so that includes high schools and then the years after high school that you're allowed you that fall under that we only obviously do that for we start with three-year-olds but it stops at grade eight for us so that percentage actually is smaller if we take out the high school um and the same thing you'll see that same exact trend so this time if i look at language arts for example 22.7 percent in terms of the state students with special disabilities ours are 32.5 and if i do the same thing with the growth 43 versus 51.5 so again just some comparative data to look at and then every slide after this great breaks it apart by grade so you get to see by grades from grade eight in this example state district general and special education so really when we're talking about if i break apart that subgroup out of our general education where our number was in the 60s it's actually 80.8 and then for special education it's 26.4 but again i if i have a disability and i'm getting in services typically i'm reading either below level or in that area and i'm getting services and modifications and accommodations but on an assessment that's done at the state you are actually taking an assessment with grade level content so you know those are some of the things that we look at and we talk about so we compare it then to aptitude we compare it to classroom performance and talk decisions from that okay so that's what all the other slides are so i'm going to wrap it up so i take you through every grade language arts and math until the end so that is the end any questions and curriculum committee as i said we will talk again about it next month as you have time to digest and ask follow-up questions and all that good stuff like we always do thank you mr i have my first question is about the percentage of the special ed students in our district when mr scavelli was here in finance he had explained that the state aid that we receive is based on the average i believe for k-8 which he always said was at 13 and he would say we are much higher than that but we are not getting any more aid so now i see here he never actually put a number on it but you're saying 23.8 and he said that perhaps the state legislature was going to look into revamping that part of the formula to actually give money based on the number of students any have you heard any movement on that or where that may be because that that could really help us yeah i mean there has you could jump in there too but there really hasn't been and that's really something that every year that we've talked about both in finance right curriculum in all those different areas is and really what i think um mr scavelli explained is that and what you've seen i think i've heard in the last couple years is that funding formula is broken it hasn't been used it wasn't used for so long and then remember they did that hold harmless right and then they opened it up and then you could see some of the factors within it but you can't see them all so i think you know again until there's a shift and that all ties down to legislation that would absolutely i would think help us but you know certainly don't know that for sure but yes i would agree perhaps something to put on the list to lobby the state you know as you did for us in that initial letter point well taken thank you ms noel i'm gonna add that to my list uh it earns a spot on there i try to keep the list short because i don't want them you know i know less is more in a way but that's important well i'm glad you mentioned it thank you and just one other quick question about the you said the and the baseline testing that was done because you know i have the two boys so i know i did the base i saw they had those assignments but um i thought that we were tr having to assess i may be wrong but i thought in the road back it said we need to evaluate the learning loss of our students because of the spring remote learning shutdown of in-person instruction did am i remembering that correctly that we are supposed to be assessing the learning laws or noting where our kids are because if you assess where your kids are you naturally see where is the loss what would they have had so rather we're not going back and we're not teaching you know for a second grade and we're not teaching first grade content oh okay what we did so if i use math as an example they took a readiness assessment at the beginning of the year in grades one through eight and that really shows do you have the content of to be successful throughout the course of the year with what's going to be taught so teachers based on that data and looking at it if they saw a deficit in a particular area and let's say they saw it with you know these four students that would be a group of four students that i would see during a math workshop and i might need to build some foundational skills i see to a double digit edition right that second grade example so that's how they do it right by looking at where are they currently and then fill the gaps if they are finding that they miss this from the front right you know from the spring and they're just in general and really what something we've talked to our teachers and again they're just wonderful at that is every year we have kids who come below level we have kids who come above level at every grade so that really is the heart of teaching is knowing i have to differentiate regardless so we knew that we were going to see that irregardless kids at all levels and we're finding out where they are and again we're looking for growth throughout the year thank you for the explanation any any other questions or comments um ms mccoolick i have a i have a quick question uh if anyone doesn't isn't chiming in um so this is this the science test right okay so i know like and again this this might be an incredibly silly question uh in high school when we when we do we have we do this like science assessment test for the state they always tell us like it doesn't count it doesn't count it doesn't count what what is what what's the difference between the science assessment or what we're doing here comparatively or different than what's going on up there in high school you actually were taking end of course science assessment yes yeah then as it relates to requirements for graduation it's just a language arts and a math it's not a science yes so that's the difference with high school you have your you know your ela for grade 10 is what counts and your algebra one are the two that are required assessments for graduation but in elementary we are just required to give the assessment for science it's in fifth and eighth grade and you kind of think of that as like an early um like an early indicator because it's by the end of fifth grade here's the the content that you should have to be successful and on track for high school so when okay let's just say so when they're in eighth grade and they take that test that test will help them learn whether they're going to like environmental science or biology or it's one of the factors that the high school looks at but not the only one okay and in particular this is a brand new assessment so if you remember it used to be njs yes yeah then they switched it to nj sla science did a field test year where they gave you no data no information and then this which is 2019 was the first year they released the results and you did see it was very low across the state but it was a totally different assessment yeah so it would be what would be most interesting for us curriculum people awesome because looking at data over time and then talking to the high school about what are they seeing are the different areas where you know there's a focus at it because yeah there's such a focus for graduation in high school for for math and fur and and for english and and related arts in that way but it always feels like the science one is like thrown there and it's just like so i was wondering like how that played out i appreciate that thank you that really clears it up for me uh anybody else any questions or comments thank you very much thank you mr mccoy i appreciate uh your presentation all right so that at this point is ending um is ending our our two presentations i thank you to mr donio and mrs mcgulick again uh for for the presentations at this point in time we are going into public comment for agenda items only this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public you'll also limit your comments to three minutes per person a couple things that i want to point out here and this is very important for you before you start calling number one um i know that the the the issue right now and and and what is uh making a lot of people tune in is about paraprofessionals and their health benefits it is not on the agenda okay so if you have a comment about that or a question uh we would hope that you would please reserve that towards the public comment for any item of interest uh secondly uh there is a three minute timer okay uh mr summer is uh he's gonna be answering the call uh and he will be you know when you get to three minutes he's gonna tell you we are expecting a high volume amount of calls today we want to be as respectful as possible for everybody who wants to try to call when we hit that three minute mark we're going to have to be pretty hard on that three minute mark also um when you call in per agent per public session it's one per call okay it's it's please do not call multiple times uh also and this is very important you will you may want our feedback particularly the superintendent's feedback on questions we ask that you please turn down your listening device or whatever it is that you're live streaming through then after you're done asking the questions hang up and then raise the volume on the listening device dr smith or whoever can answer or address that question will address the question so you can hear it uh it is very difficult again to do uh back and forth through live stream okay i believe i hit everything if i recall all right at this point again this is public comment for agenda items only so we will open it up if we don't at 7 55 right now if we don't get any phone calls we'll we'll close it sounds good thank you go ahead call you're on with the board can you speak up a little bit we can't hear you sure why are you why are you not discussing the paraprofessionals health benefits thank you for your question it's not an agenda item as the uh the hours that employees work in this case is a managerial prerogative item not not a board item so it doesn't need to be on the board agenda it will however be addressed in my superintendent's comments and i'm sure and we look forward to the second public comment section where people can share about that thank you all right we will be now closing public comment for agenda items only i've closed it i've closed it we're gonna we're gonna move on all right um at this point in time uh we're gonna be moving to approval of the minutes i need a motion to prove items six point one through six point three do i have a motion to approve items six one one six point three uh motion by miss fleming second it by miss null any questions or comments for approval of the minutes seeing none let's go to a roll call please this is barbara giovanni yes this is everhart yes mr fizzicaro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you at this point in time i need a motion we're going to go to superintendent's report and administrative items i need a motion to prove items seven one through seven seven do i have a motion motion mr catholic do i have a second second by miss barbara giovanni any uh before we have any questions or comments uh dr smith um you have your superintendent's report so the floor is yours sir thank you mr pizzacaro my superintendent's report tonight has two topics we have um as each time a reopening update um our plan is going as as planned uh we've had a lot of really valuable progress with um the way that the online learning is going um it is um amazing to watch and see our teachers um managing both in-person learning and the remote learning at the same time through the cohort a and b with the live stream if you ever want to get a little window into that just for our parents at home and i'm not doing this to pluck my own twitter feed for sure but but i do when i visit classrooms i really make a point to try to make a send a tweet out to open a window into what's going on in the room so so people at home can see what it looks like it's very very exciting and uh you know so just want to say thank you to all our staff for that excellence that they're bringing every day in terms of our uh the learning also from a physical safety standpoint we've only had so six positive cases total in the entire year and today was our 31st day of school okay 31 days of in-person learning um six cases and that goes to just is you know evidence of the teamwork of staff students families um working together to try to keep um the inline the in-person learning going as long as we can you know because we really um we we made that an emphasis of our plan and we stuck to it and i think that um you know the fact that we can look back and see all the learning that's taking place for our kids is proof that um you know it's working um and i just want to give a special shout out to our custodial staff uh and mr donahue our facilities manager um just thinking back to all the all the planning that they they put in and to see it get carried out um daily that you know executing that plan and that it's keeping coveted at bay is very gratifying for me and i hope for them as they as they look at that um so thank you to them so second update is a budget update i've been including budgetary information in my friday emails to all etsd families um and if you haven't seen one of those yet just want to give a couple numbers so our district must cut 5.8 million from our 2021-2022 budget our state aid will be cut an additional 1.6 million in 2022-23 and a further 1 million in 2023-24 and you have to let those numbers sink in a little bit okay we have a 77 million dollar budget okay on top of that the pandemic has increased costs and reduced revenues and even starting this year a range of roles in areas of operations will be impacted as we examine each new circumstance presented by the pandemic for possible savings our goal we'll talk about a few of those tonight later when we get to personnel items our goal is to reduce the negative impact of these cuts on our children knowing though that negative impact cannot be avoided but please know this as clearly as i can say the goal throughout this entire process is to reduce the negative impact on children this entire budgetary situation is extremely painful for everyone it affects staff our district family the steps with our with regard to our paraprofessionals were only set in motion by remote learning wednesdays which are shortened days which result in fewer paid hours fewer hours worked and fewer paid hours for particular hourly employees which would result in the potential loss of health benefits eligibility for around 30 paraprofessionals starting on january 1st 2021 as these remote learning wednesdays did not exist before their impact only became clear after the start of the year and that impact was communicated with the paris as soon as possible at that point just in case anyone doesn't remember from the start of the year shortening the wednesday of every five day week to create remote learning wednesdays was a compromise worked out between district administration and the union that represents 98 of our staff including teachers and paraprofessionals before the start of the year the union was pushing for an all remote start no in-person instruction for any children and if not that then for every day to be a shortened day similar to some surrounding districts which would have resulted in all of our paraprofessionals potentially losing eligibility that we should be all remote with no in-person learning or if not that all days should be shortened days is still the union's position and all the emails conversations phone calls and communication of any kind that i've received from eta members including leadership the only ideas for cutting that have been shared with me unless i missed one in which case please show me again our ideas that do not affect any of their members even though they represent 98 of our staff 87 of our budget goes to our staff the suggestion box lid was removed weeks ago and i'm still waiting for a single idea that affects them the entire budget process which will last years is incredibly complex and iterative that means that we are always discussing always listening in the dynamic landscape of our times as a board as a superintendent as a district administration we are always discussing through that discussion we have determined that all that our paraprofessionals will be paid for their typical full day hours on the remote learning wednesdays thereby maintaining benefits eligibility for any para who would typically earn it this year i'll say that again our paraprofessionals will be paid for their typical full days on the remote learning wednesdays thereby maintaining benefits eligibility for any para who would typically earn it personally i am very glad for each pair who benefits for a few of them i even taught their amazing children who are now grown up as amazing adults my heart has been sick about this at the same time my heart and my mind are extremely sick and distraught at the prospect of the additional cuts that must come and what the impact of those cuts on children will be as by january we must develop next year's budget 5.8 million in cuts our district exists to serve students since we will now be paying for a full day's work on the 30 shortened days of remote learning wednesdays some of those 30 days some of those remote learning wednesdays will be converted into regular in-person learning days some cohort a some cohort b i will submit an updated calendar at a november board meeting showing which remote learning wednesdays have been converted into days of in-person learning this conversion is a positive benefit for students a tremendous benefit as they will receive more in-person learning and there is just not enough of that not enough as we would like no matter what we try but here we can provide some more and our paris will continue to receive benefits along the way a win-win i will communicate this information via memo to all staff for those who aren't tuning in tonight thank you dr smith uh just so i'm i'm clear and so people who are watching are clear and you've just reiterated you've just uh you've just shared with with the public and with the board uh that that the health benefits for power professionals will not expire on december 31st 2020 uh 2020 correct correct okay uh you also explained at that same point that in order to do that we will uh be adding in some wednesdays uh for all uh for for uh in-person instruction correct correct okay all right thank you i just want that to be very clear so that everyone understands that uh no loss of benefits will happen all right there'll be no loss of benefits that will happen nothing will be expiring by december 31st of 2020.
the next one i have in front of me is sunrise seven for uh breakfast for the remainder of first semester 77.3 percent uh say to leave breakfast in the classroom for second semester 68.2 percent say to leave it in the classrooms for lunches sunrise teachers say that for the remainder of this semester 59.1 percent say leave it in classrooms for second semester 40.9 percent uh indicate returning to pre-covid lunch routines as they as they were pre-coveted so different for k4 then for 5 6 and 7 8.
um so right now the cold dominated grid is more carbon intensive than natural gas used in buildings just as a note to point out here this is only looking at the actual use of natural gas in power production and not any fugitive fugitive emissions i'll touch on those later um but we can see that even the portion the portion of electricity supplied by coal has decreased it's still the primary source so it's had a big impact on our missions to date but we have a lot more work to do to achieve a renewable grid and we can see how big of an impact that'll have in all of our emissions we also know that ann arbor has changed a lot in the last 20 years so if we look at population and gdp this graph looks at percent change since we see that emission reductions aren't usually exclusive with healthy growth and then i just showed you a simple inventory to understand long-term trends since um or over the last few years standard protocols for estimating inventories have become more comprehensive and more data is easily accessible so what that means is we're now able to more include additional sources of emissions to provide a more complete picture of our carbon footprint and we're calling this the expanded inventory so in in addition to the mission sources that we just looked at in the simple inventory it also looks at emissions associated with commuting patterns local rail um some more municipal facilities like the airport and the closed landfill as well as upstream emissions associated with electricity and fossil fuels most of the changes are are small um compared to the total emissions like less than two percent uh commuting adds around fifty percent more emissions and ads isn't really the right term just as a reminder um those submissions occurred in 2000 as well we just can't accurately estimate their magnitude so just pointing out that's the largest change and then we can visualize this change as well so this blue line shows the simple inventory trend that we just looked at and this lighter blue shows the increase in the expanded inventory again that's due to the ability to account for commuting so while emissions have decreased uh 20 since 2000 that's one percent a year it's larger due to changes in a cleaner grid um we can see that we have a lot more work to do to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 you know working at a much more rapid pace and um working on a lot more strategies so this illustrates where our community submissions come from we know buildings account for roughly two-thirds of our community submissions with passenger vehicles i'm sorry we know buildings account for two thirds of emissions and passenger vehicles account for over a quarter the remainders accounted for are accounted to commercial vehicles waste an upstream emissions so the left graph illustrates year-to-year changes in emissions by sector and the top values representing the total emissions each year there are some changes from year to year that's mostly due to changes in consumption from electricity and natural gas that are somewhat weather dependent we can also look at the sources of our community's emissions so what fuels are our emissions coming from the use of electricity represents the most emissions in 2019.
okay thank you i i just wanted to just clarify that uh so that everybody is aware of what's happening thank you dr smith um any questions or or comments uh ms noel oh i'm sorry mr mr megan i'll get you next just a quick question so um excuse me we were going to vote tonight on a revised calendar which brought you know through the end of the school year as you guys know cohort a cohort b remote learning was so that's taken off the table is the way i understand it we are not voting on 7.3 revised calendar um ms noel thank you for that question because uh we we should still vote on that calendar because it encompasses over 100 days remaining in the school year we're only on day 31.
for the phases sunrise teachers 72.7 of sunrise teachers say to continue phase two through the semester and forty point nine percent say to leave it in phase two for second semester the last set is fox creek for breakfast for the remainder of first semester 70 say leave breakfast in the classrooms for second semester you can see a pretty divergent chart here however 30 percent say breakfast should be served in the cafeteria before students go to their first class go through the line on their own teachers and employees are assigned cafeteria duty on a rotation basis and students go to playgrounds or outside areas before class the only real difference here from pre-covered is that that's very much pre-coping so sixty percent is pre-coded because that's the three if you add those yeah if you add the others uh regarding lunch for students through first semester 55 percent say leave lunches in the classrooms for lunches for second semester we have another 50 50 split 50 uh say essentially to do the uh what each of the sites did pre-covered and regarding the phases for the remainder of first semester 65 percent of fox creek teachers say we should continue phase two and for second semester sixty percent indicate that we should use phase three at least start the semester in phase three i'd like to thank mrs lott for us creating and sending out the uh the survey and for disaggregating the data into these charts for you um i don't recall any of the other details except the very first one which is for the remainder of the semester for breakfast if you uh you all had asked for these broken out by sight which is good but overall it was 68 percent of our teachers said to leave breakfast in classrooms for the remainder of the semester for second semester i don't remember the details for any of the others but that was simply because it was the first thing that popped up on your screen when when it was the all the data all right comments like dr stewart said it seems that everybody's fine with well not everybody but overall people are fine with breakfast in the classroom or the way it was pre pre-covered which a lot of them did have breakfast in the classroom just just a comment um uh you know we had no idea where this was going to go um but it uh is it was rather surprising to us that even the middle school and the junior high were pretty much for the most part in favor of leaving breakfast in the classroom for the rest of the semester so that that did rather surprise us yeah you start to the second semester you start to see a little wavering of what they wanted but it looked pretty clear that they wanted to keep everything the way it is right now at least for their major the first semester you know for the most part i mean obviously there's some that don't but as far as breakfast goes um it's almost completely wanting to keep it where it's at for this semester second semester it jumps back and forth it's kind of a little bit different lunches same thing looking at that bullhead middle school wants to get back to normal in the cafeteria i think that the rest of them wanted to stay if i'm correct on that they were the only ones that wanted to get back to normal this semester but next semester i think all of them want to get back to normal some some meaning of normal even when those numbers are close when you figure in you know four five and six as close as we can get back to normal they're wanting to get back to normal next semester as far as our phases what i was seeing on that is most of the schools are well we have some that want to get back to phase three now blood middle school wanted to get back to phase three now excuse me mr president let me really point out because this is really important phase three is not pre-covered okay pre-covid is that other choice that third choice okay so phase two is what we're doing right now very much a hybrid uh phase three is less of a hybrid and more and closer to normal but it's not entirely normal and and that was one reason we made sure that they had a copy of that of the plan so that they could see which things were not like they used to be pre-covered so i just wanted to clarify that because you know we want everybody to understand phase three is not pre-covered okay and if the and if your decision is pre-coded that's fine but let's make it clear what those things are i'm sorry to interrupt um bullet middle school phase three now 45 um almost 60 percent back to pre-covet for second semester um diamondback was 37.5 pre-covered plus 28 modified um so they were also wanting back to normal um then you had second semester oh i'm sorry that was for meals um they were 41 percent uh pre-covered uh back to phase three and 29 pre so right now they're wanting to get back phase three or pre so pretty large numbers for them for diamondback um and it was almost an opposite switch pre-covered to phase three so they definitely want to get back to as normal as possible as quickly as possible for those two schools desert valley wanted to stay phase two uh for both semesters uh with 50 with 85 percent first this semester and 53 second semester uh sunrise for phase two seventy seventy two percent per semester uh but phase three thirty six percent and then twenty two percent uh back to pre um so pretty heavily wants to get back to some normalcy fox creek uh 62 percent let me make sure i wrote that down right so i didn't put my note afterwards was 62 percent or sorry 65 yes 65 percent uh stay in phase two but overwhelmingly uh phase three and back to normal 80 percent in those two categories for second semester so with the exception of desert valley our teachers want to get back to normal as quickly as possible some of them want to i mean the the numbers if we want to get to phase three now for our schools with the exception of one um and the rest of them want to be at least phase three if not pre-covered definitely by next semester with the exception of one did i read that correctly it would be two because the sunrise and desert valley are very close sunrise was for first semester one for first no no no no first person yeah we only have one school that wasn't saying that for second semester sunrise wants to stay phase two first semester but the other schools all want phase three or pre-coveted first semester and definitely want that second semester we only have one school that isn't saying let's get back to normal um at least that's how i was reading that did anybody interpret that any different um can i think that's about right you know and i think that that gives us time to kind of get through the you know november december and then hopefully in january things will be looking up and we'll be able to get back at least closer to normal normal yeah now this is an agendized item we just had to get a little workshop did we have any additional input from anyone here that would like to share on those numbers okay any other comments from the board well i thought it was interesting also um that the food service input thought that lunches should be served in the class i mean in the cafeteria too over about 50 so that was interesting information also and audience knows they can comment yeah this is a workshop so if you guys this is a perfect time if you have anything to add okay all right with that uh we need to move on to our regular meeting we are just a couple minutes over so we're going to get this going so we need a motion to adjourn the workshop make a motion when you're in the workshop and before you start your game uh all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland aye brandi dubois i'm charlemagne yes before you start right that meeting is adjourned okay mr president if i may insert something we had parent conferences yesterday and then finished up today by noon so many of our folks took off understandably but i would like to introduce two of our new people that you've not had the opportunity to meet so we have kim godwin who is the principal at diamondback and we have lashayna sparrow ottabi who is our special ed director and we're glad to have them and of course mr roy is with us from sunrise but i wanted you to meet our new people that i know you haven't had a chance to meet in the past thank you thank you all right i call this meeting to order our regular meeting of bullhead city elementary school board on thursday october 22nd 2020 at 607 pm uh roll call corey burgess here jeannie barland here brandi dubois here certainly is here citizens president if you please sign in the back and please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands thank you call the public this is the time that the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board and subject to reasonable time space and manner restrictions as the governing board may establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically weighed by the governing board at the conclusion of the call of the public individual members of the governing board may respond to criticism made by those who've addressed the board may ask staff to review a matter or may ask that a matter be placed on a future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters that have not been noticed in advance as part of the agenda and we have just the one moses corn out please come forward uh do i need to introduce myself or can i just yes please okay hi my name is moses cornell um do i need a title or anything no okay uh so i'm just gonna get started with my statement just so that um it can stay within time limit so good morning board members i'm here to address the president and board members regarding the context of my resignation and the poor quality information provided at the last meeting calling a vote in this profession with that little context was not a presidential action bringing up that i did not give notice yes i will give you that i did give prior notice when i was going to resign before that time and while circumstances made it to where i could continue each week also brought new restrictions and i would not continue to be forced into mediocrity accusing me of telling students of the situation i told parents as it is their and it is their prerogative to tell their students parents do have the right to understand why they are losing their child's teacher to judge my actions without having the full account as very unjust and on the characteristic needed for good leadership lastly you said that this was not coveted related uh this is entirely covert related these situations would not have arisen where not for covid my mental emotional and physical health were deteriorating i've never dreaded the idea of going to work but in the last six weeks i had begun to my administration's idea of help was to tell me that if their hands were tied and that this is how this district had decided to deal with the pandemic that there is nothing that i uh they could do what am i supposed to do accept it and continue i was never offered viable solutions and i was consistently blamed for not coming up with better solutions at one point i was even told by my principal that if my computer was not working well i should have asked the principal to use their room and computer to teach my classes this does not sound like a viable solution to me it sounds like a reach i wrote a very non-traditional letter of resignation i did so in the hopes that this board would read it and discuss it its contents that was my hope when i saw my name there in the agenda last meeting and to see that they didn't have the letter nor did you intend to read the letter but to call for a vote i was shocked and bear ashamed and outraged so i will read my letter that was meant for your eyes and discussion to discreetly but will be read to the public to preface while these ideas and frustrations in this letter were brought by me i used the angst and hidden sadness my fellow teachers had been feeling into account when writing this i talked to my colleagues and tried to have them convince me to stay as best they could but they could not they could not offer me solutions as teachers have very little power of decision nor could they offer me hope i will be reading an abridged version to fit the time constraints dear board member dear ms godwin dr stewart and district board members please accept my resignation for my position a surgery teacher at diamondback school my last day will be september 20th 2020.
the portion of emissions is expected to this portion is continued to decrease as planned changes from dt and u of m come online and more coal is phased out however a natural gas powered grid will still have significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with it um this is a reminder the 820 plan targets securing 100 renewable energy for our community to eliminate emotions associated with electricity consumption so looking at the pie chart we see that then natural gas and transportation will become our largest sources of emissions and that's why it's really really important that we also address those and that just reflects day to zero strategies and i'll run through these very quickly um just as a reminder if you want more information i'm also posting a detailed report within this information if you'd like to go through it on your own time again stationary energy emissions are roughly two-thirds of total emissions um and since 2000 there's been a 22 decrease in emissions from buildings and those largely due to the changes in the grid um just as a a time check if i could ask for one um i can either skip through these or if you'd like i can i can answer them shortly um no why don't you go okay thanks um so university of michigan buildings or institutional buildings emissions decreased eight percent since 2015 um and that was just due to a spike in natural gas consumption that's uncorrelated to how cold that year was or how much heating degree days there were um in fact institutional consumption of electricity and natural gas are negatively correlated with cooling and heating degree days that means it's like not very temperature dependent um the pie chart just points out a portion of that natural gas is used to generate electricity in their essential power plant and then just to understand how university emissions are trending with growth we know that u of m has grown a lot in recent years so the graph on the right the dark blue shows percent change in the ann arbor campus population with a lighter bluing lighter blue showing total ann arbor campus emissions so we see that even though population has steadily increased emissions started to decrease around 2015 and we see that reflected in the graph on the left that there's starting to be a decrease in emissions per capita in residential buildings um they've decreased roughly 20 since 2000 um that's largely due to the cleaner grid but natural gas consumption also decreased around 13 since 2000 at the same time the use of electricity increased so since 2015 residential emissions have remained fairly steady um but natural gas emissions are strongly correlated with heating degree days i think i have a quick illustration just to point out the barograph is how much natural gas was consumed um related to emissions um and you can see that it generally tracks the heat and degree days just pointing out that's very weather dependent which makes sense we use natural gas to heat our homes for the most part in commercial buildings the combined um total of commercial and institutional emissions or commercial and industrial missions have decreased 22 since 2000 um from 2015 commercial emissions have decreased 32 percent um that's because we see that commercial emissions largely come from the use of electricity and that's strongly correlated with cooling degree days so that's how much um how often you probably use electricity to run ac to cool things down because you you need to um address high temperatures so we we can see um the yellow bar showing showing cooling degree days that the use of electricity generally tracks those in terms of transportation overall these represent 30 of our emissions we account for a local passenger and commercial transportation uh we now also account for commuting patterns so emissions outside of the ann arbor boundary and local buses rail and aviation it should be noted that non-local so like the scope 3 buses rail and aviation trips and non-commuting long-distance passenger vehicle trips are not currently estimated so if you jump on a plane in detroit metro to go on vacation we're not currently able to check those submissions in local transportation we account for passenger and commercial vehicle trips that begin and or fully contained in ann arbor so since 2000 local transportation emissions have decreased 16 percent and we see that since then the vehicles mild the miles traveled actually haven't changed that much um by you know only around two percent which isn't that much and so this is largely due to an increase in vehicle efficiency since then so our vehicles are about 17 more efficient um passenger vehicles represent most local transportation emissions um we base these off of uh vehicle registration data for washington county so that's where that split comes from you can also there's a darker middle screen the 0.25.28 is commuting emissions those are just based off of census data and are only available in five-year increments so there's not much change from year to year there but they did increase from 2015 to the following years um just to point out so upstream emissions count for transmission and distribution losses from our electricity grid there's some um efficiency loss just moving electrons around um and it also accounts for local fugitive gas emissions so some of the natural gas that's in the city is released um just as methane without being combusted uh this doesn't account for or include um non-local fugitive gas emissions which are occurring at a much higher percentage um there it's it's hard to get a clear number on that um which is why it's not included here um i do run through that in the report if you'd like to understand the magnitude of that waste and wastewater represent a very small amount of our emissions we account for the wasteb landfill the closed city landfill composting and wastewater treatment so we see um the since 2015 waste emissions decreased 35 percent and that spike in 2015 that you see is largely due to operations in the closed landfill either associated with flaring gas annual repairs or updates and data collection so just to wrap up um in the beginning of this presentation i went through our simple inventory and that allows us to evaluate long-term progress compared to a 2000 baseline then we looked at expanded inventory which provides a more comprehensive picture of where we are now in the future we hope to share an expanded plus inventory so this is this will include consumption based emission sources like the expanded transportation activities how we consume food goods and services the embodied carbon and new and existing buildings and renewable energy credits and offsets and so we plan to develop this inventory as part of a cohort organized by ickley unfortunately that was postponed by the copa 19 pandemic so we don't have anything to share this year but we hope to work on that in the future um also as i mentioned a few times we are posting calculations a guide and a report going through the inventory as well for transparency to our website so you can look for that in the coming weeks uh thank you so much for giving me this time and i'll open it up to any questions you might have okay yeah thank you thea um let's see i i can't see the uh everybody on the screen here so just either speak up or raise your hand in the sidebar here there we go any questions i don't see anything right now i had one question thea yep that is uh when do you expect to get data for 2020 given the pandemic um most of the data is fairly straightforward to collect and shouldn't have a big difference um i mean some of them we get internally uh some of the data that we get from external parties might be a bit harder to get a hold of we'll see how big of a change that is so that might be looking at um our transportation study um or some sources like that it honestly just depends on what organizations have faced a staff time reduction so we'll see how that plays out okay any other questions um shannon yeah i'm just wondering if you all um have a system in place to be able to track how uh renewables in the city are happening like in terms of the solarize program or people that have done things outside of that i'm just wondering if that has been any part of at all in terms of your analysis up to this point and then if if yay or nade like how how you're moving forward with that information because i think we'd all be curious to see how successful some of these programs are to see what if how much it actually moves the needle yeah so we are kind of indirectly um getting some of that in in the inventory we get aggregate um electricity consumption data from dte and so they don't none of that data includes solar energy that's produced on site and consumed on site so indirectly we're accounting for it we are missing some just because of the info outflow system it's hard to tell between solar energy that's um sold to the grid and then later used and make sure that it's not being double accounted so right now it's a small enough percentage that it's um not a big issue but just also that's important to track and so we're also working on getting together um additional metrics that show how we're doing so in addition like evs are also important to understand um in our ev adaption so we're looking at um ways to easily get that data and then display that visually in a way that's like very easy to understand for the public so in practice as well okay um rita i think you're muted [Music] pardon me um you're tracking the embody carbon of buildings have you considered looking at the embodied carbon of trees yeah so that is part of a current um study going on that we're working with some university of michigan students who are looking at quantifying our current tree cover and the emission reductions associated with that in addition um we are trying to look forward at new trees being planted and just trying to figure out the best way in an inventory to both present the current trees and also trees that are planted so we know that when you plant a tree the missions don't happen immediately and it also depends on the success of that tree um so it assumes that that tree is watered every year and and makes it to adulthood so we we don't quite have the exact protocol figured out and how to count it for it but it is in process okay thanks those uh um students here that you're working with sound like maybe some that we're going to uh for in chris graham's presentation talk about are those in the c's department that are working i believe they are i work a bit less indirectly with them um so i'm not quite sure what department they're in and they may be the same group but i'm not sure my question i thought that was a great presentation thank you and i learned a lot and i just to follow on rita's question about the embodied carbon and the whole expanded inventory how soon is that going to be like a long time for the expanded inventory or are things moving quickly um well for one uh it is a newer um thing to do uh and so we do need some support to do so we are waiting for um equally the organization i mentioned to have the capacity to run that cohort and then um i do expect some sources will be easier to estimate than others and we'll be able to present them uh sooner um so we might be looking at a couple years it just depends if the data sources already exist if it's uh data that we have to go out and get um which which could make it a bit longer thank you okay all right well thank you thea um there's no more questions john yeah thank you thea um just a a couple of things for us to ponder i think um i think while the report is excellent and the methodology is really great i think the report should be sobering for all of us in the sense that we're reducing greenhouse gas emissions at roughly one percent per year almost all of that is due to changes in the grid from dte and not from things that we are doing at the city level or as residents and we know that dte's target for carbon neutrality is 20 50.
the days that will change with the updated calendar are just going to be certain remote learning wednesdays in the spring so the benefit of this calendar and again just uh i can't thank our parents enough for all the communication they give me because it helps us be responsive as a district um so the calendar painful as it was to create because it basically projects that the pandemic will be with us through june um but again parents were asking and totally understandably um in terms of their work schedules and so on could they know what the a days and the b days are for the remainder of the year so those eight days and b days monday tuesday thursday friday won't be changing with the updated calendar november it'll be just those certain remote learning wednesdays that get converted into a cohort a day or a cohort b day and i would love to say that the november account when we get to that november and we approve that updated calendar that would be the last time for the year but it's a pandemic and if you think back to the slides there was one slide in the opening reopening presentation that we repeated twice and it was the shortest slide of all and it said tentative tentative tentative it's a pandemic you know and those words still ring true thank you mr megan my my clarification was just addressed i want to make sure the remote wednesday change started in the spring and you clarified that um so it'll start the the conversion of particular remote learning wednesdays will begin after winter break so after winter break so so january february and onward yeah that's okay oh it's fine uh any other questions or comments um i i will i will say something i i you know i want to thank dr smith uh for uh for this i think i think this is very important um especially look we're in we're in crazy times man we're in crazy times um you know i've been doing this a long time and i have gone through a lot of issues on this board uh you know whether it was that's a family or or evans or uh or school choice or privatization issues or bus depot issues or whatever it may be but i i can't tell you how cataclysmic everything has been in terms of of talking about making cuts losing money covet 19 hybrid who comes in who doesn't what days are off who gets what who's afraid of what even my opinions on things have changed rapidly since august but you know we always talk about being a family and i and i i i unders i understand that sometimes that gets kind of thrown back at us um but sometimes as a family even families who have money issues really struggle together um things things are things things are going to get are going to get really nasty they're going to get really nasty all right and i take zero joy in in in saying and saying that um but i i am glad uh that that we were able to to to do this and allow allow for those those benefits to stay especially um god forbid if something were to happen um with with this pandemic so i thank you dr smith and i appreciate all your hard work and everything that you go through um this is this is not easy so i appreciate it good just i just want to say i appreciate um with our board um and i believe it came up at a prior meeting we were talking about how our board like what's fantastic about it among many other facets is it's truly representative of our town there's a range of perspectives and we get to share and come to consensus and that's so valuable because it really feels sometimes like we've distilled the entire all our entire town to nine people and for me just in my role yeah i couldn't ask for anything more so i just want to say thank you for that uh mr lancelata can i say one more thing absolutely sir you know first of all i wanted to thank uh dr smith he's been working tirelessly highly tirelessly in order to try to make as many changes positive changes for the school for our kids you know and this change which was great for our powers and our children while it's it's great we are kicking the can down the road of a huge budget deficit it's not going to get any better and it's not because of the it's not because of dr smith it's not because of anyone on this board we've been getting emails every single day phone calls every day and we appreciate every single one and but we need to really start focusing our emails and our attention on the men and women who are elected officials hi or higher-ups in government you need to start talking about you need to start emailing your governor you need to start emailing your assemblyman and assembly women anyone that will listen because we're not getting the federal funding that we need for covid and we're not and we're also not getting and we're getting budget cuts state budget cuts that are astronomical to any to any district so please start emailing start calling the people in office that are making their that are making these cuts well said thank you very well said there's a there are a lot of people here a lot of passionate people so i think we could start doing that ms barbara giovanni jeff that was beautifully put and we really do need our community residents to start sending letters to the governor to our state assembly to whoever will listen i know we sent we dr smith has sent letters up asking please save our schools to take a hit like we have in the aid is horrendous and all we're asking and i know it was even asked of the state to could you just even it out a little bit more don't hit us with so much doesn't want it falls on dead ears so you do have senators you do have assemblymen so i'm asking the community write the letters to them call get in contact because we love this district i know people come back and say their words but we really do and we don't want to cut anybody so we need your help in this matter so thank you and dr smith you've done a wonderful job i have called you i have asked you any questions that i asked about what's going on how many of this is affecting and all you've always taken the time and you've given the answer and i know many other board members have reached out because this is very serious tonight and we don't want to lose anybody or have anybody lose their benefits so you are always there and you came in at a heck of a year and believe me you deserve praise not anything negative so thank you any other questions oh mr fleming i'm so sorry i just wanted to also thank dr smith again for always communicating and rapidly i would uh suggest as well i also think to the community when dr smith is asking those that have access to that suggestion box please put the suggestions in if we don't know about it as a board then or dr smith doesn't know about it we can't think of way other ways we're asking and asking and asking so please submit them fill the box send the suggestions to the board dr smith please this will take everybody in the community as well as the board every person that works in our school district you know from the top to the lower levels so please make the suggestions certainly certainly reasonable ones and understand the deficit is large and as mr lanzalotta said it's just we've just kicked it a little further great benefit for our children and our paras at this point tonight but it is upon us and in just a very few short months thank you again yeah so uh i think in in the emails that we've been receiving a lot of people have asked how they can help um in previous emails i know dr smith has laid out kind of four options right we can work with the ptas and ptos you can work with the evesham education foundation the third option is obviously a direct donation and then fourth and most important is reaching out to our state legislatures i would like to see in our our in our weekly updates to parents and staff if we can add in the budget update just as the last line the fourth option there of reaching out to the legislatures and kind of keep that there so it's on everybody's mind moving forward because i think that's the most powerful yeah we'll do mr canton thank you thank you the one thing that we that i've learned being on the board of education during times of crisis is that nobody's coming to help you no one's ever coming to help you you're always hoping that when there's a major crisis that someone's going to swoop in it's of higher power than you and they're going to save the day but they're they're never coming and so the only way to get their attention is by getting their attention all right and it's it it takes it takes a lot to do so all right and i i something that i i told i told the public and i told everybody a couple years ago and i remember this very clearly when we first started this this road down these cuts i said in the end of the day what is going to happen is we are going to tear each other apart and the people who are responsible are going to get away with it scot-free because the people who are responsible for it are the people who created a funding formula that robbed you of nine million dollars in your state aid okay they're the ones who did this but instead what happened which is what i i warned you would happen we began to tear each other apart and as we tore each other apart basically two you know two uh two wolverines chewing for the same bone uh the person who gave us those pity pitiful scraps they got away scot-free so mr lancelot is absolutely 100 correct all right and and the board the board agrees with that you have to put serious real pressure and if you don't put serious real pressure no one's coming to help us no one's coming to help you and we're gonna be back to killing each other again in april all right we're gonna be back at it again joe if you remember i think it was sometime last year where the lenape regional and the sending districts yes we formed yeah i think it's important that we not we but all the districts um have a letter it's very difficult to ask people to write their own letter if we can have some kind of form thing going on like we need a concerted effort because you can sit here there's a template we'll make sure that the templates of the template's available for those you know update it and the mask lets everybody do this absolutely because people are not going to do it if you just tell them go and do this i i agree with that gentleman yeah that's just my opinion it was much easier when we had that letter and sent it out to everybody and they could just insert their name the language is there for them yeah dr smith you took yeah so there's um and i just it's it's fantastic uh hearing ideas so so there it there are um resources along those lines that are in in a website i shared in a prior email but but um us being etsd uh i actually think it'd be better to um craft our own letter that's specific to our needs and and and i you know i go back to the testimony i submitted and i'll put this in the form letter because instead of asking for like if we ask for five things it's easy to kind of like say oh there you know but if we ask for one thing and one thing would be delay the timeline of these reductions it was developed before the 100-year event of this pandemic you know and so to implement something that's a five-year timeline that was developed before a pandemic which we don't even know it's gonna when it's gonna end is uh applying something to a completely different context that doesn't even fit anymore and that's the one ask that i put in the testimony and i think you know if we were if we had a form letter that had that same mask in it and just repeat just beat that drum beat that drum beat that drum then we may be able to you know we can see what happens so any other questions or comments almost forgot what we were voting on all right i need um all right let's go to a roll call for item seven of superintendents report this is barbara giovanni yes this is ever heart yes mr fizzy cara yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you at this point we're going to go to item eight which is curriculum and instruction idea motion to prove items eight one through eight six do i have a motion motion by ms barbara giovanni do i have a second second by miss fleming any questions or comments pertaining to curriculum and instruction seeing none let's go to a roll call please this is barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro yes miss fleming yes mr katherine yes mrs noll yes mr mr lancelotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you all right at this point we're going to item 9 which is finance and operations i need a motion to prove items 9 1 through 9 15. do i have a motion to improve items 9 1 through 9 15.
it has been a great pleasure working with the staff at diamondback school i thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the staff and students i was born and raised here seeing the teachers i admired as a student mr mitchell mrs brown and mr roy advancing their fields was a great joy unfortunately due to the changes brought on by covid which were exacerbated the weaknesses of the administration i can no longer continue as a teacher and i feel i've been forced to make this difficult decision there have been many points where i've understood the challenge of online learning when i attempted to provide reusable solutions for basic problems i was only told no i was informed of vague expectations not aligned to the curriculum and i was required to teach i was provided with no genuine support no solutions and made to feel as if my efforts were dismissed and my ideas held no value to the current administration i would rather allow someone else to fill my position who can better work within the confines and limitations the administration sees fit to implement i cannot be valued or respected as a professional while simultaneously being represented and lectured on professionalism through group emails teachers were also left to fill with no training or compensation the position of informational technology support for the children and parents there was at no time a plan to deal with parents or students who had equip who had equipment but could still not access assignments for example in my class alone i had six students who consistently could not stay in class long enough to learn or complete assignments i felt it unfair to assign these students poor grades if i had been as i have been directed to do so when they had no access to the curriculum even with uh recorded lessons whose function was a gamble based on the temperament of the technology that day it's unfair to ask a student who tried to be online all day to watch five 45-minute minimum lessons after school uh having 45 minutes based on the curriculum prescribed to hear that i'd also become a buster to the students breakfast and lunches and a janitor to all materials also piled on the list of responsibilities left to be filled by the teachers and also with no more compensation for added responsibilities added to the already unrealistic expectations we were given these added responsibilities take valuable time for us to plan uh prepare and focus on the providing the best education possible for the students in this community that truly deserve it more personal time outside of school and contract hours will be required to meet those already established expectations for teachers i do hope there comes a time when the education system and district tech resides itself and i can return to put my education i worked hard for to a good use once more i came to this district with three of my friends who were all first-year teachers throughout the grade levels and the start of my second year i'm the last to leave i thought teacher conditions in arizona would have changed two years ago then last year and then this year nothing really has i can only hope for the passing of prop 208 to give schools the funding they require and deserve and that this letter has pointed someone in the right direction for improvement in equality work conditions for the teachers in our area while it is the adage that uh teachers can be miracle workers we are not we only average citizens trying to make a difference in the lives of the youth in our community sincerely moses cornell to close my emotional mental and physical health take priority to my job current administration was not able to help with me to find a viable solution to work with these issues and i was forced to make this difficult decision to ensure my health i enjoy teaching and i received my master's in teaching to follow this career path i did not make this decision lightly and i ask you all to take this into into consideration thank you thank you and do i need to sit for the if you have any comments or do i just stay here you can't comment at this time oh okay thank you do you have any other calls to the public okay all right moving on item 2.6 adoption of the agenda can we get a motion to adopt the agenda and move we adopt the agenda randy dupois i will second that corey burgess all in favor aye corey burgess aye jennie barland aye brandi dubois hi charlene item 3.1 policy iha basic instruction program dr stewart mr president and board members this is the second reading of uh this policy that has to do with instruction the two changes were taking off the item that indicated that we would be teaching foreign language and a legal reference change at the bottom it is a second reading you can take action at this time i will move that we approve policy iaj as presented corey burgess second jeannie borland all in favor aye corey burgess aye genie borland aye brandi dubois hi charlene so moved item 3.2 resignation of moses cornell teacher diamondback dr stewart mr president board members you tabled this at the last regular meeting and requested additional information which was subsequently sent to board members via do email have any questions comments everyone did get a chance to review at this did you have a question miss diaz no i'm i'm good to go all right okay at this time i motion that we accept moses cornell's resignation we have a second i'll second that motion charlene all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie berland i'm brandi dubois hi charlene so moved item 3.3 liquidation of damage clause contract with moses cornell dr stewart mr president and board members based on the discussion that you had last week about this item i put it on the agenda and corey approved that for you to consider the clause that is in all of our employees certified employees contracts liquidation of damages for a breaking a contract during the year we have any questions or comments i mean i guess i have a comment i don't i don't i don't know i mean do you can we ask him a question sure okay do you i can't see with my glasses on looking out do you feel that um if you had been given more support that you would have put in a resignation um if i had been giving more support and solutions i would not and we definitely worked before i resigned to do that we worked on solutions and support and it wasn't enough and nothing came with it and things just got progressively worse any other questions um i just feel like these are unique times that people don't know what they signed up for when it comes to this year and who could have imagined that we would take a turn this way and i don't know if we should really hold people i mean people should step up step up to their responsibilities and their jobs but i just think it's a certain um different situation this year so i agree with that we did have a chance to review um and as mr cornell just stated they did try to work but not to his satisfaction to come up with a solution we are in a difficult time i agree with that totally but as you also stated we have responsibilities to leave our position in such a short notice and leave our students hanging in a situation is really where i struggle we we've held teachers to uh to this standard for less um does anyone else have any other comments okay so this time i would like to make a motion uh then we invoke the liquidation damage clause the contract with with moses cornell do we have a second no second the motion dies okay so moving on item 3.4 consideration of the location of meals dr stewart mr president board members uh the topic of your workshop and uh i have a rather complicated recommendation there for you um but um it's in your hands all right this is what our workshop is about big changes so uh as we discussed during our during our workshop um i think we can all agree that i hope i'm not speaking out of turn here that our schools want to maintain our meals program as it is for this semester so we just take these one at a time and kind of instead of trying to tackle it all at once does anyone see this differently okay so first semester three main meal is the same as far as meals go second semester um looking through the list they're wanting to get back to in the cafeteria with a with an exception but most of the schools are wanting to get back in how do we want to move forward on this because right now it's easy on the first one they want to say the same but the second one i mean i would like to see us if our numbers are at least the same that we move into phase three for cafeteria next semester okay so bringing up uh phase three looking at what's going on can we excuse me mr president could i insert something please um for a second semester breakfast if we can keep the meals separate from the from the next item that would be very helpful for us but the other thing i would like to point out to you is uh the point that i made about for second semester my recommendation and we'll do whatever it is you all decide but i just want to make clear to everyone that k through fourth grade breakfast continuing in the classroom is a financially attractive situation for us as a district because going back to putting k-4 in the cafeteria based on our history would be that we would be losing the money that pays for about five kindergarten teacher positions so that would put us back into a situation of half-day kindergartens not this year not this year but for next year in terms of finances i was getting the impression that most of them want breakfast in the classroom i mean how it was prior to covid okay and i just wanted yeah yeah i mean i'm not going to say breakfast prior to how it was on each side i know they're all different and i just wanted to make that clear because so you know there's another breakfast in the classroom from here on out because the teachers have spoken and i went and and i wanted it clear that my my recommendation for that had to do with a factor that was not covid related that it has to do with things that you all expect me to pay attention to which is a good you know good husbandry of our finances so i just wanted to make that clear thank you so much so breakfast we're talking back to sites as pre-covered normal so those that still had them in classrooms is that correct everybody in agreement with their pre-covert breakfast yes [Laughter] interesting um we all know where i used to yeah if i if i could again mister i'm a little confused corey can you let us know if i if i could mr president just the only thing that i would like to uh have you think about is this piece other than what we do between now and and well even well other than what we're doing from today until the end of december the the rest of that you real you can decide tonight but i had also recommended that perhaps you wait another three weeks uh to see what data does so that at least we're not saying something tonight and then maybe data gets crazy and you have to change your minds but if you decide tonight then that's the way we're working thank you so just just so i'm clear on on phase three phase three is is with the minor adjustments like masks washing your hands sanitizing other than that yeah and and and being very cautious about visitors we wouldn't be forbidding visitors but we would be very cautious about visitors uh we would be cautious about field trips we'd be cautious about activities in phase three originally we had said we wouldn't even do other than our 21st century and after school programs that we might not do some of those other programs for four weeks in but we said those all had asterisks next to them sometimes that's hard to say that it would depend on the metrics so you know you would be giving us if you said phase three it would be as normal as back to pre-covet as we can make it the asterisk would let us make some decisions based on what does it look like on what does it look like on january 4th you know when we come back and um and judge you know make some adjustments if we needed to and then look again my recommendation then was to look and uh consider if we if we were in phase three at the beginning of second semester at your february meeting consider going back to pre-coven so you know that and that was my recommendation we'll do of course whatever you all decide um with that well so with phase three it would be masks sanitations but our recesses our lunches our our other you know our specials would be right back i mean this really comes in a big play especially like the music department we don't have our violin teacher our strings teacher staying at one school trying to teach over um right he can actually get which isn't he teaching virtually yes because we're not letting him come to bullhead middle school he's doing it virtually um well he's i think he's teaching virtually from the school because he's not one of the people i'm sorry he's not one of the folks who has to be isolated himself but because instruments frequently are shared and those kinds of things we're not actually having them having the kids in the music room but it would it would go back to being a music class even in phase three where kids are going to music and classes our music classes so yes so what is he teaching then if he's not he's teaching like music reading how to read notes music theory and and some of those skills that you can do without actually having the instrument in your hands and the same for the uh the same for the band teacher at uh fox creek um but we would be able then to have band in phase three much needed we know those kids will be playing their instruments yes and the singers to be singing yes we do definitely and we are seeing we add up all these numbers because you give us an 80 right the majority of that 80 percent is space 3.
so it's way way past our target and so we obviously you know we're we're decreasing emissions at one percent per year i think it's a little faster than that thea since maybe 2012 when we had our first uh climate action plan but again almost all of that is due to dte emissions reductions as well and the thing that i think is we need to be we need to recognize is that um roughly 50 percent of our emissions if i caught it correctly are coming from heating and from transportation so heating is you know furnaces and boilers and hot water heat that's all coming from heating with natural gas and transportation is all from gasoline and diesel and those are typically you know capital investments in in a in a business kind of sense these are things that you just don't stop doing to today and then you have something new tomorrow you're talking about spending five ten you know and more thousand dollars to to change and these are things that people just don't change on a dime so we really have um a huge challenge in front of us and i think we need to do everything we can to help osi and to work with our fellow residents and just one last comment and that is um it's the area under the curb that's important so it's not like we can go at one percent per year for you know another four five six seven years and then reduce our emissions dramatically in the last couple of years um we will have admitted far too much um and that will impact them you know global warming um and yeah and we all know the consequences of that so thank you thea okay so um thanks john dia so uh let's move on to the next uh on the agenda new business um first thing up is uh chris graham um he submitted a proposal uh the seized proposal and the resolution for support of the of the seas proposal um i think uh uh chris you have the floor thank you um most of you should have a copy um we the your natural features committee has been working on this proposal since last winter the idea is to try to enlist university of michigan master students to help us with really two things that are pretty important first to use existing remote imagery technology and software to greatly upgrade our woodlands map our natural features woodlands map layer the information in that layer was developed in 1990 through a contract with a vendor for the city it was an extremely rough compared to today's standards uh set of information set of data in literally any sort of wooded area across the city whether it was a buckthorn ticket or a plantation or a neighborhood with a lot of trees or a native forest fragment the data we have doesn't distinguish much less does it distinguish within native forest fragments some of which are quite large communities plant communities jason talent is a gis person and already is doing some of this work as those on the committee know with university and he's recruited two or three really very capable people who are also working in this area to help with the team um the second part of the proposal is is again responding to the natural features master plan and the set of recommendations the natural features committee made a couple years ago about wither and how where are we at with natural features to begin to develop an outreach program the idea being that neighborhood by neighborhood we could reach out across the city and teach people about the natural resources in their neighborhood about their water resources about how to better retain water on the land about how to have and operate and do a much more sustainable landscape probably one of the foremost pieces of that puzzle is a whole lot less turf grass in any case we would we are intending to ask the students if they will help us develop graphic materials and um i don't know they'll have to design it themselves but how best to reach out and and um and educate people and get them get them excited about their neighborhood and what can be done with it to make it more sustainable the thanks to anne bannister the council approved a similar resolution earlier this week and we're hoping that you'll join them and and give us the strength of city resolve to take to the students and say we really do want to do this so i would move the resolution and i hope someone will second it and i hope you'll approve it second is there a second from bob and even one first um all right so um um the floor is open for discussion um does anybody wish to make a comment um john callaway i uh support the concept definitely just a question on process if council has already supported this do we really need to pass a resolution no but i'd appreciate it it's just one more um piece of strength showing to the students at the university it's this is a competitive process and we're hoping to get them interested so the more the more we are interested the more they will be okay um yet to me it's a an important goal that we have an updated online natural features and inventory so um i don't know how this um i'm assuming this incorporates all the city parks as well uh yes we have um though they haven't yet been included in the new natural features pages on the city's website um the parks have over the years uh distinguished plant communities within them and of course probably the greatest number and highest quality of the native forest fragments are on our parts so they're very important they're very important as models for what can be done elsewhere in the city to the extent we can encourage people to restore um some facsimile of our native force okay and um is there some connection with the university's property in the ann arbor public schools as well all property in the city will be part of this project okay all right that's wonderful so we have uh any uh anybody else wish to make a comment i don't see any hands so uh there's already been a motion to uh to vote on this so all who approve of this um resolution please raise your hand or say hi hi all opposed anybody opposed thank you passes unanimously chris wonderful good luck thank you i appreciate it a lot very excited yeah so the next item on the agenda is um as a resolution that's been submitted by rita mitchell um it's about uh uh fringe about the flood for development in the flood fringe um so rita uh you have the floor thank you um would you display the resolution now the draft resolution oh gosh i wasn't ready to do that um i think well galen i've got it if i can share screen if you can do it and that's great yeah well if well i don't i i'm not authorized yeah she has to be allowed to galen could you so galen could you give um ann bannister permission to be the host okay and you've got your host as your host now so you can share your screen okay so while you're getting that up um i've looked at the two resolve clauses the first resolution is just to approve we didn't have a vote on on approving the um the proposed overlay um district so the first uh resolve clause speaks to that but there's a second one about development in the flood fringe area and um and i personally don't quite understand what um what is in the i understand the sentiment behind it very strongly but i don't understand how that might affect um what the city is legally uh permitted to do and what um and uh also keeping in mind that each individual project has to go through the planning commission and be voted on by city council presumably i'm not sure personally um um if that second statement needs to be refined a bit or or what the impact is um actually on on the city's uh scope of uh scope of action so um all right let's open the floor for discussion may i give a little introduction please yeah yeah sure thank you um first off i want to say um thanks a lot to jerry for the presentation that he gave at our last meeting or last um formal meeting of of the commission um and the the goal of of creating this was to first off as you said to support the work that he's done with the floodplain overlay um that was presented to planning commission this week as i understand and it was passed he said also um and second of all to offer in the scope of the environmental commission's responsibilities to support the health and welfare of the community to offer a little more strength to the um overlay to allow um the ongoing existence of open spaces that are in flood fringe areas so according to my interpretation i hope that jerry will will join in and provide additional explanation as needed um the flood way would be set up to not allow any new construction there are many um structures currently in the floodways of ann arbor that are controlled by the city of ann arbor by as opposed to the state um and those are the areas that are in the less than two square mile um size of of the flood print flood plain in the city um and so if we allow our current um open spaces to remain as open spaces that will provide additional protection um from with respect to storm water management for uh just the general natural use of of the space in a flood plain um i'm not asking for any tearing down of structures i'm just saying it's a good idea for us to allow spaces to remain open and what i what the resolution um requests is for a additional um review and strengthening of the existing overlay as proposed um so that it would um prohibit new construction on properties that currently don't have structures on them um so that's very specific so that's that's really my presentation but my goal is really the health and safety um knowing that we have um the potential with climate change for greater intensity of flood events in the future so i'll stop there and open i hope for discussion did my screen share work um we it would um it needs to be scrolled if you can or could i ask have the commissioners had a chance to read the document as submitted i didn't there was no hyperlink in it um so when you click on yeah there was nothing associated with the agenda that i got i guess oh i'm so sorry um we i did identify that beforehand but this morning i thought it worked and it does possibly not in the documents that were circulated to commissioners but it is in the city's legistar um active i did not get into legislation i just i just um went with the the the pdf agenda that we had yeah okay that's disappointing got updated yeah with the hat link well let's see yeah i have it on my computer here so if i if you can allow me to i will post it i will share my screen hey guys it's actually josh uh galen had to stop step off because of some technical difficulties um but um i think ann could you uh you might actually have permission now to to change the host do you see if you go over to the participant side yes okay yep and then if you just make uh steve the host he should have access to it i'd just like to add that um i appreciate the consultation that i got from jerry hancock on on looking over this um and i did send it specifically to commissioner needham um who was certainly interested in looking at it in detail and i'm sorry i didn't we didn't have to have an exchange of discussion but okay let's see i still don't have oh here we go okay okay so here i have it on can everybody see that yes yep yes so rita you need to tell me where to move it to um well i think we should let the commission read it and give about 10 seconds or so of reading time at least and then scroll what's the status of the full uh amendments to the udc for this that jerry's working on where is it in the process now it was approved at planning commission tuesday night oh good it will be scheduled for uh city council at first reading uh november 16th and second reading december 21st wonderful well i think you could probably scroll now steve buddy okay to move yeah maybe you can move it up to show the last result thank you um in three in the fourth paragraph from the bottom and the fifth and third paragraph from the bottom right i would it caught me caught me trying to read this whereas federal department of housing urban pod prohibits use of funds for building in flood fringe areas i almost said okay that means buildings i would i would switch these two words building and construction in the next paragraph i put construction up here in that paragraph and buildings and then in the third paragraph in other words it would say whereas hud provides use of funds for construction in flood fringe areas because of risk to health and safety whereas avoiding new buildings and for french areas can support improved safety and stormwater management that sounds good to me okay rita can you take note of those i will do that i just got a notification from chip about an email chip do you want to kind of summarize what you just sent out so that we could um sure so this is um the email that i just sent out was sent to uh planning commission into city council by a group of 35 west side property owners who all own houses that are either in the fringe or in the flood plain they have a number of concerns with the ordinance as it's currently written as it limits their ability uh to rebuild in the event of disasters i think these are important considerations and the fact that these houses uh have been there for years and years and years many of them have historic designations or in the old west side historic district all of that warrants consideration i would say at least from my perspective i wouldn't be comfortable voting on this language until that issue is resolved i i don't know if this was discussed the planning commission uh shannon but but uh if it was i would appreciate an update here i asked about the date of that email was yeah october 18.
uh motioned by mr lanzalata do i have a second seconded by ms barbara giovanni any questions or comments pertaining to yes ms noel my question is on 9 13 about the school security grant application sorry i did not have a chance to ask this earlier so if you can please explain that to me yeah sure um it was probably oh it started before the covet so it was sometime i guess in the winter um the state put out a school security grant that you could apply for there was two two parts to it the first part was you had to be compliant with alyssa's law which is the panic buttons in the schools which we we did do that we were compliant at the time anyway um so once you got that approval then you could apply for grant money to offset caught offset cost of panic buttons if you didn't have them or other pro other projects you did that are related to security or future projects that you are going to do in our case we had done all the vestibules over the last couple of years and that will qualify for the grant money and we'll get reimbursed uh some of that money [Music] through this grant once it's applied for and uh approved by the state we'll get back back approximately 242 thousand dollars wonderful thank you you're welcome miss everhart yes so i just wanted to talk about 9.5 as i did last month i want to just do a shout out to uh seems like over the last couple months we've had a lot of generous donations to the school district uh in different fashion than we had in the past so i just again we are surrounded as a town by the pandemic but people still find a way to um to do some things for the district so i don't the only thing is i don't know what so i want to thank lockheed martin local company for for giving us uh some money towards technology for the district i also want to thank the anonymous donor whoever they are uh collectively or maybe one individual for that children's handmade mask that's a very creative um generous donation and if somebody could tell me i want to thank the anonymous donor for the access points but i don't know what that is thank you but what is it what oh very nice so thank you uh for that again thank you to the public for rallying around again also for the tables and chairs uh that you're still continuing to donate to the schools because we've been blessed with some really great weather so they've had the opportunity to be outside it's not not ideal we'd like them to be inside but this is a nice thing that the town is doing all different kinds of ways that they're getting them to the school so thank you thank other questions or comments all right let's move to a world cup case mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries um want to say uh congratulations on the appointment of the rice principal that is my home school so wish miss miss cam success at the rice community and um you know good luck and godspeed and enjoy it it's a great community thanks that's it i want to piggyback off of that i'm i'm very excited about this um this cam is a wonderful wonderful person she'll be a wonderful building principal i think she's a great addition to rice um and i also i am also very happy about the outcome of this as well um you know in the in the savings that we'll be making through this and the savings that we're making through this and the other one is through what we're about to prove for the transfer over into into vanzant um when i talked to this board in in early september i was talking about we need to make movement now these were the types of movements i was talking about uh seeing these kind of movements where we can start eliminating positions but not hurting people in the process try to try to lighten the blow before we get into into the real meat of this these are the things that i was referring to i'm very thankful that we were able to do this and i think it's important for us i think it's important for uh you know for this for the district and for um a step in the right direction of our financial health so thank you i appreciate that um mr p may i just um i think uh each board meeting up tonight i've shared a few thoughts about um our retirees and and tonight i'm gonna just change it up a little bit and just share a few thoughts about our a few people who are being affected by the the cuts that we made now so uh you know we talked a lot about impact of the cuts and uh so we're what we're talking tonight through the addendum and the personnel items is we've eliminated four positions okay a supervisor position curriculum supervisor position which is a district administration position um a counselor position a media specialist position and a uh child study team position okay to gather those four positions um and mr rashinti correct me if i'm my math is wrong but i believe it's 486 000 in salaries and benefits okay 486 000 in salaries and benefits so that 5.8 as there is after this board meeting and and we approve it is really a 5.375 okay um still a mountain but a step okay um but each of those steps represents a lot of other steps a lot of other steps you know we spent the bulk of our administrative meeting with the principals on wednesday and there will be many many many more conversations to come talking through what that means in terms of what we do right because every every role in the district is part of a web um and uh you know so every every elimination like that leads to um additional the work is still there right and it leads to uh shifting it um other places and i'll just give you just one little concrete example is like for for me for a little me so i'll be picking up observations um you know so miss cam does 100 observations in a year right um that's that's a lot of observations right it's almost one every other day or actually it's more than one every every school day um the benefit to me is i get to get to know better our non-tenured staff right first year third year staff and we get to work our way through those you know state required observations that's like one pixel and a much that's one one pixel out of a tremendous portrait of additional changes that go on um so i just wanted you know i wanted to share that i won't share that every time we make changes you know what i mean but just since it's like the first batch you know i felt like it's worth saying and just lastly um i sent an email to the rice community last night the staff and the parents about uh kelly cam being i mean this is an incredible thing so you know it's it's rare when you encounter somebody that i i still haven't met somebody who doesn't talk about her in superlatives you know and and i hardly met anybody like that you know and and from what in the short time i've seen i've worked with her here it's exactly true so you know it is very tough to find a great candidate for a principalship and to have one in house to have one here on our staff is an incredible asset i'm so glad that we can um you know uh take advantage of that for students in that way and then rosemary thaxton the counselor here red hall who's going to go to vanzant starting on january 1st to take over for jane raider who's retiring so rosemary my kids came through red hall i mean she is like that rare kind of unicorn type of person who has a wealth of experience but still has that spark of enthusiasm for all that she does and she will be you know just a absolute spark plug at vansant next to already a spark plug of mr de blasio i can't even wait to see what what two of them come up with together but um i i really feel like that's a fantastic um step for that school i thank uh miss thaxton from the bottom of my heart for um you know her openness to this uh next chapter in her career and and also i i'm very thankful to the the des counselor and the green hall counselor who will pick up the the load for her uh going to uh vanzant you know so um again that's just just a i won't do this every time make changes but i just since this is the first batch i wanted to kind of speak a little bit to that yes ms barbara giovanni i just want to commend the administration for doing what you did by choosing kelly kim for the principal wonderful person i know her she's fantastic and you're eliminating a supervisory job but you're also we're not having to pay for a substitute to come in and fill in till june and i think that's wonderful and for the jobs that you aren't uh filling i say kudos because as everyone can see we're really trying hard and when there are retirements if we can get away without filling them then we are trying to do that and i just want to wish everyone who's retiring uh the best of luck you're gonna love it thank you thank you ms barbara giovanni i got a long way to go any uh any any questions or comments [Laughter] all right let's go to a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzy cara yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries okay we're moving to item 11 which is policy i need a motion to prove items 11 1 through 11 3.
um they're looking for phase three right now yeah and i think um i mean i don't know i feel like there's a few things that maybe we can give them back right now absolutely and maybe we go pre-code it after the new year right um but we need to get as close back to and we with our insurance we did with the masks there's there's certain things that we just can't change at this point with where we're at but surprisingly the students at least what i'm seeing is they're they're dealing with it it's it's a mask you know that's not as big a deal yeah i thought it was going to be worse it's really not that big of an issue um and and i got to give credit to the staff for sanitizing and keeping up on that and people are doing their ppe they're taking care of them they're a little more concerned they're taking care of what they're a little more concerned with i know mr eastman up at fox creek said he's really impressed with the kids out there he thought it was going to be a little more troublesome too and and even the littles you know uh we our our four-year-olds do not have to wear masks by you know by the declaration or by the uh executive order uh but they're doing it too and and it's pretty amazing actually how well kids have adapted but that's also i i also credit that as one of the reasons that we're still at zero in our district for employees or students we're still at zero and that's not true elsewhere in the county i'd like to see us have the music classes like the band and the choir start being able to use their instruments and seeing as soon as possible the band at the high school has been playing this whole time they're spaced out they follow procedures and it hasn't been an issue so as soon as possible i'd like to see the the music department start getting back to playing would you be okay would you be okay with uh for orchestra that it that it just started the middle school because that's where he's working from right now and then move to having it at the junior high or at the junior high and not at the middle school so we're not taking things back and forth between those two sites every day i would rather see them at the middle school because don't they have abandoned choir teacher at the junior high no the junior high teacher is just band and chorus right right mister so they do have that yes so they have at least the orchestra stay at the middle school so they have a music option okay and i was just offering those options as a way of us phasing i would like to see it i mean high school hasn't had the problems i mean i would i mean i guess i would like to see teachers be able to have their kids back in their classrooms with them before and after school that could all be part of phase three right oh absolutely part of phase three phase two between now and christmas i mean we do have the after school programs right now but we're we've restricted those numbers to keep those groups small still phase three would let us open up after school and during them yeah but with phase three right i'm just thinking like between now and january though i know i wouldn't now but i mean i would like phase three right now but the teachers obviously are still apprehensive on you know on some campuses now there's a couple campuses they are right i mean i feel like we're about a 50 50 split and if it makes them more comfortable to stay phase two through this semester so we're gonna pick certain things i'll deal with it but i would i would like to have certain things back in i think they need to start having a little bit more recess i think they i mean there's no reason they can't take their cohort of pe outside to the playground they have been doing some uh they do go outside of their classrooms they do go outside their classrooms within cohorts um i don't the kids would probably not consider it recess because it's not like they're going on all the playground equipment and running around with all their friends but they do they are getting some activity and i mean with these with the tutoring and the in the flex fridays are we obviously we can't stay in cohorts that way the kids are intermingling within the site they are doing some and and everybody's being very cautious you know right and i don't i'm not saying don't be cautious right they are they're doing a great job don't be cautious no they're doing a great job and and even the foods class at both sites we're not letting them cook and have access to raw food but we are letting them do some things where they you know they're they're getting to taste some healthy foods and you know do some of that kind of thing but it's yeah they're they're making it work teachers have been incredibly uh ingenious uh in working within the restrictions and i mean i i i don't know what all restrictions we have going on 100 percent i mean each site's would you like to stay well i mean it's it's obviously spelt differently than my opinion i mean keep your masks on wash your hands i mean i don't know i've got kids with with low immune systems and asthma and respiratory and bronchial disease and we've all stayed safe by washing our hands and wearing masks and social distancing we still have to wash our hands right right i mean i'm not opposed to phase three but our teachers are nervous so we'll stay phase two and about the staying in the cohorts is that a phase three also where each classroom stays together uh no i don't remember no i don't recall that that's in phase three the cohorts are part of phase two okay and uh um no because when we send out the questionnaire i mean we're being very careful not to use the word survey anymore but when we send the questionnaire out to parents for second semester you know things are going to shake up some anyway particularly well it's going to depend on how many how many folks are you know going to bring their kids back to in person who are currently currently virtual so you know that there will be some shake up of classes and those kinds of things but much closer to to normal if you recall in the original version of the plan and even in the revised phase three we called near normal you know not exactly but close as close as we can make it and still maintain safety even with the um the phase three you're going to have you don't have a recess in the morning correct just am i great because of the busting they come in right before school starts we yeah we we would have to adjust that uh since we're going to pre-covid the thing is if we went to phase three right now because our busing is set up for kids to go come arrive and go straight to class right now we don't have the time before school for them to go to the cafeteria for breakfast but if you were to say start i don't really want to change that but we could leave that you could leave that as part of your phase three and say okay first grade you have your lunch recess together so you're expanding your cohorts with the first day the four first grade classroom and they're not mixing the grade levels you're just expanding your forward and that keeps it a little bit easier to control if you're worried about keeping chords i i yeah i do know what you're saying charlene the phase three would allow us though uh to accommodate the change that you all have already discussed about pre-covered breakfasts and lunches after the christmas it would give us between now and then not only time to get our classes set up which we're going to have to do anyway but it would allow us to get those bus bus times changed and and when we're talking about uh 60 routes uh you know that that will take us a little time but we can we will do that because of what you know because of the decision about breakfast to do that between now and pick a date between now and then we don't have that many school days you know we're at uh we're at 50 days in now i think 48 or 50 days in now so we're only talking about 30 days of school 25 days of school to the end of the semester so you know we would be making that change in transportation then anyway i mean i would like to see the kids be able to go out to recess right now not wait till january i'd like to see them get their music classes i would like to see you know teachers being able to take their own personal children back into their classrooms in the morning and afternoon with them i know my kids did a lot of work for me when i was in a classroom you do know that's a violation of policy even though we've been practicing it and i think we should continue to practice it and then maybe we need to look at the policy absolutely we can't keep our teachers as it is absolutely and gives them two hours after school to stay in to work because johnny and susie are in there with them absolutely it's policy can be changed yeah absolutely if that's the policy to change that yeah yeah recess music their own kids back in their class do you agree or do you have after school i agree with um teachers being able to have their own children inside their classroom before and after school i had connor at my son's book school with me when i was at desert valley and baby night to come and help me grade papers get stuff ready for the next day shirt and pencils i know shoot and they didn't have to go sit somewhere and be bored so yeah yeah and and there's no reason a policy can't be changed and if you want that policy on the next agenda we can do that get that done any other things we want change now recess music children in classroom before and after school so we're saying not until the next meeting they can't have their kids in there because that's what policy states if you're staying in phase two no if you're staying in phase two no it needs to stay the way it is especially since we have some kids coming from other schools the 21st century and they're intermingling and these kids are home with their parent anyways it's in some cases we have children coming from one school to another school at the end of the day well i'm not asking for that i'm asking if you work at that school and your kid is with you at that school and that okay so that's a designation if that's what you all want i would like to be able to see that happen it would make it i i'm just teachers need things to be made easier not harder sure right now but we can do that in our directive we don't need to do that in policy until we can change the policy absolutely we can do a directive and get that happening right now and then get it on the policy so that that's we can we can do that that can happen right now if that's what you want i just want it i'm just we just need to make things easier for them i mean they're stressed out i don't know what else we could do to make it easier but if having your kid with you at the end of the day makes it easier for you to grade papers and keep stuff up to date then so be it it's you can make that mark it sounds like we're setting you up for a motion here for these things anyway i got everything anything else that you guys want added to this uh for exceptions i mean in phase two are we not allowed to have a recess where they shoot hoops out there if they have a classroom basketball or oh i don't have it in front of me for me to look we're trying you know if they were going out well because it's it's a those are objects that have basketballs or things that have to be sanitized in phase two no additional playground equipment what do our recesses look like right now principles structured activities for my understanding scheduled times where the teachers take their class out a lot of times they're some are doing you know calisthenics some are doing like playing charades singing songs so every every teacher had the opportunity to sign up for time but it was convenient for them to get their kids out but the teachers are directing the actual activity and basically instructing they're not having five minutes ten minutes of supervision to unwind and take a deep breath and say okay you go play well i breathe for a minute and that is important it is important the break is so important two we were told that this was what was needed to be done and so to give the teachers forth option i mean if they aren't comfortable with free play then have your activity but if we say it's okay jeanne i think you open all kinds of doors if you say that teachers are going to have options whatever your plan is that you all approve we need to be able administratively to make that happen not just give everybody free rein to say oh i don't agree with that so i'm going to do something different first of all you know that's not how you can effectively run a school district of saying oh yeah we have policies and we have regulations and whatever but if you don't like them you don't have to follow them i didn't say that i stated that if they chose to continue to do a structured activity because that's what they were comfortable with then they would have that choice or they could take that five minutes to breathe in their 10 hour day and let the kids play okay so we're wanting to open recess now are they are they currently going in in cohorts in this section is that a scheduled time during the day that we take these two classes and they go outside or do they have to sign up for it they they were given a questionnaire to fill out to request the time that they wanted and then we put it within those the times that they asked for so that they could go out and some teachers chose not to take recess because before you'd have one teacher watched all the classes and the other three would get a break and now you watch your own class you don't get the break just saying it would be nice if the kids could play hopscotch or do something independently and the teacher could breathe and not have to plan a structured activity that's all i'm asking i i will be devil's advocate for somebody else right now um parents chose in-person or virtual based on the fact that we were doing phase two the the fallout of changing to phase three right now when they don't have the option of changing their minds about what we do you know about what they might want to do uh it could be problematic to rebuttal that when we made our motion we were originally talking about if the numbers didn't change because of labor day we were going back to full on so so they knew they knew this was coming now and we've gone a much slower approach to what it was because our numbers have actually continued to drop since then but when we originally talked about it we wanted to get back in now we wanted people to make their decisions we held off because of that and we wanted to see what those numbers are going to look from that holiday and actually dropped so the argument apparent to make to say well you're changing it on me we've actually been a whole lot slower than the change we originally planned on a whole lot slower and those kids that so those parents that are coming back in person they were under the understanding we might be going boom full bore when they came back but we went slower than that and that's why some parents chose to stay home so for us to make that change now and then then to say well you're going back a little too soon well no no no because we we're going much much slower than what we originally decided on okay and and and i and i that's why i said i was being devil's advocate what i would ask in that case if if if in fact the board decides to move to phase three right now or as soon as we can do it keeping in mind that you've already you've kind of already said what the meals are going to be like so that would indicate we're not going to change our bus schedule in the morning but then i would ask that the board would be very supportive when we stand firm with some of those parents who might want to make that change and say you're going to get to change it semester we're not going to change that we're not going to allow you to make changes right now because i think you know from the numbers all of our discussions about the virtual class sizes and the regular class sizes i think you understand that those could go crazy really fast unless we hold firm on on where kids are until the end of the semester and so i would hope you would support us in in saying no just stay where though you have to stay where you are through the semester now we're not making schedule changes i agree but too much thank you i i hear a collective breath of relief no i just don't feel a parent's going to change their mind based off of the kids can have free play versus a structured activity on the playground i we've got teachers with 25 30 kids no breaks lunch in the classroom breakfast in the classroom teach all day you might not get your break because our specials teachers are subbing we've got to give them back something because we're not going to have any teachers next year if we don't start making little changes to help them breathe we're going to have 10 more like we did tonight putting in a resignation because it's too much on them to keep doing it i think everybody wants to try to make this as easy on them as possible yeah and i'm not asking for phase three i mean i know you are and i would like it i honestly would like it but obviously based on the surveys the teachers are a little more conservative with it and i'll respect that and at semester i would like to see us at phase three 100 at phase three difficult because i'm not sure how the younger schools work to set up a a recess where kids just go play where first grade one of you suggested that where one grade level goes and then they can rotate that i don't know how it always works it's really hard for me to to say what is possible yeah historically a grade level goes to recess together the whole group goes together uh usually a couple of teachers depending on how big the grade level is if there are four t four classrooms at the grade level it's probably two teachers doing duty or a teacher in a classroom aid doing duty uh and and so they have duty for a week and then next week it was it's another teacher's duty so it rotates and and you know they everybody gets to everybody gets some time off and at some point but not necessarily all week the same week since our numbers since our bullhead city elementary school district numbers are zero we can certainly work on something that's uh a little different for cohorts and getting kids out there we could work on a plan and we could do that fairly quickly you know we could i can meet with principals next week and we can because that's who it affects the most is the elementary but it also affects middle school because they they have some recess time as well maybe we can meet in the middle with the recess as far as keeping the classrooms in their cohorts but allowing them recess on the playground or with the sports equipment that way they're still staying in their cohorts through through the semester and then second semester we can open it up for grade level and i wasn't even asking to change the schedule i just thought if they could free play instead of guided calisthenics you know keep it i mean that's all i was asking for that would be that they would be able to do what they want to do at recess instead of a guided activity so even if it's even if it stays in cohorts yeah i didn't even ask for cohorts i know that's easy no all i seriously was asking for was follow your same schedule but the teacher doesn't have to direct the activity they just need to supervise what they're doing that's all i was asking for some some measure of break yeah so they can breathe instead of saying okay let's do jumping jacks let's do this let's do that let's play this game they need to we can make that work and also the kids have that break time to not be following their teacher's instruction for sure this time too so if you're done learning for that moment you want to just sit there and just yes how many parents have gone to the bathroom just because they needed to go to the bathroom to get away i mean those teachers needed fingers yeah and that's that's an absolutely reasonable thing and i'm sorry i misunderstood what you meant genie because that's absolutely reasonable no i just think they should be able to have unstructured recess sure and if our numbers were you know if you change the schedule just unstructured sure and and if our numbers were different you know then my re you know my response would be different but we've managed knock on wood i mean truly truly are fortunate um we may be the only we may be the only district in the county is that still at zero so allowing playground and playground equipment yes unstructured and students can wash their hands after they play with the equipment and the equipment like don't expect to sanitize the monkey bars sanitize a hulu or a spray down well we'll just have to figure out who does that because you don't want if we're staying in cohorts which is fine if we're using basketballs and hula hoops and whatever we've got to figure out but here's the easy solution to that this class has its own equipment that they take to recess with them and the next class has its own equipment that take yes so we can make that happen well we do but here's the bad news since you brought that up corey i'm actually very glad you brought it up jen attended the most recent esg workshop yesterday remember i told you using their calculator their estimator that it looked like we would have 2.4 million and i also told you that they had last week decided that the first 500 per student you know they would just consider whatever we did as as good jen says that in the meeting yesterday they said to only expect the first 500 per student that cuts our 2.4 million to just over one million so uh so what's the difference between that in our cares act now nothing well both of these funds are from cares act the essers essers was is the one that we can spend through next september uh and it was it was it's 1.4 million i think one for 1.4 million and right now a lot of things because we've already been receiving that money we've we've been spending it and we would journal over into the esg but we were and lord knows jen and i haven't spent 2.4 million because we were pretty skeptical about that to begin with but to have that cut by more than 50 percent doesn't quite give us the leeway that we thought we were going to have so do we have some funds from cares for that for these things yes we do if they're available i mean things are available so just today these a bunch of the school supplies that we ordered the first of august just arrived today because of course everybody in the world has been hitting school supply things the good news is it's here we're getting it out to schools uh it's duplicates of things that have been sent out already but we wanted to be sure we had these things so i'm kind of glad you brought that up because we're really annoyed we're really annoyed that uh you know you're promised one thing and then so that document they had a sign about agreeing to all of these procedures to get this extra money now we're not getting the extra money well not as much as we thought if you remember at the bottom of that document yeah at the bottom of that exactly exactly it was eight pages this isn't the legislature i'm sorry corey this is i mean yeah okay i don't want to get political here but the last paragraph in that agreement said oh keep in mind you will only get as much money as we have available and they've given us a new set of fill in the blanks with all kinds of details to make it happen so um uh that's yeah okay i'll get off my soapbox here's our agenda yes yes um okay so let me just make sure i have this clear uh we're wanting to keep first semester meals the same uh second semester breakfast back to pre-covet unrestricted recess with equipment assigned to the cohorts right i had i had that for second semester all grade levels would be pre-covered whatever we were doing for lunch and breakfast would be pre-covered is that correct okay lunch and breakfast pre-covered unrest understood unstructured recess right this semester yes which phase which phase for this semester i mean i think that you can say phase two this semester generally yes so we're keeping phase two right now but we're making some exceptions okay and those exceptions are unstructured recess returning the music and choir programs back to in person [Music] does that mean at the k through four level the kids will go to music class just so there's clarification for them and that's a good clarification uh jen's kind of our expert on who's teaching where jen are our specialist teachers elementary are any of those uh having to teach virtual they're all they're the elements k-4 are all in person i mean can we send the kids back to specials if they're sanitizing wiping mr roy i mean i ask what may i ask for input from it for y'all i mean if if the teachers are wiping you down the tables in between i mean you can make it work um i think that some of the specialist teachers would would like to be able to be in their rooms because traveling library and traveling music and traveling art aren't the easiest things to do yeah um i don't know my concern is that they can't share supplies it's not about just wiping down the tables like in the art room if they can't use the ground the pencils the markers scissors if you can't mix those between cohorts that would make it very limited on what those teeth like the art teacher these people do what are they doing for supplies they're they're using their own supplies the teachers can get a little bit of prep time in i don't know so art stays in the cohorts in the cohorts music library and pe could be back in the schedule music library pe am i missing anything those are the three of the four okay so we are good on that and then the last one is a directive too that's what makes it easy for the teachers yeah do you want to open it up for the schools to make that choice like yeah i understand what you're saying brandy but you and i know that just is going to complicate things and a direction to allow teachers children back in their classroom before and after school if they're attending that school um yes and and that's what you said before um could i uh this just occurred to me uh are our teachers who teach virtually we've not been allowing anybody else to come into their into their virtual rooms they shouldn't have a child on campus if they're exactly right exactly they shouldn't but i just i wanted to clarify that because you know do we want kids of virtual teachers to be able to come to that campus that could potentially be an issue for transportation but it also it could be all kinds of issues so i just want clarification on that how you want that to be i'm just thinking of the teachers their children are not currently there i would and we have preschoolers on that campus if i'm making up a name in case there's a miss jones out there if miss jones is teaching virtually on her campus and her child's in kindergarten on campus i think ms jones kindergartner should be able to be with her before and after school right if miss jones child isn't on the same campus with her well she's teaching virtually then no okay that's a good clarification thank you okay and i'm sorry miss jones anything else i'm missing we're in agreement well let me make the motion and then we'll see we still haven't well you have talked about but so i have and i just want to be clear here phase two with these modifications for the rest of this semester what about second semester i think let's address second semester when we get a little closer i mean i would have to say if everything is the way it is now we should start putting the wheels in motion for phase three okay however and the reason we the reason for you either to decide tonight or decide at your next meeting if there's a need to move that's a separate part of the agenda but the issue is we plan to send out the questionnaire to parents on the 16th of november and your regular and your regular meeting is is after that pardon me then we're planning on going back to normal second semester right i mean i would normal or phase three i know you want normal at least at least three yeah i would say as of right now we're looking at phase three for second semester we're looking at phase three all right thank you it's very clear okay so i will make a motion um that first stream first semester meals remain the same as they are currently being done second semester breakfast and lunch return to pre-covet we are going to maintain phase two for the remainder of the semester with plans for phase three second semester with the exceptions first semester of an unrestricted recess music library and pe returning back to classroom and a direction for children of teachers who have children on the same campus can be in their classroom before and after school and we want to change that inner policy for next week but a direction we can get first reading next meeting is anything in my motion did you say about the abandoned choir be being able to pay their instruments and sing at bullhead middle school yeah at the upper levels okay so added to that is banding choir to play their instruments and sing vocally yeah but keep them the way right now if i understood what you said earlier that we have a music teacher at fox creek that program continues we have two teachers at middle school and they both stay there was that what i understood i would agree that the music teachers stay on the campus throughout they get to sing and play and they get to go into their music rooms into their music room okay thank you that's pretty comprehensive no i think that's it okay i second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland hi brandi dubois hi charlie here thank you so you actually handled 3.5 3.4 and 3.5 in one one motion awesome efficient item four point one designation of bullhead city middle school and fox creek junior high sites for designated district wide gray five through eight special education programs dr stewart i know that's a long explanation but one of those workshops that i attended indicated that if possible you try to get the whole thing into the title if you can so you don't have to have a lot of attachments in this case we have we have students in need of some special programs but we do not have enough students at each campus to warrant a teacher for a specific program on campus at the elementaries we have a high needs classroom and it is at desert valley and it serves students from all three elementary schools in the case of middle school age students and junior high students we have right now two programs that there are not enough students to warrant both programs being on both campuses so we have one program on one campus and the other program on the other campus but that means then that those programs have students potentially have students five through eight in both of those programs this is just a technicality relative to the state paying us back or paying us our budget money uh the weighted money for those kids by designating that seventh and eighth grade students in this specific case can be on the middle school campus enrolled there and that fifth and sixth grade students can be enrolled at fox creek kind of a complicated situation we've done this for years and each time we do this uh or make a change in this then it has to come back to the board to get it authorized for us to tell the state department so i recommend you approve that any questions i i do have a question how would the determination be if we have a fifth and sixth grader if they go to fox creek versus seventh eighth going to the middle school what would determine which school they would go to it's which program it is charlene so so i'm going to give i'm going to give an example if if we have a program for students whose special ed classification is emotional disability then whichever campus has that classroom would have the students with that disability regardless of their age five through eight okay okay i'm using that as one example yes that makes sense so are these more of like a self-contained classroom where these things would be all day long and they're not most going out into their normal class well they yeah they and and uh yeah pretty much so uh but then there then if if a student and i'll use that same example if we had a program that's uh for uh emotionally disabled students one of the things that we would hope is that we're continuously evaluating the status of that student so at the point where that student might be able to function in with peers there'd be an iep meeting and the placement would change so the student might no longer be in that program and would no longer need to be there a student with multiple disabilities might be in another program and once again that would be iep driven and this is not new this is i mean we've done this for years it's just that right now we don't have those designations in place well the password it was we had the self-contained yes middle school which when they were both junior highs didn't really matter it didn't matter but now it does it isn't a junior right that's where the problem is right contained well even even when it was to junior high's corey uh all of the students in the self-contained special ed program were at bullhead yes there weren't any yeah right now that's what he's saying right yeah exactly exactly exactly it's not in junior high anymore so we'll have seventh and eighth graders that need to be in that self-contained class and that's why we need this designation yes it's not so much as what's the fox rate because it's a different player no that's changed yeah we don't have a self-contained up there yes we do we have one have yeah we have one and and the thing is that by us not saying in this motion or in this action we're not saying which program is where that allows the special ed department to determine where where best you know so if i'm going back to my example of the emotionally disabled students if most of the students and that needed to be in that program were fifth and sixth graders it would make real sense that we placed the program at the middle school and and vice versa so uh you know this still allows some flexibility for the special ed department to make some movement of programs based on the you know based on the population needs at that time any other questions okay then i move we approve item four point one motion certainly do all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland aye brandi dubois moved item 4.2 proposed bcesd logo update with variations uh kim would you put up the first yeah that one please okay so our uh our current logo just says bullhead city elementary okay and uh that presents some confusion because uh there are folks who interpret that as being a school not a district and um so i thought this might be a good time for us to be thinking about making it you know making it say what we really are especially as we're looking at um sometime during this year some possible redesign in our website and some of those things and and so james mcnutt helped develop the extension of the current logo it's just a revision of the current logo and then some um some other uh approaches to it that we might use in different in different situations so um uh can we show one of the okay so there might be a place where we don't have a whole lot of room but we still want to be identified and uh and then i don't remember which one it was that just that that's a longer version that might work at the top of the letterhead or something and uh was this the one i'm sorry i shouldn't be talking to the audience i i think this is the one that james was thinking that might might work on a yeah something something small and square or whatever you know a patch or a that kind of thing um and that's just another one so it's just some variations on bullhead city elementary school district so that uh it's clear that we're a district and not just the name of one school so we're looking to approve all of these or any of them i didn't like that last one [Laughter] i mean i'm personally not opposed to changing the logo but i am opposed to spending a lot of money on things to put our logo onto we would just do it as they come up no we're just doing it for things as they come up and it's primarily like for our letterhead you know our letterheads digital things yeah digital things you definitely don't want to throw out what we currently have because it doesn't match the new logo no if we've heard this new logo i don't want to get older no no no no no no no no no no no no we'll use what we have no we'll use what we have it's just and it's a transition thing it's not a it's not a throw things out and start over i'm okay if we take the last one off so did you want to make a motion i make a motion we approve the first four logos i'll second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland hi brandy boy all right future topics 5.1 do we have any future topics we got a lot of policies that we're maybe not aware of maybe we can take the next year or so and maybe at the workshop start going through our policies and seeing what we like and don't like okay um i actually had told the meet and confer group last year the committees because the the scope of their discussions is very narrow by policy and by law but i knew they had other issues that they wanted us to discuss and start considering some of which are policy issues and i had said to them you know okay you know let's do the meet and confer thing that's official and then i'll be happy to meet with you all any of you who want to meet as an advisory committee and then covet happen so it's my intent to start that again the people have been elected for meet and confer if they would still like to represent their sites on an advisory committee policy is a good place for them you know for us to start and get their input and then bring things to you so you know i already have a stack of policies that i know that we need to reconsider can we go in order though no no no we would spread it out but but you know we have some and i'll give you an example we still have in our policy uh corporal punishment this district has not used corporal punishment in over 20 years so it's it's it's not a good idea for us to have a policy that has been a forbidden practice so i think you could expect fairly soon that i would be bringing to you uh because i was really surprised when i saw it i thought what it's still there you know a recommendation that that be rescinded why don't we just start like you said from the beginning and we don't have to take into a big jump no let's just do like add to a workshop whatever we can do in 30 minutes yeah and unless unless of course we have other things you want to discuss then we can shorten that policy yeah so let's just get a few that we go into the next workshop discuss say okay looks good we're definitely going to want to check with asba make sure we're not changing things that can cause problems i would make sure that i could answer those questions for you do you want them to come from this committee or do you want us just to randomly do it or do you want to start from the beginning of the book because i will tell you that there are some items in section g which is in the middle that we need to address well we can start i say we start at the beginning and then if there's stuff we have to address okay okay let's jump those in there too say hey let's start here but we want to really get to this now okay i think we're okay with that right so we just yeah all right and uh i attended actually kim and i both attended yesterday uh an asba workshop you all got notification about it if you wanted to attend and i know you're all busy and working but we attended it that had to do with how to deal with policies it is now available on their website um and and so i could forward that link to you if you'd like to go through that before we actually start this process because it was and it's it was was it even an hour i don't think was it an hour it was an hour um but a pretty good review of how the process works and and how policies come to us from asba why some of them have the little c next to the letters and some don't some stuff like that that you know helps us all of us be better educated about how to deal with them i'll send those to you any other future topics i think that's a pretty big topic [Laughter] upcoming board events uh big one asba new board orientation if you haven't had a chance to attend the new board orientation i highly recommend it it is awesome training the information they give good news is it's virtual this year so um and three of you are already three are already signed up oh awesome brandi signed up charlene signed up and amanda is signed up you guys are awesome and if you haven't done it jd you might want to think about it it's virtual you don't have to go anywhere it's really good so think about it just let us know what were the virtual dates yeah this is november 2nd through the 4th no no no no i think it's december or december 11th yes oh okay there you go sorry vacation i'm on staycation nope i took off at work my sister's flying in okay did you have did you attend the uh legislative thing oh yeah i'll give an update on that craziness um that's up to you you're the board president uh the legislative thing we just had just to give you the board updates on that um yeah it was very interesting um you're not telling me to do it again it was really really long for the first hour and a half just trying to get everybody set up it was insane signal would drop and had to come down to the school and try it there it was it was a mess it was a mess um it was yeah uh to basically all the topics they sent to us that we went over with the the suggestions for new legislation and what they wanted the direction for aspa to go is really where it went um only twice i can recall that anybody voted against anything so it went really once they got all the kinks worked out they were going through the steps rather well um but it was painful sorry i brought it up i wanted to block that out sorry but yes um all the stuff they had sent us of the agenda of what asp has outlined for the steps they're going to take the priorities they're doing is really what the school boards were voting on and if anybody had any problems with it or concerns that's where they brought it up and like i said i can only think of two times that somebody just voted against there was no changes to it which was kind of nice but being virtual it took a long time everybody was having computer issues so okay 5.3 date time and location for future meetings we have scheduled right now november 19th 2020 at 5 30 pm does that date work anyone have a conflict with that date and time do we want to have a workshop at 5 30 to start on the um policies policies at 5 30 and then meeting at six ms diaz does that work for you ms diaz now you can make a decision without you does that work for the rest of you yep all right okay so we're going to set our date and time at uh november 19th 5 30 for workshop six o'clock for the meeting well at least it's regular schedule yeah we just not throwing or something appreciated and and i truly appreciate that you went ahead with that other stuff decisions because that makes it much smoother for us to continue to plan and to let parents know okay item 6.1 motion to adjourn i'll make a motion we adjourn i will second that all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland hi brandie dubois we are adjourned thank [Music] you so [Music] you
there you go and then i actually had to join the planning commission late on tuesday night because of parent-teacher conferences but jerry however was there during the whole discussion and so he might be in a better position to be able to summarize i do know that resident concerns were brought up and that jerry did summarize they had planning commission had asked him to have another public input meeting because um you know it takes time for people to kind of figure this out that it's going on and and they had a really robust first session but they they hosted a second one where they really got into some of the minutia i think of how to you know what where what they have the freedom to do and not um in terms of their homes and uh so i know that that that was certainly discussed but i don't know that we ended up actually changing anything jerry correct me if i'm wrong but it seemed like it went forward as it was but it is something i think though that is is very much still being kind of figured out by residents and i too feel like it would probably be good to let some of that settle a bit before um i'm ready to just kind of race forward with this and also just because we're kind of reading it on the fly here um um so i guess that's that's my that's my take on it but jerry i would appreciate any any um comments you have since you were there for the whole discussion and i was only there for probably the last 10 minutes yeah so the this particular home home owner group has provided comments at several points along the way and a couple weeks ago we had a workshop and we it was a two hour long workshop and i would say seventy percent of the conversation was uh addressing the questions and comments of that group and the overwhelming majority of the comments and questions are about current code not necessarily the code changes it's already required by code to elevate elevate properties when you do substantial improvements in the in the flood fringe um the the building code already has definitions for substantial improvement which we spent a lot of time going over so there's very little in the way of change in the proposed ordinance in the flood fringe from current code we are proposing to elevate one foot higher than what is currently required and then there are some there's one change in how we uh calculate substantial improvement we're putting a time frame on it over 10 years so that people don't um come in and piecemeal a project together to avoid the current regulations um so i'll be i'd be interested in seeing what the their concerns still are i haven't i haven't seen any um correspondence from that group since the workshop yeah this was sent to um the planning commission on that on the 18th in advance of their discussion uh on the 20th was held um quite a quite a few days before that correct jerry like that the um the second meeting that you had when was that it was two weeks ago tonight okay great all right and i would just like to point out that the second resolved in this that we're looking at tonight applies to areas that do not have construction so these are areas that are i'm thinking conceptualize them as properties that don't have construction on them right now as opposed to people who own houses that have you know that they live in that are in flood fringe areas right now so it's where no structures exist as of this date so when i talked with jerry he said there aren't that many but if we have them it seems to me it's a worthwhile thing to prepare to not add to the risk that could take place for anybody not just people who are eligible for hud support but for anybody i have a question about how to interpret or how maybe jerry how this would be interpreted this says it prohibits new construction on properties in the flood fringe area where no new structures exist the question that i have is what if there is a larger property with a um flood fringe and and floodway potentially also um that um let's say occupies 20 of the property my understanding is this would prohibit any new construction on the 80 percent of the property outside of the flood fringe as written it prohibits new construction on properties so if there's a property that's defined with a plot and there is flood fringe area um and there's no construction on that property um then the 80 percent um would not be able to be built on is that is that the i mean that's the way i i lead this i don't know how others read it and i don't know if that was the intent i can say that that was not my intent okay but if there's a way to write it in a way that that supports kind of the the outline that you've described um i would suggestions for sure well what if it's just prohibited construction i mean i think i might yeah okay i'll get to my second comment later what about prohibit new construction in flooded fringe areas where no structures exist as of this state isn't that what it says no on properties new flood fringe area so i would strike no prohibit new construction in flood fringe areas where no structures exist and i think that would cover the concern that i have that you could still develop in the hypothetical situation where there's a substantial portion of a property outside of a flood fringe area that that part of the property could still be developed that's that's a good suggestion uh if if staff is directed to revise the proposed ordinance we would only be regulating within the flood plain area so yeah yeah that seems clear yeah because all of the the studies that right now for the affordable housing initiative that's happening through jennifer hall's program they're looking at several properties that have flood fringe on them and so that means that you know none of those would be eligible for that yeah if the entire property works right right exactly and there's some you know there's some i have neighbors that have a corner of their property in flint fringe but the vast majority of it is out of it so i think it'd be really important to distinguish that there yeah and that that is how the the overlay district works you know it only applies when you're below the flood elevation um so regardless of how you end up writing writing this we wouldn't be applying floodplain regulation on areas outside of a floodplain i have a question also what jerry what is new construction if i have an existing building and i raise the building um is that new construction if i add um something off the back let's say hypothetically outside of the front fringe area or even just even if it is in the flood fringe if i add something um an elevated um and the sat back or the side or whatever is that new construction or is that a different um defined term like is renovation fall under new construction or is that exclusive uh an exclusive term how is that understood independent of the the proposed resolution here how when regulation works right um so obviously a brand new building would be new construction sure in addition would be new construction although in the ordinance to make sure that it's clear for example in the flood way we've specifically said no additions so that so that it's not interpreted or misinterpreted uh but i mentioned earlier there there's a concept in the building code that's related to flood plain development that's called substantial improvement so if you have an existing structure and anywhere in the floodplain and you're going to do a prod a project to it whether it be internal or putting an addition on it if the market value of the project or excuse me the if the project cost exceeds 50 percent of the market value of the existing structure then you treat the project as if it were a new building and you have to bring the old one up to code in other words elevate or flood profit um if you if the project falls below that threshold the the existing building does not have to be brought into compliance and that's because that's in the building michigan building code and communities are not allowed to change that we're not proposing any changes to that it's already a code or already in the building code thank you and jerry would you mind um just restating what you've said to other groups about historic buildings historic structures in the floodway and floodplain yes so within that that definition of substantial improvement there is an exemption for historic structures so in other words you can you can maintain and improve a historic structure in perpetuity because that because that threshold doesn't exist right now if the ordinance goes through you couldn't put an addition onto a historic structure because that's outside of his footprint and then the only thing that would uh cause someone to lose that exemption would be as if the building were destroyed to the point where the historic district commission no longer considered it a historic structure how many of the feelings in the floodway and flood fringe today are historic structures or as a percentage of the number of buildings that are there that aren't um so total there's about 490 structures in the flood plain i don't have the number right off top my head but i would guess that it's around 45 percent are in the historic district because uh allen creek and the fingers that go off to the west are where most of the buildings in the floodplain are and all of those or the majority of those fingers that go off to the west are in the historic district we also have some structures in the historic district at the lower reaches of traver creek they just have to be in the district even if the building itself isn't historic or does it have to be an historic building in the historic district so the way the building code is written it has to basically the structure has to be considered historic so so if it's a 1950s house in the historic in the old west side it wouldn't qualify in the same way as something that was built in the late 1800s in the old west side um i personally don't know the answer to that because that's that's more of a you know what how does our district look commission look at it i think you're correct no because it because they have a term of contributing or non-contributing right okay that's right and then right now jerry it's basically in the in the one percent in the what they call the hundred year right and the way it's written right now is for that and there's sort of room for the 0.2 or the 500 year as they say but it's right now the way you've got it written it's for the the one percent am i correct about that yeah yep yep regulations apply only to the one percent flood plain area where the proposal is buildings within that one percent were asking that they be elevated to the point two percent which is called the 500 year also um but not regulating that um horizontally there's comment in the email from from folks in the neighborhood out west about market value [Music] what's your assessment of what might happen to market values if if the proposed changes to the udc go ahead absolutely nothing so within the proposed ordinance we're providing a definition of market value that is basically what the city assessor uses as market value that is exactly how staff has been implementing the flood regulations since i've been at the city which has been the last 30 years so it's no change we just wanted to codify it to avoid um arguments with petitioners and give petitioners you know the transparency that for them to understand what we're going to be using um now if someone disagrees with the assessed value no so in the usually when people disagree with the assessed value of a property they want it to be lower so they can pay less taxes in the case of one point regulation they might want it to be higher so they can have a higher substantial improvement threshold if somebody wants to go to the city assessor and take uh you know on a private assessment that they've had done to our city assessor they can go there's a process that they have already established you can go in and you can have that conversation and once the city assessor agrees on a new number they would provide that to me we would use that in the building permit and then the assessor may change their taxes at some point as a result but um so that that process already exists so we like i was saying we we're just putting that in code to codify um current practice i think though that part of what they may be getting at which is not part of what the city what you're you're talking about is that if i'm i'm looking for a home and i want to see one in the old west side and i know that because i'm buying if i'm comparing two and one means that i can never put an addition on it or put a shed on it or or make the garage bigger or something like that versus another one that's higher and drier it's not the assessed value that you know that they're talking about in terms of the city it's more like the potential for future changes i think and and that probably would have a difference that like i know when you know people buying the historic district they kind of sign up for okay if i make any change i'm going to have to go through the historic district and there's a whole set of regulations around that and this would mean that there's kind of another set of regulations around that um so i i think that in terms of the the piece that you're talking about you're you're totally right but i think that there is you know just as is somebody who may be selling their house knowing that you can never add a mother-in-law suite or that you can never you know do that that does make a difference i think in terms of on what people um how people may perceive the value of a property so yeah same time i think you know what i see this is as the really promoting the safety and welfare of of people who live there and i think that's why i brought it as part of our purview as the environmental commission any other questions um so i have a change in two of the whereas clauses and a change in the second resolved clause to remove on properties um are there any other suggestions for changes i think i'd just like to i think i generally agree kind of with this but i feel like i just haven't really had time to because it wasn't kind of part of our agenda in terms of being able to review it on our own i would propose that we let it sit for one more time and and have time to be able to um just be able to kind of digest it a little bit more within this before voting on it i guess that's how i feel i feel a little like pressured on the fly to read it on the screen and figure it all out i totally understand that and i i'm i'm very sorry that it wasn't available to everyone i got it in my agenda announcement from galen two days ago when i tried when i opened that up it did not have a link in it my mine does not have a link in it it's not on the agenda it was put in uh it was an attachment it was a separate attachment maybe that's what i was doing well i don't know if other people that feel the same or not if people feel you know um prepared to vote on it or not i i would i would like one more one more whack at it i see i feel like things are still a little kind of even though planning commission passed what was there this is a little bit different i feel like things are still kind of bubbling um and personally i would like another i would another another take um but if other people are feeling totally comfortable with it um i guess that's john cut a few things but i feel like there's other things to kind of um potentially think through that would be my preference to the question i have we didn't have any public comment today and i would think this would be something that had just been well known and um that we would have pro pro and con comments i think that's an indication that maybe it wasn't recognized in the community um i mean i i'd be i'd be okay to vote but my preference would be to wait another month i'm okay with that um since at least there is an opportunity for us to act before council gets a solid vote on it i certainly appreciate comments from everyone and and jerry's review as well i have another question about the wording and that is um in the resolved clause rito do or jerry do we need to have the exact language defining the fred flings as the 0.2 or the 1 fringe area in order for this to carry the that that's already that's already defined in the proposed overlay district okay yep okay so that way my goal was to put the exact title of the of the overlay district in there and if i need to make corrections on that i certainly will do that okay okay okay um so i get the sense that uh we'll table this until december 3rd so do we have and we'll put it on the agenda for december 3rd and try to get engaged more community input and so is anybody do i hear a motion to table it no um second okay chris seconds it um all who uh agree to table this until december third raise your hand or speak out does that work with council's schedule jerry you the final vote is in december sometime if they don't delay if they don't delay it'll be december 21st okay so we have our yep so we'll have time on december i will send out what we've revised as of tonight as soon as possible to the commission and i'll work with galen to make certain that it gets included in our next agenda packet in the correct form yep thanks for your work on this rita yeah i appreciate it too and you might even think because i know that there's a very active group of people around this and chip i think it's his district or his ward you know and so you might even you know through him or something put it towards some of those folks too and see what they think about i just think it's better to try to engage people and get their reaction rather than just have them you know show up so because there are definitely people on the record that have been sending a lot of emails and things like that we've gotten a lot of them and there's actually quite a long treatise um from a group um i've read that yeah yeah right so i just think it would be great to um just have have multiple eyes on it see what they think about it i totally get your intent here i just want more time to digest and i feel like things are still really bubbling you know with it too so um well i think the the neighborhood group is ultimately you know poised to be supportive but i think you know they have to be able to work through some of the issues that they've brought up and have satisfactory resolution and and i think turning them into allies will be very useful and there's the allen creek um floodway group i mean they may want to speak for this and to give you know strong experience it would be good for us to hear um distinct voices on both sides um i mean i've been in i was in jerry's first presentation of this and there were quite a few people from that group that that attended that and spoke up and we haven't heard from any of them so i think it would just behoove us to make sure that we had proper on public content it sounds like it's not going to make a difference relative to council schedule so i think that's the best way to go my only concern about the council schedule thing is that if they can they make i don't think they can make amendments between november 16 and december 21st but maybe this wouldn't be an amendment they they can make amendments it just sends it back at first reading if the attorneys determine that the amendments are substantive changes so that potentially would delay it one month correct yeah so it's not like we're throwing a total monkey okay yep so chip who makes that judgment uh generally that's uh this is a land use regulation so i would think that kevin mcdonald would advise on on whether changes were substantive or not the city attorney's office yeah okay all righty okay so um let's move on to the next item on the agenda which is a preliminary preliminary discussion of 2021 goals um i think given the time i think i will uh like to postpone that to december third as well okay if everybody's agreed okay so um so the next item on the agenda then is the reports from committees um natural features working group we are meeting tomorrow the final um touches on the seas proposal will get done we're going to look a little bit at what the numbers might be as insofar as funding is concerned um as i said in the resolution the uh to hire a consultant to do these two pieces of work would be in the many many tens of thousands of dollars um if we can entice the u of m students to do it not totally for free i hope we can find some money for them we will get a better product for a fraction a small fraction of the cost and given the city's financial circumstances way sooner which would be wonderful uh um we are also as you know have a subcommittee of the national committee trying to make an amendment such as this floodplain one to better protect trees in the city as requested by council and resolution and we're many miles through that but not done yet but we'll talk with the committee about it tomorrow um there are some philosophical changes as well as some regulatory changes the most important one being um establishing a higher that is doubling the mitigation requirement for what we call heritage trees which um are large trees um of um of our landmark tree list and that itself we're revising to really include a much more diverse list with native trees having a prominent role but other trees which are important to many people having a role as well in the protection of trees across the city we're beginning to talk about soil compaction in projects which is so limiting in terms of how plants of any sort grow after a construction project occurs if compacted soils remain on a site we're getting close today i'll get a draft out to you um uh it's a slow process i think jerry can tell you about the one he he's working on now it's been five six seven eight nine years we aren't going to take that long but uh uh it is taking time okay um that's all i can remember about tomorrow sorry okay i'll be enough all right thanks chris thank you yeah the solid waste working group we don't have anything to report right now um let's see how about other commissions um shannon um things that are relevant to the planning heir to environmental commission um we looked at the floodplain piece like jerry had talked about and passed that um we looked at the capital improvements um uh new methodology uh which is also interesting um and and seeing how they are incorporating some of the new um sustainability goals into that and then i guess the other thing just especially relevant to what chris was just talking about is that uh actually in the last couple of months we've had two projects come before us where somebody had um a developer had landmark trees that they were supposed to protect and um in one case it was just they they just killed the tree because of soil compaction and things like that and and then in the other case they actually took a tree down that was kind of on the border the right-of-way and they felt like it was in in the sight distance of cars and they so we we had to kind of reapprove the the the plan with the mitigation that was required of that and and when they do that it's a 200 so normally with the landmark tree it's it's 50 of the diameter of the tree and you like if you have a 10 inch tree um then you have to mitigate for for five inches of it um uh with the when you when you make an oops or you you know knowingly violate something then it's 200 percent so it's it's a pretty it's a it's pretty big difference so um so we had you know they had to come back through site plan uh the site plan approval process which is no small thing either to have to do that and then they had to have a mitigation plan approved so i think it's apropos and what you all are thinking about too that you know these things happen um and and that they have to they have to come back through planning commission and then they have to plant way more trees and um you know for the one that came down in the right of way it was a great big oak and it really i think could have been solved by just doing some pruning of the branches um which is kind of tragic um but it's done so they had to come up with a mitigation plan for it um so anyway like i think just that's one of the one of the areas where um these commissions dovetail and uh so two in the last couple of months had come through and had had that happening so i just thought you all might be interested in that where was that one in the right of way um it was called the annex i think it was on nixon oh it was a big white oak that came down so sad okay well thanks shannon how about um um um parks mike oh mike apple you're muted we could just stop sharing the screen so that we can actually see each other again i'm not sure who's in screen sharing mode i can't remember anymore uh the things most relevant to environmental commission that we've discussed at parks have to do with uh people wanting to garden in parkland uh we had a group called the northside food forest recently uh just start planting trees on a fifth of an acre up in leslie park so most of our last meeting was discussing how we were going to move ahead with them uh and we uh the commission approved working with them for a conditional year to see how it works and also gave them a lot of feedback on the sorts of things that they might want to think about in terms of organizational structure a departure plan inclusivity with the rest of the community public meetings that will satisfy the entire community as opposed to just the people that they know that want to do this so that was uh what we've been talking about interestingly enough i recently heard through the grapevine that project grow is no longer allowing for perennial gardening so there used to be a few project grow plots that allowed for year-long leases and allowed people to grow garlic and horseradish and all these crops that take more than just a few months um so i would imagine that this is the sort of thing that we'll be seeing more over time uh is that there'll be more of a demand from residents to be able to have a place to be able to do longer term gardening in the parks we're going to have to figure out how to move ahead with that if we see more demand for that all of these things you know people are approaching us saying hey this meets the city's sustainability goals and we should just be able to do this um so there's a fair amount of head scratching that needs to happen in order to be able to let that happen and uh this northside food forest i think was a great shot across the bow for us to be able to start to think about this in a more holistic sense of how we might need to accommodate the needs of residents in order to be able to garden and that's the exciting stuff yeah well thanks mike what's up um chris you wanted to comment were they doing this in forced areas micro open recreation lands it was a turf grass area uh most of the staff agreed after they saw that it was probably the best place up there that they could have chosen for the site um you know some of the problems included uh you know the fact that they didn't have a public meeting before uh also the water that they had used from the project was coming from uh arrowwood and not all of the arrowwood residents are on board with the project so you know to them that was taking water from them to be able to water the project um so yeah there are there are certainly some issues that that that we're dealing with here um but like i say they're they have agreed to work very closely with park staff moving ahead and you know basically not do anything without talking to park staff first uh and we're gonna see how the year goes uh we're going to revisit it next november but before this in april we asked them to to come back with a pretty clear list of uh all these things that i mentioned before in terms of you know who who exactly we're dealing with and and and how we're going to go about communicating with them very interesting the sighting wasn't terrible and why is project grow not allowing perennial gardening anymore just the demand they want new people every year for it uh no i think it has to do with tidiness um and also uh you know project grows governance is based on uh the the the people who are actually doing the gardening so they have a they have a meeting every year that involves people that are uh participants in project grow um so you'd have to ask project grow about that um all i the only part of it that i've heard about is uh hey why aren't i allowed to perennial garden anymore i think part of the issue um may be that they do they tend to do um soil preparation all at once in one big area and working around plots that are perennial and not it makes it a lot more complicated for them rather than you know everybody's done in november and they can just plow the whole thing and turn it over and then be done with it so i know that that could be part of the issue i don't know if that's all of the issue i don't i have one out of math eye and i i haven't heard anything about this so maybe it's site by site it might be um i the annual board meeting project row board meeting is coming up soon so i'll send all the commissioners the information for that if they want to talk to them at the board meeting um i have a perennial plotting at uh county farm park and um this i have not heard anything about that uh these were complaints from greenview that i had heard is that the greenview perennial plots were getting shut down so maybe this is just a local thing and it's not across the the uh the entire project grow system okay so mike i want to just say i'm really glad to hear the what um the parks mission is doing in terms of asking for a plan from the group because of the experience that i had in another park that just had a spontaneous um set of trees planted um i think it's a really good way to deal with all those issues so good going yeah it's uh you know if i were looking to not give the staff additional work this wouldn't be the approach that i would take but uh staff was enthusiastic about being able to take it on um if they if they weren't i'm not quite sure what our resolution would have been uh but since staff was willing to really work with these folks moving ahead it it seemed like it was a good fit yeah it just for sure needs a plan so it sounds like that's what's going on it's great yeah yeah and thanks for your thanks for all the work you're doing in worcester park to take care of somebody else's trees rita okay how about energy john yes uh we in our last meeting had the same greenhouse gas inventory presentation we had a presentation uh the city's solarize program anybody that's interested in solarize i encourage you to go to lifestyle and take a look at that program it's basically residents reaching out to their networks and bringing those people all together right now via zoom and based on volume being able to get a discount on solar um been very successful in terms of increase in number of permits and kilowatts installed one concern is cost transparency and whether really the costs that are being provided are really that that competitive um but osi has indicated that they're going to look into that and then the last thing i would offer is that the eb readiness ordinance which will um address eb charging infrastructure in the city has its first reading um in front of council on november 16th and anybody that is interested in that is encouraged to provide public comment um while i have the floor i want to just raise one other question about the resolution we just considered that rita authored and that is reader if we could also look into whether or not new construction includes um a park pavilion for picnics tables for example or a playground or whatever i'm not sure we necessarily want to restrict those what i would call it not semi-permanent kinds of structures that would uh especially in in urban areas where we have a lot of our flood plain floodway issues um those kinds of parks we may want to have a playground or something like that and new construction generally that's it okay um let's see so let's move on to council but to my knowledge a couple meetings ago week the council did pass the solid waste resource management plan and that also cleared the way for um the downtown now to get their plans together for some reason they had to go in order like that and um i just wanted to add that on the um exciting new umc's program proposal to master students i hope we'll get a lot of students interested and that ties in with a comment we had at the natural features working group meeting that wouldn't it be wonderful if the the weber property on 2857 packard road is for rent and bob webber is trying to earn some money off of it while he works with um matt groskhoff and others on dividing the land and saving some of it and building on the other part of it and so meanwhile the weber property is for rent for only 1500 a month for the whole historic collins house which is uh three to four bedrooms one bathroom and i believe it was 1600 square feet and and so it was suggested that maybe the students that are working on our tree programs would like to live in amongst the trees and also you know rescue lots of lots of the acorns and it it's just so i'm just re mentioning it to you all that if if you know of good people to rent that property um and as we move into the seas program and talk to more students uh it is a very rustic house you know so it's um so that's just keep that in mind it would be great to have that new life great breathed into that property and maybe people would welcome all of the rest of us to come visit and lastly i believe this is my last official environmental commission meeting i've really enjoyed working with you guys these last three years and i'm still here i may even apply uh to be a regular uh resident at large on the commission and i would definitely with commissioner graham's permission i would like to continue on the natural features working group because i know that there's a few other regular citizens on on that group yeah happy to have you anna thank yeah you you anna it's been um and man yeah thanks everybody so so i would um follow up with one piece of information is i spoke to the u of m board of regents today during public comments uh about their um what i consider to be their rather inadequate regional participation as it regards both carbon neutrality and and covert their response covet 19.
uh do i have a motion motion by ms knoll seconded by mr lanzalata any questions or comments pertaining to the bylaws and policies and regulations that are written here just make note that uh as you can see they're all mandatory so okay all right um that being said let's go to a roll call please mrs barbara giovanni yes mrs everhart yes mr fizzakaro yes ms fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you all right at this point in time we're moving into committee reports if there's any chairs that wish to share any reports with us this would be the time to do so mr lanzalata i'd like to first thank uh jay levinson and the republican committee for allowing us to come in and when i say us i mean the community outreach committee here uh dr smith and myself went to their october meeting and it was just a way to explain to the community what is going on uh in in the eastern school district uh dr smith talked for a little while about you know what we're doing as far as um precautions for the the the covid uh virus he also he also talked about um you know our reentry plan how it's going and and just how great everything's been so far um and and and then finally we talked about the budget crisis that we're having just so everyone's uh you know it it it's out there um this month coming up we're uh supposed to go and visit the uh the the democratic committee um and then also the rotary club as well as the elks club and i would just like to throw it out there if there's any other organizations that would like that would like us to come and talk and speak on our behalf and just to to know what's going on in the school district we would love to you know love to come and hang out with you for the night just just shoot me an email i appreciate that mr lanzalota i think it's very important that uh you took the bull by the horns on this with the community outreach program and that your committee and dr smith are reaching out to several different groups i look forward to hearing more about this so i appreciate all the work you're doing thank you uh any other any other committee reports okay all right seeing none we're going to close that portion of the meeting let's uh now head over to old business i don't have anything on the dock for old business dr smith you're good okay all right gonna move past that we're gonna go to new business uh anybody uh have anything of new business seeing none we will close that portion of the meeting okay we're now getting into open public comment uh this is uh open public comment for any item of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person again same rules apply oh dear lord the same same rules apply first before we take any phone calls before we take any phone calls uh there are there all right there are uh there are two people that are in live public who uh will uh we wish to speak okay well give me one second i'll get right to you um a couple um there's a wireless mic right there right there all right a couple a couple things again caveats i want you to remember when you call please state your name and address uh also when you when you call um your if you are asking a question please lower your your volume of your streaming device again say your question hang up raise the volume again dr smith or whoever can answer that question will answer it for you uh we are strictly hitting this to three minutes per person only because we anticipate a large volume and also finally also finally this is meant for each person to have three minutes not calling continuously and add three minutes of time so please make your point in those three minutes uh we will do our best uh to listen to you and uh and respond if need and necessary uh first i would love to uh i would love to address uh the uh the audience live if you could please uh name an address hi my name is coreen halibura i live at 13 olympia drive i'm a paraprofessional at rice elementary school i had prepared a speech today i'm relieved to say that i don't have to read what i had written i would like to say that in the past our superintendent has had board meetings with us about budgets and things that were happening and i would hope that things would be transparent as they were in the past and not just kind of where the rug was pulled out from under us we had no idea this was coming i've been sitting in board meetings for the past 26 years as a parent as an employee and as a taxpayer and i know that prior to covid there was a 1.4 million dollar deficit and there's there's always been the end to anticipation that people were going to lose jobs and lose benefits and whatnot and a lot of things were were done so that didn't have to happen and i understand with covet and i understand that but we never had we were never blindsided before and i would hope joe as you had said that things are going to be nasty and i hope that they're not going to be nasty i hope that we can all work together as a community so that things aren't going to be nasty that we can work together on this and try to solve the problem and as my father always said you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar we are supposed to be examples to our children so let's set an example and going forward let's do things a little bit differently thank you thank you thank you mrs alberta uh just one one follow-up thought um so that the the typical budget process that you're talking about absolutely still in place so you know we have meetings in november and december with staff where we go to the schools as a cabinet to talk about the budget development and then it's presented preliminarily in january so that that still all stays in place and what made this you know unique and unexpected of course is that those remote learning wednesdays never existed before you know and hopefully after this year they will never exist again so thank you would you would you like to comment too or you oh okay i just wanted to make sure before i went to the phone calls thank you okay i'm sorry i know there's probably a caller waiting please go ahead mr summers hi my name is janet kimmenauer and i am an 8th grade language arts teacher at demacy and i'm also a former union president and i have worked with many many of you throughout the years um i have everything said but now i get to change it first of all i can't express enough i want to repeat what miss halibera said it's pretty much what i was going to say i think the biggest problem that the association and members had was again the way that the information was rolled out we have in the past always worked together the association in the administration the best that we could and those kinds of funding information ahead of time definitely softens the blow so dr smith thank you for your decision after all that um it restores a little bit of faith i believe for right now and some trust in the whole process and um also counselor donio thank you for um recognizing um our our um i don't know it's not a picket line but thank you for recognizing our cause and doing what you did at that time um and again we've been through so many of these things um i hear you mr fitzicaro we've been through this and where we've always done well is by sticking together and listening to one another and working together and i hope moving forward that we understand everybody has to make these deep cuts these hard decisions i think it's just the process in which we what we could really learn from is how that process will be just how that horrible news is going to be disseminated is going to be the key to helping raise morale and keeping the morale alive and again thank you again dr smith for that decision i know a lot of paras are going to be able to sleep a lot better tonight thank you i have no questions for you thank you good call you're on with the board good evening my name is karen ahern and i've been a secretary with eve stamp for 30 years i'm the proud second vice president of etea and proud to work in the school district i want to thank you for your support tonight for our professionals i had a fabulous speech put together but i'm going to cut it in half and just address them a point that i still feel important you continue to talk about a 5 million budget deficit when we analyze your school budget we found no such deficit but we did find the following in the 2021 budget you submitted to the state of new jersey there was no mention of a five million dollar budget you did not budget to cap nor take advantage of the ability to budget an increase in health benefits outside of the cap if the cost went above two percent when it comes to unanticipated surplus you had almost 1.2 million more than budgeted and to make matters worse for the 2021 school year you budgeted an additional 1.5 million in unanticipated surplus if we're losing money why are we budgeting more than the previous year moving on our total operating budget for 2021 increased by more than 2.1 million dollars if for short 5 million how then could we increase our operating budget by more than 2.1 million dollars the budgeted fund balance is almost double what was reported in 2020 or 2019-2020 so again why is this almost doubling if in fact we took the 1.2 million sitting in unanticipated surplus and added it to the budgeted fund balance we have an additional 4.9 million dollars i'm no mathematician but the 4.9 in these two accounts certainly doesn't sound like a 5 million deficit in my 30 years i've seen the good and the bad what we've gone through for the past few weeks has shown me the ugly i appreciate what you did tonight thank you for the support of our staff our powers and uh we look forward to working with you in in the future thanks again you guys thank you one uh just one one follow-up thought and mrs a hair and thank you for um the information you shared so it you're you're sort of the the hat the what i couldn't exactly hear you know i'm sure i'll get an email follow-up probably with all that laid out which i look forward to getting as soon as you as you're able but the how is interesting to me because the previous callers miss kimono kim and our and uh our you know miss halibura here who's in person both spoke about the how you know and the how of communication um i speak with our union leadership every friday and often other days and we meet you and and russ and debbie often in liaison meetings and the first time that all that information which i couldn't really make out is being shared isn't through the meetings that we have which are scheduled regularly and it's not through the friday conversations and the emails that we always have it's live in public comment in a very hard to hear format with nothing in writing that i can't even i couldn't even respond to so you know i i just i would i would encourage all of us to to continue to communicate via mechanisms that we that already exist and we know work or can work and so i look forward to that email and communication in our liaison meetings thank you let's go count down from a minute now go ahead call you're on with the board hi um my name is jocelyn cooper i just wanted to say a big thank you to dr smith i had him as a teacher when i was in high school and i've heard what he has done for the aids of the evesham township school district and i just wanted to say thank you so much and how much it means to me and my family thank you so proud of you okay director lots of responsibility you're doing amazing stuff keep it up hi this is russ bowles i'm a teacher at demacy and vice president of the eastern township education association um i'm sure everybody saw the support that we had outside today there was close to 200 people out there i just want to say thank you to those board members who stopped to discuss some things with some of our members they were pretty passionate about their calls i also want to say thank you to dr smith administration for continuing to are continuing our paris benefits throughout the year um one thing that i wanted to address was having the meeting in person i know there's a lot of other school districts surrounding school districts that have switched to that i know that there's still the 25 capacity and six foot social distancing in place uh i i do think that we could follow that in the dimension cafeteria uh we we submitted that request but it was denied by dr smith and mr fisa carroll we have to have it outside which i know is not the perfect situation for having a meeting but we're trying to do everything to get our members there in person so i do ask that maybe you take a look at that and and for the future i just hope that continuing on to our paraprofessionals i just hope that in june the board of education doesn't decide that they're going to take away the benefits from a group of people that the last superintendent grandfathered in under districts under the district's consolidation plan uh the current paraprofessionals that have benefits until retirement were grandfathered in by john scadelli in the board of education i don't care whether it was a written agreement or a verbal agreement it needs to be followed that's something that we've always done as the eastern township education association and the board of education you know and some of the current board of education members that are there know that this was the agreement that was made um as far as this whole remote learning wednesday i i've seen it in press releases i've seen it being told to many members that that it was our decision that it was the eta who switched to this remote learning that ended up cutting the paris benefits uh that's not the case you know we we did want remote learning uh we didn't want our powers to be cut their hours no surrounding district has done that you know we got an email asking us to do away with that so the powers can keep their benefits you know this doesn't get you know getting rid of remotely wednesdays and bringing the powers back doesn't fix the problem you know and i feel and we feel as an association that it's not not about the money when it came to that it was about putting two units in one association against each other so we we hope that that's not the case and and i hope that this is not the eve sham way because it hasn't been the exam way and if this is the way we're going to do things in the future you know it's it's a dark one for for our district so again thank you for the decision you made tonight we appreciate it and i hope you keep that in mind come june thank you thank you to just address the question about the in-person meetings and the meeting format uh i will be talking to the board president and superintendent as well as the board secretary about changing the format of your meetings based on some legal guidance and some other some changes that are going on your meetings have been conducted the way most other board meetings have been conducted but there is this transition towards uh changing the format and we're going to be trying to work something out so that hopefully by november we will have a different type of meeting format for you hi it's debbie van curen eastern township education association president first of all i want to thank the board of education members who stopped to speak to our parents that were so passionate in the parking lot and i do want to thank dr smith for working this out for the paris however this evening i want to address something that was mentioned earlier by mr bowles it keeps being said that this whole situation with the paris came as a result of etea requesting remote wednesdays this kind of makes me angry because we in fact did not come up with remote wednesdays if you remember all through the summer we were asking for a delayed in-person start date due to issues with air quality the eastern township school district decided to install ionizers but send students and staff back to the buildings without the completion of these units the question for dr smith this evening would be what is the completion date for those those ionizers because we are still not convinced that the air quality in our building is up to par and secondly the etea had asked for at least to begin with half days to limit the exposure in the schools and shorten the time students and staff would be in a mask we would never have dreamed that benefits would have been taken away from any of our members during this pandemic we were told both of these plans that were proposed were not options and then on july 28th dr smith told us that they had good news and that we would have remote wednesdays we were excited because we thought at least our custodians could be able to clean thoroughly and our teachers who were giving this undoubted undaunting task of teaching two or more cohorts at a time would be able to attempt and plan and keep their heads above water and all of our friday afternoon or friday morning chats dr smith mr bulls and my stuff we were all in agreement that this would definitely you know be something that we should keep because it would help our teachers this was a compromise and we were all in agreement about it um moving forward we are constantly hearing about this five million dollar loss um ete i did just this week and i apologize to dr smith that he's getting this information late uh but we reached out to greg yardy at njea and he was very knowledgeable about school budgets and he went over a lot of the numbers with us we would like to have a sit down because we find that there is a big discrepancy another thing with the teachers um the njdoe wrote back plan page 35 prioritize the health and emotional well-being of staff and students above all else by taking away the remote wednesdays we are not keeping the emotional welfare of our teachers why don't we just add 15 minutes each day to monday monday tuesday thursday and friday for our paras they would be able to keep their their uh benefits because they'd have enough hours and the teachers would be able to continue to have the remote wednesdays because honestly this is going to be a domino effect of a lot of other issues um so dr smith and mr shinty let us know when you would like to go over the budget with ecea we'd love to have mr you already join us because we definitely think there's some discrepancies in what we're being told and maybe it's not as bad as we think but please consider my other idea of adding 15 minutes to each of those four days so that we can keep our paris benefits and let the teachers keep the remote wednesdays which are keeping them afloat at this point thank you karen and just just again in the spirit of complete transparency and honesty i just i you and i spoke in person today and we texted and we emailed and so unless you got that information about what you're talking about which we haven't seen anything in writing to not share it in person with me via email or via text at any point today means that you must have received it during the meeting or maybe desire a larger stage to share something that's very mysterious but i'm very interested in of course because the goal is to make these cuts so absolutely we will be glad to meet together but i just think when we're talking about communication it's important that involves everybody you know and uh and and i just again um i look forward i i deeply appreciate all our communication i just i think it goes better when we can actually have a dialogue and not through a public comment session like this um i will take your idea about the peres with 15 minutes under consideration just please know that the other learning wednesdays i'm not saying they're all going to disappear in in the spring but i do think that we have months where we currently have four and by the time we get to the spring our teachers have worked their way and had the support of multiple room learning wednesdays throughout the fall and knowing the desperate need for more in-person instruction trying to strike the right balance between um supporting our students and supporting our teachers you know i i i'm listening i'll consider it but there is a really really strong value to more in-person instruction thank you hi this is tracy brown a teacher at marlton middle school this is my 19th year with the district um i'm so very happy and thankful that you've taken this under consideration to make sure the powers have the benefits and at the same breath i am so deeply disappointed that the agreed remote wednesday plan is now being revoked after winter break i can't even begin to tell you all of the details because um honestly it's probably bring me to tears i i don't think and i don't know that the board could even comprehend what's really going down at this point in the middle school i teach approximately 140 students i teach cohort a cohort b cohort r i currently some days have four children in front of me and 26 on a news i think we're up to 30 something percent full removed kids are dropping like flies when we talk about the benefits of having this in-person instruction um it's not working like this at the middle school i love it i wish we had more kids well right now we are chasing these remote children around we're trying to help them we want to help them kids are ghosting us on meats and that remote wednesday is so so crucial to be able to do one-on-one to be able to get in touch with parents families and figure this out and problem-solve together and i just can't fathom what our weeks are going to look like without so i beg you to please take into consideration the 15 minutes for the monday tuesday thursday friday and please do not touch these your movements thank you ms brown and just just so i i want to make sure because i couldn't tell um but i'm not saying they're all going away i'm saying a balance will be struck we have months where there are four remote learning wednesdays that is to that you know again trying to find the right balance between the needs of teachers and the needs of students that's what i'm talking about and i'm going to come back to something which i mentioned in my superintendent's comments which is and i'm actually still not hearing it it's so interesting i have yet to hear a single idea from etea that infects them that affects them and what we actually have before us is a small a morsel of opportunity with a few remote learning wednesdays to be converted to in-person learning days and i haven't heard one person call in from eta and actually accept that we have a lot of protest signs but i don't actually hear a single productive attestation that giving something back to kids in order to get something for our paraprofessionals is worthwhile and i would urge all of you we have a 5.4 now not 5.8 a 5.4 million dollar journey to get to by july 1st and i feel like the lord the longest journey is going to be the psychological one not the financial one it's going to be the journey in our minds to put team before self and to remember that every cinder block in every building in this entire town exists for kids we'll come back to this yeah hi my name is evan scott i live at williamsburg court i'm going to read a series of seven news headlines and we're going to then play a little game of which one does not belong okay headline one america's baby bust headline two generational race gap grows headline three baby bust threatens growth headline four low birth rates poses economic challenge headline five immigrants filling the void as residents flee new jersey by the tens of thousands headline six new jersey school enrollment levels off headline seven we need more babies seriously this is a problem okay so to provide the necessary context for these seven headlines this is from page six of the white hall demographic study and it's not just from the most recent white hall demographic study done in january of 2019 it's from also the previous demographic study as well now when i read those headlines to educators educational advocates as well as other journalists in the press they all say the same exact thing we are dipping our toes into racist and xenophobic tropes and language that would be inappropriate for a school demographic study so i think that this would mean that we need to have a much larger conversation about how this kind of language which also only appears in our demographic study whitehall has done many demographic studies and that language is only in ours so the first question and to start off the conversation is why is that language in a school demographic study and should we be rewarding whitehall with further contracts in the future i dare say that when you read that in the context of a school enrollment demographic study the headline of immigrants filling the void as residents flee new jersey by the tens of thousands sticks out like a huge sore thumb now for the board members what we as their constituents are looking for was this due to ignorance or a lack of due diligence i think we need to reevaluate the documents that we have and that our public faces thank you hello my name is jeannie guida my address is 9 john quill place in marlton dr smith i am a paraprofessional at jaggard school and i think i speak for all the paras when i say there are truly no words to express our gratitude for your decision this means more to us than you will ever know and you have restored our faith in our evesham township district family it was the right decision for the paris and it was the right decision for the special education children of yvesham township i would also like to thank the board for any support you may have shared on our behalf thank you so much to all of you hi my name is erin guarini at 25 nottingham i had emailed a couple days ago dr smith and i'm sure that you're overwhelmed with emails but i was wondering if you could please address the survey that will be coming out for the all remote learners on the current all remote learners to potentially return the hybrid there seems to be a lot of confusion and possible rumors on the rumor mill that that offer to families that chose all remote and had the opportunity to return at the beginning of the second trimester is being retracted i was wondering if you could please um speak to that or if somebody on the board could please speak to that thank you i want to thank you for that question um and i'm sorry if uh that i've received a couple emails this week that in the run-up to the board meeting um i haven't gotten back to yet and clearly yours is one of them and i apologize for that um you did put the ball very well on the tee for me though with your questions so i'm going to take advantage of that for a second um in my email to all families tomorrow there will be an update on that process but essentially where we're at right now is at our administrative meeting on wednesday we worked on a survey form that we'll be sharing that with our all remote families and our families whose children are currently in a in k preschool or first grade where there's a four day per week in person instruction arrangement so that we can gather up all the data we need to strategically plan for essentially this this ongoing process of the pandemic learning that we're in so um so there'll be an update in my email tomorrow the forum is in the drafting stage and we hope to finalize it um this coming wednesday that was that was when we left the meeting it was like we got to get it done by this coming wednesday and we will so thank you go ahead carl you're on with the board hi my name is lawrence i live in woodview apartments i am a long time lifetime since i was two resident of marlton and um i have uh two suggestions since the superintendent keeps asking for suggestions on i'm not associated with the school district i my children went through the district that are no longer children and uh two suggestions i'm curious as to why the property of evan's school has not been sold that is prime real estate on route 73 and probably could bring in a pretty penny and the other suggestion is that maybe the superintendent who came in at a higher salary than mr scavelli and some of the top earners in the district take a pay cut and i'm just wondering if that's viable thank you carl what's that question so i'm gonna um i'll start with the evans um so evans actually brings in uh i want to say it's and i'm looking over at mr vicinity to make sure i'm getting sorry 800 000 in revenue each year roughly okay so um i'm ballparking that but he's nodding so 800 000 in revenue each year um so that i mean i don't even want to say that too loud because i don't want the people who you know it it's a nice it's it's certainly a nice um piece for us in in our in our portfolio of um miscellaneous revenue and um so selling that would end that miscellaneous revenue stream from the evans property uh the the question about salaries so um just so you know uh and i because i think you mentioned superintendent's salary i didn't pick out the exact wording but usually when people talk about superintendent salary they're talking about it being too high so my salary this year is actually less than i made last year as assistant superintendent and a neighboring district and i specifically asked for my salary this year to not be one dollar higher than the superintendent's salary last year and i did that when i was in the interview process months and months ago before i knew all the true numbers but i knew enough to know that we had a cataclysmic financial hurdle to climb ahead of us and the last thing i wanted was to not walk a little bit of talk in that way so um you know that that's uh i just want to share that superintendent's salaries they are higher uh than a lot then then salaries usually the highest salary in the district typically but it is i you know i tried to bring some some some moderation to that with um how i approached it so thank you go ahead call you're on with the board hi my name is amanda cerisky i'm a teacher at martin middle school um first i just want to thank dr smith and the board for their decision tonight i know the teachers in the paris are very appreciative that um the paris will maintain their benefits for the school year um but i wanted to loop back around to uh debbie vancuren's call and her original question um about the ionizers i know as a teacher the air quality in the buildings is very important to me um i do not take my mask off while i'm in the building i also work at the ecc program at mes next door um i do not take my mask off for the two hours i am there i don't take it off while i walk across the parking lot um to get across i don't take my mask off for a drink i eat lunch in my car so this is a very important issue to me as i know it is to a lot of my co-workers um my understanding was that it was supposed to take approximately 10 weeks for those products to get delivered and then whatever the installment time is so i know debbie asked about that um but that question wasn't answered so i would very much appreciate if we could all get an update on where we were with the process of those products getting delivered and being up installed in all of our buildings thank you thank you so much for circling back to that because um miss van keren did mention that and um so i do want to talk about that so and it makes me glad when i think back to um you know that all the conversations i want to say it was september 2nd this special board meeting to approve those to get the process started because we knew it was going to take a while and we also knew that these are in very high demand nationwide and the timeline was not going to be reliable so we did not want to start in any other way than in person because you know not contingent on the arrival of these uh devices because we don't control their production their transportation and the demand um the rooftop units are um going to arrive sooner than the classroom units and i'm looking over at mr shinto to see if um at this point i want to say the classroom units it's not determined yet exactly when we're going to get those but the rooftop units are coming in about three weeks um i'd have to check with the suppliers to get an actual uh update on the delivery times they they have been delayed because of what you had mentioned um the the number of orders that are coming into these companies they give you a an approximate date and then obviously then they start postponing them the the the nice thing knowing that you know wherever we are in the queue i'm glad we acted as as immediately as we did as i think back to that time i mean it was a pretty swift process um we called the board meeting um after as soon as we identified because we did a lot of research into because we're so much talk about ventilation testing and and whether to put the money into that but it doesn't actually leave us with the physical product and the ventilation we knew again from our uh engineer at the time was working the way it should but the ionizers give us permanent benefit for covid and every other um you know airborne particle allergy et cetera um so it's really you know so again for the long-term health of our district they're going to continue to be an asset for for all time to come but uh at this point um you know we're still waiting for a rival and um again uh just glad wherever we are in the queue we're ahead of all the districts that uh were watching what we were doing i'm just saying that okay so thank you uh and just we we did i mean when we approved this we knew this was going to happen like this was this was something that it was not a surprise to us we knew this was going to be delayed so this is just a follow-up question for the evans property 800 000 revenue what is what's the cost associated with that and the taxes that we pay so my question i guess is what is the net profit that the school district gets by holding on to that property as opposed to what it would sell for you we're just one call per callers we have a high volume of people who want to call and we want to make sure that everyone's heard okay so make sure that it's one call per caller thank you don't have those numbers with me tonight i'd have to pull those files i would like to come back that that second call the caller who just called the second time there uh there was something else she mentioned uh in her first call about um salaries in general for administration um say i am listening i want to come back to that right so um the uh in my email on friday last week to all etsd families i shared um a chart um which shows where we rank in terms of different um areas of spending right so um again just trying to i'm just trying to give an update every week to keep it on the front burner of all of our minds because this is the bigger challenge in the pandemic it's hard to imagine anything could be bigger than the pandemic but this is bigger this is bigger um and if you look at that chart it's interesting um so we are one of 74 k-8 districts that have more than 750 students right and you think only in new jersey right we have 600 school districts in new jersey 600 school districts 74 of them are k-8s with more than 750 kids out of all those 74 districts we are actually number one meaning like most cost efficient in terms of administrative costs okay so we have the most students per administrator the most staff per administrator um and we still found a way to you know make make a savings right because okay going back to miss cam is going to rise to become principal there um and we will not be replacing that curriculum supervisor position um but i just you know your your question i just wanted to give you get kind of if anybody didn't see that um in my email last friday please feel free to they're all they're all posted on our website by the way if you go they're listed in two spots you can go to our copa 19 reopening plan updates they're listed there or you could go to my superintendent's page on there and they're all listed there too um and thank you uh public comment i do want to allow uh we have someone else one other person who's live who wishes to speak so i just want to allow them to have that opportunity and i want to thank them for being so patient as we went through the phone calls so please state your name and address my name is susan beck i live at 548 justice drive and i just wanted to thank dr smith and the board for listening to us and on behalf of all powers i'd like to thank you for preserving our benefits thank you thank you we're going to be closing open public comment and we're moving into board announcements uh does any any board member have an announcement to make all right mr well i i i just i'm very happy tonight that the decision was made that um there are the benefits for the paraprofessionals will not be taken away this year and you know in two months i should say um it has been a rough couple of weeks and i have read before in school board guidance that serving on a school board is not for the faint of heart okay you guys can all agree a rough few weeks with emails particularly i hope you can sleep at night but i'm looking around this room i have veteran board members here who may be used to this and also educators across from me mr lanzalata who is active with the union but what happened here tonight was a disgrace okay i hear people calling in and saying you attract more bees with honey than vinegar i just want the public to know that we were prevented from pulling in i mean has this happened before in this town it was disgraceful and um if if there's somebody who doesn't like that i'm speaking out then so be it i can't sit quiet it was extremely uncalled for and very upsetting especially when it is apparent that um members were riled up um over this i just i'm just in shock i i'm in absolute shock over this and things are going to get tough down the road but let us not conduct ourselves in this manner i mean unless you guys think this is the way it's supposed to go and i'm not anti-union i i think unions are wonderful without them we all would not be afforded what we are afforded in our you know in corporate america i understand that but i mean this was just over the top that's all i have to say miss miss knowle um i i will i'll comment um and obviously i'm speaking as board president speaking as a resident and speaking as a member of the ldea okay so i i wear three very distinct different hats um no this this wasn't this wasn't normal um no it was wasn't wasn't normal um there there there are a couple of things that were a little different obviously um you know we we didn't allow public in here we've had meetings where the public's been in here and and and again i'm not speaking to a specific group of people i i'm not doing that but members of the public that you know have done things in meetings uh that that have you know it it questions your what you are as a board member and look let's let's be clear what our job here is board members we have to we have to do with clarity of thought all right and we have to think about a lot of different elements um when when i am outside of the board of education or i'm outside of being an elected official and i think about things maybe on a national level or state level and i don't comprehend them i have a tendency to get angry quicker i have a tendency to to fall into that what we would call mob mentality all right um with that being said you know i i do do you know i i do want to to just warn people in in a sort of way you know sometimes our fears and our passions do take over and and listen i i in 2009 uh as as as a teacher at uh taught at the time seneca high school when governor christie made his budget cuts uh we were all given an envelope and half of them were reduction of forced letters and half of them were contracts for the next year so i i i have gone through this i've been a paraprofessional i've i've been a teacher i've been through this entire gamut i i underst i understand power professionals who say i'm undervalued when i was in an emotionally disturbed class you know my first year and i'm barely able to survive i i get that um and i and i get the the teacher who worries about their their health care and their health benefits and and i understand that too and worry about their paycheck decreasing i i get that too but i just want people to know out there that look sometimes a tactic on paper may look good but when it's actually enacted it doesn't have the desired effect you may want on the people that you're trying to impact so tonight you know there you know the right to peaceably protest is is a right that should never be denied but we also should be very careful sometimes and i speak generally on this and how how we are that sometimes what we do may actually defeat the message we're trying to accomplish okay um well i could say that there were no allies the we have to build bridges the the board the board of education is is nine is or nine residents of eprom township we're nine residents of yeshum township uh in no way and i would be the first to admit this none of us are career politicians no matter how long we've served on this board we're not in the end of the day we're just people and i always thought the board of education if you took it in terms of baseball is like single a baseball like whereas like you know what goes on the federal level is the major leagues we're at the very bottom here okay we're the bottom rung of how government works all right and it's it's it's designed that way because we are within the town and what and what goes on but sometimes because we're just simply people and we don't have the ability to to disassociate like a senator does or congressman does or supreme court justice does we will take things to heart and sometimes in the wrong way i i would urge anybody that just be careful of your tactics it might have a negative effect on the message you're trying to do uh and and i'm saying that again as someone who is who's been through i i got i remember i'll tell you i'll tell you a quick story i'm so sorry if i'm if i'm prolonging this i remember we had an issue called that's a family it happened in 2007.
their president's commission on carbon neutrality which was expected to deliver recommendations to get to net zero emissions um by 2030 they were supposed to deliver those recommendations by the end of the semester that's now been delayed until february of 2021 uh i think that this body will will need to uh i think because most of the regents don't live in ann arbor they don't understand a what we're trying to do with the a20 plan and they are kept pretty insulated from that aspect of the university i think it will be important that that me as a citizen that and as a citizen that all of you as environmental commissioners be involved in speaking to the regents at their meetings in public session to try and keep their feet to the fire to make sure that you know these recommendations are are real that they're transformative uh and that they're working with what we're trying to do i think there's uh a lot of opportunity for us to have positive influence that way so i just wanted to to share that with everybody the regents meet what is it every other month you need to sign up in advance there are 15 public speaking slots that come at the end of their meeting uh but uh unlike ann arbor city council they run their meetings pretty efficiently and are very scripted so you know it's generally not too much that you have to sit through before you get a chance to speak so i would encourage all of you to uh speak in that form i know many most of the people that speak before that that body are students or affiliated with the university directly i think it's useful for them to hear from alumni from community members from people who are working in this field especially when they are are not living up to uh their leaders and best mantra um chip don't two of the regions live in ann arbor i know mark bernstein does uh mark does ron ron wiser lives in uh in the township i believe or in barton hills one of those um you know but but the i i think as i was talking about the a20 plan there were an awful lot of just puzzled expressions they didn't know what that was so i had to spend more of my three minutes than i'd like to kind of bringing them up to speed but uh you know looking judging by their faces they also didn't understand that ann arbor public schools are limited to virtual instruction right now because we are unable to hit the infection threshold metrics to uh allow us to to go back to in-person instruction and the reason we're not able to hit those numbers is because they made the decision to have in-person undergraduate classes without adequate testing and enforcement in place before those students came back and you know this was a predictable unfortunately a very predictable outcome to that but they have the ability to make the next semester virtual and and with the hope of getting our kids back into the classroom sometime during the 2021 school year okay duly noted and uh so thank you both um ann and chip for your service on the commission here i've been greatly appreciated it's been a pleasure we'd throw a party if we could so okay so let's move on to i know the uh people are anxious to listen to the debate probably so uh the chair has no report um right now um report from staff hi all i wasn't expecting to speak tonight but i'm just going to go ahead and do a really quick um kind of overview of some of the things that we've been working on steve could you uh make me host again i just wanted to kind of share my screen really quick [Music] so if you go to participants it should bring up kind of a list on the right-hand side and i'm actually logged in as galen to ensure there was continuity with zoom yep cool okay now you're the host all right thank you um so the one thing i wanted to share with you all and i will keep this brief um so for the energy commission one of the things that we've done and i'm not sure i talked to to galen about this but i'm not sure if he brought this up we wanted to make sure that there was a kind of continuity and you know just kind of transparency and collaboration between the office and what the office is doing and what the energy commission uh the work that they're doing so one of the things that i did with uh with our with the staff internally is create kind of this basically a summary and it kind of goes through all of the major projects that we're working on so energy benchmarking disclosure um you know this reform re 4m so we just did this kind of these couple of convenings on electrification heat pumps challenges solar eyes i know john mentioned that we had julie present last time so we kind of look at solarize and a few other kind of programs but you know one of the things that we're doing with the energy commission is that we have this uh basically posted on our agendas on a uh so every month that we meet so that way all the commissioners can kind of look at uh what staff are doing um and i have recommended uh that gail and i kind of shared this with him as well so i think that this might be something um that he puts on as well i mean there's everything from 10 000 tree initiatives so it's not only energy specific it's basically everything the staff is doing and then the second sec section here is actually public engagement updates and so that's actually addressing some of the uh public events and other events across the city that are that are happening so i won't take up much of your time but i did want to let you guys know that this is out there and i've talked to galen about it hopefully he'll put it up for you guys on your agenda as well so that's all i have okay well that's good um thanks josh yeah okay look forward to that in the future how often are you doing these and how are they made public yeah so they're uh monthly updates um so right before each of the the commission meetings basically i do for the energy commission side i do a call amongst all staff to give updates on on projects that they're working on and then we're we're actually putting it straight into the agenda so we're putting it as an attachment in the agenda so that way people can go ahead and take a look before before our meetings thank you okay thank you so um the next item up there is items for the next agenda i have the uh redis fringe development fringe flood fringe development ordinance would be on the agenda plus our housekeeping stuff that uh you know that comes up every year we should start that discussion on december 3rd um does anybody have any other suggestions for agenda items i have one um topic to put on the radar whether it's an agenda item or not um we had a commitment in the past from administrator lazarus to get quarterly solid waste updates um we got one a couple of months ago but if that still holds then we should be getting another one soon and we can decide whether or not that can be in written form or an agenda item i leave that up to you steve together with galen and eileen um or jenny yeah i'll contact eileen and see and see if that will happen okay yeah eileen is still out on the maternity leave so that's slowed up the uh city staff um involvement they're busy with the murph contract and collection contracts that are coming to you so um i'll do that um for the december meeting one other topic if i may um i'm wondering we touched on it a little bit when we had the report on the watershed and that is microplastics in the environment i'm wondering if that's something that we should deal with more broadly in a sense it strikes me as being something like greenhouse gases and global warming it's known among some people but not broadly understood by public at large and how pervasive they are and how they're getting into the environment in the food chain even plant uptake in formula and i'm wondering if that might be something that the environmental commission should be looking at and you know who and when but i'd like to put it on the radar um i'd hate to be you know 20 30 years from now and saying we knew this um you know a long time ago we probably knew it even 10 years ago and we didn't do anything about it and that's certainly what happened with global warming it really we didn't get serious about it until 10 years or so ago 10 20 at the most yeah yeah um i should have mentioned this probably with for the solid waste working group but yes this is uh this is a potential serious crisis that's um almost upon us um so um part of dealing with plastics has to be reducing and reusing them and not just recycling um so but we'll cover that in some detail at the next um solid waste meeting which we might have to bump until january until the january meeting you know given um given all the uh things we have on the agenda already for december 3rd but uh so um okay um [Music] so the next scheduled meeting is december 3rd my only question is is will it be online or we do we have to do it in person um do either of the council representatives here know what uh what legally might be possible on december 3rd as yet yeah the state has adopted you know the legislature passed and the governor signed the uh changes to the open meetings act that allow for electronic meetings to continue okay all right so we'll be electronic then on december 3rd so uh now we're reaching the second public commentary period for public comment um this is another opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call one eight 213-338-8477 or 206-337-9723 and enter meeting id 924 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press 9 star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and please be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established i'm not seeing anyone steve okay so this ends the uh public commentary period uh we have no callers so i declare this meeting adjourned on at 9 17.
my poor wife i was just starting we were just starting to date at that time it was like the first month we were dating and i i'm like complaining to her i'm like just this woman she's never gone she's gonna marry me she's never gonna marry me i'm complaining about board meetings and i remember that we were like we were talking about like how how crazy like stuff is right now um we were attracting national attention we were on fox news there were there were groups there were lgbt groups that were coming from california that were sending us emails and coming to our meetings and what ended up happening and again you know this is just stuff that happens and we have to always take a step back was that we were all getting these these blanketed emails like the same email that were just being sent over and over and over again by these particular groups except for mine went to my work email not my school my school board email so it went through the lenovo regional school district and um yeah they overloaded the server and and basically stopped the email system in latvia regional school district so sometimes sometimes yes things things like that do do happen um and you know what i just again like i i read it before like things have the potential to get ugly again um but you know dr smith you know we'll we'll better communicate if if that's a thing and um you know we will better communicate and we will keep working with you and doing everything that we can we will try to keep informing the public we'll try to keep informing uh you know the you know the the um the union uh but the same thing as dr dr smith says you have to work with us all right we will work with you to have to work with us and we just we all cannot get to that level again uh because in the end of the day and i will close with this is that no matter no matter all the stuff that we that that you do to try to convince us it's not we're at a point now where it's everything that i've been through has been about convincing us throughout my entire career but 5.4 million dollars cannot be convinced of anything it's like that old adage you know wear a mask don't wear a mask no it doesn't care covert doesn't care kova doesn't care about your politics covet doesn't care about about what you do who you spend time with covet 19 doesn't care 5.4 million dollars doesn't care either at the end of the day that's still going to be a thing no matter no matter how we go about each other how how aggressive we go at each other that will always be a thing and that 5.4 million dollars will not care about how we interact with each other it will always be just a solid reality and i think we all have to remember that in one way shape or form yes we can solve this problem together and i i felt today with some of the people i talked to that that can be a thing let's make it a thing miss fleming yes um same lines as miss noel and mr fisacarro i do believe dr smith has done um going above and beyond in terms of being transparent with the board expressing things to us emailing us back quickly getting us answers meeting with us and trying to extend an arm of transparency and communication it was disheartening for me to hear that he spoke to somebody today in person via text and via email whatever was discussed during that day apparently was not excuse me the um information that miss vampirin brought forth was not discussed with dr smith would have been the perfect time we kind of have a standard rule that we don't want to blindside anybody so i appreciate why staff maybe could say that they were blindsided i encourage all of you certainly speak to your leadership speak to all of us i don't think any of us in here are saying we are not going to work with you we want to work with you it is going to take all of us because at the end of the day if we don't have the school the children don't get educated no matter you know regardless of what happens i can appreciate like mr physakera said peaceful protest was a little uncomfortable to have to be have my car stopped and not to be able to drive forward but again glad to listen to people absolutely so please make your suggestions don't give them to just leadership speak with dr uh dr smith yourself um write those emails to us because if we're not all in the loop together the only people that are suffering here are little folks and that's the kids i also think i i believe i saw a couple children in the parking lot so i i think it's good to be able to again peacefully protest but please be in mind all of our children are watching whether they're little children 30 year old children 25 year old children they are all watching us so again i i am glad that um the paris will be able to keep their benefits i'm so thankful that they are calling in and let us letting us know that i appreciate that but again it is going to take a lot of work not just on the people or the teachers the entire community the entire community thank you anybody else at this point like a motion to adjourn motion by miss knowles second by miss fleming all in favor all right i'll see everyone in november [Music] hmm [Music] uh [Music] um [Music] ah hey [Music] hello [Music] do [Music] and then [Music] you
is okay well [Music] all right what's up foreign oh [Music] as we honor americans [Music] so [Music] um [Music] all right ladies and gentlemen get ready for some clifton football today's matchup is between montclair bulldogs and your clifton mustangs looks like the mustangs are getting the ball to start the game [Applause] and the mounties kick off the ball looks like it's returned by number one got a couple blocks up front and looks like he should be down at the 31-yard line first and ten for the mustangs and here comes the offense led by number 10 kyle vellis and the backfield number jacob maldonado looks like we got three by one [Music] sways the emotion fellows gets the ball goes back uh-oh he's going deep to bonaparte and it is intercepted by number 38. first play of the game interception by valus looks like montclair is going to get the ball at the 38 yard line let's go to them and here comes out your mustang's defense played by number 21 joshua hernandez [Applause] and there is a flag on the play [Music] looks like the penalty's on the mustangs [Music] referees discussing the play on the field call on the field [Applause] pass interference on the defense looks like a first down for montclair will be on the 48 large yard line well claire snaps the ball to number 24 it looks like about a four yard gain on the play [Music] before you had yard game by williams looks about second and six snap man in motion looks like a sweep to the left oh mustang sniff it out by number four nick burgess [Music] looks like it's gonna be about a third and seven [Applause] quarterback stamps looks like a pass oh a lot of pressure oh steps up in the pocket looks like number five has the first down and more and he will be out on the 25-yard line first down [Music] clifton defense should have had him in the backfield quarterback steps up makes a big gain first and ten montclair uh oh looks like a full start on the offense that'll send montclair about five yards back balls on the 30-yard line first and 15 for montclair [Music] [Applause] quarterback takes the snap oh he's looking deep oh double move looks like oh incomplete pass in the end zone second and 15 for montclair [Music] looks like five wide receivers for montclair quarterback snaps caught by number two taken down by the mustangs looks like we got multiple flags on the play oh [Applause] waiting for the flag on the play personal foul against the mustangs personal foul against montclair those penalties will offset we will [Music] repel [Music] time out montclair hey [Applause] hey [Applause] is [Applause] oh [Applause] all right ladies and gentlemen let's get back to football we've got about a third and 12 here empty set you have robinson alone himself in the backfield robinson takes the snap looks right delivers and it is caught tackled by tackle by feliciano first in goal here about first and about seven [Music] robinson gets under center robertson takes it on a naked skin the outside and will he get in no about a three-yard gain stopped about the three [Music] it's about on the 5-yard line [Applause] robinson under center robertson snaps and mustangs stop them at the four yard line good job by joshua hernandez on the play there [Music] all right mantis on the three yard line robinson stamps and looks like he's gonna take a naked and he's in for a touchdown [Music] [Applause] looks like the muddle muddle huddle ladies and gentlemen montclair ready to kick the extra point number 11 set to kick hold good snap good and it is good montclair is leading seven nothing oh [Applause] thank you [Music] looks like montclair is about to kick the ball off and it's a squibber oh [Music] here comes bonaparte bonaparte with the ball and looks like the must oh a couple key blacks and out of bounds at about the at about the 17 yard line and here come the mustangs on offense [Applause] [Music] fellas takes the snap penalty on the play we have off offsides on the mounties that'll be a five-yard penalty encroachment [Music] [Applause] in the backfield this snap hands it off to maldonado looks like maldonado is stopped for no game looks like the mustangs are in three by one fellas takes the snap i don't know if that was an incomplete pass or a fumble it looked like the ball oh it looks like the montclair scores a touchdown [Music] it is 13 nothing montclair early [Music] [Applause] looks like the manis are really pumped up another muddle huddle here and the touchdown stands montclair sets kick step good and looks like we got a penalty on the play looks like a full start on the mounties [Applause] all right we'll try the extra put one more time [Music] snap's good holds good kick is up and it is no no good no good on the extra point so it's a 13 nothing lead for the mounties real early in the game with about seven minutes and 32 seconds into the first quarter all right kick off five mounties another squibber taken by number 20 past the 30 yard line looks like some good field position for the mustangs at about the 33 yard line plays you know and the mounties are really pumped up mustang's gotta answer on this drive mustangs take over on about the 35-yard line liz jones about seven minutes and 20 seconds left in the first quarter [Applause] right fellas in the backfield with maldonado fellas takes the snap and looks like valas keeps it and looks like he had the first down looks like the mustangs are hurrying up dallas takes a snap gives it to maldonado and he might get a couple there looks like a second and seven second and eight fellas in the backfield with maldonado looks like encroachment on the defensive end lining up in the neutral zone that's going to be a five yard penalty coach for the mustangs coach for the nannies really upset free five [Music] looks like [Music] it's maldonado be about two yards short we'll have about a third and two mustangs take over with a 32.
looks like they're switching formations fellas and shotgun burgess in motion fellas to maldonado and he gets the first down [Applause] 44-yard line all right fellas and shotgun to the left maldonado fellas takes a snap to maldonado and it looks like a one-yard gain so it's going to be about second and nine about five minutes and five seconds left in the first quarter if you guys are joining late mounties take it for the first drive for a touchdown after an interception by fellas and then the mounties take a fumble recovery to the end zone here is fellas shotgun swayze in motion snaps fell steps back passes and that is caught by number 11 michael kristoff hurry up offense here maldonado gets the ball looks like he'll grind one out for maybe two or three about three yards [Music] mustangs break the huddle vela's shotgun to the right maldonado [Music] snap to maldonado oh get to crease there he goes looks like a first down by jacob maldonado mustangs are starting to move the ball mustangs break the huddle fell shotgun formation with maldonado to the left snap looks like fellas is going to pass to mounties adam and that is a loss of about four yards on the play [Music] is you got about second and 14 here fellow shotgun formation in the back takes the snap gives it to bonaparte brought apart stretching it out horse had a 10-yard game for bonaparte it will be about third and five [Music] in shotgun formation looks like we have a timeout montclair [Music] second and 14 here [Music] stretching it out [Music] all right ladies gentlemen back to football uh mustangs got about third and five for a first down this looks like four down territory ladies and gentlemen okay looks like velus is in shock formation maldonado to his left the snap given to maldonado and he is going to be short got about fourth and about two mustangs on the 13-yard line need about three or four for the first down wildcat formation looks like bonaparte gets the ball this is gonna be close i think he got it first down mustangs [Music] 13 goals [Music] looks like bonaparte wildcat formation will turn the corner and that's a mustang touchdown caleb what a touchdown [Applause] we got about one minute left in the first quarter mustangs touchdown what an impressive drive by the offense [Applause] to stop stephopolis for the kick snap good hold good kick up it is good 17 13 7.
montclair with the lead mustangs get a touchdown impressive drive by the mustangs [Music] touchdown [Music] all right mustangs getting ready to kick it off okay mustangs with the kickoff looks like a little plopper and down by number 37 we're about the 31 yard line and here comes the mounty offense manny start off at the 30-yard line [Music] looks like a power eye formation in the back moved looks like we have a false start on the left tackle that will bring the mounties back about five yards first and from the 25-yard line [Music] [Applause] manny's in the same formation robinson takes the snap hands it off and very nice gain there that's about a five yard gain ten-yard ten yard game excuse me it's gonna be about second and five robinson shotgun formation gets the ball and runs the same play the other way oh looks like we got a break there and great run by the man who's number 28 that will be a first down oh [Applause] [Music] and that's the end of the first quarter ladies and gentlemen it's mounties 13 and cliff your mustang mustangs oh [Music] all right ladies and gentlemen monty's back in the power eye he moved [Music] [Applause] should have been a five yard penalty there number two with about a seven yard gain [Music] i'm claire playing a little smash mouth football robinson takes the snap and he passes keeps it up there number four's wide open oh he just missed them right there ladies and gentlemen wow pass was intended for sullivan it's gonna be about a third and six all right looks like the man needs to get out of smash mouth football this looks like a pass here we got three by one robinson in the shotgun takes the snap and he's gonna run with it and looks like he got enough for the first down [Music] mounties on the 35-yard line and they are driving robinson looks like robinson takes nap high snap to 18 and that looks like about a four-yard game robinson back take snaps robinson takes the snap gives it off and looks like about a two yard gain to bring about third and two looks like montclair's turning up the offense robinson pushing forward looks like he tripped and he is short about fourth and two fourth and three [Music] injury on the play is [Applause] number all right looks like montclair is going to come out it is about fourth and three looks like smash mouth football looks like heavy set here [Applause] it is a first down by the mounties [Music] manny's get a first down there's about nine minutes and 34 seconds left in the second quarter robinson on first down takes the snap hands it off to number two and he is met by a lot of mustangs still it's about a three-yard game second about seven robinson scanning the field looks like a pass here a double move number four no looks like we got a flag on the play it's gonna look like past interference looks like first in 10 first and goal first and 10.
robinson takes the step high snap 28 looks like he's met and that's going to be a big loss so you've got a three yard loss on about the clifton mustangs 13 yard line looks like we have an injury on the field [Music] looks like first robinson he's got second and goal from about the 11 yard line [Music] please gentlemen it's a very physical game up front both sides both teams playing very physical today robinson under center robinson snaps out looks like we got a no gain on the play mustangs all over that got about third and 11. it's actually third and goal ladies gentlemen from the 11 yard line looks like we got a timeout by montclair oh i didn't want to do this all right looks like 2x2 [Music] timeout by the mustangs we got about seven minutes and 26 seconds in the second quarter [Music] everyone got about third and goal from the 11 yard line robinson back motion robinson gets the pass throws and it's way over his head looks like we got about a fourth down fourth and goal from the 11 yard line looks like montclair is sending in the field goal units number 11.