000 and then transition fees i kept at 50.

here's a snapshot of our historical tax rates eav was declining in levy years 2012 through 2014 while the tax rate was rising since 2015 our eav has been increasing that we've been able to see our tax rate decline except for this last year the increase due to eav not increasing as high as we had projected is making our and then we had bigger bond payments so currently when i projected a really rough levy for next 2020 levy it looks like that our tax rate might go up 13 cents if we only get a 2 percent increase in eav which i'm really hoping that we get more than that but that's kind of what the average was for elgin and plato township and seven million in new construction so if those two things come true then our new tax rate or will be six dollars and 84 cents and then i will work on better or more accurate numbers when we go out for levy and definitely calling so these are kind of more of the levied estimates the computation when you fill out the levy form if based on those two milli two percent increase av seven million new construction you'll see the 2019 levy numbers those are known and then where the projected levy is going to take us this slide just shows you the breakdown of all the expenditures by a function code which is in the other budget that was attached to the board package is that excel spreadsheet that has it listed out by account numbers transition um this next slide shows the operating funds for expenditures for all the operating funds salaries and then all the other sources salaries and benefits make up 72 percent of our budget which we know salaries are the major part of school districts expenditures this doesn't really change very much i think it dropped one percent from last year this next one it shows you the total expenditures for fy21 broke out by fund so you can see that the education fund is the highest which it it always is that's where all of our salaries and everything is and then the second one would be o m at 11 here you see some list of the major expenditure assumptions there are major changes that keep occurring daily as we navigate through these uncharted waters we've made increases for salaries and benefits for the best union contract extra time that it's going to take to probably board the buses unload the buses sanitized between them it's going to add time to the routes time for cleaning and disinfecting the buildings cea salary negotiations is still pending adjustments to add extra staff and teachers and secretaries to the buildings to help try to with all this covid record keeping so these numbers that i put in our budget have reflected as the beginning of august so there's already things that have changed in the last two weeks so it there will be revisions at the next one budget capital projects that we have going on cms windows and frames are being offset with the school maintenance project grant that we were approved for we did get fifty thousand dollars for it so fifty thousand of it will be replaced it's about a hundred fifty thousand for the total project so well a hundred thousand will still come out of our own budget and then there's some referee partial roof replacements that need to be done throughout the district these next slides show just major expenditures throughout the budget i just pulled out key ones they're the same ones i pull out every year so you see the elementary middle school high school salaries athletic salaries for the ed fund and then the next page is food service special ed technology budgets with a total of 45 45 million six hundred forty four thousand five hundred and seventy seven dollars for the ed fund being a quick interruption yes athletic salaries that's taking into account paying all salaries for athletics correct correct even if they don't run correct yep yep we just budgeted as status quo for that um then you have the o m fund um that kind of lays out the salaries and services capital outlay so the total o m fund would be um seven million sixty eight thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars and then we have the transportation fund salaries benefits or salaries bus leases fuel contingencies total transportation expenditures would be four point three million four hundred or four million three hundred forty nine thousand dollars ninety five dollars sorry nina can i ask a question about that so um in in the revenue is is the state isn't the state supposed to pay us back for all this whole fund um a majority it is reimbursed by the state it's usually prorated about 80 this fund is the only source of revenue really for this fund is um is a little bit of the lobby but then you do have the state categoricals so if you only get two of those things out of breakfast for the year you're only getting half of the amount that you need to help cover these expenses so they're you're estimating only 9.88 so we're really short of that fund if you don't come through yes cash flow will be tight in that fund that's the one i'm nervous about the remaining funds just kind of put up the totals for the debt service imref capital projects those funds on that page um and then there's a fy21 fund summary it shows you the projected revenues on the projected expenditures and then the difference of where they would land so you'll see that those four funds i mentioned earlier are in deficit spending by quite a bit and then this next slide shows you the the difference that was on the previous slide is in the middle that shows you the change so you have the first column would show you the unaudited fund balances that we have so we still may have some adjustments to those fund balances plus the surplus or deficit in the change column and then kind of gives you where we anticipate our ending fund balances are going to end up and then the last slide is just some future concerns and issues that we have the state has always been always has issues we always talk about them they seem to linger they never go away we're constantly monitoring any legislation that runs out there just to make sure that we don't miss something but got to keep them on the schedule because the minute we take our eye off them they'll pop up our continued enrollment growth is always on the forefront with planning it affects all aspects of our districts like teachers ftes our building space our transportation department continues to grow so we're still going to need more parking spaces the essa requirements a lot of it is at the high school level and dr mangan's been working with high school administration tirelessly to make sure that we are meeting these new requirements that may cost more time and that's really it so um i think in summary there's always unknowns out there that we are going to face in this future i think this is just um as dr cope it was was reviewing this with me and he was saying that this is something that has never ever would have you know in his million years thought that this could ever happen in his time and he's been through some weird things um so after tonight the budget will be on display here at the d.o for 30 days um and that's it any questions just to clarify i mean it sounds like across the board this is a pretty conservative estimate um i think too um i'm always one for your cruel method obviously for my old days um obviously we're on cash uh the cash basis for accounting and what that means is that money comes in today it's booked today we get money in when april or for the next fiscal year so our fund balances look awesome but that money is already dog-eared for the following year correct so um it might be nice because you're going to post this but like what percentage of that money or those fund balances is tax dollars for the next fairly tax for people who see this because i mean if i were just looking at this i'd be like dude they're set you know right so it might be good for the public to see that just to know you know i guess give them a better understanding of what money we have it's not all like right yes if you could explain categorical payments for those that are new to this so categorical payments are um they're like man mandated payments that the state does so most of them are like driver's ed and our cte grants special ed private facility transportation for the regular transportation and special ed transportation it and then orphanage which we i don't think we've had any we had a small claim a year or two ago but those are payments that the state is they call them mandated categoricals that they reimburse us a lot of times they'll voucher them so the comptroller will voucher the payment so you can see that you're owed it but it takes two three four months before you actually see the money into your checking account okay and that's typical i mean it's almost a standard practice it kind of yes since i've been here for seven years it's always been delayed okay because typically it's four categories yes you get one a quarter okay you're supposed to get one every quarter um but like i said the one that was owed in june just got paid in august okay so um so then now they're caught up for last year so now they owe us four for this one so september that's next month we're um we're not going to see that one until maybe november december okay so there so they they say they're going to give us four payments correct in a fiscal year or calendar year it's typically ends up to be two to three um i don't want to lead you i'm just trying to explain for everybody that's new to this in my years here we've always usually received three and sometimes four but so normally i would always do one or two for the the prior year and then two for the next to total for but there i remember there was a time where it was even further back like it was almost three payments that were owed so finally they got caught up and i i remember doing a whole um analysis for the board every time just to tell you how much more further we kept going in the hole that they owed us until then they got back up so the money we rely on correct typically is linked yes okay yes just wanted to make sure that was clear because it was something that i you know that i learned early on and being with the school board and you know we've got a little bit more attention now than we have in the past and and the transportation fund is the one that's really really heavily reliant on those on that it's it's based off the transportation claim um and then that's how most of that fund is and then we heavily rely on transportation for our students correct i think it's important for the board to also realize that in washington uh there's kind of some gridlock related to uh another stimulus plan under the heroes act which is what illinois was banking on when it passed its budget so the evidence-based funding formula being fully funded was based on that second round of stimulus going through washington it still may go through washington but it has not as of today so if that money does not come through pretty much guarantee that we will districts will not receive their proper level of evidence-based funding money just quick sorry dana yes sorry um you've in your one of your earliest slides mentioned the fact that you've got added costs included here due to the covert 19 correct can you give me an estimate how much that is and where it is in the budget and it's not obvious to me sort of leaking through this okay um i can pull that together for you to show you where we we've put it so um seven new custodians i put it into fund so there would be expenditures in the salaries and benefits sections for that group okay and i can show you on the page in that thing so fun 20.

and then in the supplies accounts we have it in the um i added some into the so in the on page two of the huge excel budget on the ed fund in the there's a section for district-wide programs and the there's it's broken out by school 1100 4200 it says textbooks new adoptions leases in this one yeah yeah okay sorry which one is it again so like right here in the middle of the page no i went to supplies sorry okay right okay yeah it's it's which line is that sorry so in the o m fun sorry i jumped to a different thing so in the um custodian salaries so there's a 20 e02 2540 1190 we've got basically basically 130 000 additional right um it was about fifty thousand two to three thousand about fifty thousand an employee times seven for teachers um i'm looking at the budget's 1.85 well 1.858 right for this year um the one version 2.1 basically last year's budget was 1.85 this year is 2.089 yeah which is [Music] 239 correct okay and that that's basically the code and that's first yes for that in overtime okay all right and then the other one and then the supplies and stuff we put into um a lot of them are going into on page two um there's they're broken down by schools so it's the 10 e 002 1100 4200 those accounts are where we're putting manipulatives and all the math you know the shakers for music class and the um white boards and structural supplies and tons of instructional supplies in there that's textbook new adoption digital leases yes okay so they're broken out by school but they're um they're for their extra kits and stuff for the classroom for each kid let's come down you in the thing so the supplies have gone down we've reduced that by 160 thousand right 155 3600 all right maybe i'm looking in one place um well some of them yeah are we reducing if you total that that that subsection right there's a 1.065 as opposed to 1.226 right so it's a reduction of right some of them had reductions there there are some cares act that i did not get into the grant or get into the budget so those will be coming that's about 280 thousand already maxed out so the covered element would be the probability of thirty thousand on the first line of that tomorrow the i'm sorry the covenant i was looking for an estimate in terms of what we're actually allocating as additional costs for due to covert 19 arrangements next year i think i can get you something for that okay as a overall right because they are spread out throughout here you know i understand that but yeah thank you i'm sorry the other thing i did mean to ask is only for the cares for the cares act uh inc money we got and also for the uh fema money do we have to pay any of that back um cares the cares grant is um we get 290 000 so that is just flat money that'll get reimbursed to us the fema is a 75 match so they will pay of what we turn in and we have to pay the other 25.

up to a limit of how much um there is no limit it's whatever we whatever whatever qualifies for an expenditure for them okay perfect so if we max that one out first whatever doesn't qualify that we can use that extra 25 through the cares if there's money there is a time limit for that um they want you to um project what you are going to expend through octo um april of 2020 um but there is there is no 21 21 april 2021 sorry we project how much it's going to cost and we can turn it in and then we can start getting reimbursed for it okay and when will that be sort of they'll be reimbursed as we as we present basically yes yep great thank you anything else on the budget from anyone thank you dana sam i'm sorry hillenberger yes yes yes ready yes yes yes next week in motion and second to discuss and approve the tentative budget for the northern king county regional vocational system efe-110 this is the first year that district 301 is going to act as the administrator and the fiscal agent for the northern kane county regional vocational system um the budget is balanced in all the funds revenues remain consistent for fy20 it's the federal perkins grant with a slight decrease in the state of illinois cti grant the cti grant could be increased at a later date based on some state funding and then expenditures will be completely covered by a combination of both these grants so just to kind of give you a little mini presentation of what the northern kane county regional vocational system is it's abbreviated as n k c r v s is the initials for all of that and we also call it the efe 110 so i wanted just to present to you so this is the beginning beginning of this fiscal year we've taken over the responsibilities as a fiscal agent and the administrator for this system in previous years u46 has been the fiscal agent for it and completed this task so tonight i'm presenting this fy21 budget just like i did for our own budget and asking you to formally approve it and then it'll be on display of the district office for 30 days same process as our regular board meeting are a regular budget and then at next september 21st board meeting i will ask you to formally approve the adopt the final budget um sorry she's trying to work on oh she was trying to there you go up she's moving are you moving all right sorry about that um the northern kane county regional vocational system that is also the efe-110 it consists of four king county unit school districts which include u-46 district 300 district 301 and district 303 this program brings more class offerings for all our students and allows us to to use collaborative efforts among the districts using the resources that each school can offer throughout the region the goal of the system is the planning and evaluation and improvement for cte programs throughout our region these are examples of the cte programs that are offered within our region they're all over in different schools but there you can see there's a lot of different opportunities out there for students in our area how does the vet tech program fall under this yes it could be in agriculture some of the programs that are offered regionally are listed here and then it kind of shows you which school they're actually being housed in so these are some of the top ones that are listed here the goal here is to continue to expand new opportunities for our students as we do this you want me to finish and then you step in okay so um these um our vet tech this is the answer your question mitch is right there on there that's the one that we have here and then the allied health care is coming soon will that be located at 303 or 300 or uh i have to defer to terry on that one i don't think it was it's not going to be disgusting as far as where the proper placement for that is uh we do have current programming in u-46 that does their certified nursing assistant other programs like that so it may work out best to put it there we're not sure we're going to continue to look at that just recently we had our veterinary program get their nafta approval so now they're a nationally approved program so students that graduate at the end of this year will be able to sit for their veterinary assistant test along with that precision manufacturing is also at hampshire high school right now we don't have any students going there as far as a regional program but that is an option for students to go there as well and that's welding as well as another option for students to go to hampshire high school there so the program has become so um so well liked over there at hampshire that they had to hire another teacher for that welding program here in the last year or so i have death just open to 300 students right now because it's so impossible at hampshire high school yeah it's just 300 students that's why we send ours to elgin high school where there's room there for that program and i think we have uh approximately 15 between 15 and 20 students right now that attend that program revenues are funded through two grants through this program the perkins five and the ctei grant perkins five is a federal grant that's calculated based on the number of students enrolled plus the number of students poverty at each school cti is a state grant and is calculated based on the number of cte programs or courses being offered at the district and the number of students that successfully complete one or more of these programs and then approximately 80 percent of the revenues go back directly to the member schools so this page shows you the um beginning fund balance um this is an unaudited number that we got from u46 so as soon as they finish their audit and get their final fund balances we'll adjust our numbers but based on that you'll see the revenues that are coming in the cti and the perkins five total revenues of 1.78 million and then the expenditures are the same exact thing so what we spend is what we get into our into our account where did the existing fund balance come from originally that's a great question because normally you can't let grant money get that high so we have questions in with u-46 to see if that truly is that number okay so that's what they had on their their number we called and got a newer number but that's what they're showing is their number so i'll have a better answer for you first in september's meeting this this slide shows you the ctei expenditures it kind of breaks it out by the salaries benefits and then each school that that's their portion which shows you the grand total of 1.1.083 million and then details are in the other budget that you received in your board packet that in this tent this little tentative budget the details of those salaries and benefits and services are on pages four through six in the other little budget here so i just summarized it into this powerpoint the next slide is for the perkins expenditures same concept just salaries and benefits and then showing you by the schools those are payouts that are supporting the programs that exist at those schools correct so when they they'll they will re um they will send us invoices and um back up for all their stuff that they're purchasing for their programs and then we're gonna have to figure out how to cut checks and reimburse for that and then we will get the money from the state and disperse it out so we're taking control of all of the accounting all of the paperwork everything from start to finish so next in the next two weeks we i have a meeting with our auditors to figure out how to get these reported into ours but not included in our fund balances so i may have to make a different fund for them um a different program i'm not sure how that's all going to work but it's going to be some exciting times like you got something going on why not i'm up for the challenge so um and then we there's finally showed up so there's the perkins which is the same concept the salaries and benefits so salaries and benefits right now we have terry strow who is the new director for this program he comes with a lot of experience in cte so he is going to be the main person kind of running this and that's his new role and then we have izzy castillo who is more out in the field getting agreements with different places and stuff like that for us business partnerships for internships for our students and both dr mongan and dr stern have been on the executive board on the other side of this so they're they understand the flow of the other side it's just us doing the administration what's exciting about this is that we can pool our resources and offer things together that no district could offer on just standalone so that way we can invest our money in the ag program and the veterinary science program and other districts don't have to put their money in those things instead um i know u-46 and district 300 have built state-of-the-art welding areas and what's exciting about these opportunities for our students is we're committed to having our students when they complete the programs have nationally recognized certification that they can actually take into the marketplace for meaningful employment and provide for their families dr mangan [Music] one of the great uh success stories we just had over the summer is one of our students that graduated in may june of this year from the welding program uh had not even taken his certification test yet due to kovid went and got a job and the company said great we'll pay you 15 an hour as an 18 year old right out of high school for welding i got in the job for about a week to two weeks and the company said we've seen your skill we're now gonna up you to twenty dollars an hour based on that skill set so the skills that we're teaching students in these programs is is really taking them far beyond where they would normally have been coming out of high school now it's a matter of continuing to work with elgin community college and how do we align those to the post-secondary alignment and the post-secondary careers for students because welding is not a final stop for a lot of students you get into manufacturing you get into parts manufacturing and things like that to get into the the engineering and the manufacturing business where you know they're out working on machines and trying to fix them using these skills along with then our precision manufacturing classes and students learning how to do that as well so a lot of these skill sets that we're seeing in this program are taking students far beyond where they've been in the past curious what is precision manufacturing the precision manufacturing is the use of computerized lathes and cnc machines i've seen say so right now we have um streamwood high school south elgin high school uh hampshire high school that offer precision manufacturing and we have students actually working on lathes and cnc machines on a daily basis in those classes right yeah fantastic any other questions this shared responsibility between all the districts involved in it like elgin was responsible for the budget now us does it like rotate or what's the benefit to us doing it i guess well i'll talk a little bit about that so as an executive committee um which is encompassed with u46 district 300 303 and ourselves we felt that it was important to do some shifting for fiscal and administrative duties to make sure that we're monitoring as a secondary step to make sure that we're following through with good metrics of auditing good metrics of physically being being fiscally responsible for all partners within the agency as well as administering some of the tasks that we're doing within this we have a memorandum of understanding between four districts in the memorandum of understanding we work both administratively with administrative counsel who rules on a month-by-month basis and terry will be leading up that administrative council he also then comes in with the executive council which is really made up of the superintendents and some assistant superintendents who overlook the expenditures how we're utilizing the dollars how we're moving the needle in terms of career pathways and how i work with elton community college you've heard us talk a little bit about working and partnering with elgin community college as part of the post-secondary workforce readiness act the pwr act we've talked a little bit about that it's a new requirement by the state government as well as by some of the federal government but really more state it is asking us to work on pathways for our students as they're entering in high school to have a pathway of where they're going to land whether it be in college and or career so we're currently working on building those pathways but we can't do that alone we know that dual credit is becoming a huge piece of all high schools in the region in the state it's actually a mandatory piece that we have our students try to exit our doors with at least six hours of college credits in order to do that we have to partner with elgin and so we've formed a coalition i guess between the four districts and elgin we formed a new committee that's called asus it's a large title it's an acronym for the title of what it is but it's really a partnership to look at building those pathways and we're working with ed network which is helping us develop those pathways and helping us break down barriers between ourselves and elgin community college and when i say ourselves i mean the four districts the four high school districts that feed into elgin to provide more opportunities for courses that our teachers could teach for dual credit courses that our students can take for dual credit courses that would actually lead somewhere so they don't walk into the college without any credits at all and terry will be sitting on one of the top levels alongside me for this year and then eventually taking over that process along with elgin community color for our four districts so that we have a voice at the table so this person this partnership that we've done we've decided we want a voice and so this efe has taken the director here to make sure that we have a conduit between all four districts and a voice for all four districts at the table at ecc so it's part of a larger plan i think it's really just trying to make sure that somebody has a responsibility and we're verifying um we always have good auditing practices here we make sure that at least two or three people are looking at things and now we're just doing that as an entire efe system do we commit to a certain number of years we haven't acted a certain number of years and that's primarily because the state board of education is currently looking so this is a mandatory element of the state board of education they've developed or they've separated different regions together we're one of the largest ones obvious because we have u-46 as part of that they're redesigning how this looks we have not seen the new guidelines yet and what that's going to look like but it's primarily because of the pathway work that they're requiring us to do in the pwr the post-secondary workforce readiness act so it's not mandatory we don't have a number of years but we're waiting to see what the guidance does first and then based on that we'll make a determination much of the guidance has been formed around having partnerships with those community colleges so many up here in the north you go into harper which gets into 211 214 partnering with harper college here we partner with ecc you go just south of here they partner with obonzi college uh for that so that's really partnering together in that dr mangan mentioned that workforce readiness act for how are we going to have those career opportunities for kids going in post-secondary education one last thing i don't want to open up a can of worms here what is the remote plan for this scene that we're tied to other districts on this terry is currently working with every district to make sure we have some students from district or from u46 are actually coming face to face for our program our students are working in terms of going there for remote or some lab sciences some of they've got different programs military address a little bit more because he's worked directly with each of the directors at each of the districts so right now uh all of u-46 is scheduled and matched up to where those students we've called all those families individually and saw and asked them where they prefer whether a hybrid or they prefer you know remote learning the majority of students have asked for hybrid schedule they want to be face to face and view the hands-on pieces of this class for veterinary science here so we have those schedules already set where u46 students will be able to come on their assigned alpha slice day and we've examined all of the course loads to make sure that students are still socially distanced in those classes appropriately we've worked with u-46 for our students that go over for welding and for automotive they're looking right now at a plan to have students back in the labs at certain days during the week um to you know i think week three so september 14th roughly students will have a schedule they'll go over so many days a week to work in the labs and get that hands-on piece i've also talked with teachers who are preparing uh you know how to teach at home on a lot of these and setting up i have an automotive teacher right now who's setting up his his garage at home as a shop with a web camera to start going through all those pieces as much as we can with students face to face yes motion second required to discuss and approve revisions to the student parent handbook to reflect the updates related to isbe and idph guidance tonight we're fortunate to have with us dr schreiber um principal walter and principal testoni uh they've been working with the administrative team to make updates to our handbooks those updates are included in your board packet along with a memo is there anything you'd like to highlight as administrators the highlights that we have are just reflective of our return to school plan so the main ones are in the areas of attendance to just make sure that attendance will be required for both remote and in-person sessions whether it is through the hybrid or students who are attending 100 remotely there were also adjustments to our handbooks in regards to the change in times at the middle school and then at the high school with the high school schedules um the other area is in regards to visitors so that all visitors will be restricted at this time unless they are authorized to attend the building and then there will be a screening process that will be put in place for them at the middle school we have not traditionally allowed students to carry backpacks in the classroom so that was an adjustment in just the middle school handbook because that is how they will be carrying their supplies as there will be not lockers in use there will also not be lockers in use at the high school in the area of student dress in all three handbooks we adjusted that to include the face coverings that are acceptable that meet our guidelines and include a discipline policy for all students at all three levels and the last part is the communicable and chronic infectious diseases that we will be following our cdc and idph guidelines and the reporting for covid so those kind of a summary of them did i leave anything out from any of yours most of the language is just a language that was added to the handbook to align with the return to school plan and then uh some language was stricken uh very very little mostly in the attendance interesting and the only difference at the elementary level is the playground playground equipment will be limited or no use at this time until further notice any questions for clarification thank you for the update and your work on on the handbook thank you yes yes next we need a motion and second to review the serious safety hazard findings approved by the illinois department of transportation we have to do this annually and this year we need to preview qualifies as that route so we need to take action to approve that plan second this designation or you want to take that go ahead um basically we file the serious safety hazard report with the department of transportation back in 2017.