now joe we've been monitoring the numbers and i have cara here we spoke as recent as the other day and i'll let her speak but my takeaway from this is that our numbers that we're seeing are going to be our numbers the infection the um the rate of uh actual uh positive rate is about five percent which has been consistent what is fluctuate has been fluctuated has been the um those the the number of uh incidences where it's gone up to 24 25 down to 17 but the overall the overall numbers seem to tell us that we have an opportunity to bring students in because of the because it is consistent um certainly we'd like to see it going the other way a little bit more and this week the report that i have did do that but um carrie you're there maybe you could explain it a little bit better than i am in terms of how we looked at those numbers those cases sure thanks dr sal um so as dr sal said you know we're continuously monitoring this some days uh we go up a little bit some days we go down a little bit i just ran the numbers for our positivity rate for the past week right before i hopped on here and we're actually down a little bit to a 4.2 positivity rate you know this does it changes every day it's rolling i usually do it by week there are you know we're watching very closely how this is what's happening in other schools throughout the whole state and what we have seen is that there's very little transmission in schools so we're watching our numbers closely with with that in mind it's showing that the mitigation strategies put in place have been effective um so even with community spread they're still that's not transitioning into spread in schools our numbers have consistently still been in the moderate range they are looking at addendum 4 which is the metrics for the different levels they are department of public health is looking at that there could possibly be changes based on that because it was developed in june and they've learned a lot since the reopening of schools so we're also looking at that one of the changes that they are making is they're going to a 14-day rolling average instead of a seven day rolling average because it does give a little bit of a more accurate picture so right now actually our seven day and our 14 day rolling average is right around 17 which is in the moderate level so um so one of the encouraging things that's going on is that we're beginning to get actual data from our connecticut schools and i think i shared it with you cara and the team this past week and the transmitting of of the virus among students is something like point two seven percent teaches about point zero seven three percent some less than one percent um and um which which is telling us that that that those expectations that it may um may really cause a lot of infection rates and dismissals is not uh materializing what's happening is what we're reading um the the contact tracing uh relegated to a classroom two or three classrooms students go home for the 14 days rest of the faculty come in and students and they're able to move ahead so um we're collecting that data regularly in fact one of the things that we're doing i've asked the area superintendents to come together with their directors of health and nurses and we're going to do some tabletop on on contact tracing for for uh consistency in the region so um you know uh the reopening was based on that um we will reopen we will open on the 26th buses i think someone asked me about the bus i think it was joe and here's what i keep finding about the buses the buses will have windows open uh some districts have two you know they'll put two or three receipts but they're finding less than 30 percent of the kids that are riding at this point but it seems to be growing uh some districts have reported now uh one that's gone back that was about 60 percent i think one of our buses from what i understand at this point if it stands true we have about the largest about 40 students on that bus at this point uh so we're comfortable with with that um and you heard the work that we've done with the hybrid it's not perfect but it will bring our students in we will have everybody there we'll have a chance to look at our technology with partial students there with our social distancing and as i asked around and we continue to ask who what you're doing what you're distancing i'm finding out with the mitigation strategies three and a half four feet um lunches are pretty much in classrooms for elementary middle and high school or doing the grab and goes with shortened days that seems to be the formula that that that that's been created at this point so as we get students in uh one eye is going to be on do we have to modify the actual program to enhance the learning as we talked about before and then are there things that we can do for the next step and we're looking at the next steps um care um the state has provided some extra funds for and it's very explicit what it can be spent for and that will be for more ppe we're looking at some furniture um we're good we have some tents that you're going to see at the buildings that's for timeout or for mass breaks so we're going to have all of that in line for us uh for the reopening um and my fingers are crossed you know you know phil i want to get our kids back i really feel that um the bridgeports and others are in school our kids are home um i like to get them in um i i i want them to be able to feel comfortable and safe and i think this is a good way of starting to do it so um i'm looking forward to the opening i'll just leave it at that and see if there's any questions oh kathy i'm sorry kathy you're online anything to add to the numbers for the for the board um thank you dr sal good evening everyone um i will just uh echo what kara has said um in regard to the transmission in schools i've had some experience with our non-publics who have been open we have had a couple of cases and in those situations there has been no additional spread of covid in the school it has just been within the community um and i meet weekly with my nursing supervisor colleagues in fairfield county and so for those districts who are either in person full-time or hybrid they're finding the same the reality is we will have cases covet is still in our community but we have our mitigation strategies in place to prevent that spread in school and we're prepared with our contact tracing to do what we need to do to either you know keep it minimal to either closing just a single classroom or a cohort but the good news is the mitigation strategies are working so i'm very comfortable with our reopening on the 26th and i'd look forward to seeing the kids and having them back thanks again my concern is right now is that we get our custodial staff it has not been an easy it's almost like the substitute teachers right uh we're out there recruiting to find our uh our custodians to come in and help so that we have that ongoing um the buses are all set the cafeteria is all set uh the kids will come in it'll be a i call it a grab-and-go breakfast right kathy we we have that going on for the youngsters for nourishment and um you know we're ready to go good thank you are there any questions about the sale from board members kathy thank you again for uh being with us to give us the information that we need and i know it's been a long summer a long journey and we just thank you for always being here to give us the information that we needed to hear thank you again thank you cara thank you kathy for doing their help so um next on the agenda uh board chairperson report i don't have anything to report just want to thank everyone for uh coming in and being part of the meeting to uh tonight and just look at your um calendar and make sure we're getting close to the holidays uh make sure that you govern yourself uh those that are working to have commitments and you know make sure that um did the calendar uh give you time to uh reconcile or do whatever you need to do with your job to be at the meeting because we have a few uh date changes uh are there any board committees reporting none okay we're moving on down the agenda um i need a motion to enter into executive session al actually you know what al's our second ding i'm sorry yes do you have a question now mute unmute yes should we also make the public world we may be returning to public section before voting we will be returning to public section this is uh down here is on the agenda and we'll be using the same link that was for this uh this first public session just so you're aware so the motion carries so we're going to go into executive session we need to vote sorry yes do you want me to roll call or just a collective ex yeah do the roll call okay joe britton yes he's got yes in the chat there rachel celeski aye canetta i gladys cooper yes lauren daley aye joe da silva all right there we go good night there uh catherine hodgson hi um al russo hi amy spolino hi motion curious thank you emotion so careful thank you all okay so we go to the link for the executive session yes
can i start i see uh danny's just getting to a seat and then i think we're good okay okay um judy gary frank can i start did judy hear me june i'm ready yeah i'm ready okay all right call to order the october 15 2020 regular board meeting please stand for the pledge and a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all you may be seated roll call here yep got it miss bassford here miss beltran mr canova mr daley mr casper here mr piscenti here mr smith miss danny here can i have a motion to go into executive to discuss contract matters i'll move forward exactly motioned by mr pacenti second by mr abu drabbo roll call mr abu drab yes miss passport yes mr casper yes mr pacenti yes mr smith oh i'm sorry miss danny yes um this is foreign okay um could we have attendance roll call of board members from executive session here miss beltran mr kelly here here mr pacenti here mr smith here mr danny here next order of business is the mission statement mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to democratic society in an ever-changing world next order of business is the open public meeting statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advance notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy 0168 next order of business is recognition and award presentation of the 20 20 2021 paste county teacher of the year thank you uh madam president i'm going to step off the desk i just need a minute okay miss danny if i could just chime in i think samantha derose is coming with her photography equipment to record this as well okay she's here she's coming down the aisle good evening members of the board of education and the clifton community it is my honor tonight to recognize one of clifton's own miss megan graziano teacher at clifton high school who was recently recognized as the passaic county teacher of the year so let me take a second to put that in perspective of all the schools in passaic county every school has a teacher of the year there are 20 schools in clifton alone every school in passaic county is a teacher of the year all of those teachers of the year compete to become the passaic county teacher of the year there are 21 counties in new jersey megan is one of 21 county teachers of the year in all of new jersey she was then put into a competition to become the new jersey state teacher of the year and i'm extremely proud to say that she finished in the top five of all the teachers in the state of new jersey [Applause] mr graziano tonight we have a small token of our appreciation for all that you do for our children and for our community so if you wouldn't mind joining me up here on this camera if you can squeeze in to the picture with me i'm going to present you with this plaque we're going to take a picture and i'm going to present you with these beautiful flowers [Applause] and if you are if you would like to say a few words you can i'll bring these over to you thank you so much um i would just like to take a second to tell you i am just so proud to be a part of the clifton school community i work with some of the most amazing educators that exist i teach some of the most incredible students in the planet and have some of the most supportive administrators i've ever known and so again i just want to say thank you to of course the board members for all of your support to my administrators my supervisor my colleagues especially the other biology teachers in the department we've always been not just a team but like a family and it's been an incredible time that i've been here and i just treasure the opportunity to work with the students in clifton every single day so thank you very much okay i'll just um right um so thank you very much congratulations uh next order of business is going to be adoption of minutes um can i get a motion to adopt the october 1st regular and executive session uh meeting minutes motion by mr pacenti second by mr abhijabo any revisions concerns cnn roll call yes yes mr smith yes miss danny yes there is no um commit communication and announcements there is a first reading of policy so we have policy 1620 administrative employment contracts mandatory 2431 athletic competition mandatory 2464 gifted and talented students mandatory 5330.05 seizure action plan mandatory 6 64 40 cooperative purchasing mandatory 6470.01 electronic fund transfer uh claimant certification mandatory 7440 school district security mandatory 7450 property inventory mandatory mandatory 7510 use of school facilities mandatory 8420 emergency and crisis situations mandatory 8561 procurement procedures for school nutrition programs mandatory the next order of business there are no presentation of reports from administration advisory committees and special committees we do have several um board committee reports and dr arbitozzi as i understand the student representative will speak during the public portion correct that's correct miss danny and if i could just interrupt you for one second madam president uh mr horn for the members of the public that are in the audience can we turn the volume on that chromebook so they can hear you you might want to move closer but within six feet or further than six feet thank you miss danny okay should i wait a second or or they can hear uh just one second um make sure we have it up and running and we'll start with the first one um passaic county school boards association uh as as soon as um dr obertosi okay followed by policy followed by technology followed by education okay um so vice chairman yes i'll go first oh okay okay that's me yeah okay good evening everybody i attended the passaic county school board association meeting on monday october 5th it was called to order by president judith basford at 6 30 with the flag slate mr dan sinclair the njsba immediate past president said there has been an increase in board members attending uh school board association sponsored meetings because of virtual meetings he said they are looking into conducting hybrid meetings for the future officer applications will soon be out to fill officer positions each officer serves for two full years nominating petitions will be coming out in november and the nominating committee will meet in january or february and nancy schwartz njsba board of directors delegate explained that the new board of directors have been sworn in at the passport of director's meeting ray penny njsba member engagement director talked about the virtual workshop taking place next week october 20th through 22nd all sessions will be recorded and are available for a year there are opportunities to talk with vendors as well as njsba representatives during this time christopher jones njsba legislative advocate presented legislative updates uh three months were added to the fiscal year 2020 due to the pandemic fiscal year 2021 started october 1st and will run through june 2021 reimbursement of extraordinary special education funding increased by 25 million in this year's budget the school-based youth services program received funding in the budget as well the subcommittee the subcontracting bill has passed the senate our bargaining units must be notified during negotiations the coach's contract bill has not made it past the senate as of yet it was going to provide employment protection and a three-year minimum contract for coaches kathy halwa our field service representative discussed the importance of setting board and district goals as well as getting together for board retreats she is more than happy to meet with us to help us get that underway jonathan bush from the bush law group presented on public meeting storm pandemic it seems as if a hybrid model for school board meetings will be the new normal public comments will be taken virtually either emailed or through zoom participation can be up to 50 people indoors for board of education meeting there will be new notice requirements for placing notices on our websites there is a limit on the number of people who can come in person there is a the way you interpret it it can be 50 or 150 depending on how you look at it board members do not count in that limit public comments can be provided through email before the meeting boards may also take text-based comments either on facebook stream twitter or a phone number that can that they can send it to emails and comments must be read during public comments a new nominating committee will be put together to interview candidates for the passaic county board for the passaic county school board association our next meeting is december 7th 2020 and i was appointed chairperson this year for the unsung heroes are there any questions any board members have any questions so i had one yes can you just clarify that 50 150 person rule what was it that they were talking about yes depending on how you read it everyone is saying it's a 50 person limit and we don't count in that count so there's a up to 50 people that can sit in the audience but there is also a count where you can have a hundred and fifty in the audience miss bassford do you know more on that one um no i no i don't know uh joe it was um it's depart it depends on the capacity of your room the size of your room your ventilation system whether you can have the 150 or 50 right now it's 50.
what's up wildcats i'm here to talk to you about video wait yeah [Music] i want to tell you a little story about something that actually happened to me yesterday i went to target to get some supplies for my new classroom and a random stranger decided to ask me what the price was for a particular vacuum or whatever on the aisle i was super confused until i realized i walked into target wearing a red shirt and khaki shorts it reminded me of an important lesson which is that your appearance can very much dictate what people assume about you now obviously wildcats this is not an ideal situation but what we can do during this remote learning time is we can make sure that the work that we submit is our best so that people don't make the wrong assumptions about us number one and probably the most important thing that you can do is adjust the camera lens placement what we're trying to simulate is a conversation and what's one of the main rules of a conversation eye contact so you want to make sure that your camera lens is exactly where your eye line is not too high or else it'll look like people are staring down at you and not too low it'll look really weird and like you're some kind of giant right at eye levels what we're going for number two lighting we're used to seeing people being lit by the sun that's a big light source above us that gets diffused through the atmosphere a lot of fancy words there what it means is try to find a window or something with natural light to light you and if you have a lamp in your room always put it above you not below you putting light below you is basically only acceptable at campfires and the final tip and probably my favorite is depth the general idea is think of the space that you're recording in and try and put as much of that space behind you in the frame that you're presenting to whoever you're sending the video to and that's it wildcats three steps zero dollars huge gains and you will be looking your [Music] best
uh we've come out of closed session and we have four items for action uh as a result of closed session item a is considered action on student suspension appeal uh i'd entertain a motion but the board deny student 20-21-1 suspension appeal and adopt hearing officers findings are packed the board further finds that based on the gregarious nature of the student's misconduct the discontinuing presence at school would substantially disrupt impede or interfere with the operation of the school that the length the suspension was reasonable and necessary and that there were no appropriate and available alternative interventions by karen anderson second high second by gregory connor can you do a roll call vote for me please karen aaron anderson yes tammy hines that's john long yes greg meyer yes yes this issue yes the motion carries on to item b approval of administrative administration wage increases i'd entertain a motion to approve the administration wage increases as presented yes lisa schumacher yes erin anderson yes uh item c is the approval of the suspect agreement for 2020 to 2023 that agreement that we previously discussed in another meeting has been ratified by cespa so i'd entertain a motion to approve of the suspect agreement for the years 2020 to 2023 as presented a motion by lisa schumacher second bye second by tammy hines could you do a little vote for me please yes greg meyer yes yes greg o'connor oh lisa schumacher yes aaron anderson yes great motion carries on to the last item is the approval of extracurricular assignments for jeremy donald volunteer assistant coach 8th grade basketball i've entertained a motion to approve jeremy now in that role let me make that motion motion by john long on the second bye second by karen anderson could you do a roll pokemon for me please bring higher yes scott middleton yes connor mr schumacher yes karen anderson yes tammy hi no john yes motion carries and on to adjournment i'd entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting motion by uh greg meyer second bye yes mr schumacher yes darren anderson yes john yes great the time is 8 25.
all right great uh welcome everyone uh to uh our regular schedule october board could i meeting a uh please karen anderson here tammy hines here john long here greg meyer scott middle camp here craig o'connor lisa schumacher here we have a forum we're going to go ahead and get started welcome visitors um in this time we do have public comments anybody that would like to from the public would like to make a comment and please step on up and state your name and uh three minutes okay my name is cindy mcmullen um i've been here before i was actually a teacher in the district so i think many of you know me i am here tonight to first of all i just want to say thank you to all your hard work um i know with this very very difficult situation it's really been a no-win situation for everybody and i just want to say i appreciate the hard decisions that you've had to make and the situation that you're dealing with i just wanted to let you know that i appreciate all that you're doing with the teachers the administrators and you all so i just want to say thank you before i get started i am here just to try to quickly talk about um one of the resolutions that for the upcoming iasb meeting is resolution two is everybody familiar with resolution two all right cool all right so yeah it basically is talking about if it's adopted the isb would agree to support raising the child safety basically a child access prevention law here in illinois currently our current law applies to minors under the age of 14.
you good evening everyone i'd like to call tonight's board of education business meeting october 15th 2020. uh call to order mr zenski you have a rule for forum please mr grimbo here ms hallett here miss ham here ms harrigan here kelly here here mr white mr chairman thank you ashley we stand for the pledge of allegiance well good evening fellow board members jeff carroll marlene vincent it's good to see you all again here but everyone seems healthy and well knocked on wood uh to our folks that might be watching this evening welcome uh we are meeting town council chambers uh we do a presentation coming up with more esposito from jessica although moore's not here yet um we could move on to audience and standard reports of committees and potentially circle back tomorrow when she shows up sure this is an objection to that so that being said do we still have some audience questions jeff sure and just for the record if folks are wondering you probably have this memorized by now uh but any questions public comments concerns please email them to cpscovit19 at cheshirek12.ct.us and we'll be checking in those emails throughout the meeting so let me just jump into the report to stay in the committee starting with finance mr grippo i hear a step genie yeah oh i'll uh send the report over to mr matiana thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen we did include the finance report as of september 30th in the board's package i will provide a brief summary so september represents the third month of the fiscal year as you see on the report we have completed the largest section of encumbrances which is for the payroll accounts so as of right now our expended and encumbered percentage of budget is about 71.6 percent pretty typical for this time of the year the the only area that we didn't complete encumbrances which we will for next month is the transportation encumbrances which total about four percent of the budget about three and a half million dollars other than the expenses associated with the pandemic which include everything from cleaning uh to buying products to ppe there are no major budget variances that i'm concerned about which is good news and that includes our special ed accounts those seem to be running pretty much in line where we would expect them to be right now you know as far as the covet expenditures this is just you know to provide a further update from last month's report if you do look at page two of the finance report what we were able to do as of october 1st is submit our application to the state for the um the corona coronavirus relief funds if you remember in august we submitted a survey based on that survey the state approved about 700 6 000 in reimbursement grants for the expenditures related to coronavirus and so on october 1st we were able to complete the actual formal grant application and so you know i've outlined uh on on this grid basically those categories where we did apply for the grant the way the grant application worked was that we could only apply for the dollars based on what they approved previously in the same categories in other words the state's not permitting yet moving grants from one category to another so those categories on the personnel section are cleaning ppe health and safety where we were approved for eleven thousand twelve dollars we applied for eleven thousand twelve dollars and we will um we will certainly expend those funds you know primarily for isolation room monitors uh the second category is personnel transportation where the state approved about seventy five thousand dollars i'm not sure we'll be able to expend all those funds because we determined that we don't need as many bus aides as we originally had submitted when we completed the survey and then the other categories were contracted services for cleaning health and safety 457 000 approximately supplies for sanitizing disinfecting as well as some additional furniture and equipment we had to buy for the schools about a hundred thousand ppe for our staff forty one thousand and cleaning supplies were twenty 000 specific to transportation so the good news is we've applied for the grant we're still waiting for some additional details including whether or not the state will allow us to you know if we don't expend funds in one category can we expend them in another but assuming that we uh we received the 706 000 looking at our current expense run rate for these categories and we do need the reimbursement but it will make us close to hole for the expenditures based on what we know today you know based on the current way that we're operating our schools obviously it's only september you know we've got you know nine months remaining in the fiscal year several months remaining in the school year and you know we hope things continue to go you know kind of along the same lines that they're going now things are going pretty well we've only had one day where we had to put one of our schools highland into remote learning so if that continues i think from a budgetary point of view um we'll be okay um i know i promised that at the end of this month we would do a deeper dive into the budget to see are there categories that [Music] we may have to reproject you know and i will do that as as we get closer to the end of the month where i could see all the expenditures for october running out and have the transportation encumbrances done so um long and short of it with the state reimbursement of 706 000 i think we're running just fine budget-wise to this point in the year that is the budget update now if there are any questions i'll be glad to take them um van i just had a quick question on on your um i don't call it cost overruns but uh i guess account uh transfers uh mostly in the uh the maintenance and supply area in the last section yeah because you just explained um what the transfer was about there well you're looking at the maintenance supply 158 000 um against the maintenance repairs of 138 000 i just want to make sure yes okay so just to be clear those aren't transfers those are just where we would expect to be over budget maintenance supply and we would make up the shortfall in our repair line for our buildings and our equipment repair lines of 20 000.
good afternoon everyone uh sorry we're a little bit we're running a little bit late uh we are reconvening our regular board of trustees meeting for october 15th thursday and i'm going to have a roll call of vote not a vote but a roll call uh hello all right mr o'neal are you present mr o'neill maybe he's muted he's present mr jabbar here miss piercy here miss smith president all right thank you and myself uh i'm miranda trejo here and uh we will like to present our new student representative to the board of trustees uh elizabeth o'cea to lead us in the yay lead us in the um flag salute and the uh provided us with a moment of silence elizabeth all right please rise for the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you a forum over the moment of silence i thought it was fitting to give it to mr ginsburg as she was the second female justice of the supreme court being from women's rights one of my favorite quotes of her is my mother told me to think constantly one would be a lady and the other there was to be independent the study of law was unusual for women of my generation for most girls growing up in the 40s the most important degree was not your bu but your misses so moment of silence for her and her work to our country thank you elizabeth and next we have our closed session report uh will the clerk of the board of trustees present the closed session report ms smith thank you 4.1 no reportable action taken regarding public employee performance evaluation superintendent four 4.2 no reportable action taken regarding existing litigation 4.3 no reportable action taken regarding negotiations 4.4 no reportable action taken regarding personnel 4.5 the board of trustees unanimously voted to accept the settlement agreement with employee hr-2020-21-05 4.6 no reportable action taken regarding existing litigation and last 4.7 the board of trustees unanimously voted to approve the resolution agreement with employee hr 2020-21-20 thank you ms smith and at this time again i would like to uh welcome everyone that has joined us um moving on to our student representative report miss ochei last week thursday they had their first rsvp summit and it was very good and was very successful to the point where uh their staff asked them to come in so they could have that exact same experience as the students and also for what they the students said in terms of social they would like to see more bonding events and then for community they just want to see since we are going to i'm sorry elizabeth you're cutting you know from school okay i'm sorry okay and as for the ambassadors with our ochr training as we're moving on to our second day of that we see how essential it is and how we can really operate it in our schools and i think the restorative justice part of it and how we can implement in different ways it's a long-term adjustment for us and it's a long-term success for us and i think that's pivotal for how we're moving forward as a district and two schools i want to highlight tonight is oxfords so i want to highlight oxford student byron meda who has been selected to speak at commonwealth's club center on civics and then also western's positivity week as they've been advertising on social media in an effort to boost morale and spirit thank you thank you so much what a wonderful uh first report for you we're so happy that you're with us and we're very proud thank you okay moving on to our report of the associations uh do we have csea here okay uh asta uh good afternoon um uh good afternoon trustees cabinet and auhd aohsd community my association report tonight will be focused on the district's planned gradual reopening of campuses i would first like to make the board aware of the communication going on between asta and the district as what as we deal with the pandemic and how we are dealing with it together the availability between district leaders and asta members has been commendable and has led to important communication and alleviation of anxiety in a number of areas a primary example of this is a request i made last month to meet with business division for a discussion about the safety of our ventilation systems throughout the district i had collected the newest cdc recommendations about ventilation systems and filtration specifications zora cronin not only had all of the answers to the questions i posed but she had already purchased higher grade filters to meet the new recommendation and had started the installation process another instance involved confusion about how to report covet cases and isolation protocols within 24 hours calls between myself jennifer root diana guyata and the teacher involved cleared up the confusion and helped us refine the process that will be integral to keeping our students employees and communities safe the teacher input group with representation from every site also has weekly meetings with the education division to discuss distance learning and possible ways to improve its implementation as well as the creation of the possible hybrid model when health conditions enable us a campus return our bargaining teams also move forward with the mou process to reopen campuses to limited access following state directives giving students and teachers voluntary access to meeting outdoors in small groups with ppe and social distancing precautions along with this progress that has been made comes an even larger group of questions and concerns that we all know must be addressed before school campuses can be reopened we're going to have to lean on these relationships as we continue to move forward another step in our move forward the district is presenting to the board a gradual plan of tiered return to campuses as health conditions permit asta has been discussing this plan with district leadership and is in complete philosophical agreement with this approach bringing back groups in tears while checking our processes and protocols while also addressing questions and concerns provided by each group of employees is the best way to ensure the safest restart to school when it becomes possible we must have a detailed plan that we all understand ahead of time to ensure a smooth transition tonight's plan is aimed at a january reopening but we understand that all plans are contingent on virus containment and this can be adapted to restart at other times during the year we look forward to meeting with the district to negotiating with them and formalizing the plan for teachers as we make these plans we also hope to find some protocols and procedures in the area of testing having widespread easy access to testing within our school communities is incredibly important we must have a robust testing plan to accompany the tracking process that the district has already implemented we must all continue to reflect as well on the demands being put on our employees and students that are affecting their mental health the district and associations must work harder together to promote the resources that our students and our employees already have available but may be unaware of the mental fatigue in ware is becoming more evident as the year progresses i'm confident that we will find our way through this together as we continue to model the cycle of reflection and re-evaluation of what we are doing to address these issues within our auhsd community finally today i want to bring attention to the asta racial and social justice committee that has begun in partnership with the anaheim elementary educators association our members are continuing to meet regularly to promote inclusivity and make sure that all member voices are heard i am aware that some have questioned the public support by both our association and the district of the black lives matter movement the positive response by asta's membership and active participation on this committee shows the necessity of making our members feel heard and part of our association this is not blind support of any statement by any leader of a political movement but rather an acknowledgement that our institution often left people of color feeling unwelcome and ignored that must stop and we must address this within our association and within our district asta leadership has also just created our first lgbtq committee for members to address concerns uh of that group that are often unheard as a segment of our membership this idea grew out of the district gsa advisors group that supports students and will now be doing the same for our membership we have never faced larger problems with more serious consequences as a school district asta looks forward to being a partner with the district and the board to find our way through this together by providing education working condition and information to our community we will come out stronger on the other side this concludes my report thank you mr schuster uh is uh afscme here okay apga yes good afternoon hi sylvia thank you for your time today i'm excited to be speaking to you all about the good things our counselors are hard at work doing counselors have been teaming up with teachers at their sites to conduct core curriculum lessons which are formerly known as guidance lessons on both synchronous and asynchronous days counselors are also meeting with students who have been identified as at risk of learning loss and providing them with supports to be successful at school in addition the counselors are preparing for our annual district college fair coming up at the end of the month thank you thank you so much all right first time wasn't so bad right alrighty and uh axa i thought i saw hilda here hi i'm here okay do you have a report today i i do uh thank you madam president borah trustee superintendent matsuda executive cabinet and welcome community members students and parents my report today from alta is um for the work of that we've been doing for september and october we're continuing as mr schuster mentioned to prepare our campuses and address the needs to return on gradually on campus we're checking and tying up our systems in place and also checking and double checking our facilities for whatever comes up as the needs are um as in as we see the needs as people are coming back to campus also based on the needs of students and parents feedback as well from our coffee with the principals and just daily interaction with contacting parents we know that there is not a lot of need for social emotional support not just with staff but students and parents so we're continuing to provide some of that on campus and our services are still available and so we're continuing to do that administrators also attended a training by miss dr cruz and so wanted to again uh reiterate that we are continuing our services and we are building our capacity and revisiting the best practices and procedures and protocols for that also in terms of instruction our administrators went to and received a little bit of training awareness of our uci project for science and ngss and some culturally and equity practices within instruction that we look forward to implementing this year also we are as well working with our teachers our counselor teams for the amazing college and career fair coming up and doing all these amazing open sessions with our partners so we look forward to viewing that october 29th in addition uh we are also attending some mindfulness practice through mindkind and also there's a book study so we are really actively engaging in how to uh continue to develop those mindfulness practices so that we are not just uh preparing ourselves but also preparing uh our virtual environments and we come back our classroom so that we are present in the moment and using those practices to create a community within our classrooms and our campuses also uh our our counselors and administrators have been mean uh our um education mr uh mr hernandez has been coming to me uh by sites and we have been uh looking at our counseling services and also we also started our master scheduled task force so that we're looking at how to build better cultures right uh through the master schedule so we're already preparing the work for this upcoming school year i know we just started this one but we're already preparing for the next one and refining our systems in place also just want to reiterate what our student ambassador mentioned how important it is to get the student a voice and and how to better prepare our student leaders to also take some ownership and leave some of these restorative practices in circles within the school sites so they reported back our administrators how powerful that experience was and as you mentioned today is the second day of that restorative practices and also administrators will be attending uh some bias training through oc human relations and many of our sites already have these practices in place and we're putting them in um they're already being implemented uh and lastly uh all of our sites oh almost lastly two more items um every single site is working and developing further supports for students uh in this virtual environment so you're going to see a lot of our english learners have additional support monitoring teams and also extra counseling and at-risk meetings we also have some additional saturday academies provided for language development and also math and then in addition to that we also have some tech workshops for students and so every site has just been really um in intentional about designing supports that meet the needs of students in this environment and so we're actively adding more support services as we get feedback from students on what they need and also working with our special programs to see if parents need additional information or if they need workshops i know some sites are doing parenting nights we're also doing the parent leadership academy to build our parents capacity and so really just being having a team effort of all stakeholders and lastly but not least we are definitely um concerned and want to continue to reach out to students who may not be as engaged in our virtual environment in a virtual learning environment and so administrators are conducting home business and are checking in on students to make sure that if there's something that you know we need to connect with or if there's a reason why they're not connecting that we should reach out to them if we have not been able to do so via phone and so that is my report thank you thank you do any board members have any questions or comments i just want to thank you there's a lot of work that uh people don't know uh you know uh that's going on uh it's not just you know the teaching situation there's a lot of work being done by all of our um all of our employees and uh your reports were uh very thorough and it's a little overwhelming to hear on this side just all of the things that are going on and we thank you so much and we really appreciate all of your dedication to not only the work that you do but putting the extra effort into the associations because you're supporting uh all of the folks in your associations and i apologize for calling it axa it's i don't know where that came from but uh thank you so much uh on behalf of the board um i i just want to take this moment of course thank you everybody for their uh reports but i wanted to thank grant for specifically highlighting the black lives matter movement and the work that teachers in the district are doing so i appreciate you actually making that specific statement to us because i think it's very important to let folks know that that work is very important not only for this district but as a community as a whole so thank you thank you mr jabbar all right and with that uh let's move on to our public comments and uh just uh so the public knows that um comments were submitted online prior to the meeting and they will be read out loud right now by our council and board members cannot immediately respond to the public comments as stated uh so with that um mr weidel thank you trustee randall trejo uh we do have a few public comments this afternoon the first one comes from amber fendrick of cyprus these kids need to be back in the classroom i have an 8th grader and 10th grader who both feel like they're learning nothing and their only focus is to make sure assignments are submitted on time both of them have been experiencing head and body aches from sitting at a computer all day i have caught both of them on their phone playing games or talking to friends during class and i know my kids aren't the only ones doing this this is absolutely insane to me that other schools in cyprus are open but the junior high and the high school cannot are the covid numbers you're speaking of strictly based on school at children at school i highly doubt it let the kids who want to go back to school go back have the parents sign a waiver the parents or kids who want to stay home can stay home this is getting out of control and i know i'm not alone i know teachers want to return as well let the teachers who want to return to the classroom go back as well our children's futures are at stake right now you all need to take this into serious consideration while deciding on how you're going to proceed with the real kingdom schools the second comment comes from cole fendrick also cyprus we should go back to school because all of the problems with online and internet in school i don't have to worry about wi-fi and if there is a problem your teacher can help you fix it also there is no problem in wearing masks most people are okay with that if we go back to school the next comment is from cheryl olson also of cyprus get the kids back to school they are suffering trying to learn by virtual teaching parents should be responsible for keeping them home when ill if parents want them to return sign a waiver continue support and let these kids try to live a halfway normal life think about when you were young and how you would deal with what they are going through other districts are back so why aren't my grandchildren the next comment is from bryn campos uh related to ethnic studies my name is bryn campos a recent oxford academy graduate in the class of 2020.
but we don't count administration doesn't count it's just the people that come out of the audience count the like the people that we have now are for sitting in front of us so we have one two three four five people we can have 45 more members in the audience they have to socially distance but um that's one of the things that they said if you want more clarification you have to give them the size of your room and it's it's a percentage of how many people you actually have in this room i think it's what 850 in this room yeah so we we could actually have more than 50.
and what they're looking for is is encouraging our illinois legislation to raise that to minors under the age of 18. so that it covers our entire school population from kindergarten to 12th grade i know that the the rationale for that is that the data shows that stronger child access prevention laws help to reduce the numbers of suicides unintentional shootings and school shootings that we see and there's a lot of data to support that the iasb the committee the resolution committee has i know they recommended to not adopt this because they said it doesn't deal directly with issues inside a school district and i disagree with that i feel that school districts do deal with school shootings i mean they're called school shootings for a reason because they do happen within a school district are we not requiring our staff and our students to participate in active shooter drills every year are we not spending money to fortify and secure our buildings so that intruders can't get in and all right just last year the isb had a resolution on the agenda to and they supported it the resolution committee supported a resolution that would allow school districts to arm teachers because of school shooting so last year apparently they thought that that was an issue that did directly impact our school district and the only thing that's changed now is their attitude on that so i think that um they're wrong that raising the this is going to be a very minor thing raising the age really i hate doing this i hate talking in front of people but really what compelled me to come tonight was as a former teacher um was the issue not those school shootings are yes are a major thing but suicides are a major thing and i don't know if you all remember but there was a student in 2012 by the name of travis self and travis self in april of 2012 he was a 16 year old junior here at columbia high school and he shot and killed himself i had travis as a student i knew travis he was a very sweet thoughtful caring young man i can remember him coming in he was in rotc and i can remember him coming into my class at the beginning in his the on days that he had to wear his uniform was wonderful uh coming in with his friends laughing they always had interesting conversations they would always come in early and they were talking each other and having a good time and i forgot to bring my shirt um travis one day i just i must have asked him what he was doing for the weekend he was going out his grandpa and he were part of the missouri operation clean stream they were a clean stream team and they were going out to um participate in a stream clean up over the weekend and i mentioned that how i thought that was really awesome and you know i'd love to do something like that that next week he came back he had a t-shirt for me he brought me a t-shirt which i keep and i always think of traps with that t-shirt um travis lived with his grandparents and i know he was very he loved his grandparents especially he was attached to his grandfather they did a lot of things together and in march of 2012 his grandfather died of cancer and i think with everything going on with the death of his grandfather and all the normal things a 16 year old has to deal with it was just too much and in a moment of pain and despair he accessed a gun and was able to end his life now he was 16.
so those were projecting to net out the 158 000 are expenditures related to covet um so most of it is the cleaning supplies and the ppe we're just putting it into one you know category so we could track it more accurately we would be that's probably would be primarily offset by this reimbursement grant from the state that i was referring to but for now because we don't have the reimbursement we are over in that budget category so i'll have to make sure that we don't overspend that budget line as we get through the rest of the year if we don't get reimbursed okay thank you you're welcome um are there any other questions uh if you'd like to continue on to the um medical benefit trust yes thank you we just received late today the updated medical benefits claims from cigna so we were able to produce and and put late in the day today the updated medical benefits report unfortunately september we had a very high claim month of 1.2 million dollars against an expected claim month of about eight hundred thousand dollars so if you um take a look at the report you'll see that our medical trust fund balance decreased by 459 048 this month and the trust fund balance therefore as of september 30th there's 1 million 916 267.
i am submitting this comment because it is imperative that auhsd makes ethnic studies a graduation requirement living in such a diverse district it is absurd that a form of ethnic studies is not already a graduation requirement and speaks volumes about the values and priorities of the auhsd giving students the opportunity to learn about others is something that is essential in order to create well-informed citizens the only class that truly teaches us about our world in quotes is us history the reason i put our world in quotations is because for many of the students taking that class the curriculum is not written from the perspective of their world these classes are taught from the perspective of the white man oxford is a majority asian school and the only asian american history we learned was that of the chinese exclusion act and internment camps asian history in the us extends far beyond these two events and this large racial group should not be defined by these two historical events a uhsd as a whole has an overwhelming mexican and latinx population yet there is little to no mention of any significant latino history black history is also lacking with the focus being on slavery and civil rights with little or fleeting dimensions of black accomplishments such as black wall street or the impacts of black culture on mainstream society auhsd will continue to be a hypocritical and ridiculous body until it lives up to its goals of creating informed citizens by informing its students about the world they actually live in one radically altered by the actions and progress of its racial minorities make ethnic studies a graduation requirement the next comment is from tracy ahui of cyprus i'd like to state my opinion about the reopening of the auhsd schools i have three kids one at cyprus high one at lexington and one at vessels in cypress school district my husband and i both work outside of the home the distance learning model is simply not working my high schooler is doing okay and is more motivated to attend school and do what she needs to do to get things done my middle school is on middle schooler is almost the opposite he's very distracted and yes we've taken away phone xbox etc and has numerous absences usually because of wi-fi issues issues he is not engaged in the learning experience at all my third son who is going two days per week at cypress school district is doing noticeably better since returning to campus why can't this happen for auhsd what is being done now is simply not working distance learning is not working my high schooler is up at 8 am and does not go to bed until almost 11 p.m or so working on schoolwork she is constantly in her room working on assignments and doing what is necessary for teachers and they are being held to the same grading standard and attendance standard as if they were actually attending in-person school how is that fair every family is different i am not there to monitor them every hour of every day there are some stay-at-home parents who can do this but unfortunately for those of us who can't it is a huge disadvantage for kids how is auhsd okay with this the school board needs to think outside of the box what about setting up classrooms outside what about splitting the hybrid days in half two or three days at four hours each i fear that my eighth grader is going to fail he is overwhelmed and as much as i sit and help him night after night he is not motivated stressed overwhelmed and has lost the drive to do school work why can't the people who are okay with their kids returning let their kids return and those who aren't comfortable returning let them continue distance learning if los alamitos district has figured it out why can't auhsp why not learn from those that are successful we are failing these kids not only academically but socially mentally and physically cypress high and lexington should be able to return why does it have to be all or nothing for the school district if the numbers are high in anaheim and santa ana then those schools continue to stay closed but cyprus is doing well and should be able to open i am very concerned for my kids and i'm sure i'm not alone the next comment comes from kay engels also of cyprus once the parent survey is processed and it is determined the number of students returning with the hybrid model be revised to accommodate more in-person instruction if numbers allow second with no vaccine available what is the difference going to be in second semester versus allowing students to return why use a standard approach to a district of this size and using testing positivity rates of adults and that is the final public comment that we received thank you carl okay moving on to our presentations 9.1 our mental health report with dr adella cruz yes great what do you mean president um anne-marie trihole board members cabinet and community agency community thank you for having me here today to present on our current mental health efforts so i'm going to attempt to share my screen so please spare me before go with me for a few seconds here we go let me know if you guys can see can you see the presentation yes perfect okay so i'd like to i'd like to start by putting the issue of mental health in perspective as it relates to schools um you know i i'm hoping that at the end of the presentation it's clear why this work is so imperative within the school community so as as i move along to the through the presentation for for all of you to please keep in mind the the 50 of youth with mental disorders that do not receive treatment so that's going to help us again with keeping perspective why school-based mental health services are so important so when we talk about mental health oftentimes that term is used interchangeably to need mental illness and although those terms are related in many ways they do mean different things when when we in behavioral health talk about mental health we're talking about an individual who you know who is able to function productively in society regardless of the role in society generally have healthy relationships are able to build and maintain healthy relationships and they can't they can adapt and and cope um with adversity an individual with a mental illness which is what what i'm going to be referring to throughout the presentation is someone who already has a diagnosable mental health disorder um significant complications with the way that you know that that that person processes information um their emotions and their behavior and it usually um it leads not all not always but it leads to problems in functioning in society whether that's at school whether it's at work in the community at large within the school community when we look at these efforts you know comedy we we talk about the social emotional that spectrum we talk about it in terms of mtss or multi-tiered systems of support in behavioral health we look at health in a spectrum we look at individuals who have maximum health or mental health individuals who have minimal mental health these are individuals who may be at risk and then we have individuals who have minimal mental illness and critical in that area are intervention early identification and intervention services and then we have individuals with maximum mental illness again these are individuals with a diagnosable illness within the school setting you know looking at mental health and mental illness involves those tiered systems as we are we're all familiar with right certain things that we do for all youth things that promote and maintain mental health um students in the middle who may need some some intervention in group um or individual intervention that we have our most severe um issues that's a few kids so generally speaking within the school community as as is within society most people have health most people have physical health and only a smaller portion of the population has illness and the current data tells us that one in five or one in six youth will develop a mental health disorder um 50 of those usually begin before the age of 14.
guerras miss gutierrez could you check into that and get back to the board on that because i could have sworn at the governor's hearing today that he said any municipality um council people whatever they are counted in the count of the room i'm positive he said that at his hearing today now maybe i know i know jim he said that but this is the law that came out two weeks ago that's why i'm just trying to get a clarification here so we have the right stuff here yeah i could um do that and check into um you know the legal or you know just for clarity because we just have two opinions at the moment nothing i don't i don't know whose is right i have no idea sorry i was muted i apologize uh yes we'll look into that to clarify in the process i'll also find out from the business of from the business administrator about the capacity for this room but yeah i'll get you some clarification on that thank you any other questions congratulations mr casper um madam vice chair basford for policy yes uh the policy committee met at uh 6208 on october 13th 2020 attendees were myself uh board members joe konova frank casper and jim smith from our administration dr danny robitazi mark teigen luis ross and also president was the intern rachel harrington the agenda it was very very full it included discussions of the following straus ismae mandated policies that committee uh recommends for the board to adopt number one 1620 administrative employment contracts number two 55305 seizure action plan number three six four four zero cooperative purchasing number four six four seven 0.01 electronic funds transfer and claimant certification number 57440 school district security number six 7450 property inventory number 78420 emergency and crisis situation the committee also discussed the following policy and recommends the adoption of said policy with changes and choices indicated in the markup copies provided to the full board number one twenty four thirty one athletic competition number two seven five one zero school use of school facilities number three eight five six one procurement procedures for school nutrition programs two further policies were reviewed and discussed by the committee which offer the following recommendation number one 2551 adult high school the committee will send this proposal to the education committee for further discussion number two 2464 gifted and talented students the committee recommends changing the strause's main designated language of gifted and talented to talented and gifted uh wherever it appears in the proposed policy thus keeping in line with the uh non-clemature and used in our district literature in addition to the policy discussed chairperson bastard myself provided the committee with literature and suggestions to commence the process of drafting a new policy addressing the onboarding of new board members commissioners straus says they will be consulted to inquire if a model policy exists to aid the committee in drafting the new policy to present to the board the goal is to have the new policy approved by the end of the calendar year the meeting adjourned at 7 13 p.m and mr ross so respectfully submitted the minutes any questions thank you madam vice um chair do any of the board members have any questions okay um see none mr canopa technology the technology committee board meeting began at 5 pm attendees were myself vice president ms judy basford board members fahim abu jabbar frank casper administrators dr danny robertozzi mark teigen janina kusalevich heather rotolo eric mountain and guest were rachel harrington item one administration approved the chromebook provided a chromebook update 399 chromebooks have shipped and hundreds more are configuration being prepared for shipment the remainder of our may order has been officially allocated to clifton and is queued for configurations as well action informational number two administration provided a security camera update installation for the island building and transportation bus garage security camera system is complete and tied into the chs ccms woodrow wilson middle school system action informational 3.
and his i read that his grandfather was an nra member which to me indicates he knew about gun safety he was aware he was probably very concerned i'm sure he trained he taught his grandchildren about safe gun handling and safe gun storage but the law only applied to kids under the age of 14. travis was 16. he was a very dependable reliable stable kid so the law didn't apply to him but i wonder if it had if his grandfather might have taken there might have been extra precautions that they might have taken that he would not have been able to access that gun if the law had been for kids under the age of 18.
that gives us about 2.4 months in reserve you know this is certainly a concerning trend that we're seeing so far this year where the trust fund balance we we've run through about a million 53 000 of it most of what we're seeing are relatively high claims not hitting the 175 000 stop loss layer yet but trending that way we we know that we've had quite a few employees you know that have severe ailments again not covid um quite a few surgeries that employees are have been out for including as as we've gone through the first couple of months of the school year so you know i'm certainly hoping the trend subsides we know that come january we start a new hsa claim year and employees will have to meet their deductibles you know before hitting our claims pool but it is a concern i you know i think that we'll have to keep watching it over the next couple of months if the if the size of the claim subsides you know we'll certainly be okay to get through this year but i think what i would say is an early indicator is that as we prepare the 21 22 budget you know we will need to increase the medical benefits fund contributions so that you know we'll we'll start to have a more adequate reserve as we go forward so we'll cross our fingers and and hope for the best as we go forward but this was uh this is probably the worst budget news we we've had so far this year so at least we have a reserve to cover us any questions just a comment just can't seem to catch a break uh because in the operating budget so far you know based on the opening school year where we are with the state reimbursement with cobit costs we're looking okay not spending you know we put caps on so kind of you know knock on wood okay for now but on the flip side the benefits trend is not changing so go figure but we'll keep a close eye on that i don't know hopefully 21 is a better year on all counts um are there any other questions or comments um before i uh turn it back over um uh ben i just wanted to uh commend you and your team i know last month you were uh reporting that um that the state was making it difficult to be able to categorize our expenses for reimbursement for this grant and it looks like that uh your you and your team have solved the problem so congratulations on that we've really really been able to qualify a lot of the expenses for for reimbursement so that's that's great news um thank you yeah i think that's all so thank you so turn it back over yeah and uh tim joined us welcome to them i just uh we were just giving more some time to get here maura welcome i am as always thank you now don't be we've got plenty to talk about um for better for worse so we went to stan report communities reports so i had to get back to number two the presentation i thought that morris here uh we're gonna keep it here the rest of the next three hours or shorter hopefully we get this i'm gonna some more whenever you're ready yeah we're happy to hear you and then we'll get into audience i told jeff today unfortunately i haven't had a lot of time to prepare a lot of stuff i'm sorry it's been just really crazy um but i did send over some information um especially i wanted to indicate to you the update as to where our covet cases are in the age groups we are up to 228 cases um in the community so i created just some bullet points i figured you'd probably have more questions uh to ask me um because there's just we've been moving so fast um chespercott has been contact tracing since march 26th we've interviewed over 496 cases 228 of those were in cheshire our last residential um fatality was may 27th so that i'm very happy to report that we are not having the fatalities that we had at the beginning of this crisis we have worked very hard with our two nursing homes um this we also work with our group homes we have an outbreak last week we've been seeing the trends again in the beginning of the pandemic we saw those trends being in the older i get scared when i use that word older because i don't know how to i don't want to offend anybody um but now we're seeing about 20 to 40 year olds that's the age group the past two weeks we've conducted contact tracing for close contacts that exceed 275 people so that means we have a positive person and who have they come in contact with um we've assessed all walks of life businesses restaurant salons i don't want sports camps you name it we've been in working with them we've trained and worked very closely with all the schools private and public your nurses have been tremendous through this it has been a rocky road for sure but i'm getting less phone calls daily so i know they're getting it um you know but we expected that at the beginning it was going to be a little rough but now they're they're understanding um what is required of them um we have been experiencing the positive cases infiltrating into the school systems it's in all i do three school districts three school systems i have region 16 which is prospect and beacon falls cheshire public schools and i also have wolcott public schools you are not alone what you are happening here is happening in my other two so um and i can tell you also talking to my peers it is also happening there um you will also see the governor release tonight his new map and of cases and cheshire is on uh the high rate not the highest but what i can tell you is that i am seeing probably about three weeks ago there were some very high um publicized positive cases in waterbury um from high elected officials and unfortunately that resulted in a lot of their co-workers and they all many of them reside in our community and that was where a lot of these cases are coming from right now um again as i say my staff is really small there's only seven of us plus our two admins um but we have and none of us have taken any vacation or any time off but we continue to be dedicated to this pandemic um for both our community and everyone else um i did want to kind of go over what has happened in the cheshire public schools i don't know if jeff did i take your limelight away not at all okay um we did have a positive student in highland elementary school it was a very swift clean principal um jeffrey was really great to work with and working with the nurses we quarantine 20 students 20 from the class and eight from the bus and one teacher it's very very and as we keep getting more and more cases we're getting better at this um the dodd middle school we had a one positive student we quarantined eight students from the class and the case did not ride the bus and i do know that you may hear you know why didn't i do the whole classroom every case is is very specific and we need to look at many different parameters of what situation happened and so in that case the child had kind of come into the school was it didn't bring the proper notes the nurse acted as she should have and quickly removed the child so therefore the child was not in that room for a very long period of time and so i did not feel it was necessary to do everybody but only those things those kids that were close in proximity um but i wanted to give you a real life example because it really is kind of um sorry interesting when you start being able to connect all the spider webs to find out who is the spider um so i had one positive adult this one positive adult resulted in two positive kids his two children it resulted in 20 classroom students being quarantined seven teachers quarantined 11 from the bus 10 soccer kids 8 football and 12 basketball lo and behold one of the football also got ill from this child which resulted in another 70 quarantine and two teachers that was really challenging so um but it is real so a total of 140 people have been quarantined in region 16.
critical to to the promoting and maintaining a mental health is all the work that's happening at tier one and this is where where our teachers and our school counselors are doing amazing work um in in the area of you know um social emotional learning classroom lessons all of the curriculum that's currently in place that everybody's working with our teachers and services to our teachers like mindfulness all of these things are so important for promoting and maintaining behavioral health we and and mental health see that the way that i translate we see we see it in and looks a person looks like you know they're they're resilient they have agency um they're able to manage and cope that is that is what this translates into i oftentimes like to refer to it as grit right a person that's able to manage and cope with life but it takes work it takes teaching kids especially the younger they are right we need to do um teach and teach them how to um identify their emotions how to manage their emotions how to build healthy relationships but i connected to the community having healthy relationships so i want to stress the importance of this work because when we do this right and all the work that we're doing when we do this right that means that we have less children who are um in crisis less children who are developing mental illness current efforts and suicide so suicide prevention and intervention and postmention resources within a school you know are are critical in identifying um students who are at risk of suicide and where not everybody who has a mental illness will develop suicidality or or will be at risk for suicide but we know that the majority of individuals who die by suicide had a diagnosable mental illness and it's usually depression so so work within the educational system and social prevention is so important in finding and identifying students and then linking them to the society and in an effective and in a comprehensive suicide prevention program everybody plays a role everybody plays a role in keeping students safe and that is so true when it comes to social prevention we are all gatekeepers and depending on our role that's how we're going to intervene so every year at the beginning of the year um we remind all of our staff you know teachers and staff how to identify what does that look like when a student is at risk and then what do you do to whom does a referral go to when you identify a student at risk when we need to respond to a crisis or when we need support we would leverage our community partners in this case it's um orange county department of events crisis response network there are there are critical and strategic partner for us not only in the response but anything that happens in the community that we're not aware of they work very closely with the coroner's office and they communicate with us immediately as we get that information that we have a student who has suffered a traumatic traumatic event in the community where whether it's a death an accident anything that happens to communicate to us we leverage the our eap crisis response services they have been absolutely um incredible in helping us anytime you respond to a school for due to a death of a staff member a colleague or a student we bring a clinician in who's there to support our teachers our counselors our staff anybody who needs that level of support they're there to support our employees while we and the team support the students so they have been for the past three years we have been leveraging those services we have formal agreements with community agencies like chalk where you know student was hospitalized and upon exiting the hospital they communicate with us that the student is is leaving the hospital and they want to do the warm handoff um so that the student doesn't get lost in the transition so again i'm just trying to highlight how how suicide prevention really includes everybody and everybody's doing such an amazing job i have to stress that everybody our administrators our counselors social worker psychologists everybody is responding accordingly right especially right now and you know everything that we're doing virtually it's it's that much more difficult but they're stepping up to to the call and responding as as best they can and you know i was recently at a two weeks ago at a be well meeting be well orange county um is a non-profit organization who is charged with improving the mental health systems in orange county and they have four areas that they are um focused on um in the county one of them is crisis response and the conversation that we were having is is really in the community trying to create a system where that individual in crisis is identified early and somebody follows them through the journey and that journey being that risk assessment the hospitalization the exit from the hospital the follow-up care and that linkage to critical services when somebody goes when somebody's in the hospital that's not considered a treatment that's considered a crisis response geared towards stabilizing that individual temporarily trying to figure out what's going on and making into services so as we were talking you know i i started presenting our model and it's really what the community is trying to to replicate and i just wanted to make sure that i highlighted just how important um our [Music] work is not not only for the student but it serves as a model for what is for what we want to do in the community at large to support um efforts in preventing suicide one of the you know our last frontier when it comes to mental health is really strategically leveraging our youth who are so eager to help in mental health prevention um you know they're they're doing projects across the district they're doing things to raise awareness to they're asking how they can get involved and help so we we are working currently with ocapica who has funding through the healthcare agency to focus on suicide prevention with with youth who will design develop and implement suicide campaigns across the district and we currently have a cohort of 40 students who are eager to um take on this role in helping us in in the area of prevention for suicide and we already had a couple of meetings with them and it's moving along so they have the funding um we have the desire we have the kids that are eager and again this is our last frontier in terms of suicide you mentioned and we already have this um going when we're talking about kids with minimal and maximum mental illness so so again the spectrum everything is important but right now i'm going to focus on children who already have psychosocial issues and and within that that is also expected there's different levels of care so i have to obviously highlight the great work our psychologists are doing in supporting children who are already in special education who have been identified and they go through their evaluation process who have a mental illness and they service them on a weekly basis either individually or in group and or they're connected to our community-based mental health services um commonly referred to as firms our our team of social workers we currently added um six more social workers were in the process of bringing somebody else in um to support the efforts for for them the the team has successfully transitioned um to offer telehealth services and and our services really require assessment linkage to community-based resources because we don't want to duplicate services so as much as possible we need to connect um families and students to the community services that they are already eligible to and then we whenever whenever whatever time we have available we use that time to serve kids who are not um linked those are under 50 of children who have a mental health disorder who are not successfully linked and they do that through either group individual treatments or interventions we are building our targeted case management services for students who are high risk these are kids who are children who have suicidality and we're in the process of stabilizing linking them to the community so they can get mental health services children who are living out in the streets children who are runaways children who have that severe mental illness like psychosis severe anxiety depression so it's targeted case management meaning we facilitate an assessment we determine what that need is and it has to be individualized because we can't we can't connect somebody who has psychosis to the same provider or somebody who has perhaps severe trauma or anxiety it really has to be individualized any work that we do with children has to involve the caretakers if we're working in silos only with kids and not bringing in the parents and educating parents on what it what their child's depression looks like what their child's anxiety looks like we're not helping with the student we have to make sure that we work with the parents educate them give them the resources that they need to support the child at home make sure that we're doing warm handouts to the community and oftentimes this is the challenge right um connecting families or helping them navigate the systems that are so complex even for us you know you've been doing this for years but that work is is very incredib um very important there are cases just for everybody to know there are cases where we may work with students because any any child who's 12 and older can in some situations consent to their own mental health services so we're trying our very best to meet that need within the law we're trying our very best to meet the need um our social workers are working very closely with counselors and psychologists they're working with teachers on individual students so again this this work is is very important to support those kids who who have minimal to maximum mental illness but we're not able for to connect them or we're in the process of connecting them to the community so important work in reducing the stigma we have for the past three years been delivering mental health workshops we continue to deliver parenting um parenting classes so the mental health workshops serve as that awareness piece is just psycho-education on mental health disorders what do they look like what is what does it look like in children what are services what are the best treatment options and then you have parenting skills which is really building up the parents ability um to maintain healthy relationships with the teens it's really about the healthy relationships and understand sometimes we need parents to understand normal adolescent development when parents don't understand normal adolescent development that oftentimes becomes a crisis so when we come in and we provide psycho education they realized okay that's normal for them to be doing this i shouldn't be making a big deal about it educating them about research resources in the community and then really supporting those parents who have children with mental illness and that's a that's a an area where those of us in behavioral health um try to focus especially with minors again like i said earlier if we're not doing that work with the parents we're really not doing best practices with students or youth because the parents are the primary caretakers for for children obviously ongoing efforts we continue to um build um workshops and presentations for teachers our social workers are our work with the site teams and you know depending on where they are with their work they develop presentations for for the sites right now the work with with our teachers is reminding them about the referral process reminding them about what you know when do you refer a student in crisis versus general mental health we recently facilitated a suicide prevention training we had 220 participants administrators counselors psychologists social workers staff who came to a four-hour training on social prevention we started doing presentations on trauma-informed and responsive um practices and looking at trauma in universal ways we facilitated the training for all of our administrators and and i added foster youth because that we're we're doing we're rolling out our lcap recommendations and as we visit the sites we are we are presenting that information through that trauma informed lens and really understanding what is what does it what is it like for the child to live within the foster care system and how do we as schools play a huge role in helping them with that stability and how we how we work with them matters because we know that they already have um trauma we facilitated we brought in a community partner who is offering mental health first aid for free we were the first ones to jump on it they have they have funding for one year and we train to 70 of our staff and what mental health first aid does it's it's really for the non-clinician it helps that person talk to somebody who is in a crisis or has a mental health crisis it really puts us at ease as adults and how to talk to somebody what to say and what not to say and we have a request for more trainings and we're currently working on bringing that back in january um you know in in terms of telehealth because we as a district i think we we we jump on what we can do differently and how we can continue to service our kids we went all the social workers went through telehealth certification this program is not going away for us once we come back to school it's going to stay and we're going to utilize it and leverage it to continue to connect with students who are not engaged with school and use it when we can't go on a home visit for example connect with kids that way as we work with them to transition back to campus so in in behavioral health this certification is important if we're going to deliver the service so all of our social workers have gone through the certifications about a 20-hour training that they did online we're going to continue with training for our social workers and psychologists on evidence-based practices dbt is a is a is an intervention is a very specific intervention um that is that has shown effectiveness in working with children who are in crisis um these are your kids who are suicidal right they have suicidality so it has shown a lot of promise in that area so we're bringing it in and training all of our school social workers and psychologists um on that training it's a pretty lengthy training they spread it out for us so that it doesn't take too much time so there's eight modules but um they're all pretty excited about about that training they've been asking for it um strategic community partnership as a district we have a lot of partnerships in place but a few of the of the partnerships that we have that are really important for our work um a new one the most recent one is chalk and you know aside from them letting us know when when kids who are in the psychiatric unit are released they have agreed to partner with us and support our efforts in meeting the needs of children with mental illness which includes consultation services um training for our social workers and psychologists you know and serving that child who has that severe mental illness you know an area that oftentimes the community doesn't really understand is that school districts on a day-to-day have to manage and support children with mental illness it's not just we connect them and they go they go to that treatment once a week with the provider they come back and they're on campus every day so i try my very best to communicate to them that that that teachers staff administer administrators they're they're trying their very best to support children with mental illness we need a community to come in and help us and help us strategize and how to support children with severe mental illness who by the way we're still mandated to educate and as we should um so so it's it's beginning to you know work in our interest when when we have these conversations with the community the orange county healthcare agency is currently we have an agreement with them at a formal mou where we can um access all of their services and they have parenting workshops and some of our sites are taking advantage they've given us three clinicians at three of our junior highs that they provide one-on-one psychotherapeutic services among other services that they have um as i mentioned earlier catholic is a current strategic partner to help us in suicide prevention we continue to work with western youth services as our main provider in the community those services are free to us they are our region provider they are funded by the health care agency to offer um mental health services early prevention and intervention services to our region which means us and we continue to partner and connect with with community agencies based on the needs of the student so if the child has severe trauma they're linked to providers that that deliver trauma-focused therapies if the child is homeless until we connect them to a homeless service provider our local universities are partners that are very important because they bring in they give us interns that support everybody's work the counselors psychologists um and of course the social workers we currently have 20 interns supporting our social workers on each one of our sites ongoing um county-wide efforts and all of these most of these are funded through the mental health services act these are these are monies the millionaire tax their monies specifically for mental health services early prevention intervention so orange county department of ed is getting ready to roll out their program they recently were awarded a grant where they have now hired and are training seven mental health coordinators who are going to work whether with their designated districts to help districts build their own mental health services or programs if you will um another agency that received funding from the health care agency is the center for allied resource solutions and they are working as well with with all school districts to support them in building their mental health services i serve on the steering committee to help um with the work that we're doing to give um best practices ideas and just to support other districts and that work the be well be well orange county is working with an entire district all non-profit private school districts um and in supporting mental health efforts in in again like i said earlier six different areas and these areas include i'm going to have them here area one is reducing stigma area two is um prevent and act early i i represent the district on that one um three is closing the treatment gaps and improve access four is to strengthen crisis response and again i serve on that committee five is establishing community wellness hubs and six aligning partners policies and programs when we went on long distance learning um and and facilitated a training on welfare checks for for everyone we made sure that we added information on eap services for our teachers we wanted to make sure that they had information about what services for free they had in the area of self-care resiliency and other supports you know that they may need and and anecdotally we received some really good feedback from our educators that they really appreciated that we took the time to say to them we also care about you it's not just about our teachers we um working with eap currently um i've asked them to we have 20 hours that we can use for pd so they're currently working on building self-care workshops and from that we're going to determine the need to do more um specific groups and and this is important for one reason because just like kids we have you know in the adult population doesn't matter where we go in general adults with minimal to maximum mental illness and it's the same because there's still stigma in mental illness unfortunately so sometimes if if we are suffering we're suffering in silence and we may not know how to reach out or when to reach out but we may not know if we're ready to it you know so the more we talk about specific services that are available and we remind those folks who need the help hey just a friendly reminder this is how you can access this that is that is very critical for for that individual who has minimal or maximum mental illness because it serves as a motivator for them somebody cares somebody is interested you know i'm gonna i'm gonna try it i'm gonna try and see what happens so that's very important for all areas of prevention as well so we we have our mental health task force that's moving right along and we have representation from all of our groups we have just to name a few of our community partners that are on the mental health task force we meet once a month and we've separated we've created five groups um the most important ones here right now that are doing really good work are group two and group three um where we are looking at all of the efforts in tier one and social emotional learning and we we want to as a district um develop our own framework we don't want to bring any new standards or anything else we just want to have our own framework and if it means that we need to bring in training to understand what is social emotional learning how does it connect to mindfulness how does it connect to restorative practices how does it connect to trauma um so i reached out to ocde who who has those resources to kind of help us come in and develop that framework and align all of the all of the things that we're doing and then bring in training um if necessary we are as as most school districts right now and talking to the community looking at implementing a screener at seventh and ninth grade and again this is important for the early intervention if we find students early then we can mitigate prices we can prevent crisis from happening because we find them early we connect them to services and in the other groups you know self-explanatory we're engaging youth in that suicide prevention and our ongoing efforts with parent involvement and engagement this year um effective july the state is allowing school districts to bill um for services outside special education or outside eap so if you have a mental health professional who's employed in the district we are able to bill for in-person or telehealth services and we started this year um we're just you know we're troubleshooting with with the system it is it's you know if you haven't worked with medical billing you if you have i'm sorry you would know just how complicated that is i used to do i used to do that in the community and there's a lot of paperwork but but we're moving right along um where we're in terms of the funding you know making sure that we're building accordingly with students so we bill for general assessments anytime a child is assessed we bill for treatment services and if you're seeing the child two or three times a week we can bill for those three times so there's no limits in terms of how often we can bill for the service that we provide that specific child they do have to be medical eligible and the systems are already in place with that and as i have to say that sys has done an amazing job in that area already within their programs we're just adding um the general mental health services onto the services um that already exists so current data just to give you some quick numbers in terms of what's happening right now so since august to the end of september um we received a little bit under a thousand referrals for mental health services um and this is this is a number that's only for the social workers we had 28 hospitalizations and we have about some 75 students who we're working very closely with to make sure that they don't fall through their cracks that they're that they're being connected or checked in on make sure that you know we don't we don't have any more crisis or anything out of the ordinary happen when it comes to children's human when it comes to children with mental illness i have to say that we're always always considering working with specialty services to make sure that we don't miss childhood or any of those things so those are efforts continue with with our group and that ends my presentation let me exit and i'll take any questions or comments and i'll stop presenting wow thank you um mrs this was the really anticipated um we've been waiting a while but uh this was uh well worth it thank you um board uh we'll just go in in order um mr o'neal do you have any questions or comments i don't think we can hear him he's talking but we can't hear him okay when you get that figured out brian we'll we'll come back around okay uh mr jabbar you have any questions or comments yeah mr o'neil are you good i think he's trying to figure out how to yeah we can't hear you all right uh well first of all thank you very much [Music] very comprehensive uh report there i think you know this is this is one of the reasons that i asked for the report is because i think it's important for a hopefully community folks are watching too is that you know the district puts a lot of time and effort into making sure that uh the mental health of our students is taken care of so i'll start off with the last slide i'm gonna look at my computer here so the last slide you mentioned between august and september you had 927 number of youth that our team of social workers have connected with uh and 28 number of youth hospitalized uh number of youth who have presented with severe mental illness and all of this was handled by how many social workers we have um 17 social workers and we're adding you know plus the additional temporary social workers that we've added but yeah temporary social workers are coming in so it's like the 17 who are pretty much taking care of it but i i want to highlight if a stupid student is being hospitalized what do we have to do so so and in that flow chart that i showed in terms of the journey right so if we identify as child that's at risk where is that child identified so we have the system in place whether it's a teacher or a company so then we facilitate a risk assessment and determine whether the child needs to be hospitalized and if and if we determine that the child has an intent to harm themselves we have to call it the cat team or we do a welfare check the child then is is hospitalized you know 72 hours sometimes kids need to be hospitalized longer because they're very unstable or they go into a crisis shelter because they're very unstable and then the the the discharge people when you exit the hospital that is the most crucial time so our efforts involves working with the family while they're in the hospital making sure that they let us know that they're exiting so that we can do a warm hand-off so that we know and and connect them to services we want to know or obtain copies of you know any diagnosis any medication that have that side effects all those things and then the linkage between the underlying reasons why the child is suicidal because all of that is just to stabilize but the linkage that's most crucial crucial so that we don't continue to have crisis and then to obviously take care of the child who's suffering they're they're there there's psychological pain which is what what we describe it as in mental health right and these are numbers for august and september correct so august 1st through september 30th the students started since we started receiving referrals right okay so the other question that i had was we obviously had like students that we knew who were being referred to or actually under our supervision under our social worker supervision before we went into the pandemic have we or did we have a plan or do we have a plan or have we been getting in touch with those students to check how they're doing so so at the end of every year yes we last we received 300 before 3 000 referrals i'm sorry not 300 clear that record 3 000 referrals so you know at the end of the year um we we terminate the cases where the child is is you know stable they're connected they're secure and we follow up make sure we follow the kids and we maintain our cases open for kids who have still the need so so the plan is the services are really very ongoing and it's really triggered based on the needs of the student so this is just describing the new referrals that we received so the character the case is continuing it's ongoing work right especially for our high kids we really don't pose those cases we have to make sure that really those only way because the child's symptoms are decreasing right they're successfully connected they're improving in all areas of functioning otherwise we make sure that we maintain those cases open so that's ongoing work okay and then just to kind of get an idea for not only me but for also the audience currently with the whole virtual model how are we training our teachers or what kind of resources are we given provided to our teachers because they're the first people who could actually see the screen and figure out uh if a student would need some kind of support having done that yeah so so we we did that at the beginning of this long distance and we the training well um really how do you look at a walker check right the priority is that you're going to try to connect with the administrator make sure that you refer the student what does that look like when do i refer what are the symptoms or or the warning signs um and then and then what do i do who do i call we give them the numbers to call the the training and the wealth effect is really what do you do when you touch on anybody and you're a concern for a student right i'm more interested in like the virtual setting right so that was something that we did in person but in a virtual setting we did that for a virtual we we're doing that originally what does it look like virtually okay yeah so i think that thankful work has to continue because right now we're focused on the precipices and helping teachers virtually you know and reminding them what do you do when the child is at risk in the virtual world um the additional work will have to happen and continue is how how do you connect with kids a social emotional piece that is already happening that we need to continue to build on but but we are focused on the the crisis piece the the making sure that they they feel comfortable and understand virtually how do you navigate um students who are in crisis okay and then the other question that i wanted to ask was i know we talked about the strategic community partnerships that we have with different organizations i know you mentioned a couple of organizations like you know western youth services of caprica i thought that we did have a couple of mou's that we establish with access california and igna relief will also provide mental health services how do we how do we strategically partner with those organizations so you know when we do individualized we just had another student who you know and the social worker was consulting with me in terms of how do you support the student and throughout the the messaging of the student and the parent i would see that that the need was cultural that that we needed to have a cultural partner address the mental health services and for access for example we have families who are middle eastern descent well it's better for a clinician who is a middle eastern descent to help that parent or that student um because they because of the culture that's crucial in how we service families who historically there's sometimes no term for mental illness in in their culture so we leverage based on the need of of the family based on the cultural need of the family based on the psychosocial issues so we do a week our guidance center access korean um services um or capital western news that i mentioned you know the healthcare agency uh the waymakers um just just it depends on the need of the student we really are strategic and connecting them to strategic partners my final question was i know we received a grant with uh healthcare agency or the state and the healthcare agency hired six coordinators how are they being useful for a district so so they were hired by ocd so ocd ocde so they're the ones that are managing the grant they're the ones that hired the the seven coordinators so for example if they partner with our district their their goal is to help us build a mental health program one two helping build partnerships in the community strategic strategically build partners in the community and three help us connect students to services um and or sometimes even service children themselves i don't know the specifics of it can i interject uh as the district's position on that was as you know mr jabar was to ask for that equivalent money uh that's funding those six or seven um ocde employees that that money would go directly to the districts that was the district position because i think it's a great quite question how are how are they going to be able to help us which obviously we have a pretty robust program already happening so um that's that's a really good question um yeah the reason that i asked is because i could uh highlight and put a little big big spotlight on it because at the end of the day i think we need to figure out a way to work with our partners to understand the need in our local school districts because anaheim union might not have the same need as a anaheim elementary or a magnolia elementary so having these coordinators it really doesn't serve a purpose and i'm saying it out from the diocese so that it could be a public statement and i've mentioned this as well to our folks but i think you know for folks who are listening need to have those conversations with our partners at orange county healthcare and orange county department of education um if if i may if my name is jabar there's there's there's four questions that like when you're talking to the community that i pose when we're talking about mental health in schools and the four questions are who is that to have all the programs in the community but who identify with youth that that are having behavioral psychosocial problems who assesses the need and then who links them based on that need and then who's going to show kids who who are not linked fifty percent children don't have mental health services they have multiple barriers so the best place to serve them is within the school setting because that's where they're at so so just you know just to give you some you know questions that you utilize to educate um the public as far as what are your time i appreciate that and uh yeah that's that's pretty much it i'll wait for the rest of the folks to chime in with piercy i have no questions thank you adela mr smear thank you anna adella i just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart the scope and range of what the information was i think helps our community to understand what we are dealing with in the area of education not just medicine and i value you as a professional and i know this would took a lot of time to put this together and i just want to thank you very much thank you mr smith appreciate that thank you very much thank you miss smith and mr o'neal yeah can you hear me now yes we can oh good um adelie you mentioned there's 927 almost a thousand um youth that need our services that have been identified how many uh how many people do you have on your staff working right now uh long term 17 we're adding we're adding six more who are you know some of them already started to help us okay and those six will be uh how long uh to the end of the year the calendar year i'm sorry december 31st the end of the year so those those six you're hiring is really um on the dice it's just i know it's great to get somebody for any period of time but to only have it for that short few months what then happens after they leave i i do you think the uh case vote is going to increase uh as the year progresses because of the situation we're in so mental health in general like you know issues like suicide and mental illness have been going up they were already going up in the past for the past decade they were going up what what this has done and has added you know the the when it comes to the economy poverty when it comes to the trauma when it comes to the grief and loss that's happening in the community um everything else that the kids are dealing with and i like to i usually reference it reference it as their 9 11 because all the things that are happening and for a family so yes the numbers are going up if anything what this has done you know those those those kids that have minimal mental illness that are at risk or or minimal mental health it's kind of moved them up a little bit more so that now you know it surfaced where we now need to address it so so yes it's it's they're going to go up because so many things are happening social media i mean you know social media in general prior to clover 19 has was already impacting the number of students or youth that were developing mental illness you know prior to to all of this happening that was already it's a huge factor in the mental health issues of our kids so mr uh o'neal i think that's an excellent question knowing that the money that the federal government supplied for hiring additional counselors social workers only uh it's going we have to use it by december 30th of this year so we are going to be a very vulnerable position regarding mental health going forward longer term so i think it's important the audience knows that mr thank you that's very important for the uh public show and and for people in the district for that too thank you um i really appreciate uh this comprehensive report i love how you you laid out the fact uh you know the difference between the mental health and then the mental illness uh i think people have um different um ideas about mental health in general and they they then we mix the two uh the two up so thank you for for uh clearing that up um i love uh our partnership with all of the different agencies it points out that uh you know school is is more than um than than education and and this is the setting where we can help kids also i i thank you for um you explained it a little bit in the question highlighting uh that um the trend was already and that's terrible way to talk about uh mental illness uh i wish there was another word we could use but it's issues have been um permeating and increasing uh way before kovid so about how many how many years has has this been permeating beef before covet i think covid for some reason start allowing people to really reflect on issues and so um how many years have we been trying to get mental health in in the in the discussion you mean to the the awareness of mental illness i i would say you know i've been with the district for what 10 this is my 11th year um we saw a trend going up since 2009 with suicide and until it started going up and if you pair it with what what was happening in social media right everything that was coming out of social media you paired the trend is the same um as far as that goes so i think that you know what what again this is not a really the best way to frame it but when when mass traumatic events happen in the community like mass shootings the conversation always goes to to mental health of the individual mental illness of the individual there's more advocacy i think our youth are more are more voicing more they're asking for more school districts are increasing their efforts because the movement and being more responsive to the needs of the student as opposed to more community right the social emotional and tss there's multiple multiple factors that that play have played a role in our our collective awareness of the of the mental mental health needs of our kids or the mental illness so so all of those efforts right our policy makers are more aware and they're they're passing legislation that helps us those of us that want to do this work within the school district so there's there's a lot of things happening a lot of great things happening we've always known that they were there but now we're doing something about it i think what i what i have to say in our district what i'm very proud of and very happy that i couldn't see when i first started in the district 10 years ago that we were going to successfully merge behavioral health with the school with educational system and we're doing that we we you know this is a task this is a test of our program and right now and the test is that we're meeting the needs even though there's challenges we're meeting the needs of our kids so it has withstood adversity and it's gonna come out and it's going to stay and you know and that means that we are successfully merging the two which is i think i personally think if i can get my opinion that's what it should happen mr jabar so adela you're an expert in the field i'm going to throw your curveball here what would you say the local cities could do to help with this in terms of supporting mental health for our schools that's a great question i think that one and we need to be more awareness with our with our um nearest local leaders in terms of the challenges that schools face every day in trying to support the youth you know who have mental illness that's one and two they really need to help us and and bring in those resources that we need i i i think that every single country should have a mental health professional to work very closely with our school technologists and our counselors you know to work as a team and to meet the needs of our youth so one more time that that every school in the country should have one social worker one mental health professional to work with the school counselor then the school psychologist and everybody else meet the needs of students uh on campus because this is where they are where do they at school and who finds out what their needs are first our teachers our staff um so so when you have that mental health professional on campus it helps build a mental health literacy in our educators and and in our administrators and everybody that we can understand the behavior so that we can change our practices right and it supports the families we're able to chip away at that signal with families so when you have that mental professional going back to your question are leaders really continuing to support schools and bringing in mental health professionals within an educational setting but that that's that's key you know i thank you for that but i will also advocate i think you know folks who are watching it is just my opinion as a school board member i think the school cities should start building into their budgets supporting mental health service providers for the city because i think the city needs to take responsibility as well because these are our kids for living the city and partner with the school district in such form that we could actually together work together to help in this endeavor so thank you of course thank you mr jabbar and adela we are so proud to have you uh we're so proud that you're not only uh helping our district and and steering us in the right path um connecting the services for our students um and the family it's not just the student we know mental health affects everyone in the family but we're also extremely proud and grateful that you're out there advocating uh for orange county in general and serving on those committees to help help them um you know do the right thing and so uh we're so proud of you i know you've been doing uh your such hard work trying to um you know educate you spend time with our kids uh individually on top of all of everything that you're managing you spend the time with our students and you know making that connection and and teaching them uh uh and teaching and empowering them uh to help one another so uh we're so grateful and uh we owe you a debt of uh gratitude and thank you for highlighting that it's not just for the mental health a mental health um uh it's not just your job who that it's everyone it's a custodian it's a bus driver it's a cafeteria worker it's it's a admin it's everyone um working together to help uh fill the needs of our of our students so thank you so much bravo thank you so much thank you okay thank you and moving on to 9.2 school dismissal and distance learning i believe uh manuel manuel yes good afternoon madam president and board members and executive cabinet thank you for this opportunity uh to again give you an update on our reopening of schools um today we will be presenting to you a timeline uh for that reopening that is strategic that it's intentional in terms of that preparation um so we will go through uh that plan and also the preparation um so i'm going to go ahead and share our screen as i'm doing that i want to remind you um to please hold questions until the end as we probably will answer many of them um as we go through the presentation so to start um and to really lay the foundation for for this plan i'd like to turn it over to our superintendent mr who will uh talk through that foundation thank you alone and uh you know as the board and our audience knows uh this has been a long journey that we've been on together and i'd like to also put a shout out to all of our associations our admins our parents who were on committees and even some of our students elizabeth dolce one of them to uh to be part of these important decisions having said that we um are leading in ambi ambiguity this is a very um you know trying to navigate covet 19 for all districts have been very difficult to make decisions without knowing um the the blueprint or the roadmap but i do feel confident that we're making the the best decisions um based on all of the input from from stakeholders and i would like to also acknowledge those who have shared their opinions with us who may differ from the decisions of the and the recommendations by the the district as we move forward i want to also really uh remind our audience that we've been making these decisions in respect to the california department of public health and the orange county healthcare agency as well as our local partners the latino health access and the uci school of public health these have been really important partners especially the epidemiologists over at uci who are experts in community spread and and how volatile this whole situation is for us so um is are these the first two and just yeah are we gonna show the other one yes okay so this one uh as a reminder too i was uh i presented a short video to our community about the county risk level from purple to red to orange to yellow and looking at positivity rates we've been monitoring positivity rates rates and adjusted cases per hundred thousand as well as everybody knows orange county is in the red there we do have um pockets of zip codes and neighborhoods that are in the purple we've always said that we are disaggregating our numbers and i know that there are areas in our district because it is large and we cover five cities that are in the moderate range as well so um but as we've pointed out time and again we have many inter intra-district transfer students from central to the west side and so we've been very cautious about making these decisions and so i just wanted to put that in context before i hand it back over to mr colon to go over the specific calendar again i i just want to say that things could change this is not written in stone in terms of these dates we know that we're headed into the flu season we know that there are predictions of there being spikes in neighborhoods and communities we are seeing neighboring counties also having to deal with going from red back to purple we're seeing other states in which new york for example which are closing down entire wards are areas that uh of schools after uh reopening so um and we know locally too like places at chapman university there's been um an outbreak as well so um just just know that we are being very careful about these decisions moving forward so at this point uh i do want to hand it off to mr colon for more the concrete plan thank you thank you mr mitchell i just want to check are you guys able to see um the different slides yes i can see them thank you um so as we said part of this preparation really is about backwards mapping and i just want to preface this with um you know we don't know what the situation will be at the point of us reopening but we want to make sure that we are ready but as we are going through this process we want to make sure that all the preparation is done and that we are keeping in mind um what is happening in our community and so that that information it will guide uh this this plan um but again uh we are backwards mapping from our reopening which will be in january as a as we will say um as we look at uh the plan we need to consider that uh part of the reason for us doing the plan in stages is really to prepare our staff for that return for them to know a target date uh for them to have clarity in terms of what they may do or must do in preparation for that um as well as thinking about how are we going to normalize uh once we are back how we are establishing routines how are we establishing habits prior to having our students on campus these habits include ensuring that we are wearing our proper protective personal protective equipment that we are doing health screens properly that we are practicing physical distance uh and and all of the needs that we have in terms of ensuring the health and safety of our students and our staff all of that is part of this preparation um we need to go through uh dry runs and check to make sure that everything is functioning properly that everything is able to uh to do exactly like we've planned and if there is any adjustments we have time to do that if there's any adjustments in terms of needs that we have we have time to prepare for that so this plan allows for us to do it in a very intentional way and allows us to ensure that we have what we need as we prepare for the return of our students so with that again our plan is backwards mapping from our return which is the beginning of second semester um october the 19th we expect our all of our management to return to our schools in our district um the reason why the management comes first is because we want to make sure that all of the proper protocols and procedures and systems are in place that are reviewed and checked on and double checked to make sure they are ready for a full return of our staff and our students on october the 26th we welcome back all of our other employees except for teachers instructional assistants our speech and language pathologists and our speech english pathologist aides except for them everybody else will be back again this will allow us to put those systems to practice uh the health screenings to make sure that everybody is familiar with the space to make sure that we are re-engaging and retraining and to make sure that our ppe is properly situated for all of our employees on november the 30th which is right after our thanksgiving break we welcome back our teachers our speech language pathologist um and all and everybody else again this allows for more uh staff to be on campus and for our health screenings to be revisited uh this will also allow us to retrain our staff on all of our safety procedures as well as checking to make sure that all of our classrooms are ready for our students to return to class on december the 7th we welcome back our speech and language pathologist um our instructional assistants um all of these uh uh positions require additional training and so it is very intentional to have them back at this time because now that the rest of the staff has been back we are now we can now focus on this training for this specific group of employees on december the 14th we welcome back all of our other instructional assistants um and have our full staffs back on campus this truly will give us a full week before we go to winter break to ensure that everything is ready for our students to return back to school on january the 6th again this is a wednesday we welcome back our students um now before that our teachers return after winter break on monday and tuesday um the reason why our teachers return on monday and tuesday as a non-student day is because this was something that um that we worked with our association to ensure that we have planning time uh and uh ensure that we have uh time for our teachers to be re situated as we begin in the preparation for our students so these days are teacher preparation days uh on january 4th and 5th we welcome back our students on january the 6th um this uh for january the sixth we are gonna welcome back our seventh graders and our ninth graders the reason why this is important is because our seventh graders and our ninth graders have not been on our campuses um they are new to our campuses it's important for them to be acclimated to the campus for them to see the staff for the first time so we will welcome them on this first week of school it also will allow us to go through the processes and procedures and protocols with students on campus but it's a much smaller group of students at this time and then on january the 11th we welcome back all of our students all of our grades to our campuses on our in our hybrid model again our hybrid model ensures that our students are safe by having a third of our students at one time this will allow for social distancing and allow for uh the safety and security of our students on our campuses so that is our proposed uh plan for reopening and bringing our students back to campus in a hybrid model with that i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our director of risk management is diana guyeta who will talk us through our safety protocols thank you good afternoon and thank you for your time today i'd like to start by taking a moment to thank all of the countless staff who have contributed to the tremendous amount of care and hard work and collaboration that was necessary to prepare our sites for staff and students preparing our sites required a lot of time and effort and dedication and i could not be prouder of our team as more staff return and work in their environment and learn the daily controls they will be able to provide us with feedback and we will continue to adjust accordingly and we will continue to rely on those staff that have been so supportive to date our first slide manuel we will review how the district has met the local and state requirements as well as perform the recommended tasks to return our staff safely to work and our students safely to in-person instruction as a district we perform the recommended risk assessment to identify measures to prevent the spread of the virus the risk assessment information is included in the required written site-specific protection plan which has been posted on every school's website as well as the district offices website within our protection plan you will find the education and training related to covert 19 which all staff were required to complete and all students received as cobit 19 student activities during the first days of school in august information on how to reduce the stigma surrounding coven 19 as well as individual controls and measures are also included our cleaning and disinfecting plan identifies examples of high-touch areas and disinfecting protocols within our protection plan you will also find our process for responding to reports of covert 19 which were developed in accordance with legal requirements for protecting the rights and privacies of individuals while keeping staff and families informed of any individuals on our sites who have tested positive for covert 19.
administration provided a phone system update the new ip phone system is formed fully operational all existing phones have been upgraded in all classrooms have the phones as well all teachers now will have a unique voicemail account tests have been successfully run to tie the phone system to the chf security system equipment needed to complete this and every building has been ordered and installation will commence upon arrival action information item four commissioners inquired about the potential capability for text alerts to keep parents updated with pay for it.net lunch balance activity administration will investigate action informational the median transition to education committee meeting at 5 30 pm respectfully submitted mr thank you mr kanova do the commissioners have any questions see none um education committee mr casper it's been quite a busy month i tell you that much the education committee was held in conjunction with the technology committee meeting the the meeting began at 5 30 p.m attendees myself as chairperson board vice president judith basford board members joe canova and fahima badrava administrators included dr danny robertozzi mr mark teigen mrs genita kusalevich miss heather rotolo mr eric mountain and a guest uh miss rachel harrington number one in person reopening update dr robert terzi provided brief update about the in-person reopening of schools he and both assistant superintendents visited every school this week to oversee the start of in-person learning the overwhelming response was positive teachers administrators support staff and all district personnel implemented all social distancing protocols and did an outstanding job staff has complimented on their hard work and efforts as they manage in-person and remote strands families continue to be engaged to ensure that the health screening is completely is completed daily action informational number two berkeley college collaboration doctor robert teuzy shared a new collaboration with berkeley college the district has an existing dual enrollment agreement with berkeley for students the new corporate educational partnership provides staff and family members with a 30 discount reduction at no cost to the district additional opportunities to use facilities and provide professional support are also included a resolution to enter this corporate partnership is included on the 1015 2020 board of agenda number three climate grand stipends update mrs kusalevich provided an update on the district climate grant to support pbsis on this agenda universal team members are listed for hourly stipends for after school meetings and parent students involvement activities the grant provided for district administrators to receive statements for after hours and evening time commitments these administrative statements will appear on a future board of ed agenda a resolution for teacher hourly stipends is included on the 1015 2020 board event agenda additional item security securing our children's future bond act grant commissioner abhijava raised the topic of this grant opportunity ms kusalev shared that the business administration business administrator mr michael lucy is working on the applications for possible funds for school security and water filtration the cte component of this grant does not apply to the district action informational the meeting adjourned at 5 59 pm respectfully submitted mrs janina kusalevich thank you mr casper do any of the commissioners have any questions okay seeing the next order of business is public recognition this portion of the meeting is open to citizens of clifton for the purpose of addressing any subject matter pertinent to and or directly related to the operation of the clifton public school district residents are requested to sign the register provided for this purpose and to state their names addresses and subject matter if you are virtually you will log in and put your name into the chat in your address unless you're a student comments are limited to five minutes per person issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments do we have the student representative right now so that he can speak first miss danny i do not see him online okay when he does come in if you can tell me so we'll go with the um live public portion absolutely i'm told there's um several in person and we have two online so what would you like to start with we'll start with the in person just make sure that they sign their name and address thank you just if you can unmute for him so that so that the public can hear once he finishes signing in if someone could unmute for him because he's muted thank you can everybody hear me yes yes we can mark brunsiak 20 holly street thank you dr robert tosie thank you i'm sorry if you want to pull that up a little bit i want to speak in reference to an executive order signed monday allowing organized sports considered medium and high risk to the state to resume contact practices and games indoors with restrictions countless times we've heard over the past few weeks how guidelines are constantly changing and from the state so the science continues to say one thing and another and all of a sudden in this article by nj.com rece recently this week after consulting stakeholders and medical experts we have concluded that with proper public health and safety protocols and still in in place indoor sports may now re resume in a way that protects players coaches and staff so this means indoor games like basketball uh kickball whatever they do indoors any kind of indoor sports and what i don't hear is trying to get these school kids in for five days a week on top of that what i don't hear is recommendations to try to make it as normal as possible for the students right now it's a requirement for the students with barriers in front of them including six feet apart for them to continuously wear their masks throughout the classes there are several people there are several of us here who do not have a mask over here yet the risks have been mitigated and as a result of that we are we are safer as a result of that so i'm requesting that the board at some point make recommendations that give a student give the students choices to try to make it as normal as humanly possible in the classroom the rates have dramatic drastically dropped and i continuously hear the science says this the science says that where's the signs what changed in the science and then you find out second second to last paragraph in this article from nj.com that you find out the reason that they now allow indoor sports is because enough parents complain to the state to say that it's devastating for their kids their kids want to play indoor sports the kids want to play sports period they want to move on and they know what the survival rates are cdc september 23rd those who unfortunately get infected with coronavirus those ages 0 to 19 have a 99.997 percent chance of survival those aged 20 to 49 have a 99.98 chance of survival those aged 50 to 69 have a 99.5 chance of survival god forbid they catch this so and the highest risk group are 70 plus 94.6 new york times just this week the american public has made an incredible adjustment embracing mass wearing and social distancing and putting up with unprecedented months-long lockdowns which has made a difference that has saved lives so there's a reduction there's been a great reduction there are new treatments that further denting the virus's impact including antiviral drugs and steroids like dexamethasone and we've we've been told uh by the feds that vaccines and antibodies are far likely to be more effective as a result so i'm asking the board over here to try to make in-person schooling an option for the parents to get their kids back in school because they know what's best for their kids and for those that are high risk they have chosen that and i'm thankful for everybody like missy nina like dr robert tosi and all of you involved in doing that in in helping to give give families that option but why stop there we shouldn't stop there we it should be a continuous improvement over here and i know it's hard because you're always saying the guidelines from the state they change constantly okay but you could also tell them that this isn't working out this isn't working out for our district there are parents here who who want their kids to be in school full-time as much human possible if they have extracurricular activities and all of a sudden this week this week governor murphy signed an executive order now allowing high risk indoor sports with with measure every time you're running to the rim or every time you take a shot you're screaming in the guys you're screaming in your opponent's face okay um the time has been closed is that what the science says now time i'm sorry the time i saw this again i'm requesting to this board to try to make try to make it as normal as humanly possible for the kids thank you very much for speaking and god bless america thank you everybody thank you dr arbitosi the next person that comes up if you could you only see their chest so if you could pull the you know the um video up so you see their face uh president danny can i just get a clarification he said something that several of us here are not wearing masks did i hear that yeah yeah we could do that in in board member my name is justin swisher uh i am a sixth grade social studies teacher at christopher columbus middle school i have held that position for the last 10 years i began in september 2009 i'm also a product of clifton public schools a 2004 graduate i've loved every minute of my experience in the in the clifton community and i'm always grateful for it um i've spent a long time in columbus seeing the wonderful things that the staff does that the teachers do and that the kids are capable of i've seen the fabric of our community get stronger and stronger as we face challenges day in and day out i was humbled and honored just one week ago when um dr robert tosie and i had a conversation and i was informed that i would be appointed or recommended for appointment as the next vice principal of ccms i'm here tonight to express my gratitude to you dr robitosi for the opportunity and to express my gratitude to the entire board of education for this opportunity to make a difference in our community i know this is a challenging time for all of us but i hope everyone knows that the challenges are what build our character there's a saying i'm a cross-country coach and there's a saying and running that that first mile is a liar that if you feel in that first mile that you want to quit you've got to keep on going and i know for everyone sitting here tonight since march 2020 this has been one of the longest first miles anyone's had to experience but all of us as a community have been working hard to continue to lift one another up and to keep on going and on a most human level i know that it's very challenging when it seems that no matter what choice is made we're dealing with people telling us that we're wrong but i hope we can all keep ourselves focused on the fact that we're building ourselves as a community we're staying together as a community and we're working to move forward as a community um anything that's worth it is worth the effort that we have to put into it and uh everyone in ccms has been putting 110 effort since day one of my career there since my time as a student there and especially through this whole crisis as we've been trying to work through it and navigate what is uh incredibly unknown experience for all of us in any event what i'm here to tell you is i'm incredibly grateful i will be giving it all of my effort and i look forward to a great future for our community for our school and for clifton thank you very much congratulations uh hi everyone i'm jessica kutch i am the media specialist over at woodrow wilson uh to start i want to thank the board and the administration for all the helpful clarity that has been provided during this reopening process uh regarding especially regarding procedures and protocols uh getting the kids in the school these past couple weeks much of it has been very helpful and reassuring i'm hoping we can continue i'm hoping continue providing clarification and transparency as we continue throughout the school year currently i am a little concerned about the vagueness of past responses regarding what will happen when a teacher is inevitably required to quarantine after travel i understand in some scenarios that sick days may need to be used for self quarantine but i'm a little worried about the lack of clarity regarding necessary travels i know it's been mentioned that it would be handled on a case-by-case basis but i'm hoping that you will be prepared providing further guidance i know uh some may be concerned about losing their sick days and adding this can add unnecessary stress to situations that might already be very stressful like family emergencies or such uh can we be assured that these situations will be handled with empathy and respect thank you for time and consideration and i hope to hear about this kind of seat thank you good evening everyone i'm miss langer i am an 8th grade science teacher at christopher columbus middle school i'm here to ask a few questions but also express my thanks for a number of different things i want to start by thanking the administration at christopher columbus middle school mrs gaba and mr jaeger and dr robert tosi have all been in my classroom since we returned to school and i really appreciate that show of support and i also appreciate the modeling of wearing masks in the building i think it's important for each and every one of us to model that behavior for our faculty and staff every time we step foot into a school building i wanted to also thank mr frankel who is the science supervisor and i'm sure he worked closely with janina in getting us resources that would allow us to teach both in-person and remote very well so they purchased a system that allows students to solve mysteries and i think it's absolutely phenomenal and i'm incredibly grateful for that one of the things i've noticed though is that we do ask the students to model things in science after all hands-on learning is fantastic and i've found that my remote learners are able to do more modeling at home because they have the supplies that they need to do it the in-person learning is restricted by what we're allowed to share i was also concerned but mr kanova i heard you mentioned our chromebooks are close but one of the concerns that i have is that in person without the adequate technology i'm having a lot harder time evaluating and assessing student progress i don't want to put anyone at more risk than necessary by passing out and collecting materials and i really think the technology is an important piece it was a little hard to hear you through the chromebook so i'm hoping that we'll get some more definitive answers on when that technology is going to be available to us i also wanted to speak a moment on social emotional health of our staff at the last meeting i was very concerned to hear a parent expressing concern over the mental well-being of our teachers and i wanted to thank jessica tremble who's in charge of our counseling department because she has been sending out weekly self-care tips to our staff but i also want to thank sue feliciano who has worked to get us mindfulschools.org training it was something i started over the summer but the district has supported that and allowed me to continue my training in that area and i'm hoping that that what my colleague miss kutch mentioned from the other school there that teachers are treated with that empathy and compassion is a very real thing because we're all learning so many new things that it's just as overwhelming for us as it is for the kids and i'm sure as you're experiencing here as you're trying to run a hybrid and remote meeting that it comes with challenges and i am concerned for my staff member colleagues that are trying to teach in person to a classroom of students and remotely simultaneously i understand that in some scenarios that may be required because that's what our parents are asking for but i do feel like it puts us empaths in a position where we can't meet anyone's needs well and so i hope that that's something that you're considering and i really appreciate everything laurie lalama has done to support the clifton education association and i'm curious to know where we stand on her recommendation of getting an industrial hygienist to take a look at our hvac systems it was something that i heard many board members support at the last meeting some even said that yes we should reopen if we do that and i have not heard whether or not that has taken place yet so i'd really be curious to know where that stands and i also wanted to thank you because last meeting someone pushed for flu vaccines to be offered at clifton high school i remember it was one of the board members but i don't remember who i wanted to thank you i came here made it easy got my flu vaccine and i'm wondering if we would consider working with the health department to offer the same kind of drive up covid19 testing to staff because many places that are requiring essential frontline workers to come to work are providing regular testing and you did such a wonderful job with that i was in and out in five minutes that i don't see why we can't try and work with a health department to implement something like that and i think that's all i have for tonight and i really want to thank you for your time and your consideration on these issues thank you do we have any more in person mr mountain if we could yes we have a few in the online waiting room okay well first up is lorila llama lori if you can hear us you're the first up to speak and whoever else is going to speak if you could in the chat put your name if you're not a student put your name in your address if you're not a student after laurie will be max reuben and then emma okay so if you're not a student please put your name and address in the chat thank you looks like lori's having an issue so let's go to max first and then we'll get lori max you may speak take them um good evening everyone okay thank you um and i'm a student so i won't have my address in the chat thank you um hello everyone um it's good to be okay it's good to be back at school um so far i mean i'm a cohort b so i went on tuesday and i'm gonna go again tomorrow and everything's been running pretty smoothly the teachers are starting to get used on how to used to how to educate kids online and in person at the same time and it's been working out okay the one thing that did kind of alarm me is that apparently some students either aren't wearing their mask properly don't know how to wear their mask properly or are just choosing not to and we're all high schoolers so we definitely know how to wear a mask that can't be the issue so it just it's just a little upsetting to hear that some of my peers aren't taking their responsibility and the initiative to just put on a mask so i'm in the cast program and on the morning announcements we made a little video um on how to put on a mask which i still find it's ridiculous we have to do that in the first place we also we put a warning on how to stay safe i just hope that if students are not wearing their masks and aren't following the right rules there should be some severe repercussion or they should just be sent in person or be sent to remote because that is ridiculous and i'm really upset that i had to hear that um on a more positive note um the chs morning show has been running smoothly we're continuing to add new things every day um also my drama teacher miss pogee wanted me to read this email that she sent me about a chipotle fundraiser that's going to happen next week so the clifton high school drama program will be hosting a chipotle fundraiser at the route 3 clifton location coming up next wednesday october 21st from 5 00 to 9 00 pm chipotle will donate one third of your check back to the drama program so please be sure to either show your flyer or mention the fundraiser if ordering with the cashier at a register and if you want to order online you can use the promo code which is t76p a jr all caps the flyer encode can be found on the chs drama instagram page at clifton high school underscore drama or you can email miss pogie at lpogia cliftonschools.net with any questions and hopefully you'll support the drama program we do actually have some plans coming up as of now we are still planning on doing a musical next year um hopefully i'll be a part of that so um yeah we still have a lot of plans this year and hopefully you guys can go out to chipotle or order online and support the drama program other than that um i'm also the president of the clifton student union and we've been coming up with a lot of ideas on how to make ap exam books and sat exam books readily available for students we have a couple ideas we're going to hopefully have a book drive an in-person book drive where people can come to the school and drop off their old test prep books and that could be one to two weeks and then people can come at the school anytime and pick them up hopefully we will do that at either the end of this month or the beginning of next month i need to get in touch with uh mr waka the new central wing vp we also were thinking about doing a virtual um an online list that we could post on the website just a well-formatted list of all the a bunch of youtube channels various test prep websites college board khan academy and just create a list of all those websites and put it up on the school website um so that's another thing we're working on another thing is if you haven't heard yet for students watching this and for parents there is an update with the gym policy i know my um my colleague sam at the last uh board of ed meeting mentioned that kids were felt uncomfortable showing their face and showing their body as they work out on camera so if you feel uncomfortable with working out during gym class on camera if you're 18 you can do it yourself but if you're younger than 18 which most high schoolers are you can have your parent email your gym teacher and inform them that my child feels uncomfortable exercising in front of the camera i want a recommendation for him to either tilt the camera away from him or her as he or her exercises or just um point it towards the ceiling anything um and you can do that now uh the other thing the last thing um is sports have been pretty good so far um our soccer team and our football team are killing it this year and we have our homecoming game tomorrow i think the homecoming ceremony is being pushed just sometime next week but um yeah i'm looking forward to it and i hope you guys are too unfortunately the stadium is only open for parents of band kids cheerleaders and football players but the game is getting live streamed i believe by mr mecca so you can always tune in online and that's it thank you thank you max uh before miss la lama before you speak um if you are here and you are going to be speaking in the chat if you can put your name and your address and so when i call your name and address is already in there thank you very much in the chat miss la lama and then we will have uh we will speak to miss howard all right is that okay miss danny yes yes okay thank you all right good evening to everyone um i hope everybody is doing fine as the president of this association this has been the most difficult job that i have faced since the beginning of the pandemic my job is literally to protect the four corners of the contract however i've always believed it to be much more than that public education is very important and we're going through a lot of battles right now according to the afl cio a strong public education system is essential to the individual and collective well-being of our country and its people and its development of an informed and engaged citizen without without which no democracy can exist and flourish this is what clifton public schools does we are a very strong community and education is so important however this pandemic has taken a toll on everyone including from school six the board i would imagine the teachers the principals vice principals so we need to be united because being the president i hear things from the community i hear things from staff and it's beginning to make us very divided and we can't do that we are a community of educators we are a community that cares and i invite and there's a great quote by gene francois cope i invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division teamwork over personal ambition and this is what needs to change i've been involved in so many meetings to make sure the plan the district wrote would work despite such a horrible situation we're all going through many of you have gone through the this plan must be fluid due to coven 19.
and so i think that if we can prevent the the loss of a life especially one you know like travis then we should do it's a very small thing to do in my opinion it's a very small act to support this resolution but it would go a long way to save um to keep us from having these big losses thank you uh anybody else from the audience okay on to correspondence do we have anything for board corresponds going on nothing going around there on to the consent agenda uh items four and five did you want to walk through that mr marshall the minutes are all there the financials are all there as they are in a month um got some resilient resignations um i clarified like about the fields she's resigned from apartheid custody but she still will be employees um we've got the employment of some of the employment personnel certified personnel and they have to prove extracurricular assignments i did have a question regarding one of them right i'd like to have jeremy donald removed his own agenda and discussed in closed session okay so with that one modification i would recommend that we approve the consent agenda as presented with the actions okay so i'd entertain a motion to there's a correction um on the budget hearing uh roll call it should be seven a's versus one [Music] open session regular minutes of september 24th yeah for the public budget hearing the motion that was carried it's seven pays so the consent agenda would that change to the minutes and the exclusion of the individual okay does that entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended promotion by karen anderson second by tammy hines can you do a roll call vote for me please karen anderson yes tammy hines yes craig wong i'm sorry john you get a lot of credit what about you john are you doing um yeah craig meyer yes scott middlecam yes greg o'connor lisa schumacher yes motion carries on to the next item on the agenda communications reports and presentations uh enrollment is there at your table um it's nice to see it split out and with percentages and all those good things administrative reports principles report we have mr reeves here hello hi hello everyone we are in our third week of hybrid and we're plugging right along yesterday we had the psat nms qt which is in essence the practice test a practice version of the sat and 50 students take that yesterday and we did have the sat for our seniors who should have taken it as juniors a few like a few weeks back in that first week of our hybrid and both both sessions went very well we had two we had our sports programs wrap up the only ones that went in the fall were our cross country teams and our golf teams and all had successful seasons thank you thanks john to assistant superintendent's report um the main uh topic i wanted to discuss was the school improvement plans um this year you remember last year changed the format a little bit and tried to really make them more smart goals this year if you look through them they are not as smart as in the past and that is really because our data sources are lacking right now we didn't have our our own internal benchmarks that took place at the end of the year and we didn't have the state or federal benchmarks that we would normally be using for academic goals and we also don't have all the survey data that we normally would have used do you guys need one so that made it difficult to make them more measurable so a lot of what's in here is more of a qualitative than a quantitative measure however we have the action steps and also you'll notice the other big changes last year you saw one one per school and then we did that but they were all kind of tied together this year because of what we're trying to accomplish it's kind of very challenging here because we're all aiming for the same exact thing it all of these goals will vertically align no matter the age group so one of them the smart goal number one will attract mentor and retain highly quality staff as you know we've had some challenges recently with some key areas of getting people and then retaining them so i think there's some changes that we can put into place to work towards that um so there's some action steps there um student performance will improve by adding technological resources as funding allows so that goes kind of along with what we've been doing with the one-to-one but then also providing support to our teachers in implementing that with fidelity and effectiveness so continuing to do so as we can that will be an ongoing and i that would obviously be an ongoing beyond this year not just for the remote learning uh smart goal 3 is related more to academics in the areas that we have testing which is our language arts math and science so that is more towards addressing our tiered approaches both tier one which is what happens in the classroom um as you know there's many concerns with what happened in the spring of where that gap is but we are just now being able to measure that we have aims web testing is happening at the elementaries and then we will begin doing our map testing normally those things have already transpired but obviously we do have the capability of doing that remotely but there was concerns of the reliability of the results um so if we could hold off a little bit and bring it back in to the school then we were going to do that so that's where we're at um and then the smart goal four is dealing with our character education and social emotional and we're going to be trying to use data from the spring spring to help us with that and then the last one um is that college and career and military and that is just we're saying that we want to see no matter where those kids are now no matter the age we want all of our kids to make growth we can't really say now how much that's going to be i can't put a percentage on that but hopefully once we get some of this data back we will be able to make some goals for those students so we want 100 of the students to meet their individual growth goals basically so that's the plan so it looks a little different so i wanted to outline that to you than what we had last year on to round three superintendent's report all right i'm going to start with the foyers smart procure has come back again with the quarterly report we're getting quite used to them and we keep sending them the same information we had a new one from a company called adac they're asking for our special ed numbers we responded accordingly we didn't give them any names or anything like that just aggregate numbers of what they're asking for um that said uh i want to update the board about the district goals the strategic plans as you guys are probably aware they were extended through the 1920 school year technically that means we don't have any plans a strategic plan or any goals we have the document we have a list of things that didn't get done and we're currently kind of working on that as we as we get our moments and chances courtney and i have discussed we're developing a plan to develop a plan so what we would like to do is bring you next month a plan an overview of who would be involved how it would go but develop a new strategic plan for the district um we do it next semester starting next semester continue it into the summer and then for next school year i actually have a strategic plan that we've created for a five or six year term to be completely honest right now our main goal is really to survive government keep everybody healthy and get kids back into school and so we've been spending a lot of time on that which i think is time well spent speaking of that we have a meeting today with our um return to school committee and so i would like the board members to check their calendars because we're going to meet again on october 28th mr wagner wants a few more weeks to see how the quarantine goes and how it spreads and we're looking for a special board meeting on the evening of october 28th that will be wednesday the lead of two months do you want to do 6 p.m or 7 p.m the only action night would be any changes or recommendations for returning to school or expanding it or whatnot and you might object to 6 p.m good good we get 6 p.m on october 28th we'll have that noted and we will get that started um it's going to kind of alluded to improvement plans are different this year for a lot of reasons um the school report cards will be coming out none of our designation changed um because they didn't do the assessments at the end of last year we are at the same designation as we had left but they were prior so typically right now they would give us our new designation and they would tell us that this is uh to be held secret to a certain date and they basically told us that there's going to be no changes so what we were last year we are did which is uh three exemplary and one um just below that so it's excellent and then the last thing is um i want you to be aware we're going to be bringing you recommendations to purchase buses we've gone out to bid it's in the budget so we you've approved the budget to spend the money on the buses we don't need to spend them until we approve the amounts and um but we have gone out to bid and so we're slowly getting them in fact i think we got one document today giving us the prices so that's one that we're hoping to have uh the recommendation of two buses that's on our normal rotation that yeah we've said i'm correct okay cool okay what companies are we getting bids from do you know what canada i do not all right i do not i would imagine central states would be the one i would imagine um yeah but they're there i mean they knew most yeah historically there's been very few bus dealerships right now there's only like a couple of them internationally traction uh oh so if we have any comments or concerns or anything like that about returning to school did we save that for the special school we're meeting them oh yeah okay if you want to call me tomorrow we can discuss it as well uh item seven is fraction uh the approval of tremco roof work [Music] numerous times um and discuss these moves um really thorough and at this point one of the interesting things is we agreed to do move work at the high school and to buy the warranty we've not yet paid for the warranty and in our analysis we've decided that the warranty is not money well spent it doesn't cover the labor costs and it's a pro-rated material cost and although you know just it's a document it's money now well spent so at this point in time i'd like to just tell the board that i don't think that we are going to secure the warranty for high school the work is done they'd be happy to secure it for the 10 years it's not like that's going to change any without the warranty or with the warranty it's just money that if we need to you could put it to repairs um by the same token the recommendation here we took out the warranties and they're just paying for the repairs to get them up to what the company would be pleased to put that back under warranty these are originally terminal roofs they are um kind of like going out to other questions about bidding and you know they're the only ones that can really do these repairs on their roofs we wouldn't go out to bid for a repair on our hvac systems we've had other roofing companies come into our architects and explore this and so we've looked at it from a lot of angles and we spent a lot of time on it and the recommendation would be good forward does anybody from the community have anything you want to point out options i'm not sure who we can get the cost to complete it we're talking about it doesn't uh doesn't really make a lot of sense either you know we've already spent a lot of time and effort looking at roofs and talking about roofs and hiring consultants and all those kinds of things a good step forward on the maintenance path all right i agree and uh i'm i'm very pleased to find that we're actually maintaining our roots and keeping up with repairs and not just letting them go until they need to be replaced and triple has really shown a strong desire to prolong the life of our roofs and really is saving us money and my estimation i'm a numbers guy so i look at the cost per year of maintaining our roofs or replacing our roofs and how much it's going to cost each one of these is going to it just it's 20 cents on the dollar that we're going to be spending versus replacing so the longer we can get these things going and keeping them dry and clean and great actually i gotta commend him he dug into the warranty more than i ever did i never even read the thing but he took the time to read it and go through all the terms and conditions and he's absolutely right that uh it's it's not a good deal for the district has written i think tremco historically has gone above and beyond what the warranty actually provided but they don't have to and again it's our job to oversee this and make sure that the t's across the eyes are dotted we get the value for our money and i think when push comes to shout i agree with our superintendent that we can spend our money a lot better on maintenance and future repairs than to have a little warranty that really isn't worth the papers written on so we had a really good committee and some great discussions and worked out really well um if we go ahead and do this this evening when would this happen can you get it as soon as possible did tremco give um any idea of who would be doing the repairs no i believe that they have their own people coming to do that to do the work itself but just about all commercial companies do that i mean no matter who you go with you're going to have a subcontractor involved all right any other questions on on the ribbon seeing none and entertain a motion to approve the tremco work including parkview not to exceed nine thousand dollars on eagle view not to exceed thirty eight thousand nine hundred dollars and not to include the uh warranty motion by greg meyer second by john long tammy hines yes john long yes greg meyer yes scott middle camp yes greg o'connor lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes all right on to items b the uh 2020 2021 school improvement plans for ew part b cms and chs any other questions for courtney on those seeing none had entertained the motion to approve the 2020 2021 the school improvement plans for eagleview parkview cms and chs as uh submitted motion by lisa schumacher second by tammy hines kim can you do a roll yes greg meyer yes scott middle camp yes craig o'connor lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes tammy hines yes approval of first reading and foreign policies press issues 105 did you yeah the big picture thing is that a lot of them had to do with the title changes yeah um so this brings us up a legal code i did include the four packets of specific questions like we don't have students so we didn't include those words so if there's any questions or comments on any of those questions or the replies to them and again for the board and for those watching this is the first reading we would be uh following this up with a second reading feature oh this is the first year to approve yeah so any questions at this time and again that's our first reading so we absolutely need none and entertain a motion to accept the first reading of board policies as presented again we have to approve the first reading and then we go and then we do a second reading usually it's a voice vote but since we're on this we've got to do a roll call for this promotion by karen anderson second bye second by greg o'connor can you do a roll call vote for me please craig meyer yes scott middleton yes greg o'connor oh lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes tammy hines john long yes motion carries and on to item 8 discussion items the first item on the agenda is the isp iasb resolution student safety and protection plans you have in front of you eight new resolutions three reaffirming existing positions and one new belief statement and um through the packet that was sent out you saw whether or not the iasb is saying that they should oppose or support the recommendation of their committee that was music um karen anderson has been the voting delegate i believe for some time but it will be representing us um we had a speaker tonight that talked about resolution number two we was the gun storage law we also had an email from chris carpenter [Music] instead of the recommendation of opposing it as to which way the board desires and then we can bring up any other issues on these if you if you have any questions yeah first of all assistants say normally the resolutions committee meets on saturday morning of the iasb joint convention and due to the cohort the convention is not being held in person in chicago it's being held virtually and so it will be the bulk of the conference will be held on friday and it's totally virtual but the resolutions committee it is in the bylaws of the iasb that the resolutions committee must meet and that the delegates will vote on these so what's happening this year is there's a session next week and then one a couple weeks later that will be they'll be sending the link to the delegates to link into it and it'll be open for a discussion and they will be discussing all of each of these items from what i've gotten information so far they will probably record those i'm not sure but that was the last that i heard which would be something different because normally the discussion that takes place during the resolution session happens and nobody ever sees it and some of it goes on for a long time but i don't if they do have a link of what the board members know and i can share that with you but um i don't know for sure what's going to happen um and i don't know how it's going to go because it's like okay if you want to speak you push the little button at the bottom that says i'm raising my hand so [Music] you can answer put questions out in the chat and i just they don't really know for sure what all is going to happen i haven't figured out yet how they're going to have this vote because normally it's a boat where you hold up a paddle and they go through and count all the paddles so somehow they're going to know how many people are are in the room and walls in there so that would be interesting but um if you have questions or concerns about any of these and you've seen the recommendations where they say do not adopt and the resolutions committee has given their recommendations or do not adopt or their reason for adopting if the submitting school district yes they do not adopt and wants to appeal they can do that and they have a amount of time and the resolution to the gun storage the submitting district has appealed the recommendation of the committee and will have an opportunity to bring the girl's proposal to the delegate assembly if it says do not adopt and has not been appealed there's no discussion they just move on but if there's an appeal that's been filed they will have discussions so there will be a discussion on this item and i need a consensus and we won't take a vote but i do need a consensus opinion on how you feel about it the isb has said that they recommended not to do this because they the vast majority of the iasb physician statements deal directly with issues that happen inside the school district and things in the last two years you know there's been one on there about having staff teachers carrying weapons or being trained in firearms and those they recommended to adopt and the vote on the floor was no so it was a close vote both times but the votes were known so this time they're saying do not adopt so i just need to know which way as a consensus you feel and how you would like to have me go forward anybody got comments thoughts i do i would like to see the age expanded to 18 because that would mean a lot of the high school the school shootings are the high school age so the parents having to keep the guns locked up away from 18 until they're 18. makes sense to me support the resolution which is what the speaker today and email both would like for you to do and the seminar district has appealed to to have discussion so i i know there's going to be a lengthy discussion i i agree with tammy i don't know the problem with hearing the nations of the board on anything with the exception of number two which is the gun deal and you know guns is something that is a very decisive issue for most people but gun safety i don't think should be i think going up 18 to secure firearms you're not prohibiting firearms you're not discouraging firearms you're just preaching or encouraging safe for mandating safe storage of them so kids can't get to it so i can't imagine anybody have a problem supporting that personally but so do i have a consensus that you would want me to vote to adopt this resolution and what happens with these resolutions is these are the um stand that the iasb takes and also it's where the lobbyists are working with our congressional okay any other comments questions and this meets i'll be meeting on november 14th which will be before our next board meeting well we'll have a special meeting oh yeah but it's still it'll happen before our next regular november and that's why i wanted to get this out here tonight thank you thanks thank you uh on any more questions for here on 99 word presence i'm going to go to um we are i'd like to go into closed session or executive session for purposes of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public friday including hearing testimony on a complaint lodge against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity and purposes of discussion of collective bargaining items and discuss student disciplinary cases do i have a motion to go into closed session uh john long and greg meyer second you need to uh vote for me please scott little camp yes greg o'connor lisa schumacher yes karen anderson yes tammy hines john long yes greg meyer yes okay for those uh that are here and those that are online we'll be shutting down to go into executive session we do have items for action after executive session so if you want to hang out online and wait for us to come back you can you can see those see those items there you
um that is why you saw if you've watched the news region 16 actually shut down their middle school for two weeks that is not my goal at all to do that um but it is reality but i do have to say that i think that cheshire public schools have a lot more when i talk to when i need to talk to the principals they know exactly what i need and they get it to me they got it to me within minutes the other school districts were not as prepared as yours so i commend jeff and your staff and everybody for all the hard work that you've done i commend your nurses your nurses are completely on board they know what's going on who's doing what who's on first who's on second um so it's been a challenging tonight i've been working with another situation at wilcott high school and a girls softball team um the governor and the commissioner of health absolutely know that this is impacting the schools um the whole goal we all know in this room was to keep those kids at school and that was always my fight about sports um because we knew what would happen and so ultimately that is what we are seeing um my goal is trying to analyze each situation but i will tell you it's getting very tiresome um my staff is very tired we i worked three days all day all week all all weekend um but we're committed to keep doing it um so if you have any questions what no i was going to ask if any questions i'm sure tim's good tim the man then faith man thanks tony um thank you more for being here tonight and for everything that you do for this i'm gonna start sleeping in a minute public health is incredibly important and i know i would not want to be in your shoes um what uh do you have any suggestions for what we should do could do well the big okay so so we've looked at and i've looked at like what is the scenario of what's going on what we are finding right now is we're opening things up the government is opening up we're going out we're seeing people we're going to our families that is the culprit in our eyes um i'm not seeing like these big reported you know events i it's these little itty-bitty things i do have one or two that you know it was a bigger event but it was a bigger family event um i cannot say how much we are trying really to emphasize to the kids um younger kids that the importance of are the only tools that we have in our toolbox at this moment wearing your mask staying six feet apart washing your hands we we receive a lot of complaints about the kids walking up and down west main street we must have gotten three of them in the past day i will tell you that the governor is pushing us um we have uh all been asked to uh participate in the meeting tomorrow because as you know they had issued that we could issue tickets which in public health we don't issue tickets so you know but they're going to train us on how to issue tickets and yeah i i i have a lot of work to do um but i think the big thing is really emphasizing the fact that these people that went to the gatherings who were the sick person they didn't know they're asymptomatic at that moment but it's it's that infectious period two days before either you're showing a symptom or you're testing positive right now the most common symptoms that we are seeing congestion runny nose headache and complaining about a allergies that is what we're seeing we're not seeing the fever and the cough and things like that that seems to happen with the cases that are really bad but for the general public it's these very mild things symptoms and it's very challenging because they mimic almost everything else including the flu and we've already had positive flu in the community so again it's i know it's really hard but really limit your time exposure that's all i can suggest um we can't make anybody just be smart to try to limit and keep that curve because the curve is definitely going up the good thing about it is that we don't have the fatalities um so and you know can there be a good point for this but that's all i can say right now is just really getting the words and you're seeing a lot of those messages on tv um it's just repeat repeat repeat and hope that we get through this very fast um they have been pushing us we're meeting twice a week um in preparation of vaccinations which teachers are on that um we have gathered all our town numbers um chesapeake will be doing those vaccinations so we have we have like a lot of people too once we get one as we know the reports in the news about the vaccines haven't been too promising um but i'm hopeful that somewhere down the line something's going to happen because i really think that's only the only thing that's going to happen especially as we're getting colder and getting back inside and we know you know just like a flu you know we're inside we're spreading germs [Music] sorry that was a long winded i don't know no i appreciate it i was just going to add real quick this i will say our kids in school i have to commend them have been incredible about wearing masks everywhere you go they're always wearing the mask and most of our kids aren't calling around to organize family gatherings so that's a reminder for adults too to be smart i visited the high school sorry a couple weeks ago and i i didn't know what was happening outside but i was like what is going on and they were all doing a mask break and i was so impressed by all of them uh because they were all separated they were all following the rules um i i really thought you know that that's hard and they were dealing with it so adam oh thank you um so you know before i walked into the well before i heard your report this evening like i had a couple of questions written down and one was you know what would it take for us to maybe add a third in-person day to the high school but now it seems like you're painting a picture as if um we're at the top of the mountain about to jump off the cliff is that kind of what your impression is here where things are as good as they're gonna get until they don't um i don't say that we're at the top and we're about to jump off the cliff we're still climbing up the mountain um and i do know that you know it was very hard um with long river middle school because they had just opened up and went back um they increased um their kids coming back and the next day boom they shut down for two weeks um we don't know that's that's the problem with this um i will say it's just everywhere um we just don't know um we have cheshire has a significant amount we had 27 we had 14 cases last week plus three in the group home so we had 17 cases um we haven't seen that kind of activity since april um but i think that a lot of that also is associated with the fact that we can get tested now you know back in april we couldn't get tested um and i want to say that most of the mothers or the parents that i speak to because i get a lot of phone calls all day long the school nurse said i can't come back until i get a you know a note or i'm in quarantine what would you suggest and we always suggest that you know what for a peace of mind go get a test but just realize you're still quarantined for those 14 days um and so we have a lot more people getting tested so when we test we're gonna find well before in april we just didn't have the resources we didn't have the testing we didn't have the the equipment we didn't have a lot but now we're in a much better place so the so the your recommendation i'm guessing the recommendation of pph as well is to hold steady and not that we should resist the temptation to open further and that we should stay where we are there's a lot of supporting stuff that my numbers are going up um i'm getting a lot more younger um but i think that you know that's a hard decision for me to tell the whole board i mean i'm i would be very cautious i do not think it's going to get better i think it's only going to be getting worse in the next couple of weeks um and so my my second question is um is actually it's about cheshire academy sure um are they fully open yes and do their numbers count towards our numbers if we are to have to shut down at that percentage no actually believe it or not i work very closely with the cheshire academy they um they have to randomly test their students um so i'm i and they report actually their illnesses to me so i know exactly what's going on over there um i will tell you that um they're most most of their right i guess residential people their students residential students have been fine we've had a few instances where we've had day students that have tested positive we had um at the beginning of the school year we had a day student who had tested positive and we put several of those students out on quarantine and i believe we just had another person um just get ill but they're keeping a really big eye on their their students um and they do not count towards yours private schools i believe are separate like universities their own little category thank you yeah okay you're an excellent yeah um thank you more for your work um i do have some questions i'm hoping um as i understand it the state's statewide infection rate through october 7th is amongst k-12 populations 0.008 okay you would know that more than me i'll be honest with you i don't know those details um what do you know what our house cheshire's hospitalization rate is no i don't do can you describe the severity of the cases of the kids um who are testing positive like i said we have a few of them let me i brought the actual cases because i figured you'd be asking [Music] um so a lot of these that are positive um again we're mild okay um when you say a lot do you have a number um no i don't sorry i'm just i have to reference the ages if it's a cheshire public school students you're looking for faith that number is three yeah is that what you're looking for is that are those cases um now this is actually in cheshire generally are you seeing severe cases uh you know and i guess it's like a civilization question right so that's what you're what i said is what we're seeing right now is i've got a runny nose i've got i've got congestion i've got i think i have allergies and the parents are taking them to get tested because they've either dad got sick or they're being tested for other reasons um honestly we've the nurses and i don't know the numbers um i'm sure the head nurses would know but i know they have made a lot of people test um because that is the policy right now before they can come back to school if they're out due to covered symptoms they can only come back if they produce a negative covid pcr or they provide a note from their doctors diagnosing giving an alternate diagnosis so we have had a lot of kids tested i don't know what the number is but of those we have not had any positives could you say that i'm sorry could you say that again no one got positive based upon actually one one i think one of those three cases so we have a lot of kids that are out due to they're showing signs of runny nose and normal symptoms mom is having them parents are having them tested so that they can come back to school and those results are resulting in in negative okay so i just want to make sure if they come back with a negative pcr test they are allowed back into school as long as they're not being quarantined as a close contact okay so we go by addendum 5.
and finally the protection plan identifies staff responsibilities for maintaining a safe environment and information on their available leave benefits under the family's first coronavirus response act while this current protection plan is comprehensive i can report that as new information and guidance is released the protection plan will be revised to address any areas of need and or update existing information and will be reposted on our sites upon completion of our protection plan as well as the other recommended guidance and requirements the district physically posted at all of its sites the orange county reopening checklist at the station as a visual guide to ensure all individuals that site administrators have met the requirements for health and safety next slide menu we'll dive into a few of those protective measures and controls within our protection plan let's begin with physical distancing in preparation for uh return in person our administrators use the national institute of occupational safety and safety and health niosh hierarchy of controls for the workplace in order of most effective to least effective starting with engineering controls we just addressed engineering controls in our district by distancing every workspace and every class classroom to the maximum extent possible but no less than six feet between each work area and every student desk risk management has visited every site to support classroom setup as well as other areas on site and we will again schedule to return to all sites as we continue through this process to review our controls and support our staff where possible we have placed furniture as natural barriers to the staff members workplace the teacher's teaching space has been marked by a visual indicator indicating where the student's foot space begins counter sneeze guards or plexi barriers were placed on our public-facing counters for employees whose primary duties include dealing with essential visitors and may receive or hand off supplies or medication within that meeting time another engineering control to separate the hazard from our staff and students is the replacement of our standard filters in our hvac systems with a filter that is rated at least mirv 13 which captures very small particles and is recommended by the state's guidance as an effective tool as a fight against covenanting we will continue to review we continue to review additional ventilation aids to further address our hvac systems supporting for all of our classrooms and of course we are frequently washing our hands sanitizing our area which also separates the hazard of coronavirus by eliminating it to further address uh counter sneeze guards for some employees it's important to note that sneeze guards are intended to be placed um not intended excuse me not intended to be placed on a desk where one might be directly downward of an infected person for any period of time it's also important to understand they're considered ppe and according to niosh are less effective than the other controls administrative and engineering because they require significant effort by the affected employee ppe must be inspected for wear and tear it must be maintained it must be cleaned and must be replaced when necessary and for some ppe may provide us false sense of security about the level of protection it produces individuals may forego physical distancing due to the belief that wearing a mask and or standing behind a sneeze guard eliminates hazards our job is to keep the hazard away from the staff member so we want to make sure that we have implemented the appropriate uh controls which are your engineering and administrative controls again sneeze guards are not implemented at this time where we are able to maintain physical distancing and where we are not required to be in a closer proximity than six feet for any period of time to meet administrative controls signage has been posted across all sites as reminders of physical distancing and face coverings physical distancing markers have been stenciled in all high traffic walkways across our sites decals mark the areas where students are able to be seated indoors and outdoors as well as they shall not be seated every classroom will have a hand sanitizer mounted at its entrance directional traffic has been identified for student use district drinking fountain caps will be placed over drinking fountains and more motion sensor hydration stations will be installed across our sites our disinfectant for student desk is so safe but it's approved for food contact services services and yet is approved for use against cobit 19 by the environmental protection agency therefore as a result of our engineering and administrative controls we have produced a safe environment for our employees and our students but we can't keep our environment safe alone we need staff and students to abide by the protocols we have established to maintain physical distancing and to wear the face coverings at all times and to remind those around them to do the same next slide please let's talk about base coverings the guidance continues to identify that masks combined with physical distancing protect us from individuals who may be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic as recommended by the guidance the district's protection plan includes a requirement for all individuals on our sites to use a cloth face mask at all times including but not limited to interacting with others working in an area that is a shared space classrooms and walking to and from one area of our campus to another staff also have the option to use a three-ply surgical mask we've had which have been provided to all sites in lieu of a cloth face covering and additionally the district has purchased humanity shields which may be worn in lieu of a face covering in accordance with calosha complete face shields such as humanity shields provide eye nose and mouth protection and are approved as an alternate to a cloth face covering by cal osha individuals who are unable to wear a mask due to a medical reason or a disability will be addressed with face covering alternatives and or an accommodation pursuant to the state's requirements auhsd will exclude students who are not exempt from wearing a mask and refuse to wear one next slide health screenings i'd like to begin by confirming that another component embedded into our kovid 19 education is the importance of all staff and students to self-screen at home prior to reporting for work and school and to remain home if any symptoms related to coven 19 are present and or if there's been any contact with anyone with or suspected of covert 19.