um floyd central historically strong program should give north a quality test a minute 40 remaining in the match ely clears long spurgeon intercepts sodell cuts inside picked up by federally federally looking through missed clearance by coal house this ball it's gonna be picked up by shum fetterly in the miller picked up by lang lang touches into space laying inside just over the bar towards the back post anna gale fields she will be entering the match looks like she's gonna step on for lauren barker and with 45 seconds left hannah hammerline will start play ely clears long with the victory north will move to four and one and east will fall to one and three um recapping tonight jenna lang scores her 14th goal of the season a uh claire livers assist to kj ely followed by livers put back i'm forgetting somebody scored the third goal but puts us at four to one four ruth betterly scores her first career goal off of an assist from abby miller good response from east in the second half but north just too much in front of net for the olympians great scene out there seeing the players congratulate each other some of them their last east north game some of them their first east north game hopefully we see both of these teams back at the bcsc soccer complex in october playing for the sectional final um got to be pleased with both both teams efforts and lots of positives to build upon for the remainder of the season one more time bcsc and all those who are tuning in tonight thank you so much for checking out the crosstown confrontation game one of the series this week columbus north takes the first victory four to one in the ladies shootout tomorrow night the guys will be back here as well and we'll have another great contest i want to say a special thank you one more time to our sponsors for making tonight possible thank you to ruoff mortgage ovation technology group first financial bank columbus wealth as well as jolie rentals and jolie development and overhead door of south central indiana because of these great sponsors were able to provide streaming to as many people that would like to tune in thank you to those who came in person ty before we go i just want to get your opinion we've got a couple sponsors and we're going to go ahead and give the offensive player of the game tonight to columbus wealth a local financial group here in town ran run by columbus north graduate jacob martin jacob was a great football player at columbus north but tonight he's going to be the sponsor of the columbus wealth offensive player of the game who are we going to give that to tonight ty claire livers claire was very dynamic down the left side she was able to create havoc for the front runners ahead of her recording an assist and then a the final nail in the coffin with the final goal of the night player of the game offensively claire livers awesome thank you so much and then on the defensive side i think that there was just quite a bit of hustle from both sides obviously the scoreboard shows that columbus north got the victory tonight i know i personally was impressed with the olympians goalkeeper tonight in spite of the onslaught of kicks the goalkeeper kept her head in it made some great saves but that would be my pick but who would be your overhead door of south central indiana defensive player of the game tonight if we do not go with anna limata the goalkeeper from columbus east i believe that allison craig the left back for columbus east was the key performer for the backline of either team tonight she did a great job defending 1v1 she was able to step forward and get into the attack she provided a lot of positive opportunities for the olympians tonight so i guess i'd go co-play defensive players with anna limata goalkeeper for east and sophomore left back allison craig awesome well i would totally trust your judgment you are uh the man in charge for columbus express soccer club thank you so much for joining us tonight being our announcer uh columbus i'm really excited to be coming back with you tomorrow night game two guys back here at richard y david greenfield thank you for tuning in to tonight's game we'll see you next time you
and as i said we have two cohorts of students split we've split the district in half those cohorts were established with transportation in mind and building capacity and special situations where we had to maintain specific ratios for our special education students in our classrooms so actually i'm going to back up a minute because i'm going to say about on the initial starting of the of the season so our teachers are coming in on august 31st and they will have 10 days of professional development and where they will learn about our health and safety protocols work together collaborative collaboratively to prepare for the students arrival remotely on september 15th i say remotely that is for all students except for our pre-k students whose ieps mandate that they be enrolled in our integrated pre-k program as well as our special education programs paths pals and past our specific programs and if you need more information on that you can please contact your building principal so on september 15th our students will arrive remotely obviously you are going to receive information from your buildings prior to that day we're asking that teachers will reach out to folks during their 10 days of professional development so that your child will be all set to go beginning on october 1 is the day we begin to bring in transition into our hybrid model that day we will bring in and october 1 and 2 our pre-k through two students and our grade six moving on to october 13th through 16th will be our grade three through five and our grade seven and then finally by the week of october 19th through the 23rd all of our students will be entering into our school system in a hybrid model and again that is our plan anything can change depending on what's happening with the virus and other issues so with that said i know we have tons of questions so i just want to give that brief overview but get started on some of the um specific areas that you asked about and i think it's probably important that you hear about how we prepared our buildings and the kind of cleaning we have in place etc so i'm going to ask mr kylie who's been working very hard with our custodial and maintenance department to get ready for the school year mr kylie thank you dr gifford so it's been a um a lengthy process to get ready we've we've been utilizing various department of education guidance throughout over the summer to shape what we do and how we do it in the buildings we began this back in march by cleaning and disinfecting buildings in the hopes that we would return to school in the spring and obviously that did not occur but um since then we've been preparing for our hopes that uh we'll have students back in the building soon so in doing so um dr gifford mentioned some of the some of the things that are very important that we needed to um to address such as physical distancing in the classrooms looking at the feasibility of how many students we could place in each classroom and still maintain proper physical distancing the guidelines uh has sort of evolved a little bit and are a little uh a little bit um i don't know unclear i guess in that they talked about aim for six feet of physical distancing but three feet was um could be appropriate we've made every effort to use six feet as our standard in all of our classrooms so that severely limits the capacity in each and every classroom so we've figured out that you know approximately we can we can fit about 12 to 13 students in in most of our classrooms although they do vary in size so we've been setting up those classrooms accordingly we have uh developed traffic patterns throughout the buildings so that we can ensure that students maintain can maintain that six foot distance when they're not in the classroom so we have um in cases where folks may be closer in office spaces added plexiglas shields throughout buildings we've added hand sanitizer stations throughout the buildings in all the classrooms um in other areas high traffic areas so that people can practice good hand hygiene and we have purchased purchased signage we have also purchased a great deal of ppe personal protective equipment for staff and students in order for them to be safe when they when they do you know return to the buildings so we've also um prepared to clean and disinfect the buildings as we move forward so to do that we are looking at we've purchased um epa list and sars cove 2 approved disinfectants which kill covert we have purchased equipment to spray classrooms we have a focus on high touch areas through the day so we've shifted custodial staff hours during the day shift in order to be able to touch more high clean more high touch areas during the day such as doorknobs stair rails bottle filling stations bathroom fixtures during the day and then sanitize classrooms at night we in terms of our heating and ventilating systems we have adjusted those so that they will run their hours of operation will be longer promoting more fresh air exchange we've cleaned those we have new filters in those and we are also committed to installing filters more often than we would otherwise to you know ensure cleanliness in those uh in those units we um consistent with the department of education guidance have committed and made sure that the windows and classrooms are operational so that we can open windows and promote additional ventilation so that's been a project and for preparation for this summer as well so those are some of the things that we've done to uh to prepare for a return of staff and kids thanks mr kylie you're welcome i also know uh obviously that we've had a lot of questions about what we're doing we mentioned our virtual platform very often and what we were trying to do to provide students with an opportunity to engage in education if parents decide that they do not want their child to return to the school for medical or other reasons so um we have chosen something for the middle and high school and obviously the elementary is a different situation so i'm going to ask mr galashaw to discuss the middle and high school platform um now thank you dr gifford um just to give you an idea of what how where this has come from uh the state realized the need for an online program for those that might not return back to their districts so they in early summer they went to work with looking at various products and going out to bid for those products and coming up with two options they have two companies for two options one option is a curriculum online curriculum that could be taught by our own teachers or the own teachers within a school district and they picked two companies for that one of those companies was edgenuity who have you worked before with credit recovery at the high school and we're familiar with the second option which we'll talk about later was where you would send your child out to be instructed by a teacher from another place massachusetts certified teacher from another place we'll talk about that next with uh mrs albera but the ingenuity platform uh that has been used at the high school will now be used high school and middle school is an online platform that has a full curriculum and courses and electives that a student can enroll in and be self-paced through this program our teachers will oversee that process checking in with the student and receiving those grades at the end to put back into the system uh our aspen system um they've used that for credit recovery in the past successfully so those teach those parents and families who opted to do that remote learning will be in con the schools will be in contact with them to discuss that platform and the process of enrolling in that system to do the online course we can provide the computer the chromebook for them to do their work as we do for all the students at the high school in middle school and the chrome issue is something we'll talk about in a second about the middle school as it expands talk more about the elementary level and how that that option came to pass and how we went in that direction mrs oliveira was going to address that because it dealing mostly with its most important piece both high school and middle school i mean middle school and elementary curriculum this is oliveira thank you mr galasha so as we investigated our online platforms for our full remote learning for families that chose not to come back into the buildings we uncovered that we couldn't really find the best match for dartmouth public schools we were really looking for a high quality teaching and learning instruction and we to be quite honest could not find that so what we've decided to do at batman public schools is kind of create our own virtual academy so parents that have opted to do this will be getting an email sometime tonight to see if you are still interested in with all the details of what we're going so we will be hiring six teachers kindergarten first second third fourth and fifth grade teacher that will be running our virtual platform uh myself will be overseeing uh the teachers but they will be doing exactly what is done in our classrooms so that way when our kids come back and we're all joined back together we have no gaps in knowledge we've all been exposed to the same standards and with the same rigorous um understandings that we all want so tip parents that kind of chose that um they will be receiving that email we'll be following the same scope and sequence parents are going to have to um commit to staying there the entire year at the other levels we were looking at semesters but because we're hiring teachers we're looking at parents committing for the entire year instruction will be through google meet um and it'll be using like i said all of our dps curriculum um we're not sure about inclusion of special areas in this platform it will be dependent upon staffing um and we're really excited to get this up and going we think it will be the best match for our students and i imagine um we've talked about the idea once again the middle school high school is reaching out the elementary will be reaching out by email but if people still have questions because now they think i know we had a number of folks in the initial survey that were quite unsure even in these questions uh please reach out to bush street and we'll be able to answer those questions if you think you might still want to enroll your child in the virtual platform so now of course we need to answer some of our questions for us from a special area special ed area and um i'd like for us to talk about some of those questions that came in about the logistical aspects for our special education folks and all those special 504s it's not a special ed initiative we do i know you two ladies um address those issues as well so i'm not sure if miss townsend or ms jodwin wants to start there yeah so i'll begin um speaking a little bit about the logistical questions that are related to special education so first and foremost if a student is enrolled as dr gifford mentioned in one of our specialized programs so for us that's pals pass and paths those are located the elementary versions of the those classrooms are all at the quinn elementary school um and then the middle school and the high school also have those classrooms so um if they are students are enrolled in one of those programs they will start in person on full days five days per week in accordance with the full school day that the building had in the past and that will begin on september 15th students who are enrolled in preschool where their iep for special ed services uh requires that the student get the full preschool program they will also begin on september 15th they will also begin in person but they will attend um from nine to 12 three hours each day of the five days so there's a little bit of a difference there um so i know that's a question that came in quite a bit so i wanted to clarify that we did have questions about whether or not students would get their special ed services if parents elect to keep them remote and the answer is yes students on ieps who are electing whose parents have decided to that they stay remote will receive their iep services remotely and through various service providers again based on what the individual plan dictates they are absolutely able to get those services remotely students who are in the specialized programs who have ieps that they that portion their ieps would be inclusion with general ed students they will be able to join the the general education peers for some inclusion minutes in some ways once the peers are in school for hybrid so as the general ed peers are joining us throughout the month of october we will certainly be looking for ways in which those students in specialized programs can have some of those inclusion minutes with their general ed peers um also uh you know there was questions related to the hybrid model of preschool once the hybrid model begins we know that peer partners from the preschool program will be starting to phase in just as the other students will phase in for hybrid so at that point the preschool special education students will have access um for a full day of learning um during the hybrid model so just want to those are some of the logistical most common questions we also got a lot of questions related to 504 plans um and as dr gifford said it is not a special education initiative um but we you know we wanted to speak with that as well um 504 plans you know are in effect um and they will be implemented in in the fall um continue to be implemented but they will also be implemented in accordance with the safety requirements um so for example if an accommodation is for close proximity to a teacher um then the student seat would would be a seat that is six feet away from the teacher um and obviously you know if a student is in a remote environment um you know some accommodations would not be in effect just because of the nature of the accommodation also for students with 504 plans that have allergy related accommodations the 504 team should collaborate to ensure that the classes with students who have allergies will remain an allergen free environment and that lunches in the classrooms adhere to allergy requirements as well okay i know we have a lot more questions on we'll get back to that in a little bit so i wanted to talk a little bit about um structure of the day the scheduling of students uh in the hybrid met what what exactly does my remote child what is my child doing in a remote setting what is my child doing in a hybrid setting what kind of lessons are they getting what does the day look like so once again i'm going to turn it over to director of teaching and learning miss aloe vera to talk about that thank you again dr gifford so we had a lot of questions that go with just that what does the structure look like and will my child be on a computer for six hours a day so if we unpack this little by little we we first have the remote setting all of our students with the exception of what we've talked about in our special programs will be starting remotely on september 15th during that time students will be receiving their education on a computer but our goal is not to have a student on a computer looking at a screen like we're doing right now for six hours a day prior the reason why the school system and the department of ed pushed back our start time of schools was so that teachers could prepare for the shift of instruction so our 10 days of pd are going to be focused on how do we deliver our instruction in a remote fashion where it's still as rigorous as what we want it to be so our teachers will be working on how do we for i'm going to give one elementary example so we teach phonics um we do a lot of little cards and sounds and unpacking that sound and what we're going to do instead of doing that is one example is the teacher might just say go around your house and find something that starts with m mm and kids will come back and have those conversations with what has m and then they will go off to do something else so during the remote time which is either two weeks for our younger kids up to about four weeks for our high school students students will be receiving direct instruction and then time off the computer to do their work to pro to finish assignments to work on projects and then come back to the next class so if you have a high school student they will be following the schedule just like brick and mortar where they'll have their first period class the teacher will give some instruction and then the student will go off to do some work but the teacher will still be available on zoom if the child should have any questions or need some some work the same thing will be at our middle school and at elementary school teachers will give give a lesson um we have a schedule and i'm going to get back to the schedule at the elementary school in a little bit because we had a lot of questions about that but they have a schedule so there'll be a ela time and it's a two-hour block when you look at it and that's a long time but the the goal was and what teachers are going to be structuring the lessons to be is they will have a little bit of a reading lesson they'll go into what their mini lesson is what the goal of what they want the student to work on the student will gonna go off and do some reading the teacher will then work with small groups maybe a couple of kids be available for questions for kids and then bring everyone back and maybe say 25 minutes i'm making that time up but 20 25 minutes depending on the age level and they will do a little share session what did you read just like we do in a brick and mortar classroom and then they'll do the same thing for writing they'll give a little mini lesson kids will go off and do their writing and then come back for us share session so that'll be the work that's done in the first 10 days of school it's kind of unpacking some of that work and just if i can keep going some of the work questions that we had was about the elementary schedule so when we build a schedule it's probably one of the like building a 3d jigsaw puzzle because we have a lot of uh moving parts we have a lot of special areas uh interventionists children who receive special services and we try to fit that all in so we heard some of the talk about lunch times being off we understand that part of it was just we gave um snack time earlier for our little kids we understand families will be having lunch time at different times we just ask make a sandwich put it on the counter have kids come come together for lunch time we get the socialization we did try to go back we revamped the schedules we kind of had the schools look at them again to bring lunch times a little bit closer together the other goal we were trying to get at was that as we start transitioning into hybrid we need to keep the same schedule because we really didn't want our little learners to be going through all these different schedules just like at middle school and high school they'll be keeping the same schedule we kind of wanted that for for our elementary students too so we built a schedule that will work in remote and it'll also work in hybrid so that students still get all the special areas they're interventionists so we're tweaking that a little bit we're going to put that back out but i just wanted folks to understand the the gravity of building that of putting everything together and just trying to make it work for you know a thousand different students across the district so hopefully that answers some questions if i may transition from from i'm sorry dr gifford if i may um from mrs oliveira the delivery of that instruction is complemented with the software and the main software management the teachers will be using um in goguardian and um other platforms like google classroom and google meet so all of that amazing curriculum will be organized so that children can follow it through google classroom through meat when a conversation just to uh also talk to mrs oliveira we use the room the word zoom a lot uh it's synonymous with it's like a tissue or a magic marker it's become some because it's a great name they got that name uh we we're trying to transition to google me because it's fully integrated into google classroom and to go guardian and such so sometimes we use that word zoom we'll still do zooms like we're doing now because zoom has a large capacity in the streaming that we're doing now but in the instructional area it's that meat they just didn't get a grab a good clever name like zoom so well that's one of the things i wanted to mention but some of the tools they're using in goguardian teacher gogarni is the software that filters the content that your child is using on that chromebook at home it's a filter that follows them home usually we filter out inappropriate material here but goguardian reaches out but it also has a program called teacher which is a great way for a teacher to see the whole classroom and project their screen to the child and also the the video that they make they can start the video start starting up automatically from their classroom uh the teachers are going to love it the middle school was using it last year but all the schools are using it this year and they really we're doing training on it next in the upcoming weeks with the the the tech teachers and the teachers i think they're going to find it a really cool management tool and a communication tool for the kids so i just wanted to throw that in there it's a compliment to the curriculum that we do it's just the vehicle so i'll talk more about vehicles like chromebooks because i know everyone's only tuned in to hear about when they're getting their chromebook and that's why i'm here so um when you when when it's my time dr different language i was just gonna i was just gonna continue i i forgot all about the hybrid schedule which we had tons of questions about also uh people are very con confused i guess and and we get that as to what does a child do with their when they're at home so as we know our hybrid schedule is an alternating day schedule we have cohort a and cohort b we have a color-coded school calendar that will be coming out soon to help parents with those days but your student will be attending monday wednesday friday of one week tuesday thursday of the next week and that will continue uh throughout our hybrid phase when your child is in school the teachers will be doing direct instruction just like a regular class now they'll only be half the amount of kids in that class so our goal is we will be able to maybe get through a little bit of things quicker we know not as not not at not the same pace but a little bit of a adjusted pace but our teachers during those 10 days will also be working on adjusting our curriculum so that when they're in person they're teaching more direct teaching when the students go home they will do be doing the reinforcement and the practice when students are at home they will not be on a computer meeting google meet with their classroom they will be completing their work their assignments their reading their writing solving math problems doing projects that their teachers sent them home with the day before the reason we chose the alternating day was so that there could be a lot of contact with teachers we wouldn't lose a kid for five days at home when they get stuck on a problem or anything we're going to be coming right back and forth so that teachers can give feedback and send the kids back home to do work um that was just a lot of our questions was about what does that hybrid day look like so i just wanted to reinforce that when we're on hybrid kids will still be working on a computer through the google classroom because that's where all our assignments will be but they won't be meeting or live face to face with their teachers because the teachers will be teaching the other half of the class um i think that will kind of clear up the schedule since dr gifford can't speak for some reason technical difficulties i'll jump in with uh communication oh ironically you're back so okay uh you can go for it okay communication i just want to say that we're doing the best we can to maintain this our website there there's a main website for the district and there's one for every school we try to put as much information as we can up there it's a wealth of knowledge it's great to have a central point a central repository for information explore the website always there's a there's something on there to whether to hit to send to the webmaster if there's a suggestion i can't find boy it's just it's it's confusing you take make an attempt to trying to be in the mind of a resident or teacher student or parent to find out how would you find something so you try to keep it as simple as possible we're trying to do that here and we're trying to post things i know the the um the learning sites that that doc i mean that mrs oliveira has been putting up there amazing information one of the questions i received and dr gifford i did man those questions there were 208 i want you to know that so our community is extremely active and most of them most of the questions were multi-level so that's awesome that shows uh care and involvement one of the questions was can you make videos about how you're coming back i know the tech teachers and myself we are going to create those videos and find some way to get them organized so you can do a how-to how do i get there's on there now is how do i get my access to my aspen account or how do i how do i log on to my gmail and things like that so we're trying to build those we have programs that build uh production of you know quick video of how to and your mouse follows the screen so you can follow along you can pause if next necessary and we'll provide those links up here to all the software that we have so the parents can understand what kind of software that's been extremely vetted through curriculum through the instructional technology people uh before being subscribed to for by our district we have really quality software like i excel and um and naviance for the the kids in high school and we have a lot of those programs so um i just wanted to mention that so communication and as always if there's something extremely urgent we will contact you through our all-call system and for those viewers who don't know who's the voice it is for the all call i'll give you a little preview here this is a message from the dartmouth public schools so you didn't you didn't you needed to not see me to know if the voice was there so i just wanted to say that's me it's it's a it's a guilty pleasure of being here in dartmouth uh but i just wanted to say that if there's something important we will do the all-call to you the text the the the app but for the for most information right here the website sorry dr gifford i i get rambling too much coffee today no thanks thanks mr galashar i know we're here to help each other remember all of these fine points from these um questions i do want to address one thing also some folks asked about how we're building relationships with our students especially during the remote so i just wanted to reiterate that during the 10 days that the teachers are here and as ms oliveira mentioned involved in a lot of professional development we've left a lot of time um for them to reach out to our appearance in via a virtual method uh to get to know them i know i'm told you know the elementary folks will be reaching out as well we want to find out about our kids and and just to start that relationship um so we're trying our best as again remotes a little bit difficult but at least to start it then and i also know that the schools are working on some kind of virtual tour or orientation i know the middle school's been working i just talked to mr peratti who's wonderful in helping us out tonight behind the scenes uh that the high school is doing a transition you know ninth grade transition video so there are going to be there is more information coming from your schools that will help your student transition into what the expectations are um so now i kind of wanted to turn it over to mr kylie again because we have transportation to talk about um some of the things you mentioned in the schools about some of the transitions we've made but particularly like the isolation area and maybe how lunch is being facilitated some of those logistical pieces for the day thank you dr gifford so yeah i think i'll start with um how you get to school so um in terms of transportation we had several questions transportation was one of the last guidances that we received um from the from jesse and and uh they sort of kept us in suspense as to how we were expected to accomplish this so what um one of the questions was will there be a signed seats on a bus so did i thought it would be best to describe a little bit what transportation is going to look like so first of all i think it's important to note that parents are are being asked to screen their students in the morning before they send them out to the bus stop so if they have and we'll have more information coming to parents about specific symptoms but if they have any covert 19 possible symptoms we should not put them on the bus in the morning that said for our kids who are feeling good and are ready to get on the bus um there will be assigned seats we'll have one student per seat on the bus no more than 25 students on a bus they will be directed by the bus driver or a bus monitor as necessary to their assigned seat and they will sit in a zigzag pattern so one student will sit next to the window one will sit next to the aisle and so on and it'll be the opposite on the opposite side of the bus students will be required to wear a mask there is hand sanitizer on each and every bus they will uh be able when they board the bus to be able to use hand sanitizer and when they disembark the bus be able to use hand sanitizer uh we got a question about will we be able to change our transportation arrangements during the school year so as you can imagine um with such limited seating capacity on the bus it's going to be a challenge to make changes we'll try our best to accommodate any change request from a family we have asked that families submit one pickup am pickup location and 1 pm drop-off location those two do not need to be the same but each day the am location and the pm location need to be need to be um consistent and uh we but again we will make to our best effort to um you know to accommodate changes because we understand uh that family situations will be uh will be changing throughout this process um we got a question about is reimbursement available to parents who transport their child to and from school so interestingly enough there is a case where um reimbursement would be available so if if a student has in their iep specialized transportation provided parents could be could transport their own child to and from school and would receive reimbursement for that so um if you if your child has specialized transportation included in their iep i'd encourage you to contact the special ed office here in the administration building and they can help you with that um those were the primary transportation questions we we got some questions about lunch um everybody's gonna be hungry of course so i guess i to to summarize all the questions lunch will be served primarily eaten in the classrooms although at the high school there will be lunch served in some large spaces where physical distancing can be achieved so in the classrooms our classroom set up again six feet apart students will be able to uh eat lunch in in at their desk lunch will be pre-ordered depending on the age group that we're talking about lunch will either be delivered to the classroom for the students or it'll be a grab-and-go system upon entering the building in the morning um i got a question and it was a good one about trash um we don't want you know smelly lunch trash sitting around in the classroom uh all day so what we have done is working with our great custodial staff um we are planning on adjusting their hours once we get in-person learning in place and providing more support during the school day and some of what they will be doing in addition to cleaning and disinfecting high-touch areas will be removing lunch trash so it will not sit around all day in the classrooms um i got a health question regarding um mandatory covet testing so just wanted to say that covet testing will not be mandatory what depending on the situation of each individual if they have covid related symptoms a covid test would mean potentially that there could be an earlier return to school um than if you decided not to get a covet test so there's some advantages obviously to have a covert test that comes back negative and be able to get back to school sooner so but there will not be mandatory covent testing um those were the primary questions i think i touched on most of the hvac questions in my initial discussion i think that all right if you think of anything else mr kylie just pop up i just thought of it the isolation you mentioned the isolation spaces so in each building there's an isolation space that is used if a nurse um if if a student is sent down or or potentially even a staff member has covert related symptoms they will not go into the nurse's office with um with students who do not uh have coveted related symptoms so there is an isolation space that the nurses will be supervising and utilizing in each of the buildings and that space is going to have minimal furnishings that can be cleaned there is physical distancing in those spaces and as a when a student does is placed in the covert isolation space uh they will then be their parents will be contacted and asked to come pick up the student and hopefully get a covered test and hopefully be negative and be able to return to uh to school after a time frame um without symptoms so that that is the plan for the isolation space each building has one um it's not a little cubicle uh closet it's a larger space and so you know a student won't feel isolated even though it's called an isolation space and the nurses will be there to assist with those students okay that's a good uh transition to miss jodwin who's been supervising the nurses and working really heavily with them and um you know let's hear a little bit i know we had a nice meeting with the nurses and dr clock our our district physician the other day and maybe you can give us some highlights about what's going on with the nurses and protocols and some of the some of the practices the ppe that we're putting in place so the nurses have been hard at work for a good part of the summer just just trying to wrap their heads around the best protocols to put in place and by protocols you know we're also talking about how students just come to the nurse's office um they want to be able to be ready for for students who might be coming in with potential covert symptoms so um you know they are putting protocols in place in which uh students will not be just able to come themselves they'll the teacher will have to call first and make sure that um you know the nurse knows what what the situation is so that way the nurse is prepared and included in that preparation is um you know being able to put on additional ppe if needed um and that has all been provided to them um other protocols just you know really trying to work with staff to uh you know teach students the importance of hand washing teach students the importance of face wearing uh mask wearing i i think that um the nurses really feel that that wearing masks is is really an opportunity for education for students um about the importance of keeping themselves safe as well as everyone else and so the nurses you know are really working hard to to ensure that their areas are safe as well as there are protocols in place to maximize student safety as well and i know our last meeting with them we would be in touch because they did mention creating a video for families i believe we're going to be doing um just for that purpose to really help families prepare especially our little guys um about the masks as well as hand washing but also our older students of how to even be personally responsible for their areas and keeping them clean in school sanitizing etc so that'll be forthcoming um since we're on some health reasons i know there are a ton of questions about our coveted scenarios as we say how do we respond to various scenarios things that might happen in our classrooms someone with temperature or someone getting sick whatever it might be so ms roy is going to address some of those samples and i will also mention that that information the the guidance document is embedded in our our our comprehensive return to school plan which is on our website so we'll give some samples today of how we address that in consultation with our local board of health director all the time so miss roy thank you dr gifford um these scenarios fall into two main categories the individual that's symphonic and the individual exposed to a cloven 19 positive individual so in the first case if the individual is symptomatic and if they are at home they need to stay at home and get tested if the individual is symptomatic whether it be on the bus or at school they will remain masked and adhered to the strict physical distancing the students will be met by the nurse and they will stay in the medical isolation room that mr kylie talked about until they can go home they will not be sent home on a bus if the individual is a staff member they will also be sent home and asked to get tested in the case where the individual is exposed to the covid19 positive individual if the individual is at home when they learn about this close contact with the individual who's tested positive they need to stay at home and be tested within four to five days of their last exposure if they're at school when they learn they were in close contact with the individual tested they should go home they will not take the bus home we will have families pick them up and again they should stay home and be tested within four to five days of their last exposure in both of these scenarios if the test is negative mr kylie indicated they can return to school once they're asem a systematic for 24 hours if they are tested and they're positive they need to remain home monitor their symptoms notify the school any of their close personal contacts should be notified they can assist the schools in the contact tracing answer calls from the board of and health in many of these cases it's relatively mild illness and they need to self-isolate for 10 days or at least three days um has passed with no fever or symptoms if for some reason the individual is not tested they will need to remain home in self-isolation for 14 days from the onset of the symptoms um so again the there's a 20-page document that we have linked at the end of our plan that has um you know further further detail within these two scenarios um that you're welcome to explore and i think obviously that's the concern a lot of questions came so i imagine many folks will be reading that but i want to assure folks that in like i said in consultation with our director of board of health we will always adhere to the guidance we will sanitize rooms that uh folks have been in there are to be closed for 12 hours at least according to the guidance and folks will be alerted i think that was one of the questions as well will parents be alerted and and the answer is yes so it continues to be a fluid situation but we will adhere to that guidance and make sure that the communication uh continues to our families so i'd like to go back to special education we had again a lot of questions obviously there's a lot of concern and i know you're going to talk a little bit about health related but no we actually covered a lot of that if you have anything else to add when you start that's fine but also the implementation of special education so if we can do some of that thank you so much dr gifford so um i want to begin just by um letting everyone watching know that the focus of special education um this fall is going to look different than it did in the spring primarily in many cases special education was seen under what was called the resources and support model in the spring and this fall the movement and the focus is really on instruction and services model and what that means you know in practicality is that the minutes of students ieps will be met uh even if it is remotely so the iep service delivery grid is the driving force of how special education will come to students and again you know in a hybrid model there will be minutes that will be able to be met in person as well as remotely during the remote period for some students for many students they will start remotely but those minutes will be held so special education teachers related service providers will provide specially designed instruction um using some video conference platform um primarily google meet that aligns with the students goals and objectives and you know and as uh ms oliver already said because the design of the remote learning model is such that students are not going to be sitting in front of a screen for six hours a day that's not our intent um you know there will be periods of time where students may complete some projects or independent work as part of their service delivery minutes so in a brick and mortar situation a special educator may ask them to independently tackle a particular project so those minutes will also be embedded by which the student just like the general ed peers that student will have time at home not in front of the computer per se to work on some of those projects related to the specially designed instruction um and you know we just want to reiterate uh to continue that communication with your child's teacher or school um if you're having any sort of difficulties in terms of logging on or or accessing that instruction but we also wanted to kind of acknowledge the fact that you know we've heard from so many parents how challenging this has been time has been on so many levels um but particularly for for students in their learning process um and that you know we did get some questions um from people that you know their child is a general education uh student and they are struggling um and you know we wanted you know all of you to know that um we do have um supports available within um the general education setting um to meet academic and and social um needs of students so you know if you know once things get up and running and you know you still feel that your child is struggling reach out to your schools reach out to administration to teachers um to have conversations about um you know what what can be done in order to um you know enhance their supports okay thank you um i know mr gallashore you're probably dying to speak again you have more to say because there's a lot of technology questions yeah there were a lot of technology questions but they threw they went down the the same line uh the first one was chromebooks when do i get my chromebook to my child get a chromebook as you know we were one-to-one chromebooks last year and the year before um grades eight through 12.
Oh, and how is it working now? It means a ballot of teachers designed or in charge for separate schools, but now it seems all the students are going to be... what happens to the children learning from the elderly? How are they going to take action from the school? Can you read your name? [Music] How [Music] colored [Music] in a school under interaction between friends, between the friends of the school and the teachers? Thank you for the work you are doing during all this time. As a parent, you have to work together, but you also have to help these videos in distance learning, and what does the social and emotional part of the children mean? For example, for the youngest children, they can go to school, the older children cannot. After this, this has changed the courses of how one is going to return to one of these schools with all the bad things, with all the people who are in charge, and now the distance.
i want my voice heard i want in-school learning not distance learning my daughter needs to go to school to feel connected and to feel normal she wants this too she will wear a mask keep her distance and only go two days a week if necessary but please after agreeing to all of these concessions i want you to keep your word back and forth decisions one day yes and next they know has elevated our emotions and anxieties my daughter's sport which was done successfully all summer has now been cancelled i do not agree with that decision either quarantine the ones affected and let the majority choose to play sports or not and choose to go to school or not seems to me all these decisions take away my choices and are based on more fear than anything else why can't you test kids for fever and temperature temperatures like businesses and doctors offices or test them for coven 19 once a week giving up on in-school learning is not acceptable to me don't put us at a disadvantage again because of a few people that are positive move forward we accept the risk we feel strongly that we need to get back to normal as much as possible darlene murphy i'm writing this to express my extreme displeasure and anger regarding the decision to start the 2021 school year on a five-day distance learning while i understand and agree we all need to be cautious and take precautions to protect our children ourselves and our community but to keep businesses shut or at limited capacity be afraid to step foot out one out one's front door and to keep kids out of school and out of the classroom because of a virus that of the human race will survive is mind-boggling this virus just like the flu is here to stay and will ebb and flow peak and wane and we all need to live with it and get back to our lives fully that being said the fact that dps the board of ed and dr cell have changed courses on reopening of schools three times in five weeks is very distressing and quite frankly frightening it seems the fear-mongering narrative being perpetuated by the mayor the media unions and frightened parents is being listened to and acted on yet logic and common sense or not we all agree distance learning in the spring was a disaster it certainly was better than nothing but not all what kids need or deserve we've been told distance learning this fall will be completely revamped synchronous more accountability etc well now we as parents have no choice but to hope and pray this is the case when dps announced on july 21st that schools would reopen on a five day a week in person schedule we knew it was too good to be true as much resistance was instantly received and this ridiculous hybrid model was created fairfield parents and teachers already had options full distance learning or home school but those of us who want our kids in school whose kids want to be in school who understand the benefits far outweigh the risks were given one option to have their kids in school part-time here we are two weeks before school is to start and 69 of us per year pie charts want our children in the classroom are angry frustrated and confused as due to a small uptake uptick in cases here in danbury and the reoccurring fear-mongering the hybrid model has been replaced by the full distance learning model to be revisited on october 1st we are told why are the parents who want and neither kids in a classroom not being heard clearly no one making these decisions takes into consideration what's best for kids mentally emotionally academically and socially nor do you take into consideration the fact that many most parents work be it remotely from home or outside the home either way they need their kids in school the board has offered no helpful resources to parents who are now scrambling to find alternative care and coverage for their children which comes at a significant expense emotionally for the children and monetarily for the parents an added expense in spite of the school taxes already paid this alternative care will very likely be in a studying with kids and teachers from different schools locations parts of the city and our state thereby creating a much larger and potentially much more harmful exposure than if kids were put in their respective schools five days a week or full day in person learning the logic the lack of logic again is mind-boggling this decision needs to be rethought and reconsidered as our children's society and the future of our community state country and world are being greatly damaged more so than this survivable virus whatever cause tiki rules 21 email address will the ebt cards be used again for the three days each week that kids won't be in school melissa to know my children struggled greatly during the spring 2020 pandemic with their learning my high school senior who was very disciplined and dedicated to her studies lost interest in trying to virtually virtually learn which is very concerning recognizing the importance of education and preparation for their future my high school freshman struggled greatly with focus and anxiety the learning was very much a struggle that my son gained nothing through the process other than becoming frustrated and even more negative about trying to learn without the support of a trained professional we all did what we could during those times and we respected what had to be done and did it for the temporary period my son is ready to go back to learning in school face to face because he struggled so much not all children can learn via the virtual method no matter even if the curriculum is able to be given the chance to be prepared appropriately no one model fits all students some students have ieps or 504 plans and are required by law to receive their services many children even those who do well and enjoy school become disengaged and lose their desire to grow academically furthermore not all parents can quit their jobs to offer their children the support they need to learn virtually we have to work to continue to pay our bills and taxes and to meet the basic needs of our children so they don't have to focus on primal needs but instead can focus on learning and developing themselves to eventually be a provider additionally not all parents are equipped prepared or have the slightest clue how to begin serving as the lone face-to-face in-person academic support person the world must continue to turn as that in itself is a valuable lesson for our children to learn and experience to be able to adapt to situations as the real world will certainly ask that of them children need an in-person learning option those parents who elected this option knew the risks involved and made the decision knowing such preparing to comply with whatever rules were set in place to allow this in-person learning if so chosen just as the businesses and community had to adapt to the new normal soma school systems it seems as if there are two sets of rules one that the schools operate under and one that the rest of the world operates under for example look at daycare centers they had to figure out a way to make it work in person because they don't have public funding their customers had to return to work and hence they had to come up with a way to sustain their services how is it that we can require low wage workers to work eight ten or sometimes even longer shifts in stores and restaurants interacting with all different people all day long but can continue to educate our children in a setting where they can learn and stay positive about education these kids are our future we can't throw in the towel and say it is just too risky or complex we owe it to them to offer a face-to-face learning option if the parent decides on such furthermore i am sure you are aware other school boards in the area have made the decision to continue on with in-person learning options i believe our children deserve the chance for their academic social emotional and mental needs to be met see citizen 48 email is anything being done about teachers who are hosting learning pods for distance learning in their homes while also teaching distance learning this seems extremely unethical and if danbury is concerned at all about equity of education this should be not this should not be tolerated donna bosworth as a special area teacher in two of our elementary schools i want to sincerely thank you for your concern and support of our students and staff in the decision to start the year in distance learning as teachers we are keenly aware of the enormous pressure that you face in these decisions which impacts so many in our community you know that we all want to be with our students i don't know of any teacher who was happy or prefers distance learning it is a completely new mode of teaching essentially a different job than what we went to school or trained for that we need to acclimate to very quickly and requires much more time and effort to do we know all of the pitfalls and issues that distance learning creates for our students and their families however it is clearly necessary given our population and facilities ventilation issues and overcrowding crowding staffing levels and monetary constraints among the many considerations i am sure that you had one that parents might not realize is that special area teachers like myself teach at more than one school usually between two and three but some music teachers go into eight to ten buildings weekly my caseload is 30 unique classes each week across six grade levels with about 650 students to see students in person i would be have been pushing into their classrooms potentially breaking cohorts and cross-contaminating hundreds of students with the evolving information just released yesterday the virus seems to be more aerosolized than originally believed there were numerous complications to in-person learning such as this one example thank you for making these tough decisions and keeping our students their families and the greater community safe it is understood that public schools have traditionally stepped up to fill in gaps left out of the broader social safety net and we often do more with less because we do love and care about the students we are entrusted that are entrusted to us we promise to continue to work hard and do all that we can to teach our children support their social and emotional health as much as possible and rally together to press our elected officials city state and federal to provide the services that our families so desperately need right now with the decision of distance learning we lower the risk of become becoming gravely ill ourselves or spreading it to the most vulnerable amongst us please continue to follow the science and speak with those of us who work directly with the students trusting us to do what is best for all of danbury's children and our community connie hope i am very passionate about education and the well-being of all children i have watched over many many months as our children took blow after blow i have watches everything they had to look forward to was snatched from them i have watched as everything they knew changed i have watched them being told one thing only to have that changed time and time again i have felt powerless all of my kids struggled for the past five months and i'm sure there are countless others that did as well i can tell you firsthand distance learning did not work my children haven't received an education since march what we did have was loneliness and frustration as we tried to just make it through the year my 10 year old cried almost daily spending hours trying to complete busy work without proper if any instruction often she would start at nine and not be done until i forced her to stop at dinner time my teenagers teenagers were forced to muddle through with little to no instruction they ended ended up developing a whatever attitude to just survive the year mind you these are all very self-motivated learners with two parents who are available to them much of the time if this is how poorly it went for children as fortunate as mine can you imagine the less fortunate in our area what about those kids the kids who not only come to school for an education the ones who when they walk through the doors finally are safe and cared for where teachers and staff can provide for the needs otherwise neglected have we forgotten about those kids who's going to pick them up like i've done time after time for mine over these months these poor knee-jerk knee-jerk decisions to shut down schools will impact many children and families i have already told my employer that due to distance learning i will need need to take a leave of absence i simply can't leave them to fail fall on their faces in frustration again though i don't know how much good i can do for all of them even with the multiple degrees in education i do not mind sacrificing for my kids i would do it a million times over but i can't help all the others out there that's why i write now to you in appeal for those who don't have voices shouting from the corner the children's social and emotional well-being are also being overlooked my youngest hasn't been with his peers in five months unacceptable this simply that's simply not healthy in their development all of my kids have struggled emotionally over the past months this breaks my heart they need to go to school they need to be with their teacher who teachers who love them they need to be with their peers they have prepared our children well the safety protocols are in place we have done what we what was asked of us as a community we got the numbers down and kept them down yes i understand there was a slight jump in numbers but that was not in situations where safety protocols were being followed that's like comparing apples to oranges i asked you all to do everything in your power to get these children back into school it can be done it needs to be done and well before october 1st if not i fear the further damage that the poor decision making of our leaders will have on this precious group of children and their families tracy bruno my son will be an incoming junior at dhs and plays multiple sports my immune system is compromised yet i've still chosen to send my children to school and have elected to let my son participate in sports as well as summer conditioning at dhs for football i have observed all summer the precautions for every coach and league has taken to provide a safe environment for our children and i have felt safe in letting my son participate in all conditioning workouts held by dhs coaches and staff members i am concerned that with distance learning my son will not receive the same education he would if he was in school school learning and i pray that this year is better than the spring we as parents understand that the school did the best they could in the spring but now we have an ample time to plan so why is there still no clarity your recommendations for caution are noted however the parents who chose in school learning should get the final say for their own children just as those who chose to distance learn i am aware of every single risk there is in leaving my house going to the store and letting my children play sports or return to school and i am okay with it i do feel as if we are forced to distance learn we should at least have the option to continue with sports the option was there previously for those that chose to distance learn and therefore should remain these kids have worked hard to follow the guidelines set forth by leaders to continue to flatten the curve as a whole have done a phenomenal job please do not punish them for that they deserve so much more than your immediate dismissal precautions are in place for a reason coaches athletic directors teachers parents and most of all the children are more than capable of willing to carry them out so please give them a chance to prove it sports motivates these kids to do better and be better they need this now more than ever please know that i support all fall sports as they've been played in previous years let the kids play and return to school cheryl radachowski it's been challenging times for high school student athletes and coaches since the middle of march when sports were turned upside down due to covet 19.
we have two existing governing board members on the ballot and one vacancy that will be taking mr adriano c so we will have mr mcgibbon and mr rollery on the ballot we have three write-in candidates we have kelly ellen laura cortez and paul fitch and mrs shelly keith will continue fulfilling the remaining two years of a passport member c which expires december 2022 so that's just an fyi november third election day so again um thank you and we will keep calm and stay alive so if you have a question if we go to an am pm model of hybrid doesn't that kind of dispel the need for cleaning so if you look at the denmark models where they're using cohort groups they're the the whole key is you've got a group of people that are together and you clean when that crew leaves if we have a group here in the morning and another group comes in the afternoon we just cross contaminated so we have an extra classroom because the digital teacher is not actually present in the room so we would have those kids and we would have if we do afternoon we can get the custodians to go in it because it would be like an 8 to 11 and then we have time for the teachers to have lunch clean the room and be ready for like let's say the 12 to three or the 12th third 12 15 to 3 cohort so we could put them in that other room and have the teachers go to them and for that third cohort in the afternoon rather than move the kids but because the teachers have all their material and their stuff in their own classrooms we did hire that additional custodian so that custodian would definitely be you know we have to focus all hands hands on deck to clean and be ready for that next group and what about the transportation model will we be able to get the kids out get the bus cleaned and pick up the next group of kids yes because what we're doing right now with our claims inside the buses it's just a quick spray there's a mister that goes over and correct me if i'm wrong it dries in ten minutes the spray we have is less than five but that's that's past that's post cleaning of the bus and ideally we wouldn't want to we wouldn't want to bust the morning kids home if parents were not there obviously we'd have a place for them to stay but in terms of coverage and having people in-house to cover those students because it would technically be two cohorts getting instruction for three hours and we would have to either push them in so that's logistically something that we need to work out because if the middle school kids are still home the second graders could go home and they'd be there but once we have everybody back on campus we have to figure out how to keep them here and service them well not everybody has a middle school or at home right but your preferred model is to gradually open the school and the time you would have the split classes morning and afternoon is only if we have overflow in the classrooms and we can't do the distancing is that right right so in october we'll look at the numbers again at the corner because our people have said they want to stay digital through october have the option of coming back so if we have a lot of kids coming back we're going to need that digital teacher to come back so then we may keep two digital teachers on to do maybe a k2 digital a three five digital because we're going to need bodies in the building but we're going to get to a point somewhere where you have no choice right you have to everyone has to be yes and in december those who choose to still remain online we could offer them the official aoi and all teachers are back so it's just going to be this little quirky time between you know october and december or september and i think you're going to have that lag time of parents on the fence and not coming back because of whatever the reason is right now yes and then the social distancing we're staying with six feet not three so it's six feet in order for for students to not have to wear a mess if it's three feet they have to wear masks in class if it's less than six feet they have to have nasty class is that a school room no because we're trying to kind and then if they have to leave their seat they've got to put their mask on to the bathroom or the sink or something like that to transition to the cafeteria makes a lot of sense and we're going to stagger cafeteria time and recess time and all that so we may shorten even shorten the recess time a little bit just to make sure we can keep the kids safe can you give these new thank you any further questions from here um we have a consent agenda please [Music] sorry thank you new business a food service assistant furloughs i don't like so again we're recommending um to further the two food service assistants until it's possible to have them return i'll move that we do the furlough with a comment i agree with mr mcgibbon that it is it's a second so are we going to be taking food out to people so we are taking food out to people and surprisingly our numbers are very low so we went going to um via animals and mr nain has been there and there's only been one or two lunches picked up um he's gone to minetta heinen's and maybe five lunches at the most picked up on any given day here we've only been serving maybe one or two so very very low how's that compared to the summer is that yes well in the summer when we were when we had before we went on summer break when we had the fourth quarter we were taking food anybody from zero to 18 because we were we had the additional funds and it didn't cost didn't cost exactly so now we're taking food to the to the families that are free and reduced lunch currently or are wanting to pay for lunch to be brought to them the first day we went out we took 82 lunches and i gave out five okay and then we've taken it down to where we're taking 20 out every day and we're coming back with about about 10 9 or 10 coming back so the criteria have changed we've gone from anybody between the ages of zero and eighteen you didn't want some lunch no questions it could be anybody and now you must identify as free of a checklist and sign off on what they did and the difference was fourth quarter that was federally funded versus now where there we don't have that support as a school district um but even towards the end right before summer i think like the last two weeks we started down below two preschool staff members to return from furlough so due to the number of students that are coming that preschool is watching preschool and kinder students we are glad that we were able to offer these programming needs to come back he one moment please okay [Music] so how many students are we seeing in our preschool steve do you know the number of preschool students preschool had 10 and they're not just preschool they're pre-k through kinder it was assigned a classroom three and we have 10 to 11 signed up but i don't want to say we're between five and eight a day our attending it fluctuates a little bit some of the parents have opted where they're truly using it because of work schedules and their work are having them go every other day so we're only seeing their kiddos every other day and then some of our kids are coming you know monday through friday so kinder can come to that yeah we're set up for it's pre-k through through dinner and how many teachers do we have in there now miss jenny oversees it but she's not actively working with the kiddos as she is working with doing all of the rest of her normal students she's doing the digital learning aspect with them and then we currently have two um two pair of pros that are coming in and running the actual program with those kids so that would give us four force uh staff in there four staff for five day kids no so it's only two programmatic gains so so these are the two that are working the program and then we have some additional who are ready to provide some coverage in those two people so there's two we're looking for substitutes in case one of them has to be out or anything of that nature but correct but we would have foreign [Music] and so these two that we're saying bring them back so they've never known earlier but they've been brought back as of last week so they're already back so we really don't need to approve it because they're already back yes it was just we need to get it back on the board that they are backing from fertile because we had discussed that we would bring them back as needed but we wanted to officially let you know they're back okay i will acknowledge that the two instructors are back mr thank you see reopening of school update going back to some discussion on hybrid so again um with this um action i am making i'm asking for the authorization of a hybrid transition model as metrics allow for the reopening of school with our aspirational date of september 8th what i want to ensure is that we can as a leadership team develop the transitional model that will work with more teacher input parent input and organization so that on september 8th we don't mislead our families to think that they're going to get to just all come back so i'm asking for the authorization to develop a transition model that we can start as soon as we are given here yellow light i should say to proceed with things so just because i'm a slow learner um so the yellow light i like that it's when we're all in the yellow that is our quote go time hybrid hybrid go time and the hybrid go time is to slowly open the school like you mentioned kindergarten second grade each pod over the course of three to four weeks and i i think that's a really good idea and i i think it should be really at instead of the sorry that was me um the board discretion i'm not the discretion your discretion because it's public knowledge when the yellow lines are lined up right i don't think it's necessary to have a separate board meaning to say oh all the things are up if we can agree to your model that you've presented that's what i would um agree with your proposition i guess or the agenda item lack of a better word did i [Music] yes so we are we are asking for authorization to develop our hybrid transition model based on some of the plan a and plan b and some of the things we have discussed that we need to clarify rather than the aspirational date of september 8th being everyone back to school so the model can be one of we went over three the two or three days for a group and then another two or three days and then if it's not quite that good we go to maybe a week and then the other one was an ampn so there are options available within your discretion yes yes yes and i just say that between now and september 8th we need more time to prepare our teachers and start to look at some of these scenarios to call our parents to see how many truly will come back on september 8th so we can make decisions based on whether you know if truly all the kids are coming back we need to get the message out to the parents that if classes are more than 17 kids will be expected to wear masks um or not so but we need but we need to gather that information i think when this all started and i was one of the ones who said it that i think kids are accustomed to wearing masks now they're a lot more resilient than you think it may be i would totally endorse the gradually opening phase versus the am pm and the two days on monday off two days on so i mean i will go to your expertise as to what is applicable at the time but just i would encourage that but i wouldn't encourage think that the authority is unless we're all going to yell and is that what this is saying that we have to be in the yellow to be able to open because i think if we're not that's going to open us up to lawsuits the county or am i missing something no that's why i'm also saying the model as the matrix allows for reopening this right so i just want to make sure we're clear on the metrics yes is that joe is that the metrics that you guys are seeing my my understanding of the of the options and superintendent rico's presentation was that the we we're authorized through executive order by the governor to open regardless of whether or not we met the metrics if that's the case the opening plan would be the hybrid model which would be ampm or block is that correct okay now the other option would be the gradual the gradual opening where uh i think the preferred model that you present presented the first first two days would be um one three five the second two days would be two um it's important to specif but the yellow light in in all categories it's important to specify the difference between the hybrid model and um slowly slowly ramping up because we're using in listening to this conversation we're seemingly using those two terms interchangeably so we hadn't really thought about we hadn't really discussed a hybrid model because we didn't think our numbers really it was necessary so for one grade level with 27 kids in each classroom i don't think constitutes a hybrid model for all grade levels when you look at our other numbers in our classes like kindergarten if you see in candor we have 19 and 21 students so that's doable if we could probably get those down to seventeen and i would make sure you have enough don't get into classrooms if you need to put a second grade class in the third grade pod or a fifth grade pod you could well there's space in this in that part itself we have to get somebody there because we don't have funding for or approval for an additional teacher so it's with existing staff that we would have to figure out how to service those students if we can't and that's part of the conversation that has to occur because if we can't do it with existing staff then we would have to look at a hybrid model for second grade only so that's why because you think you need that third teacher to maintain the online section at least until so second grade has 27 kids in each class and the online teacher has 18.
so that is great news we are down quite a bit in the number of employees hiring remember one of the goals of the governing board in the district is to retain highly qualified staff and that number is reflective of definitely starting to retain some employees so that is great news in that remaining teaching vacancies last year we had 25 elementary and six high school this year at that given at the same given time uh 10 positions in elementary two in high school which is another good so that is the numbers for enrollment again i stand for any questions that you may have excellent job on that thank you for the presentation we have any questions all right president leonard if i could just uh add an exclamation point on the celebration in that slide being that it's important that we are able to retain our employees and the fact that we had over a hundred more that we had to hire last year indicates that our employees are choosing to stay in dysert and the same with the number of vacancies that we have starting out the school year that reflects a lot of hard work by the principals in our hr department to process applications and and candidates for positions but the fact that we are starting out the school year with so many so much fewer vacancies this year than we have in the past is another celebration and that means that um classrooms are not starting the first day of school with a substitute they're starting with an actual teacher and that is always something that we aspire to absolutely thank you for that clarification yeah it's definitely important and uh definitely one of the focuses that i love to celebrate um the retention of good quality people and obviously having them in the classrooms on day one is vital to our success especially in this ever-changing environment it's good to have people that are are willing to work with us and also know our systems so that definitely helps all right we'll go ahead and move on go ahead and go to action discussion item i1 and that is revision of policy pursuant to asba's recommendations second reading dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board again mr croto will introduce this item thank you once again uh president leonard members of the board superintendent kellis and cabinet tonight we bring to you the second read of three policies that we brought to you in the last board meeting 7.10 9.7 11.1 they are in the action this evening because we need to modify 2.19 that i just presented before we can put them into the consent agenda so there are no changes to these policies as presented at the last board meeting excellent thank you for that any questions all right we'll go ahead and move on to oh let me go back to that one so we need a motion all right so we need a motion to revise was it two point okay i'll make a motion to revise policies as presented motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner we'll go ahead and vote motion passes thank you now we'll go ahead and move on to action discussion item i2 recommendations to approve the dysart student broadcast sponsorship package dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board of members of cabinet bastard is very fortunate to have some extraordinary leadership in our student broadcasting network and this evening there's some action that needs the board's approval to make it even better and mr dean will introduce this item mr president members of the governing board dr kelson members of the cabinet this evening if the board will recall in the spring when you granted approval for the beginning of the dysart student broadcasting live position and the coordinator of such in that conversation we talked about the goal of the program would be to become self-sufficient within three years we're very excited about dsb live and the opportunities it will provide our students to broadcast athletic events arts events and other events throughout the district given the kova 19 current situation and uncertainty with the number of fans that can be allowed into athletic events or other activities dsb live becomes very very important in the forefront of us providing that broadcast for our parents and so this evening we'd like to do two things one we'd like to introduce you to brian yoder who is here in the audience and he's going to stand up and he's sporting a dsb live polo with the new dsb live logo we're very excited about that and thank you brian uh for being here this evening but this this evening's agenda item is to ask for approval of the sponsorship packages listed um for the board in tonight's agenda the packages vary um in in price and um and accommodations that go with each package and the sponsorship packages will be peddled to businesses throughout the valley and provided an opportunity to become part of sponsoring our initial dsp live program and we'll continue to offer annual packages as we move forward so that's what we're asking for this evening we're very excited about dsb live taking off we already have a lot of buzz throughout the district our high school kids are very excited about what's coming and their ability to participate in this program and again we are thrilled to be able to provide this for our parents as well excellent thank you for that any questions on this no i'm very excited about this program and uh i think it's an excellent opportunity for us to utilize the students and their talents and also bring in some revenue on top of that so i love the fact that you know we're working towards the sponsorship opportunities as well as providing um some great opportunities for people to advertise and and get a lot of bang for their advertising dollar with dysart um so i'll make a motion can i have more questions please do um question is um so how is it going to be the students that are trying to present this to businesses or how is that going to be like introduced out there to try and gain some of these um platinum members and things like that mr president uh member tanner to begin with uh mr yoder we'll we'll do the lion's share of presentations to um to local businesses and and we'll be contacting them as we move forward as the program begins to take root and we move forward not only in future years but this year as well then we'll begin to include students in that piece one of the big pieces that we'll be looking to do is to provide content very quickly that we can put together in a sponsorship pitch that would that would provide information to local businesses to help them understand what they get with each sponsorship piece okay and then i'm assuming that's good for a year is that how they're doing yes the the the packages that you would be um approving this or that we're asking for approval for this evening are one-year packages so for example if a local orthodontist was interested in sponsoring dsb live they would have an opportunity to um to select from one of those packages as well thank you i also heard once upon a time that local orthodontist loved platinum it's strange that is my understanding as well and very strange yes agreed i'll tell you with very frugal orthodontist we will not be buying the flag the tickets um that are being offered through the packages for the vista performances are they only for outside groups or would those include student performances as well mr president um member densmore the answer to your question is yes so when the vista announces its yearly schedule um those those tickets would be available to the yearly schedule and i would point out that those that part of the sponsorship package will return money to community education to cover the cost of those tickets so that the revenue is not lost at the vista for performances as well okay thank you and it's also my understanding that uh mr yoder who's here tonight um comes with a pretty impressive resume so welcome and we're excited to have you and get this program started so thanks for your leadership and all that you bring to the table any other questions all right i'm excited to make a motion to approve the sponsorship packages for the dysart student broadcasting program second motion made by jay leonard seconded by don densmore let's go ahead and vote and that is a yes go ahead and pass that we appreciate you and are excited to see what uh what you can make happen so very excited about that program let's go ahead and move on to action discussion item i3 recommendation uh to appoint a trustee to the employee benefits trustee board dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board and members of cabinet and this evening mr ken hicks will present this item good evening mr president members of the governing board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members tonight is an ebt night so as mentioned this agenda item is to appoint two members to the employee benefit trust board there we had two terms that ended on june 30th so we were without two members as we recognized one and as you've heard from earlier this isn't an advisory oversight board that provides those recommendations on employee benefits that then come before the governing board after we requested interested citizens that are not employed by the district to submit a very short and abbreviated notice of interest with some additional personal information i believe we received eight requests and two of them were selected and are being recommended recommended by administration for appointment mr matthew kinney and mr and jason tanner i also see that we have one current member of the ebt ms caruso that's uh sitting back and keeping a watchful eye to make sure that we're doing it properly i'm thankful for all those that applied and expressed their interest and i will stand for any questions thank you any questions i just had one um on the agenda it cites that that was a news release on july 7th but the website says that the news release went out on july 27th yes we had it i'm sorry yes we uh i started this agenda item early and then revised it that is the second part is correct not the first we did have some issues on the timing and when and so we delayed it until the 27th okay thank you very much no problem any other questions president leonard if i could just make a note of um order that because this involves the spouse of a board member that the board member would do well to recuse herself from voting the question may be posed if there are two board members who are voting out of three is that a quorum and based on the rules you can vote with the majority of those present okay so we do have to have a quorum of three so should we put this we just vote on the one then can we split it and vote on the one tonight so we'll have to represent that she said we'd have to represent represented at the next meeting mr president uh miss dunsmore is correct you could make a motion to vote for the one um which all three of you could vote for if it's in the affirmative but um i mean that still is an option if you want to modify the the motion mr hicks when's your next meeting or what's the time frame as far as are we good to wait in there mr president members of the board there's uh i think our next board meeting is uh september 9th i do not believe we have uh ebt board meeting before that probably if anything i believe it's in october or the first schedule so there's time there is time okay um we did have this question come up in a previous district where i was superintendent and the legal opinion on that was that it's the majority of those present you have to have a majority of the board members to conduct a meeting but for those who are present at that time our legal advice was that it was the majority of those present okay miss densmore you needed something to do are you okay with moving forward on voting or would you prefer to wait that's fine okay i'm okay with moving forward i'm good either way okay um so based on that i'll make a recommendation um to appoint the trustees as so stated i would need you a second second okay motion made by jay leonard seconded by miss don densmore we'll go ahead and vote you abstain yet and based on that we move forward and it passes um mr president does not pass oh sorry that did not pass i guess my goggles need a little bit clearer all right mr president again as point of order um this will be brought back to the next board meeting okay we will go ahead and move that to the next one all right action discussion item i4 uh closing schools for in-person instruction dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet um this has been an ongoing conversation with the superintendent on the board and our attorney and the attorney has suggested that the board ratify the decision to delay the opening of school passed the august 17th date which is when the governor ended his closure of schools through executive order um i will say that the board does not have to take action on this the attorney has made it clear that that is an option of the board but has suggested that the board should consider and have a discussion of whether you do or you don't one proceed with this vote and the other is then to decide however you vote so this is one of those unique agenda items where the board can make a motion and if there's no second then it is the motion dies you don't have to take action you can take action it is up to the purview of the board essentially you would by a yes vote you would be ratifying the decision to delay the opening of in-person instruction the interesting thing about this is that the state and the county health departments have made it very clear that schools should not open until it is safe to do so and have presented um dashboard data that would indicate when it is safe to return to in-person instruction so regardless of how the board acts the state and the county have said that schools should stay closed which in essence the board would be voting to ratify a decision to stay closed which is in compliance with state and county health guidelines if it doesn't do it we are still under compliance with the state and county health guidelines and the attorney makes the suggestion merely on the fact that with a board vote it comes as a matter of policy that the action has been taken and voted on any questions on this item all right i'll make a motion to direct the superintendent to delay the reopening of the schools for in-person instruction until october 19 2020 pending the benchmark data from the state outcomes from our resident expert science and our ability to do so safely safely and effectively if the benchmark data indicates it is safe to return earlier then october 19th dysart will adjust its in person return date second motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner when that motion passes we will go ahead and move on to action item i five recommendation for approval of the superintendent's 2020 2021 goals objectives and evaluation plan dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board members of cabinet um each year it is the responsibility of the superintendent to submit to the governing board the superintendent's goals and objectives for the upcoming year i will present these that should look very familiar it is the board's goals and objectives and in alignment with the governing board's goals the superintendent is presenting the same goals so that we will remain aligned and on flown in the same direction i would share also that these are the districts goals and objectives that each entity of the district is has accepted adopted and is working towards the fulfillment of thank you for that any questions okay all motion to approve the superintendent's 2020 2021 goals and objective and evaluation plan second motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner let's go and vote and motion passes thank you let's go ahead and move on to action discussion item i-6 approval for approval of the appointed district delegate delegates for the arizona board association asba dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board and members of cabinet it is the responsibility of each member district of the arizona school boards association to select one delegate and one alternate to represent the governing board of each district at this year three different events the responsibilities of these delegate and alternate delegate is to vote in a delegate assembly and the vote would potentially represent the the governing board that they are representing and we have had many conversations about this over the years this is an annual action item um i would share that governing board member sawyer sinkbell is on the board of asba as a county director i believe is the title so she will be there anyway but if the board would like to select a separate delegate or alternate um it can she has expressed interest in and being the alternate if necessary um so with that would turn it over back to the the president to have the discussion to uh identify one delegate and one alternate excellent i went last year so if anyone else wants to go mr president if i could have that these meetings are all virtual okay i'm easy either way i could attend so i'll i'll make a motion appoint jay leonard to represent dysart unified school district as the district delegate and don do you want to be the second yeah is that okay i like the alternate alternative sorry yes sure and don densmore is the alternate to the arizona school board association at an annual delegate assembly and direct the district's delegate to support all items i don't think we have an except for the asb proposal 2021 political agenda second motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner let's go ahead and vote motion passes thank you very much we'll go ahead and move down to j1 request for future agenda items do we have any future agenda items that anybody would like to discuss okay then we'll move down to our favorite k1 and i'll make a motion to it during the meeting motion made by jay leonard seconded by miss jen tanner and that is the media adjourn thank you everybody for attending we appreciate you and uh thanks for your support have a great night
when does the training we need to get up and to speed occur don't get me wrong i long to return to my classroom not under these circumstances though i request you consider adhering to the original decision for remote learning for and look at the data again once fall break commences thank you stephen bain williams field high school dear higley school district board members let me start by first thanking you for your hard work and consideration for higley teachers after today's meeting with administration i would like to bring some concerns that you may not have heard about before you vote to reopen schools on september 8 2020. i'm deeply concerned that is not as of yet safe to reopen schools i see new stories of school personnel who have contracted covet 19 on a daily basis this tells me we should continue to wait until the arizona department of health metrics are met i appreciate that dr foley took the time to explain the metrics to us but it does not make me feel any better about my safety or the safety of my students the positivity rate is still unmet for state statistics and the district's stats for positivity are still in the yellow i do not see how we are meeting the guidelines yes we have met two but it appears we have one to go i would compare the decision to open before all metrics are met to that of hiring a teacher with missing qualifications given the high standards higgle unified holds for its teachers i don't think the district would be okay to hire a teacher with just some of their credentials i failed to see why we would make a decision while still missing a key qualification we are all suffering from stress and want to be back in the classroom i sit at my desk looking at name boxes instead of my students faces my back and legs ache from sitting in a chair so long i miss my students i miss the classroom i miss my colleagues and i worry that one of my students might be struggling at home and missing out on their education however i'm willing to put up with the discomfort technical problems and stress if it saves someone's life or health i feel we are trying to rush back into this too fast beyond the metrics the sanitation stations are back order or on backorder the new computers for students have not arrived and we know very little about the chemicals being used to fog our rooms i worry that within the first days of reopen i will have students breaking out in rashes and allergic reactions i see and appreciate how hard our administrators have been working to make this plan work they want everyone back in school as bad as we want to be back but i do not think we are ready further i would like you to consider what we teachers have been going through as well none of us know if it's safe to return and we trust that our governing board will make the right decisions for everyone involved teachers and students alike lately we've witnessed changing reopening dates and we do not know how far we should plan on how far out we should plan anything i think i can speak on behalf of many other teachers by saying we are prematurely worn out from all of this and it's taken a physical toll on us instead of being rested and ready to go we are anxious and exhausted we will likely return with ran down immune systems at a time we need to be at our best again i appreciate all you have done thus far and will go back in the classroom when you give when you give the green light but i ask that you take my concerns into your account during tonight's vote thank you mr stephen bain masters of education u.s and world history teacher higley high school john arnold students at williamsfield high school good evening governing board i'm writing to you after looking through the powerpoint that was made available to the public i am saddened to see that the data being included is not consistent i feel you should follow the science and data from either the arizona department of health services or maricopa county you should not be combining data to make it fit for you as educators we should be role models for our children we do not get to pick or choose the information both sets of data say we should not be going back yet we are still in the moderate risk range we need to show our kids that science matters and we will listen to what it says a few more weeks will let us see the impact of the other school openings will have on the community there is no reason to rush this a few more weeks will only help us to ensure that when we do go back we will be able to stay there i know we want life back to normal but making sure we handle the virus with caution and concern is up the utmost importance it is our job as adults to make sure it is safe for our kids our teachers and all of our staff i would like i would also like to thank my child's teachers at williamsfield they have been hard-working and their dedication shines through their lessons they are providing we are fortunate to have such wonderful educators in our district thank you for your time jonathan i want to thank the board for allowing me to comment on this agenda item i'm a proud teacher at higley high school and would love to return to my classroom and teach my students but i only want that when my health and the health of my students isn't in danger from my perspective as a history teacher i see this as a turning turning point moment if the wrong decision is made we will look back at this moment and scratch our heads and wonder why we wanted to go back so soon my concern is that we as a district aren't ready to return not yet i look at universities like notre dame and their extensive budget and if they weren't able to stop a spike in cases how can we be assured without doubts that the same will not happen for us i plead and ask the board to exercise wisdom and patience and making any decision about reopening for in-person learning thank you jew blaine children at gateway point elementary and coley middle school dear governing board president kaler board members dr thomason dr foley and cabinet members i find myself in a con reasons i hold a variety of roles in our district i am a parent i'm a teacher and i am a representative of a collective voice of educators while the majority of educators who have reached out to me share my views i am not speaking for all teachers in our district i firmly believe that the benchmark data regarding covet 19 cases needs to be attained and sustained prior to approving in-person learning to base our return to in-person learning on the fact that the data is trending that way is not safe or in the best interest of the staff and students being in education we all know that data changes so do trends big hair and using copious amounts of aqua net hairspray were a trend thankfully fashion is not moving back in that direction but all joking aside there are a lot of factors in our immediate area that could very likely change the way covet 19 data is trending unfortunately we will not know the impact for some time because of the lag and data that is presented by the state basically we are basing our decision to return to in-person learning on a hunch some may argue that i am basing my claim that the data will trend back to the red on a hunch as well well that is a valid argument i would rather err on the side of caution and ensure the benchmark data sustains green results before our students and staff experiment with trends for argument's sake will the governing board can mean if any of the benchmarks from the arizona department of health services or maricopa county change to yellow or red and vote to extend our remote learning there is a concern regarding the social emotional health of our students this is a valid concern and one that i feel in my own home but explain how the social and emotional health of a student or staff member will be handled when they have the realization that they are responsible for the illness or even worse of another person regarding social emotional health and the uncertainty of the situation we are in is taking its toll on our staff i have worked more hours this quarter than any quarter of my previous 17 years of teaching i am doing everything i can to provide rigorous engaging instruction for all of my students each and every day i am learning new technology and varying ways to use the new technology to reach my students i am analyzing student work and constantly providing feedback on their assignments or making short videos to review the procedures of the concepts that they do not understand yet educators want to do what is in the best for their students we always have educators are also being reminded that the survey results state that teachers want to be back in the classroom with their students well of course we do we do not need that reminder but the part of that statement that is being left off is when it is safe i do not feel that the return to in-person learning is safe yet please consider continuing with remote instruction until second quarter thank you george costellis i am nervous as a teacher to go back to school we all know that covet infection rate will spike if we open up the schools children can't grow an environment of fear we still need to learn more about covod while stopping it from spiking we need to be we need to lead by example and keep our schools closed so we can get this pandemic under control before the flu season hits the procedures in place are well-intentioned but they won't stop the infection rate i have been a teacher for 11 years and i have seen how students and faculty get sick each year hand sanitizer and a fog machine won't stop people from breathing the same air for 55 minute periods they will the biology is obvious don't open the schools until we see how covert reacts during false pardon me during flu season leah davis children of san tan and saseman hello i am the mother of two children in the district and a substitute teacher this is not the right time to send the kids back to school in person we need to stick to the plan and wait till we meet the health metrics if we go back now we not only are putting teachers staff and students at risk but we will most likely have to shut down within the first week or do or two due to severe contagious nature of the covet 19 as already experienced in other states we need to do what's right and socially responsible for our community thank you a proud santan and saw someone parents jennifer zour santan and saseman i'm writing i'm writing you today to urge you to please not rush into reopening too quickly like many in our community we are pleased to see that our numbers are headed in the right direction just two weeks ago at the meeting on august 8th you the governing board said that you wish that there was data by district and not by a county to make the decisions for our schools you are now choosing to use some maricopa county data and some higley district data to make your decisions you asked for data by district you got it and when it didn't meet your needs you have now decided that the maricopa data isn't so bad after all just so you can say that we are in the green and higgly when we are not according to data dashboard that has been provided by maricopa county department of public health that was last updated on august 20th we are in the moderate range in the higley district being in this for two solid weeks indicates that we could open for hybrid instruction it's my understanding that uhusd does not have a plan that allows for hybrid instruction therefore for following the metrics to open sooner than october 12th as you indicated you would do we need to wait until we have been in the green for two weeks before we fully open the earliest possible date we can be in the green for two weeks in the higley district would be september 3rd if you follow this and follow your words to give parents a full week's notice before opening the earliest we should open for in-person instruction would be thursday september 10th or monday the 14th if you don't want to start mid-week along my thoughts above i would like to point out that one of the biggest concerns that has been shared throughout this entire time has been the mental and emotional health of young children as i am sure you have seen many schools have opened and had to shut quickly due to covet even here in tucson after only three days this too is incredibly difficult on the mental well-being of children this is another reason why it would be beneficial to wait until we are in the green for two full weeks to open it would give us the best chance of opening and staying open and stay open rather than bouncing back and forth children need as much stability and security as we can give them these days if waiting just a couple more weeks provides this opportunity it would be one we should strongly consider lastly we've been given the opportunity to watch other districts who have opened this week i believe there's great value in allowing those districts to be open for a couple of weeks before we make any decisions we know they can take up to two weeks from covet exposure before people are sick so let's wait until schools have been open for at least two weeks before making decisions in addition it was just made a requirement on monday if this week for schools to report monday of this week for schools to report coveted cases i'm willing to bet that there were cases last week that we don't know about due to the fact they weren't required to report it until this week in addition we can learn about what districts did that worked or what isn't working based on any closures that happen as parents educators and community members we always are teaching children to pay attention to what's happening around them learn from others mistakes and most importantly be true to your word i hope that you as husd governing board members do the same robert colbert children at williamsfield high school in coley middle school why are we basing an important decision on selective data from different sources you're hand picking data to support schools reopening early if you force the schools to open early you run the risk of an extended shutdown which is counterproductive the better long-term option would be to stick to the original plan by reopening after quarter one by doing so you will have extended the quarantine helping ensure a continued reduction of covet 19 cases and increasing the odds that we will avoid a shutdown when kids return to the campus eng idled wine centennial saseman i've known since remote learning started that at some point schools would go back in person and things classes teachers and so on would change both for those going in person and for those staying online as the quarter has progressed we have settled into a nice groove knowing that the board previously indicated in-person learning was likely to start after fall break unless benchmarks were met sooner looking at the dashboards today neither the state nor the district levels are all in the green yet yellow still means hybrid which we were told previously was not a possibility due to funding but that's where we're at right now hybrid the fact that the fact that stats are being cherry-picked to justify a full in-person return is concerning and i question the wisdom of this push to return in person on september 8th not only are the benchmarks not fully in green we are surrounded by neighboring communities that are also not in the green in fact mesa is both a city and a school district are still in red we are not some small remote community here in husd to not consider our neighboring communities does not grave disservice to us all does a grave disservice to us all in addition to not quite meeting the benchmarks why now if we return to in-person learning on the 8th of september we have less than 3 weeks before fall break who benefits from having everything thrown into chaos with changing teachers classmates and everything else that that close to the quarter end and fall blake also on the subject of timing we have area schools that started in person last week there hasn't been enough time to see how their return will affect the numbers if they indeed do why are we not giving these not giving things more time just to see how safe the proposed return is considering the lag time of the covert presents as much as i understand the desire to return to some semblance of normalcy rushing to return to school in person is not the way to go about it we have seen the evidence across the country and indeed even in arizona when schools reopen new class probably new cases happen kids and staff are quarantined and schools shut down again we will reverse our current trend which is bad for everyone let us really meet the benchmarks into the greens so we can so we do open schools we can keep them open mandy brocker children at coronado and coley middle first please allow me to thank the board for doing what it can to keep our children community safe by listening to our public health experts remote schooling is not ideal but your teachers and staff have been amazing at making it all work i will ask that you consider a hybrid program so that we can safely take small steps and combine an in-person and remote learning experience i also ask if all possible we be allowed to keep our home campus teachers as some as some of us while not returning to in-person schooling immediately still desire to remain part of the school community to join our classmates as soon as it is possible for our family that said we have all compromised as there are no perfect solutions please it would be tragic a tragic mistake to rush school opening only to have to close down after a short time let's take it slow wait for the cool compliance of arizona department of health services recommendations and most importantly get true buy-in from all teaching staff before opening to any in-person schooling this partnership with your teachers full support is most vital step in a successful in-person return if the arizona department of health services says yes but the teachers say no we should wait teachers make it all happen please listen to them over everyone else thank you again for all your time energy and efforts joshua pleasant centennial elementary it's too early to open up schools as a health care professional i find it disturbing that the maricopa county tracker shows that we should be hybrid and the board is considering full-time in-person school learning if you look at what is happening in bordering school systems queen creek there are potentially up to 30 students exposed to covert 19 and they have been back to school for only a few weeks we should not have to manipulate the data to justify returning to in-person learning we are not ready yet i have friends that are teachers for schools that opened already and i've heard horror stories there are also there is also the problem of reporting covet 19 positive cases that occur within schools please do not fight the state mandate to report positive cases to the parents all parents deserve to know and school staff as a parent i just do not have enough proof that you can protect my two boys enough to consider sending them back to school in person this is a travesty as i should not have to decide on choosing between keeping my children healthy and safe versus a quality education let's face it when you resume in person school learning the quality of education that my two boys will receive will be reduced dramatically my boys will also receive less social interaction with their classmates in conclusion there's just too many questions to be left unanswered do not proceed too early as it could be a giant setback for all involved carrie matthew i have taught at higley's high school since 2012 i have been impressed with my sight in the district good faith leadership during this time i truly believe that everyone is trying to make the best possible decision however i have many concerns about returning to in-person instruction while much has been done to address surface sanitation there has been little done to address the issue with airborne transmission which is the most important factor in reducing the infection rates class size have not been reduced no attempts have been made to reduce numbers of the students on the campus in order to create the possibility of physical distancing i have a class with 41 students and others have similar class sizes there is no way to have physical distance with that many adult size students in the classroom i have been told that reducing the class size is unlikely because of the disruption and rescheduling of students other teachers and i do have individual student desks we have the flexible seating and tables students in my classroom sit inches apart facing each other while this is this was excellent for student interaction this is terrible for kova transmission there are not enough student desks to change the furniture to at least having students face in the same direction when i asked why a block schedule has not been considered as a way to minimize numbers of students on campus i was told the feeling was that the teachers would require more professional development to make that work and that we we did not have time to do that successfully as a professional educator i am disturbed by the decision that it was that is better to create a more dangerous environment on campus than trust teachers to adjust to a new schedule and new habits we have worked tirelessly since march to learn new skills to adjust to new expectations and new realities a more creative schedule would not be outside of the skill set of any teacher that i know and if time for preparation for more safe schedule is needed then it seems that a rushed return to the campus is counterproductive i can see that enormous efforts have been made to sanitize to provide protective gear and to make a face a firm face covering policy those are important but nothing has been done to even create the possibility of physical distancing which is the single biggest factor in reducing transmission i would like to see this issue addressed with the same consciousness with with which other factors have been considered casey jerkowicz to the board let me begin by acknowledging the well-intentioned and professional leadership we received at my site and within the district everyone is trying to navigate an almost unnavogatable situation while keeping the students needs and teachers needs all in mind a lot of great steps have been taken towards making the situation feel safer for both students and teachers despite this i do have a few concerns with social distancing being one of the most effective ways to slow the spread of the virus is it it is adamant that class sizes be shrunk in many cases class sizes are upwards of 32 or more students in some cases reaching 40 students large class sizes are difficult enough but when you combine that with small room sizes this seems to be a potential environment where the virus can quickly spread what efforts are being made what efforts are being made accommodate this problem to prevent this from happening if and what there is an outbreak what will the district's response be at what point will the district consider reverting to remote learning model has the situation in queen creek been investigated by the district for examples of good ideas and examples of bad ideas for reopening the district while i understand the importance of getting the students back in class especially when it comes to their mental health i believe that more planning needs to be done to ready ourselves for the potential problems that will inevitably arise with the return to in-person instruction there will be problems that appear despite our best-laid plans but in situations like this we set goals and do everything we can to control what we can control thank you for your time and attention to this also for your support of the teachers and support staff within the district casey jerkowitz april french with a student at sue sauceman preschool after sitting in a virtual staff meeting this afternoon i have learned that we will most likely be voting to overturn your original decision of reevaluating until after fall bacon and instead we will have this return immediately following labor day weekend this is frustrating real this is a frustrating realization and honestly feels like a bit of a betrayal from the school board in an effort to appease the concerns of a few loud voices who won't actually be in the classroom you are most likely going to change our schedule again there are too many unknown factors to consider i don't understand and it's overwhelming it's confusing i also don't understand that if it is safe to return why aren't you allowing anyone in the boardroom we are going to be expected to conduct our business behind the mask why aren't you speaking from behind yours if it's a district mandate if you're worried that people may not understand what you are communicating don't you think the same will be the same thing will translate to the students and teachers my concern now is for students who can't or aren't returning to in person students i care deeply about last week one of my students began smiling and laughing and then immediately started crying when i asked him why he said because i know that when it's time to go back to the in classroom especially if it's too soon my parents told me i won't be able to go to school in person i am having so much fun and need this class i am sad because i know it's going to end soon and another one said i don't think i am going to be able to cope if i if we go back too soon i know i won't be allowed to return yet and i'm going to miss my friends this is the only class i care about i'm going to be stuck online with someone who doesn't care about me they were told they would have until at least fall break you told them that as teachers we plan for that it logically makes sense to wait it out for those remaining couple of weeks we've made it this far nicole camp cooley and chaparral i realize a lot of parents don't care about the kids who have to stay at home when schools open up but there are parents who do from the information we've been given so far it sounds like the kids who will be remaining online will be left with losing their teachers and classes they've grown to like these kids will be left without the option to continue their accelerated courses and there has been zero assurance the district will be officially pardon me fixing this issue the kids will be losing the opportunity to continue their elective courses why are these kids being punished for having to stay home they're already going to miss out on being at school now they can't even continue on their current educational paths those of us who have opted to keep our kids online for health reasons feel like we're being forced to send our kids to campus just so our kids won't lose their accelerated courses and credits you need to make it so their these kids can continue these courses either online or by following video of live classes from home work it out if you have to open if you have to open school so soon then you can work out better online options for the smart kids casey blonde students in kinder and second grade i'm an emergency department nurse working in our community i can speak from first-hand knowledge this pandemic is nowhere near contained or controlled i see many coveted patients every day in my department many can go home but many need to be admitted these people are very contagious and very ill the number reported by the health departments do actually do not actually tell the story our positivity numbers are down because hospitals have in the past two weeks started testing every admitted patient so yes positivity rates will drop because of this has it gotten better yes is it controlled absolutely not please let's not use our children in higley as a test subjects to see if it's safe for schools yet let's wait until the october day to see what happens and how other districts are going back let's see if the rates rise which i know they will the online learning has been fantastic for our kids please don't take this from them please don't remove them from their teachers they've grown to love over the past weeks please make the scientific decision thank you for your time alana schranovsky a teacher at higley high members of the board my name is elena alana tranowski i teach ap and u.s history at higley high school yesterday higley high had a staff meeting about the potential to return to school on september 8th i'm very thankful for my administration and their willingness to support staff during this time though the information shared with us was deeply concerning to me and many of my colleagues as questions were asked the answers from admin did not calm any nerves first the data that was used to come to a return to school date has been manipulated in a way that i do not believe was intended by the az department of health creating averages that look good enough in order to show the metrics have been met was has been met was met with disbelief as the arizona department of health website continues to update and show how schools in maricopa county have not met those benchmarks higley has averaged them to a pass i would be met with extreme criticism if i chose to if i chose to use this math to pass students in my class we were made aware that some district pp has been back ordered though higley high school has a good supply to start how will we know how long the back order will stay in place we are told we will receive health training to return back as teachers we are barely keeping our heads above water with online teaching grading contacting parents students meetings planning and creating modules now add trainings that have not been introduced we'll be expected to do the training on the weekend before we go back we were also told the district will be one-to-one for technology so we do not need to be collecting papers from students except there is no date when those computers will actually arrive since this purchase is being approved this evening so what are we supposed to do in the interim will students be instructed to bring their own technology will the network support this because that is because it is not in the past with 150 students entering my classroom in a day how can i ensure that their physical safety will be met as well as their educational needs when so many items are back ordered until an unknown date physical distancing has proven to be the best form of slowing the disease how will that happen when hundreds of students are in the hallway in a five minute period and over 35 students sit in a small classroom for an hour how do we just go back to normal on tuesday after finishing virtual on friday i'm i am aware that the answer is for teachers to spend their three day weekend planning and setting up during a time we should all be taking the day off so we we also desperately need it is my opinion if we're actually allowed one the fall break would be the best for planning and preparation for this new normal we must navigate this was a date that was designed decided several weeks ago and lunch best marks were met according to the health department they have not been met while we have all been on this roller coaster teachers have not had the ability to plan more than a week in advance because the expectations and chances of going back is always up in the air the goal keeps the goal post keeps getting moved october 12th allows everyone a fresh start a natural break in the progress period for students who chose not to return and will begin new teachers online if you are unaware if a student moves out of a class their grades do not automatically merge into a new classroom they must be entered manually in the new teacher's gradebook the idea of scrambling to start then go on vacation 14 school days later is not what's best for the classroom and education it's confusing chaotic and frankly scary it has always been my goal to be the best teacher and educator i have rolled with punches before there have been changes in funding expectations from admin and new curriculum to name a few but this is different this is my 12th year in higley i consider it my home but these are people's lives and livelihoods we are gambling with the rush to open the rush to open based on cherry-picked data is not what's best for students staff or the community thank you for reading and understanding what pressure teachers are feeling during this time kristen terrell to the members of the board i want to thank you for all of your time and consideration you have put into determining the best course of action for our school district this year as a community member and a teacher i am concerned about the outcomes of tonight's board meeting i think the pressure of reopening schools is pushing you to make a decision to overturn your previous decision to wait until after fall break now that we have two different sets of benchmark data results to follow we are muddying the water i want to remind you that our district is open we have students teachers and staff coming in all over the east valley to our campuses and our local families are not staying within their borders 100 percent of the time relying on the maricopa county website to just focus on our school district is not an effective way to determine our potential risk to exposure i hope that the you you are i hope that you consider reopening the schools tonight that you will strongly consider a hybrid option if you choose to restart schools on september 8th this will allow us to provide some form of social distancing something that is not even remotely possible at full capacity and will ease our students and staff back into school in person school if you look at the information coming from other states school districts are experiencing unprecedented amounts of positive cases among their schools communities within 15 days of schools reopening and are already being forced to shut schools down again i hope that hybrid model will allow us to avoid this happening within the higley to mitigate the risk to our students teachers and staff of contracting the virus utilizing a hybrid model through at least the end of the first quarter allow us to ease back into in-person learning and limit our risk to our community thank you for your time melody led coronado and williamsfield since i can't appear like since i can't appear in person to comment i would just like the board members to have the opportunity to hear from me in writing here it is imperative that we get our children back in school the numbers supporting doing so we've met the metrics and our kids are suffering through online school the teachers have been amazing but we can all can only do so much while some children may do well with the format others are experiencing constant failure frustration and poor grades to this learning format there's absolutely no reason why public business like movie theaters gyms restaurants etc should be open for business but our children still still not able to attend in-person school with safety measures it is appalling that the needs of our children in our community are being pushed to the bottom as a society we should put our children and their needs first there should be no question about that this should not be a political issue this is about our children this is about what our children need they need an education i've seen my children there's a great deal in math and writing skills in the time that they were out of school and while it may have been necessary to do our best with less online education for our time that time has clearly ended it's time you vote to represent the parents in this school district who in your own survey overwhelmingly voted in support of sending their children to school quite some time ago you were elected to represent the parents and children in this district please do so and allow them to return to school as soon as possible kelly stromello children at higley traditional academy with the reopening of gyms teacher theaters and water parks etc wouldn't it make sense to delay reopening in-person discussion until october so we can see what happens to the numbers heather malman chaparral in coulee middle school as an employee and a parent i would like it known that i'm in full support of returning to on-campus learning as a mother of three children in the district two of which have learning disabilities i know firsthand the struggles and anxiety and frustration that remote learning is causing them because of this our family is strongly considering placing our children in private or charter schools as an employee working with title one students they have expressed their strong desire to return to on-campus learning they tell me that remote learning is hard and my heart breaks for them when they didn't when they don't get the support that they need and their teachers want to give them as for the teachers and parents who do not want to return think you providing the options to work and learn from home and for a majority of us that want to return then keep providing the option to work and learn at school kathleen richards children at higley traditional academy i'm deeply concerned that based on the board's agenda the board seems to have decided to abandon their original metrics of positivity rates based on our county in favor of looking at the small higgle unified school district area we do not live in a world where looking at our rates at a small exclusive level makes any sense teachers are coming to classrooms from all over the valley students can opt into our district with open with open choice while our higgle unified school district numbers are low today without waiting to see the impact of the opening of gyms bars theaters and more we cannot accurately assume safety for our students and teachers and staff consistently our for our students is key the board set up a start date provided metrics are met and maintained of 10 12.
uh so we pretty much mastered that skill if the child if the student has a chromebook problem we have swap um chromebooks they take on loaners as we're repairing those um and we cycle those through pretty pretty well um we want to expand that of course through for all students um so fortunately in the spring we got ahead of a rush that happened worldwide uh there's a computer shortage worldwide and so many districts are waiting possibly till october november for chromebooks to come in which must be difficult for them we fortunately were able to get 700 before the rush actually literally before the rush they said they were the uh an order came in for seven thousand right after i replaced mine um so we got those in we we enrolled them and got them all uh inventoried and such and they're ready to go so we're going to be rolling out chromebook distribution to complement the existing chromebooks we have i think in the survey i had mentioned that if your child needs a chromebook part of the reason for that is we have exactly as many chromebooks as we have students almost that close so i think i looked for a little bit of buffer but we really want students to have their chromebook so there's no interruption at home about borrowing us a computer or being on an incompatible platform what have you so i begin the process next tuesday uh with the sixth graders i sent out a message to the families of the sixth graders uh from ten to two uh the beginning alphabet at 10 to 12 and 12 to two and then the message went out and we're doing that same drive through model and we'll do that at each of the schools we don't have to do it for the high school because the kids have theirs the freshmen are getting theirs but in a more advisory way showing up on smaller smaller situations a drive-through as well but the middle school we're going sixth graders drive through coming in now obviously if if you're if you have a child that's seventh or eighth grader let me know we'll hand you theirs too because you don't want to come back to do that so it's the the i'll be there with staff in the middle school who know the families and then we can identify which serial number we'd like to assign them to people so we know where they are and we have a good handle on them um so we'll do the sixth grade distribution on tuesday we'll start there the other distributions will come the following week it seems to see a barrage of distributions happening all around the district around the 7th 8th the 8th 9th and 10th a little bit so it's good that you get the students get those chromebooks in try them out make sure they're working i will set up hours and post on our website if anyone's having a problem there'll be links to go to to go to your school to get a replacement or if the the camera doesn't work or something like that would like to swap them out so they there's not a whole lot of contact we'll take those and we'll we'll clean them up and straighten them out for the next loaner so it does like that fortunately we did place in another order for chromebooks that are due in october first for the that it'll make my buffer a little bit bigger dr gifford i'll feel a lot better about swapping them out so it's one of those situations that if you absolutely don't need a chromebook uh you can probably you could wait but eventually we'll find you and get you a chromebook one of the newer ones that come because we want everyone to have one we want everyone to be using the same chromebook i mean using a chromebook um but uh we'll be okay as we do the six seven and eights uh coming up uh those kids the students will be very excited to to see those uh one thing i might mention about the sixth graders in the spring we were looking for them to return chromebooks not everybody returned them but they are using them all summer dr gifford which i thought was a was a great testament to these young young people they're on them they're using them we would like those back so we could clean them up and make sure they go to elementary school students so you can get the middle school students so that's one of the things i have i brought in uh one of the assistant uh principals from the middle school to enforce that because he knows these kids and he knows just to make sure that they're returning those just because we like to keep order to them to know where the numbers are we're a little bit like that when in technology we want to keep that order but everyone will get a chromebook and we'll do it as as much as you know as easily as possible with that drive through a model handing it to them they go through um and i think we'll be okay if i had two other items that i think are rather important i'll try not to ramble on because i know the time is getting up there um the second item had to do with um transmission uh internet very important you do need a reliable internet connection at home a lot of people were saying that they have um sometimes spotty internet because one thing that happens with with internet connections if everyone on your street is is watching movies on movie services and or zooming or such sometimes it can bring the signal down the speed down comcast will allow you to pay for more services it does the bump up in service is possible for those people who can do that um comcast also offers and it's on our website for those who who uh want a more economical version that they can do if you work with comcast as an application there for getting that connection uh you can and i think for about 120 dollars a year they'll provide an internet connection and wireless hub you have to qualify for their program but it is on there and additionally if there's people with uh more uh more need beyond that please contact your school because we we have a grant that may provide access points there are cellular access points for those people in great need because this is a strange time wherein and you may have that need please be advised that these little uh hot spots as they're called they're not for the family's wi-fi so you're going to be disappointed if you think everyone's going to get on there to go on netflix it's not going to work it's a sign for that one student going to all the educational sites that are dictated so it's a very specific they these hot spots the company that we're looking at knows exactly what they're doing this is get to work hot spots no uh no extended family wi-fi so there's other options for that but um the need is there because i think it's so important that the kids have to have this connection to the internet they have to have that um access to do their work and i think the chromebooks will add to that dr gifford to to make sure they can do their work um and i think that was the the the only the other ones i had so if i could turn it back to you for so i just check my notes okay thank you um i do want to mention i know there were a number of questions of revolving around mask wearing so we are going to require all staff and students to wear a mask we are um working with the school committee for a policy on that but we do we are not going to allow at this point the gators or bandanas as those have not been recommended according to the guidance to offer the proper protection that folks need so if if there's a question about that we'll have more information coming out with our school committee meeting but but with the masks we know there will be some children will have medical exemptions um those kinds of things and those will be addressed of course i also wanted to mention that about mask breaks so right now we again with the guidance and consult with area physician the mass breaks will occur in the classroom six feet apart the students will remain at their desks and we are going to ask the teachers if they're obviously if they're not eating they'll get to eat lunch obviously um if there's a snack break and the extra mask breaks when needed it will be teachers will be asking students to be silent that's in the guidance about um you know again if we all start talking and 12 students we know how they are we do the same thing get all excited and so will be a silent we've talked to the elementary principals today that perhaps teachers can do a mindfulness moment um just relax and and think about things or the teacher can do a read aloud at that time just times for those students to have a mass break we're also using the outside of course with recess and um they'll be structured activities not just run around all over the playground um might lead students in whatever it might be a stretching break or something but they'll be obviously there we're very cognizant of the need for that we've all we're all wearing them as well obviously in our offices and um maintaining our distance and our mask wearing and we need breaks as well i also we also had some questions about our kindergarten screening so i'm going to ask miss roy to talk about that so kindergarten screenings so normally we would have completed them at this point but because of the situation we've decided to screen our kindergarten students when they return so we're looking at beginning their return that october 1st and 2nd so we'll take a few days to complete that but we will be doing that when they return on their in-person days you should have received a kindergarten welcome video that was completed by the schools and also a parent questionnaire at this point so we're asking you to complete that and uh return it we also did get a single question i'm trying to look through these regarding substitutes whether they'll be trained on the new platform and we are looking for um clusters of uh substitutes in each of our buildings that are um that we will be training um to help with that as well along with staff that are already in the building and i warned everybody i said don't be muted so we have to say you're muted you're muted um do you have anything miss aloe vera about um i know there are a lot of questions and again we have our hybrid and remote plans in place the learning opportunities for students but we do acknowledge right now that there are some questions from parents who are not going to have the opportunity to work with their child during the day the child might be in a daycare situation we recognize that so just maybe give some thoughts about what we're trying to do to help those folks right now so we we certainly do understand that it's difficult for parents that will be working that need to support their kids and and you know we we get it we understand it so if you're in that situation please call your building principal we can work with you and try to figure things out um once we go hybrid we're hoping that this will be a lot easier for parents because students will be coming home with the work that they could do our goal is to really make students self-sufficient on that day when they're at home doing work we understand their kids and that that's impossible but one story that i can really tell when we learned our lessons learned from the spring was that we have a program at elementary schools called st math and any of our elementary parents know about ggi penguin uh the kids just love him or her we haven't decided and they have to work to get gigi across the screen this is a program that has no language so it's all understanding and movement and spatial movement of gigi and if you look at it it's very intimidating even for adults and kids went home they use a qr code which they scan on their their chromebooks and they can do it and we get responses from parents saying i don't understand one thing but my kid is doing this and they're very happy and it looks like they're right because at the end gigi the penguin's very happy so our goal is to have that is to really train our kids that they can go home and and do the work that's required of them i always say to our teachers that you know expectations are high and we hold them high for our kids our kids always surprise us and and can do it so that is our goal during remote if you're having some trouble you know we can work with you show your kids how to log on but we understand we understand those difficult situations and and we're here to try to work with you and troubleshoot them the best we can uh our hope is to see all our kids we want to see our kids back we all want to go back to normal we're all parents ourself and so together when we work together during this we can always do what's best for our kids and that's our hope okay so i'm just going to wrap up i don't um think our folks have any more specific questions i think we've covered pretty much pretty much everything as best as we could in the in the questionnaire here um but i just want to remind folks once again that the starting date for students for remote is september 15th you will be receiving information from your schools whether it's through a virtual orientation newsletter's home you also are receiving information about signing up for the virtual platforms if you are choosing that your child not returned to school we are i'm not sure we mentioned that if you enter the virtual platform at the middle in high school you will have to stay in it for at least a marking period we don't want that disruption not only for the student's sake but also for the cohorting it's as mr kylie mentioned with the setup of the classrooms we have to be very careful about the distancing and the number of students in the classrooms about that i also had a question about folks asked about the high school transitioning in why we didn't transition in ninth grade first and we understand that that's a transition year but it's very different than like a middle school sixth grade whole class coming in they're multi-age classrooms so they they don't necessarily come in and all the ninth graders are together they're in 10th grade classes perhaps or 10th graders with it just um it wasn't a good fit if you will if you um once again if you are interested in the remote excuse me the virtual platform now that you've heard the information you can reach out to your school your building principal and i also want to acknowledge not only this team of folks like i said all of us have lost about a thousand hours of sleep um we have i do have deeper wrinkles and long hair um but we still like each other even though we've worked really hard together lotsum we are in the office now we all came back full time but i also want to acknowledge our building level administrators as well um their heads are spinning like all of ours and i have to say that we are in a dilemma together and together we can we're trying to row in the same direction and once again um patience is what we've been trying i know we've all you know we're all frustrated and anxious but together we can but i wanted to acknowledge the building admin team again because they're and our directors they're all working very very hard to make this fit for all of us and with the hope that we will soon return 100 percent that we can all breathe easy and that this becomes something in our past and a bad memory a bad memory so with that i want to thank everybody for joining us tonight and again if you have further questions please reach out to your building principals there i'm moving now to get folks back in school so they will have more specific answers for you for your child so once again have a great rest of the evening and we thank you so much for joining us tonight
Now, as parents, we don't have any decision to choose, but the resistance of being with him as first two too, but now the children with the plans that they want the children to go to school and in The goal is that a benefit will be in the school. We want the Indians in a school and a mindset. In few cases, they have to ask. You have to not review a poor old man. Clearly, the children's decisions, the rituals, the social part, doing things in the field with the parents have different needs and come from different places. Personal, by exception, the countries of the states themselves. When the children return to school, the pandemic has caused some to live in the horn and disagree with learning and secondary problems when they do homework because of things that are blow. The children need personal learning because they want to find personal learning.
seasons were lost in the spring many athletes never had that at last one moment in their high school career or for their team and the constant uncertainty has lingered into the summer months players coaches and parents were all committed to practicing and playing safely they did everything the state city and school leadership asked them to do and i believe they were successful in doing so a few months of conditioning gave hope that these things will return to some type of normalcy in august earlier this week our local leadership mayor mark and dr cell put a pause on danbury high school sports wait have they not done everything that the state city and school leadership asked them to do that wasn't good enough and now they might not have the opportunity to play with their neighboring cities towns and states are able to let's provide solutions to how they can play instead of just canceling altogether many dhs dhs athletes have been playing in summer leagues for baseball soccer softball and basketball and competing in other sports such as track so these athletes have a sense of what they need to do to stay healthy and have a season to play for i'm hopeful sports can begin soon for all the kids in danbury the mental strain of not being with their classmates teammates and coaches has been tough on many for many high school kids including my two juniors school sports are their way of doing better in school earning a chance to play at the college level and to have some normalcy in their lives while high school sports isn't the end-all be-all of anyone's life they certainly help young people grow in many ways um and i i just checked the emails and that is it for public participation tonight thank you so very much santa you do an excellent job you know going through our comments we're going to move on down with our agenda um we have a couple of action items that we need to take here as a board and then we're going to turn uh the rest of the discussion over to our superintendent dr sale um we have four action item to um put before the board uh rachel would you do action item a sure um i'll make a motion that the board of education except for first reading policy 2150 visits to the schools as accepted by the policy committee 20-78 a second motion rate made made vibration segmented by al and the discussion on the motion i'll take the second on that gladys it was kate okay i'm sorry no problem okay thank you kate any disclasher cnn all in favor of the emotion could i hear um no kate do the roll call please sure thing joe britton yes rachel scholeski i kate caneva aye gladys cooper hi uh joe da silva catherine hodgson hi rich janelli yep rich is away for the moment kathy molinaro hi uh al russo and amy spolino hi rich we just were uh taking a vote on action item a which is um the visits to the schools did you have an uh there's a motion on the floor for this and we're actually on a vote so did you want to weigh in with an uh i or an a yeah nine eyes one abstention okay motion so careful thank you all kate would you do action item d sure uh i'll make a motion that at the board of education except for the first reading policy 5141.8 this is uh face masks and coverings is accepted by the policy committee through exhibit 20-79 closure made by kate second of all could i hear i thank you that's joe da silva joe thank you in the discussion on um action item b uh yes just a question please yes right um to uh mr walston did um i mean we talked about uh types of masks did cathy o'dowd happen to weigh in on that she she did and cat and kathy is here oh great i don't know if there's anything um the state about what types of masks would be acceptable so kathy i know that you were saying you were waiting an update from the state regarding what types of masks would would be acceptable so i had shared with the board that we were waiting for an update but i don't think anyone was if there was one available at this time but if there is an update please let us know um yes thank you kevin um no we have not received any additional guidance from the state in regard to the mass so at this time um the only maps that would not be approved are the type that have the valve which is an exhalation valve um other than that we've had no additional guidance regarding gators and bandanas so i'm sorry and we did make that update that you referenced about the ventilation right okay thank you thank you any other questions thank you rachel um all in favor of the motion uh kate would you do the roll call sure thing uh joe britton joey there can you step away he's muted so i'm not really sure okay uh rachel chaleski hi kate caneva aye gladys cooper gladys are you and i not sure if i heard that gladys did you did you weigh in on that i'm sorry can you hear me kate did you call the roll call my connection is kind of okay joe i can hear you now so i'm i'm i'm a yes on that motion okay thanks and gladys i'm sorry yes okay thank you uh joe da silva hi catherine hodgson yes rich janelli yes kathy molinaro hi al russo yeah amy spolino hi that's 10 eyes okay promotions okay thank you all uh captain america could you do action i didn't see please yes that the board of education except for first reading emergency suspension of policy during pandemic as accepted by the policy committee promotion made by kathy second by second uh by joe in a discussion on this policy gladys it's joe britton i just had a couple of questions um so just procedurally first reading is not adoption correct i don't know who that question would go to this is just we do the first reading you look over hope the board members will take it home make sure that you read it and then we'll bring it back and we do a final uh exception of the all these policies that's my understanding okay um and my other question is uh just kind of a clarification i'm all for the um emergency powers during the pandemic with all that with a lot of that delegated authority to the superintendent um in theory but i just had a question i don't see a procedure i don't see an end date on when the board would retake that delegated authority or really a procedure on whether or not we vote to end the emergency powers or or what and it just i'm not concerned i know sal will do a good job with it but it's just the integrity of the board and just how um just that power as the governing body of the district would would receive the emergency powers once god willing the pandemic um is over so that's that's my question just for that one specific so miss so miss cooper if i can yes you may there there is a sentence in the policy joe it's it's it's closer to the end of the policy it says the board hereby suspends provisions of its policies and hold policies as identified by the superintendent if such suspension is necessary to implement the written guidance from the seat from the uh from the state department of education related to containing of copa or for the duration identified in the governor's order of school closure so in essence when when the governor's um school when the governor's order um subsides you know so so with the policies um now if you're asking do we need you know to vote on this when it ends that that is not that is not detailed in in the policy uh to your point but it is understood in the policy that when the governor's order ends regarding the pandemic uh then so would you know these the powers that are exercised that have that have been granted to the superintendent i don't know if that helps at all does that help john right yeah yeah it does so just so just so i can want to bring it down and to try in simple forms in my brain here so when the governor's order expires that's when the emergency powers in this entire block so that's not just the superintendents but that's also those emergency powers for the temperature screening the the segregation rooms for those that are suspected of being ill that all expires with the governor's order that that's how i'm reading it and you know i don't know if the if the board you know has an interest in having a special meeting to suspend this policy or not um and again there's i don't see any guidance in here on how to handle that um but that's my understanding that's how i'm reading that that paragraph okay um it would just be i mean i know uh rachel you're the head of the policy committee but my suggestion would just be if there's any way we can kind of tighten up the procedure to end the policy a little bit but um other than that that was really my only question so thank you yeah can i just add to that please um the policy is a living document where we can um modify at any time um these these policies that we're voting on tonight are only temporary um and they can be repealed at any time by the board there are some there's some language in for example the visits to school where the policy is to remain in effect for the duration of the school year or until repealed by the board thank you rachel any other questions i'll do a roll call with goddess okay uh joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate canela hi gladys cooper yes uh jojo silva uh catherine hodgson abstain rich ginelli yes kathy molinero hi al russo hi so that's nine eyes one abstention motion so carry in if i look like i'm just looking um my it takes they said my inner neck connection is sort of slow so i don't know what that's telling me so okay we just if kate if i look like i'm not saying anything just continue on with the meeting okay you got it hold it up for me uh mr rules up down al would you do um action item d please d motion to the board of education except for the first reading posse 6114.82 coveted emergency measures motion made by l i'll second it second by a case in a discussion any discussion on this policy yes no okay uh okay do the roll call sure thing joe britton yes rachel chaleski hi kate canetta i gladys cooper yes joe da silva aye catherine hodgston aye rich genelli okay kathy molinaro yes thank you rich kathy or and i i'm an eye thank you al russo uh amy spelina yes that's ten eyes motion carries unanimously thank you all the emotions so carrick i'd like to thank mr walston and rachel and the committee uh for meeting and going over these um policy in order for us to bring it to the board tonight to uh get this on the agenda again thank you uh all for your hard work the committee and mr washington and racing now we're going to move on down to the next item which is twice uh we decided that was very important to have this meeting tonight to keep parents and everyone informed as to what's going on in our school system so at this point i'm going to turn it over to our superintendent dr sale thank you thank you very much and um first let me thank all the parents for their thoughtful comments um and i want to reassure them though those those issues they raised were resounding in our thinking uh throughout the time that we're making decisions a quick reminder that we had a reopening committee the state made it very clear the option was only to return full-time five days a week from the onset we felt that was not an appropriate mode for our district due to our space issues and other challenges and um have repeated um appeals to the state to move to a more safer model for youngsters and for our teachers which is the um the hybrid the most recent change was due to medical and we have a full medical presentation and i want people to understand there is no knee-jerk maneuver here it is um heart to mind and soul that we look at what it is that we are doing and make trying to make decisions to align with with that and it comes basically from the medical uh individuals for our local situation so um for the board's understanding uh kathy and kara and dr fong and the times dr bags have been meeting over time looking at data monitoring all that is going on during the summer we did have as some folks pointed out how could you have preschool when you don't have the others preschool tend to a classroom no transportation many many other limits that schools cannot replicate when we do return to school so even with that we were monitoring those situations and had some challenges during that time but there was constant communications um when things started changing immediately was contacted by the city officials the mayor um carapanti that we were monitoring very closely uh to see how this may or may not impact um i'll go down unequivocally our our in-person learning was our priority that was our intent that was where we were going until uh things um changed in in such a manner that presented itself with a um a decision had to be made relative to the safety of our youngsters so with that i'd like to um now just uh can you bring up that presentation and i will start the first slide in there it's kathy o'dowd now i know what the board would like to ask questions so i say leave it open you know i don't want to happen the two meetings ago when we got to an end i think we need to think these through and ask you questions but would you bring the first one on and kathy if you could introduce the team that has been reviewing all of the data and then start start the um informing the public in terms of how we monitor the depth of the monitoring and the communication that's been going on over time please okay um yes certainly dr sal thank you very much uh good evening everyone um my name is kathy o'dowd and i am the health and nursing services coordinator for the district um i would like to introduce our district medical advisor dr jack fong hello hi and uh tara prunty who is the city's director for the department of health and dr bagg who is the city's medical advisor good evening everyone good evening so um this is the group medically who's been collaborating so i just would like to start out this evening by saying that um this was not an easy decision this is not an easy recommendation for us to make to uh dr sal in the district um we want our our students back in school the students want to be back the the teachers the nurses everyone wants to be back um but we've always with all of our plans be it full-time in person the hybrid model or distance learning um health and safety has been our number one priority um i thank uh the public for all their comments please know that they are heard and those many issues were part of the decision making um it was not as dr sal said a knee-jerk reaction this is something that we have been looking at for months and um given the recent uptick in cases we have had to make some changes in the last few weeks um and it's not a one-size-fits-all and as we move through the presentation and start explaining the data and how it's recorded um i hope that we can bring a clearer understanding to you um but as disappointing as this is for everyone this is a very serious virus it is very easily spread and we have to take into account health and safety number one um so to review our collaboration with the city health department um the district has always enjoyed um a very good collaboration and uh since the start of covid back in march um we have been in contact it started multiple times a week and we have reached the point where it's now multiple times in a day um i would like to thank cara prunty she has been such a valuable resource to us as well as dr begg i appreciate his input his expertise um not only in public health but as a physician who is on the front lines uh working in the emergency department and has been so throughout this public health crisis so um i i truly appreciate everything that you have with us um so as i mentioned our collaboration started back in march and um you know as we've moved through we've had multiple phone conversations we've had meetings and we have been watching the data very carefully so how did we get here connecticut initially when we shut down in march connecticut did a wonderful job everyone did what they had to do they stayed at home they only went out when it was necessary people wore their masks we washed our hands everyone was much more mindful of cleaning and sanitation and certainly um the physical and social distancing and as a result we proved that it works and we were able to flatten the curve but what happened how did we get to where we are today as the curve flattened and there were not as many cases out there and or many cases being reported people got very comfortable and they got a little relaxed in their practices so those mitigation strategies were not in effect as strongly as they had been before we have seen a lot of domestic travel to and from hot spots throughout the country states where these mitigation strategies weren't implemented and they weren't able to do as well as connecticut there's also through the contact chasing it's been reported that there has been international travel in and out of danbury we also experienced a power outage that lasted more than a week and that resulted in more communal living you know people had to do what they had to do but again those mitigation strategies were relaxed and that has contributed to the uptick in numbers um so the state reporting by county versus local data so most of the data that is seen and is made to the public comes from the state department of health but they report on a county-wide basis not a local basis so when we have other towns within the county where there are very few those numbers really uh dilute the data that we've been seeing in danbury um i would say honor about octo i'm sorry on about august 10th is when we started to see a rise in the numbers and that's when um i started meeting with the health department more frequently along with dr fong um dan barry had been at one to two cases a day and it's we started seeing the numbers eight 12 then into the 20s and as you heard last week we were up in the 40s so that was very concerning to us um so we did meet um as group and we reviewed the data and tara will follow with some of the specifics for you and we felt that um in light of everything our best recommendation to dr sal to consider was the move to distance learning um one thing that was very concerning to us is that a lot of these positive results that we're seeing are children for a long time we were told it didn't impact children very much but over a two-week period 17 of the positive cova cases in danbury were children and the ages were from infancy through adolescence we know that children carry a higher viral load so even if they are asymptomatic they are very capable of spreading that infection and that infection not only to other children to parents to grandparents to to teachers to other people in the community um you know it's good to see right now that the children we are seeing are not as sick that is the good news but the bad news is they have that capability even asymptomatic to spread it around so that again contributed to our decision so mitigation strategies and moving forward connecticut showed that these mitigation strategies work we've done it before and we can do it again as a community if we can collectively and consistently go back to what we were doing before we can flatten the curve again and then it will be safe for our children to return to school um so uh right now i'd like to turn it over to um cara and dr begg thank you kathy um for those of you who don't know me my name is kara prenti i am the acting health director for the city of danbury um and i just want to say thank you for all the collaboration it's been a great partnership this is something that we have been talking about and discussing for a very very long time um and as we saw the increase in our numbers um as you can kind of see here uh we've been obviously tracking it um and the peak was in april and uh now we've kind of seen we've you know we have our curve here and it's going back up so um we have we had um 83 i believe cases in in july and now we're up to 258 or 68 um now in august um so you can see the week by week data we started seeing a little bit of an increase in the middle of july and that's when we started having some more serious discussions i started talking with the state dph state department of public health um to say you know we're seeing a slight uptick in our cases and we were watching it watching it and then after the power outage a small uptick became a very large one uh so we've been you know watching this go on and um and and looking at this closely um for july we had a positivity rate that was just over one percent and for most recently we've had a positivity rate of seven percent and then we have um increased our testing as of friday when the alert went out so we have conducted well over 2000 tests since saturday and we've starting to get some of those results from that from the two federally qualified health centers we have a positivity rate of of eight and a half percent and five percent so that sounds uh a little bit better um we are those are our target groups of that are being tested by our federally qualified health centers so that's the number that we're really looking at for our positivity rate our seven day rolling average of of new cases when standardized for 100 000 people is just under 23 it's 22.7 um and on the when you compare that to the state metrics of where you would be for the low moderate and high that's right butting up right on the high which would be full distance learning um i'm just going to go if we can go to the next slide i just want to show the trend in our data this is a comparison of the age breakdown from june july and august and it's the you know the age groups of who who are testing positive um the largest increase that we've been seeing um as you can see is pretty dramatic is the zero to nine age group um since august 12th we've had four infants test positive when we had four infants test positive all throughout the whole pandemic so a total of eight but in the last two weeks we've had four infants test positive which is um concerning for us uh they're all from different households and it's from family spread um this is something that we're really looking at looking into and monitoring we're trying to do targeted outreach we're trying to increase testing and really take some strong mitigation strategies so that way we can kind of control the spread understand where we need to where we need to target our outreach and move on from there um i you know that's that's an overall breakdown of what's going on locally um these are conversations that we've been having with the state and our local medical team so these are our things that this is the best recommendation that we could make at this time um dr dr pascarella um to comment for us from your perspective at the hospital um i think we we've all thought through the risk reward part coming doing the mitigating circ mitigation strategies but in this case it was the severity of the spike the trend going up with the decision was that the risk versus the reward as some folks pointed out were willing to take the risk um was too great the other timing why the amount of time so maybe you could help think through and educate us further about why the amount of time and and the risk reward factor from your perspective that we should be thinking about please it's like the bag's not there there well maybe i can can you hear me yeah go ahead a little louder well thanks i'll speak and then i'll defer to dr uh so i i do want to thank the parents uh for their passion and their interest and i i i'm a parent of three kids too one is in school in danbury now i absolutely understand the emotional well-being of our children those needs um i understand it's a huge burden our parents um the distance learning that we're we've had and we're suggesting i've been practicing emergency medicine in uh the city of danbury at danver household since 1993.
so second grade is is high in general when they all come back we're going to have you know 25 kids in the class when typically as a board we've staffed kinder through second grade at 20 students so would there be another elementary online less better online person will pick on actually that that potentially could pick up some of the slack in the second grade not slack isn't the right word but for that online portion search to maintain it if we get to the overload of the second military class you know yeah so that's why i said we could get resources we already have maybe a couple hours from the third grade teacher empowers a fourth grade teacher and they all can i can't think that there's i don't know how long it's a full day or not like it is in a normal school day right so those are just things that we need to think through so we'll be looking at a trans phase in transition model and possible hybrid for second grade if i may have a point of clarification we have some discussion about the two day on wednesday cleaning that's a surreal issue that's not on the table here just fyi for everyone but it it may be if we meet the second grade and we can't figure out internal coverage and the teachers decide i really think the teachers have to have a voice in how they want to service their kids so if we as a team decide if that's the way to do it to split it up into two cohorts and you know we may have to be creative with second grade but i have a feeling if you're over that roughly 17 student mark there's going to be some pushback from parents about wearing a mask all day long i personally this is my as a parent and as someone who has just a little enough training to be dangerous um uh that's not good for any human being to have that masculine face it simply is not that's my opinion so there's going to be some pushback there and we have the third grade teachers here their classrooms are at 19.
this goal actually seems achievable as numbers continue to decline with minor fluctuations however if we contribute to the perfect storm of everything reopening at once we are very likely to create an environment of increasing numbers which will require shutdowns and will create more chaos for our kids and teachers i am deeply confused how the voices of the loudest and least connected are now seemingly detecting policy these same voices have publicly declared that they send their children to school with varying symptoms with minimal impact this cannot be an acceptable moving forward we cannot teach our children that we can manipulate data to achieve the outcomes a group seeks we are in a pivotal moment where we can teach our children the important lesson of resilience following facts and science and that patience can pay off cooley preschool and higley high in reference to school returning metrics are encouraging but i feel there are still things to still things to consider i believe it would be prudent to wait to see the outcome of other districts if we were able to re if we were able to remain face to face or return to online as a teacher and mother i find the weak notice if passes very stressful to prepare i am looking for returning but more time is needed to prepare for another change don igboa children at gateway point in williamsfield as of right now there is already one teacher that i know that has had primary contact with covid according to the powerpoint this teacher would be allowed to come to school as long as they were asymptomatic which would potentially expose any student they came in contact with i am very concerned that sending my children back to school on september 8th would be too soon one of the things that has helped my kids through remote learning is consistency we have not yet addressed what will happen when a teacher or a student has a has to quarantine would there be the same sub for 10 days would there be a different sub in and out every other day what if a teacher got coveted would the entire class have to wait 10 days to come back to school or be put through a cova test would quarantining students be able to reach to remote learning for the period the t the time of t with the teacher would they be doing online learning with a different teacher with all these scenarios comes more inconsistencies and we need more answers before the decision can be made please consider keeping this con consistent and continue remote learning until at least october 12th thank you wendy haas i teach at chaparral as a teacher in the district i'm concerned about returning to school our class sizes have not gotten smaller in fact we have positive enrollment since the beginning of the school year information shared at our chaparral staff meeting yesterday i currently have class sizes of the following 29 26 27 29 26 i have double desk in my classroom which means students sit side by side at the desk that measure 46 inches in length so each student would have 23 inches of personal space with no barrier between them i am physically unable to move the desk apart and with the large class sizes i will be filling all the desk in my room i'm only able to distance the double desk two feet between in order to fit my 15 pairs of desk the only ppe i've been given is a bottle of is a bottle of hand pardon me a bottle of sanitizer and in our staff bathroom we have a spray bottle labeled 710 no indication of what is in it we were told to spray surfaces while touch spray surfaces we touch while using the restroom no indication of hong the surface must stay away after stay wet after we spray i haven't heard any protocol for students temperatures illness checks i haven't i haven't hear the plan for mask or what to do and in a case a student refuses to wear a mess or come to school with an inappropriate mask many parents online have been talking about bucking the system by sending schools in mesh masks that offer little to no coverage protection i have not had any updates on acceptable classroom activities can students talk to one another move around the room etc which is worrisome as i tend to focus on very hands-on activities and i rely heavily on students working in groups for their learning i don't know if students will have access to laptops in my room as technology was handed out to parents during the virtual learning i'm concerned about the loss of instructional time if we have to transition between virtual and classroom learning it takes a long time it takes a long time to convert from online to in person and i imagine we will spend several days bringing kids up to speed that were unable to create things at home interactive notebooks printed assignments etc thank you for listening to my concerns stacey abrilla students at bridges and cooley good evening members of the board i would first like to express my gratitude to our district's teachers who continue to work harder than they ever have before for little pay under extreme conditions and limited to no predictability they truly are heroes and deserve much more respect support and pay i have some concerns with respect to the agenda item 7.1 while it is true there are many options opinions as there are stars in the sky about whether when and under what circumstances our districts should return to in-person learning i think we can all agree that honestly transparency and clear communication are imperative is with this in mind i would like to point out the disingenuous characterization of the statutes of the benchmarks depicted in slide number 10 of tonight's presentation which states all metrics were met on 8 20 2020 this is the first time all metrics were met this statement is decidedly false all three benchmarks have not been met for in-person learning for the county iglino flight school district boundaries areas and zip codes or surrounding districts and zip codes slides four through seven clearly show that two metrics have been met for the county geographic area and two have been met for the higley universe higleno fight school district boundary area and that the county health department currently recommends against a in-person learning it appears that the district is taking the position that for some metrics it will consider county level metrics and for other districts other districts level metrics apparently whichever paints the rosiest picture this despite the fact that the new cases per hundred thousand population in the higging unified school district boundary area was 35.3 more than three times the benchmark the percent of positivity rate for the county was 8.7 nearly double the benchmark some people may argue that this approach and some may disagree in any case the board and the district's approach to interpreting and applying the data should be clearly stated explained and justified board stakeholders the statement on slide 10 and must be qualified to include the caveats that the metrics were met as of 8 20 2020 only when the data have been cherry picked to suit the agenda i recall certain board members empathetically stating during the august 8th board meeting that the county is large and we should not use county data to make local decisions when the data meant keeping schools closed and yet the board is apparently prepared to apply a single county metric tonight rather than the logic metric but rather than the local metric but only if it means overwriting the local metric in order to open schools for in-person learning either the county data apply or they don't we don't get to rely on the data when it supports our position and ignore it when it doesn't thankfully the metrics are heading in a desired direction and perhaps by next week this concern will be moved however i cannot emphasize enough that district leadership should be very careful about the way in which they communicate and depict data to the public the board's 8 20 8 8 20 20 resolution was that the return to school would be approved when the metrics are met there is a valid argument to be made that metrics have not in fact been met particularly given the county department of health clearly states on its dashboard that is the recommendation for higley is hybrid learning and not in person if the board wishes to disregard the maricopa county department of public health's recommendations it should do so transparently and with honesty and integrity if the board votes to reopen schools for in-person learning based on the metrics then its members should explicitly state they are willing to defend their position that 35.3 cases per hundred thousand population and the higgle unified school district and surrounding areas is efficiently low to begin in-person learning it may very we well be the right decision nevertheless i implore you to be honest about the facts you use to justify your decision ashley booker santan elementary i wanted to share some positive feedback every board meeting i feel like it's super negative from the public i want you to know there are parents that support online learning i know it's not ideal however i also know it won't last forever teachers and senses teachers and staff at santan elementary are amazing they're always willing to jump on on live meetings with me or my daughter if she's having trouble i wish more parents would speak up to their children's teachers for additional help we are parents it's our job to make sure they get the best education i'm sorry that some parents blame you all or the schools on the child's education when we should be the ones to speak up isn't that isn't the saying a closed mouth doesn't get doesn't get fed thank you again for keeping our children and school staff safe by closing the schools until benchmarks are met i'm sorry you were all put in this spot in the first place ashley booker president caleb remembers the board that is the completion of the email smith children at bridges it is mind-boggling you are going to send kids back to school in a week there are two reasons why that is a is an uneducated decision one you originally planned for it to be on 10 12.
We have to adapt to the school, to the regulations of the school. It does n't have the priority. In my case, early on they are working, they are doing it, and they have looked for ways to continue working. The parents wanted to decide on the perfect effective learning. They want the options for personal, social, and emotional learning that they need. There is something they are doing regarding the processes. To the teachers, as a special area teacher, we are under pressure. We understand that they are under pressure from the students, or there are some who have distance learning. Now it is different, like a big test, compared to when we were taught before, compared to the teachings of now. [Music] When activities like how to do it with the settings some parents do, you can recognize some teachers teaching from one school to another. My workload is like 31 hours, sometimes 1.
um just the last few months i i to to to really put this into context i i've i've had over 50 of my colleagues who work at here at danbury and ambassador brothers where i also work over 50 my cogs contracted coronavirus i've had my my uncle died of coronavirus who lives in connecticut and grandma almost died and the reason why i mentioned that is because if you look at the data not only connecticut across the country our younger population are absolute risk for getting uh the covid virus but they're not the ones that have the severe complications what they do is they pass it on to people like my grandma and my uncle and your mom and dad and maybe your your spouse and you're the ones that um will get it i'm not trying to fear mike i'm just giving you the data um in our icu is at uh danbury and the vaster brothers we had um almost 100 people on ventilators and we had over a thousand people who had coronavirus from discharge but not everyone that was discharged was discharged the same many had organ failure uh neurologic damage and other issues for which will never be the same so um if you look back at the pandemic in 1918 we it the numbers are are almost the same the curve we had the big break um uptick in the spring things settled down in the summer and then there were cities that chose to go back to some degree of normalcy and they had horrible outcomes and others that uh chose to be more conservative and they actually did okay when you look at the numbers that kara put up there's a delay so while we're seeing a spike in some cases the we and in truth we haven't seen a lot of hospital admissions although absolutely trending upward the number of deaths and severe outcomes there's a lag of a few weeks so that's why we're concerned even if we do distance learning we still are worried about increased number of um deaths and and patients uh who get it um when we uh tack on the idea of the the um the uh all the children in school and even though we have uh policies that relates to uh hand washing and masks and social distancing the the lessons learned across our country already for schools that have started early many of them have been open only a week or two and then they end up going to uh social um to distance learning because of a large outbreak so we're never going to hit it right the way public health goes is you try to look at the greater good and it is a risk reward and um i agree and my recommendation is that the risk is too high for the greater danbury area um if we um go back to the model of the hybrid model i i do think we need a pause of a few weeks and um i'd be happy to answer any questions as well cara or actually dr phone i'll turn it over to you for some comments well let me ask more questions one of our considerations as one parent pointed out why not you know set baseline data by testing everybody and taking temperatures um do you comment [Music] the ability for just to do something like that in the district with 12 or 13 000 in terms of it so it's well it's there's not only the the sheer amount of work it takes but the validity um i'm not trying to indict our health care system but by the time you have a temperature that bumps up you're you're pretty far along in the illness the the folks that are the super spreaders and the ones that spread the illness are the one that don't have the temperature but they still carry the virus and have some symptoms so just from my personal experience the the screening helps identify those who are really sick but it doesn't capture everybody by any stretch also when you're testing people testing them and i've seen this in nursing home arena in our greater denver area just because you test them this week doesn't mean that that gives them a clean bill help for uh the next uh week and also the tests quite honestly for high-risk groups are not 100 um the the number of false tests are in the range it's getting better but it's not a hundred percent that the test is correct so when in high-risk groups in the hospital setting we actually have to test someone twice before we feel comfortable that they're okay to go back into the general population so um while would be a big burden if we tested everyone and did tempter and everyone that still would not uh give us a level of safety given the increased rise at least from my um my viewpoint um i'd be happy to answer additional questions dr sale otherwise uh dr fong well let me let me make a few points of comments uh number one is the taking the is a screening test and like all screening tests there's false positive and false negative so it's not a diagnostic test the challenge we have now is that the diagnostic test for the covet 19 infection uh there's a time lag meaning there's no such a ta test at this point that you can do the test and have the answer within an hour or or a few minutes there's no such thing so the time lag is is is really the weakness of of the of the test itself now the only proven mitigation actions that are effective one is is uh uh wearing a mask and and wash your hands frequently and number two is the social distancing that you know people discuss about the the six feet or even more and number three is not mentioned all the time and that is crowding crowding that is why people take so much precaution if they're going to fly or if they're going to um uh take the subway or the bus or or the school bus for that matter because when you have a closed environment the circulation of air basically any any uh infectious uh will stay in the air for a longer period of time so with those the the going to school for children is not going to be without without the potential of getting infected and the challenge going to be it was mentioned uh by kathy o'dowd earlier and and certainly has been proven that children the younger they are the more likely that they not only carry the infectious viral particles they also may not even have to have temperature temperature or any symptoms so that they can be the carrier for the infection and get somebody else infected whether it's the parents grandparents uncles and great-grandparents and so on so the spread can be through them and and there's no simple way at this point now without a quick test to basically identify these children um it's a it's a fact that has been proven without any doubt and because they they don't have a mature immune system and is the immune system they create a particle the angiotensin converting enzyme to and and provide the anchoring points for the for the infectious molecule which enable the infectious molecule to enter into the cell and destroy the cells so basically children the younger they are they can harbor the the infectious molecule and yet they don't have the uh symptoms because the the infectious molecule cannot get into the cells they can only stay at the door they are not entering the house so to speak so all these problems we are we're up against i think you know when you look at it there's no perfect solution and uh in particular just one other point which is beyond our control is that yesterday was the day that the 2020 summer this year already uh we have a hottest summer on record because we we have recorded the high the uh temperature that is more than 90 degrees in this year than all the other years that connecticut that has kept a record and you when you have a hot temperature and in some of our school classrooms it wouldn't be you know the kids will not be able to learn properly when as the temperature goes up it goes up so high because we don't have air conditioning in every school in danbury so those are points to be considered and it's not going to be a there's no good solutions and there's no good one-size-fits-all i think going back to what dr sau says i think the ideal situation at this point as long as we don't have an effective vaccine than the hybrid model which we hope by controlling the spread and the spike that we can move towards that so we'll see when we analyze the data on october 1st and see what we we can do to improve the situation so so so um i i'll pause there but for the board's background knowledge in listening to this and looking on looking at what's going on across the country any return and the risk and then dismissing schools in a week or two seem in my view too disruptive of a path to take and in fact there wasn't any rationale for me to move in that direction so that's why i certainly appreciate all of the thoughtfulness of the advisory group here and they did look at things very very deeply and um in our in our estimation this the least disruptive and the safest to begin the year with the hope as mo all appearances mentioned to get the back to get back to in-person learning so um gladys that was this portion there were many questions asked about bl and what we did today was we went through many of the questions at that time and incorporate it in a pr presentation so we could answer a lot of the questions that the parents are asking so whenever you want me to go to the next phase which would be if you want to bring up that um that the next slide um kara madam chair i i have a couple questions that might be appropriate now doctor sal would prefer me to wait i can wait no i'll pause now i'm not gonna i'm just saying whenever you guys are ready to get the next phase let me know i think i know the answers to some of these questions but i want to confirm them um first and i don't know this may be a question for either of our doctors or for cara but um let me i'm gonna make sure i'm right at 22.7 cases per hundred thousand we're bordering on not having an option under the state criteria but to go to distance learning anyway correct is that right no the them those actually those metrics are set by county so it would have to be fairfield county going to that to that metrics um the state has been the state laid that out they want us to look at things by county but because of our uh trending of our data and the number the our our seven day rolling average that's why we were given consideration okay because our rolling average was bumping up against that number right and it was trending so we saw a trend it wasn't just one spike it was a trend in that direction right and this and just to make sure i have this right the the the decision to go to distance learning and i guess this may be for dr cell this is medically based this is based on the advice and recommendations we received from our medical advisors our health department and the scientists okay last but not least doctors this might be a good time to for one of you if you could to dispense for everybody the notion that covet 19 is just like the flu because there is no more nonsensical or dangerous idea right now than that first thank you doc um so yeah so if you look at the numbers um the death rate from uh flu is anywhere from one in a thousand to maybe two in a thousand in connecticut and you know the numbers could be numbers can be uh somewhat variable uh but the numbers of connecticut we've had uh um about 4 400 deaths uh out of 52 000 cases so i mean that death rate is by at least my numbers is about eight and a half percent so that's significantly significantly uh exponentially more than flu um and so um that in our society the the number of deaths from uh kogud so far um supersedes the number of deaths from uh almost any uh tragedy that we face in this country it's it ranks right below world war two deaths and right above world war one death um but is to answer your question um it's about one to two in a thousand um or point one or point two percent for flu but in connecticut it's well over uh uh 10 times that it's about eight percent some of the numbers early on so only two or three percent so what that means is if we let um if we had more uh relaxed um policies uh and we had a thousand cases and even if the death rate was only two percent that means that 20 people would die out of those thousand people that that got uh covered so um it's actually it is pretty significant compared to flu thank you doc and what is that number for um under 18 doctor so the the death rate for um under 18 is a is much lower um in fact if you look at the uh i just want to make sure i'm not immediate if you look at the numbers across the country um and that's where some of the challenges are we have not had a lot of depth from uh covered in the pediatric population although we have had um a number of uh bad outcomes from other illnesses that uh seem similar to kawasaki's so that's where the challenge is when people look at the data so geez i haven't heard a lot of children that died so let's just let them go back to school public health is about the greater good and so the parents who say not a lot of kids have died they're actually correct it's the greater good and it's everyone that they're potentially infecting that gets the uh overall mortality rate much higher thank you sir thank you dr sell i'm sorry i'm glad i should let me know if there's any ques more questions that's why we i thought we should open with the medical team uh because they're so intimately involved in the data and dr begs is working this every day seeing and living it and he was very passionate in um in in providing us strong leadership and understanding that the depth of uh returning dr sal i have a question um based on joe's question too i think um it is a virus correct just as the flu is a virus but we this is a new virus that has been introduced to the humans um we haven't had a chance for her immunity we haven't had a chance for um an inoculation against it so are we saying are we going to say that there is no safe way to put these kids back in school until we have a vaccine mine is an opinion but i'll let the doctors go first yeah i mean i have an opinion on this too so let's talk about the range so the worst scenario is that um you're correct the worst scenario is that we may not be able to go back to school till we get a vaccine right if you look at two of the pandemic of 1918 it was almost three years before everything subsided um uh the best scenario is that we as a country and we look at lessons learned in some other countries if we pay attention to all the public health recommendations and we can truly get the rate of covert down to a low enough number and we get the proper testing then if we do have a slight outbreak we can trace all those people and and shut it down uh locally uh so it doesn't proliferate into a huge um event where we have to close down schools so i am hopeful uh i'm truly hopeful that we can potentially open uh october 1st if if we get the uh recent outbreak under control but um it is a range and that's why i feel bad for the parents who think that maybe we're not doing our job we can't make up our minds it's a fluid situation and it's actually a credit to cara and the team at danbury public health who are looking at the numbers and it's a day-to-day decision you know sometimes uh people are quoting uh sports um and you know uh if you look at a football game if you get down two touchdowns you don't go with your same game plan you got to open up your playbook and start being aggressive as opposed if you're doing really well then you get conservative so we have to be allowed to be fluid in our decision making and um dr sal turn it back over to you well maybe i can add another dimension to this because if you look at the seasonal influencer uh we don't eliminate that besides the virus change every year so why why is it that with the vaccine you know we we basically the kid can go to school is because there's such a thing called hurt immunity meaning if you vaccinate enough people when you go beyond 60 or so then it's it's the the viral particles in this case in particular is transmitted from human to human so if you have enough human that are that are immune to the infection then yeah the kid can go back to school and the vaccine just helped to keep that hurt immunity and in fact that's why it's so important that every winter that we should all get the flu shot because in in getting the flu shot you not only protect yourself you're also protecting the community so you can't have the vaccine but you will not eliminate this virus never i'm sorry go ahead no no i just say not likely i wouldn't say never i mean look look at smallpox i mean you know it's eliminated yeah and look at polio is a good example in many countries in the world now is eliminated not the world but smallpox is eliminated from the world but polio is eliminated from many countries so kathy in in in my view um the enemy the enemy to the good of the perfect is the good you know if you can't make it perfect and i think if the good for me would mean the review that that we would have would put us in a position where we were prior to this the start of this which with all the mitigation strategies that we have in the hybrid model reducing the number of in youngsters there reducing the number of youngsters on the bus all of that that would be going on would put us in a position i hope that we would be able to return while we wait for the therapeutics and the vaccine because you know when we get there is is is when we get there but i think as so many parents pointed out coming back the social emotional is very very uh strenuous on the youngsters the way we're doing things so it's my hope that it's good enough at that point won't be um you know perfect but it'll be good enough me too sal i'm just making the point that this is always going to be in motion until a vaccine as dr fong says you know we have to have 60 vaccinated and get the hurt immunity going and there was some questions also about athletics and and just know that um we allowed the youngsters to return um the pause in that simply was because of the pause in town where all of the sports teams were you know sidelined i think it was true very true that our youngsters and their coaches were following the proceeds for me we were and for the medical team we thought we would wait at least this week to see how the numbers are going and if there's any group that could return that that's been a model group the way they've handled themselves but i'll let kathy comment about that because i think those parents deserve an explanation kathy regarding the in scholastics um yes um dr sal thank you um i will be uh again collaborating with cara to get the data um we've done testing every day in danbury this week so um by tomorrow or friday we'll be able to look at a lot of those results and be able to um offer you a recommendation thank you kathy thank you gladys anytime we want to go to the next phase which is the oops sorry gladys i have a question whenever i can start interrupt go ahead joe um i just had a question um and please direct it to whoever to our docs uh maybe but um just with the whole the way things are trending right now and your professional opinion i know how october 1st is looks like it's a good time to reevaluate and there's potential to go back into the classroom but what i can't wrap my head around is um is the transportation and the school buses can you give a professionally say that there isn't going to be risk on the transportation in the school buses that can find space like that with a bunch of kids and fall when we're getting it right into flu season and right when there's about to be another when they're saying that there's going to be another influx of kovid and it just that i i mean i i'm all for reevaluating whenever we can because i would love to get the kids back into the classrooms but just what i can't wrap my head around is just how we're gonna be able to do this on the buses and how we it's just i'm wondering if you could just clarify that for me well i have an opinion on that so there's two pieces uh first of all um we collectively are only as good as the weakest point in the day for the children so even if you do a great job at school um if if you have that 20 minutes on the bus where the social distancing uh hand washing the mass break down then the whole um then uh children at risk so part of the reason why i personally think it's good for us to take a pause until october 1st and not necessarily suggest the whole semester ago distance learning is because i want to see lessons learned from other school districts around the country who were more liberal i want to see what they what happened with their school buses and i feel bad that that we're going to benefit from their maybe uh not optimal experiences but that's my viewpoint um i want to see lessons learned so i don't know if dr fong has a different viewpoint no i have the same same viewpoint i think it's important i mean my my recollection is a few days ago the the school bus drivers actually uh picketed uh to protest because they they also would like to have protection they should they want the plast the uh the shield to protect themselves they want monitors in the school bus to uh to make sure that the children are having the the mask on and behaving properly so yeah i i think dr beck is absolutely correct i think that is potentially the weakest point and uh and we have to address that uh when the time comes in october one of the things um joe is that the hybrid model automatically puts you half the number of students in the bus we also believe that at that at the time we were looking at returning we had about 23 to 24 of our student bodies were going to be on distance learning further reducing the number of youngsters that would be riding the buses added to that high number of parents we've had to take precaution at the schools uh to create some kind of differentiated entrance time and doors so that knowing that parents are going to be driving so with all that said it is the hope that the buses would be reduced substantively so the spacing would would be um making it safer safer not 100 and the advice is when you can if it's not cold keep windows um keep windows down the other thing i just remind the board if october with cooler weather then um because we're not permitted to use fans um you know that's been our mode for breeze in the schools other than a few have air conditioning that would also make it uh another factor in returning uh but joe that that's what we have with the buses right now okay great thank you guys for answering that but just so like if we're only half packing these buses i mean i've seen some of them and they're packed with like 60 kids so if we're half packing a bus with 60 kids with like 30 children that's still 30 children that are going to be on this this bus and i and you know the fact that it is our weakest link i hope that we're going to put a lot of resources into this because transportation is relied upon a lot by parents um in the district and it's just i'm all for us wanting to look and see what other districts are doing i think that's great but it's just personally i mean i don't have any kids but if i did have kids in the district i sure wouldn't be putting them on a school bus i don't know if you guys would but i definitely would be putting up would not be putting them on a school bus for the rest of 2020 and that's really just what i wanted to say on that but i'm all for us seeing what other districts are going to do and i appreciate you know the attention that you guys are putting towards this on making sure that we get this right because our margin for error is zero we have to get this right and so far i think uh we're we're getting there and the decision to go remote was the right one at this point so um thank you guys and that's uh all i wanted to say on that any other questions got to say you want to move to the next line yes i just want to really thank this team uh just know that uh you're on uh on call every day i just want to remind you of that so thank you very much cara dr fong dr veggs and kathy certainly appreciate it very much yes can you roll this i i do have it up can you see this guy dr cell okay yes good um let's start going on it then okay so um the next couple of slides really deal with some of the questions that parents have rightly so about what distance learning will look like uh moving forward um in sort of this quick shift that we that we are making um and so we'll talk a little bit about the instructional expectations and how those may be different than uh what folks experienced in the spring and uh what it'll look like and then we'll show a k5 sample of a school day that we uh have just sort of landed on where we're working through ways to provide more structure for for students particularly at k5 um where things were a little bit um looser in the spring and so i will i will go over all of those so um i think the biggest uh differential for students in the spring um is in the word is i think we could capture it by using the word consistency um so there were varied ex varied levels of experiences throughout the district with uh distance learning in the spring but mainly that was a training issue is mainly because of um sort of our inexperience with doing uh live interactive lessons and that's something that we hope to shore up this year through some training and some and some additional guidance that we're going to provide for teachers um so right off the bat um we have created some non-negotiables if you will of how google classrooms need to be organized so that we deliver a more consistent instructional experience to students so that parents and students can find information a little bit more easily little things like having a course syllabus or a course grade overview that sort of anchors the classroom where parents can go to get all the information that they need in one place logins codes things like that where they can go reach out for extra help the teacher's office hours and when they can expect um what that instructional day is going to look like in terms of the schedule so we think that that will provide um some consistency there for folks across um uh the schedules will be structured uh with defined meeting times and so we heard very loud and clear and we really combed through the surveys last year both the parents uh and even the students and their feedback about what you know what would have helped you more and so having sort of an organized weekly overview of what to expect for the week where and when do i have to be at what time what's due and um you know what's expected of me synchronously versus asynchronously so we do plan on having a weekly planner and of course the the um these course syllabus uh for all classes will be in play um we're trying very hard to reduce the number of google classrooms at the k5 level that students have to navigate that was a bit of an issue in the spring so there was just way too many classrooms particularly at the youngest levels so we're doing a comprehensive special area classroom so that students will will go to one classroom to access art music media and pe uh working through some of the challenges with with doing that and having a shared classroom but we think that it's worth the extra effort in organizations so that it's a little bit easier to make sure kids can get to the right classroom and don't have to log in and out as much so we think that that will help we're working with our staff right now on understanding you know very much the startup organizational expectations so what are the what are the first two weeks what are the goals in the first two weeks um immediately connecting with kids and communicating with families reaching out building some community in the classrooms uh that we missed over the summer that um in some cases started in the spring and as well as uh front loading with social emotional learning activities um and making sure that we're connecting with students and and recognizing where they are in this whole process maybe some of the traumas that folks have experienced in the spring we certainly have some professional development that i can speak to in another slide but we think that this organizational front loading will serve everyone well we provided a teaching and learning guidebook for the teachers that just went out and so it kind of clarifies what those expectations are it gives some guidance on things like grading and reporting absences and all the lessons will be virtual interactive lessons we're working really hard to um start the conversations around blended learning strategies so many of our teachers in the spring learned pretty quickly some great tips and tricks on how to weave some of these strategies into their teaching uh bag of tricks if you will um this fall we're going to be engaging in something called blended learning strategies for the fall of 2020 by author catelyn tucker so our folks will be engaging in that starting on monday um and we feel really good about that training and what it'll provide in terms of um structure and vision for how to to create the most engaging lessons that we can possibly put together for students um there'll be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous so while most classes will will every class will meet synchronously there will be some asynchronous work so synchronous is when you're meeting in real time just the way that we're doing now and asynchronous means that the teacher may post some content for students to engage in um at a more flexible time uh at their pace um we the distance learning schedule is a compressed student day so um students will not be in school from eight to three uh going course to course of course we compress the day down it's an abbreviated day with the expectation that students will complete some independent practice um and i'll go over the k5 sample because that seems to be the um what is most on parents mind is understanding what that k5 k5 daily routine looks like um services will remain intact with modifications one of the benefits of having a structure day is that we're able to identify the blocks of time where students will go out for services and work with other staff that they need to they need to whether it be special education esl or or intervention services we will be going back to regular grading so in the spring we allowed for the default was a pass fail um and while that was certainly uh applicable given the uh kind of really dire situation that we were in the spring um now that we're back in the fall we'd like to make sure that students are really engaging and invested um so we'll employ the regular grading policies we'll also have an honor roll as well uh so long as um you know we're able to operate officially in this environment and so we'll be continuing to reevaluate that but as of now we pursue we will be proceeding with regular grading um our lesson of our lessons will have embedded social emotional learning activities staff will be receiving some training on that this week along with some additional training that kelly truechess has put together that is really high quality around trauma and covid uh related trauma and students will be engaging in some of their independent practice activities that are adaptive such as ixl and raz kids and i just want to clarify around and ingenuity we're using this as a resource at the secondary level in grade 6 through 12 in the courses in some courses um we have many courses where this applies and then but not every course will have this an edge annuity is a resource for teachers to use to help deliver course content so it is not a platform per se although they do have platforms we are not using it in that capacity um we are using google classroom as our learning management system edgenuity is uh sort of a co a co resource system that uh works alongside uh whatever the teacher puts out in terms of their curriculum and pacing through the google classrooms i just want to make that clear students will have some responsibilities and ingenuity for engaging in that content taking quizzes and responding but the teacher ultimately will make those assignments through google classroom which is our main platform this is a k5 sample schedule so every like every year teachers i'm sorry principals will put together a schedule that um exposes our students to the district curriculum so i just want to point out that the school day here will be correct this is elementary this is k5 uh this was the one that was was on everyone's mind in terms of what does the day what's the day going to look like at the k5 level secondary has always been scheduled into courses they get a very rigid schedule it's very obvious what those what those classes are when they meet k5 has been a little bit more of a fluid day of blocks that get scheduled um so it's a little bit less visible to to parents and and to to the outside unless you um happen to have that individual teacher's schedule so the day at elementary will start at at 8 30 so um and i you know i regret not color coding this a little bit differently when we when we met but this was being tweaked right up until uh this morning because we were making some adjustments and i i do believe we'll continue to make some adjustments as we once we get started to make sure that we are delivering the most efficient program we can the day for elementary will really start at 8 30 and i'll explain what this is in a second um so students will have their morning meeting they'll uh the teacher will engage in some um some social emotional learning activities to build some community to warm students up to the day and of course to take attendance and to cover some any morning uh any morning uh informational uh sharing that needs to happen uh they'll have a reading class they'll engage in some small group instruction and phonics um particularly the younger levels this is a kind of a sample um they'll have a special so they will engage with art music media and pe this will be sort of an abbreviated time they will have math and math practice in this block and so the teachers will be scheduling flexibly in here so this is the idea that this is more of a whole group lesson and then there'll be some small groups and whole group lessons small groups and again the teacher has some flexibility in there on how to arrange that and we'll reach out to parents to make sure that everybody knows what that schedule is and they'll also be embedding some breaks um in in real time for students as they need there'll be a writing block and then this is a fixed block called win or esl so this is an intervention block or a what i need block so if students need some services they may go to special ed they may go to esl they may go to an enrichment and they may stay stay with the teacher and so we will um see students will be assigned to specific um additional instruction in this block and then then that is the end of the student day at 12 30 for most students there'll be a lunch break in here and then it is possible that we will work with some populations and some students for additional small group support um or special services so it could be special education it could be um another reason to reach out to work with a particular student um so the student day is really 8 30 to 12.
so we've set up six foot distance with 17 deaths do you think that you can get two more deaths in your classroom and still have them six feet apart and not wear masks it'll be pretty tight yeah it would literally put if we did that the teacher would have to stand in the corner of the room and because you could you could put mrs helton's here we used hers as a demo you technically could put probably two more across the front and the kids would be it's like this at the at the front of the board to add two to three more kids to your seventeen frankly that's absurd in my baby that's we we set up that the 17 is as close to comfortable as mr merzon said their heads weren't in the paper dallas spencer but it is but it is it is right there when we say that 17 in our professional opinion and it was the three of us that did it that would be our comfortable as the max and that's only happened two rooms open and the third room is still available beyond life's the five so here's the other there's no reason but you have to have you have to have teachers to put in the third room and that third teacher is doing online schooling but here's the other thing that we could look at because miss helgen you're the digital teacher your neighbor is miss navado can we open up there's no opening now so in any part are there middle school only and right now the two my classroom one and two that have the on-site place to go students those are actually being operated and that's why we do have more than 17 in those classrooms because we're actually using two classrooms because the middle school is designed without partitioning down the rooms so i've opened those up so i'm dealing with double the square footage of an average sized classroom which elementary does not have that much so how obligated are we to our students to continue the online once we'll just pick on the second grade since that's a conversation to continue that or say hey by october 1 you've got [Music] so we can condense our like i said our digital teacher so let's say ms halton she's the first great digital teacher if we when we bring back the other kinder teacher and the other second grade teacher because of members we would ask miss halton to figure out how to service k2 those digital kids so we should be a lot less too yes because we're anticipating that there will be less um but again it's just we've asked parents if they have said digital to remain digital till october so yes there's a commitment for well but we've had a few calls of parents who say well no we want to change our minds and our mind and we want them back in but with the numbers the way they are we're not going to be able to say okay come back because we don't have the staffing just for information the the second semester starts on what day october october that we october so i'm i'm a little concerned here uh because i sit on this board in support of public education as a public educator having taught in many different states licensed in many different states to be a public school teacher i'm number one concerned about us throwing our public education system away we're moving toward an online program you don't you don't have to do too much work to go on craigslist and find all the opportunities to make between 25 and 50 an hour providing modules of online training in math english language arts uh even music and so i'm really concerned about that my second major concern is that as a board part of our job is to be visionary and i don't do well with surprises i like to think things through i'm a pretty data driven person and i'm hearing data about santa cruz county which is one of the four counties that has the highest rate of covid per per population of any state navajo apache apache sand cruise and there's there's yuma i think so so even comparing us to that it probably isn't a good idea i think if we look around at our zip codes 85614 and the surrounding zip code area that's probably a better better idea of using the data-driven information to make a decision i'm concerned that we are not being aggressive enough that our parents may look for another way to educate their kids and if you can find a better option than public education i'm in i'm ready to listen but i think if we don't say to our parents and our business community who wants their people back at work that we support you we're working with you i think we're going to have a problem across the country in education and i'm not sure as a board sitting here saying that we're the visionaries that we're you know we're supposed to set policy and be the vision and come up with the new ideas i i just don't feel comfortable saying you know what superintendent good luck we're passing this over to you you know work on some models do the best you can you know we'll support you yeah we do support you but my goodness we absolutely have got to look at keeping public education alive and we're backing down this is when we need to lean in and we're just we're saying we're going to divide you up we don't have resources for this we're going to move this teacher look who would wake up tomorrow morning and say send me to the u of a i want to be a teacher those numbers are going down public education is going down i just i understand what you're saying i understand what you're asking for i think if it means that we have to have a poem with you every day then we need to have a call with you every day because our job is to be standing on the edge of that cliff looking out for you and i think we need to be giving you a lot more information than we're giving you now and so that's my feeling i mean i'm i'm i'm all in favor of getting these schools open but we need to do it in a data-driven method and we need to recognize that we care about our teachers we love our kids we support our administration but we serve a community and we need to address that so that's my diatribe and i'm sorry anything else well i just think that there is some data there from if we go to the red green yellow purple colors that's the data there and it's a very unknown how many parents that september 8th is the day if everything's in the yellow will really be sent i don't know but me as a parent of a sixth grader i don't know what i'll do september to begin with i sure as heck would like to have her out and be here in school but we as parents we don't know and i think i'm not alone in that into some of their friends and you know and unlike you i don't say oh it just won't work out i'm not a big believer i'll add something as a parent as well because first and foremost that's that's far more important than anything i'll ever do on the board is to be a parent right and of course i want my kids to be safe when they come back here as well absolutely in this particular situation i think they're simply asking for their authorization to try and make something work and if it's a if we're slowly transitioning over the course of a week or two i i think we owe them um a little bit of slack in the rope so to speak and and allow them to to use their expertise they're they're in the thick of it every day and they're seeing the data change like the weather and i can only imagine frustrating is for me as a parent how it is for them um it's absolutely mind-boggling will you please uh commute if you're on the phone please and um anyway i think that it's very appropriate to allow to give them some flexibility to try and i can see i can see the concern about september 8th everybody comes back to campus it sounds like it could be a little bit chaotic and i think there's no harm in allowing a little bit of transition period to try and make it work i think i just see no arm there right because they can learn the procedures instead of you get 700 people yeah you get a few one in one time you get you know the time when the conditions are right and the transition i think that is a i really do like it and i just want to reiterate that we want our kids back in school too like there's we we believe that our kids need to be here but we also have to um not at the expense of their health or the staff members health or i mean i my job is to take into consideration all of our stakeholders so unless i speak to my teachers hear from them speak to our parents we have kids on the task force that we hear from i mean our team can agree we've been on the phone talking about this for 15 hours a day and we're texting teachers at night and we're calling teachers at night and we're saying what do you think what do you hear um here's another potential thing if kids if teachers call their parents and say all kids will have to wear masks in class and parents say absolutely not well guess what we're going to be forced to develop a hybrid model so that we can get kids in class where they don't have to wear masks but we have to talk to our parents and i you know we could talk every day but it's time that we need to talk to our parents because they're our customers we've been doing it but it's we've we're constantly doing it we're having these calls we're meeting right now i mean we have to make that personal context so it's clear to parents if we have more than 17 kids in a class which these numbers look like kids will have to wear maths in class get but we need to make that personal contact it's not something you can just send in an email and have them respond um because we need to we need to build that trust and right now um i think with the transition model coming in we can reassure our teachers that our procedures are in place reassure our parents and our kids first and foremost because they're all wondering what school is going to actually look like so we have all been doing the work but it takes time and you know we're working on this day in and day out trying to hear from parents hear their concerns so we all want kids back in school as fast as we can but i also want to ensure that we are following pima county health guidelines and making sure that it is that we're in the yellow when we're in the so pima county health department says when we're in the green for two weeks and we can sustain the metrics and the green then school can operate in full force like we used to so typically the direction was five to seven weeks when we started talking about this so you know we i'm cautiously optimistic but i want to do it right and we have to i we have a responsibility to our students and our families and to our teachers so we deliberate over retentions and services for kids and it takes time so a decision like this when we're talking about lives of kids and health it's not something that i feel we can say let's just go forth and do and let's see what happens because i also don't want to interrupt school and education if we come back and we have teachers who test positive or families who test positive and we have to go right back to square one like that's going to be more detrimental to kids than if we say okay let's get you in slowly let's transition let's do it right that's been seen all over the country from public schools to universities to sporting teams there's a few of us in the background that are trying to contact u of a to see if we can get rapid saliva testing going but that's probably a pipe dream if anybody's got a connection to u of a um you've got a mass maybe not i'll try is make us meet the saint the poster child and we can test everyone every day and get the three rapid return i know that's a pipe dream but if anybody knows anybody to reach out to please do that or give me the information i'll do it but i might what you said i was going to bring that up is to open shut down open shut down is a nightmare is it better to stay shut down i don't know i don't know those are and when we look at again testing because we know that our insurance covers the cvs testing for free seven to ten days get your results back there's other places where you can go to urgent care and pay thirty dollars to get a test and get your results in one or two hours there's other places you can go and pay a hundred and twenty dollars to get your results immediately the rule still the procedure is if you've been in contact with someone with coven you should quarantine for 14 days so again can we afford to have our teachers quarantined for 14 days if needed and we can't mandate that they will pay 120 out of their own pocket to get a rapid right so so if they're gone 14 days and if the substitute cost 100 a day it'd be much more cost effective for the district to cover that rapid test would it not a day or two versus 14 and then we know so i don't know if that's emotion or it's not policy or whatever but i i wish that on the table and i mean we've tossed out can we make a deal with urgent care for teachers that's something that you know um so that will our insurance cover the 30 copay to get the results in two hours to so teachers can have a peace of mind that they can come back and be with a negative test result if you got a teacher out for ten days that's a thousand dollars plus whereas we spend 125 on a rapid test or even 200 that's way ahead and you've got a teacher there and i'm a substitute well that's something we need to do any further discussion no more no okay we are i'd like to entertain emotionally to approve their authorizations of hybrid transition model some about a second yes with the request that this be extended out through at least the end of january to look at modeling to model through the end of january right so it says an aspirational date of september 8th i'd just like to see the model being sent out through january since september 8th will slip that it gives thank you uh the liability endorsement for the trust superintendent recommends the purchase of the liability endorsement for 20 000 bucks right the if the claim is made if there is a waiver there's no deductible if there's a claim of the the uh acknowledgement is ten thousand deductible if somebody that didn't do either makes a claim then it's a twenty thousand dollars right and then they cover the rest regardless of what it is so what we did ask the trust is let's say it's in a classroom and we have three three students who have filed the plane one who has signed the waiver one has signed nothing and one for a sign who has filled up the acknowledgment form then that would be a thirty thousand dollar deductible and it would count as one claim is what we're asking them to clarify because we said is that three different claims or is it grouped as a classroom considered one um and i really hate to ask this what are other districts doing is this a popular thing they're they're saying yes i think this is a good idea to buy it or you know let's roll the dice or right now statewide it's right around the 55th right and the way the attorney post it is if we don't purchase this coverage and there is a claim then we would have to go with [Music] i believe it was towards the end of september yeah it's not any time in the near future and that covers for the fiscal year yes um there it is september 15th well greg you're the finance guy what do you think i think 20 grand now is better than a hundred degrees later okay i'll move that we approve the insurance policy i'd like to move that we tabled this until our september 14th meeting tell is yes motion passes now we have a motion on the floor thank you okay let's see our colts k program so again i sent you all the information and the approval letter of our aoi school so we're asking for approval so that we can start to let our parents and families know that doi is available and was it mentioned in there which program did you guys pick so um with for our uh five through eight kids we will be using mesa distance learning mason okay yes and then for the k-k-fours we'll be using edmentum uh with their kelvin learning product is that the one veil uses or not yes that is the only value sarita uses an ingenuity something like that yeah and what happened with edge annuity we're looking at we looked at um one makes the distance funny because they're one they're the one of the oldest aos in the state so they're already grandfathered in their approved they have everything you know with the state we looked at florida distance for florida virtual edge annuity and momentum uh to fill in the other platforms for the grades that means the distance learning did not uh did not offer so with edge annuity we didn't want to sign or say we're going to commit to anything until everything was all approved because there would be no point and then they want to hold us to a set number of kids but uh once we got the approval and we were talking edge annuity is not taking any more students for any virtual courses so we have we decided to go ahead with edmentum to offer our 4rk force okay thank you i'll give a second yes further discussion yes yes sir so there was a discussion of we lose money per kid that goes aoi right or is that exempt this year at least that's what subreddit told me that their aoi this year their examples still get their full six grand or whatever it is per kid when we get that or not because is it discount no we we will get we did not expose they created a digital pathway model to operate like an aoi hiring their own existing teachers right so the state approved anybody who developed an aoi type virtual warning was going to receive full funding so it wasn't going to even though they contracted yes and then the cost of the state keeps five percent we only get received yeah how much is that so that comes out to 175 dollars per course per student okay so um so a thousand dollars yeah i can tell you right now did you say for a course yes so it comes out to if if they take four core classes and one elective for mesa distance it comes out to 32.50 oh sorry i take that back 1750 if they take uh four cores and uh and two electives it comes out to 2100 or if we just offer uh core classes for say like fifth grade then it's it's a so it's an average of two grand a year and we're still way ahead and yes the the funding well the cost versus potential funding is always is less than you know what we get back right okay thank you further discussion so if we're going to be getting then if we get kids enrolled in aoi and it's costing roughly 2 000 and we're going to get about 9 000 from the state what do we do with the other 7 000 i'm not understanding what you're saying well per student well per student and average uh average aoi student will generate five thousand dollars in aoi funding okay five thousand yes okay so so we would pay you know in that case if it makes a distance depending on the number of courses two grand so we pay two grand of mesa and then we keep three thousand in funding that funding it goes to the school to for staffing purchasing of additional you know software vendors or we have to purchase the software to begin with yeah right well no we pay them it's all hard so that money will go into the school's budget it goes just where all the other money for the students goes the one really nice thing about aoi is our district boundaries have now gone to the state's boundaries so we could be teaching kids from page to you went to nogales we can have everybody in between and we have a gross profit of three thousand dollars per student yes which we don't have when we have to account for all of the sanitation facilities instructors curriculum everything there's still an aoi instructor that has to be paid for but but in a sense yes that's what fails and what what vale did is that they instead of using the platform's own certified instructor they hire their own teachers and they're purchasing the course which is obviously even a lot it's a lot cheaper than the all-in-one package but we don't have the manpower without the staffing to do that so we would have to rely on on on their virtual teacher as opposed to an on-site virtual teacher depending on the number of kids it still sounds like a pretty bad option it's a very lucrative deal for the school and we've been losing funding for kids who are being homeschooled or because we haven't had this option to offer uh this has already been approved correct we just motioned we have a motion so this is the vote correct yes so this has already been approved though right the aoi um in july was to submit the application but then the state approved it yes the application and so it's we've had it at our school we've been approved reports we're ready to engage yes but congratulations on the successful submission and the start of uh continental online learning technology school program i guess in order to pull the trigger we've got to say approval yes you have to be presented to the word for approval introduce us to the student facility board please all right well i'm going to do this standing up and over here at the podium because sitting in that chair for too long makes my butter fair enough so good evening everybody um i wanted to take a few minutes to introduce the board to a department of our government called the school facilities board the school facilities board was created back in 1997 and their sole purpose was to make sure that district school district buildings public school buildings were at and operating at a minimum standard back in 1997 roughly 600 million dollars from the general fund was put out to get schools to a minimum standard and for the sfb to maintain this minimum standard so what does that mean for us as a school district that means that when i get an invoice from pueblo mechanical for fifty two hundred dollars to replace a compressor i can have the school facilities board pay for this versus using the district's money when the american fire comes in and tells me that it's going to cost me twenty three hundred dollars to replace a a four inch fire pipe that's twenty three hundred dollars and i can have the school facilities board paid for versus having the district paperwork the school facilities board will deal with any health and safety issue or any building issue in a occupied space that produces adm so if if the air conditioning unit in this building was to go down that that condition in this room i'm going to have to pay for it this would be what they call excluded space but if it went down next door in the library that is that comes with our school and helps us drive adm so they would actually pay for that i have another invoice on my desk for twenty eight hundred dollars but it's for the snack bar and bathrooms out here that does not produce eight am so that is twenty eight hundred dollars that i have to spend so the way this way the sfe works is we have a project we submit that to our sfb representative they take it to the sfb board the board approves or disapproves of the project and then we can move forward as some of you may not know i'm recently an ex-employee of the show low unified school district and last year alone i spent four million dollars of school facility board lab and that a lot of it went to yours close to a million dollars on a high school gym floor there are 750 000 to put air conditioning in that high school gym there's another 650 000 just to put bleachers back in i spent hundred and ninety thousand dollars of the school facility board money to re-roof and hole in elementary school so the school facilities board is there to help districts take their budget and stretch it when things break they're not going to help us out with aesthetics um if our buildings were stucco and the stucco was falling off they would help with that but they're not going to paint it because it's been six years since it's been painted so the way that they're going to work is after they vote to approve they will send us a letter for the superintendent to sign off on and as well as the board president the next item that we're going to talk about is actually to use a stamp for the board president and i will kind of give you an insight as to why that is on the agenda for this evening so when we submit so let's let's just say using tonight as an example if this was a regular school board meeting if i submit a program a project for tomorrow it could be upwards of a month before we could actually get started on the project if we were sitting here and waiting for a board member's signature on that project so tonight in the next agenda item i am asking for permission to use the borders of president's stamp to move these projects further along and get them going instead of having to wait upwards of the month to get things started i gave you a high level overview of what the school facilities board does i would be more than happy to answer any more specific questions if you have them we need to entertain questions from the audience if that is all right with the president let's get it clarified i think my question is what's the catch okay so good question what's the catch yeah the catch is there is no catch the catch is the school facilities board usually gets a right around 63 million dollar budget a year it comes right out of the government the state's general fund okay they have in the past had to go back to ask for extensions and a larger disbursements but the catch is there is no catch and we haven't done it maybe because we haven't known about it the reason why we haven't done it here we just didn't know well we talk about it all the time at the arizona school boards association meetings yes so we do know about it um okay so let me rephrase the person or folks who have held this position in the past may not have known about it so let me go ahead and rephrase my answer that way but there but there truly there is no catch if there was a catch it would be get your projects in before or april before the sfb starts running low on funds so this is also for building new facilities as well so the sfb will build a new school but they have to show you have to show two years of being at or over capacity in your building before they ever consider it so they will also if you do not have land for a new building they will purchase the land as well or they will they will facilitate the discussion with the state if you have statements correct and over the blm educational purchase program correct yes so what would be the maximum amount of money that you would want a stamp for so that you could approve on behalf of the award what would be the what's the top line well and i'm going to be honest all those projects i did in show low a million dollar project i had my stamp the very next board meeting it was here's what we used to stamp on we've got this sfp project this is what it's going to cost so then the administration is making the decision and informing the board correct over the stamp is just for the ssd it is just for so once they get that once the sfb board approves a project they changed over their system so it may not even require now but the old system required a wet signature from the superintendent and it's either a stamped or wet signature from the board present well kudos to you for bringing this here well that's why we're here we're in the business of education and it just doesn't mean math and math and reading but doesn't do buses and stuff it does not do buses it is just your facility so fortunately we don't have boilers so when a boiler goes down there's 75 000 to replace the boiler so i guess i just want to make sure i think from my house to here is about five miles and i think all of us live fairly close and so waiting a month for a signature why would that be because it has to be done at a board meeting or have the approval of at a board meeting to use the authorization to use a staff so i think this is our third meeting in august so we don't see i've been here for five weeks and this is my sixth meeting yeah so i don't think we have any trouble scheduling uh board meetings or second but yeah i think we're talking about a fourth one before the end of the month so i don't think getting board meetings is a problem it's just a way to advance the project quicker it's all it is and every year that the board changes over if we have a new president this would come up again okay thank you and you're very welcome now we move on to g if that was the information that occurred yes uh using the board member stamp on the sfb application i'll move that we approve the board members down for the sfd application second i will second discussion well i'm going to say again i don't think we have any trouble having board meetings i think that taking the board out of their position of being responsible for the vision for public education in the green valley area to include the infrastructure and any necessary repairs to the infrastructure makes the board a shall we say a rubber stamp and takes away i think not only some of what the board should be doing but what the board does this is if you look in the statutes in the arizona revised sections this is what boards are supposed to do so we're supposed to be working with you and helping you get these things done thank you for the discussion i think it's a windfall thing that i mean it could save us significant money oh i agree all right there's no there's no challenge to the fact that using the school facilities board which as you said has been in business since 1917 1997 so it's been in business for 23 years the fact that we haven't used it is more on us than anything else but the fact that we're talking about you know the board isn't going to be the one that is is leading this vision and and supporting our infrastructure and being more proactive and what are the needs of the infrastructure and even approaching the school facilities boards to address upcoming needs and even building a new school you know these are things that we talk about at asba all the time and i think now is the time for us to get a little bit more engaged sorry about that i forgot i had another item on the agenda so currently the district does not have a 403b plan or a 457 plan 403bs and 457s are the government equivalents of a 401k this would allow our faculty and our staff the option of going ahead and subsidizing their retirement by entering into a 403 b or a 54 57 k or a 457 plan so i bring it tonight for your approval for us to speak and search for vendors who will offer us a 403 b or a 457 plan do we have any of those plans in place now so this is a benefit and optional too yes any of the staff that would great thank you yeah i in my limited tax information knowledge so this goes in like a 401k and is not taxable until you pull it out correct correct government could choose a government version that's a great option hopefully that you guys can take advantage of that because when you're old you're different this is price yes how worn out the advent staff is and all this planning and i'm glad that you were not me but you know you i just want you to know you have my support and um we all want to do the right thing for our kids and families and staff to get them here and greg again they're a great welcome to the school and just these couple of proposals here are i think looking forward to the law conference with the arizona school boards association um i know that there's going to be a lot on there about about liability insurance that is going to be coming in from the federal and state governments so that will be very helpful for us when we look to open schools thank you i think it's good said i'm very grateful for the efforts here i know it's tough i know it seems like every every time we get a little momentum we hit another brick wall but i'm convinced we'll figure it out we just have to keep stepping in the right direction so i applaud each and every one of you for your efforts and let's keep moving forward we'll get this figured out so thank you and i just wanted to announce that our override posters should be up um this weekend so we should be visible by monday oh and we need volunteers to help put them out ferguson there we go [Music] okay thank you
we all understand like anything there was a verbage that read it could be sooner but why not allow the covid curve to continue to trend down for another month as it really as it's really not even another month before we have two weeks off for fall break two it doesn't make sense to send kids back to school when they go on break for two weeks wow guess what people are going to do on the two-week break social distance isn't the 10 12 plan making more sense now make sure the curve continues to lower by 10 12 and get the kids back to school then we understand you have to deal with the politics from both sides act like you're not overreacting to that and plan for the kids to come back on 10 12.
Right now, with the new news about the virus, we sometimes do less. We'll do things right, but make the possibilities, like, how to help in this, to test the service that all families need with distance learning. We help so that it does n't express itself. You will have these tips, please. If not, follow what the two scientists say. And now what is needed is necessary for this tendency to panic. I am very passionate about talking about education. Victor, they have seen how, perhaps in one thing or another, everyone has kept me with complications in doing distance learning. What we do, what we have now, is only loneliness and its expression. My son, I was all the time because they couldn't understand the lessons. My younger children, they survived last year and this one didn't, and this one did. This was not so good. Now the picture is of how this coming year is going to be.
now if you go back up here at 8 o'clock what we're trying to do and this is the one of the pieces that we're working on right here is that we would also like to offer because this is really a truncated day we would also like to offer a morning enrichment session so it would be an asynchronous post for eight o'clock where students can log in and it could be a great pe warm-up it could be a great um brain engagement activity in any one of the art music or pe classes um sort of setting the stage for what they may see in their class later on in the day so we're trying to build um just more opportunities for kids to to connect but that this would be a little bit more flexible in the morning that knowing that sometimes the morning routines are a little tricky for for the young ones but it's also a way to quick connect kids who are ready for a little bit more um and and can do that between 8 and 8 30 but if the student is not really ready at that time or the parents then they can log into that asynchronous uh offering at another time later in the day um so we're trying to uh make sure that we have some additional enriching experience to engage students and to kind of change it up a little bit so this is a fairly structured day as you can see there's some time and flexible time with the teacher will will work with students wednesdays are a little bit different this is a really heavy small group day where kids will get much more uh targeted uh independent work with the teacher um and we keep this in line because this is very similar to the hybrid when we where wednesdays are really about kind of a more intense small group instruction so um across the week from eight to you know eight to nine you can see that this is really where kids need to um be logged on and reporting and ready to go for the morning um straight through and the student day for most students will end at 12 30.
all it will take is one person in the district to get covered and your rush to change the current 1012 date backfired on your on you bad we love you guys make the right decision lead don't follow please have the courage to read my email in tonight's meeting thank you okay we're going to take just a five minute break okay we're back and i move that we approve consent agenda item 6.1 to 6.7 second any questions mr glover uh thank you madam president i just there uh item 6.5 is not a question but somebody may is making a very generous donation to coronado pto and uh i don't mispronounce the name but uh thank you very much to all those all the people who generously uh donate to higley absolutely do we know what that's going to go towards at coronado do they have plans for that gift president kaitlyn are members of the board we do not know uh what that's going to at this time i can find out and put it in the superintendent's report very good thank you thank you mr glover all right all those in favor aye motion carries 5-0 um okay we are moving on to 7.1 and an update on reopening of schools dr foley president kaler members of the board tonight we have some updates that we'd like to provide for you let me just do a little overview of what we'll be talking about so that you will know what will be coming in this presentation uh tonight we're going to do a little update on the metrics that are available for us to talk about we're also going to discuss the original resolution that was approved at the august 8th board meeting we're going to talk about some health metrics and protocols one of the things that we have discussed at many of our meetings are the how are we going to communicate what is the process for and so we're going to go deeply into some of those aspects tonight and we have uh jillian fulton here tonight who will be going through those with us and we'll talk a little bit more about that and then we're also going to talk a little bit about an example of a social emotional because at our last meeting we discussed the need for discussing what does that look like right now because we know how important that is but in in the remote learning style so we have a couple examples that we'd like to highlight for you tonight so next slide okay so one of the things we want to revisit and we revisit is the original governing board resolution that we approve that was approved at the august 8th meeting and in that resolution it prescribed the following that the governing board approved the return to in-person teacher-led classroom instruction to begin on october 12 2020 or earlier if the arizona department of health services and the maricopa county health department venture benchmarks and health metrics were met we indicated in that it prescribed that we would at least give the community a one-week return notice if they were met and that we would re evaluate them at each scheduled governing board meeting so let us talk a little bit about the dashboard and metrics that we are referring to so when we first met on that august 8th meeting the document itself had just come out it had just come out for the executive order from the governor and he had promised this dashboard so we've now had this dashboard for three weeks one of the things that we studied deeply in this document was not only the um what the dashboard looked like but we what were the considerations that we had to have for offering in-person instruction and it had the benchmarks being cases percent positivity and covert-like symptoms it also indicated that we would be we in addition that local health departments may modify a specific benchmark because at that point the maricopa county specific dashboard had not yet been created because it came the following week it's important to remember that when we're looking at these metrics that they are on a delayed schedule so for instance what we're looking at for the data that was released on august 20th 2020 those are for the time period of july 26 through august 8th so it's important to remember that the update we get is is substantially delayed in the dashboard so it's from weeks before it's also important to remember that as a district we've been monitoring um on on what's available what do our local areas look like daily so that we have some idea of what do the numbers look like that might be in the windows that may come out on the metric so obviously it's important to remember that those are delayed so when we looked at our arizona department of health services dashboard this week what's interesting too is they both come out at different times the arizona department of health services benchmark usually updates about nine o'clock and literally we're sort of sitting there going refresh refresh refresh um because that's when it updates so the good news is is that we see we see trends going in in positive directions they're they're going down which is a good thing you'll see that on this dashboard that the first one it's either one or the other a decline in cases or less than 100 per 1000 individuals and so on this arizona department of health services dashboard it shows that we met the first one the declining cases it shows that we did not meet on the arizona department of health services benchmark the one for percent positivity we see it's going down but we have not met that on this dashboard and that for two consecutive weeks the covet-like illness again continues to go down so when we first created this resolution we did not have the other dashboard but you'll notice that in our resolution we had identified because there had been we had been a part of a webinar that had indicated that maricopa was going to be following on the heels of it and as sort of indicated in that first document you can use parts and pieces of this to help understand where your community is at to help guide in decision making so next slide so the maricopa county dashboard or it was the one that came out that's more specific zip code school district area so it takes maricopa county as a whole and breaks it down what was interesting is the first week we were the first we were one of the first that was yellow remember that the lagging week's data this is this is almost three week old data so it's it's continuing to give us it will kind of continue to give us a back story of where we were you'll see that from the first week to the second week again the other one has been available for three weeks this has been available for two that we're continuing to improve so when we take a look next slide when we take a look at the the original document that says these are the metrics you're looking at and these are the dashboards you we are looking between two dashboards here and we're monitoring that so you can see that on the cases one that um when we look at that data that was met on the department of health services metric this week next slide for the positivity you'll see that this one while we did not meet that on the department of health services we did meet it for the percent positivity indicator while that was the one of the ones that was green so again for just that metric that we met that for that metric on the maricopa i'm sorry on the higley specific one from maricopa county and then the covid like illness we've met that one on both both both dashboards so when we take a look at next slide again you've heard in our but you've heard that we have two different metrics that we have been looking two different dashboards we're looking at the three metrics and so this would have been the very first week where utilizing those specific metrics between those two dashboards we would have had a green in each of those areas so next slide uh let's not let's not pass by that too fast please because i have i have the same concerns that a great many people raised about this and you know taking the best score is one thing and combining them is it's they're not that doesn't mean the same thing and i think i think our teachers are not fooled by this they know data and if you have a kid that's getting a c first quarter and then gets in a second quarter you might give the kid an a but you might also give them a b and so um i really am not a big fan of this particular slide and i'm sure i'm glad to hear that our teachers didn't receive it that way either um i think it's important you know when we when we talked about these we did not know uh or i mean we had a notion that they might be able to be broken down by school district but we didn't know that for a fact and none of us were betting on it um so this to me is really i don't want to rely that that we're all in the green here and then the other thing is if you if you were you don't have to but if you were to back up a few slides there's three colors really you've got green and yellow and red and the the research that is telling us where we are that's yellow is giving us some guidance from experts that is contrary to the full blast 100 percent in person return and i just i'm going to just point that out and some of the other numbers that that that that the state has decided to use you know just by way of comparison like the cases per hundred thousand people it's cool i mean i'm i was thrilled that to see that higley was where it was when those who were released i was surprised i didn't have that information i didn't know that so that's awesome and i hope our community continues to do the right things to make it go down but when you talk about 30 i can't even read this 35 cases per 100 000 people the schools like in germany that opened uh we're between like zero point something percent and and under three per hundred thousand so we're our numbers are still high and you know even when you say one on the metrics is like well it just has to get lower all right cool we got a million cases now we only have 900 000 that's lower that meets the metric so you know a grain of salt but kudos to our teachers for calling out that chart because i saw that and i had great issues with the fact that you really i mean it's got to be green green in my opinion and not one or the other and cherry picking really does set you up and you guys can comment i'm sure people disagree with me but i didn't want to let that pass without supporting someone president kaler board member glover i understand exactly what you're saying i believe and i understand what our community and teachers are also concerned again we are providing just just an update on where we were with those metrics and and i understand those concerns and questions that have been brought forward so next slide thus if you choose to interpret utilizing both metrics or both dashboards um if you're using both dashboards or metrics from each one if you were to look at it that way we could consider that the metrics were met for the first time we saw greens on 8 20. again the projections looking at again we won't know until tomorrow at either 9 or 4 but when we're looking at what our data looked like at those weeks that they will be pulling from the projections look like they'll continue to go down if they were to meet again on the 27th and the third if we were to go back to the resolution and choose to use both dashboards to make that recommendation and we could choose not to do that as well but if we were to do so it would mean that if we were to pull them from that way the first time that we would have met them and allow more than a one week notice would be on september 8th so tonight one of the things that you will be determining on and again going back to we can interpret which dashboards we're using and if we want to use them for different metrics or not absolutely but there would be a recommendation for adherence to the resolution where we would utilize both dashboards for those specific indicators and if um with that updated match with with that updated information that you could consider in-person teacher-led instruction to begin on september 8 2020 if the public benchmark metrics continue to be met and again going back to determining which dashboard and metric pieces we would utilize as part of that decision to consider mr glover i agree with a lot of things that you just said my concern in reference to as they say we're cherry picking i understand completely what they're saying in reference to this as as we're looking at the data starting at 9 8 maybe when that time comes to have that conversation but i just want to throw it out now the statistics are going to be released tomorrow okay and then they're going to be released again on september 3rd again on thursday if we're looking at something like this i just want to throw this out i would feel more comfortable that we're going to look at the statistics for tomorrow and then we're going to look at the statistics for next thursday and if everything is going somewhat good we'll see a decrease in the next two reporting and then we'll look then i would be more comfortable with even considering opening it up on the eighth so i don't know if for us to have a board meeting on that thursday night and say okay guys a thursday night this is what the stats look like for this thursday this will look thursday and then somebody's got a green across the board on either on these benchmarks then then we're going to be okay i mean if there's going to be you know as we talk about we see other school districts around here opening up this was going to give us these two weeks to say okay what's going on around the neighboring community here is is things starting to happen so but we have the chance to come together as a board on that thursday night that third to say look at the numbers have changed we we need to we need to take a step back before we decide opening up on the on the 8th but maybe when that time comes during our meeting when we talk about where we're at but i just wanted to throw that out right now as for some discussion and reference to looking at the statistics from the next two times that are taking place mr glover can i ask you a question mr petrovic i'm so sorry i'm sorry i'm like uh if you were thinking of that would you still want us to go back on the eighth that would only give teachers five ish days to prepare um i i guess what my thought is we can have this conversation is is to go through with thinking about the eighth but us as a board are going to look at the statistics tomorrow and we're gonna come together on that thursday the third to say okay is this is this going to be a go um so only giving the teachers five days notice and this is community five days that's that's the question yeah that's the question i'm trying to make you like start thinking yeah that's something to think about if you're yes yes and mentally as we go through this slide that that only gives them five days and really over a long weekend right so that might be very difficult right maybe i'm going to look at the 14th instead but i just wanted to throw that out for conversation president keller members of board i think i think it's really important to remember that this these are brand new metrics that we have only had for the last three weeks that came out to us and again we made uh we've had these tools we're interpreting them as we go this is is something that again we are going to you're going to use information but again these are new tools that are are again on delayed data that gives us an indicator and again the projections are looking like we may be green this week on the maricopa higley specific but again we're going to know more tomorrow so again there's lots to consider here and and and one of the things that we hear is so important is understanding this is a time with what is our health and safety protocols and how are we going to help support teachers and our community and our staffs and our buildings to understand what does this look like so next slide here we're going to do a little update here that is really important for everyone to hear because there are some things that are mandated from maricopa county health department and that we need to be sure everyone understands but we're going to kind of go into the conversation of the role of masks the wearing of masks the difference between primary and secondary contacts what does the communication structure look like with families when when when there is concern about health and we're going to give some scenarios so that we're hoping that we can answer some questions and clarify some information and because there are some differences here that are important for you and everyone to understand and these are things that are also that are uh response to to the state level directive not just higgly specific and so we're kind of wanting to go into some of those details tonight president kaler members of the board dr thomason members of cabinet i'm jillian fulton the district nurse i have a health process update tonight the first slide up we're looking at the risk assessment of course we know that masks are mandatory and i found this image that i thought protect that very well you have on the very top your high transmission probability those are two people that are not wearing masks in the middle you have your low transmission probability one person is wearing one one is not and at the bottom lowest transmission probability both people would be wearing a mask miss bolton i'm sorry to interrupt and i'm just and i apologize for uh for the interruption uh i was just reading the cdc some cdc stuff this morning and one statistic that really stuck out and i just want to bring it to the community and everybody else and i you can feel free to correct me if i if i if aired but i uh 50 percent of the transmission transmissions occur before symptoms occur and i think that's really worth putting a lot of thought into and then as i as i have this sense that our teachers are very concerned and rightfully so about their health and the things that they might be bringing home to their loved ones um you know the idea of getting tested so i yesterday i got home from work i'm also a teacher and i've been in schools and i got home from work and i thought you know i should really got to probably put my money where my mouth is so i went online and i found at chandler-gilbert community college there because the governor has said like he'll help us with these testing blitzes and he'll help schools but i did talk to dr thomas about it and they said well there's just want to channel gilbert so you're probably not going to get one in higley and that's fine so i thought well i'll check this out it's after school um anyway by i saw i got before 4 15 or so i got online to do put in my name and uh and by 4 55 i was there and they had stuck a q-tip up my nose for five seconds uh it wasn't bad at all in and out and uh i have insurance but if i hadn't had it and and they're not there's no co-pay no billing i'll never notice it but if i didn't have it they would have tested and so that got me thinking like we should to make our teachers feel better we could have the communities help because we have all these kids people running around possibly that are not um showing any signs that if they if we could just encourage them somehow maybe through ours to get tested it's not mandatory or maybe find a day of the week maybe where it's early release and just say to teachers like okay get out of here go get tested and i think those things would help alleviate some concerns and maybe get people thinking like okay maybe now we have some real data and some real numbers and uh and we can move forward so i i didn't know where i was going to shove that in there but i wanted to mention that for the community the testing couldn't have been easier i felt like it was like 1970s american healthcare like i i went i got what i needed it was timely and i was in and out and it didn't cost me anything at all so anyway thank you so for no president healer board member glover i'm not going i'm sorry i interrupted you but i didn't realize you were talking i'm not going to change your statistic you're right and i have noticed that there are many more resources lately about testing and the availability as well in places and that are opening up to do that so i think that's a great idea lastly it's they're open 24 hours 24 hours which is amazing i think that even our friends at queen creek did like kind of a testing blitz right before their schools open on the weekend and then asu i got this numbers today because my daughter attends asu and they tested over 31 000 students before they were allowed on campus and 161 tested positive so those were really low which i was very encouraged by so i'm hoping because i have a daughter there that she continues to stay healthy and well but they they're they're following some very strict guidelines on masks on the campus even outside walking to class so anyways i did see that too mr glover masks are definitely one of the most important subjects that we'll be covering in all of the health updates the primary versus secondary contact again it all comes down to masks primary you may be considered a close contact of someone with covet 19 if you were exposed to the sick person for more than 15 minutes and within six feet or less you live in the same household neither person was wearing a mask secondary contact you may be considered a secondary contact of someone with covet 19 if you were not directly exposed to the sick person for more than 15 minutes and within 6 feet or less one person was wearing a mask i also want to include that all facts are considered each individual case is completely different and all of those facts are taken into consideration when we're looking at that this is the husd cope 19 health office protocol that was put together and this is what our health aides are using in all of the health offices when we are looking at students that are coming in with potential symptoms and the flow sheet that we're going down when we're looking at that you'll notice at the very top in the red if anyone enters the health office with cover 19 symptoms you have to wear your ppe that includes your mask face shield gloves and gown that is a health department requirement and that's something that we're doing regardless the purpose of this flowchart is to help the health office go down and monitor the symptoms look at underlying conditions anything that we can rule out if we need to talk to parents before we go all the way down you'll see the very first thing we're doing is assessing the symptoms from that we're going down you if they have symptoms we're isolating them we're contacting their parents we're contacting site admin we're sending them home with the exclusion guidelines we're also i just want to be very sure that everybody knows we are looking at pre-existing conditions that has come up often and it's very important so next slide this is our student cova 19 exclusion guidelines this is specific to students you can see at the top we have the symptoms outlined they go home if they are displaying one symptom we're excluding asymptomatic students who have had positive cover 19 tests or live with someone diagnosed with cova 19 and we are excluding siblings of students who have had a positive positive sorry covid19 test that green and blue box below is outlining if they have a cova diagnosis symptomatic asymptomatic below that the cobot symptoms have not been evaluated by a health care provider that's giving the guidance of what we would do there and below that the no symptoms and live with lives with a person diagnosed with coping 19 or primary exposure next is the employee coveted 19 exclusion guidelines these mirror the same as the student at the top with the symptoms and the positive and diagnosis and then the health care provider what you're going to see that does not mirror below that is no symptoms and lives with the person diagnosed with cova 19 or primary exposure we have continued working in monitor for symptoms if symptoms develop within 14 days of exposure they will go on quarantine according to the maricopa county department of public health quarantine guidelines the next slide is student versus employee primary exposure to positive cases like you just saw those slides before the students will follow the student husd exclusion guidelines the employees will follow the employee husd exclusion guidelines educational workers are considered essential employees and can go to work after primary exposure if they are asymptomatic and wear masks they continue working and monitor their symptoms and if symptoms develop they will go on a 14-day quarantine with the maricopa department of public health the process for exposure and positive cases i am working on a training i'm going to be filming a video for our employees and in our admin and it's checklist for students and there's four of those they're going to look like exposure for an employee exposure for a student a positive case for an employee in a positive case for a student and that will go down and follow that process and it brings us down to the same guidelines that i just shared with you and that will be a training for the employees as well confidentiality who needs to know identifying information the district nurse school health aide school state administrator and human resources it's very important to remember the confidentiality i think this is huge and and it will be included in the training that i do in that video as well lack of confidentiality there's federal laws or state laws we do have hipaa we have ferpa i was just on a webinar at the health department today with them reiterating the importance of that that's very very important and the potential discipline for anybody involved in violating the confidentiality when and who will be notified of a positive case general anytime there's a positive number no sorry covet 19 case families connected to the grade or scheduled classes will be notified by email with a positive cova 19 case on campus communication for primary contacts if you are identified as a primary contact the district will work in conjunction with the maricopa county department of public health services who will call you or instruct inappropriate district personnel to call you husd will also send a letter via email secondary contacts will not be notified directly unless the maricopa county department of public health advises husd to notify notification to husd families for primary contacts again they'll be notified by email with the primary contact of awareness exposure communication phone call from the maricopa department of public health services or husd employee and will result in a need to quarantine for secondary contacts they'll be notified through the email positive case on campus for kindergarten through sixth grade that will be grade level and for seventh through twelfth grade that would be the class participants so based off of that student's schedule and they will not result in a need to quarantine again facts that go into every single case but in general speaking i do have a question in reference to the primary contact with secondary students they're in a classroom they change classes and every day there's they're sitting around different people in that same class so how are we going to decide if there's no seating assignment for that particular class i come into this math class every day and there is somebody that tests positive how are we going to know who are the primary contacts with those students sitting next to that student if they change every day because i think this we said how many days it takes like four or five days or something or before somebody you know so president kaler and um board member botovic i wanted so there's a tab in synergy that's our data system that we have for the district and in there it's a tracing tab and so if i go in there and i type in the student's id number or their name or whichever i use it outlines the entire student's schedule for that day and where they were and what students were in that class so for example i tested it and i put a student in from one of the high schools and i had the exact number but 162 165 students that were connected to that student that would get that notification yes the next slide please oh i'm sorry i'm sorry you've skipped i skipped ahead of you and the notification to husd employees the primary contacts will be notified by email with the primary contact of awareness of exposure and communication phone call from the maricopa department of public health services or husd employee and will result in a need to quarantine if symptomatic secondary contacts will be notified through email with a positive case on campus and will not result in a need to quarantine so mrs fulton basically just for to kind of bottom shelf it in a class if the child has been wearing their mask the whole time and there's a positive case that person is considered a secondary is that correct so it really goes to the mask wearing whether you are a primary versus a secondary and so you'll be notified through an email but that doesn't mean that student has to go quarantine but if that student chose not to wear a mask or didn't for some reason i mean that's a whole nother conversation that person would have to go quarantine because they would be primary correct yes president kayla and so again all those facts and so for example in this in your example if we weren't had a classroom and every student was wearing a mask they're all going to be secondary if one student takes their mask off but every other student is wearing their mask that's where the health department and i sit down and literally conversations come down to how long was the mask off how long were they in the classroom before the mask off came off who else was in the classroom where were they before that when did they i mean every situation boils down to that mask so in general to answer your question they would be secondary contacts but there's always things that play into it that i couldn't guarantee that would be the case so to follow up on that question whose responsibility is in the classroom to keep tabs that the maths are on and for what amount of time etc etc so if somebody says on a certain day the student tested positive so is the teacher supposed to be writing this down every day so and so took off the math for 10 minutes i mean who's going to keep track of this and to add this to the teachers in addition to cleaning the classroom and wiping the desk to man to testing to see who's keeping their mask on you know if you can tell me who's going to keep track of so if you call this classroom there's a positive test in the certain classroom and for the secondary and primary who's going to show you the numbers and said okay these two students took the mask off who's going to give you i guess how are we going to how are we going to do that president kaler and board member without i will tell you that everybody is very alert on who does not have a mask on at all times and will that change maybe but right now they can identify exactly who's not wearing a mask and there's a lot of remediation there of put your mask on let's put your mask on and that's going to be what happens as far as who's monitoring it in the classroom it will be the teacher if i guess i'm kind of speaking a little bit for myself thinking about past conversations and dr foley can step in but there's discussion you have the teacher reminding the student you have if that student still won't wear it you have admin come in and help talk to the student about the importance and education of wearing the mask and what that does more than likely will need to talk to the parents and have them on board too i mean it's a team effort president taylor board member with that's one of the most important parts about this is the mass mandatory mask wearing and that there be there that there be scheduled breaks or places where masks are removed where we can ensure physical distancing because really the mat wearing the mask at all times in in places where we cannot physically distance is the difference between a primary and secondary contact and so hence it's going to be really important that that's why it's a policy that we that we adhere to we talked about the fact that um only a um only a iep or 504 would that would trump's uh policy for that because quite honestly that this is such an important part of us having a safe classroom environment with is is ensuring that wearing that mask is is in place um it's essential i'm assuming that we are trying that like we're kind of getting a test run of this and support services and that's how you guys are speaking like how mrs fulton has said that they're reminding the kids to put it on and i'm assuming that's because of support services am i correct this is what's happening at support service like when we're doing support services right president kaler board member wilson yes support services have been a great trial run for masks and i'll tell you that one of the things we've been proud of is our littlest warers of the mass do a very good job one of the things we actually had a conversation with our principals earlier this week was there's the health the health assistant on campus is required to wear uh you know substantial gear from a mass to a shield to almost a hood and um a principal was saying to us you know actually what the requirement of this was startling and frightening to a student and we talked about that there's going to be a great deal of learning that has to happen just like when we did fire safety with our youngest learners being not afraid of the firefighter who's coming in to help you in this gear but how important wearing our gear is to protect us and each other um and and the quality of masks and our social and appropriate responsibilities for wearing those masks you know um when explained to our little our youngest learners and and again etiquette about not touching it as often or all those things are part of the learning that goes along with this but when explained to and explicitly taught to our youngest learners that they are very receptive and very good about adhering to it yes we've had reminders and we've had learning opportunities but again we've been pleasantly pleased with how our students have done we may need to do some reminders for our adults about wearing it over our noses but other than that we've had we've seen on a trial run in our and our support services the mass mandate and again we have situations in special educations and self-contained classrooms where there are iep health reasons these students are not able to do that and there are protocols that are being put in those classrooms in order to adhere and accommodate appropriately there and um just to address i know as a board we have chosen to sit apart we have chosen to keep us spaced apart and so that rule has been very clear to us in this board room that we don't have to put our mask on because we are more than six feet apart from everybody but the moment we walk around in this room everybody puts their mask on we use the restroom everybody has their mask on the district office every time i've come in everybody has their masks on so that is definitely the policy that we are following even here in our boardroom going to the theme of responsibility and understanding one of the things that will happen is when in-person learning resumes there will be an acknowledgement form that will be electronic through through parent view and in follow-up and paper if needed with an understanding for parents to understand how important their knowledge of the health safety sanitation and their their students health wellness is to the safety of all that visitors will be discouraged on campus that face coverings are going to be required and if a face covering isn't a mask it could be a face shield but your child will have to wear a face covering because it comes down to that face mask being the difference between quarantining or monitoring it really matters and and strict adherence to that is going to be really important this idea of these daily screening health protocols that your child is symptom-free yep we do know that asymptomatic um is possible hence the wearing of the mask and the hand sanitation and the and and and physical distancing where master off at lunch time and all those things are going to be essential and important there's going to be processes and protocols that have to be followed on campuses to ensure that we are as safe as possible and that ongoing communication about any health issues will be expected for instance if your child does come to school and your child does have a symptom that is concerning that your child needs to go home just like it says on those exclusion guidelines for 10 days and now again you can come with a negative test just like board member glover was talking about but sometimes it can take a few days to get those results but again we're going to be taking health and safety very seriously because it's important for us to be able to to if we're if we return to in-person learning it won't be business as usual without new protocols and processes in place to ensure safety and wellness where possible now one of the things we have been very direct about from from the get-go is that um physical distancing is not always going to be possible that is one of the mitigation factors that we know we know that hand sanitization that masks that physical distancing are all essential and very very very important um so but the wearing of the mask is going to be essential when we cannot physically distance so there will be an acknowledgement form that will be part of awareness for our community as well as conversations that happen with students about what this looks like in the classroom and there's responsibilities too now does that mean that it will be perfect that does that mean that everyone will adhere to it at all times no this is going to be an ongoing new reality for us when we return to in-person learning and adherence to that will help make sure we are able to stay stay in in-person learning at which point um during any of this are we gonna how are we going to educate our students about this i mean the importance are we going to have some youtube videos for them to watch you know the first couple days of school and to say okay you need to put a mask on this is how you put it on um i was watching one the other day we touch our face 16 times an hour okay and this they were showing even with your mask on at 16 times an hour you still have germs up here and everywhere else and it was quite interesting to watch some of these videos that some school districts are showing that even with children washing their hands they were missing the top section and things like that so they were educating through videos the correct way to wash how to put the mask on it was it's so i mean it's important that we all are getting the same message to everybody on our campuses and perhaps through a youtube video or something but you know i think we need to all have the same message and how to do this and and you know if we're going to um get through this we need to come together as a group and i think it's important the more things that we do to make it fun for our students you know educate them with the bubble man or whatever we need to do but we need to get the information out and it needs to be the same information on all our campuses yeah president taylor um mrs fulton i saw this same mask picture that you shared with us at the banner health asthma office and i actually took a picture of it i found it to be very informative and it helps explain the importance of the mask and dr foley i think you i know you mentioned this just now is that we know physical distancing isn't going to be available in lots of our areas and both the cdc and the arizona department of health services and maricopa county health i mean you put all these health services in and their recommendation is a mask when physical distancing isn't possible so knowing that physical distancing is not going to be [Music] possible in our classrooms all the time in our hallways and things like that in some areas may we might be able to spread out a little bit more and have that physical distancing be able to take that mask break and things like that but um i know we heard multiple times in our public comment tonight the concern about the physical distancing and that is why the masks are so important we recognize and if we could physical distance through the recommendation then that would obviously be ideal but it's not it's not available in our industry it's not available in our schools so it that those masks are going to be very important and i agree mr ritovich we we need to make sure that we're trying to share with our parents how important it is how to properly wash your hands how to properly put your masks on um and do what we can to to do that properly and the sooner we can communicate that and get our families um hopefully working with it i know it was mentioned at our previous board meeting and i know i saw lots of things out there where it's like working on having my kid wear a mask and i've seen lots of pictures even through the meltdowns of the remote learning but they're getting their kids to wear the masks during remote learning to get used to it so um thank you for sharing that and i think that that's a great visual on how this does how important it does prevent the spread of the this virus president kaler thank you well uh thank you got both for your comments and uh mr batovich having been and seen uh around some kids that have gone back to schools i'm impressed with how well they're doing i really expected to hear a lot like put your mask on put your mask on put your mask on because were really good they were really good and sometimes kids are the best of us and and kind of sometimes show us how we should behave but um but if you if now it's maybe a time you know if you want to go back i mean i for me you know i have looked at the hybrid model i think it matches what some of the guidance has said um if you if you absolutely must go back short term i would like to watch other people make any possible mistakes rather than our kids i understand that's wildly unpopular and it would be extremely crazy for everyone but you can establish some routines the kids can learn if they're at a new school they can learn the new school but limiting the numbers in tight spaces i think is so so very important um you know and then there's there's you know there's things like the desks are not going to be set up the way that they're that we're used to the drinking fountains are probably going to be covered and maybe every other table and you know the lunch tables you can't sit right next to your buddy anymore we've got to get a little used to that and so at 100 full capacity asap full speed yeah i'd rather have a little time to to adapt to that but um anyway i this this um this presentation um i don't think it this is not a bag but there's some data you need some data so i want to throw some numbers out um since august over 70 000 children in the united states have tested positive for covet a 21 increase i think that's important to know uh there's been a sharp rise since july the last two weeks of july 97 000 kids under age 19 tested positive the american academy of pediatrics which people like to throw at us released a report at the end of july and guess which state had more coveted cases per hundred thousand than any other state in the country yes arizona you've got it right uh there's about a thousand and ninety-eight per hundred thousand children's we are we are worse or better depending on your perspective uh we're worse than arkansas louisiana and mississippi and that is not great company um arizona has the highest positivity rate for kids it's 17.8 percent so those are numbers that you know i feel like we kind of need to to make some decisions so i just wanted to throw that out there for anyone i'm just going to say though i did read to some of those exact numbers mr mr glover but i do believe the one that with the academy of pediatrics they only they only took nine states total it wasn't all 50 states that they came up with that number i kind of read that later on but i did see the same articles that you are referring to president taylor members of the board one of the things that we've had a theme that we were talking about at several of our meetings and it was asked for us to come back is a little bit about social emotional what how are we connecting with kids because we know how important this is you know what our teachers are amazing and they love their kids and we want to connect with them and sometimes it's hard to do that and they have been very creative and have come up with different ways to do that so we wanted to highlight the work of a couple teachers here in ways that they have been connecting with students in remote learning and they've got some great things happening that connect with the great social emotional support again it's hard to replace what can happen in the classroom but what we're doing is extending to bring the connection through that screen and connecting with individuals in ways that are a little unique and our students have done some neat work in their class so we're just going to share a couple examples again um just just a highlight of some some of the many things that our teachers are doing with our students in the area of connecting and building relationships with them at this time so president taylor members of the board this for me is a success story for sure so when our kids work with us remotely in person or eventually online here we're not just developing academics with these kids there's this whole other side and we call it that social emotional component i like to think of this as the real life skills these are the skills you need to survive as an adult so some of those things include managing your emotions setting and achieving goals developing empathy and the capacity to build those positive relationships with others so next slide please sunny braxtona is one of our sixth grade teachers and she was gracious enough to share this example and i thought about it for a while because all of us can probably we could probably write a diary since march because that's when it really impacted us here and so she's stretching her kids to think deeply and share what's been going on with them she told me today how much the kids are missing school and how they look forward to wednesdays and they want to talk about it all the time so these are some of the questions that she's challenged our kids with how has your life changed for all of us there are a lot of talking points data points changes some things might have been positive and i can sit here right now and say our kids have grown through this their technology skills their ability to persevere problem solved in spite of adversity but then there are those challenges or those changes that none of us were prepared for so i love the fact that she's getting them to talk about their feelings um she told me you know some of them are saying i'm getting headaches oh me too or i have anxiety and i'm worried oh me too so this to me is one of the best things we've been doing it's such an uncertain time and our kids i guess unfortunately or fortunately are developing some lifelong skills or some grit maybe earlier than we would have wanting to wanted them to go through this but there are positive points when i met with my elementary team this week we said we've got to keep doing this when we get back in person we'll do it in person and online and should we stay remote we'll continue so next slide please so it is a critical time in history and i always think about where i was on 9 11.
To blogs like yours through The months need the ink times the descriptions have already spoken, also spoken with their bosses that if they have the advantage of impact they already have to take and not vacations or stop working because they have to help their children, the children socially and emotionally are like they are not considering that, that is not simply not healthy for anyone, they need to go to school, they need to be with their teachers, they need these things, companionship. [Applause] As a community we have a little and I don't have, yes, in the poor decision that both of our leaders have made, my son to enter high school and very athletic, they were late but in the remote interview, he is not going to receive the same education as last year, well, there was little time to decide, but now this year there has been a lot, so why are the guidelines still there, they are fine playing that all the children want to return to school, at least we have to maintain what they want to return to school, please don't change this program, teachers, coaches, those who guide the sports, sports motivates to be better and they will become better, let the children who can in their sports and also return to school, the one that I know is consistency.