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hey good afternoon everyone my name is jamie knox i'm a school adjustment counselor at uh for the amherst regional public schools at summit academy um we are joined today with some panelists who in a moment will introduce themselves and are going to be talking about building a solid college list so the kind of process for today all of our panelists will introduce themselves they'll each take a few minutes to check in and share their thoughts about this process i will be keeping an eye on the comment section in chat section just to see what's coming up and we'll we'll give those questions to our panelists to answer so good afternoon everybody and dale i'm going to turn it over to you to introduce yourself great thank you my name is dale niemer i'm associate director of admissions at skidmore college in saratoga springs new york hi everyone my name is daisy ogunado i'm an assistant director of admissions with the university of massachusetts lowell hi everyone my name is abby stevens i use she her pronouns and i am as an assistant director as well at the university of vermont thanks for having us great and hello folks my name is rachel tampone associate director of admission and international recruitment at merrimack college over in north andover math great so i'm going to start and talking about ways you can start building your list of colleges and one of the ways i think you can start is even looking in your local area you are very lucky and that you live smack in the middle of some of the best colleges in this country but there's also a range of colleges out there and everyone needs to make some decisions early on do you want large small rural urban etc but we'll get there later but i think now in the time of covid things have changed a little bit and i know it is harder to get onto college campuses but certainly if you're out for a sunday drive or visiting a relative it's always nice to drive through a campus and just check it out and just see what appeals to you if you know students that attend some of the colleges that you're interested in i think that's a great way to find out what they like about that school and maybe their opinions as well websites are a really important way to learn a lot more and one thing about the website now is i think all of us on this panel would agree that our colleges are doing everything we can to build an important informative website so you can find out a lot about our campus culture the majors the size of the classes and also extra curricular life as well we all know there's lots of guidebooks out there um i think i always reference them with read them look through them and strain and sift a little bit of what you read but there is some really good information in the guidebooks with covid i don't know that all schools are doing college fairs anymore but hopefully we'll go back to those soon and i think that's one of the early best steps you can do is going to different tables to learn about different colleges their strengths what they're about but also making those decisions of do i want a large university a liberal arts college a small college a community college a trade school and just kind of realizing what all those opportunities mean um as you can in the fall typically all of us would be on the road visiting your high school unfortunately this year that's not happening hopefully next year it will be so definitely when colleges are coming to visit your high school you'll get to go and visit some of the counselors that come and ask the important questions you need to know of mouth parents your guidance counselors are probably the best resource out there they know many colleges they know us well and they also can use tools like naviance to tell you if you are in the ballpark your teachers are also a great reference but before i finish um as you're building your list you're the expert in your college search and you're the expert of what you need and what your educational goals are and it's great to take advice but trust your heart too i think i'll stop there and then come back and let somebody else continue for a moment oh i think sorry uh what i always advise students when they're planning on their college list is to make it a game first things first is to look up schools that actually have your major so what i suggest is get a sheet a google sheet whatever docs use google and just look up all the schools that you can find that have your major start writing as many of them down and then at that point take like 10 minutes to do all of that you'll probably find quite a few different schools what then i suggest after is to start figuring out which schools fit best for you the colleges are always talking about fit and you know what student fits best but you also have to find the school that fits for you so not only does it have your major but is it private is that what you're looking for is it public is it a community college or is it a specialty school for trade anything specific to you like hbcus or latino serving institutions and then try to figure it out from there then narrow it down even further does it have the clubs that you're looking for is it accredited in certain programs that you're interested in and then from there your list starts to get smaller and smaller another thing i always tell the students because i did have a group of students who played this activity and they were writing down lists of schools that didn't exist anymore or had merged and changed their name so make sure you're actually checking when you're doing all of that to make sure that those schools are still around some really helpful website to do all of this college board is very helpful naviance is great too i know a lot of students have access to that then we've got college green light which helps students find different colleges as well as scholarships then there's fast web which is also good for scholarships as well as searching google is super easy and as dale mentioned before using the school's websites just utilize as many tools as possible to make this not just a difficult you know process for you make it as fun as you can play it with other friends that are looking to get into college whoever has the most on their list that are accurate you know give yourselves a prize or something like that but there's definitely a way to make this interactive and also give you the opportunity to find exactly what you're looking for because no one wants to end up at a school and they realize hey this is not what i was looking for so a lot of research that you do beforehand is gonna save you so much stress in the long run and i'm gonna pass it on to someone else now awesome thank you i think i'm up those are both such good pieces of advice i love the game and and the fit and so oh i would echo both of those um general statements i love the idea of going to visit your local college even if it's not on your list going to check it out but before this panel i actually got some help from some experts which i will put in the chat after but it's a video of our current a couple of our current students giving honest college advice and how they kind of felt what they wanted to know in their search process and i loved watching the video and and i will put it in the chat um and throughout they all had little different nuggets of wisdom that i thought were great and spot on but they all echoed the same statement that it's this is your choice it's up to you and your family what is the best fit um and just like daisy said you know you hear the word fit so much and what does that mean so for example i think a place where students might get caught up is size do you want a big size or a small size what does that actually mean um you know for students coming from a smaller high school setting maybe they think okay i've had a small high school um i need to stick with it and have a small college or maybe um you come from a small high school and you're like no way i'm done with that i want a huge school that that will be great for me so there's so many different sizes um and i think it's a great question to ask when you go to these different visits whether they're virtual or in person what are your what's your class schedule like right now what kind of classes are you taking because the student of um student to faculty ratio at all these schools are going to look pretty similar after a while so really just hearing anecdotally from students i think about you know do you have a mix of classes are all of your classes very small um is a good way to get to know it and and then their one piece of advice i think is helpful so you know we all know what size means large and small but how does that feel for you and what does that mean i think is important um yeah i think i will go ahead and stop there and excited to hear some questions thanks awesome um so i can jump in i think my colleagues from all the other schools have done a great job of explaining how you go about building the actual list so kind of once you get to that point you've done your research you've narrowed down by major by location by extracurriculars athletics religious affiliation size there's a lot of things to consider so you have this list now narrowed down considerably but now you have to think of yourself and your own academic profile and who you are as a student and where you may fit in these institutions um so there are different buzzwords that people throw around like reach schools and target and likely and safety schools but really just thinking about it it's a way to make sure you're giving yourself enough options the right options it's always good to to have some reaches you know some things that are aspirational but i think the biggest part about this list is you know the safety schools or those match schools target schools um those are schools that you should find yourself very happy at and that would be very lucky to have you so you know don't put all of your eggs in this one one or two reach baskets because there are so many institutions where you can find a fit so just kind of thinking of that so things that you'll want to keep in mind when kind of planning your lists and and what your applications are going to look like you're going to want to keep in mind you know the school's acceptance rate what their average gpa may be do they require test scores and what are those averages um just to kind of look at your own academic profile and see how that's in line with what's typical for the school so that's kind of how you'll curate that list of you know okay well my gpa is a little bit below this but i like all they have to offer i'm gonna put my application out there and you know see what happens um or this school you know is right on par with my gpa that's what i'm gonna apply to i would be very very happy if i was able to get in and go there um so it's just good to really give yourself options you don't have to break any world records for how many schools you apply to um you know a healthy list could be anywhere from five to up to you know 15.
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i'm waiting for the live stream to start oh okay oh cool yeah yeah no you're good mike all right rosie go ahead all right thanks good evening everyone today is wednesday october 21st and i call the regular meeting of the brookfield board of education to order in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-206-1-225-1-226 of the connecticut general statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the brookfield board of education youtube channel furthermore such meeting will be recorded or transcribed and posted on the board's website within seven days of the meeting and made available as required by law all speakers taking part in the meeting are reminded that they are to clearly state their names and titles if applicable before speaking on each occasion that they speak individuals wishing to participate in public comment portion of this meeting may do so by calling the following numbers and actually do we have i forgot to write those down um eric do we have those numbers just in case um people need a chance to take them down yeah if you don't see them on the agenda here i'll just read them out for you the numbers are um area code nine two nine two zero five six zero nine nine or area code three zero one seven one five eight five nine two okay and the meeting id thank you the meeting idea is nine five six zero four seven two two eight eight okay thank you um so let's stand for the pledge 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 okay so tonight we have all of our board members present so up first we have public comment and i see one phone number so um eric i'll let you um sure so i'll go ahead and unmute the phone number ending in 846 um and um um rosa do you want to um lay out the guidelines name and address right yeah so um once eric unmutes you just please state your name and address uh for the record and you'll have three minutes to speak um whoever that phone number is i am trying to hit unmute um it's it's not going so it might be asking you for permission so if you can just go ahead and unmute yourself you can do your public comment [Music] maybe they're somehow just listening oh here we go hello are you there did you just mute them them or did they mute themselves i did not they muted themselves so um i i think uh all right yeah i think we'll just move on then um up next we have the student representative report hi i'm tanvi chandra is the brookfield high school student representative there hasn't really been many developments since two weeks ago other than the big email from yesterday um i think it was just disappointing for the students who play fall sports knowing that their season was kind of cut short but we do know that it's for the health and safety for everyone so i guess we could just look back look forward to coming back to school in two weeks um also the seniors were glad to see the sign um for the class of 2020 taken down because those like really is such a small act to help us see that it's our year as seniors now and the only other thing is that a couple people have asked about what's happening with student council for every grade this year and if we can host any events that have the potential to be like modified to be safer during the virus but that would be all thank you okay thank you up next we have written correspondence hi ron jaffe shared articles from publishers weekly and the journal enquirer and also shared a video regarding slavery and indigenous peoples tatiana preston wrote regarding the ais program tammy sylvester wrote with questions about quarantine and jessica jesco wrote regarding the switch to full remote okay thank you amy up next we have approval of board minutes oh that's me again i make a motion that the board approves the minutes uh listed below from the regular meeting on october 7 2020.
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i'd like to call the meeting to order at [Music] announcement of items could be discussed in closed session we didn't have any action items in closed session um and then also if you have any comments for the board and you're on live stream let's fill those if you can fill those out now because it takes time for some of the comments to get to us so we're going to do that indicate what your subject is and what if it's a business item or consent agenda item things like that so send your messages in early for technology purposes so we have to make sure that we get your questions before we get to that item so um because if your question gives to the item after we've discussed it we won't be reopening the item to discuss um flag salute let's just have james would you lead us in the flag [Music] indivisible all right that brings us the agenda item of adopting the agenda do we have a motion to adopt the agenda we have a motion by mr bruno do we have a second okay we have a second by mrs pope do we have any discussion on the item any public input on the item not seeing or hearing any discussion that we can you can generally consent this right scott even though there's only four years all right so general consent on adopting the agenda all right so that brings us to organization reports first one cuta mrs mason hi good evening and everybody out there everybody in the district watching tonight's board meeting well thank you vanessa literally every teacher is probably tuning in right now so i wanted to thank the school board for having to speak tonight um earlier this week i shared the certificated staff concerns with the board in an email and i've gotten several emails and reply from board members but to sum it up roughly eighty percent of our members prefer a january fourth or later return to on-campus instruction in the hybrid model this allows time for all the tech that craig and craig has ordered to actually arrive in the warehouse because everything enforces the back order get disbursed to the site and for trainings to occur and all other preparations needed to provide a safe environment for students and staff to safely return to campus and then i'm guessing you may have received many many emails from our staff certificated staff members and that was the result of a general membership meeting that was held last week and they asked what can we do to let the lord know our concerns what we would like to see for our return to campus and so i said email them they have a district email did you know that and they didn't know that so i'm sure you've gotten many many emails so um if you had any questions about them i'd be happy to answer about the email specifically or the information that was shared in the survey okay and then last month at the cuta we had a special meeting where we were able to recommend the two candidates for the schoolwork position and cta heller voting last week and we recommended delray pope and nancy anderson on the november election ticket as a cta recommendation thank you very much any other questions [Music] apparently there you go thank you cuta for the endorsement all right absolutely it brings us to cse in a second good evening um we've been meeting virtually with our chapter meetings for several months now and it seems to be working out really well and i kind of hopingly continue that method even after we all come back in person because it uh it allows us to be able to talk to more people that are you know because of all of our schedules it's kind of hard to get all classified together at 4 30 in the afternoon so it's been kind of nice to be able to to have a change that works well for everybody this morning we began voting on the health and welfare benefit agreement we reached with the district the voting window will close on saturday october 31st and i would like to take this time to wish mr wilson and his family the very best as they begin a new adventure thank you for your years of service on the school board it has been a pleasure to work with you many classified employees are concerned about the details and decisions leading to the returning to in-person instruction we did not do a survey asking folks to choose the date they feel is reasonable to return to in-person instruction over the past several months we have shared the results of our many surveys and the concerns that were expressed we have encouraged employees to reach out to the board and express their concerns we appreciate that the voices of all employees are heard and considered as the decisions are made and plans are finalized while we know that whatever decision is reached may not please everyone we trust that the decision addresses the needs of the students and families while ensuring the safety of our employees thank you thank you thank you and thank you for your well wishes i love working with you guys so trust me listen just a clarification i think when you had asked or someone had asked previously mrs mason said is there any public questions we did receive a couple from the public okay i'm not sure if that's in order to have the public but or it does relate i believe to item c so possibly would you like us to read that as public comment i yeah let's let's do that i'm not going to see that way those people still get to make their comments and we're moving on target too [Music] all right that brings us to committee updates facility update craig decent all right getting about that sound today um just a few things to report um for the full day kindergarten that's coming up um here and actually hopefully we're going to start in november um you've got three contracts in front of you tonight okay one of them is for the greatest maximum price for the lease leaseback contract which is with the contractor you have the dsa inspector and the testing inspector contracts so if those get approved tonight we plan on breaking ground november first and then how far we continue past that it also depends on your decision that you made kind of with opening um hope and supporting schools back out and then the other thing that we're working on right now with the kindergarten project is the flexible furniture we've got two bids for the 21st century furniture that's going to go into those some classrooms so we're kind of zeroing in on getting ready for when the buildings are there that we can fill them up with good stuff the cte applications we met with the architect our first meeting with the architect was today and we started talking about conceptual design so we'll be able to share with you share with you that information down the road and then november 11th we'll be applying for our funding for that project and then with our new school up in sierra vista we did turn in our cd application for approval of the space that we are planning on using to be approved as a school site cd1 a cdd some jobs that they do is they approve every school site with a lot of different things that they look at they did have a few questions so we're responding to those questions and we're hoping for ce approval later this week or next week because after that we'll start working on the land acquisition and we're hoping to bring the land acquisition agreement to you in november and purchase that property and then finally um the company architect is going to be bringing a conceptual design to you and sharing it with you in november so that's basically all i have unless you have any questions but i did bring you a draft conceptual design take a look at just in case you have any questions when they present what the ten thousand thirty of that school site's gonna look like questions doesn't look like thank you craig all right thank you thank you reports presentations mr jordan williams uniform complaint quarterly reporting so i'm here to report there were no williams complaints this quarter and that concludes the shortest agenda i'm sorry we're all right thank you um now that brings us to the agenda item that are comments from the audience regarding items not on the agenda do we have any carol and or and are there any in the audience this evening okay not seeing any here okay so this is the only one that is actually titled public comments it says uh it is from karen i am disappointed that a board member who doesn't believe in wearing masks and refuses to follow the policy of the school site by not wearing one has such a strong vote in determining the safety of students staff okay well that's why we're the united states we have differing opinions so board and superintendent reports mrs anderson i would just like to rein write thank you to csca and cuta for endorsing me um and don't worry as well and hopefully we'll be off to a good year and get all these problems ironed out working together on it yeah um dory i would like to reiterate thank you cse and thank you once again to cuta for the endorsements um it really means a lot and i appreciate it and let's wish yourself luck uh mr burton um i just wanted to say that over the past few days i have received a lot of emails primarily from teachers i've been contacted by some some parents and i just absolutely love it and encourage any community member staff member whatever if you have something on your mind let us know the better informed we are the better informed decisions we can make and please let's continue the engagement and mr so mr wilson i'm not sure what you're going to say here so i might reserve like two minutes of my time over after you if you're okay with that um but i just want to take the opportunity to thank staff this has been a very unique and trying year and i don't like the collective sometimes just thanking everyone but i like to thank staff because so many people are doing so many unique things for the benefit of our community and our students and our staff but i did want to call out a couple it was funny to dawned on me yesterday as i was leaving it's five o'clock and i looked over at center high school and i saw some parks and or some vehicles in the parking lot and i won't say all their names but i want to acknowledge the coaches that have been out working for the last few months that are doing conditioning with our students for those students they approached myself and mr ferguson and said hey could we do this it meant the guidelines the permits we had some very strenuous guidelines we said to do that and i just want to acknowledge and thank them for doing that because i think it's a great outlet for our students that want to do and have physical activity and along those same lines i know our another activity that's happening is we're working on our play and so i want to acknowledge and appreciate the staff member that's pushing forward with that and having that available for our students i to me it just as mr bruno pointed out there's a lot of emails that we receive and some are our form emails but a lot of them are heartfelt in the beginning and at the end and as i read through those it just reminded me of what a great place we are working in and we get to be a part of and with that i think it's important out of all this we will only become stronger together and we will continue to do what is best for for the students and with that i also want to add i recognize that we're going through difficult times with the decision that the board will be considering tonight there's a lot in our world that seems to be upside down for us as individuals as a collective group and with the holidays approaching two i think that adds one more layer so i think his staff is all of us really being aware of how we can support our families our students and each other during this time that it could be extremely difficult for people so with that i will leave that and turn it back to mr wilson well i don't have much except to say thank you um too many say uh thank you to say to everybody individually um obviously i've been around here a long time um never planned on moving some different things happen so i just wanted to say thank you obviously i take a lot of memories i went to high school here i will miss a lot of people but other than that i wish all of you well i've got an adventure i've never planned on taking but if i got to take it i'm going to make the most fun i can with it so [Music] i just want to say thank you i wish you well i obviously hope this district much success so thank you and just briefly mr wilson to reclaim a couple minutes i just want to thank you you know i met you gosh 12 years ago as you entered the board we were going through a pretty tumultuous time as a school board as a district and you came on and one of the things that i've always admired about you is is the decorum and the way that you run these meetings and really kind of keep that order i've always appreciated that and and want to thank you for for that plus we've over the years had quite a lot of conversations around school business and other business um and i know i will miss having those conversations but i wish you and your family great luck success and um if i ever go to florida maybe i'll try and swing by and although it might be out of order typically just so the community knows when a president of our board ends his or her term we always award them with a gavel to commemorate the year that he or she spent as the board president so since i might have known you might have been leaving we did uh go ahead and get a gavel made up for you even though you you are about two months shy but uh just acknowledging that mr wilson for his uh 20 20 years president so we'll present that to you and wish you and your family great success and happiness thank you very much that brings us to the consent agenda do we have emotion on the consent by mrs anderson do you have any discussion by the board on this any audience participation anything on the computer all right we have a motion we have a second no discussion do we have general consent [Applause] looks like we do all right that brings us to business items business item a architect selection award and contract we have a motion on business item name emotion we have emotional babies support do we have a second we have a second but mr bruno we have a new discussion on this item only that this this item will allow us as mr diesel said during this facilities report that we this would allow us to select nocturne lewis as the architect firm that we would use to construct the two career technical education facilities that we'll be putting in here in the next bit of time any other board comments have any audience comments on the item anything virtually all right so we have a motion and second to accept the staff recommendation um do we have general consent on this item okay general consent on item a that brings us business item b guaranteed maximum price for the leastly spec contract we have a motion on this side we have a motion by mr bruno do we have a second a second have a second by mrs pope do we have any board of discussion any staff will put on this just that this would have this is the guaranteed maximum price essentially budget type for this project so we would seek your approval okay do we have any audience comments on the item anything everything okay we uh we have a motion a second do we have general consent all right so that brings us to item c item c is plan two hybrid update and return to campus state i'm sure we'll have some comments on this but first um do we have a motion i'll bring you to the floor uh mrs anderson let's bring it to florida do we have a second second have a second by mr bruno go right ahead mr jordan all right good evening we're going to talk about our hybrid plan 2.
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i think we're still getting eileen set up okay great alrighty i am going to call this meeting to order this is the regular meeting of the chico unified school district board of trustees for october 21st 2020 if you would please stand and join me in the flag salute 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 okay we have a very uh full agenda tonight and uh we're gonna try to work our way through it i would appreciate if everybody would take a moment now and turn off your cell phones so they're not going off in the middle of the meeting and becoming a distraction okay so uh we had a closed session prior to starting this meeting however there is not anything that i need to report out right now we're going to have announcements dr kaiser so i am an official election [Music] worker and i just wanted to update everyone um if you are 17 but you will turn 18 on november the 3rd you are legally able to vote and that would be a thrilling to see you there we have several voter assistance centers around chico and the bmu on chico state campus will be one of them it will actually hold two voting centers and the same thing and we are encouraging everybody to wear a mask we will provide masks if you don't have them but we are also going to have face shields if someone has a physical reason why they can't wear a face shield but that's not a barrier to voting in other words you will have the right to vote we are prepared to help people register on the spot that day and we are open from nine to five starting halloween um and then on the actual election day the third we will be open from 7 a.m to 8pm so i encourage everyone to come and vote you can put your vote your ballot signed in the ballot box outside there are drop boxes around the city and you can also come inside and if you need assistance we will have a voter assistance specialist that's what i usually do helping you with the machine so please come and exercise your participation in our democracy thank you okay thank you kathy uh before we move on to our items from the floor i wanted to mention once again what our process what the procedure is going to be for people who have sent in a speaker card or have signed up to be a speaker what we're going to do is we're going to go back and forth between people who might be here in person wanting to speak and those who will be telephoning in and if we do not have and it appears to me we do not have a number of people who have phoned in are one on the speaker card who is going to be addressing us on phone okay and i am not really seeing if anyone is going to be addressing us from actually here in the building but um should there be anybody yes okay um when that item comes up we will have the person who came to the meeting and then we'll have the purple who are on the phone and then if there will be an opportunity for other people to indicate they do want to speak right who are just viewing it and we can take them time allowing correct okay okay so we have a whole procedure in place erica and john you're going to be working together and we're going to be all right having the people here so with that said um items from the floor is uh for the people who want to bring up something that is not on our current agenda it has to be an item that is not on our current agenda so i'm going to ask pardon i don't need to okay uh so anyhow if there are any items from the floor we will take those right now okay um i'm not seeing anyone who has contacted erica and so it appears that we will not have any items from the floor then we will move on to negotiations update for mr hamlin yeah so as i reported last time we reached agreement with cta we we will be meeting with them tomorrow to do some cleanup language on some of the uh details of the mou but um we expected some productive negotiations there um they're typically small items we got all the big stuff hammered out when we signed the agreement but um we have a couple details we want to revisit with regards to csea we signed an agreement today with csea they will be bringing that forward to their members for a vote and then also taking that through their 610 process through sacramento as i had said before in the meantime we are operating on the previous mou and uh there are some significant things that csea has asked for and some significant things that we need and both of those make it work so we can operate with school open so so most of the csa folks were already back at work so it wasn't the same kinds of issues that we had with teachers that we had to get ironed out so tomorrow with cta i have i know we have presidents of both unions i don't know if they want to add anything to that okay do yes mr moretti well for the first time i think in two years i have something to add to jim's report in addition to fixing what we might have gotten wrong in the first mlu we also want to start looking at what the next step looks like so so if we can get everything fixed i'm not saying we will all the small items we need to start looking at at the next phase and and what that mou might look like just one addition to jim's comment okay thank you mr moretti and uh is there another representative from csea who wanted to say anything yes lori sullivan's here thank you for letting me speak and i just want a second what kevin and jim said negotiations are going great um we have a nice cooperative team and we will start working on the next phase terrific thank you lori okay we will then move on to our consent calendar and i believe eileen said you wanted to pull an item yes thank you i'd like to pull under general item two donations to the district okay that item's pulled did anyone else want to pull an item from the consent calendar is there any way i'd like to pull i'd like to pull an item please sure go ahead linda i'd like to pull uh 7.2.1 the enrollment update oh right we've got those two items down anything else anybody in the audience wanted to pull anything okay so do i have a motion for the remainder of the consent calendar with the exception and attendance data i'll second the motion okay we have a motion by dr kaiser a second by eileen robinson we will take a roll call vote as our first vote uh linda how do you vote harvey i robinson oh robinson i kaiser griffin i lando i alrighty that passage unanimously will go to the item eileen pulled which is 7.1.1 um yes thank you madam president um when i went through the donations list i saw a donation to neil dow elementary for ten thousand dollars from the firm family church in care of will wilson when i inquired these are funds and gift certificates that they have donated as awards and incentives for the kids that are doing well with school and i just it was such a significant contribution to the school site i wanted to just give them a shout out and say thank you very much okay thank you did you want to move that item then thank you i move approval of donations uh 1.2 yes yes 7.1.2 so we have a motion by eileen robinson a second by dr kaiser all those in favor please say aye aye aye okay that passes unanimously um linda your item is 7.2.1 great thank you thank you i actually want to bring this up and perhaps get some feedback from the fiscal team when i took a look at the enrollment update which i'm so grateful that we get i i noticed from october of last year to october of this year is a substantial drop in enrollment i think it was somewhere around 445 students what that does i don't know the current exact dollar amount that we receive per student from the local control funding formula but if i did some just fly over math that looks like 3.5 million dollars and i'm bringing this up because it is of concern because we will take a look at enrollment and of course attendance for this year when we do our budget for next year and so we're looking at a potential loss of 3.5 million dollars and that's not even taking into account anything the governor might do in light of the crazy economic times as far as kind of taking a cut to the schools so i wanted to reach out to the fiscal team and see if i'm off base or if this is something that they are watching as well okay kevin will address that i really appreciate the question because um obviously it was like enrollment it leads us to average daily attendance which ultimately leads to the local control funding formula exactly when the budget was passed um the legislation changed the prior year because remember we get the better of the current year ada or the prior year ada correct and the legislation um noted that our for the 2122 year the prior year ada would actually be the 1920 year so that enrollment as just a reminder was 12 369 at seabeds which calculated to about 11 848 ada so that will become our new base so we have the benefit and charters do not charters don't get that same prior year um but we will have the benefit of that ada as the better of so if for instance we stayed at the current enrollment and as linda pointed out it was millions of dollars of loss because students not attending we would still be guaranteed the 1920 is is our average daily attendance that we'd use for funding that then means that there certainly is a problem in the out year because then your new base becomes uh the current year 2021 and um as linda also noted we are concerned about what the 21 22-year budget will be in january from the governor because our current year budget was based on tax revenues that were received prior to covet so we are expecting a pretty severe reduction in revenue at this point in time in january from the governor's proposal so we'll have a repeat reprieve related to average daily attendance but i think we're also going to see a loss in revenue related to either cuts or deficits in our local control funding formula okay well thank you for clarifying that right well thank you yes um not really what i wanted to hear i wanted to hear i was totally off base but um thank you for clarifying and so i just again wanted to bring that up that we need to proceed with caution and um you know really navigate the year coming up and do the best we can so with that may i move uh 7.2.1 okay all right we have a motion by linda huffy we have a second by eileen robinson all those in favor please say aye aye and so that passes and that takes care of our consent calendar yes i have to apologize i just got informed by one of our constituents so then i had my mic on and so they didn't hear a thing i said so i really apologize huh i heard you you did oh it was uh oh because it was julie said she couldn't hear anything well if people heard me then that's good i don't have to repeat it okay um you know if you want to you could do it at the announcements at the end too you can repeat okay so we're going to move on to our discussion action calendar and first up we have educational services and this is an information only uh update on the reopening of in-person instruction in the modified traditional ampm model thank you yes we're just going to kind of go over what it's looked like for the first three days of our am pm our shift to am pm for you guys to kind of give you a quick update on what that'll look like our agenda for this up discussion our item will be the number of students and our each of our instructional models so we want to kind of give you a look at what how many students are attending our schools in the amp model how many have done the oak bridge model and the other that has done the third option was to do online distance learning on their campus we'll kind of go over again what curriculum and instruction looks like in those models we will do the health and wellness or social emotional learning having our students come back to school after seven months we wanted to kind of share what we've been doing with that our safety and sanitation on our campuses when we brought them back a lot of that you've heard but we just want to go over again the update from that and our communication and our technology update for our parents and for our students so first we're going to have mr karis kind of go over the data which shows what um what the students and what model they have chosen good evening so uh at the request of the board uh i'm i'm reporting out to you the percentage and number of students that are choosing to take part in site-based online instruction and in in-person instruction so what we see is a little under 80 percent of chico unified students are back in school in the am pm model in person and about a little over 20 percent chose to do the site based online i want to note that oakdale oak bridge and loma vista are not included due to uh the different ways they take attendance oakdale and oak ridge are independent study and loma vista has different policies due to programs there okay next this slide i wanted to provide by by site for your review i'm not going to go over each each uh each site but at the elementary level we see anywhere from 90 percent of students uh in person at shasta to little just a little over rosedale so wide span and how how the sites are coming back at the at the secondary level we see you know chico junior at 67 or 68 coming back in person that's the lowest in secondary and then we see on the other end chico high with 87 of their students coming back next slide oak bridge enrollment as we've gone through this this change has stayed relatively static we're only down 16 from right at that first week of school and we currently sit at 5 35 any questions about those we'll take questions at the end oh you want questions at the end um that's okay if you would who if you yeah i wanted to go back to the uh this is eileen excuse me i wanted to go back to this to the slide before this one um when you're talking about percentages are you talking about um the percentages in attendance of those that were expected do we have absences or are the people that you're reporting [Music] the uh the students were the ones that were enrolled and expected to attend i this this data is showing what the students are scheduled into in aries so it has nothing um attendance doesn't come into play thank you that was yeah it's just what they're signed up for okay we're going to have mr sullivan and mr shepard kind of go over the different instructional models for us there we go uh yeah we're excited to be back in elementary we had a i mean people have been very happy traveling to all the different schools and checking with as many people as possible and just generally a very comfortable confident happy return it's kind of how i would sum it up certainly some little issues uh the elementary world we've come back in person so we have a mix of teachers actually delivering instruction in person to kind of class sizes about 15 or below some of them we have other teachers that are doing kind of a in the am they're doing things in person but pm they're continuing zooming also potentially and kind of the third way that some of them are doing things some of them are actually kind of doing some live streaming while they're teaching in elementary world they were incredibly flexible trying to match up to what parents were looking for what teachers wanted to do so they kind of creatively put different models together and like when you looked at the rosedale data that tim shared a little bit they had a whole different need level with what families wanted to do as far as being there in person compared to a shasta with it so different teachers different sites were very creative and really kind of put different strategies together so that i think as of this moment everybody's been able to slot into whether online am pm something that's kind of matching up to what their family is looking for so we've been happy to be back and actually gina rivera is here with us she's a chapman elementary teacher first grade and i just you know to share for a couple minutes and i have to walk through gina's class today actually while she was live streaming in the pm with one group and had about eight or nine students there in person with her also at the same time so gina you want to share for a minute yeah sure thanks ted um hi my name is gina rivera i teach first grade at chapman as ted said i am doing the am pm model where my pm is that third option we were given of live stream or zoom plus in person getting back was quite the transition my grade level partner and i decided to keep ready math we really liked that program but being back in person we loved wonders for online but wanted to go back to treasures because that's our our natural go-to and and we know it so well and we love the way that flows too um being back there have been a lot of pros for us for my class specifically i haven't had a lot of issues with math i actually haven't had any issues besides the oh honey it needs to go over your nose and they go ahead and go right for it my sanitation has been great in my classroom thanks to our custodial and some mno workers it's been super clean i felt really good and i like that i get to cleanse because sometimes i like to clean a little more it just helps me feel good it helps with my anxiety of being back and that has been really helpful for me our drop off and pick up pickup has gone really smoothly um my school's smaller so it might not be the same for everybody but my admin did a great job of coming up with a great model and it has worked really well for me as a teacher having the two groups and having smaller numbers is actually a little bit of a silver lining for me because i want to make up for those seven months that kids haven't been in person and being able to really focus on kids and have those spontaneous interactions that have been missed online i've learned more about my kids in these last three days than i really had online it's sad to say and that's kind of the con for my kids who still are online there are still some things that i'm missing for them and i just can't necessarily do everything for them that i can with my in-person kiddos but we are doing our best and we're still pushing through and there is that feeling of being nervous of getting sick and bringing it back to people i love and and for my kids too but here we are we're working hard we're doing really great things and it feels great to have our school come back to life and it's been wonderful thanks jana for sharing and i will chime in gina said they did a really good job with parking and pickup and things they'd say that's the one growth area we have in elementary school several schools with reopening we have a little traffic flow issue at a couple of them that the principals are definitely working on kathy so i'm glad you mentioned that uh i have two at emma wilson and two step ones at rosedale and the first day the chaos was literally in the pickup but certainly nothing but bright smiley faces from the kindergartner and the second graders and by the second day both schools had really ironed it out and it was so much more fluid and worked so great so those are both different schools as you said and emily wilson's our second biggest one so the fact that they could get it all figured out was really impressive okay from a secondary perspective as you can see these three models are relatively similar to elementary and i do think it's important to highlight the inclusion of all of our students that includes our special ed students our english language learners our targeted student populations those needs are being addressed as we as we transition back sometimes those targeted student populations are disproportionately affected by these changes and so i know diane and her team and ritesh and his team have been doing everything they can to include these kids i do want to invite kyle gunther he's a middle school teacher here in the district he comes from an educator a chico local educator family you might recognize the last name and kyle's going to tell us a little bit about how his experience is kyle good evening thank you mr shepherd and for having me tonight um i just want to start by saying i've been super impressed with all the teachers and staff and admin on campus but most importantly our students students in the classroom have done an amazing job of procedures and guidelines and from what i see on campus i couldn't be more proud of our gators i think the biggest challenge that i have come across so far is setting up the hybrid model in the last week and a half or so between working with my technology and figuring out how to best address my students and prevent a distraction with the zoom making sure that the balance of working within the classroom and on a zoom is there but i'm happy to say after today day one of the hybrid model i think it's gone really well with the exception of a handful of hybrid students that have been juggled around not being able to get the zoom links and that but i think with time we'll get on track that another thing that i've noticed with students is over [Music] the time they've been back three days the lack of questions that have come up from students and i think this has come from the time distance learning where there is added responsibility of joining the teachers offices voluntarily or emailing the teacher for help so having them back in class where they're able to raise their hand i think is going to be super helpful i actually volunteered to bring some of my academic support students onto campus a couple weeks ago and work with them in the afternoons and to help with those questions i set up a little quarter sheet weekly check-in form that they get when they come in and one of the prompts on it was today i'm going to ask for help on and i think it helped the students be able to think about what they've been working on before coming to school and come up with some questions to ask while they're here and get that extra support that they're here for but now with day one i think students were really hesitant they weren't sure what to expect they weren't sure what to do but now on day three we jump back into our science curriculum today and already i've seen many more students engaged in raising their hands asking for help it's really helped me be able to observe and figure out how i can help rather than wait for the email or them join office hours or having to track them down myself via email during distance learning i've also seen much more participation in the classroom responding to class discussions opposed to when we were doing distance learning yesterday and the day before in science i showed a little video about a science investigation and the importance of wearing masks and how they might prevent the spread of bacteria and virus and afterwards i had a student raise their hand and share just a very initial thought to all the evidence they saw and they said i think we should wear masks um always if all that stuff comes out of our mouth when we talk or we speak um you know we yawn we cough whatever it was and immediately the whole class turned around and looked back to them uh like really you want to keep wearing these masks but to me it showed that there was so much more engagement and everyone was involved and it really went to a great scientific conversation which was fantastic very cool well thank you kyle for addressing the board you're a relatively new teacher and we appreciate your courage um to join us this evening yes thank you thank you i do want to go back to one of the challenges that kyle expressed we we i know the board is aware that we are still working with our sites to be sure that we can meet the needs of all the students and parents who are interested in the third option so we are still in the process of addressing the many challenges that come with that with that choice but as we're hearing it's definitely been worth the work we are hearing students truly feel like they're they're part of their school so they can see kids if they're working from home they can see kids in the classroom and they feel much more connected so we're still working on those schedules thank you thank you john okay next i'm going to have a couple principals speak on the health and wellness first we're going to miss joanne bettencourt talk about on the elementary level good evening um it was so exciting to be back this is just our third day today um and we had our counselors and um counseling assistant ready to help kids that may need difficult or maybe having some difficulties with transitions a lot of times those kindergarteners have a hard time we had done some uh we had opened up the campus on sunday so that parents could do a self-guided tour with their child so they could figure out how to get from their car and which gate they needed to go in to their classroom um and the students did really really well you know there were just a handful of kiddos we had to show to their classroom especially those kindergartners and first graders you know it's a big campus and they're not quite sure where to go but for the most part um it went really really smoothly more smooth than i could have ever imagined so um we were super excited about that lots of smiling faces lots of parents excited lots of kids excited it it really felt like that that first day vibe where the kids and the cat campus is just hopping with you know just those positive smiles and vibes so uh we were super happy um everything went really really well um and then our teachers are hitting the ground running you know they've already literally on day one i walked through a class i had mr chairs with me and teachers are already doing their their assessments for their trimester assessments trying to get ready to do those report cards um trying to figure out where those kids are so they can start um implementing interventions um and at rosedale were unique you saw our percentages um but actually some of my teachers have opted for example my fourth grade team has opted to run the zoom while they're teaching and then in the afternoon they've invited a small group of kids who they feel just need some some one-on-one small group instruction so they're getting their interventions in that way so i thought that was a pretty creative way to um so those kids are zooming in the morning and then they're also coming back in the afternoon to to get some interventions so i thought that was pretty creative so they're kind of getting a double dose there so um very proud of that leading up to getting back in to campus um we had our pbis team we sat down and we you know figured out what protocols needed to be in place and and what it was going to look like on our campus um and as kathy alluded there there was some refining that needed to happen with the the pickup and we have one more round of revisions tomorrow we're hoping that that will fix it but um between the difference between day one and day two was was quite large quite huge but um little by little or as we say in spanish we're getting there um some of the neighbors are not very pleased with the traffic at 10 30 they're just not used to that i think they expect it at 2 30 in the afternoon not at 10 30 in the morning um so um yeah our pbis team did a really good job creating um a slide show that the teachers then took and added some as they wanted to address for their own personal classrooms and then i created a video and pushed it out to uh the whole community as well so very excited very happy to be back and um it feels good yes joanne i think several of your teachers now know how loud a voice i have so i was able to contact the kids that i needed to get a hold of but one of the things that i was so pleasantly surprised at was i went back to emma wilson to drop something off and i was not aware they had a social emotional dog and i was just so pleased with that because we did a experimental dog at citrus but i didn't know emma wilson had one so that was great i was not aware either i know so that would be the next thing joanna okay we'll work on that okay next we're going to um have mr our mall um come up and see here he is in person we have somebody in person at a board meeting thank you mr mall anything i could do thank you for having me um i first want to start out um by just expressing my sincere gratitude to my elementary and secondary colleagues for their efforts up to this date um i have the most wonderful wife at home who is also a fourth grade teacher i'm here in chicago unified school district and to see what she goes through every day and prepping just in general but also what our elementary teachers have learned and set up for for their students for their turn and also during distance learning i'm in awe and i'm very much humbled by all of their efforts as far as my secondary colleagues i cannot thank you enough for your collaboration your communication and your creativity as we work together to meet the the needs of our students and our families and so with that i just want to share a little bit about what alternative education has been doing uh since the since the year began since spring so when we prepared to come back to campus and then we realized we're going to be distance learning back in uh to start the school year um the student support team really had to get creative and intensify our efforts and what i feel we already do very well but also in how we're going to do it with students um that are not on campus with us so um our targeted case manager did a phenomenal job of gathering truancy data from a distance learning perspective and to this day we have made 78 home visits for non-engaged and partially engaged students we have a team of administrators targeted case spanners wellness counselors and youth for change representatives so we hit the road while our teachers are doing a great job of the daily interaction communicating with students that we're engaged and also during an asynchronous time reaching out to those who needed support and also those who were not engaged while they were busy doing that and giving everything they got which i can't tell you enough about them and how proud of them i am um so to get out to those homes and to really uh do everything we can to get them connected it was it was amazing we had 25 approximately 25 positive visits as well when make sure we uh we shared our students our appreciation for their hard work and as you know you've probably heard me say it many times that i am privileged to work with the most resilient and courageous youth in our community and to you know hear the stories and the barriers and the adversity that they go through that most of us will never experience and still reach out and to uh to trust you know that courage that they that they have to trust us and some of them never met us up to this point so we have a lot of wonderful stories but a lot of work to do even with our students coming back on the campus so some of the other things we did very well in my opinion we have truancy rosters on the fairview side so we're compiling our data as far as our return it was a very smooth transition to reopening i got some data i could share with you on that but we will um start back up our currency rosters every fairview teacher will get a roster for their second period and they will make connections uh text call email everything they can possibly do to get those students reconnected to us oakdale they have their caseloads they're constantly reaching out everything they can do to keep those students reconnected from an independent study perspective and of course afc cal staff they are absolutely phenomenal they take their first period students every single day every single week and they call and call and call until we get a response and if we don't then we get out there our student support team has come up with creative ways to you know connect with our students we have a partnership with promotores and so we are getting counseling groups set up but then they're actually starting this week we had to modify a little bit with the ampm model so having a zoom counseling groups taking place the opposite of the student's schedule so they created a wellness page that is something we've wanted to do for a long time the fact that they've been so creative underneath so much stress it's it's it's humbling to say the least um so as far as reopening again it was a it was a slow start we had about 30 students that are actually signed up for in person show up yesterday on monday today or yesterday we doubled that to 66 and i think that's a testament to what our students or our students are capable of once taking across one of those barriers and connecting and trust our staff um today i don't have the data today but it looked from my direct observations it looked pretty similar to what it was yesterday and i'm confident we're going to get back up to the 80 mark that we that we typically around every year discussions with students and staff our students are absolutely amazing they were a little nervous on monday when they stepped back on the campus all of them were in compliance with their masks we haven't had any issues with math no discipline issues about anything in terms of compliance and again that's a testament to our staff providing information and just expectations for with students before and when they finally came onto campus um he said our staff was prepared they're the best the best at what they do and i am extremely proud of our staff and i'm humbled to be a part of the program so thank you thank you i loved your balloons all right thank you staff was there early i think part of the intimidation is we had staff lined up in socially distant manner and students kind of didn't know where to go because we're kind of covering everything so that was great thank you thank you mr mulligan once again you can see his passion for his school and what a great job he does our next slide is safety and sanitation mr baltimore sure so on the slide there's a pretty long list of items that we were able to provide for the start of school from signage to social distancing stickers on the ground to the hand sanitizers at the entrance points to our schools but this represents a lot of work and a lot of work that happened early all the way from our business service side making sure they ordered the materials to really our staff getting those out i will point out we think it went well but we had a couple challenges just to admit to the board uh the water uh the neutral electrolyzed water which is a we think a very good disinfectant didn't arrive over the weekend like we were promised and we were scrambling to provide regular water in classrooms for the start monday morning to give credit to our maintenance staff they went out on a sunday and also found disinfectant wipes and we were able to put those in classrooms to be available for teachers and staff and students that want to use it so again it was a problem but we had a solution to the problem and i would give a lot of credit to that staff we had custodians and maintenance people that were out at our schools at two in the morning making sure that what we promised people was there even though it wasn't the new water and exactly what we said was going to be there at least we provided the bottles that we said were and certainly the effort was there to make it happen the order did show up monday morning at 9 a.m and we had to do the entire process over again and i would say by tuesday morning 95 of all the classrooms had new water in the bottles with the microfiber claws and ready to go so it was good work it wasn't obviously ideal it was a very stressful weekend for our staff but i do think we provided a safe environment for kids and i will say our custodial staff i was able to visit four during the am pm transition for elementary um and that microfiber cloth system that we've placed in those classrooms got a lot of positive feedback on those from our from our custodians they really felt like they could hit all those desktops and high touch areas very quickly and the last thing that isn't mentioned here but i did want to note our maintenance people and our grounds people all support staff if you know the grass isn't mowed right now because they've been on on site with a cloth with disinfectant literally walking the campuses throughout the day making sure that those areas were wiped down and they're really smart because they were always in areas that were highly visible and they were always in areas that were highly used so i just can't thank our staff enough for really working outside their job descriptions but they were doing that um to make sure we had a safe environment for kids so thank you mr baltimore yeah thank you mr baldwin especially for staying up until two o'clock in the morning and making sure it was all done we appreciate that well i left at 12 30 staff stayed until two years okay all right next slide is communication and technology i'm going to start it off with mr vincent back here behind the curtain as we call him mr the wizard of oz good evening board yeah i'm back here behind the curtain so i just want to report um the first few days of school we had no big issues with technology always a plus sometimes first day of school can be a little rough but it went really smoothly this year i went to eight different school sites and talked to admins and um things were very good so one thing that really stood out when i was going to different school sites though is the number of usonic tvs are being used by our staff and same thing talking to other admins the same thing that those new vsonics are just being used extensively in our classrooms right now they're fantastic machines are not just tvs i talked to mr whitaker today when i was coming in and he said one of his math teachers was taking students were able to throw up to him the problems they were having issues with and he could put that on the viewsonic and then do the problem in front of everyone on the viewsonic so all the kids can see the problem that that student was having so it's just as a great platform for all of our all of our people all of our kids and ours our teachers and i just wanted to say um phil morgan did a fantastic job at getting that project done in a very quick timeline he also yes um and he also was um taking care of the training so we had a lot of training on this we had chico high school had six trainings and i know all of our schools had multiple trainings uh we have more to come so as teachers learn the basics we'll then have usana come in and teach them those more complex things that really allow them to utilize this technology to its fullest extent the other thing i want to mention to you is patrick bessetti has been working on changing out our older access points our wireless access points in our schools just to make sure we have the most bandwidth possible for all those chromebooks that are out there that the kids are bringing back so he's working on that probably next month or so this should all be changed out and we all on the newest access points thank you thank you john you know that's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that most people don't know about so we really appreciate your getting everything up to speed so this works well that was a big issue at the very beginning of this uh you know the whole online so thank you very much for taking care of that and patrick john i want to know what happens when my five-year-old is 10 and knows more than i do about any of that stuff you know also we were able to get um mics and headphones for families for students that do not have them so we handed those out to all the principals at all the schools to make sure that the students that are still doing the distance learning have the proper equipment to go with the chromebooks we've heard that was something that they needed also we send out many multiple communications to families regarding the new safety protocols for their students to come on a lot of our principals at our schools did great videos showing where their kids had to go in what gates what the protocols and distance that they needed to be for the social distancing there is a video clip there from neil dowd but we're not going to show it tonight but we wanted to put it on there for you to watch but a lot of schools have similar videos neil darwin was very cute that they did also our teachers on that thursday and friday before we we went to this monday um showed those video clips and also introduced themselves where their classrooms were what the safety protocols were going to be in their classrooms so they did an excellent job on that thursday and friday to let kids know what they're going to have to be and their parents what the expectations were going to be they did a wonderful job i just watched a chico high one today that was amazing also so it was really good next thing we want to do uh tina out there in the crowd she's done again we talked about it last board meeting a masterful job to make sure that we were able to get our workday child supervision for our for our workers for am pm if their kids had students going on the end that they had the pm child care then if their students went to pm they had the am so they did a masterful job at training to meet the needs of all of them i think that we have a couple that we're we're still uh fixing but i i think that she had those done today but we did a math she did a great job for how many people had to do that nutrition service has done an amazing job we talked about this again last board meeting but the am students come in and eat breakfast at the campus i'm in the morning if they like and then they take the lunch on their way out the pm students come in and eat their lunch on campus and then they take their breakfast on the way out for the next morning so that's the way events has been going so they have two meals for them every day and transportation has been doing a great job of making sure that we get our special ed and our foster and homeless students to school so that's our presentation if you could see that picture there was that tv it was in their yale building where it says welcome back we can't mask how excited we are to see you but there was a lot of those type of sayings a lot of our schools it's just amazing our students one they were a little shocked to be in at school but how well-behaved they were and how they wanted to follow protocols even on the one ways they were they're doing an amazing job we all split up and went to different schools i think we all went to at least five to eight schools that first day to see how it went we hit a few yesterday also so everything's seen we know it's early on just like it is on any early on of a school year everybody's doing what they need to do but so far so good so if we have any questions or any comments that's the end of this presentation yes eileen yes thank you um i i was out doing errands this morning it was such a nice warm feeling to see yellow school buses around town i ran into bus 40.
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questions or comments yes mr glover just one uh i just wanted to uh give some praise and thanks uh in item 6.2 there's some uh elementary teacher additional duties there's a stipend in there and i appreciate the cabinet and the superintendent for working on that for our on behalf of our elementary teachers oftentimes i have found in my experience that elementary teachers will very often do something without complaint and without compensation they just do it um but this is the case you know just out of the goodness of their heart but this is a case where they were doing extra work and uh higley saw fit to compensate them for that i think that is uh that follows along with our plan of honoring our teachers and especially uh in a year where people are very stressed out to know that their work is honored and their time is honored by the district is really good and i thank you for doing that yes thank you mr glover and thank you for always advocating for our teachers in that area okay all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries 5-0 7.1 any questions or comments for mr gad tonight on our financial report well that was easy mr gad gotta like that okay 7.2 we are going to review our um proceed fiscal year proceeds of capital improvement bonds maintenance operations override data and a presentation and is that going to be dr fowler is it dr fowler members of the board sorry we're going to pull up we're going to pull up this attachment and mr gatt is going to give some details and additional information will also be provided by dr fowler as well if questions arise and president members of the board this report is required annually by law to reflect what the district spent last year on its m o and bond budgets the mno listing as you can see has the five bullet points that was provided to the voters in the in the pamphlet the teacher compensation increase is in the neighborhood of seven to eight percent for teachers that has been added to the salvage schedule and would not have been added had the override not been available the elementary specials would be art music and pe the maintenance of those programs at the elementary level reduce average class size our calculations show basically this offers two per classroom as a reduction so instead of having 28 you would have 26.
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um the muwenki center was renovated in 2017 so it is a very new looking space we have a state-of-the-art kitchen we have spaces where students can really find community and build safe space on campus if there's they want to go relax with their friends or cook a meal with their friends or stay someplace and study late um the cultural center is open until midnight and it's really just the place that provides holistic programming um anywhere from you know support as you navigate an academic um space to learning how to wrap your hair um so it's a really affirming and beautiful community space on campus that we have for students um i think that was a smith as its identity as a women's college one of the biggest misconceptions that students have is that there isn't diversity on campus um because everybody might hold similar gender identities but i think that nothing could be further from the truth so that students come from 47 different states over 50 different countries about a third of our students identify as domestic students of color about 14 percent of our students identify as international students and eighteen percent of our students will be the first members of their families to attain a four-year degree um and in closing we have additional resources all over campus that are helped that are available to serve students so um the office of multicultural affairs has emergency funding for students um so if you're studying one night really late and you fall asleep and you break your glasses there's funding for you to replace them um we have the jacobsen center and the spinelli center which is available for writing tutoring and also peer tutoring as well we have our wellness center that offers um bypoc support groups and free therapy sessions for all students our office of equity and inclusion is really the central hub on our campus that is responsible for holistic programming for faculty staff and students um to help us promote that mission that i was talking about earlier how do we attain diversity and inclusion at smith and the office of equity and inclusion is really charged with um ensuring that um all faculty all staff all students um really put inclusion at the forefront of everything that they do um they also hold affinity groups for faculty staff and students we also have liaisons for undocumented students students who are non-binary um or tran and or trans and for students who are first generation college students we also have the office of student engagement which also works to promote clubs and organizations and programming on campus for all students and we also have centers for leadership and community engagement honestly i could go on and on about all of the resources that are on our campus and i'm happy to discuss them further once we get into the q a but that's my overview thanks so much so i think i'm i'm next in our order is that right okay yeah so um so there are are really a couple of different ways that i want to talk about diversity uh at bennington the first is to think about uh or to talk about the institutional commitment to um dismantling structural racism um and examining the ways in which uh our institution may be upholding that and so um there uh are many efforts on campus um the two main ones are that we have an office of diversity equity and inclusion um that is specifically uh to address these questions about uh structural racism and we also have a president's working group that consists of current students staff faculty alumni and board members um so i think about 25 or 30 people total um and and they are uh right now um have we just created this group and they're sort of meeting to talk about um how is bennington going to respond uh to structural racism um so so that's that's important to talk about but but the second thing to talk about when we talk about diversity at bennington um is the student experience um and diversity on campus so i'll run through a couple of like statistics and numbers um just so that you have a sense of uh the broad picture uh so bennington is very small we have um currently enrolled right now 733 undergrads um so uh in terms of uh gender diversity uh we have a population of students that are about 60 female identifying about 30 to 33 percent male identifying and about five to seven percent non-binary so we have um we have a really uh gender diverse campus um we at bennington uh about 19 of students identify as students of color um so that's a low number um and it's also much higher than it was 10 years ago and and there are a lot of ways in which bennington has really made an institutional priority out of um thinking about access to higher education and and specifically access to bennington uh so we have about uh 19 of our students are international students um and then we have um socioeconomic diversity which bennington has always uh had um had a lot of uh so we about 22 percent of bennington students identif are our first generation college students uh which means they're the first in their family to attend college that's a really high number for uh for small private liberal arts colleges in in new england um about 28 of our student body is pal eligible so basically what that means is about 28 percent are identified as high need financial aid students um and uh and about 10 percent of our student body qualifies for extended federal financial aid that's need-based which again is a really high number for a small private college so i want to talk a little bit about um some admission efforts that have been that we have made to make it easier for students to access um you know bennington and and to apply uh so bennington partners with raise me that organization partners with colleges to bring transparency to merit aid so when colleges say they award merit aid a lot of students are puzzled about what exactly that means um from college to college and so raise me helps students understand these are concrete steps that you can take to um to access uh merit merit aid at particular colleges um and it also gives students increased access to counseling resources that they might not be getting at their school because maybe they attend a huge school and their guidance counselors have a lot of students that they're working with um we have no application fee at bennington we did away with that i believe in 2016.
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um there is no minimum word count for the common app essay um and i mean you know generally speaking within the the universe of writing right more words doesn't mean better right an 800 page book is not necessarily better than a 200 page book obviously because without saying um within the context of the the common essay though i think that one one thing that admissions committees are looking for in the essay is a sense that the applicant has really made the most of the opportunity to express themselves on paper and communicate their identity through the written word and i think just a very a very easy way to show the admissions committee that you've done that is by getting very close to the 650 word uh 650 max word count um admissions counselors we don't have time to you know we're not going to like count every single word and see you know if it's 645 words or 646 words um but i will just say you know a very easy way to show the admissions company that you have um invested a lot of time in in your essay and really made the most of that opportunity is by by getting by getting close to that 650 uh word count and um you get to echo the remarks of my colleagues already i think you know once you get started with brainstorming and drafting um you'll find that 650 words is oftentimes not enough and the problem is you know usually more cutting down your essay instead of adding on to it so um definitely don't be intimidated by that 650 uh number um i think you know yeah again just a very easy way to show the admissions committee that you invested a lot of time in the essay is to you know get get get fairly close to uh to that 650 max on a similar topic there's a question about uh what's the approximate layout for an essay whether it's five paragraph or three paragraph at least from my perspective um there's no specified layout um i think if things aren't formatted whatsoever if it's just a big square block of text that doesn't look great just aesthetically even if the content is wonderful uh and it's the most amazing pros i've ever read um it just shows that you didn't like space things out you didn't indent and use your margins appropriately um so you want to make sure that you do just double check even the formatting um i wouldn't say that you have to use five paragraphs some students kind of do a narrative so it's broken up into lots of little bits of text over the course of those 650-some words it it's really what makes most sense for your writing but you want to make sure you have thought about it just a little bit um five paragraph is perfectly fine if it's three i think that's also fine um but that's again going to be just another way that you you can kind of put the effort in and we can see the effort quite literally how is it presented to us when we're reading it so it's not just one big block of writing uh yes and and to griffin's point just one thing yeah that's yeah it's definitely definitely not the case that the only essays that we receive are five paragraph essays and it's also not the case that the the best essays are you know the standard five paragraph format um we definitely get um you know narrative stream of consciousness essays um you know i i think the thinking back to girlfriend's remarks earlier about you know being true to yourself just like you know if you're not a comedian the comment personal statement essay is usually not the best time to try your hand at stand-up comedy um same way with sort of stream of consciousness writing um if it is you know a format that you're very comfortable with um you know it might it could very well end up being a strong strong essay um i think you know as you as you spend more time writing the style that you feel most comfortable with and you feel um allows you to um you know engage with your topic and communicate yourself through that topic um just being sensitive to how you feel during the during the drafting and during the revising process is very helpful and chances are if you if you feel very very comfortable while writing within a given format that's a format that's going to be going to be very effective in terms of getting you close to that to that final draft that you're looking for screenplay format personal statement oh my gosh yeah those can be very fun as well we love yeah yeah we love when students are just being being true to who they are and true um and reflecting that through uh through the format so yeah if you if you are a creative person who just has you know is comfortable writing in a variety of different formats um don't be afraid to try those different formats out through the through the drafting and revision process um one of them might end up being the final draft that you want to submit so yeah definitely don't but um don't let you know creative you know creative and impulsive definitely don't ignore your creative impulses as you go through the drafting process um i've noticed over the course of many of my high school visits virtual high school visits this fall a lot of students have been asking about how can they share about covid um it's something that's impacted quite literally everyone that's why we're not in person doing this presentation but all over the us um and just so do know it impacts everyone including us on the board of admissions so we're aware there's going to be lots of changes um and those are being communicated clearly and accurately by your counselors but there might be additional information that you feel like is relevant to share i think it's important to kind of discern what should you be sharing and what might just be kind of an understand under understood given i should say um so i think if there's a curriculum change that's impacting your entire school well that's probably shared by your counselors in a document called the school profile so do you need to share that in the additional information section well probably not i'll understand when i look at your transcript why that exception might be there if there's a particular circumstance that's unique to you your family something that's immediately specific to you that wouldn't impact your larger community i think that's worth sharing but that's just my perspective i don't know if noah or tom have other ideas on this very new relevant topic yeah i would just kind of share that for us um again if it specifically and uniquely impacted you and and you want to share about that i've also seen students already starting to respond to covet in their like portfolios for example making work about it and that's been like a really special unique way to kind of see their response to like making quarantine like not having access to practice spaces um or studio spaces in the way that they normally would and so using like the essay section to kind of contextualize that like could be a really cool thing um but definitely there's no need to you can trust that our admissions committees will be looking into understanding like what's going on at your school and how it specifically impacted your school so you don't need to tell us what you might already know which is really just a good strategy in general for the essays you'll have other pieces of information in the application if you're just repeating that in your essay you know you're really just repeating yourself so yeah there's another question that popped up a lot um about like appropriate topics of what might be okay to write about and what might not be okay and uh trauma has come up quite often of um when is it appropriate to share and to what extent um i often kind of would phrase it as is this something you would share or feel comfortable sharing um with the teacher and um how how does it present you kind of like what do we learn from this in a positive way we want to always view you in the best life possible so where's the growth and what's the takeaway um everyone's going to go through all sorts of experiences in life and that's okay you shouldn't feel like you have to share the heaviest story that you've been through because sometimes that's very personal and you shouldn't have to feel like you need to share that you need to share the story that you're most excited about sharing so sometimes yeah it can be a hard moment but it doesn't have to be so don't feel compelled to share what might be the most challenging moment you've ever been through um because maybe you want to present yourself in a different light you shouldn't be defined by a kind of traumatic experience of course it will impact you but that shouldn't be your only story so it's your choice i know that's not really the most specific answer but i just want to relieve any anxiety if students feel pressured into sharing a certain type of narrative please know that all sorts of narratives are accepted because that's who you are you should be accepted for whatever stories you want to share absolutely no yeah i'm so glad you you brought that up and yeah we will never um yeah we will never you know read an essay and be like oh that wasn't sad enough so we're not going to give it a high rating that's just not you know how how the application how the essay process as an essay review process goes um and as much as the common fsa is a wonderful opportunity for um you know introducing yourself um to the admissions committee you know we also realized that you are you are more than whatever you put down on your essay we're not going to reduce you to um that single feature um but it is just a wonderful opportunity for you to um share about something that is meaningful to you and um not yeah and not letting the you know where it falls on the spectrum of emotions being the sole consideration that you have um with respect to the topic that you choose is is helpful um is helpful to you to to keep in mind um yes yeah um essays that deal with trauma definitely aren't going to um you know either you know get guaranteed one way or the other in terms of you know what the overall rating is um again going back to what we've been talking about earlier you know it's uh you know how does it communicate who who you are and you know how does it how effective is it as a vehicle or um giving us in the emissions can be an idea of who you are beyond the other pieces um of the application um but yes definitely definitely don't feel like you have to um you have to um yeah produce an essay that um you know that generates a um or lists a certain emotion from um from the readers that that are going to be taking a look at it katie is still with us um via our chat um so she was able to chime in and i'm just gonna read back um approximately what she shared a piece of advice that she often shares is to focus on how students have grown um through moments of challenge and trauma and how they have coped with it um so how do they kind of prepare themselves for challenging situations in the future um college you're transitioning from high school a home environment you may have been around for many many years to a new home a new community so how are you going to cope and what resources are you going to use to make sure you kind of lock in your mental well-being so that was from katie yeah uh thinking of uh i know we've mentioned something more essays before um earlier earlier on in our conversation um uh yeah i mean full disclosure attending is not an institution that requires supplemental essays but i mean just anecdotally from um you know working in admissions and being in conversation with other colleagues i think generally the the advice that i i tend to hear most often is to um if you're applying to um a common app uh if you're applying to common app institutions to work on your common app essay first um and then um work on supplemental essays afterwards um i think that can you know from a time time perspective um that can be helpful um and i think also just from a writing creative perspective it can be really really nice to you know have have your common app essay uh done and sort of use you know the brainstorming um and creative energy that you um that you um exercise during that process to um sort of inform your process of going through on the supplemental essays um as well um and i think yeah um yeah in terms of timeline wise perhaps you know working working on your comment essay um at the beginning of the summer if possible um and then perhaps doing the the supplemental essays um in the fall or later in the summer um i think yeah at this point in high school um yeah the students will generally know how they you know how long it takes them to write a certain amount um so for me i'd probably have to finish my common app essay spring of my junior year and start my supplements at the beginning of the summer because i just take a long time um so just being very very cognizant of you know your your own personal and work and co-curricular responsibilities um at different points of the year um it's definitely a good thing to keep in mind as you go into the spring of your junior year in anticipation of writing your essays if you have a lot of false sports commitments for instance um maybe trying to work on the supplements over the summer as well um would be would be helpful um but generally i think the the advice that i tend to hear is to um yeah work on your combat essay first have that finished and use that to sort um a base to sort of guide your work through through the supplemental essays afterwards i was also thinking about this when griffin brought up kind of essays that mention things that are that might be specific to a different school than the one that the sa is landing um at and so definitely i love like a beautiful spreadsheet moment and if you want to just like track like each individual college's specific requirements with regards to the essays or other things about their application process that can be a really great kind of organizational tool to just kind of keep track of which schools are looking for which things and making sure that you're submitting the correct things to the correct schools so that they get the things that are written for them and made for them and they know that you're putting a lot of thought into your application for that school um on a similar note uh this again is um from katie um when you are writing your supplemental essays don't put it so far off uh that the quality of the writing is significantly different where you have a very polished essay with your common app and your supplemental essays um for her institution she mentions quest bridge applications where the essays there's a discrepancy between the two um and then again when you're writing your supplemental essay where the prompt might ask you um why would you like to attend this institution don't just write a laundry list of things that the institution has but rather how you'll engage with them that is so much more relevant and it shows that students are going beyond just um all right this college has this type of first year student program or this type of dorm but how you actually engage with those resources um and then a piece of advice that i would share when you're responding to supplemental essays kind of think about what the question is and what you're really trying to share so why you want to study here yep that's a pretty straightforward one but maybe it's an honors college that has a specific mission or learning style well how are you going to display that you have that maybe it's in interdisciplinary learning how are you going to put that on display or if it's maybe a scholarship supplemental essay they might ask about like critical thinking well how are you going to put your critical thinking on display you have to kind of link it all together so someone like myself can understand how you actually view a problem how you challenge it how do you present ideas and kind of put it all together in a package that i can follow along with so different supplemental essays will have different kind of goals at the end of it and it's up to you to kind of define what's the goal of this essay and what should i be sharing there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer but some might be a little more helpful than others it looks like we're being prompted to share any final tips or takeaways um so i think my final tip would just be really try to find that voice that like internal dialogue this voice i think somebody had mentioned it before when you're by yourself without kind of criticism or praise from anyone who are you in your own eyes and how can you best share that with us um all sorts of different ways to do that i think that's the most exciting part about the college essays is it's your own words all the other parts of the application you really don't get to say exactly your own words um so really have fun with this opportunity to take that voice from here and share it into that essay yes and uh i'll uh i'll bring in katie's advice first before i sharing my own so from katie i'm from a colleague of katie's um don't write an essay about discovering um that other people are also human um this applies to especially the essays from uh privileged students about about service trips um yeah very very good thing to uh to be to be cognizant of while you're going through the brainstorming process and um in the drafting process uh as well um in terms of uh yeah in terms of final tips for me i mean i think perhaps this isn't necessarily college essay advice but for advice related to the college essay um in terms of the the introspection that goes on while you're drafting your comment essay um don't feel like this has to be the only time in your life when you think about you know when you are happiest and think about when you are um you know truly yourself and what makes you you um i think that the the introspection involved in the commentary is just a very good part of living living a good human life at any stage even when you're not applying for college um and i think that if you can think about the uh the brainstorming and the drafting and the revising process as something that you're not just doing to um you know get into college but um you're doing as you know an exercise for her personal and emotional well-being i think that can make it um you know a particularly rewarding process and um can you even lead to to a great essay as well so i think um yeah framing the common app essay in that in that light as an opportunity to to engage in introspection that is good for at any point um that is important for um being being well at any point in your life um really helps um to facilitate the um the brainstorming the drafting up revising process in such a way that you end up with a final draft that not only are you proud of from a stylistic standpoint but really brings out who you are as an individual uh i just want to say so much so many great things have been shared today so i i hope i'm not like repeating anything that might have like disappeared from my brain in the last few minutes but i just really think that just remembering that this is kind of your moment of like where you have the most agency in your application i know for us there's also some other supplemental things uh where you're doing things a little bit more creatively but don't forget about this moment too if you are someone who's adding those other things and you know just take that step back from your other application credentials and think about what's missing um because that can be a really great thing to sort of lean into uh and helping admissions committees understand um more about who you are um but yeah thanks again for all of the really amazing questions everyone yeah just wanted to hop in and say thank you so much to griffin and tom and noah and katie um for your time and wisdom today this was really helpful um and also thanks for getting creative and figuring out how to make it work so everyone can participate even with the tech issues i think you all really killed it on the fly um so thank you all so much for spending some time with us this afternoon and i hope everyone has a great rest of their day thank you okay you
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um so hopefully we have some some classmate families out there and i think we both know quite a few families in the class of 2021 as well so it's a double pleasure for us to be here today um gonna bring a little different perspective to the table um first in my professional perspective um like michael and kristen spent many years in college administration and i was a director of financial aid i've also been a vice president at jp morgan but for the last seven or so years i have been working for an organization called bright horizons college coach where we provide college coaching services to employees that are provided on behalf of their employers so basically free benefit everybody gets free college coaching um so my team really guides thousands of families through the college process every year at every college across the country and many international schools so hopefully i can bring a little bit different flavor answer a lot of the same questions that michael and kristen can but things are slightly different and i'm also going to bring a little different topic to the screen for us today as well i'm going to talk a little bit about merit scholarships so when we talk about merit scholarships they're not necessarily need based per se but what we do know is that they are um part of the financial aid process and that they're being awarded by colleges and universities themselves so i'm hoping you can see my screen i can't tell if you can see my screen um let's see not sure because i'm no longer seeing you guys let's see hold on hold on hold on okay okay i believe you can see it oh no maybe you can oh goodness um hmm hold on well we're gonna go ahead and proceed without the screen because it does not want to seem to share at the moment let me try one more time okay nope does not look like you are seeing are you seeing okay i believe you are i still can't see the the other side so i'm gonna go ahead and proceed and hopefully you can so really what we are talking today talking about today is merit scholarships um merit scholarships are awarded to about 22 of all undergraduate students um i'm sorry it comprises about 22 percent of all student aid that is awarded to students in the form of institutional merit scholarships so very often families will come to us and ask about you know where should i be applying for scholarships and i think a lot of people think the universe of private scholarships those sort of ones that are awarded by outside entities are lucrative and they're great but they are nowhere near as lucrative or as available as those that are offered by the colleges themselves so when you think about the college scholarship process you really want to think about the merit scholarships offered by colleges in universities we do know that by and large the the vast majority of these are going to be coming from private colleges versus public colleges although it is no longer the the rule we do see a lot of exceptions to private and public colleges awarding merit scholarships when you think about merit scholarships i really want you to change your perspective for a moment you now know that i'm the parent of a high school student and part of my thinking is well i would love for my daughter to be awarded a reward or a scholarship for all the hard work she's put in and of course as a parent i'm going to think that but i want you all to think about this from a different perspective i want you to think about the way that colleges use their merit scholarship dollars and what they do is they use those dollars to recruit the students that they want the most so don't think of it as a reward think of it as a recruitment tool and in it being a recruitment tool how do you then become strategic in identifying those opportunities for your student well you're going to put together a college list and i think there's actually even a panel discussion on putting together the perfect college list from an admission perspective our admissions colleagues will cover all of that they'll talk about the likelihood of acceptance and they'll talk about you know the balance list and making sure you have the right mix and i completely agree with all that but what i'm going to do is ask you to take that same list and now shift it over to look at it from the likelihood of scholarship perspective if the student is applying to a college that is a reach or a challenging school for them you definitely want to recognize that there's probably little chance of obtaining a scholarship at that particular institution maybe it's a little bit out of their range from an academic perspective maybe their grades and scores aren't there or maybe it's one of those ivy league or highly selective colleges that do not award scholarships and i'm going to re um reiterate that point because it's something that a lot of families don't realize and that is that the most highly selective colleges and the um ivy league colleges do not award merit scholarships well you might want to ask why remember what i said on the previous slide colleges use their money to recruit the students that they want the most most of our highly selective schools and ivy league colleges don't actually need to recruit they're turning students away so they don't need to use those dollars to entice their students instead they have extraordinarily generous need-based financial aid policies so it certainly usually covers a lot of the same perspectives so when you think about the next tier of colleges so maybe you're thinking about your cul your student have applying to 9 10 11 12 schools you might want to think about three or four of those being in that challenging perspective everybody wants to go for those reach schools but make sure you're balancing that list with some of those schools that might be just right or no problem because what that does is it really gives the student an opportunity for a greater opportunity for merit scholarships at those schools where they sort of look like the the mix of applicants or maybe better than some of the applicants they might have a better chance but if those just there's no problem schools or safety schools as we used to call them the student has a much better opportunity you want your student to look better than the majority of the applicant pool another sort of minor strategy involved in that is thinking about other schools in those categories that might be competitors and i'll talk about why that matters in just a moment so when you think about how does my student or if you are the student with us today how do i stand out it's all the things it's your grades it's your scores it's the things that you're involved in it can even be things as simple as choosing a major at a college that might be new to that college so they want to enroll it might be that you're participating in programs that they don't have it could be that you're a student from massachusetts looking to go to college in north dakota maybe that school in north dakota has no representation from massachusetts so just know that when you're looking to stand out in your applications it's going to be sort of the entire body that makes up you so that's how you will ultimately stand out so if you're still looking to add things to your resume just know that those are some of the things that could make could differentiate differentiate differentiate you in the process now if you need to do a little research on where you can find out whether or not colleges have merit scholarships there is no magical list i wish there was in fact some colleges make it complicated to even find their merit scholarships on their websites but i would suggest starting with the college's website check for scholarship pages check departmental scholarships as well often we'll find that colleges within larger universities award their own scholarships and also michael mentioned a moment ago complete those net price calculators a lot of colleges and universities will include their um their scholarship offering in their net price calculator as well so you might have a sense of whether or not your student will qualify sometime college sometimes colleges will go as far as even putting what their metrics are for determining scholarship eligibility so you may even have an idea of where your student will fall based on their qualifications although i will tell you those are a little more rare if you are looking for some other websites to maybe gather some quick information you can use a site like college navigator at nces.ed.gov or the college board website at bigfuture.org a lot of you are probably already using that i can tell you i use that particular site every single day then as you kind of think through the process a lot of questions we get are about how do i apply for those scholarships is there anything that i need to do realistically more times than not there is no separate application for merit scholarships most colleges will allow your admission application to serve as your merit scholarship application but not always so my suggestion to you and i think my colleagues would back me up on this is create a spreadsheet include on that spreadsheet what forms are required for financial aid fafsa profile taxes what are the deadlines for financial aid what are the requirements for merit scholarships what are the deadlines for merit scholarships a couple of pro tips that i will give you um if you are looking at merit scholarships we are starting to see that a lot of colleges are asking students to apply during an early application process to be considered for merit scholarships so you might find that students applying for an early action program might have priority at merit scholarships and in fact the schools might not accept merit applications during regular decisions so make sure you're paying close attention to those also double check the school websites to make sure that they are not in fact requiring anything separate sometimes there can be um a different scholarship program that maybe a donor has requested specific scholarship information so you just want to double check to make sure nothing else is required and if possible and you know the specific requirements of a particular scholarship program you might be able to tailor some of your admission application to that scholarship finally um i do want to mention that there are some colleges that will will be would be willing to discuss the offers that you've gotten from their competitors as a former financial aid director i load the idea of playing let's make a deal but i like to think of it a little bit differently now and that is if you've been offered something significantly different from one school than another and you think they're competitors and you think they may have seen something differently just go back to them let them know that you have another offer and you'd like to discuss the particulars michael mentioned it earlier they want to help they want to know if they're reading something differently particularly with regard to merit the worst that they can say is no but i will encourage you to go back and ask because i can tell you from our perspective we find that about 40 to 50 percent of the time schools are willing to take another look um so i think at this point we are going to throw back uh and see if we have any questions that came into the queue okay i don't know if all three of us are back in the screen there we go okay you're on your own okay i'll go ahead and read them unless i don't know if amanda wants to to come back in but um first question and i think michael you covered this a bit but you might want to dick dive a little deeper and that is what if you share custody 50 50.
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so it's safe to assume that most of our students whether you're coming right out of high school or whether you are 10 20 30 years past that it's we are prepared to give our students as much flexibility as possible and what clarifies is flexibility there is no requirement for most programs to go to attend full-time um you can go part-time full-time evening online more online is becoming an option right now evening courses are available for students as well too so as much availability and flexibility for our students is a good place to start in addition to other forms of support we actually have a great program on our campus called cass on center for access services and it is specifically an office that is there to support our students through unique situations so this could be if you need assistance with housing this could be if you we have a food pantry if you need emergency funding kind of students that are in unfortunate situations unexpectedly last minute there are always going to be some sort of support services that are going to be there to help support the student not just educationally but as a whole we want you to be able to succeed we want you to be able to grow with your future and we want to do our best to help you grow throughout that process and support you throughout that process whatever that might be thanks ed yeah right erin thank you ed i really appreciate it um in in kind of building off what andrea is saying in addition to all those very specific support services that the community colleges offer for their um for for students as you're saying and that have other life priorities whether they're working jobs whether they're raising families have families of their own i think it's important to also understand how the community college views each individual student as a whole a whole person that that when you when you step inside the doors of a community college that we're not just ceasing to see the different versions of who you are but really embracing you completely um knowing that that adds to the collaborative form of education you know um as as andrea said i think her she she had mentioned that their median age is 25 i think iris is 26 or um so that that creates a rich diversity of life experiences that students are able to bring into the classroom um and that that contribute to the learning experience as well um i think it lends a lot of authority to voice and to experience when students understand that they're part of their education process that it's active and not simply passive um you know that that their lives are not being um that they're not that they're not having to take a back seat to their education but that it happens concurrently with one another it informs one another um and we build upon those those successes we build upon those those educational successes to create momentum for students and helping them understand um that everybody is entitled to higher education and that it's essential these days um you know that that everybody has to have access um all the community colleges are open access institutions which means that aside from a few selective programs any student that applies to gcc is accepted um you know we believe in creating those kinds of opportunities and access for all students regardless of demographics or regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds knowing that higher education is needed for both quality of life and as we're noticing these days in our current our current climate for to improve the the level of civil discourse um you know we we need education more so than at any time right now um and so we remain committed to providing those opportunities for students thanks ed yeah you're welcome um i want to give our four-year universities a a chance to answer for answer that question for students that are coming onto your campuses that do have either priorities that they're balancing but still hoping to complete their education i'm wondering victoria if you have a couple words i'd love to share yeah absolutely so we definitely see students of all ages and backgrounds transferring to becker so we understand that some students come with come with um associates or bachelor's degrees come with families so we were definitely supportive of whatever academics you're pursuing and at what pace you want to go and um i know i get a lot of students who ask about life on campus if they are an older learner and we have a lot of great residencies available excuse me off campus so a lot of those students will like to live off campus or they'll commute so we um i think what the takeaway from that is that we're here for you no matter what you are looking to get out of your education especially if you're transferring and you may you have may have a lot of credits or just a few credits you want to fit you want to wrap up so whatever works for you we're we're here for you and we're willing to support whatever part of your journey you're in thank you victoria um was there anything nicole you'd like to uh add hi so yeah um what victoria was saying you know i absolutely agree um you know i'd also like to add that having um you know a full-time or part-time job while at bridgewater is really common um around 65 percent of our students are either in a full-time job or a part-time job um and you know our support services are you know they want to help students as much as they can and so we're willing to and want to adapt and you know to get everything that you need and especially working with faculty you know we offer classes at different times different days to work with your schedule and then also if you know life happens life comes up um that's an opportunity to talk with our faculty and they really care about um their students we keep our class sizes small you know so the professors always know you know our students names and um you know if you'd like to share your backgrounds and whatnot so working alongside faculty um is a great resource as well thanks thank you nicole yes and i think what all of you have mentioned that for students and families is important to know is that there are supports you know whether you are starting out in community college but also if you're using the mass transfer option um to come to a four-year university uh people are here to work with you on the things that you need in order to succeed so we have a couple of minutes left before the end of our session i'm wondering if any of our lovely institutions have any uh a takeaway that they really want uh students and families to take home with them as we close out i will uh start with you harold again ed thank you um i guess i'd just like to add that um you guys as andrea had mentioned earlier you guys are resilient um you have the world ahead of you we really want you to explore your options and that might mean visiting virtually to all of our campuses i encourage you to visit our website webpages and and explore for your programs and specifically for what you are interested in and and if you don't see a particular program on any of our websites you should definitely reach out to one of the admissions counselors because there's also other pathways you can take to get to that road even if we don't offer you your specific program so i just want to leave you guys with that and good luck the rest of the year all right thank you and aaron um yeah just one and i wanted to um just again thank everybody for having us today um and to reiterate that you're that you're you know in these circumstances it's it's it's difficult to make these kinds of decisions but just to bear in mind that your education is yours and yours alone um according to nobody else's expectations nobody else's timeline um it's time to claim ownership of that in that you know what it's designed to do is designed for um for self-discovery and pursue that and pursue that faithfully i mean also know that higher education has no expiration date um so that it'll it'll always be there for you when you're ready for it when you're ready for it for for you to engage in it thank you so much thank you aaron and i want to thank all of our panelists for taking time out of their very busy schedules to sit and talk with our students and families for today and i want to thank those of you that have tuned in hopefully uh you've gotten a lot out of this video and yeah enjoy the rest of your day and good luck you
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I'm a student, and I work with Cautín College. There are no images of the university, and I also received my Schubert Bachelor's degree in Latin American Studies in 2014. I'm very excited to talk with you all today, and especially to talk with Rafael about the path to university. It's a pleasure, and thank you very much. Good afternoon to everyone watching us live and to all those who will watch us a little later whenever they want. As Lynn said, my name is Rafael Trujillo, and I'm a student at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. I graduated from Emerson a few years ago with my Bachelor's degree in Journalism and a concentration in Political Communication. Today I'm doing my Master's in Political Communication, also at Emerson, and this area is where I have experience.
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there's no magic number but you do want to give yourself options and flexibility a few other things that that weren't mentioned that i wanted to just kind of speak upon and give you some ideas maybe you have classmates that you played sports with did extracurriculars with that went on to some schools you might be considering that are maybe freshmen or sophomores now you know can you reach out to them in your network and see what their experiences are like there's nothing better than you know a current student or someone you know to give you a little bit of advice another thing that i just like to point out in kind of making these considerations is affordability and cost um so first thing you know if you're going to be applying to a lot of schools do you need a fee waiver do schools have fee waivers that they can help make the application cost more manageable for you um you can always reach up to an admission counselor to ask those questions um also just thinking about cost affordability i work at a private institution so you'll see a sticker price but no student's going to pay that so every school legally does have to have a net price calculator available on their financial aid website so that is just some self-reported information about family financials as well as your own academic history that can kind of spit out a more accurate cost of just what you can expect to pay so that's kind of another thing you know parents family students you might want to take into consideration in kind of building these lists to also have options that you know might be attainable as far as um both financially as well as fit so those are just some other options that i wanted to put out there um and like everyone else said utilize the websites utilize the virtual visits schools are doing some amazing things online now so i know travel is difficult but utilize those things that are out there so i'm going to hop in here with a slightly different perspective i come from landmark college in putney vermont a four-year a private institution exclusively for students who learn differently students who may have dyslexia adhd maybe on the autism spectrum so i'm going to take the conversation about building your list towards the one in five students that the national center for learning disabilities say have some kind of learning difference now everything that the other panelists said also applies to you and it's all wonderful advice that all of you have given but let's take a look at um as a foundation some of the statistics of the students who receive accommodations in support in high school only 17 percent go on to access the resources that are available to them in college and then i think about how does that impact outcomes i was really surprised to learn that nationwide of all students trying to earn a bachelor's degree only 50 some percent succeed and the odds go down if you're a student with learning differences only about 33 or 34 of the students succeed in earning the degree that they're after and i tell you this not to be discouraging but to tell you that you can take charge of the situation you can change the odds by accessing and utilizing the supports that are available in colleges today so what kinds of support are available the the landscapes uh somewhat different than it what is for you in high school i break it into four different kinds of levels of support at the base of this triangle if you can picture it are the 4 300 or so institutions of higher ed throughout the country all of whom are required by law to give provide accommodations that give equal access to students with disabilities now those accommodations may vary greatly from institution to institution and how easy or hard they are to access can vary as well a smaller subset of these 4 300 colleges offer some kind of support services in addition to accommodation so that can be like executive function coaching math and writing labs what's important to know is that studies have shown that for every hour of these kinds of services a student utilizes their gpa increases again a smaller subset of colleges are traditional colleges that within them have structured programs of support so they may be programs aimed at a particular learning difference like adhd or autism they may be more broad based but they are comprehensive programs of support that usually come with additional fees for the kinds of supports that you access and finally the very top of this triangle a very small group of schools and post-secondary programs are exclusively for students who learn differently so landmark is one of the two colleges in that category the other is beacon and then there are various other post-secondary programs so how do you incorporate that information into building your college list i think the first thing to be aware of is what are the services and supports that you're receiving currently in school and assume that you are going to need the same supports in order to be successful college isn't easier than high school it's more rigorous both in terms of the academic demands and the executive functioning skills that it requires to be successful so be aware of what you receive now and then look at those various kinds of supporting colleges and find the one that will best match the services that you need to best ensure your success fern thank you so much so um this has been so lovely to hear all of you we have quite a number of viewers right now um and we do have one question that came through so in profile of a college clinic directory published this year likely reflect the reality two years from now may some schools be very different postcoded sure go ahead i think what i would do is i would um look at that data and you know interviews are recommended at many schools or feel free to just call the college office and ask them if it's still current i think this year some of the differences you'll see is many of us are going test optional some of us who always look very closely at demonstrated interest understand that can't really happen this year um we have families usually coming right now from all over the country international families and it's it's limited now so i would feel free to call a college and ask them directly like is your profile changing but i think best of all or most of all this year that i'm hearing from my school and other colleges is we're all going to be very flexible because of the circumstances right now um so that's what i'm hearing and i just wanted to mention one thing i don't know if we gave a real definition but as i understand it the dream college is a place that it might be challenging for you to get into your likely schools are there's a good chance you're going to be admitted and the safety are you're likely to be admitted but you know even at the safety level there's never any guarantees and sometimes it's hard i think to understand why did so and so it get in and i didn't but it's it's um it's a process but rely heavily students on your guidance counselors yeah i can i can add a little bit to that too um just in regards to i know there's a lot of anxiety just around coven and around will schools have the same amount of space that they had last year and do you have so many students deferring that you know by the time i apply is the acceptance rate going to be skewed um it hasn't been very you know honest and transparent um for the most part schools are kind of still operating the way they have been we are reviewing applications we're very understanding of the circumstance as many students that we had defer typically also some took leave of absences so there are still plenty of seats at many of our institutions so i definitely don't want students to stress and feel like you know acceptance rates are going to change wildly this year and next year because that's certainly not the case for the most part across the board i think abby you want to go first okay i would just jump in and i certainly concur with that you know we get that we've been getting that question a lot like is it going to be so much more competitive and because of different you know enrollment data scientists and things that are above my pay grade it's not we have you know plenty of room and at least from our standpoint at uvm it's going to be a very similar process and i think it's important to note that the new application or no excuse me the new question on the common application if you plan to use common application to apply um there is a space to provide more information if you felt like covid altered something that you want to give context to um but i think knowing that who the committee reading your application this year and next year in the following year we all have this context in mind and and can see it very quick clearly all right so i would just you know check it now presenters you've done a beautiful job thank you our gratitude for spending so much time today was there any kind of last questions or comments as you listen to one another speak that anybody wanted to to speak to yeah go ahead um so for me with searching for schools this year it might actually be a lot more beneficial for students it's you know as we talk with houses i think it's a buyer's market at this point um you're going to be talking to a lot more schools before because they have more access to talk to students virtually um they're setting up virtual meetings they're having info sessions you know you're going on virtual tours it's not the same obviously as going to the campus but you know even today you're talking to schools that you probably might not have seen before so you know take advantage of this this is probably a weirdly once in a lifetime thing um so do your best because i know if i was your age and i was still looking at colleges like i wish this happened it was hard enough to get out to go see schools and you know were there flying trips available now where it's like you don't have to fly in anywhere because those schools are coming to you at your school on whatever virtual platform there is to offer i highly highly suggest going to meet with schools that you've probably never heard of before because you can find out something wonderful it looks like we do have one more question just there's another comment in this oh sorry guys i think my connection's a little wonky so i'm a little i'm a little behind you all my apologies so there is another question if if folks see that any idea what the s-a-t a-c-t test scene will be next year my child is a junior personally i would say don't let it stress you out at this point in time um it's been very humbling to see how many colleges and universities have moved to test optional practice um that's not 100 across the board but the numbers are extremely extremely high um in cases that they have in a few schools in florida state schools um you are still working but a lot of it is board of directors that are kind of making those final decisions but for the most part i think you can just rest easy and knowing that we have your best interest in mind we're not trying to put any students in an unsafe testing situation we don't want you flying across the country to try to get a test date um and we're going to do what's best as we have that information i think you know my institution has always been very test optional so we're pretty inclined to you know know how to review applications but i do think this cycle will be really nice for for other schools that are kind of making this change for the first time they're going to have a real different holistic review that maybe they didn't have before so i'm hoping that that some of those changes stick around um but but overall i wouldn't stress about it um things will change as they change and if testing becomes a thing again you know schools will make their own decision but i think in good faith um most universities that you'll be applying to are going to be understanding of the circumstances all right and we do have another comment in so so jump in folks um are your schools in person or remote this year and how's it going for those of us with kids who are juniors we're assuming all schools will be in person in two years but our school um our students are on campus they're all in dorms um typically at skidmore first-year students could be in a double or a triple we have no triples this year and to accommodate that some of our upperclassmen are living in some local hotels however lucky them but um we've been doing very well our students have been incredibly responsible they're in a hybrid of classes some some of their classes are online some are in the classroom and we are all tested weekly and i will tell you that everybody has a really good attitude and so far so good so it's hard to know what we're going to be doing but we are planning to be back the same format next semester at landmark uh we are in a really fortunate situation we only have 450 students we are small in a very intentional way because it's very personal education and we are vermont is one of the safest states in the country so we are able to have students in class we are testing regularly we brought students on to campus from all over the country with stringent safety procedures in place and we've done really really well i think if anyone can continue to have in-person classes given the low density of our population i think we'll be able to continue but right now it's been going really well in person and the students are really glad to be back on campus um so unfortunately we have about 18 000 students that attend our school so being in person just wouldn't have worked this year so we are majority remote um we have about two probably probably 200 classes in session in person right now for students that needed to complete labs to graduate and the majority of students that we have currently living on campus are because they had need to live on campus so either international students or students without homes etc or just needing to get out of their home so it's actually going really well we've only had two cases total which i was surprised by and you know we're doing extensive contact tracing um testing regularly and which is really helpful because uh with our lab sciences we know that we we're part of the process of looking for you know this cure for kovid um at merrimack we are we give students the option to choose what worked best for them in their own educational journey their own safety so we did have about 70 percent of our students elect to return to campus which was great so we are able to give them that in-person experience both living and in the classroom we do bi-weekly testing we use mit broad institute so um testing is is certainly underway we have really robust contact tracing so if there were to be a small outbreak which we did deal with at one point in the year um it was very easy to isolate contact trace and continue to make the campus safe um so that is something that was important to our students i just think one thing to know is that things just look a little bit different when we're in person this year obviously social distancing safety protocols mask wearing events are more spread out a lot of things happening outside a lot of new tents a lot of new eating options really just spacing out students we ordered 50 new fire pits that are kind of all spread around campus um so still giving students that like interaction but just knowing that this is a little bit of a new normal now maybe until there is a vaccine but that we are still giving students that kind of in-person experience that many of them wanted we also do all of our courses now in multi-modality so what that means is if it's an in-person class you can still take it virtually so you could take a week off if you're sick if you visiting family if you're an athlete you're traveling so that's actually really lends itself nicely to kind of the future of having these multi-instructional options where students can either be in person or they can still not miss anything kind of live stream right in and join into the classroom sure and i'll just give a quick update about university of vermont we similarly had um you know a uvm strong committee with a you know come back with this plan to bring students back on campus every student got the option to be completely at home or on campus and 85 percent of our student body chose to come back um they get tested every week we just got an update that since uh since august 0.05 of our student and faculty and staff have tested positive so it's really low and we're really fortunate to be in vermont and we're really fortunate to have the students we have which it's fun to get updates from all these schools because i think overall you know a lot of these colleges just blown away by you know college age students wanting to be on campus and understanding what they need to do to stay there and be in person we just got an update today of just different things that happened last week on campus and in all the photos students are masked but interacting we have students at our cream dairy barn which is a fully student-run dairy barn we had students out in the centennial woods which is our environmental science labs right by campus we had the white coat ceremony for uvm medical center and it truly almost brought me to tears because if you had told me this in july this is what it was going to look like and students were going to do the thing come back and it was going to be it's gonna work um i was i was nervous so it's really wonderful to see and we're glad that students can still get these community and learning opportunities on campus right now and yes like the question said hopefully in two years who knows so who knows so i just wanted to respond there was someone in the comment section just asking um so this is being recorded so if you've jumped onto this session late this all of the sessions that are happening today are being recorded and will be available um on the arps youtube channel for later viewing um so we'll be able to to watch that when when we're done i think it takes just a little bit of time after we're done recording um i do see one final question i have to wonder if it was maybe directed at one of the presenters maybe something you had said um so if anybody wants to take this how do you determine the number of students in each class if the faculty student ratio is the same for different schools that doesn't mean that the classes you take will be the same size right i think that's confusion from what i had said earlier about sometimes that student-to-faculty ratio starts to look the same on different pamphlets and it you know it is different and it's important to look at that ratio for each school but understand um you know at each school it's going to be different like for example i don't want to speak to like i'm guessing at landmark there's much smaller class sizes than typically them but at uvm you're going to have some classes that might be lecture format which would be 200 students but then you might have you know four classes that semester that will be 15 students so i guess i that was kind of confusing um but i hope that clears that up i guess that just means you know if it's a larger institution i think students sometimes write it off as in i'll never have any faculty connections or small class sizes or i won't even have a small class until i'm a senior which i know a lot of schools work to make sure that's not the case for example i'll give an example of uvm we have a teacher advisor program so your first semester as a student here one of your classes will be capped at 15 students and the teacher the faculty member teaching that class will also be your first faculty advisor so you might go on to switch majors and switch faculty advisors later on but right away you have that kind of faculty student interaction that faculty is your advisor they know about you and they can kind of help advise right away so i guess that's sort of what i meant about the student faculty ratio and please anyone else feel free to clarify i think i would add to that that for at skidmore for exam example we're a small liberal arts school our ratio of students to faculty is eight to one that doesn't mean that the largest classes are eight to one faculty that's just the overall average of the total number of students 2500 and the denominator being the uh number of faculty we have just to jump in with a little bit about landmark which is a very different situation really than some of these other schools our uh student to faculty ratio isn't that much different than yoursdale um it's six to one but class sizes are intentionally really small the average class size has always been eight to twelve students and there aren't any lecture classes on our campus it's just in the nature of what we do to teach in that kind of a personal very hands-on way so i think folks unless i see any final kind of questions or comments come through i am grateful for the expertise in the room for sharing of your time today so generously grateful that other students who maybe jumped onto other sessions will be able to review this after it's done so if there's any closing remarks please take the floor now otherwise thank you so much for for your time today as someone once said to me a long time ago uh when you have these aspirin colleges and you think i'd love to go to this particular school i i'm not sure and you read all the data and it's like well i might get in you don't get in somewhere you don't apply to so you know go for it as well great thanks everyone for having us um one thing i would say is utilize us as admission counselors um every school has folks that work with students from a certain area um so any of those questions you're not finding on the website or from your virtual visits um utilize us as resources we're here to help you we're not scary admission officers we are here to help students you know on their journey and and we want to find students that will be good visit our institutions so have those conversations um certainly all right hey thank you all today i hope you have a wonderful rest of the day thank you for everybody watching and have a good afternoon all thank you bye
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second thanks troy okay all in favor all right hi thank you that's unanimous uh up next we have the superintendent's update all right good evening everybody thanks mrs fernandez um and uh convi we're gonna keep monitoring everything on code and do our best for all of you please know that um i have just three items tonight i'll end with my remarks with um some things on kobit in the decision making process and some context for everyone it's important to have an update it's a big big decision that occurred uh yesterday uh evening uh but first just two quick updates um and then they'll defer because we have lots of new business reports this evening and a lot of committee reports the first one is that there has been movement at the state board of education for this current school year uh to just for this year at this point because otherwise it's legislative is to use any weather-related emergency days where we have to cancel school because of transportation concerns and weather-related issues uh that those days would count as remote learning days that's not in the executive orders from the governor because his executive orders are all uncovered related remote learning so that's something that's in the works um not for the long haul yet that would be a legislative decision that has to happen but for this year the state board of ed is working with the commissioner on that we are awaiting guidance on that once i have the guidance on how those uh weather related emergency days will work they'll certainly share that with the board and with our parents and students so everybody's on board and knows exactly what's going on so that's number one number two um just an announcement uh board retreat we have our board retreat uh tomorrow there's two big agenda items the public agenda item is the discussion of diversity with our recently established over the summer um equity and inclusion subcommittee and so we look forward to having that discussion and then in addition to that the board will break into executive session um to talk about their board self-evaluation and set goals for themselves through for the year um rose i didn't know if there was anything before i could move on to the covet update if there was anything you might want to share about the retreat no that that covered it thanks okay very good okay so i wanted to share with everyone some context um about uh what occurred um with working with dr sullivan and the spike in covet cases here in brookfield and certainly in connecticut and just build a little context so people understand uh what's exactly what's going on um and so the first thing i want to do is express my appreciation to you know our faculty and staff and students uh the board and the families our administration for all the support during this most difficult time uh there's nothing more that we want for all of our students here in brookfield and that is for us to have all of the students back in school and frankly how things used to be uh this has been an awful experience for for almost all of us and we know the toll it takes on family staff and students the administration faculty and i live with the fallout in extreme challenges and constraints placed upon us from kogan every day in our roles as school teachers and school leaders we received emails from parents today questioning the decision to move to remote learning and other emails thanking the district for the decision to close school as far as i know i've been able to respond every single one of those uh today uh we need to make things crystal clear for those who might think uh the closing of our schools was a quick decision and maybe even an overreaction no decision in the school district including the strong recommendation from dr sullivan that we should close the schools is made in haste is knee-jerk or considered in a vacuum in this case health data a stream of new positive cases and the multitude of emerging needs to quarantine students and staff were all taken under consideration we also must consider the cdc department of public health and connecticut state department of education requirements that we must live within as we run our public schools as leaders we do not have the luxury of inaction or do-overs when it comes to the safety of our students and staff in brookfield we have approximately 2 600 students and their families to consider along with 416 employees and their families to consider when making such decisions none none of this is taken lightly so the question really is why change to full closure in late afternoon on monday on tuesday excuse me when earlier in the morning everything appeared under control simply put in the morning we only knew about our isolated cases in which we could target populations and quarantine by yesterday afternoons things were not under control dr sullivan was trying to figure out what was going on after the two cases we reported to the entire community in the morning more primary contacts began to report symptoms to their administrators in other cases within families these cases were being reported to school nurses dr sullivan took into consideration the significant uptick in positive cases in student and faculty and staff and in relatives of students and faculty here in brookfield and also with employees that actually live out of town more primary contacts to exposures continued to be reported to school officials across the district as the afternoon wore on as dr sullivan learned of these matters and with his pers his greater perspective of state regional and town data he recommended that we close the schools yesterday after afternoon this was hours after the information we learned of earlier that morning the case positivity rate today in brookfield is climbing to almost 10 percent here in town in three percent in connecticut right now which is the highest it's been since june hospital hospitalizations continue to be up and mortality is now moving up and dr sullivan is obviously very concerned about this along with our neighboring districts in this area of western connecticut we learned today that there may be as many as 14 school related cases in an additional eight to ten cases in town that dr sullivan actually knows about that's not the cases that are delayed in getting reported to him as a result the school district made the decision to transition to remote learning for a period of 14 days the normal quarantine period based on dr sullivan's recommendation we did this the decision was quite rational and in the best interest of protecting the students and their families faculty and staff and their families in all of brookfield we certainly recognize the emotional stress that decisions such as these create we as administration have children and families as well who are enduring the same pandemic as everyone else we must rely on the science of disease transmission in the safety of our precious children families and our educators i wanted to share that because it's very important to get the facts out there and the decision-making process and the fact that we listen to the public health experts as part of that a big part of that process and we care deeply about our families um when they're in school and when they're not in school um and of course our students and staff i didn't know if the board might have any questions or things they wanted to say about the decision i know it's a big decision and um it's it's difficult for many of us john i just want to say thank you for being so thorough and you know putting the health and safety of our children our staff members and our community uh first because that's the most important um this obviously is inconvenient and um tragic for some but um health and safety first and appreciate all the time and effort and that has gone into it you and along with your team thank you john i also wanted to thank you for um providing that additional detail and background because i think you know there has been some confusion among parents um i think people sort of get bogged down in specific numbers so i think it helped to hear all the different things that you're looking at in terms of people reporting symptoms and having primary contact with infected patients so thanks for providing that detail you're welcome and you know we can't provide that detail to you without the great work of our staff the administrative team uh you know our nurses our teachers custodians everybody has a part in this of reporting cases of acting in good faith and staying home when they're not feeling well sharing information it really is taking all of us to do our best and we stayed open for six six and a half weeks without having this um and uh so i really do want to want to thank everybody thank the board for their support these decisions are never easy um in addition to that it's important i was working with mr dunn today while my letter yesterday made it very clear that the buildings are closed to the public that's part of our effort especially when school is in session to um create that bubble we talked about over the summer as part of our reopening plans um there is a hearing scheduled for the high school um in the evening next week it's an important one on uh water in the water line uh in addition to that voting of course uh is scheduled at huckleberry and at the high school and those will go on uh like always without a hitch and we'll have our cleaning crews there and be working in total collaboration with the town so no one has to worry about any any of those issues anyone else was that sorry was that it john was that your oh yeah i'm sorry rosa yes i tried to that was a little long but i tried to keep everything else no not at all i really appreciate the clarification thank you and uh debbie to your point about the the clarification what we can do with this video is you know we could work with eric and clip it and i could actually send it out as a nice video to everybody so they can they can that's a good idea we'll work on it okay thank you oh in addition to thanking john you and your staff for being as thorough as you are i think we ought to all extend our thanks to dr sullivan and the uh and the health uh team in brookfield and at the state level uh because we couldn't do this without them um and there have been great advisors and great partners and uh and i saw that mr dunn also took action so the partnership between the schools and the town so we act in concert for the safety of our children and families is superb so um i think i'd like to just extend all of the boards thanks to the partners we work with yeah and you know what bob i i don't want to forget you know as part of our meeting today you know the leadership team and working on all this and they've been fantastic uh your point's really well taken because uh it's important to mention mr dunn put out today well in concert with parks and rec which is a big partner of ours here in town the parking rec department working with mary knox and the team uh they are putting a limit um and it's all out on the website onto sports and some other things right now to kind of get a handle on what's going on with the spread of the virus so thanks for mentioning that appreciate it the only way we'll control this thing right is by owl acting in concert and carefully so thank you okay yeah i just quick add just want to quickly add my uh thanks to john and the whole team um i just it we are in such unprecedented times and i think everyone needs to remember that times run a school during a pandemic and so every first type of decision and it's only by really looking at the science and thinking about our health and safety um that we're really going to for our head so thank you john and his team all right so um we can move on um i'm actually going to make a motion to move item a of old business the tecton presentation follow-up to right now we have jeff and eddie and antonia on the line so i want to recognize uh their time on the line here too so um so yes so i moved um to move item a of old business to right now um do i have a second second thanks amy okay uh all in favor aye all right thanks okay so um i guess the floor is yours eddie and antonia if you want to um maybe walk us through the new materials that that you have for us absolutely first of all thank you again for moving us up in the in a agenda and for dealing with us being on the road and not exactly able to host uh last time so uh yeah we're not gonna do a full-blown presentation antonia is going to focus really on the materials that have been submitted to try and answer the questions that were asked last time so with that i will turn it over to her wonderful thank you eddie and thank you everyone um for your great questions last time which really were the springboard for the document that we've created today and um eric is it possible um do you have the document ready to share or would you like me to share i'm i'm happy to do it um okay unless you have it up but i i literally just pulled it up on my screen right now and i can pull it up for you excellent that would be great so confirm we're still heading over to section four um actually if we could start just at the table of contents which should be the second page that way i can give just an overview of the whole document and then we'll spend most of our time on section four wonderful thank you so much so there are three pdfs in this packet total we are focusing tonight on the resource guide there's also an appendix a and appendix b so within the contents of the resource guide we've given a little bit more of an overview of of well and some more detail about the certification process itself and how it sets it apart from other sustainable building standards so that comprises sections one and two the benefits of well certification we've connected those to the curriculum four is where we took the questions that we received from the group last time and answered those in a little bit more detail um this way we can have conversation around those tonight and they're also written in narrative form so that you can reflect on them and if additional questions pop up we can either tackle those tonight or in the future and we similar to the presentation from last time just identified a few considerations in making your decision and gave you a little bit more information on the timeline of well certification and the approximate cost so that is the resource guide appendix a contains some examples of some of the annual submission spreadsheets the letters of assurance that would be required by the owner so if if we can spend some time also looking at that when we get to those questions in section four so you can see some exact some examples of that specifically and appendix b has some of the research studies and some links to some other excuse me some other schools that are well certified or pre-certified that you can take a look at so with with that we can move to section 4 eric great thank you i'm following along on my screen here so i'll do the same all right so i think the first question what does it take to achieve well certification um basically i i think the highlights of this are that it's um it's a collaborative process between us as the design team and our design partners and and um the school faculty and you all as as owners and stewards of this of this wealth well-certified school potentially um so what it would take is there are certain policy-based features that we'll have to discuss just on the scorecard which we can opt in for or opt out of based on how they fit in with your curriculum and some of the policies that i'm sure are already in place that align with well so that'll be one conversation that we have on the scorecard is which of those more policy-based features we can incorporate and which we can forego the letter of assurance and we can look at this example if we would like but the letter of assurance is really a simple um a simple process where it's a document generated by the international well-building institute so there's nothing that has to be actually written from scratch by the owner it's just a a check box and a signature that those features are met um in in the in the project and those are again more policy-based features that we can that we would have already been chatting about relative to uh to the scorecard and um so again just i think it would just be a simple check of a box and a signature on that document and we can take a look at that letter to to give you some understanding what that what that looks like exactly and the third component is the annual submission documents and those are also um in the appendix and essentially those are spreadsheets already generated by wells you can use their templates or you can develop your own and that would involve monthly or semi-monthly checks of some of the building systems and some of some measurements in terms of electricity usage and things like that that you can get from utility bills so there's no special monitoring technology required it's all equipment that you would already have at your disposal or things like utility bills that you can reference to get that information um so we chatted a little bit about that owner's letter of assurance which is just the check box and signature pre-crafted by well it's something that you can download and we can just quickly fill out to maintain well certification there are the three components of those annual submissions which again if you're maintaining them on a weekly or monthly or semi-monthly basis would go they would go pretty quickly if you're managing it yourself there's also an option to bring on somebody from well who would manage this process for you at an additional cost of course but that costs could be offset potentially when it comes to the second component of maintaining well certification which is performance verification so in addition to the annual submissions and performance verification there's that the actual recertification itself which nothing actually involved for that except the paying the recertification fee but if for the annual submissions you're using a well-performance testing agent then that cost that you've incurred to bring that individual on board does benefit you when it comes time to for performance verification because that those tests that they're conducting count towards performance verification so the scope is reduced at that point um the annual submission process are those spreadsheets templates already generated by well we can have a look in the appendix if you'd like and again it's just simple things like how much electricity you're using um how much how much recycling is going into how much you're recycling for example um the maintenance of the air filters within the space making checking those on a semi-monthly basis so there are just some some routine logs and spreadsheets that well has already created that you can use and follow how many other schools in our region are well certified the answer is you you would be a trendsetter because there aren't a whole lot there's only seven schools listed across all the united states and um two are certified one is pre-certified and the pre-certified school is here on the east coast so a lot a lot of the activity related to well is happening on the west coast even though the headquarters for the international well-building institute is here in new york city so the the east coast you have an opportunity here specifically in new england to be the first well-certified school in our region and potentially the first on the east coast okay um there are a few similar case studies and the links to those are in the appendix um just quickly i think i'm going to spend time talking about there's one that's actually not yet certified it's the the third paragraph here towards the bottom it's chinook trail middle school and that project is the most similar in terms of budget and square footage to the new elementary school project so even though it's not certified they've used the well-designed building standard to incorporate a lot of their sustainable design features into their project and the way that they've marketed this online the way that they discuss their sustainable goals and the way that they promote their connection to the educational environment i think is is a great case study for the brookfield elementary school um some of the design strategies that we've used again this there's more detail on this in section three um but just to let you know i think um we've just identified here a few um i think we can um i can let you read this actually just in the interest of um of your time i know you have a lot on your agenda tonight so i'm going to try to speed up yes and tony this is very important for the for folks to know about the new school design i mean you talked a lot about okay which is important and you answered some of those questions from last time but i think this is one share with the features of the school which are the innards in a lot of ways that people aren't necessarily aware of so go take go through that one that's an important one i think okay okay thanks thank you dr brown i appreciate that um so we can spend some time maybe in section three as well but just to quickly look at it here um the radiant heating and the chilled beams the displacement ventilation on the increased fresh air so our mep partners are really spending a lot of time and we're coordinating with them to make sure that we get these systems based on components in the school um to really enhance not only the the fresh air coming into the environment which we know enhances learning but also the energy efficiency and the opportunity for students to experience um these systems and and feel the feel the difference um in the school we know that that displacement ventilation system um lets out air at at slower rates so it's a quieter um system so are the chilled beams so again just having the though that in mind in the learning environment to really allow students to key in more to the instruction of of their teachers and have reduced background noise to aid in their to aid in their learning daylight we know critical for critical for learning and balancing that daylight with reduced glare um so you'll see on the elevation exterior elevations a lot of windows in the classrooms to bring in that daylight but also a lot of creative strategies to reduce glare occupant control of lighting and daylight sensors we're using a lot of dimming controls in the rooms automatic sensors occupancy sensors so all of these things not only contributing to energy savings but allowing the the teachers and students to individually control their their rooms to really optimize the learning environment acoustics of course critical again not only for for learning and privacy of sound but also just to especially in key spaces like there are larger athletic rooms in that in the central part of the the core part of the school uh making sure that we pay attention to sound in areas where they're going to be performances pay attention to sound in relation to where there's physical activity space is happening near the media center for example so really taking a critical eye on that to not only choose the right sound partitions to serve the purpose of the room but be mindful of the the whole experience at the same time and then the softer side of things contributing to mind community and nourishment and we know that there's already sustainable and healthful menus in place at in your school district so we want to monopolize on that and also give students the opportunity to grow their own food and raise garden beds outside accessible design throughout the school but also extending that to the playscapes so that everyone has access to to those those features to enhance our physical and mental well-being and nature walks appreciation of the native plantings the opportunity to again interact with those raised garden beds the natural features of the site the natural wetlands and animal species that are so so critical and the pollinator pathway that we're envisioning incorporating towards towards the main entrance of the school the bios whale so all of these sustainable features are doubling as opportunities to engage with students and their curriculum so all that is covered in more detail in section three but thank you for the opportunity to highlight that now did i miss anything jeff eddie is there are there other components relative to the design of the school and its connection to the curriculum that you'd like to offer uh no i i think you can everybody hear me okay yeah okay um no i think you did a good job kind of going through the details that the the project from day one for those that have been with us for the for the entire ride the entire project is about you know embracing the site so once you step foot on this property you're excited to go to school and and we talked a lot about every opportunity is a teaching opportunity we want buildings that teach and we want buildings that learn from the students so this i i understand we're going through a lot of detail and check boxes and checklists and all this well is about good design it's about energy efficient design and it's about setting the building design up so that students have the opportunity to learn at every aspect every turn everywhere they are in the building and so you'd be surprised that how much energy the building saves how much fresh air and these these buildings are very very sophisticated nowadays and i think it's a wonderful opportunity to to blend some parts of the curriculum with this because obviously it's an important piece of where we are in society today as far as learning about the environment and treating your environment well so there's there's a lot more than check boxes here you know it's really the soul of of the project and i mean for me and i understand it's very complicated how much does it cost does it cost more it's we have a good design we have we have to meet high performance building standards we have a lot of all i'd say majority of these components already in the project this is about basically staking you know you're a flag saying we want this building to be about not only just energy efficiency but about the health and well-being of our students faculty and staff and that's that's the flag that that this piece that everybody could rally around so that that's for me that's what well's about um so i i just wanted to kind of give my two cents because i wasn't able to last time but i mean you've done a wonderful job going through this and all the technical pieces but it's really going to represent who you are and what the building's about and what you're what the community is about so that's it's a little deeper for me than just check boxes so i won't take any more time but thanks so antonia i kind of want to just jump in here um because i think i maybe have you know the same question as other board members but is there do you have is the scorecard in this document somewhere because i think like what i'm still confused on is you know how much of that is already going to be going into the building and how much you know of course we want health and well-being to be sort of part of the educational experience but you know is there going to be a you know significant further investment that we hadn't planned on in order to achieve that well certification and then going forward you know every year you know i'm talking like very specifically like does this mean we can we only replace light bulbs with a particular kind of light bulb does it mean we have to do water test water quality testing every single year you know i think we're kind of looking at just at least some examples of some of the things that are going to be required of us right thank you rosa absolutely so yes the scorecard is in appendix a so we can go there um if that would be helpful and take a look at that there are also other versions of the scorecard that i can send if if after we view it here you'd still like to know more detail about each of the features that that is shown so this scorecard in appendix a will just highlight each of the features within the concept but the detail beyond each of those won't be there so we can either spend some time i can follow up with more detailed scorecards or we can spend some time exploring the well-building standard itself or i can even just attach that if you'd like and the great question about the light bulbs and the measurements and what what all will be involved so we can also spend some time looking at the annual submission document but overall um you're right i think that you know the light fixtures would require led bulbs so that would just be i think the only requirement there and i know our engineers have focused on using light fixtures that have bulbs that are easy to replace so it doesn't require a lot of complex parts or maintenance the requirement would just be that they're replaced with the same energy efficient led bulbs that they're that they're installed with and there is a component to measuring the water quality every year for the annual submission and certainly it's part of the performance verification every three years so that that would be a requirement there are some things that we can add to that and things that we can subtract that we can chat about for example there are filters that can be added to the water system or not so there there are ways that you can move up to more stringent requirements from the baseline or ways that you can just choose choose to stay stay there for now and the beauty of well like jeff said so so eloquently is that it's really the spirit of health and wellness so it's it's about this continuous improvement process and the continued measurement and verification and checking in to see how the building is is doing if it's still serving the purpose that um it was designed to serve and still being a benefit to the health and wellness of the students and faculty and community um so that's a lot of the reason behind the annual submissions and the three-year check-ins is just to make sure that it's not a one and done that this is a process that the students can engage with and learn from and check in and make sure the building is always performing so so with that it's an evolution so if if we start at you know measurements of simple measurements of water quality and in three years you'd like to add those filters and see what more you can achieve there's always ways to build into well more more and more um complexity um and benefit yes yeah i'm just gonna jump in real quick so i i think what what we can do because we provide an awful lot of information to you already on the detailed backup i think what we owe you is a summary presentation that kind of hit the highlights of i think throws it to your point like what what do we really need to do like you know from a maintenance ongoing maintenance standpoint is there anything we need to buy in the building today you know this is going to cost any more money in the project so we'll hit it we'll put them into some very specific categories um so that you can understand you know do we need to add the building who's going to be involved and then what do we need to do on a yearly monthly weekly basis and then who can do it can the students do it can the staff do it or do we need outside help so that you guys can see i mean we're never going to hit every every you know nook and cranny but we're gonna distill into the major pieces so that you guys understand what you're getting yourself into um and and we'll come back to you because i we could get i mean there's an awful lot to it obviously antonio's well versed in it but in an interest of saving every i know you have an awful lot on your plate tonight too i think we could do we could spend a little bit more time if you're willing for us to come back again or provide something like information we can we can give you a summary presentation on those kind of categories yeah i think that summary would be good and you know in particular when you mentioned you know what would need to be done on a sort of weekly monthly annual basis that gives us an idea operationally financially what exactly what we're getting ourselves into so that would be very helpful thank you thank you rosa and jeff what i'd like to add to that is if we could have that you know i'm just putting it out there for the board to consider um and tech time to think about we we are likely to schedule a joint we will be scheduling a joint meeting on november 17th i think it is it's a tuesday with the nbc uh for i believe it's design confirmation and approval so we we will be together then so perhaps uh an advanced summary for the board to consider and prepare for that meeting i know that's not necessarily the purpose of the meeting but also with the nbc there because it's a commitment from them they're an enormous part of this uh building project um we have a couple of architects there as well uh on on that team and together you know because this again this is a town project it's not just you know although it's a school um you know there's financial commitments and other things that have to go into this understood yep thank you and i just thinking about structuring it jeff it and antonia it makes sense to me that if you came in and said look the problem is we have too many options and too many kind of general discussions i i would almost love to say look here's what you should go for right if it was me here's what i'd recommend go for these seven you know uh categories and that gets you a well certification that you'd be proud of because by the way i like the concept um and here's what has to get be done to get the initial one and what's all in the design on this one or this one's mostly in the design but it's gonna need two or three more things and then here's what it would take to maintain it right um and this you know and then the things i i worry about is when i because i've had lots of experience of doing certifications in the business world you start and then you find out oh my god i have to go and deploy 17 people to go do a bunch of stuff i have to go you know implement these changes to our processing and that was more expensive than i expected and i heard the discussion about filters and my alarm bells go off and [Music] because we want to go in with our eyes open um i think it's what all of us want to do i think i'm not going to speak for every board member but i think most of us would say this sounds really cool let's go do it right and the fees you showed us didn't scare me um but the the so the unknown for us is a little bit of what do we have to ask our team to do on day one and then what do we have to do next year and the year after the year after to maintain it and if the answer is oh you have to go hire someone to come in and go do a certain testing and that's going to be there's going to be a bill to that those are the stuff we need to know um and i so i'm thinking if you had if you were forthright about here's a here's a absolute base case we would recommend you go pursue and then you kind of have those two columns here's what the initial certification here's what uh ongoing would be boy we'd have a lot and then flag which ones might have some costs or labor investment that would help us a lot right because you're going to get you don't want to go down a path and find out later oh my god what did i get into yeah we don't want it to be a chore it's really supposed to be you know an exciting exciting thing you you need roi on this too i mean it needs to that's the whole mission for this piece so we'll we'll we'll get that to you that's a good point yeah i i you know what i'd love to be able to tell our community we've got this very healthy building and it's only going to make education better and better for our kids and when we conduct when we can tell them it's not going to give them a covet and we can uh it's a it's a it's an absolutely controlled environment and then everybody will be exci excited but the uh but i think healthy buildings are cool they really are and i worked in a healthy building that had a bus the business form of this type of certification and it was a much better place to work him absolutely um and uh and so i'm kind of a pa i'm a believer in this i just this well thing and when you say there's no one on the east coast who's done it at all tells me there's a hurdle there that i'm feeling like i'm not seeing yet that's my worry we'll work on it thank you any other questions protect on and i had the same kind of piggybacking i apologize if this was addressed but just is the certification process really long like when we're looking at what's certified there's 37 projects listed in massachusetts but only eight are certified so that's a big number between the ones that are actually certified is that because the process is very long is that because like bob said things come up and people just buildings just drop it or do you have any insight into that yeah so there is about a year difference between um when you finish actually it could even be more than that so there's a year from the point of construction completion when the design team submits all the documents to the international well-building institute one year from that date of construction completion is the minimum amount of time before certification can be awarded so and that's just because they want to get a certain number of occupants in the building and they're reviewing documentation they're doing performance verification which can take um five to ten business days at times so um there there is a process after that date of construction completion before certification commences so that's a year um but what we also see is that when projects those 37 projects that are on that are registered on the website the project directory they'll register sometimes in the beginning of conceptual design and they still got that whole project design cycle to go through so in addition to that one year after construction completion it's a couple years to get through the design process so we might see those numbers increase as more projects move through through the cycle yeah thanks great question sure all right um so i think what we'll do as a board is is sort of go through the information that you gave us we'll definitely look forward to getting some of that you know more specific information from you um and then we'll we'll at least revisit this on you know the 17th when we talk with the nbc but perhaps you know before that or we can communicate you know through email if we have questions and things like that so okay all right sounds great thank you thank you guys thanks for coming thank you for your time i appreciate it thanks very much thank you okay so uh let's move on to subcommittee reports and uh first up we have facilities okay so um i'll report on our meeting from october 7th and our special meeting on october 14th so we reviewed the school dude reports we reviewed the most recent proposal from tucton for the boys locker room project and unanimously approved it we continued to review the capital improvement plan we finalized it and voted unanimously to bring it forward to the board tonight the custodial staffing update we still have green light helping us out we're still down one night custodian at huckleberry one night lead person at high school and one night person at wisconier so we have three custodial vacancies reopening update all exhaust fans and ventilation systems are working and and or have been replaced they're all working as it's intended to desks and dust shields have been delivered and are ready to go for the expected november 9th full in person learning um some miscellaneous discussion we discussed was that the district received a complaint about mice at the high school the district is taking it very seriously and is working proactively osha a pest contractor will be coming out now once a week set traps at night and retrieve them with bait in the in the morning and that's about it if anybody has any questions in just a little piece the capital plan for approval is later on the agenda tonight on your new business rosie you're muted sorry okay up next is finance all right so um i want to just give an update on the financials uh from our meeting on october 12th uh that meeting was dedicated to our first look at how we're doing really on this year's uh budget um so i'm gonna spend a couple of minutes talking about a couple things i will tell you that after we went through our review a couple of days later we actually uh met with the board of finance and took them through some of the same information and it was a very good meeting by the way in terms of sharing of information so let me talk about a couple things first of all our overall uh budget situation can in in your packet tonight is a copy of our financial report um and ken reported that with all the give and takes of under runs and overruns especially due to the covet spend he is um outlooking that right now we're about 88 000 over our budget um now the biggest driver in that by far is covet related spending and as you know the board of finance has agreed they will support us on you know making a proper budget adjustment when we get there so don't uh overreact to the 88 000 we're still monitoring it with the board of finance and that's why we went and met with them a couple of days later um so um so all things considered there's been there's not a lot of surprises in the current budget um let me knock off a couple of important things if you remember when we did our budget last spring we there were a couple of very specific focus risk areas that we were monitoring one was we took a 200 000 risk entry on our on our salary line and ken's done that done the piece of work given the turnover and uh that we've seen through the end the school year and it is 696 dollars is what would actually uh have it in savings due to turning over retirements of more expensive teachers being replaced with newer teachers so our the risk we took in our budget of 200 000 is almost dead nuts what actually happened so that's really good news because that's a one-time event that tends to happen at the beginning of the year when we're doing our staffing for the year so we can almost put that one to bed on top of that though we've had some openings in various roles and uh teachers custodians maintenance and clerical roles that while they weren't filled and many of them have since been filled uh we actually have salary savings and that is we have savings of 140 000 due to what they then can call unfilled positions or vacancy savings um we hate to have vacancy savings we would like to keep our employees and do that but when you do have you know a situation where you have an opening for a period of time uh that actually is savings to the budget and that savings is used to offset our covet spend so um it's about 108 000 of that 143 was teachers but about twenty thousand under run on custodians eleven thousand on maintenance and three thousand on clara so um and it was like seven or eight positions and they were you know it was three weeks here and five weeks there it wasn't one big bucket it was chunks of uh chunks of time so those are that's another area that is good news for our budget and the third basic area of the budget if you remember we've all been focused on the out out of district special ed spending and mrs wygonick and mr poston have gone through a very exhaustive analysis of the what's happened to our children who have been placed out of district and you know if you remember we always have this issue there's kids who leave and kids who come in and you know and um how we uh um how we uh those balance out and we've had some problems the last couple of years that haven't balanced in our favor well this year we had a budget of 2.109 and right now the outlook is 2.115 so about five thousand dollar difference so with the students that we know about right we're actually once again kind of dead nuts to the where the budget was so that's another good news so all things consider those were good news um and then you get to the big discussion we had which was the kobits then and um and i'll summarize this at a high level but there's a sheet that we can share with everybody if you want to see the details but we had told the board of finance back in august that we were going to spend a little over a million dollars on coping and that came in the flavors of money that was spent last year um new spends this year and the items that we approved like two meetings ago for the curricular things that would help with the covet environment million 28.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i left one of these blue cover handouts in front of you there and this is the slideshow that's going to go uh mr graham is going to put on the uh the screen again okay we tried to develop a secret code so i could tell him when to uh slides and i'm just going to say so we really we started working on this and this game comes out of our playbook about a week after the school year ended last year way back by by june we had completed our first look at the playbook our first plans and i think it's important to know that this is a moving part the the information the guidance that we're getting from the state and the county level is coming out sporadically so we had a whole plan put together uh by july at the very end of june first week of july the state came out with new guidance sb98 changed everything so we're back to the drawings again um then as we're going along uh guidance keeps changing so this is really the third the third reincarnation idea for incarnation of this uh plan and you're gonna see even though this was printed a week ago there's gonna be some slight changes even since then because the guidance has changed again we got new guidance from the california department of ed on our engagement process just last week that's going to change some of the ways that we we do things and if you notice even today the center for disease control came out with new guidance for what it means to be in close proximity to this around somebody else so that then they tweaked some things for us as well things continue to change us having said that i want to commend all of the admin the teachers that classified will work tirelessly on this literally all summer long there were no vacations this year uh and since then um i know we're all kind of emailing texting in the middle of the night it's going back and forth this is on everyone's mind and they're to be commended for their hard work and efforts towards this endeavor all right having said that we're going to move on uh reset all right first page so for those in tv land that first page is a link to uh that playbook where which a lot of what you see tonight is going to be out of that playbook so if you go to the second get elementary in person perfect all right so starting out here's how this would look at the elementary level in terms of the hybrid program the hybrid is an option for parents uh to send their students to school as well as a distance learning option full-time business learning option so this is the first one we're going to look at here is the elementary in-person model so that is on campus five days a week students would attend families who chose this those students would attend monday through friday this will be all students tk through 6 and be placed in a morning or afternoon group although we're still looking at our efforts coming in from the survey there may be a possibility at least at some sites where a morning is is enough to do the in person and the afternoon would be all distance learned um the numbers are coming in and as they come in there's more and more families choosing distance learning where all efforts in that plan are going to be to assign family members so that they're in the same grouping whether it's morning or afternoon so that they're not having a crossover transportation wise each group is going to attend approximately two and a half hours per school day with a primary focus on english language arts and math from an academic perspective that's going to be the main focus facilities are going to be disinfected between the morning and afternoon sessions and then in addition to that two and a half hours they would have students will complete independent work outside of the school day those little boxes off to the side of that little table explains the additional number of minutes the combination of the in-person time and those additional minutes of independent time are the minimum that we have to have to show engagement for the state level so we think we have to have both of those each day are you ready to move on to slide three i believe thank you eugene so now we are on the profile i think that's purple whatever color that is uh elementary distance learning this is for families that chose the full-time distance learning uh not wanting their students on campus so we again we are adjusting this slightly this will be different than it is now uh slightly uh families that have opted into this um may be required to have a new teacher and that is because the number of students of wanting the distance learning uh is is overwhelming there's a lot of a lot of families that want that and since they want that we have to to move some teachers over to be those distance learning teachers specifically it's too much of an ask for our teachers to do both a full-time distance learning kid and an in-person kid that is an incredible amount of prep time what we're found is that no matter how long you've been in a classroom as a teacher it is like learning everything all over again all the new software platforms the hardware uh even grading going through google classroom is different even the simplest thing is attendance is completely different now for this year only uh so that we can uh claim that the attendance they gave it's not called ada for this year but our engagement and it's taking i'm talking to high school teachers it's taking another hour half a week to compile it because it's a completely different formula it's not just in your seat or not anymore it's a compilation you see online with your with your class as well as a time equivalent of an assignment that you've got for that day that has to be clearly delayed from that date to be able to prove to the auditors that they were engaged that day all right so distance learning students would attend class online monday through friday there would also be a 60-minute online office hours with teachers uh per day and that would be for one-on-one or small group assistance there would be at least 30 minutes of intervention time that we are our rotation uh tier two uh those kind of things in small group or individual sessions in addition to the whole class live instruction in the office hours so that's an additional support for kids and then offline independent study work will be assigned by the teacher according to the grade levels you'll see again on the table to the right uh the additional minutes and we are currently putting together a new job description for that distance learning teacher to clearly delineate what the expectations are for that right now it's an hour online those that is going to increase it's going to be more than one hour online right now preliminarily we're looking at two to two and a half hours of online with this with the student to get more interaction with it with the family it's starting to clarify and i don't know uh would it be helpful to hold our questions or comments or would it be worth because on the on the elementary perspective can you can you elaborate a little bit on the idea that the hour is the hour like i have to sit in front of the computer for one whole hour for elementary or can the teachers break that time up so we know attention spans are short fit attention fans are short and developed so it doesn't mean you're going to be online two straight hours at a time it may be a 15 20 minute little instructional thing here then have a kid who at least kind of work then come back on and a half hour it's going to be broken down it's not realistic that the kid's going to be on for two hours you know two hours straight at the third level that's that's just not realistic is that yeah okay um related question regarding the independent work time um if we increase the amount of online instruction time would we be decreasing the amount of your independent work time yes okay correct so that it will start to resemble the in person correct thank you correct there are minimum number of minutes at each grade level that are required so k2 it's 100 excuse me k is 180 uh one two uh you're looking at 230 and then it goes 240 from that point on up minimum minutes we're ready to go to the next slide i have a question for you mike okay mr jordan um and it just when you said it it just made me think that with staff so you had said some are going to be going to distance learning one of the things like and and when we went and met with the school in florida it was total parent choice like if you wanted to be in the classroom you were in the classroom if you want to do distance learning it was distance learning from the classroom like the students should be able to see in the classroom so but the way you said it sounds like we're gonna have two different sets of teachers is that the plan to have two different sets of teachers are we gonna do the same thing where if the student wants to be at home but watch the teacher on the camera they can but if they want to i mean what's the sounds like a lot of extra staff to do that the way you said it so there won't be extra staff that you'd have to hire because you've got right now we're going to see a slide here pretty quick about 35 of our elementary kids are going to stay complete distance learning so those that are those class sizes pull down when those kids are pulled out and those teachers are pulled out as well and that's why you might have a different teacher what you're talking about is synchronous learning we do right now we don't have that at the elementary we are going to have that when i can go to the high school we are going to have that option yes we are also using that option with some of our cohorts like the one here at broadcasting we should be on the middle school in personnel moving on to rivals so again there is a distance learning full-time option and an on-campus five days a week option uh again even though this is printed a week ago we are looking at the numbers that are approaching 50 or about 45 of kids at the middle school want to do this full-time distance learning uh it's not 100 confirmed yet but we're looking at the possibility where we can do the in person in the morning and then all the distance learning in the afternoon so it's going to be a little bit different than here based on what our server results are coming back is this the av schedule are you oh we're not doing that you said it's morning and afternoon correct so yeah we would be on an adb in that yes sit but it's a six period day instead of the eight from before so students would attend class again monday through friday uh students we split into a morning and after we would shift and in this case again we're preliminary looking at the possibility that we could just do all distance learning in the morning excuse me reverse that all in person learning in the morning and all distance learning in the afternoon i think i just did a willy wonka there morning and afternoon sessions will be approximately three hours we're looking about really about two and a half to three is what a session would be and then there'd be a break between uh students would be attending three classes per day on the aav schedule and there we'll have a link to that uh there'd also be one hour of independent work a week so we're looking at 20 minutes per class that you're in for those three periods for that day and then facilities would be disinfected obviously question all the disinfecting work in between it seems to me the teachers are going to be busy preparing for in between you know work who's going to be doing that so we've got down down to where there's a sanitizer that i believe it's one to two minutes it'll dry correctly if i'm wrong mr decent it won't dry but it will actually it will kill the or eliminate the virus so they're so the idea is the teacher would just go down remember there's only going to have half requirements so you're going to have somewhere around 12 to 15 uh just spray down the desk between between class periods and then it would kill them and i said drive my apologies kill the children for the virus excuse me and then the full-time distance learning uh families that shows that that would be full-time again they would attend class online monday through friday uh they're expected to participate live online independent work for a total of at least 240 minutes so they would be taking their classes just from home as they are now thank you all right so moving on to center high uh this is where things are going to be uh slightly slightly different considerably different so center high school will be on their continue on their av schedule now the difference at the high school level is learning so a kid who chose to be in class would go to their normal a day or b days of before periods the kid who was on distance learning would be just videoing in linking into that class and watching the instruction live and we have it set up so there will be some questions and answer times for those students as well within that class period so the class periods are approximately 90 minutes um students will be split into what we're calling a blue and a gold which is just so we can we can split the kids in half and create enough social distancing uh they're going to go on a rotating schedule i'll explain that in just a minute uh one group will attend in person uh on campus while the other who participates online from home so again we can't have all those kids together at the same time there's too many and possibly good in social distance so half will stay home so the blue they get blue like an a day they'll come on eight eight kids will be videoing in on that day and they'll flip off the next day the b kids will show up and the eight bits will be videoing into those same classes the distance learning kids will be videoing in the whole time and i'll show you that rotation you have to switch that every three weeks to make sure that everybody gets in in person to an a uh schedule um so at minimum they're gonna have two days per week following a two week rotation two days on campus minimum so that goes one way three next week two and then flip flop so the rotation and i don't know how in depth you won't be going because basically at the end of that third week you have to flip flop so that everybody gets to go to their eight-day everybody what about lunch periods so we're going to be split into two lunches right now as of this morning and it's actually wasn't even from the slide it had come out a week ago we're at 48 percent of our students at center highway are going to stay in distance learning so when you split that into two now you're down to half you split that into two lunges now you're down basically to a quarter so you're we have enough room on campus to maintain social distancing during the lunch period that is the only site that will have lunch on campus everyone else is grab-and-go or calling it basically you good and i've already talked about the green and i think that's green if they opted out they can do the full-time distance learning that's not a problem again they'll be synchronously going in seeing the classes live now if a family opts for distance learning or offspring person are they allowed to change their mind later if circumstances for them to personally change it it would be helpful if they stuck to it but obviously we can't judge what's going to happen and things are going to come up we're going to have some flexibility and having said that we've got to make sure we maintain the social business in the class so it may take us a few days to get it worked out and make sure that we don't overload class so for example if we had 100 kids all of a sudden want to come back and they're all freshmen all of a sudden our freshman classes are going to have too many different social medias does that make sense yes what about when kids are put under quarantine and all of a sudden they have to stay at home and go back to learning at home so they at the high school level they would just go online like the full-time business learning kids because that's synchronous they're going to see the same thing we came up with there wants to be 15 different scenarios teachers quarantined students are you know kids quarantined but not everyone there are so many different variables that happen and it changes between elementary middle and high school on how it's going to work honestly because of the synchronous part of this it's going to be a little bit easier if a student is out of quarantine and actually because yep because it's going to be i hate to say that and that's every teacher's worst fear is that it's going to be a revolving door but that's going to happen i think we have to just accept to an extent that's going to happen it's going to be a little more difficult when a teacher is out of quarantine and that's going to create some issues but we do have protocols [Music] they will have a duty-free lunch yes without students in the room yes correct yes worked on that this morning all right okay we okay okay so again this was as of a week ago we sent this survey out or that the the holiday the uh october break um and we're still we're almost there but we don't have all parent surveys back so again i came into the admin they've been reaching out and making the phone calls and the staff the class fights and getting everybody's uh results in so that we have accurate numbers we can't do any plan until we have everybody's choice of whether they want to go distance or whether they want to go in person so this even though again it was a few days ago this is printed it is it's changed a little bit excuse me may make a comment or a question yes or comment so it was stated on social media that why doesn't the school district just take the families that don't respond and place them in a distance learning or be the in-class instruction well one we want to make sure everybody has the choice they need for child care for transportation for their their own uh personal belief whether they want their kids come back in person or not and we want to make sure unfortunately sometimes we don't have everybody's accurate information phone numbers and so forth so we want to make sure everybody has their their options i thank you for that because it was also stated that the district actually doesn't read any of the surveys or the information that we sent to the parents so i'm i i'm glad you said that because i know that you do or we do so um thank you for first i i can tell you this this data is a deep deep dive for administrators because this is how you build your master schedule and how you build your rosters for classes we have to know even a five percent difference can we can totally throw everything on thank you so we're [Music] 37.9 the red color is the number that have decided to do full-time business learning 62.1 are saying that they would like to come back full time now this was for the first kids you'll see up on the top it says first student with all students in the family included the percentage drops to about 35.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so i guess susie is driving unless she's changed buses um bus 40 was out and about along with a couple of the other smaller special ed buses it was just a wonderful feeling to see yellow school buses back in our town i have a comment and a question sure go ahead linda so my comment is you know along the lines of ileane's i have gotten such positive feedback from some students who i know personally they are so excited to be back at school even if it's just for a short time they were really really glad to be there and i really appreciated this presentation too because i've been wanting to know what's happening behind the scenes because i haven't been to the classroom my question is from my board colleagues and possibly for kelly staley too in fact i think i actually want to make a public apology when we at our last board meeting talked about a third option um tom lando bless you tom you know you were really clear in pointing out we don't really know what we're voting for i thought that we were voting to develop a third option a hybrid program it was never my intention to actually require teachers to simultaneously zoom and teach in person but somehow that's what was construed by both teachers and by parents so i don't know how that happened and i don't know if the board can help me understand that was i sleeping i might have been did i not hear something correctly how did we go from voting on the development of a third option to we're going to simultaneously teach in person and zoom and why is that now the only third option or hybrid option that we're talking about well linda i can help you understand that thank you sure what happened at our last meeting was that we had a teacher who had proposed a plan where for the ab schedule where it would be zooming on the alternative days and that was a plan that was widely distributed and numerous teachers were supporting that plan and we assumed that that that was what it was going to look like well we did not realize we did not know that that really wasn't a plan that a majority of teachers did back because when it came time to and you if you recall that negotiations were beginning the next day correct so correct so i had no idea that this was even going down that road okay so what had happened is we had received information from the union that they were open to this concept and we it was going to be negotiated in some form and what we had agreed to was go back and and do that but you know there were certain restrictions that we had to comply with there is is it ab98 is that the name of it there are restrictions on that where you actually do have to have some presence in the classroom and the students have to check in and that is something where the zoom is is required so it would have had to look like what the teacher had put forward where it was zooming some of the time and in-person instruction but when it came right down to it the teachers were not willing to do that at the at the high school level we had a lot of buy-in from the teachers at the elementary and as you've heard from the discussion tonight at the middle school and at the elementary they don't seem to have those problems because it's a whole different kind of structure they're not teaching you know six classes or whatever and it's just not you know it hasn't been a manageable type of situation so absolutely it's um you know we wanted to provide an option because so many parents had contacted us and said right you know we have the best of intentions to do that we don't want we don't want oak bridge but then we don't feel comfortable sending our kids back and so we tried to do our best to provide that and our people are still working on schedules to try to make that happen and my understanding is i don't know if i have my notes handy here but over 30 sections were added to the high schools in order to try to get that to work at a cost of over three hundred thousand dollars um we are you know working hard but this is this is a ten percent of the population uh the student population that this this is you know affecting and granted you know it's that's important but um you know a lot of effort is is going for that so i'd have to say that you know we didn't have a lot of information and we made certain assumptions about well if this was being put forth as a plan and we were hearing from so many teachers that it was acceptable to them that they were willing to do it which didn't turn out to be true so that's where it left us at the point where we are now um trying to make things work out to the best uh as possible but i don't think it was i think it was just how things evolved and that we were trying to take into consideration what uh what was being you know asked of us and and yes um you know the scenario that tom painted of you know having a teacher try to zoom having a teacher try to address the class yeah that's that's a you know a very difficult thing it may be workable and it seems to be working at um some of the schools say rosedale they just explained that that you know is possibility there and they're using it however when you've got six classes you know that that's you know it's it's just you know it's very very difficult so at this point um because and you know it can't meet the requirements of this ab-98 uh for check-ins we're going to look into the a b as we promised to see if it is viable for um possibly starting in january but it's not something what we have to be facing now and we're going to get into that on our next item is is what's happening now with the stage that we're in and you know the uh negotiations have to go on with the teachers in order to prepare ourselves for that next stage so absolutely we we have to go with that and you know continue to try to make things work for those students whose schedules they want to have the third option but um you know yeah it wasn't fully formed and a few assumptions were made also thank you thank you for that um but again i do really sincerely want to apologize to staff and to parents who misconstrued our best intention so thank you thank you for explaining that sure yeah linda i just want to make sure that we did not mandate um our teachers to zoom and teach at the same time in the mou it's volunteer only and right now we do have a lot of our teachers now i've changed over to do it we have a lot all of our teachers at chico junior and i believe bidwell and most of all our junior high teachers and now we're getting quite a few numbers of our high school teachers that are doing it also so it's it's something that we work but it was not mandated but we are we do also have where teachers are only doing online some of their periods too so they that's not a hybrid they that's a full online class so there is different options when it comes to that third option okay thank you thank you so much kevin has a comment liz will you call on kevin yeah yeah yeah i didn't so i just want to start with happy people never call me so this is totally biased bias information nobody's calling me to say how good it's working but um there's a lot of tension out there a lot of it is voluntary but but teachers are feeling pressure to volunteer from parents and um and and and those that have volunteered have gotten a lot of negative feedback from parents that's not good enough those that haven't volunteered have gotten a lot of negative feedback of why you aren't you volunteering so while it is truly voluntary that's a kind of a subjective term when you've got parents um emailing you why won't you do this for my child so i just wanna but again i'm only here for the people that are not you know no one's calling me to say how good it's working thank you kevin okay thank you for sharing that um yeah it's you know you try to please people as much as you can but sometimes it just you know there's there's there's uh things that we limitations that we have too and you know our ability to have enough teachers and our ability to pay for the type of things that we're talking about um or may not be feasible okay so um if there's no more yeah oh i'm sorry okay so uh thank you very much for that update appreciate that i appreciate all the teachers principals and others who participated and shared the information thank you for for being with us tonight our next item of business uh since this was strictly informational is a discussion discussion action item with regards to transitions between stages of reopening yes ms daly okay thank you very much and it is great to have people in our audience again as well as seeing our kids back on our campuses and our our staff as well so uh just as kind of a reminder back in july july 15th the board adopted the stages of reopening and at the time when they were adopted we were in stage two which is back where we are right now which is the modified traditional am pm schedule before we were even able to open we had been planning for that am pm modified traditional but before we were able to open the state and butte county went on to the coveted monitoring list which now is referred to as tier purple so at that point we had to make a pivot we're about two and a half weeks away from the opening of school we had to make the pivot and go to online learning which was stage one we have now moved back into that stage two or now it's called the red tier which is the am pm and in fact butte county if we maintain the numbers that we currently have will be in orange tier which would be stage three and in that stage we would per the reopening plan move to a traditional schedule with safety measures in place and then ultimately the yellow tier is full reopening of school and i would suspect at that point we would still have some safety measures in place but not to the extent that we have them right now when we get to those numbers so uh one of the things and the reason this is on the agenda is at our last board meeting uh you know late in the evening we were running out of time and the question was asked how do we determine the amount of time between when we move to a tier a new tier and when the instructional models change to mirror that tear and i think that was some of the pushback um that we heard going both ways is um you know why are we not moving faster now that we are in the red tier how come we're not opening up tomorrow and then the flip side of that is you know why haven't we taken more time and had more planning before we move into that so i think it needs to be a board discussion as to when we move from tier to tier whether we move from red to orange or and i sure hope this is not the case but if we move from red back into purple what is that time frame when we when the county changes their color tier and then the instructional model moves to mirror that tier so hopefully i set that stage and will allow for some board discussion along those lines okay yes kathy so i've had teachers from outside the district uh contacting me they either live in chico or their kids go to school in chico but they are teaching somewhere else and and so that discussion is literally not just chico unified it's it's flowing around the county and so a couple of considerations watching your grandchild at five go marching off into school i know many parents and grandparents took a deep breath of oh my god i hope this will be okay and i have felt and kevin outlined some of this that we have done an extraordinary job with all our safety modifications and really i didn't see any kids really young kids acting out about their mask however we just got to orange and the normative framework has been you go at least two weeks in that and then you go another two weeks to make sure it's holding and we know that there are already several explosions if you would going on around us shasta just blew up the highest test rate in the country red bluff high just had an explosion of students testing positive and the school was not informed until after they came back so i'm really really concerned about the issue of people demanding okay now jump to the next hurdle because everything has to settle classrooms and teachers have to i believe settle but also there's not a single classroom in the state of california that i'm aware of that can do social distancing and have all their kids back i mean we just we didn't build our classrooms to those specifications we built them to a certain number of kids and so my concern would be that one we want to make sure that we can really hold that line we're doing really well but shasta just blew up and the hema has a big hit and so you know when you look at the color map and i watched the news yesterday three different versions of it we're the only orange in a sea of red and so it isn't like we're you know isolated we're not lassen way off in the hinterlands and i also feel very strongly that our teachers who have been working so incredibly hard and our students need the time to bond with their current situation so they're comfortable the students are comfortable and the teachers are comfortable about the next day they go to school what's it going to be like they have a sense that they know and they feel safe okay uh so i just want to clarify a little bit here um if we we were just this week uh told that we are now in the orange orange category so that's assuming that we maintain this status for two weeks and then there's an additional two weeks no no i was able to get that clarified through butte county public health today and there is not an additional two weeks once we are open before we change because really once we were able to open that was an individual school district determination of how they were going to open so for example um in gridley they're back a hundred percent uh all students six periods a day that is not how we chose to do it um but that's a different community so we um have the ability the only time it would be an issue is when we go back into purple and per our plan that was adopted by the board if we moved back into purple we would move back into an online instructional model and if we did not then there is a requirement that we do testing of staff that we increase testing okay so it's we have two weeks before we're teamed you know just deemed that we're we're out of the woods as far as you know we're in the orange and so nothing could happen until two weeks anyhow and then um we have the discretion as to when we can if we choose to open up after that so so what you're really asking us right now is to set up some sort of protocol so so people know right and they can plan uh okay we're gonna allow four weeks or we're gonna you know whatever but that and and just so everyone knows too that on july 15th we had established that when the stage if the stage were to reverse order and go backwards that we would automatically go to online back to revert to online so but we have the power to decide not to do that we have more discretionary power at this point because we have opened up so we are not forced to do that we can choose to do that we can choose to maintain that or we can choose other uh you know uh another plan to say okay we'll we'll look at different things that are going on in the communities we'll look at the status of actually what's happening we actually have more discretion we don't have to follow that automatic go back so i would i would clarify that um i believe what the board adopted was that you would mirror the stages of reopening to the stages of instruction and so with purple which at that point was the covered monitoring list would be online red would be the modified traditional am pm orange would be traditional with safety measures in place and yellow would be back to a more traditional i believe that's what the board has in place right now however the governor has said that once you are in school in person you do not have to go back out even if you fall into the purple category um i think what i was looking for more from the board is what is the time frame so if we move what is the time frame for uh going from stage to stage so that that's clear with our community this last time we went to red and we had four and a half weeks between going to red initially and then starting back with the am pm so just to give our community i think a little more heads up on that and then i do believe that if we are not going to go back uh to online if we fall back into purple then we should clarify that right as well right okay eileen you had something yes thank you madam president i um a couple of different issues from my perspective um i do believe that it's really really good news that we've gone to orange however we are about to have significant family gatherings because the types of holidays that are in front of us and in listening to caution from epidemiologists about where they are seeing spikes in covid increases it's because of the smaller family gatherings where households have expanded their contact to other members of the family that aren't necessarily currently living in the household and that's that's what's coming up um i also think that we do need to to make a decision about what kind of markers we're going to use to take a look at whether or not to take an action if we go back to purple i would consider taking a look at does our district have an increase in cases because of testing or is it a community spread issue that's um say we we had a another facility for retired folks have another spike in cases i think that we need to examine how are we doing versus how the community is doing because you know as we've just heard tonight we are doing um a phenomenal job of trying to keep our folks everybody safe and the compliance from our students and staff is wonderful like the teachers reported the students are not objecting and yeah it's all new and you know it may get to be old hat but they're going to get reminded do you want to go back to not being able to come to school anymore that's a big driver um educating them about the fact that that we need to be careful outside of school as well as in school is another important thing and i think our staff is is doing that i also think that what we have just put all of our staff through um from july 15th to this past monday i'm i'm amazed that so many of them are still standing quite frankly um and and i i don't want to take a look at um making a change now that doesn't um that doesn't align itself with the um semester um break that and i know where were some that are on the um trimesters but i'd like to i'd like to just plan on staying where we are now the the other reality is if we stay at orange through the holidays and we get to the semester how long would it take to open everything back up with plenty well it's taken us four to five weeks doing it at uh you know breakneck pace along with negotiating of of any additional changes and even though we have a lot of things in place now i still think that we need to give our staff and students um [Music] a chance to to take what we've learned since july and apply it to the next change and not have it be in two weeks or three weeks i although if you know if the numbers stay down which i don't expect i really i really don't think we're going to be that lucky but if we are i'd you know i'd like to get everybody back for second semester if possible but i don't think we should do it in less than a four-week transition and if you look at the way our holidays are spaced right now we don't have four weeks yes tom thank you um i agree the upcoming holidays are a concern in terms of spread i'm also concerned still with the amount of testing or lack thereof that's done in butte county it doesn't give me a lot of faith in all the numbers we're getting beyond that which is all speculation at this point i would just like to get a quick um update on where we are in terms of our contact tracing system do we have an established system now and how quickly do we know once an outbreak has occurred in among in our sphere influence among our staff or our students well outbreaks are self-reported and so we know as soon as we're told like we know from red bluff unless we are it's indicated from the parents or the students themselves we won't know until it actually comes to our attention as far as contact tracing once we have students back into the classroom that falls on us so it's our school nurses that will be doing that tina and i are meeting with the school nurses along with diane olsen at their very next meeting and we're going to be having that conversation they've been doing a lot of that to some extent on following the case by cases and working with staff to determine when people can return based on if if the test is positive their contact having asking all the questions that the health department gives to us as far as you know did you have direct contact were you masked at the time were you around them first you know less than six feet for 15 minutes or longer was it a was it an initial contact was it a immediate contact or was it a secondary where you were in contact with somebody else that was you know exposed all those types of questions that enter into those questions so to answer your question um tom is it's going to be our nurses that are going to play a huge part in that the health department won't be doing that on a case-by-case basis for us now that now that students are back in but we're working through that process right now trustee land if i can add to we have asked staff to create seating charts so we are imp so we can prepare for contact tracing so i don't know if you saw in one of the pictures in the presentation but as students walked in very specific seating charts with labeled seats so in preparation for contact tracing if i mask a follow-up um and this is just my lack of legal knowledge do we have any standing to require self-reporting as a requirement for coming on campus i don't believe so i we have a policy that we are asking parents to um go through a list of you know do you have a fever do you have a cough um and ask to self-report those types of things but i don't think there's any recourse that we have if they do not immediately report yeah hipaa protections are there where we cannot require medical information however i think we have done a very good job of getting information out saying you know please do not come to school if you have a temperature please do not come to school if you you know have a cough or not feeling well but at the end of the day we we have to trust people and i know that's hard and again just forgive me for my my lack of knowledge we can require people to disclose their vaccination status they have to show us evidence of having a vaccination correct okay so that's that's like a carve out in the in the law around well it is a law yes and we can send students home if if they're clearly ill um so they don't uh infect other students so i know from i know from having spoken to monica soderstrom the head of nursing for public health that she is meeting regularly with the nurses and they're keeping this uh you know on their radar and they're working hard to to make sure that the schools are safe and i know monica said she is very confident that that this is going to happen and it is going to be doable to keep the kids safe so i just i'm going to jump in here for a minute um diane olson who has been working very closely with the nurses on all of the protocols does have her hand up okay great yes diane hi um everyone so i did want to update you uh on these first three days of school um some of the things that the nurses have been sure to do um we have had students that have been sent to the office or having symptoms the nurses are checking that those students and in some cases students have been sent home however most of the students that have been sent home the symptoms are related to some other illness and not necessarily to covet and that's typical i asked them how how many they usually have in a regular union they said it was very typical to what happens every year as students come in we haven't had any covet positive reports reported back yet and then also in relation to the question on immunizations we do follow ed code and the immunization law of reporting and our health aides and nurses have been working closely with all the parents that do not have their complete set of immunizations and making sure that those are completed before students attend classes in person okay thank you thank you diane yes kathy so the flu shot is not a mandated vaccine correct correct yeah it is not mandated and hepa apparently since red bluff high is in a different county that was in a different status than we were but when i find out that 17 high school kids all got it and then all came back at basically the same time and didn't tell anybody and then that made a teacher get it and that teacher's child that suggests to me that those were and i don't know this that they might have might have been participating in an organized event like perhaps a sport so the reality is we can't make them tell us and whereas i would hope every parent would feel compelled to let us know there had been a chance of contagion obviously that didn't happen there so i'm completely agreeing with eileen that i think that we should wait until the start of spring semester in january we'll have a much better understanding of how the flu is impacting us and thankfully many people in butte have been getting the shots or the nose spray how the flu is impacting us but also with these counties blowing up around us how well our own health standards and belief systems are working that people are doing everything they can to stay safe and keep their kids safe okay so all right we've had two people express support of an idea to just regardless of whether we stay in the orange stage to defer any changes to the instructional models that we're using now until uh first of the year when school starts again after winter break linda how do you feel about that yep actually i would like to weigh in on that um i'm very excited to be in orange for sure but i would have to agree with my two colleagues um let's hold let's pause let's give teachers a chance to breathe and our support staff as well as our students let our students get in a routine you know i think about the special education students let's get in a routine let's talk with our unions about what this orange phase will look like it will give us some time to do that and we will come back after spring after the holidays for spring semester and start it then the full-time in-person school i also want to talk about going backwards into purple i think that's another question kelly wanted answered here um i'm feeling hopeful that being in the orange we're not going to jump back to tears into purple but you know what do we want to do if that does happen again i'm not sure i'm ready to just bounce back into an online situation you know we may have to go back to an am pm model i'm open to suggestions on this but you know if we are not required to go back to full-time distance learning if we go back two tears into purple um i'm not sure i want to do that so okay i would like to present that for discussion well sure what what i what i would recommend is that we try to retain as much discretionary power as we have we we have understood that in butte county there have been you know a lot of coveted cases that have been with the senior citizen community in some of the care homes we have some pretty large care homes in and and you know if there was an upsurge there certainly that could bring the numbers really high but it wouldn't be something that would be probably impacting school-age students that much people who are people who are in those care homes are pretty much kept away from anybody else and um so that would be one thing or in the jails so not to say that that's not important or we should disregard that but just if we can retain some discretionary power around that then we can decide so what i would suggest is that should we start heading back into that purple zone and we get notification like we did just this week that we were in the red zone if we get notification that we're in the purple zone that then at our next scheduled board meeting we discuss and decide whether the circumstances um require us to go back to online you know if they warrant it based on the particulars of what's going on in the community and uh you know where where you know the hot spots are what's what's actually going on because now we do have the power to make that decision whereas before we didn't have the power so and then with regards to the first the first item that was brought up um the red zone i i too would agree that waiting until january before we make any changes we've got kids that are going to be having halloween then they're going to be having thanksgiving then they're going to be having christmas and all of these things are activity you know rich type of uh you know type of events and the potential for contagion would seem to increase with those not to mention the fact that it is flu season and you know so i would also go along with everyone else and tom how do you feel about that well spring i'm uh definitely in favor of that okay so i do want to jump in and i'm just remind the board we do have a speaker okay speaker on this topic we'll get to that we'll get to that we're we're on the verge here of consensus and before we make any final decision we will entertain any public comment yes eileen thank you i pulled up the district calendar to take a look at how much time we have between now and coming back to school after winter break and we've got six weeks and they're not even full weeks because of the other holidays if we're going to make a decision about making a change when we come back we'd really have to start that transitioning thought process and planning process now um well mr hanlon is already um starting the process with the you know employee groups right and that's a big thing but you know going reducing the requirements is a lot easier than where we went we had to go full bore in trying to put all these things in place and now we would be not having as many requirements so if we were to retain as many as we have going into orange would be in good shape so we don't we don't have you know we have to plan more in the in the way of our employee groups i think then we have to worry about safety because safety is at its highest level oh yeah here and so going going to a lower level we're not going to have to do so much we would actually be able to reduce some of those requirements i'm i'm uh totally focused on um the um implementation through the work with classes and redesigning staffing and class schedules i understand that that's a rather significant step if we decide we're going to go full in person um you know at the beginning of the year so so if i can just because i want to comment on that so it's much more difficult to go from purple to red with a am pm because it changes the working the fundamental working conditions of our staff yes and we had a lot of um issues that we had to negotiate with both unions to make that happen we had daycare issues that were very difficult to overcome all those issues disappear when you go from red to orange we still have the safety issues that we need to talk about but we can essentially if we had to now there's some things we need to talk about to make that smooth but it can essentially go back to a normal schedule with normal working conditions and starting times and class periods and lunch times and all of those things in an orange atmosphere so there's there's a lot less to negotiate than we had to negotiate from going from purple to um to red so so i think it can happen a lot quicker as the bottom line okay the um we would leave the third option on the table because um personal preference the number of families at least the ones that are indicating through emails to me they're not ready to go back you know even even at the semester so we would we would be able to maintain that site-based enrollment option so i don't see it happening for elementary right no i'm sorry jim i meant secondary yeah you have to make a choice one way or the other in elementary in secondary um there is because you're creating a new master schedule you can you can place from the beginning of the process you can you can place online courses throughout the day it may or may not have the same number of options that's that's something we need to be very clear we have great difficulty all of the options in the current schedule so it may not be that that wide open but as far as um but you don't have to re you don't have to re-design the whole master schedule after you've already designed it that was the problem we had you know to do in a week we can start on that now or go back to the original schedule we had and then intersperse online classes throughout the day they're just not going to have as many options as people that are online because the overwhelming majority people want to come back and i suspect if we if we go into orange there's going to be even more that want to come back well i i think there are the actually our path is pretty clear at least to me that is to proceed to iron out any wrinkles that it would take to go to full in-person classes at the semester and also change our stated intent that if we do in fact go back to purple that we go back and re-examine our decision that we make our decision optional at that point as to whether or not to go back to full online that that that we not stay with that previous decision and we make it um you know optional at this point because if um if we plan to go back in person and if we find out just before winter break that that's not looking like a good idea because of cases to not do it wouldn't really be any kind of a problem so i i think our decision here is pretty clear we we look at best case scenario and plan on coming back full in december make a second decision that we will look at our decision if we go back to purple and everybody then knows where we stand so the only other thing to consider is if we remain in red going into the spring semester it has budgetary implications we have spent a lot of dollars on adding 30 plus sections into the master schedules that that's for a half a semester now if you go into it going into red it could be for a full semester so you've just added a lot of costs to a budget that's gonna be strained already for that third option that was for that third option oh okay thank you because all of a sudden you lost me i saw big dollars but i wasn't seeing the reason behind it okay because the implementation of the third option so because it was just impossible to make a master schedule because of that cost then it would seem as though um if that option has to go away that you know that oak bridge just becomes even though it's not the popular option it may in fact be the only option for families that truly feel yet they're not ready to you know have in-person contact okay tom i know i i am going to listen to the board first and then we will get to the speaker and in fact i wanted to to address that just briefly um and then i think there was some some maybe miss speaking um just talking about approaching consensus and i don't want to seem as though approaching consensus before we get input from the speakers um it's important that our you know public and our speakers are a part of that process yes there's protocol though on we listen to each other first and we listen to what our staff tells us and then we listen to the public that's of course and i just again i was trying to clear up that language that i didn't want anyone to think that we were pre-gaming and not going to listen before we made our decision so um on that note uh eileen just brought up that if we are still i mean i heard that right if we're still in red when we go to the next semester we may not have that the third zooming option the hybrid option um it's possible it's going to have budgetary implementation implica implications and you're going to have to make that decision on whether to spend those dollars on those those sections because the issue of having that third option um the expense of it isn't going to go away so it'll still be there um and in casting oakbridge is the only other option i think that one of the reasons that people didn't want to go to bridgestone was not simply choice but that there were questions about ap courses uh being available at oakbridge and that question will will remain so i think we need to be careful that our ap students especially have been working for a long time uh to meet this goal and we need to keep them especially in mind as we if we're going to say hey it's just either oakbridge or in person because that's that's when it's going to impact a lot of a lot of kids okay so we have some good ideas um you know when we're having a discussion it's very important for us to maintain the continuity of the flow of logic that is being presented in a discussion and so if we have to interject um speakers this that the other it's very difficult to maintain the flow and for us to establish ideas and a process that we're working towards so not to say that it's not important to hear from the public but that we need to know what we're talking about first and get our ideas straight and then we'll take the public so anyhow we'll take the public thank you i think you suggested that we would have speakers in person first yes we can do that and then we'll take a phone call hey everybody i'm matt tennis here at chico parents for in-person learning i think that you should not get your thought process all lined out and figured out before you hear from the public i think you should hear from the public and see what we bring to the conversation and then maybe make your plan for what you want to do and how you want to reopen i am frankly shocked and blindsided at the way this conversation has gone tonight the first i don't know how long it was that we heard the initial presentation on agenda item 8-1-1 but basically we had a lot of uh just really authentic fanfare over how great the reopening was going granted we're only three days in but kids are loving it parents are loving it the safety protocols are all being followed to the t it's wonderful everything is going absolutely great okay um and then we heard real examples from teachers and staff of how how positive they all thought it was in every respect but now it comes time to decide what we're going to do about the fact that the tears have changed and we're now totally in orange okay governor gavin newsom and mark galley the secretary of health and human services they think it's okay for us to be back in class now full time at a regular schedule with safety precautions okay but who is more conservative than governor gavin newsom and mark galley the chico unified school district board of trustees we are being more conservative than they are in sacramento national news outlets i subscribe to the print edition yes that's right of the new york times very impressive erudite thing for me to do wait out here and chico to subscribe to the new york times well the new york times is reporting that kids being back in school in new york full time is not contributing to the spread of covid i am also an avid npr listener npr is also reporting that kids being in school does not contribute to the spread of kovid dr mark galley for weeks now has been reporting that kids being in school does not contribute to the spread of kovid we i think that maybe the one flaw here is that um you guys think that this online zoom school thing is actually pretty great well it's not great okay there are some round pegs out there there's some kids who can sit in front of a computer screen for two three hours and can get their school experience from that and also from the whatever you call the the the other learning that they do um but at least two of my kids are not that okay and i wasn't that when i was a kid and i have a lot of people in my coalition hundreds of them actually for whom their kids are not that either and zoom school it's bad all right it's not great what is great is being back in school as we've seen for the last three days and we need to keep that pattern going and we need to embrace the fact that we are now in orange that sacramento is giving us a green light and we should get back to school thank you since this isn't items from the floor we can respond and what i'd like to say is that we do not have to do what anybody else does this is a board that makes its decisions based on science based on what our public health department says and that's what we do that's what this board does we do not just listen to a group that makes the most noise we listen to all groups i thought maybe you were going to come ahead and tell us how happy you were that we had started and had kids in school since that's what you've been clamoring for for months so i really don't know mr tennis what's going to make you happy you know do you want us to disregard all public health uh recommendations and send kids back you know i realize you're running for the board and you want to have a platform but really is that what you want us to do totally disregard that you you mention a couple of people but you know that's not everybody we just heard that red bluff had 17 cases that just emerged we have a holiday season coming up we're not going to act irresponsibly just because you keep coming here and making noise so i'm sorry if you feel that way but this is a board that thinks independently considers all opinions considers objective information out there and doesn't just bow to the loudest speaker or the person who harasses us the most so do we have um emotion oh we did not have any more speakers uh mr tennis was the only other speaker from uh that would have called in yes eileen thank you madam president i too survey all of the data information from exactly the same places that mr tennis just mentioned i come away with a different opinion and i also have a lot of input from the emails that we get i i mean we all do the first sunday i didn't have a hundred 100 new emails in my in basket was last week and i went out on facebook and said oh my gosh what am i going to do i don't have and someone said search your spam file um i feel the weight of um everyone's voice whether it's loud and organized or just gut-wrenchingly important to that parent and that family i think that's the role of a board member we have to use our own instincts combining all of the input that we get including weight from the staff that we you know have come to trust because of of our experience with their advice um i i i i just i take offense at being had it being suggested that um that we're somehow rather not listening we are i am thank you eileen uh we have kevin did you want to speak mr moretti i i did thank you it seems to me that there are there's two two decisions being made one is when to come back more full-time if we stay in orange and you know it's so i sent out a survey to the staff of teachers and i had just over 50 percent respond and the majority of those would agree with your decision to hold off changing until spring uh until the spring semester just as i think many of you have mentioned can we just get this down first before you make this change again so that part i would at least from the people again just half that responded to me but of those half they would the vast majority would agree with you there the other i i don't know if you're voting on this right now or not but the other is what happens if we go backwards and so uh 350 people respond 216 left comments and almost everyone whether they want so my one question to them was did you agree with the district's decision to have kids come back while we were in red it was about 40 yes and 60 no and but of what no matter how they voted all of them were very concerned about staying in person if we went to purple and it sounds like you're not voting or i'm sorry if we went back to people it sounds like you're not voting on that right now and you're going to postpone that until later but that will be um if that will be an issue at least with cuta if the decision is to stay in person when butte county goes uh i'm sorry if butte county goes back into purple okay yeah we actually are going to vote on that because um that is another thing that we have to decide while this topic is up but we are running out of time and so um we've kind of rehashed things linda yeah if you want to speak yeah just one last thing i want to thank kevin for his input on that that was great um also i just i want to address mr tennis just briefly um reiterating what eileen says we are listening to you we absolutely are listening to you uh we're listening to all the parents our emails are overflowing our phone calls but one of the things that he didn't mention and you know kevin kind of kind of spoke about it a little bit our staff have been through a wild ride not just teachers but support staff our district office staff since march it's been here and there and pivot and go backwards and a new regulation coming down we need some time to breathe we need the children to get into a routine and we need our staff to get into your routine so with that i would like to make a motion madam president if you're ready sure okay i would like to move that we postpone the full-time in-person uh in-person classroom until spring semester and i don't know if you want to do the purple thing on a separate motion yeah we're going to do that we can do that separately separate okay yeah let's do this to postpone the reopening for full-time instruction classroom instruction until january till spring if we stay in the orange in the orange or red or even yellow okay do i have a second oh you seconded it sorry kathy all right we have a motion by ali uh by linda hubby a second by dr kaiser are we ready to vote yes a question it was one of the questions that tom um initiated with the cost um of maintaining that um third option if we go back uh at the semester is that something that we want to yeah let's not go there right now i think we need to just am i wrong that that's not part of of whether or not we include the third option when we come back we're not voting on that but we're only voting that we'll stay with the am pm until the start of spring semester and not uh conditioning anything about how we come back no thank you we're not yeah we're not going to talk about any of those specifics because those might be we're not really sure the full you know what that's going to be i think okay okay i just wanted to thank for that clarification because what i heard was that if we were in red we were going to go back full time but this motion is purely that we're going to stick with the mode we're in until the beginning of the spring semester and i'm happy to vote on that thank you yes yes that is that is clear correct and uh erica is that clear did that come across clearly i know there was a lot of discussion that's what the motion is moved to postpone the transition to full-time in-person classroom instruction until january spring semester if we stay in the orange red or yellow tier seconded by board vice president kaiser okay are you ready to vote all righty then um we'll do a roll call vote uh linda how do you vote i vote i okay robinson kaiser griffin lando eye okay so that passes now we'll tackle the next portion of that regarding reversal backwards to the purple zone thank you madam president i move that if the county moves us back into the purple tier that we meet to determine whether or not to adjust our um in purses in person versus online status okay um okay so you okay go pass it by me again no eileen pass it by me again what you just said okay um that if the county moves us back into purple yes that we meet to determine whether or not to adjust our in online versus in-person delivery status okay can i make a friendly amendment to that of course okay i would suggest that we put in that we would meet at our next meeting at our next scheduled board meeting um because we're having them every two weeks so whatever that next would be after we get into that zone sure timing is is and that and that we also consider the circumstances of the covid um right increase that's part of of the intent of my motion is that we meet and we take a look at what we want to do considering the evidence put in in front of us because the the way they're broken down by the county you can tell is it age group is you know where are the outbreaks um by not only the county but by town as well so there's a lot of information there that we can use to dissect and consult with public health as well okay i just wanted to be clear make sure we got it all in there absolutely right yes tom thank you um i am not super thrilled with that friendly amendment i have to say and here's why um we are trying to on the one hand listen to and uh work with parents who want to get their kids back in as quickly as possible which means we're going to want to examine that data as quickly as possible given that tears change on a tuesday and our regular scheduled day is wednesday i would rather have an emergency meeting if we have to and have a meeting immediately on wednesday after so that we can then make a decision and provide at least two or three weeks of lag time after that if we need to to implement any changes based on what we get okay so you would like to basically propose another amendment yes yep or a variation i would agree with tom on that a special meeting or an emergency meeting okay i feel is okay so it we could say something like if the next regular meeting is within a day or something we would go with that but if if it wasn't in order to uh deal with the emergent situation we can call in a special meeting yeah just to decide just to clarify we would not be able to find out on a tuesday and then have a meeting on wednesday that wouldn't give us enough posting right but the following wednesday we could if we did not have a board meeting that would work right and we can call uh special meetings there's you know uh yeah you know like 48 hours notice you know there's those restrictions so whatever that would be is that do you accept definitely i'm perfectly okay accepting that if the seconder agrees okay yes all right so something like a meeting within seven days of finding out the seven days of the county tier change yes okay all right so erica did you get that last could she read it please the emotions and the amendments i can't hear you okay so let me just summarize as best as i can from what i understand eileen you made a motion and you wanted for us to have greater discretion with the purple if we revert back to the purple stage in that we would not automatically go back to online instruction but that we would hold a meeting within a week hopefully less it would either be a regular meeting if that were to occur within that week if not we would have a special meeting to discuss the particulars of how those cases arose and what you know they what situation they actually pose as far as affecting and impacting um our ability to have children in school yes ma'am okay i think that we have to be careful we can't it gets announced on a tuesday we can't have a meeting with that as a topic the next day no no he just right so she clarified that okay yeah and you know there are there are certain things you know we have to do we have to have 48 hours of notice and this and that so okay um all right so we'll take a vote then and i'm going to go ahead and take another roll call vote just to be sure so linda how do you vote for the eye robinson robinson eye kaiser griffin i landed i all right so that passes okay so we got out of uh that item and just just one second i need to make sure i learned from my previous stumbles here so what i didn't hear us say is when we would make the decision if we remained in orange or went to yellow because we have november and december board meetings coming up when would those decisions be made because we do want to make sure that we give families and staff plenty of notice if that change is made what is the date of the december board meeting december 9th 9th thank you so before the holidays yeah but what we said is we weren't going to do the change until the january semester start but we would need planning time that's what you're saying well i think that the board would need to make that decision make that public that we're making that that starting in january we would be going if we remain unless you've already made that decision and i miss that well the only yeah the only the only meeting that we would have that's scheduled would be the ninth to decide that and um you know so it would have to be it would have to be a special meeting that a special meeting would have to be called if it wasn't in the area of that the ninth the meeting of the ninth so madam president if i might sure i think the question that the superintendent has asked us is regarding the what to do if we stay in the red orange or yellow right and and making that decision to to go back to full or to go too full in person with the january restart of school which would be january 4th um the ninth uh should give us plenty because it gives us one full working week and then the two weeks of vacation for winter break and then returning on the fourth uh yeah but it would it would um enable parents to know before the break yes and that would be nice and teachers that would enable everybody to know so i would suggest that we say that on the december 9th on the december 9th meeting that we revisit this it come back on and um and that it be discussed again based on the circumstances that we're facing at the time okay i just want to be clear on the timing for the decision so thank you for that clarification yeah and that's our reorganization meeting as well december 9th correct right okay okay so we settled on all that we're good with that okay that took a long time um all right so now we're going on to um discussion action uh k-6 online curriculum mr sullivan yeah thank you we just want to bring forward to you tonight for your consideration um oakbridge looking at more formal adoption of a curriculum that they're using with their elementary portion of it so just a couple reminders uh oak bridge elementary went from about 15 students a year ago at this time using a very old school packet kind of structure with things like that to swelling up to about 300 students 275 to 300 in there currently as we speak and we also heard from a lot of parents they were looking for a much more flexible option also as far as like being able to do the work when it kind of matches up to family times schedules desires with all those kinds of things so we piloted we did a little trial room with some with acelas as a program we heard some good things about it from neighboring districts and as we kind of used it and staff went through it we saw some holes and issues that we were not comfortable with with that being said we went out and looked at this at excuse me ingenuity the elementary version of it and kind of just saw that as much better option and rhonda odlum is here with us right now also and i'm going to let rhonda share a little bit more with that but her staff has been looking through it and kind of giving um has some thoughts to share with it and and positive thoughts about it also great so ronda are you on there yes i am hi rhonda odlam here thanks for having me um so we've been using path laser for about six weeks now and we found a great success with it the teachers are able to provide standards based lessons out to their students in english and language arts math social science and science we are supplementing also with iready mystery science and studies weekly so we're using some of the same online formats that chico unified is using but we really found that families are really happy with these programs and how we've implemented it because of that flexibility being stuck in zoom from a for a specific period of time at the comprehensive sites just was not working for some families and we've pretty much stayed with consistent numbers as you saw earlier tonight over the last few months so people are happy with um the implementation overall any questions about path laser online so you have and when rhonda's talking about path laser that's the edgenuity elementary version right right so thus far though you've only had a few weeks with this did you say six weeks okay and and overall the response have you had any complaints no okay other than the initial like the first few weeks just as probably all of chico unified experienced with just learning a new program but once everybody got comfortable you know just learning a new program a new format how to log in where to find stuff then everybody's been very happy with it okay that's good to know okay thank you so we just look for your approval to move ahead and formalize that i would like to move the passage of the path blazer as our elementary oak bridge curriculum i'll second that all right we have a motion by dr kaiser second by tom landau um all those oh are there any further questions or items to discuss any discussion about this okay all those in favor please say aye aye okay so great passes thank you that was a little delayed thank you yes thank you rhonda all right so next up is our discussion action on co and extracurricular expectations for in-season and off-season athletic practices correct yes thank you madam president so just to walk the board back to last summer you did approve the voluntary participation of our students during the summer and activities through the end of july however obviously things have changed and since that time we've been online and so students have not been participating in person in co and extracurricular activities so we did draft a list of expectations that we could implement based on board decision uh these have changed in the um with the understanding that these are expectations they are no longer guidelines these would be expected of every um event and i would just like to walk you through the packet that i've provided each of you and is also online so the first page is as i said the expectations we would have each coach verify that he or she understands what we expect students to do on the back page is a liability waiver it's the same waiver that you approved over the summer i thought it was important tonight to walk quickly the board through the guidance that would support a decision if the board made it tonight or whenever to um to adopt these reopening expectations so if you turn to page four and again this is the code 19 industry industry guidance from the california department of public health so on page four i've highlighted for you specifically the language that we're not discussing tonight we're not talking about competition we're not talking about sporting events we're only talking about uh so just want to be really clear on page five you'll see that there's a connection between a decision that the board could make to guidance from the butte county public health also to the california department of public health so i'm going to continue working you through the packet on page six is the beginning of specific guidance for youth sports and on page seven you'll see the same language and that was contained in the initial packet so if you continue on to page nine i realize i'm moving you quickly through this but much of it's redundant on page nine is a frequently asked question page that's provided by the california department of public health and the same answers provided provided there so what this really comes down to is the california department of public health ties the recommendation to the county tears and as you can see according to the california department of public health tying the decision to gyms and fitness centers if when i initially put this together we were still in the red so if we decided to to move forward with this in orange we could have students in in drills and conditioning only again not competitions they could be participating indoors with modifications at a maximum of 25 percent i thought it was also important for the board just for reference to see the start dates of the eastern athletic league sports and specifically the chico and pv athletic teams i have highlighted each of the chico unified team start dates because they are different from other leagues we had the opportunity to separate ourselves from other schools in our league to pursue state championships and so the schools made those decisions as part of their league discussions so every highlighted listing on pages 11 and 12 relate to our chico unified sports so i'm open for any questions dr kaiser yeah so okay i it was easy on the first couple pages this is big so cross country would have a competition date of december 28th am i reading that right correct okay good now i got it so the other aspect of that and then the flip of this is field hockey you say revise but then you say december the 28th on january 31st and you highlighted those dates because it was revised yes it was revised this the original calendar came out from the section and it had different dates on that right so i i apologize the highlighting under for december 28th and january 31st is a section document okay so so what we're saying i just if i'm clear what we're saying right now is the teams can start conditioning there's no competition and uh does that mean that for competition to start we have to be in orange or yellow the conditions would be up to the the original documents yes and just be really clear too the cif has not distributed guidance yet for competition okay they don't govern practices necessarily but they haven't distributed guidance for conference competition okay other than other than if we were in play you could see the state championship calendar here right i've just been struck by how significantly different some of the sports had professional or college have handled being able to compete and kept their testing cases really low and other sports appeared to like you know kind of fall off the edge of the table so all right thank you that really helps yep okay uh yeah kelly so i just i want to clarify here that this being in orange or yellow for that matter um would be actually based off the county not tied to our instructional methods correct so the let me get the pages correct because it is all volunteer correct so if you look at page 10 that's the guiding document because we had talked about the other side of this i wanted to make sure that was clear yeah thank you thank you okay this is going to require a motion yes i'll second that okay motion by dr kaiser second by tom lando any further discussion or questions all those in favor please say aye aye aye okay passes unanimously next we have next we have information from mr sullivan on the waiver program hopefully a very short update just the last meeting we said we would come back again with any information on waivers and actually we have none which totally makes sense because as we look at things with the conditions unfolding towards red tier status it actually was a lot faster and more streamlined of a process for us to get students back in person kind of following the direction of us moving into that red tier status we had negotiated all the prospects with that count i believe the um county is not even looking at waivers as we speak also so all things being said and done it was just a much faster more appropriate path to kind of come back via that red tier status so we're just totally on hold everybody kind of put all their energies towards coming back in that red tear status and that's where it is right now is not happening because we're in red tear status okay and anything that they have put together the the cohorts actually just kind of rolled right in to several of the schools i think there are a couple tk's that rolled in with less than 14 students and they've just rolled in in kind of that red tier status also um some of the support and rti groups are happening they're all continuing to happen also so anything that happened via a cohort you know the small groups those are just kind of continuing to happen right now also oh great great okay eileen did you have a question oh no you were just okay okay i thought you were motioning alrighty okay so that was just information um next up is business services and it is information about our transportation department uh yes we want to update the board because there's certainly a challenge that we're facing currently and i think we'll face the rest of the school year related to transportation so we have seven slides we'll go through these quickly but as a reminder our normal process is that when we start school we don't have transportation set up for home to school perfectly on day one typically we are scheduling our special education students our homeless foster youth students which we are legally required to provide services to and we are accepting applications for home to school and we even prioritize those based on the distance from their school that we're trying to transport so i already mentioned we also then give priority to our free and reduced qualified students as well before we actually start allowing students on our buses that are paying for home to school transportation as well even in a perfect year we have limited capacity in our program we have limited capacity because of the number of drivers that we're able to hire and we have limited capacity just based on the number of buses that we have and just as a point we will always be changing routes and that's happening daily at the beginning of the school year as we receive new applications as we have new ips that are being generated through special education so it is very normal for our transportation services and routes to be in flux for a number of the few first few weeks before school starts so the next slide is a just kind of a snapshot of the number of drivers that we have and the number of buses that we have and the students that we provide services to and as a comparison we're looking at 2019-20 compared to where we are right now um in 2019-20 these are averages and they were only averaged over three quarters because we didn't have a fourth quarter at the end of last year but over the three quarters our type one is our home to school transportation the larger buses our type two or special needs students and then we do have some vans and then our substitute drivers and you can see at the average last year we had 28 drivers available and on average we were transporting about 987 students and of those free and reduced represents 350 our homeless 33 and our special education 302.
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so that's that's basically how you quantify that the all-day kindergarten is of course roughly half of the teachers that we have providing all day k and that's fundable those full those halves turning into a full-time kindergarten class are about 20 of them at 1.4 million and then just general resources to the classroom including supplies miscellaneous kinds of things copiers all of that sort of thing that that would be usable by the teacher probably supplemental to what they may have been used to in the past so that is the summary of our m o override uh totaling 11.6 million dollars for last year i can stop there or i can move on to the lower part i'm just going to save mr gatt i love that you said there was 78 for our teachers that's amazing i love that thank you the proposed capital improvements are listed there just as they were listed in the pamphlet initially the bond election was for 70 million dollars and you can see the dollar amounts that were set aside for each of those categories where the estimated costs the big emphasis would be on new school construction and on maintenance those are the two that were would occupy much of the total expenditures in most cases to date new 630 2020 are below the estimated cost a couple of them exceed the estimated cost but not by a whole lot and they are more than offset by those where um we have under expended some categories significantly so so at this point in time of the 70.5 million dollar bond we have spent 60.6 million and we have 9.9 million left in in the treasurer's office in cash so the plan now will be for this year probably most of the 9 million will be committed through your approval in some way because we're getting toward the end of this program so we'll have more detail for you about that when we move ahead with our budget preparation that will be coming your way in november so you'll get to see some of what the plan is at this point and it's also important to note that this particular budget has the ability to spend 10 percent more than was authorized in the bond on anything that was not on the list as long as you've accomplished the list so in this particular case the way you would apply that is 70 million would be 7 million that you could spend of the nine and it would be not necessarily anything that's on this list as long as you were comfortable that you had completed the original list as as is portrayed in the pamphlet for any questions the board may have happy to try to answer them president keeler i wanted to add just in terms of the number the the 9.941 that shows us a balance that's reflecting bond money that had been expended up to the end of last year it doesn't reflect bond items that were encumbered for this current fiscal year and so as the board is well aware we spent a million dollars on the media centers in bond and we've also encumbered 3.7 million dollars in bond for the athletic center at williamsfield and so that 9.9 number is a little deceiving because that those big encumbered items aren't taken off on there and there's a couple other littler ones too and so we can have that detail specifically so we know exactly what that amount is but i wanted to make sure the board was aware of that thank you any questions for mr gad or dr fowler okay thank you so much appreciate that now we are going to have a little chat about our kobe dashboard dr foley president taylor members of the board i'm going to ask that we pull we're going to follow that link on the agenda there so that we can pull up our beautiful dashboard so at our last board meeting on september 23rd we had talked and had heard from our community and from our board members about we wanted to explore a dashboard for our for our community in addition to our communication protocols and if you'll scroll down thank you one of the things i wanted to highlight about our dashboard that i'm real proud of first of all i really want to thank jillian fulton our district nurse brian campbell our student information manager and cassie robles and spencer schmidt from our pr department spent hours over fall break with sherry david and i in our other home away from home the ed services conference room brainstorming how do we create a dashboard that will be something that is transparent that will give information one of the things i want to highlight is we have a lot of information on our dashboard but one of the things i think i really appreciate about ours that you will see different than others is is that we are updating our dashboard daily every morning by 10 a.m it is being updated anything any student increase as far as numbers of people who are on site students or staff are updated right from our student information system as well as any confirmed active cases you'll also notice we do something on our dashboard that others are not doing which is showing the resolved cases so that because one of the things we know is that in any given day based upon the status of where that is at it either could be an active case or a resolved case but the number today could look different tomorrow and we wouldn't want to confuse people if we said a number was seven today and it was four tomorrow it would look like where did those numbers go so all the numbers are being shared up there when they are moved and jillian is working closely with tracking each and every one of these scenarios with the health department on what days what day it goes active to when it goes resolved so that it moves board member reese i want to build on something you said earlier going with the idea of an outbreak one of the things we're finding as we navigate this with arizona department of health services here is that every scenario is just a little bit different and when they are defining numbers alone uh numbers alone the number two is whether it's epidemiologically linked or not so you could have two or three and you're going why haven't they deemed it yet an outbreak and it all comes down to that contract tracing and being linked and so we are we are becoming friends with our and have worked very hard with the health department on certain scenarios and situations one of the things that we will share with you is that we are erring on the side of over communication then under communication so that when we hear a confirmed case we're communicating with our protocols and updating it here and then if they come back and and and um demon and outbreak status you'll receive additional communication so again it can feel we're gonna we're gonna err on the side of over communicate than not and we're gonna take precautions as they come forward the other thing i wouldn't want to do a shout out to jillian is that she is working really hard with administration and site to follow up on supposed cases as a foes just confirmed cases and trying to maintain the health and wellness of what we know when we know it what's important to know about our dashboard is that these are going to be for cases that are in person on campus that would have been in our building with exposure to others not those who again if we get a confirmed while we track them if we had a person who was an online student only who we had a positive case because we'll confirm every positive case we track that but it won't go in the number because they had no exposure there's nobody in this to communicate with as far as our communication structure so this is in addition to not in place of we have gotten good feedback and we're going to continue to use this but wanted to show and share with for our community our dashboard you'll also notice on our website that you can't miss it now it's front and center we have our covid resources that we're updating so that you can find it easily so we appreciate everyone's feedback and i really appreciate the work of our amazing team trying to respond and provide resources up front so again you will continue to see this be updated thank you dr foley go ahead mr glover you sure okay yeah no that's a thank you dr paul it's a good update i think it looks really nice i think it has good info it seems really weird to complement a web page of infectious diseases but here we are i love that it has the resolved cases i really appreciate that it's updated daily because the thing about um you know what maricopa county requires it's so unsatisfying um because there are teachers who are literacy coaches and math coaches and there's office staff and there's people that just i don't want to say wander that's the wrong word but but are in our building and amongst our kids and they're not really required to be notified but they can now look on this and feel a little bit comfortable about knowing where they're going and what they're getting into and it's too bad that at our level we have to be the ones to do that do this but you know what it's just it's so typical of teachers when the job's not getting done teachers will do it so anyway i thank everybody for all the work and thought that went into this and uh it's a far cry from where we were and i think it's i think it's good and we're all learning and getting better thanks we are we are we're we are learning uh president kaler uh board member glover i appreciate the feedback again we're learning and we're responding you'll notice one of the other things we added up there was also frequently asked questions because we're also noticing there's some patterns and trends and we're trying to be we're updating information to help answer questions so we encourage again if in doubt don't delay just reach out to us and we'll help answer the question as fast as we can with that information as accurately as we can we do need to the caution i do say though is that we are responding as quickly as we can as we know information but we also have to work really closely with the health department that sometimes can take a little longer than what all of us would want and yet that is an official part and piece of this too so again we're going to continue to over communicate what we know when we know it and we appreciate everybody's communication with us along the way dr i just like to tell you i've heard a lot of positive responses out in the community and for all the hard work and i really do like the tabs on the side too as well so thank you once again echo these sentiments um dr foley so if a student comes in though with a positive case that they have it like or they submit it to the nurse does that go on here directly or does it still have to wait to go through maricopa county they will confirm president kayla good question they will confirm that case but we will start the process of tracing communication and getting into the queue ready to go so that we can communicate and formalize it because again jillian spends a majority of her of her day at this point on the phone and in following up so that we get the information as quickly as we can and the thing is at least now i know testing is coming back quicker so at least we can say that it's much faster than it was even when school started it was still a week or so for test results and now people are i'm hearing within 24 to 48 hours or getting test results and one of the things that you'll hear jillian will ask the person to do is to send her a copy of that so that she has an official documentation so we can start our process while we're finalizing it but then we're not we don't start it after we've gotten a confirmation we're ready to go and know who needs to be communicated with and to what extent well it was beautifully done i too really appreciate the resolved cases so that the numbers are very clear and just a little reminder if you're not feeling well stay home if you're being tested stay home we can't say that enough right now because we're headed into a very you know again as mr lotzenheiser says these are tenuous times and now we're going to add the flu and so um just a good reminder stay home if you're not feeling well and if i could also you know right on on this page there is a place that shows you where you can go to get tested we are starting to see at some of some not not at some other schools outside of higley that i know about um some kids who are walking around asymptomatic that have that do test positive so um you know if you're feeling symptoms and you get tested yes of course stay home but if you just feel like you want to go tested to have peace of mind this is we should have been doing this way ahead of time for like massive amounts of people and we still should so go get tested um you know you can do it for free and you know i i also want to complain about contact tracing we're we've we're terrible about this so far and uh we should be way far ahead so contract tracing i think is one of the things that could have helped to get us out ahead but also massive amounts of testing for people just to know so they're not carrying something around without knowing it and spreading it so those two things can really help and we can only get better thank you any other questions or comments okay moving on to 7.4 this is the first read only i i move that the governing board approves the first read of policy ijoa and is optional student travel second questions comments or concerns with this policy i'm glad it's just a first read good to soak in it's good to read it and then read it again so i'm glad that this is just our first read tonight so mrs reese thank you um miss martens has this been talked about at all in meet and confer president kayla vice president members of the board in regards to the specifics of this travel policy no because when we initiated it last spring we never came back from school start so our first meet confirmed meeting as of right now is scheduled for october 27th so it's next tuesday afternoon certainly something that i could talk with dr foley as well as mr watsonheimer and we can talk about the topics of that and have a discussion from there and i know there was a lot of time a lot of effort a lot of people involved in trying to come up with a good solid policy where people could know exactly what they need to do for student travel if it was moved on to administration there was essentially check marks yes they meet this no they don't um to remove some of the confusion that occurred with our policy as it is so i just didn't know and yep we worked on it and then we weren't here so um i would like that there at least be some discussion and some review and to get some feedback i get a lot of this policy too is from an operational standpoint and coverage but if we can if we can look at that i would be interested in some of that feedback president kaler vice president reece we appreciate that truly this was work that started last year there was committee that was brought forth you as a governing board had a work study on this at the end of february and then then we went into covet crisis management and school closures so truly this is bringing back the work that was discussed there in a more formal process that we had had conversation of that we're going to oper operationalize we will happily take this to our group back for additional feedback as we look at the operationalizing of the forms and process here and to the extent too that obviously this was going to be in place for when when all normal travel can resume because these are filters and processes that will be in place when when we're not sometimes modifying what the event or experience looks like because again some of the travel that we would have historically approved aren't aren't travelable at this particular point in time however the processes and systems we're working on putting in place thank you all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries and we will look forward to that coming back in november 7.5 i move that the governing board approves future payments not to exceed 128 520 to hacienda los ninos for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year second questions or comments mr glover okay all those in favor aye aye did i hear mr glover okay motion carries 5-0 moving on i move this is going to be 7.6 i move that the governing board approves a second disbursement of results-based funding dollars and mrs martens this was again i know you covered we had a lot of information in our update of we send in questions um for the board packet but just for the sake of the community we did forget a few people maybe not forgot but they were in a different list and so we're just making that right certainly um vice president kayla are members of the board essentially we did disburse our first amount of dollars back in june for all of our employees and traditionally we had what we call our educational professionals so our psychologists our speech language pathologists our occupational therapist as well as our cte and event liaison fall underneath those categories and historically they've been labeled as district level employees and when we had dispersed the dollars in the previous two years they were disbursed with district level employees so when district level employees did not meet the criteria after additional guidance from attorneys that the district sought out we discovered that they were included in that list and then when we went back to get some additional clarification they said that we could include them so we are going to change our practices and so these educational professionals are no longer listed as district employees and that they're assigned to a home site and traditionally they are and just like teachers they can get moved depending on the year and the need for our various areas so we're also going to look at some process changes unfortunately because we distribute most of the money a significant amount of the money back in june we only have a limited budget left and based on the number of employees as well as the budget remaining we're looking at distributing 375 dollars per employee so after the board's approval tonight then we will look to start the process to get it paid out within i have to verify our payroll processing period i can't think of what payroll we're in right now at the top of my head but we'll make sure to communicate with the employees when they can anticipate those dollars thank you very much mr glover well i just again thank you uh you know when you get i don't think i think well i don't want to say but i would i would speculate that most people uh are not fans of results-based funding we're always happy to get the money um but what i like that higley does differently than many other places is it's really not just one class it's it can never only be one classroom teacher that that when a school has significant gains or or good results it's it's the collective effort of everyone that's on the campus so acknowledging that as higley does i'm very proud to be a part of that i'm proud that higley is taking the lead on that you know there's there's speech pathologists ell teachers math coaches literacy coaches even school psychologists all contribute to the uh to the to the welfare and and and helping to upbring these these students and the schools so i appreciate it i'm with you mr glover i'm not a huge fan but i do like the way that higley's worked really hard on results-based funding to make it somewhat equitable across the whole district so i'm i'm with you on that one mr glover all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero i move we're on to 7.7 that the governing board ratifies the 20 20 2021 memorandum of understanding between the higley unified school district and the higley education association questions comments okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero wow that was quick we are moving on to 8.1 here are some items that we still have coming up in november on the calendar we have course guides coming and textbook adoption process update on our media centers and then we still have our athletics coming anything else that anybody would like to add to this list mr glover so sorry i feel like it's you know like the very first year when i was just talking better you better still be here when um when this comes to us then whatever you're gonna say i'm gonna be a hypocrite for a second on one hand i wanted to say um in regards to one of one of the earlier things we passed is um [Music] that we should be cognizant always of of the amount of of work that we're adding to teachers and this year of all years we really should be asking the question a lot what can what can we take away to simplify things for teachers so that's that's a separate item that i wanted to say and i'm going to do the complete opposite and it's october now i know we did talk about that list of approved curriculum on our district website i know we're all super busy but i really would before i leave here i have three more meetings that that gets done i know that that was your your main request was to have that on our website up and running before mr glover retires so is that in the plans dr foley yes president kaler board member glover i am so looking forward to bringing to you several things on this upcoming agenda on the fourth you're going to see one a handbook for the textbook adoption process you're going to see an example of what it looks like and you're going to see what our when we're talking about our our list of a supplementals we're going to talk a little about the distinction between our supplementals and our adoptions and our lists and how we're tracking them and it's all part of this presentation that we're going to do for you coming up so i am delighted to have that ready for you and we've been working really hard and i would like to do a big shout out to felicia molloy who has been working on this with our content coaches and myself we have been meeting weekly multiple times so that we have a comprehensive piece to bring to you with our policies our practice and a template so it will come mr glover loves the word supplemental we we're gonna miss you we're gonna miss you okay well with that my friends i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye motion carries have a great evening i
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and we've also got a holistic review process and have been test optional since 2006 and so a lot of schools are going test optional right now because it's uh because of the pandemic it's it's hard and scary to go and take a standardized test right now um but bennington has really been doing that for a long time as a as a way to show what our values are um and we really uh we really look more at a student's um whole high school experience to evaluate their readiness to be at a place like bennington um so now um i just want to talk a little bit about uh academic uh support and scaffolding that we have on campus um to ensure that students have what they need to be successful and then also student life so because bennington has increased its racial and ethnic diversity over the past 10 years so much we've also implemented a lot of new things to make sure that that students when they get to bennington have what they need we have a first year forum which is a class that every student takes and it's basically to get oriented to bennington to learn about how to use all of bennington's academic resources and to be paired with an academic advisor who you'll work really closely with throughout your time at bennington so much of bennington's academic process is highly individualized uh it it's already sort of set up to be um responsive to particular student needs and we also have a lot of uh financial and and structural support for students who uh are coming from low-income families um including help and support with traveling to and from campus um and just and helping afford the expenses that aren't covered in a financial aid package so then in terms of student life um students at bennington are always have always been and are uh continue to be active participants in building the culture at bennington um and the the current sort of culture building efforts that we have on campus uh this is just a selection but these are some really exciting ones we have as i mentioned the office of diversity equity and inclusion that office staffs two student interns who are uh who are both really amazing and they offer um what they call jedi sessions jedi stands for justice equity diversity and inclusion um and really they're just there to support students particularly students of color while they're at bennington whatever that looks like they're there to help connect them with the right resources we have a black student union um and they're their sort of mission uh is to uh hold space for black people for black culture on our campus um to uh create a safe space for students to discuss and celebrate issues of diversity and intersectionality we have a queer club with a mission to create a support group for queer identifying people a safe space where they can bring themselves uh without feeling like they have to erase uh the the aspects of them uh that are sometimes not accepted in other spaces um they focus on building trust and vulnerability and a sense of community we have an organization called flow first generation low-income and working-class students and they have all sorts of um all sorts of community events and run a food pantry for students on campus and just generally provide support to students who have a flow background there's a longer list um but i i want to be mindful of time um so i will sort of wrap it up here but i look forward to answering any questions that any of you have about uh what diversity looks like at bennington excellent thanks so much so i can go ahead and talk a little bit about mount holyoke um so hi everyone again my name is rhea and i use she her pronouns in addition to being an assist director at mount holyoke i'm also an alum um and so very fond of my mount holyoke experience and thinks so highly of women's colleges in general so i'm happy to share a little bit about us um and then also any questions that you all have in the q a at the very end um but as i mentioned mount holyoke is a gender diverse women's college and i actually before i even begin to talk about what we have on our campus now i do kind of want to unpack that history a little bit and and the reason why women's colleges still exist the reason why we consider ourselves gender diverse instead of just being a woman's college um it's because beyond just thinking of diversity and thinking about how to serve students on our campus we also have to think about how we can make them feel as if they belong and saying that we're just women's college right isn't actually inclusive of the trans and non-binary folks that we have on our campus um so mount holyoke being a gender diverse women's college has really made great strides in the past 183 years that we have existed um right in the beginning of in the early 1800s right there were really mostly just um white folks from new england white women from new england and now thinking about how many states are represented on our campus how many countries are represented how many first languages different faiths gender identities sexual orientations um it's really incredible to think that the community that we were in the 1800s has really shifted to not only kind of include these folks right because these folks have always existed trans and non-binary folks and folks with different faith identities have always existed on our next campus but to really shift the way that we we talk about identity and talk about belonging in a community has really made a difference in kind of who you see on campus and the events that happen on campus and the way that we celebrate each other um and i will say that it's been really powerful to see all of that in the kind of understanding of who we are as a community shift in this virtual space um so that we still are celebrating filipino history month which is in october and um lgbtq history month and day of visibility right all of these really important moments we're still celebrating them and finding ways to do that in the virtual space which i've really appreciated um as not only a staff member but also as an alum who cares deeply about kind of what it looks like to to belong in this community and so i'm talking a lot about our community right who who are we actually how many of us of us are there uh we are of course in western massachusetts um close to you all uh we have about 2 200 students on our campus um as i mentioned coming from 48 different states um and about 61 different countries and we actually have a high percentage of international students on our campus about a quarter of our students are international and a quarter of our students are identified as domestic students of color and then of course all of the intersections of those identities right so um folks who have sort of different faith identities intersecting with their racial um and gender identity and so it's really beautiful to see not only to be in this space where you can be like your diversity is not just your racial diversity or your your socioeconomic status diversity but also the intersections of all that you are which is really important and that kind of leads me to speak about how how you can belong in the community and similar to my colleagues who just spoke all of those resources that are either student-run or run by the institution so we do have of course our advising systems we have our staff advisors who support the student organizations on campus but really belonging is sort of initiated by students and we have our student organizations we do have about 110 or so student organizations that run the gamut of academically affiliated so our computer science side society physics society but then also identity based so we have um apau our association for paint after community we have um la unidad which is our association for our student group for latinx identifying folks we have familia which is for queer and trans students of color on our campus um and then all of those student organizations are actually affiliated with cultural houses and we have about seven on our campus we have our center for religious and spiritual faith or spiritual um diversity but we also have our unity center which supports our undocumented and our first generation and low-income students and we have our actually this is me our ben shabazz house which supports um our african-american african diaspora identifying students we have our eighth house for asian american and asian identifying um students as well as one for uh indigenous students one for our latinx students um and one for our queer and lgbtqia allies as well um and all these spaces i think nikki sort of smith simulator has something where we have kitchens there we also have libraries associated with the space so that you can go and read literature by and about people who look or kind of identify as you and all of those ways um really create a sense of um mattering on our campus right because we know that especially in this world it's not so much like seeing someone who looks like you but feeling like you both belong in that space and like there are resources that are there to not only get you to that campus um and certainly we kind of do this work so that we are engaging with folks um to to bring sort of differences to our campus but also that once you get here you feel like okay i actually have a space to really thrive and to be successful um and that's successful in the classroom but also successful outside of the classroom um and and helping students define what that means for them um so that's kind of a little bit about our community and i'm definitely happy to answer more specific questions about mount holyoke and more general questions about what does belonging look like on a diverse campus but thank you so much and i will turn it over to my next colleague great so i'm gonna go next um awesome hello so i'm gonna obviously be talking about westfield state um so we are a four-year public comprehensive liberal arts institution we are part of the nine state schools in massachusetts um and you know with the liberal arts piece you know we have our common core courses that you'll be taking on top of your major of studies our size is around 4 800 undergraduate students pairing that with our graduate program or probably around 5 000 in total so we're that solid medium-sized institution not too big to be overwhelming but also not too small to be underwhelming um and so when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion on our campus we have quite a few initiatives um to help not only you know support our students but to continue and expand in this field uh so first i want to talk about the student support services that we offer one of which that we're pretty well known for is our urban education program this is one of the longest running programs we had on our campus it's been about 53 years now and so basically what it is it provides support for first generation college students students who are pell grant eligible or students of color anyone in that kind of umbrella and basically it has the five year summer break or it has a five week summer bridge component and a four year experience so for the summer bridge program what it starts with is that you're going to be staying on campus with us for five weeks from sundays to thursdays you're going to be taking college level courses with our professors we also have workshops to help with time management self-advocacy skills being able to adapt to our campus we'll also be living in a dorm so you'll live with the roommate probably from across the state because they like to push you out of your comfort zone a little bit um and so that's kind of like a brief idea students have the opportunity to earn up to six credits during the summer bridge program and so what happens after that is once you successfully complete summer bridge you'll be admitted into westfield state as an urban ed student for your entire time there and so what that means is that you know all those workshops with your advisor and summer bridge that's your advisor for your time at westfield so you've already started to build a relationship with someone on the campus prior to you even coming in what's also nice is that you're coming in with a cohort of other students so the sizes vary each year um but they kind of on average stay around 50 to 60 students coming in so you already have a group of friends and you know the campus and a lot of our students think that our urban ed students are sophomores because they're so well acclimated so why this is such an important program as it helps with that transition but it also supports a demographic of students like first generation college students it really supports them it makes sure that students have access to someone when they are struggling or you know being a first gen student myself like i didn't know how to fill out the fafsa very well i wasn't sure you know who to go to for certain things um i didn't even know certain things existed on the campus and so i went to my ue advisor because i'm alone with the program as well uh and i would go to them and ask those questions and they were like my personal problem solver so basically urban ed is like a family um and even once you graduate once you become an alum you're still a part of that family and you get to network and meet the other 1500 alums that are there so you know ue has been a part of our campus for so long because it has made such incredible effective changes on our campus and it continues to allow us to grow and so another program that actually stems off of urban ed that supports another diverse population of students is our learning disabilities program and so what this is it's pretty similar to urban ed because it kind of grew off of it 10 years later and it supports students with a documented learning disability and or adhd so if you want something a little bit more than just the regular disability services that's what this program is you'll get another additional advisor with this program you would meet with your advisor to help with um you know study skills time management still as well as you know being able to navigate through your academics you'll also have that advisor to help get your extended time on exams access to our exam room readers and scribes assistive technologies like kurzweil and you know pretty much anything that your accommodations are you know what you need um and so these both these programs are you know in the same spot in our application and they are considered special admissions opportunities because this is you know a little bit more than the regular westfield state experience and then we have other programs like trio which supports both demographics of students who would be in urban ed or learning disabilities um and then out of the student support run a little bit and more into the student life you know we have our affinity groups like our multicultural student association which is one of the oldest running clubs we have on campus i think it started in the 80s we also have our black student union a latino association for empowerment our muslim student organization and a list of more um and so with them we also have our diversity equity and inclusion department who oversees all of these groups and our diversity generalist is the one who assists these groups with planning events on campus as well as planning her own events to you know support students allow for conversation dialogue and just have another person on campus to go to we also have our unity room which all of our affinity groups meet in where their group meetings and that's also a place where you can study and what's cool is like there's paintings all around the room of what you know we've had in past and things like that um and and kind of diving into the academic field too we also have our ethnic and gender studies major um and so you know this is kind of like a little bit far-fetched but it's a great way for you to kind of immerse yourself into something uh that you may not have learned in high school so you know you'll take a course load of classes that you know dive into a lot of different diverse experiences um and you know taking these classes and taking advantage of this is huge because like i said you may not have had that opportunity in high school and now you get to learn a whole new field um so i mean like those are some of the things that you know i wanted to highlight here at the university um you know we are still a predominantly white institution we are working on growing as a diverse campus community and that's why we have so many programs that we build off of um so that we can continue to grow but i'm excited to answer any of your questions all right um so i guess i'm gonna close out the presentations and then we'll be taking questions um so just to reintroduce myself i'm alyssa tomkowitz i work at mcla mass college of liberal arts and i use she her pronouns um so kind of to reiterate what a lot of every what everyone was saying um diversity we think is really important at mcla we're constantly striving to make sure that we're doing better in providing resources for our students who identify um as as some sort of minority whether that be racial um disability uh queer across the board um so our student body is um about 40 first generation students um and about 25 of our students identify as um some sort of racial minority um and our uh class of 2023 was actually our highest um class of of students identifying as a racial minority with 35 percent of the class so um ideally we would kind of get those numbers a little a little higher but we're really proud to keep growing and to keep making our campus diverse in that sense um about 50 percent of our students are pell eligible um and we've been named as a top performer in social mobility for the past few years with uh newest u.s news and world report and that means that we are providing opportunities for those students and making sure that they're graduating out um with strong career and grad school opportunities um so we have a chief diversity officer at our school who sort of heads up a lot of our initiatives on campus so recently we've been reevaluating a lot of the ways in which our departments function so um in the admission office we've been reviewing both our financial aid and scholarships as well as our tests blind um we're piloting a test blind policy for this incoming class we're hoping to make that um a universal policy that we'll be using moving forward um it is something we've been looking to do for a while and i think the pandemic sort of kick-started that but we also are are very clear on the fact that we want to be test blind because there's also a lot of inequity that that comes with standardized testing as far as financial aid initiatives we've sort of shifted from allocating a lot of our funds to scholarships for academic achievement and more making sure that we have funds for students who are demonstrating need um all of our students can qualify for for you know academic scholarships they're all academically excellent students but we want to make sure that we're able to provide opportunities for students who maybe can't afford to to come to school at mcla we have our women of color and men of color initiatives and each of those are headed up by students actually they were headed up by when she was there our director of admission she graduated in 2012 and then one of our other admission counselors he headed up the men of color initiative up until they graduated in 2018 and those are um initiatives that were put in place to make sure that we are supporting um our women of color and our men of color on campus uh so it's places where they can go for a supportive community it provides um specialized support it also provides a space for us to have complicated discussions and to make sure that we are really honing in on specific issues that that we need to work on um and that's another thing that we we like to do at mcla is really listen to our students so um we are are constantly looking for feedback from students um on course registration course um evaluations at the end we do ask you know if someone was uncomfortable with something if there's something we can change and we also have um surveys for different groups as the year goes on to say how can we better support you so through those initiatives and those surveys we have put together a number of spaces on campus for students and we have our multicultural education resource center our women's center and our identity and gender equality resource center so those are all spaces on campus where students can go for sort of a safe space to be with people that they identify with as well as to have educational resources for them to use um moving forward we also have um our lavender fund which is used to elevate queer life on campus so um that is a place where money is allocated to bring in lecturers to have our lavender reception to really make sure that our queer students are feeling supported on campus many of our buildings including our dorm buildings have all gender bathrooms so if a student doesn't feel comfortable in a single gender bathroom or they want that space um that's available to them we have a day of dialogue which was actually yesterday and what that is is where we don't have classes for the day and instead students will go to lectures and seminars that focus in on uh diversity issues and questions to sort of spark discussion um and that was started i believe in 2007 so it's relatively new but um it's gotten very great reception and it's something that students and faculty and staff really look forward to um we've recently been awarded a trio program grant so what that is going to be used for is student support services um specifically for students who are coming from low-income areas um who are first generation and who are coming in with some sort of disability so we are still working on kind of how we're going to use that that grant money um it was very recently awarded so we don't have anything specific just yet but we're going to make sure that we're supporting those students um better than we we ever have um we have a safe zone training which is for faculty and staff to sort of learn about um the best ways to assist uh queer students so in those uh trainings we talk about the different gender um sexual and romantic identities that people will have the best ways to um address people to make sure that you're not um you know making it an uncomfortable space for anybody and we also have a number of clubs and organizations um so i'll just kind of really quickly go through so we have our african student association our asian and american union our association for neurodivergent awareness our black student union our latin american society and our queer student union and students are encouraged to present new clubs and organization ideas as they have them so if there is a group on campus that feels that they want more representation we very much welcome them to uh to bring forth those ideas so um yeah that's just a lot of a lot of our initiatives and our our kind of goals at mcla um and i guess we're gonna jump into questions now so i'll so i think there was a question in the chat about the westfield bridge program all right and not see that thank you um yes so yeah i'll say a little bit more about the summer bridge program there are some things that i actually forgot to include so thank you for asking uh so yeah a i talked about the five-week summer bridge program as well as the four-year experience something to note about the summer bridge program actually the program as a whole is that it is completely free uh students don't pay for summer bridge they don't pay for the credits that they'll be earning over the summer um actually we have a one thousand dollar completion grant so when you successfully complete the summer bridge program you will get one thousand dollars in a grant money uh and that money can be used towards your books or towards pretty much anything um we know that the population of students who participate in urban ed especially within the past five years uh one of the biggest uh conflicts we've gotten from students was you know i have to work or i have to earn money and things like that so that's why the completion grant came in so that we can kind of close that gap a little bit or the time you had to take off for work you get a thousand dollars at the end so that is one of the newer initiatives we actually put into place um so more about that four-year experience so you get your own academic advisor on top of an advisor you already have within your major so you actually have two advisors here uh if you're part of the program you'll also have the opportunity to register for classes before other students uh so it's a nice little perk to kind of you know ease the registration stress um and then we also have opportunities for students to earn scholarships that are exclusive to us urban ed students um so those are a couple things that i did not catch the first time trying to think if there's anything else i'm missing oh actually if you want to learn a lot more about the program they're having their last info session this evening at six so i'll just drop in the link for you to register if you really are interested in this program absolutely attend the session i will be there um i'm actually the admissions counselor who reviews for the urban ed program as well so you absolutely are more than welcome to attend this it's really informative um it's a you know great program like i said as a family my advisor who used to be my advisor at the school is going to be running it it's cool thank you so much i also wanted to invite other folks if they have similar programs that they want to talk about a little bit more or things that you think may be helpful to add about your institutions um with this question around kind of bridge programs or similar programs just as a general piece about bridge programs for any students who are considering them if you are eligible i definitely recommend attending um for um the smith bridge program it's more of a pre-orientation program so it is not meant to substitute um the large-scale orientation program that smith holds on its campus but rather it is a smaller community where students get to find mentors that are upper-class folks right like their sophomores their juniors they're seniors um so you get to kind of get away of the land before you know you have this you know huge rush of students return to campus and you get caught up in the flurry of everything that's going on these pre-orientation programs really give you an opportunity to kind of take in um what you're saying um what you know um what resources are available on campus they give you a true opportunity to acclimate to campus before you have to meet your roommate or um you know register for classes um many of our institutions have so many resources at their disposal that it would be near impossible to sit here and talk to you extensively about everything we offer i know that i would be here all day and i'm sure my colleagues would say the same thing but um i would just say that that bridge program gives you an opportunity to start to take some of that in you start to learn how to navigate these campuses that might be unfamiliar to you so if you get invited to apply to a bridge program or you get invited to attend diverge program please take advantage of it because it is a wonderful way to acclimate to campus before other students kind of come to campus and you get kind of inundated with the flurry of activity that happens before school starts all right that is a thank you it's quite wonderful to hear about different opportunities um i wanted to invite any other anyone else who's watching or has questions or comments to chime in um you know i also want to invite each of the panelists if if something has jumped out that somebody else has talked about um if there's anything else that you're thinking i'd love to just share a little bit more information um that would be outstanding and you know i'm happy to throw a question out there as well um and so i'll i'll do that to just provide a little bit more one of the questions that i often encounter as a school counselor is how do i connect with supports or programs how do how do i make that that connection with the folks at schools i can start off by answering this and that's such a good question um because i think we all spoke about a lot of similar resources but we all had really unique resources on our campuses and sometimes it can be hard to figure out like wow there is so much out there i don't even know what to take advantage of when and i think just kind of like start by asking and and that's why you're in residence halls with people who are older than you or that's why you're um we have orientation right so there are orientation leaders who are older than you who have been around the block a few times and and can speak to resources that would be really valuable or faculty that would be really great resources to you and so i think um it's just about asking and sometimes you don't mean or at all or all the time you don't necessarily need to know like this is the resource i'm looking for do you have it sometimes all you can just say is um i know that like producing a really good final draft is hard for me like is there a place i can go to on campus and then maybe someone's gonna say oh like you need some writing support like here come to our speaking arguing and writing center come to our our peer support center um and so it's just been about asking like what are what are the things that you struggle with or what are the spaces that you need for yourself whether that's a space for queer students or a space for someone who um eats kosher and you need to have like kosher kosher food right what are those things that you need so it might not be even you know like oh where's this building on campus because it might just be asking yourself what are the resource resources that you need and asking the right folks so i would just kind of figure out what um sort of what parts of yourself are most salient and what you might need to be supported on um on campus and then going from there so uh yeah i i agree it's really important to reach out and sort of identify what you're going to need assistance with and at mcla we um our admission office as i mentioned two of our members in the office headed up our women of color and men of color initiatives um and then uh myself and another counselor are uh identify as queer so we are resources that are more than happy to help students um because coming in you might not really know anybody else but the people that you've worked with and the people that you're familiar with so um we are always there to to direct you in the places to go even if i wasn't your counselor um i'm more than happy to to help with finding places for queer students on campus um during our welcome week we also have a what we call our president's ice cream social so um it's a time when students can have ice cream and um all of our clubs and organizations will table there it was virtual this year but um it's a place where you can kind of interact with all of our clubs and organizations so if you're unsure about um what some of our clubs are what organizations exist for um any diversity initiatives um that's that's a great place to go um it's really casual they love talking to students and sort of explaining what their um goals are so um and then also within the admissions department when we're working with students um we work closely with disability resources if a student indicates to us that they would like to have accommodations or have that support on campus so we can get you connected with our disability resources department kind of right during the application process to sort of help with that transition as you're coming in your first year and continue on moving forward so i would say i mean our admission department i think is a great resource to start with because we we really do we are involved in a lot of areas of campus and we know kind of the best places for you to to get started and to find what you're looking for i would just say i think another common theme that has emerged in this conversation is the role of the self-advocate especially when you're thinking about um off if you are someone who needs a special accommodation due to a um learning disability or anything like that in high school um you know the state requires by law that you get these supports that you need um whether it's in the form of a 504 plan or whatever the case may be in college those same stipulations do not apply um as and the case is still the same for any other resource that you're going to need on campus um so i think the biggest adjustment for students is being able to vocalize their needs and figuring out what that need might be and sometimes it's a challenge because you're acclimating to a different campus so you don't really know what's available you don't know how to ask for help but i think it is a key skill that students develop throughout their time at college is learning how to advocate for yourself learning how to ask for help um going to a professor to say hey this 10 page paper is not going to get done tomorrow i need an extension and spoiler alert nine times out of ten you will get the request i wish that was something i knew earlier in college instead of finding out like my junior year second semester um so i think learning how to be a self-advocate is a huge skill that students hone in on once you get to college but i think you have to get comfortable asking for help what i like to tell students is if you need a resource or you're even seeking an opportunity go to your faculty advisor many schools have faculty advisors um at smith our student faculty ratio is nine to one um count um advisors are going to have more than 20 to 25 students on a caseload and i think many students think oh i go to my advisor when i'm like really struggling and failing a class don't let it get there start utilizing your advisor earlier um when you're seeking an opportunity if you're looking for a research opportunity start with your professor because if they can't find the resource for you you guys can figure out where the resources are together so we are coming down the home stretch we've got just a few more minutes together um i want to express appreciation again for those that have taken the time to sit in with us and view and of course the five of you who have come and shared information this has been really incredible and as a school counselor i'm really happy to be here and just talking and hearing and thinking about the things that i will be able to share with students as well um i do want to take the opportunity if anybody has the final things that they want to share or final questions that they want to type into the box um the comments box i'm i'm happy to keep an eye out for those and want to let people kind of give final final thoughts from from each of you yeah i can start um so i guess some like send off thoughts for me is uh make sure that you are getting involved uh you build your own experience when it comes to college it's so customizable and that's great i mean it can be a little intimidating at first you're like oh i have all these options try them try everything you want go for it don't be shy just go like get out there it's scary at first but it's going to be so worth it um you know and ask questions i really like i like the self-advocacy topic really do that please do that i made that mistake my first year here at westfield i failed really bad because i refused to ask for help then finally figured out how to ask for help and i started to do better so don't do what i did start that from the beginning so get involved ask for help and build your experience i'll yeah i'll i'll echo that um and also just say uh [Music] you know you can also really own the admissions process um and i know i can't speak for larger universities but i am sure i can speak for all of us here working at uh small liberal arts colleges that we as counselors really really want to help you get to the right place um and and we're here to support you um and any questions that you have please always feel free to reach out um our goal is to really help you kind of start thinking about the kind of education that you want to have now um and so yeah we're here as a resource i think my piece of advice kind of blends what a liam holly said um but i it's really thinking about asking admission officers the tough questions right like so if you have questions about racial climate on campus ask us if you have questions about where the resources are for non-binary queer and trans students ask us if you want to know what the resources are on campus for students of color who want to engage in stem fields ask us um and when you're asking these questions really take note of the answers and whether or not an admission officer is giving you a direct answer um if they're giving you an honest answer um and notice that they're uncomfortable because sometimes their level of discomfort might speak to where the institution might be um when talking about these issues and being transparent about these issues and how they serve students too so it's never too early to ask about resources and you want to make sure that you're asking admission offices the tough questions because they should have answers for you and if they don't then that might be something that you might want to sit and think about yeah we we want to ensure that you're getting the level of support and and guidance that you really need to succeed um and on top of that we are looking to improve all the time so if you are finding that there's something that is an issue we want to know about it whether that's during the admission process while you're at school um you know our our goal is to make sure that everybody is feeling like they are receiving the best level of education and that goes beyond the classroom that goes into your entire life on campus so um you know self-advocacy i think is a really excellent point um to bring up because we we are going to help you as much as you ask us to help you so as long as you are reaching out letting us know what you need from us we're going to do our best to make sure we're providing you that those resources awesome and i'll just kind of round us out and i think my piece of advice kind of in this moment would really be to own your power um and to realize how valuable you are to us and to these campuses that you'll one day step foot on because um you guys right i even think about the history of mount holyoke and so much change that has happened on our campus um has been because the students have held our feet to the fire and have forced us to change and have forces to sort of be accountable to the words that we that we say and so i think um even as you're finishing your applications or thinking about what college fit looks right for you and where you belong um know that you um you are enough and you matter and as you're writing those personal essays make sure that you shine through because that's what we're going to be looking for when we're reviewing um and what we're going to be looking for when you get on our campuses and start to become the leaders that you're supposed to be so don't doubt yourself in this process and know that you will end up in a great place and uh likely change us for the better the same ways that our current students have so what an amazing way to end so this is kind of the conclusion of our session um one final great big thank you to each of you um and we appreciate you spending your afternoon with us thanks so much and have a good night everyone
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actually i'm sorry kristen i think you covered it um what if we share a custody 50 50. yeah i'm happy to we could play tag team so yeah so yeah deciding who the custodial parent is it's you know it's a it's a part of the game it and so you could have 50 50 custody but technically you want to pick the parent who the student lived with the majority of the time during the year so sometimes it's hard to figure that out you know if it gets down to a one or two day difference you can go go with a parent you know you gotta pick one of them and that's the number one criteria and that's usually the one you want to use ideally because the second criteria is which parent provided more financial support and if it's a fafsa only school ideally you go with the custodial parent based on that where where you live as a student the most most of the time and possibly the parent that earned less money and then the other one so that's those are the those are the two primary criteria uh as you move down the line to determine who the custodial parent is and that's that's for both the fafsa profile ultimately the profile will want information from both of those the non-custodial and the custodial parent but the fafsa again is just the custodial parent who will go on there anything else i want to add on that one either nope i didn't see anything else come in okay okay kristin i think this is your specialty what should international students do yes so i work with international students and i review international financial aid forms all the time and i think my colleagues have provided some incredibly helpful information and as a starting point stacy provided some great information about making your list so if you are going to need financial assistance paying for college as an international student you'll definitely want to do your research and zero in on schools that actually have financial assistance or merit scholarships for international students because not all do once you've made your list you will have to provide some kind of application and many colleges and universities that provide merit scholarships or financial aid for international students we'll take something called the international student financial aid form we just call it the isfa that is unfortunately not a form that you can fill out on a website it's a pdf that you have to print out um pull it out by hand and pen or pencil actually don't use a pencil and run it and then university as i mentioned only about 400 colleges and universities require the css profile and it is harder to get a waiver for a profile for an as an international student but it certainly doesn't hurt to ask for a waiver you could also sometimes submit what's called a certification of finances form in place of the isfa but whether it's the isfa or the certification of finances form basically colleges and universities want to determine what sources of funding you have that you'll be able to contribute towards the cost of education and what this scholarship is applied do you have savings do you have assets do you have income that's going to allow you to cover the cost of the first year of education so it's especially important to submit that information with your application so don't wait to get an admission decision and then submit it we won't read your application if we don't have it typically excellent i will grab the next one and it is uh what if like so many in the pandemic 2019 doesn't reflect your current situation i think this is the question i've answered the most in the last three months um and and i think it is just globally uh something that's affecting so many people so as michael said earlier when you're applying for the fafsa and or profile they are going to be primarily looking at your 2019 tax information if you are a senior this year um if you are a class of 2022 they'll be looking at your 2020 and so on so for the fafsa profile for fafsa you will provide your 2019 information as it is on the profile they're actually going to ask you for information a little bit about uh 2019 they're going to ask about 2020 and 21 although they're going to be doing the analysis based on 2019 on the profile they also ask for any special circumstances so there's a small box you can provide there however my best advice is that if your circumstances have changed from what is being reported on the fafsa you should be prepared to communicate that information with your colleges and universities and i would do it with all of them and i am also in in my colleagues can can jump into i'm advising that folks do it up front this year a lot of times families would wait until after they've gotten their initial award and then go back to appeal but i think this year we're seeing such major changes in people's lives that they want to make sure that information is reflected up front schools may or may not be able to respond to it up front so what you want to do is provide to them in writing um explanation of what the change of circumstances are whether it's a loss of income medical expenses gosh we have had everything a natural disaster you name it if your 2020 income or your 2020 family circumstances look different than 2019 document it share any corroborating information that you can in schools can and will take a look at that information yeah yeah i i totally agree with that i mean you have stacy that's exactly right and doing it ahead of time is is a great time to do it the narrative section on the profile is helpful but but an additional letter with any supporting documentation is always appreciated too and and the other piece to remember is you know as as kristen talked about in the early on is is the facet does not have a narrative section so if the colleges you're looking at are fafsa only there's no place to write anything so you definitely want to send in a letter an email something that that's a little more formal and gives a fair bit of detail financial aid folks we love numbers and so if you can give us numbers that's great i mean we don't have to come back and ask you what those numbers are so so definitely when you send in an additional letter like that say that give us those numbers like instead of i lost my job it's like oh i lost my job and so i anticipate zero income for 2020 or i anticipate six thousand dollars of unemployment income and zero wages that kind of thing so additional so actual numbers are wonderful we like to see those yep absolutely and one sort of quick caveat we do know that there are you know some of the larger colleges and universities are going to make their initial offer based on what's on the fafsa so if you do get competing offers that look nothing like each other because maybe a smaller school was able to able to read the details and the larger wasn't just double check and go back to those schools to make sure that they in fact were reading the appeal information it's a tricky time everybody's going to try to do everything they can but i think we want to make sure we're giving everybody sort of you know understanding that not everything's going to happen the same way okay another question and i'll throw this out i'm just arriving i filled out the fafsa what is the next step i heard you mentioned something about other financial aid forms i can uh you gotta stop me i'll just keep talking so uh yes that's a great it's great you've done the fafsa and and uh and so uh i'm i'm i'm hoping that's the student that's on the fafsa it's the students ssn that you started with that's a that's an important piece and what you want to do is you want to check the website for the colleges that the student is applying to because they may have additional forms maybe it is a college that requires the css profile so so as kristen said they're somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 colleges that require that form to make sure that your schools are you know does not require that form additionally they may have an institutional application of some sort that they want they have some just some more detailed questions that they want to want to know about some places will also ask for a tax return or a business tax return if your parents own a business so so check individual college websites to see what they are asking for and and then send that into them most colleges now will have some kind of portal system that they're going to give you a password and id for once you apply for admission there and you can log in to see what they've received and what they're still looking for at the college for both financial aid and for admission that's kind of important because sometimes at a college they may think they need something but they really don't and it could be we interpreted a question it's like oh we need this form and they will consider your aid application incomplete until they get whatever that is they think they need so if they have an outstanding document either send it into them or send them an email and ask them why they're asking for that thing so that they either waive it or they say it's received because you want you want your application to be complete are there other pieces i should add stacy curse [Music] i would just add um it might be stating the obvious but be sure to keep checking your email because college colleges and universities will email you if something is missing if they're having a webinar on the financial aid and scholarship process if there is some kind of scholarship competition and you would be surprised at how often we email students and they don't check their email and um they didn't know that they had to submit something extra for their financial aid form so be sure to check those email accounts regularly and i think both kristin and michael have hit on something let's put a fine point on it we keep saying you because i think we're talking to students right no so if you haven't cleaned this yet uh parents of seniors you are no longer relevant to the conversation except maybe paying that bill um colleges are going to communicate directly with the students themselves so if you're looking for information and it's not coming tap your student on the shoulder and remind them they need to be checking their email going forward everything's going to go to and through them they can certainly give waivers and allow you access to information but do know that most of the communication is going to happen directly with students and that's where we see things fall apart all the time so just another sort of quick tip we do have a lot of time left and hopefully there are more questions so please send them in christian michael anything that you think we missed that we should be covering oh there is plenty we can the three of us can just talk financially all day so uh so we could certainly do that you know one one piece that came to mind for me uh you know i was actually i was taking notes while both uh christian and stacy were talking because oh there's some good tips they have in there and so so one piece that came to mind for me i think you know i'm thinking about merit scholarships particularly so you know i think as stacy said many of those come from colleges themselves so that's a great place to get additional money outside of that there we often call them outside scholarships so that's certainly a good source too one thing there's not but at this point there's not too much we can do about that as parents necessarily but you want to be aware of the policy that colleges have on outside scholarships what the colleges do if your student gets an outside scholarship or a lot of outside scholarship money what will they do to their own institutional financial aid it doesn't often impact too many students but but it it can sometimes if your student gets ten thousand dollars in outside scholarships it could be particularly at need-based colleges they may reduce a portion of their need-based grant it's just a piece to be aware of i mean that for outside scholarships and also you know particularly in in where we live in uh in the pioneer valley there are a number of colleges here so there are parents who work at colleges they will sometimes have a tuition benefit so that's as an employee of an institute of an organization they may provide some kind of help to pay for your kids to go to college so certainly ask your employers but then be aware of what individual colleges will do with that money so that's great i gotta you know i have this tuition benefit to help my kid pay for college but if i also had a need based grant and they're gonna reduce that need based grant i just need to be aware of that so that it's not not a surprise when it gets time to pay the bill a little bit later on so be just a piece of be aware of so that's fun i think i would just add that when it comes to a few months from now reviewing all of those financial aid offers you want to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples so what i've noticed sometimes when students share with me other offers is that one university might be showing the current year expenses which might go up the next year and another college or university might be showing the expenses of the upcoming year so make sure that you're looking at the right anticipated charges of the upcoming academic year and when they're putting in costs for a meal plan or housing make sure that you're looking at that two equal things because i've worked at an institution um before ohio wesleyan that would package everybody with a 14 meal plan but if you're a student who's going to eat three meals a day you want to know what that meal plan is going to cost you make sure you look at those fine details and actually i would add to that um i was gonna make a very similar point and that is when you're comparing those apples to apples make sure in fact they are apples to apples you may look at one offer and say oh good this school has offered me 50 000.
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This is the area I'm in charge of, so any questions, any doubts, I'm here to help you. But we 're all very excited to present a little more about the process to the University from first grade through senior year, so let's begin. Holly is going to start with ninth grade and speak 20 languages by that first year. So, very well, thank you. And I think before we begin, I'm going to say a little bit about our colleges. We're from Karting College and Emerson College, and this name, " college," might be a little difficult to understand in the context of English and the US because you can receive a bachelor's degree, and "bachelor" is the title of a bachelor's degree. "College" isn't like a school in Spanish; " college" is a university that grants the title of bachelor's degree. So, we'll say university, but we work with "college." Anyway, in ninth grade, our backs, men, and now here in the United States, have to remember some things.
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um the spend in the current outlook is 905 000 so a reduction in our covert spending by about 123 000 that's also good news so um now that the real reasons for the under running though is an interesting story that one was our cost for lunch monitors we have not been able to staff lunch monitors we've got we've advertised for the positions and uh those have been very difficult recruiting people into the job so while it's a savings it's not a savings we wanted to have as a savings and the other is our cleaning service bill came in a lot lower than we expected it was offset slightly by the desks were more expensive than we thought so there's a whole bunch of gives and takes uh but those are the three big drivers but net net we're down 123 000 on our estimate for covet spend and but offsetting that we're hundred expecting fifteen thousand dollars of savings in our regular budget i've talked about the salary savings that's the biggest single line item but between uh the decisions we've taken on the special education extended school year pro the savings there the life skills program uh some of the transportation savings because we um we had five less days of school and so on and so forth there's about six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars of under runs in our regular budget items that are help offsetting that million dollars of extra spend um now you might say the math of that sounds like 300 000 not 88 000.
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so on the survey there's families have multiple kids i'm only showing you the slider and have like six different slides just for elementary when we compile all those results together first kids second get third get fourth kid sometimes fifth grade it comes to right around thirty five percent want to stay home uh distance learning full time and while he's going to that to the other piece will be is somebody saying wait a minute do we have that many students in this great span or this we had parents who very happily filled it out twice the same or multiple times the same which is great but we also have people changing their minds so they might have picked something on october 12th when it first came out but then by october 16th maybe something and so they changed so the principles are actually going through that sorting it by individual like mr verno oh we have three from him well one day it was this so we're trying to keep it as the most accurate so you will see in some of these the numbers seem higher than we might have enrollment that's because some people made multiple inputs that we're sorting through all right so we're here at ryles uh we're just shy of 45 uh wanting to stay home uh not wanting to stay home that didn't come all right distance learning uh doing full-time distance level and uh 55.3 uh coming back full time we go to the high school this number as of this morning i got an update on this this morning it is now a little over 48 of the high school students are going to stay full-time business learning so that number's increased since this slide again we're reaching out and we're getting everybody's input because it makes a difference in terms of what the class rosters look like so we're almost at half at the high school or excuse me at center high school in the next slice of the fall the other high school and again there were right about 48 again at mccall in that school makes you wonder how many of those just don't want to come back to school at all and would stay that way even if we insisted they come back out there that just don't want to come back to a building it is interesting that there are there are some kids who perhaps struggle a little bit on in person that are thriving and vice versa obviously uh going on results please so going on to the staff results we also at the same time uh sent out a survey to our staff uh asking are they classified in certificate are they planning on to come back if they uh if we go into in person where they're gonna be in contact with people and so we got almost 10 of the staff are going to go through what's called the interactive process with mr grimes in the personnel office they're saying either they have underlying conditions or a spouse or somebody who lives in a house having underlying conditions and they're looking into their options is there a way i can take leave we've had a couple retirements recently um we have a couple people are saying they're going to retire they're going in person because they have underlying conditions or there's some other things so 10 correct me if i'm wrong mr grimes is about 40 employees that's a significant number and that's a significant number especially we have to replace those people before we go back into the in person that's hard teachers are hard to find right now uh they're they're not at abundance and especially special ed you're working with uh maxim and some other agencies that are job placement agencies and they can't even find candidates it's very difficult my [Music] that's not 10 saying hey we're going to leave of those are looking at retiring and other options but most of them are requesting some kind of opportunity to do this so just i don't know if people can hear that at home so really what mr grimes is adding the idea that some of the the number the 42 44 whatever it is some of them are actually just requests for distance learning it might not be a interactive process medical reason but they receive that [Music] we also we our staff has turned over and become younger over the last few years we seem to be having a clogged baby boom uh we're having a number of staff going out on maternity leave at this time as well so we're we're trying to get this but it's people we need to replace um so that we have teachers and classes can i address mr grimes for a second mr grimes there are these teachers that wish to distance learn or distance teach if we're not able to fill that will um they then retire we will show them what their options are there are different types of needs available some specifically to this building and others uh [Music] however perhaps to what you're asking as well there's no guarantee that we can promise everyone who has requested a distance teaching position there's no way we can guarantee each of them will have that opportunity we're working with the union right now and the negotiations to set up with that criteria and those priorities are based on the laws and the directors we've been here for the health department in california and and we'll go in that word and accommodate as many as we can uh making sure that we maintain the integrity of our programs here in the district as far as proper credentials class sizes and the ten percent that is mostly certificated mostly but there are a number of classified as well and mostly classified um your phone to the is our isph realm a lot of our other classifieds are already back working you know our custodians food service office staff a lot of them live here and working for a long time but the issues have been more at home or online at this point thank you thank you i apologize i'll put my back to the camera i'm not an actor on purpose guiding considerations good thank you all right so these are the things that we're we're trying to think of when coming into uh to dates to come back so sacramento county has cleared our return to in-person instruction with specific guidelines by sacramento county public health and the california department of public health so we've gone out of the purple tier uh now that we're in that tier we are clear to open again uh doesn't mean we have to open right now this date but eventually we've got to come back as part of centerville 98 our funding will continue as long as for distance learning as long as we are told by the county we have to uh remain in distance learning now they've said no parameters for how long you have between the time that you're cleared to go and you actually have to come back uh elementary school's first trimester ends on november 6th the secondary school trimester excuse me semester ends on december 18 so right before that the winter break we want to make sure that families have at least two weeks or more notification prior to a return date so that they get child care online transportation whatever they need to do um please thank you we want to make sure we have uh sufficient personal protective equipment uh and sanitation inventory at each school site so that everyone sees students staff and that's everything uh and mr diese has done a fantastic job it's been working since the summer there's masks face shields gowns uh sanitizer bottles they've got a backpack sanitizer thing for that custodian and there's just there's all kinds of ppe that and to clarify we have that stuff correct correct yes what was your question i'm sorry we have those materials to be mentioned it's not that we need to get them we have an abundance right now which is great and then obviously we need to have nutrition and transportation services make sure they're prepared with as few minor adjustments as possible what is still happening what needs to happen i'm sorry what is needs to happen right now uh before we get open we need a health tech at every site uh we're required to have isolation rooms for any students or staff who have symptoms we need at least four preferably five health techs we have been advertising for that i only have two applicants although they're great applicants but these are people that are going to man the isolation room so when a kid has they're at school and also they start having symptoms or a fever we need to isolate them until they're picked up from their by their parents what's the requirement for their license they'll be in rn no no we haven't we have an rn obviously fantastic if they were our lbn or a cna or whatever cd okay but that is not a requirement for the job um are they full time positions these are right now four hour a day positions it's possible to go to six hours we need at least four again five because we know those people are going to be exposed the most because they're going to be dealing with kids with symptoms most not just coping but the flu and everything else that goes through schools this is true right now i have two applicants i'm going to interview those two tomorrow but that means i'm still short too i need to find two more so that's an open uh job out there right now i'm also working with maxim which is a uh staffing agency but they can't find anybody either these are these people are short supply what's the pay skills are we giving them enough i don't know i'm sorry i hope the posting put on is in your email miss uh anderson so i'm happy to show you tomorrow the posting came out and it was reposted again yesterday i believe this what the posting is in your email for sure uh we we reposted it again so i know an email went up to all all staff as well as yeah i'm struggling has there been anything said or have you gotten any reports from the health department there's a certain disease i'll call it that the kids are getting that's connected with coping that affects the burns they were worried about that with the elementary kids and then there's a second disease i heard about last night that started last year and the doctors are worried about it coming back this year that's associated with another bacterial infection that affects the muscles of kids and the one mom said her daughter was two and she was jumping on the bed and then all of a sudden her legs went out from under she was paralyzed it was that fast so there's a couple of different things out there that these kids could pass around and they just don't know where they're coming from so as far as county health addressing that with us or california public health i have not received any direction on those i've heard news reports of that as well but that's something they we're in contact with county public health all the time i mean i want to communicate it almost seems like every other day at least i'm getting a message or we're in a meeting so that would be something that we will hear about if it starts circulating our community interesting [Music] did you repeat that like on the microphone i couldn't 20 65 an hour now yeah between 15 to 20 an hour oh between 15 and 20 an hour look online now the hiring of replacement teachers so for those in the interactive process we want to make sure that we have teachers uh you know credentialed teachers in place before we come back otherwise we're going to start with a lot of subs and that not that subs aren't good subs are fantastic but we want a credential teacher for a smooth start uh to when we come back it is crucial that we have a smooth start when we bring kids back on campus [Music] finalizing all family results we still have a few out we've been working diligently again i commend that the sites the admin are classified on the sites that they've just been lost they're busting it out they're getting all kinds of contacts with these families and make sure everything's get their choice set and known then with this information we've got to adjust the classes and the schedules based on those survey results so as you can see even since a few days knowing this was printed some of the things like at the middle school potentially they'll injure they're going to shift a little bit because of the numbers coming back the numbers are different than they were when we originally did this survey back in july some people have changed their oh a lot of people change their minds one way or the other um and then finally we need to finalize our nau with our cota with our teachers we have a process we're going through right now with a number of meetings uh we're getting there but we have some things that we need to work out here and we'll do it in place so having said that we came up with three potential return dates so originally we talked about november 9th being the earliest possible date we could come back that would be 12 distance learning days from from today there would be 24 in-person school days to winter break second one is november 30th there's 21 distance learning days between tomorrow and that date and again remember there's no school for that thanksgiving break then 15 in person school days to winter break can you give us the dates of those breaks the thanksgiving break is november 23rd through the 27th and then the winter break i believe starts on december 19th saturday december january 3rd to january and then the third option is january 5th january 4th is the monday that's a teacher work day coming back on january 5th that would be there'd be 36 distance learning days between tomorrow and the end of the semester or for the high school level and we'd be split semester at the trimester level there's one correction that we didn't talk about and that's the special ed kids that some of them have been brought back i understand and there may be others that need to be brought back or i don't know what's been addressed as far as that goes so we did start uh thank you miss anderson for pointing out we did start bringing back cohorts we started with three classes of students one at each level elementary middle and high we have plans to start increasing that and also increasing our services to our el students our foster youth and our homeless students because that was specifically called out within that so those are all in in the mix and if we have a date tonight when we turn we'll start mixing that up it also depends on the agreement with art with our our teachers right now we are doing a voluntary with three people we appreciate who volunteered to be back some of those classes we got most of the kids back couple classes we only got two or three that wanted to come back at this point but we will look at that so looking at those uh some specialized populations so we're just going to like set them up in one classroom somewhere well these are typically we're starting with the self-contained rooms so they're already in a classroom so i might have 15 students that are specific to me are mainstream students students who might be on an iep would be a part of the quote regular classroom when we would return with that platform okay so mr jordan yes looks like you've gone through all your points in the last point of this was board discussion and directions i guess the question i really have for you is since say everything is changing daily everything is fluid what really are we voting on if everything's changing on a daily basis i certainly have an opinion on everything so if that is it are you asking for my opinion on me yeah i mean because you know like i i wouldn't come up with example but you know it's if you say we have option a b and c and if we just but this is what's happened since march if we look at the page it says whether or not we're cleared by the county we haven't done anything on our own since march 14th and we've only taken direction from the county so the question is we're only taking direction from the county what really are we voting on yeah so the consideration that you guys would vote on tonight would be when do we want to return this hybrid model based on all the information that you guys have received from our plan to any other feedback or input so what we're looking for is guidance on an actual date because unfortunately to your point things seem to keep changing we need a date that we can say we want to work towards that date so we can make sure that everything is in place we can get the staff there's a lot to do within that but having a name would be very helpful now saying that in the world we've come to live in you could pick date x and we drop back into the purple tier and that date's going to be pushed pushed out so that's so realistically if things conditions remain the same we're looking for that date from you guys on that well i'll start the word discussion then miss anderson before we do that just the point of clarity i i mr wilson i'm gonna put you on the spot i'm hoping you can do some of the comments we've received tonight when when a board meets in public and they receive public comment that comment is usually comments not an interactive question can you address that as far as like testifying because i don't want people to think if they ask a question the board may or may not be able to answer the question we might just address that so i think i think with a lot i think you're allowed to address somebody that asked a question i just think in the modern day where people are so rude with each other most people say don't say anything because it ends up breaking down i have the opinion that if you don't answer somebody that they think they're just you're just ignoring them so i will usually try to address them in a respectful way but i think there are just so many people that haven't so a lot of boards take positions that oh you can't interact with them of course they're not around anti-aliasing we've got everybody here to the genderized meeting so we can have interaction with our constituents that's what the whole american system is about is representing your constituents so i think some people put that out there because they don't want a meeting breaking down into an argument but i i have the opinion that if you if you don't answer people they feel ignored and like the whole process bypassed them so i'd rather have a respectful discussion but um you know so um i guess i think the hardest thing about this tonight though is probably you know if i'm a parent and i want my kid back on date x we could maybe we agree and say date x but if everything's fluids so it sounds to me like we want to set a goal that even if we set that goal because we want staff to be able to prepare to come back that doesn't mean we're coming back on that date so we're not really voting on a date we're voting to like get everybody prepped and rolling because we could say november 9th we could say may 14th but if we don't have the clearance we're not going back to school so yeah so i think this is more about can we give clarity to staff rather than are we actually voting on a date to come back and if i'm wrong on that i want you to tell me i'm wrong on that because you know i don't [Music] i don't think we're going to set a date and come back on a date because we're going to wait on the county correct so i think what you're asking is is basically the same thing we're asking for we we would want direction action from you to say if everything is is golden everything's in line we want school to start back on this day so so direction is probably better but but i think for both staff and parents who are watching that that needs to be made clear because let's say we said we're coming back on thanksgiving and i use that so hopefully people realize that's not the day but we're coming back on thanksgiving day and everybody gets ready for thanksgiving day and then we end up not coming back until december 18th or until january 5th to january third 20th it's not that there was anything dishonest in our process we're not giving people the wrong impression on something we're trying to give guidance but that guidance is not binding is that a correct way to portray what we're voting on so everybody has a clear understanding yes sir okay if there are a lot of importance to this can we get staff can on technology come in on time everything's on backboard you know are is the county going to continue to keep us in them out of the purple tier there are definitely moving parts to this i just think it's important for people to know that beforehand because whatever the expectation is the expectation is they voted this is the day we're coming back and it doesn't happen and people don't have the understanding there can be a lot of unhappy people and thank you for clarifying that because that is a 100 accurate statement we look based on the direction we will do everything we can in our power however there sometimes are things outside of our control that we've received over the last eight months that have put us in different positions absolutely correct well january 1st gets here and we're in a full-fledged emergency nowhere we put anybody in the hospitals and you know obviously it's not going to happen correct so we're hoping under the best circumstances we'll be able to start back up but we have to have something for people to plan on and we have to have something to tell them look we're not going to try and get there before this date you're free to do what you need to do until then and until then this is what our schedule is going to be like right we need some kind of plan to go by and kill them agree 100 and i appreciate mr wilson you throwing that in because the reality we've been living in lately the reality could be it could change but if the voice direction is x then we will do everything in our power and if it's outside our control we'll communicate but it wouldn't be because we're doing something mischievous or wrong [Music] that's true so i think that we were at the point of discussion before i interrupted you mr anderson was there anything that you i interrupted you when you were going to ask at home i was just going to say that after the discussions that i've had with parents as well as many many teachers and i started out responding to every email i got from teachers and it quickly overwhelmed me to where i just couldn't get back to all of them hopefully i'll still be able to respond to them um i have been convinced that we should put it off until january uh for the safety of the kids i know my own grandson was scared to death of the virus when he was first sent home and he would run over and shut the door he just didn't want that virus in the house and if one kid was quarantined in his classroom or if he heard that somebody had the virus or god forbid somebody passed away he would be traumatized for life and these little ones they can't handle it they just there's too much information out there the televisions and stuff they're going 24 hours a day with it they just finally unplug the tv um we've got to do whatever we can do to protect them they have every one of them has you know different circumstances that we don't know grandparents living with them or parents with immune problems or siblings with immune problems teachers that have issues and we don't there's not enough subs out there to cover it i you bring them in back to school finally they get to go back to school they're all excited and what are you doing two weeks later you say sorry you're going home again you just some of these kids can't adjust like that i just don't see that we have any other choice but to put it off until then it's my thing and i appreciate all the information that the teachers and um csva members in a lot of cases have given us it helps us to make decisions to know that information and how it affects them on a day-to-day level i always appreciate the input anyone else we do have a few public comments i don't know if the lord wants to reserve their comment or i just want to make sure i get some comments and statements on mr jordan since you're there um we can continue with that please um one of the comments that i've been hearing a lot about is but it's why is it taking us so long to open our degree and the document that you gave us this evening you did address a lot of those issues but can you remove your mouse it's really hard i'm sorry do you want me to repeat what i just said if you could okay thank you thank you miss kelly um mr jordan i have had a lot of comments about why have we just taken so long to reopen since we started working this in march a lot of people don't understand why we're still not open when districts around us have even adjoining an antelope if you could please explain to the public why we have not reopened it i think for the biggest factor is the change in guidance to give an example we need to get the first california department of ed guidance until uh january 29th for the sb that came out we're a month away from school at that point we've already developed our first whole playbook was ready to go now we have to go back and change it again the next guidance that came out uh off of that senate bill was july 20.
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