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2020-11-19 Alameda County, CA YouTube / CUSD Board of Education transcript source: youtube 11/18/2020 Board of Education Meeting · passage 1

to speak before any okay we are going to be going into closed session i'm going to call this meeting to order and my understanding is that we have someone who would like to speak to us prior to starting our closed session so is that going to be in person or by phone we received a speaker comment request from matthew christopherson and he said he would be in person i do not see any person in here we do have a phone number and i can call him now okay thank you because there's nothing on that hello is this matthew christopherson his reception was not very good no would you like me to try again i guess district we have you at the board meeting having submitted a comment for closed session i'm going to go ahead and put you on speaker okay okay um well what i want to talk to you guys talking about is um [Music] see what's going on with the uh okay this is um the the time to talk about that is actually during our meeting [Music] if you were if you were wanting to make a comment about um whether the schools are staying open or possibly you know closing or going back to online so we can i don't know what the list is of people who have signed up do we have a list i couldn't hear you at at all okay um we're having trouble hearing you too but why don't why don't you go ahead if we can find a way to get your uh what you're saying um a microphone to it so that we can hear you we'll go ahead and listen to that since uh it sounds like you're having even difficulty getting through here so okay um if i hold this up it doesn't eat better hang on all right let's see if i can hear a little bit better now i'm sorry about that okay you have um matthew you you have three minutes then to express yourself please uh go ahead um so my my my main concern was um you know what what's going to be the uh the boards or at least the uh the school district approach because i have a son that's on the autism spectrum special needs and i know with like most special needs kids they they have a hard time like tran you know but you know unless it's on a consistent basis um it kind of really messes with them like my son in general he would end up crying all the time just because you know he missed like that was that was just his damn you know he loves going to school and so like i i know that you know i maybe not every kid obviously not likes people that much but my son is definitely one of them that does i'm just kind of curious to see where that's going to go and what that'll look like for him so matthew are you a student as well what's that i'm sorry are you a student too hang on uh sorry i i can barely hear you there's like a really bad echo i was just asking if you were a student also no no no i'm i'm the father i'm the parent oh okay of one of your students yeah he goes to shasta he's in heidi lawson's class and you know i i know that like uh at one point in time with that kid like you mentioned school to him and he would sit there and just start falling his eyes out because he meant like he really legitimately missed school like he was around it you know for a lot of kids that may not be that the typical scenario but i know for a lot of kids that's also that you know their escape i'm just kind of curious to see like what's going to be the you know the school's call well well matthew we're going to be discussing that tonight and i'm sure we're going to have representatives from um different types of of classes and and whether there'd be people from the special education department uh or you know children with special needs so i'm sure that will be a part of our conversation too uh how that will be impacting those students okay and then am i am i able to attend the uh the meeting tonight because i know that i i still got a speaker's card like you had mentioned but um i'd like to just kind of state a little bit of a case for something like that i have i kind of wrote something out that i would just like to the entire school board to just kind of hear and okay well we are allowing at this meeting um a limited number of people because of the covid situation so if you did want to come down to the center for the arts at pleasant valley high school and be in the audience when the time came up for us to have speakers from the public you certainly could raise your hand or come to the podium to speak thank you matthew thank you yeah yeah um it is it is in the information about the meeting that it is limited to the first 40 people that do come to the center so that's the only number that we can accommodate okay thank you we are going to go into our closed session right now okay i'm gonna call in what you know my spouse okay six okay yeah yeah all righty okay uh it's my clock here says six o'clock so we will begin the meeting i am going to call to order this meeting this is the regular meeting of the chico unified school district board of education we have been in closed session uh prior to this meeting but there is nothing to report out from that meeting if everyone would please stand we will say the flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you everyone for joining us from home and also we do have some people today in person we are going to begin with announcements if there are anybody who hasn't any announcements okay i am not seeing any at the moment uh from the audience are there any people who have announcements okay not seeing any all right we will move on then to items from the floor items from the floor is a part of our agenda where a speaker can come forward to speak about a topic which is not on the current agenda and the speaker is allowed three minutes and i actually have uh three people who are signed up to speak two people in person and one person via remote the first person if she is here is a misloser i believe is how you pronounce it if you would please come forward to the podium okay and i will warn you when you are close to having your time up thank you thank you can you hear me okay a little louder please good evening how about if i move this down good evening my name is kami loesser i'm a parent of an eighth grader at marsh junior high thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak i'm going to jump right in i recently sent each of you an email regarding my son lucas who was failing four classes and i thank you for those who responded my initial outreach was to his counselor and principal i was looking for resources to address my son's failing grades i was told there was no homework jam no saturday academy and the only thing that they could suggest was that i get a tutor for thirty dollars an hour after that i spent two days contacting charter schools and homeschooling options i was going to pull him out because the am pm schedule model is not working the failing grades and reduced attendance of hundreds of kids is proof however miraculously a week ago the credit recovery program was created and lucas started that this last monday here's what's great about it the credit recovery program is three hours in the morning and combined with his pm schedule lucas goes to school from 8 a.m to 3 p.m a full school day every day at least for now i am excited for him life feels normal again and i've seen the difference in his attitude his esteem his motivation and his grades in just three days school provides routine and normalcy and for some kids a safe place to be we need to create more normalcy for our kids the am pm schedule is hectic for kids and parents especially if both parents work and there's no grandparents or tutor or after-school resources to help on november 4th you eliminated the ab alternating full day schedule as an option for the spring semester please reconsider the routine and normalcy is key for cr kids success in the lcap your own survey showed that 70 of parents preferred the traditional full day model and even more recently the results from the school waiver survey showed that over 55 to 70 percent of parents would send their child to in-person learning that's your ground swell and where i come from it's a majority in addition 50 choose the a b full day schedule versus the am pm i'm almost done am pm schedule you said some parents asked you not to change things but 50 won't change so i am asking you to reconsider at a minimum the a b full day schedule as a spring semester instructional model thank you okay the next person uh okay for the um items from the floor is a i believe it's katie risinger that's correct thank you for pronouncing it right um sorry gosh i'm nervous when i speak in front of people i don't know i'm katie i just really want to take the time i i did write an email and i did get a response so i kind of understand where maybe you guys will answer back to me um i am katie rysinger i'm a mother of a very sweet nine-year-old he is known he's at hooker oak he is known by all of his friends he's very vivacious and friendly but he is struggling in school and he is in the two-hour in-person learning um and i'm just going to go ahead and read the email that i sent to you guys um because i'm going to get off topic here and i also want to thank you i know you guys didn't ask for this spotlight to be on you right we were supposed to be here discussing new schools and getting air conditioners for hooker oak not not people's lives and i want to thank you so much for your participation because it's hard year and having to make life or death decisions and i respect you for that um i just want to say so i write to you today as a mother to a nine-year-old that attends in-person learning at hook rook elementary school his name is henry cooper and he's a pretty special little dude he thrives on friendships and laughter something that has been hard to attain and retain this year he's in a vast sea among many other children in our community that need in-person learning to really be educated it's like being in a dark room with a flashlight lights are still not on it is not learning zoom learning is not learning now that he's experienced a couple of weeks back in the classroom he is struggling to catch up he is definitely a hands-on learner his teacher is doing an awesome job catching him up with the whole two hours she gets to do it in one major component of childhood education as you all know is play and boy does he miss that part of with his peers his best friend has had to go on anxiety medication at the young age of nine because of the erratic change of pace every couple of weeks in this school system as a mom and with a little bit of childhood education research i have done i know more than anything children need a foundation and a lot of consistency i played with the idea of yanking him out of public school and putting him in private school i even considered moving to a town where in-person learning would not be compromised we have been through a lot in butte county our children have been through a lot our own family has spent more than four months out of the last two years evacuated from our own home but even through that i never stopped the most important thing i know to be for him going to school and keeping consistent with his education making sure don't feel like education is an option and not a right for them is something we cannot toy around with i urge you to do your research i can provide articles if you would like on how europe is handling the need for education in their countries our country often forgets this is a worldwide epidemic and the world is struggling through the most hard heartbreaking decisions right now but most first well thank you very much katie the time has elapsed thank you okay and i just please urge you think about children and not your political views this is for our children why we are here tonight and they need an education and they need their schools thank you katie our next speaker can be contacted by the phone [Music] um me meet my friend because i don't want any leave it um hi everybody this is caitlin dolby calling in um i just i'm sorry it's really hard for us to understand what you're saying take into consideration from thanksgiving moving forward um with our school operations i can't hear her we're we're having difficulty it's sounding pretty garbled shall i shall i call back from my cell phone can you hear me no not really um can you understand me yeah yeah go ahead please are you can you hear me yes please go ahead okay um all right so i just wanted to address um first of all really quick um just the feedback i've been getting from a lot of staff members and staff members are also teachers um or sorry parents uh basically what a lot of um people are saying that are working at the school sites is that they're they're worried about safety and um the level of um safety precautions being taken um not being adequate and uh for at least at the secondary level with such um so many different changes of different groups throughout the day and this is something that we should really be thinking about as we uh consider making changes um between now and christmas break um so some comments i've gotten are for example um these are not my comments but um somebody mentions to me that they were told that during their staff meeting online enrollments are growing because families cannot necessarily accommodate the asmpn skip so you probably are going to need to look at that which i know it's an agenda item later on i'll be calling back in to talk a little bit more about those changes um somebody else told me we have parents sending quarantined kids to school parents are refusing to get kids tested three out of four [Music] let's say four out of five people in an office space on a campus our quarantine and um because somebody else that they work with has covered um and they can't have a list to prevent quarantined kids from coming to campus so even if kids are quarantined teachers are under the impression that there's not really a way to um make sure that they're not actually coming onto campus even if they're supposed to be quarantined um i was asked if i could ask if admin and the district office pushed for us to stay online from thanksgiving until winter break because there are so many kids talking about their traveling plans traveling on planes teachers are really really nervous about what's going to happen after thanksgiving break we are seeing now with the most up-to-date research even coming from the cdc that kids are transmitting the virus our staff members are very concerned about their own health and the health of their families and their students views so i guess the general theme here um is just that it doesn't seem to be adequate safety precautions being taken into account especially now that we're going back into the purple tier so um i'm going to be speaking a little bit more later about how how a lot of staff not everybody obviously there's a split in thank you for thank you for your comments um i understand that you will be speaking later you have put your name on the list for later and depending on how much time we devote to that agenda item we will be calling you back however it was very very difficult to hear you and to understand what you were saying so i'm not sure if that was because of the phone connection or i just i don't know we had a little difficulty with someone earlier so um we'll try to work that out where we we get the better connection um thank you okay we're going to move on um i just want to remind people that items from the floor is really to not do with anything on our calendar and we are going to be discussing um you know school and how school's been going so anyhow we're going to move right now on to the consent calendar oh i'm sorry negotiations jim do you have an update yes just a very brief update because we haven't met in a couple weeks but we're meeting tomorrow with cta our plan is to clean up the purple red and orange ammo used so that regardless of what decision is made by the board we're ready to go and we're basically fine-tuning those those animal use they're they're pretty much written it's just the details and then csca we meet on december 11th so we should be in the same situation with uh csea also and ready to go depending on what the board decides tonight in the next meeting thank you jim alrighty now we will move to the consent calendar uh does anybody on the board wish to pull any items from the consent calendar linda did you need to pull anything no i don't okay um i don't see anybody here needing to pull anything is there anyone in the audience who needed to pull anything from the consent calendar okay uh what item are you referring to okay that has to that has to do with um minutes okay um if you'd like to come forward we will pull um we will well yeah you're going to be given time just like you were last time so if you want to jim is going to give you the opportunity to speak and you have your three minutes go ahead please hi again i would like to recommend that the board pool item 7.1.1 for consider approval of the minutes of the special board meeting on 11 4 for further discussion the november 4th meeting agenda item indicated that the board would be discussing modified traditional am pm model update and educational update and indicated that it would be exploring the addition of site-based online learning options for students ultimately the discussion evolved and resulted in eliminating the site-based online learning option but also eliminated the potential for the a b alternating full-day school schedule meeting agendas must contain a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed at the meeting per the brown act discussing and subsequently eliminating the a b schedule was not described on the agenda isn't that a violation of the brown act in addition although the board conducted a lengthy discussion among themselves the board did not open the item up for a public hearing and solicit comments from the public the minutes confirm this isn't that a violation of the brown act even if no one was present the board should note that for the record lastly the board had indicated that they would wait until december 9th to determine the spring semester instructional model on november 4th under that agenda item you determined the spring semester model already which was to keep the am pm schedule and eliminate the a b alternating full school day schedule all without public notice appropriate notice or public input that's a violation of the brown act the november fourth meeting agenda did not accurately reflect the topic that was discussed and voted on had you indicated that you would be discussing the spring semester instructional model and you would be eliminating the a b schedule from consideration the public may have been more involved i know i would have been while the minutes reflect the motion the action and the friendly amendments made the decision does not accurately reflect the item that was on the agenda given that there are multiple brown act violations that the agenda did not one that the agenda did not accurately reflect or summarize the item being considered and two public input was not adequately solicited the board should pull this item for further consideration thank you all right someone like to make a motion for approval of the consent calendar was that the only person that was going to speak to the okay i move approval of the consent calendar i second okay we're going to take a roll call vote linda how do you vote i'll be i robinson i'm sorry robinson i kaiser griffin i i just want to be clear this is a motion for the entire consent calendar or the consent calendar less the item that was pulled uh it's the entire consent calendar eileen tom i believe just for clarification the minutes of the meeting are hours to own we are it's not being pulled by a board member so it's it's can be approved um as part of the entire consent calendar because it wasn't pulled by a board member well i'm curious about some of the points were raised there [Music] so for the sake of my conscience i'm going to vote no on that okay we have the motion passes we will move on to uh our discussion action calendar which will be first topic educational services an update on the am pm instruction at chico unified schools thank you ms griffin we're uh again we're going to be giving you an update um as we have the last few uh board meetings on the educational models we at this time were we thought at this time last on november 4th we thought we'd be giving you an update on more information about the orange tier and going full day but since we've been moved back into the purple we've moved uh more of our conversation along that lines in the red and the red tier model so first i'm going to call up also i believe we have i don't know if america can let us know if the butte county health department is also available okay perfect so we have them available too if you have any questions for them during this presentation um so we're going to call up miss tina king she's going to kind of go over administrative protocols for covet related information and then we'll go over our community dashboard right thank you good evening john vincent or jay do you have the clicker to click on the administrative protocols link please on the second bulletin or bullet great so several weeks ago knowing that we were coming back into am pm and knowing that our community was having coveted cases as positive we did want to help keep the well and not keep but build the protocols and build upon what our school nurses had started on the health end of the covid 19 positive cases that would come as our nurses work with public health the administrators on the school sites really needed a protocol of steps that they would take if a positive case were to come onto campus and we were able to put together this step sheet of protocols to help because again the school nurse really works with public health very closely to determine the health pieces of the case but then also the school nurse does pivot a little bit to help our administrators on the campus the administrators on campus really work on the communication piece to their school community including their staff members and students parents and then also they they work on the contact tracing with the nurse so that's where this covet 19 administrator duties step sheet really came from we have embedded links in there that give in spanish and english the letters that need to be disseminated for close contacts as determined by our nurse and public health we also have the minimal risk exposure for perhaps other people in the area but not considered close contacts and we have put this into play already across various school sites and it has been the feedback has been helpful we've taken their honest feedback of how we can improve it because again this is this is a brand new world we are navigating and want to keep enhancing the protocols but so far it is moving pretty smoothly on the administrative side working with the nurses so i wanted to share that and then if john vincent could exit out of that piece and move to the community dashboard go back one slide john there we go it's the second link cusd community dashboard perfect thank you so if you scroll down just a little bit here this dashboard is part of our covet 19 resource page on our website it has become a very important piece of the website as it has timely information and full clear description of cases positive cases as they appear on our campuses one important thing to note with this dashboard is that only confirmed cases by butte county health are located on here it was initially we've we've kind of had a couple of of shifts in it recently because initially when it was first born at kind of the beginning of the school year it had the it was tracking the numbers week by week that was in order to be alongside what public health has and also to track any positivity that might expand in a weekly or 10 a 10 to 14 day period of time the feedback that we got on that was that it was a little tricky to read it that way and it would be much better at a glance to look at the numbers there and the positivity rate so we made that shift it i know from where i'm standing out here and in the audience that's probably a little tough to read but it is live on our website on the kovid 19 resource page community dashboard and i encourage people to to take a look at that and familiarize yourself with it any questions on those two pieces yes dr kaiser no so oh i'm sorry so the questions that i have gotten from people uh some panic responses from friends and family who get the broad statement to a school site that there's been a positive case and i've had to reiterate that if their child was actually exposed they would get a separate email so there seems to be this you know i would say almost panic response the other question i'm getting appears to be along the lines of an assumption by parents or teachers that there is some enforceable quarantine if someone leaves the county or leaves the state and my understanding and perhaps butte county health can reiterate their understanding that this is a strong recommendation but it can't be a requirement is that correct i can address your first comment here quickly in the panic response you know this is a brand new world we are all navigating i am a parent much like most people here tonight and i understand that we're all we're all learning a new protocol we're all learning a new language on what this is and i certainly certainly know how that that coming out of the blue a piece of information does concern people so the more we can build in sharing that communication on our sites with the steps that that we go through knowing that close contact means these things happen and minimal risk means these things happen and we follow that every time on the sites i think will help become what we know as kind of a new situation that we are all in and consistent so that was the hope with that protocol step and it just i think it's going to take a little bit of time to to see how that plays out each time and i'm certainly open to questions if anybody at all has any questions about things they can absolutely call and i'm happy to to share the protocols or they can also talk to their school administrator as well because it's a district-wide step process that we're that we're putting into play and the second one yeah i think county health might be a better better person than i am about the enforcement of the quarantines outside of the area yes this is monica soderstrom from butte county public health thank you for inviting me and dr linda lewis is also on this call this evening with you as far as the quarantine advisory travel advisory that was sent out by the state that is just what that is it's an advisory it is not a mandate it is not a recommendation even it's a travel advisory so with that our public health director danette york said it's what you know for for people to consider as they're leaving to visit relatives or travel over the holiday even out of state not just out of country that they consider that there's there actually is truly um an advisory by the state to self quarantine for two weeks upon return they have been talking about decreasing that to seven to ten days and linda might have some update on that uh but but that is an advisory it is not a mandate and it is not um even guidance so and linda did you have an update on that yeah there's been no change to the 14 days i i really doubt we'll go down to seven um the incubation period just doesn't really speak to going down that low yeah um there is just so you all know um and you may want to share this with parents you know i i don't know what uh quarantine may be in other areas but cdc does have a site that you can look at for domestic travel or international travel to see if there are quarantine recommendations or requirements when you get to your destination but yeah there's there's no enforcement of quarantine when people come back to california or back to count i really appreciate that because that was a point that was being raised by several individuals as a as a i would say a heightened level of concern but the other aspect there have been some comments not very many thankfully about people who think they can't afford to get their kid tested for covid and i thought that if someone couldn't financially cover it that it was covered by the state so maybe you can clarify that yes the um the optum serve site which is located in chico at 900 mangrove avenue is free you do not need to have insurance if you do have insurance they will ask for that to try to bill it but it is not required at all you do not need to even be a documented citizen they do right now it's quite impacted so it had been allowing walk-in appointments but now it's fully scheduled so you do need to make an appointment they do see children of all ages there the other option for people in chico would be the ampla health clinic and even if people do not have insurance they have a sliding scale in california has put things into place to allow insurance medical and medicare to cover coveted testing so and they have a sliding scale for people without insurance also even though it's a bit of a drive over in orland in glen county there is another optum site and it is run the same as ours in butte county so it is no cost and so if people needed to get tested and couldn't get an appointment in chico uh they likely could get an appointment at the orleans site um in glen county that is tremendously helpful for i'm sure many people thank you good you're welcome and i would like to if you don't mind um uh the the chart that you're showing uh that you did you referred to earlier that is shared on our screen about the positive uh cases um and the percentage um that is a marvelous uh tool to have and linda and i i know both are very happy to see that the one thing i will caution is when the state guidelines looked at when a school might need to close and they were needing to track the number of cases among students and staff at a particular school the five percent threshold that looks at a possible need to close a school is that number of cases within a 14 day period so the one thing about having this all the way back to august it um you know it's like a rolling 14 day period so that would affect i wouldn't want people to look at this and think oh my gosh we're approaching a 5 when those numbers could not be current i i can't add one piece to that and this is where this has been a little tricky at a first glance and and certainly at the public health you can probably understand this john vincent can you scroll down just a touch to see to the a little bit okay it's good stop right there oh gir there you go yeah we have them yes we couldn't see that one before it was scrolled so you've got that covered terrific that's wonderful yeah we've got it both so yes thank you great great okay and then the i will just mention um when someone brought up there being a panic in response to any school-wide broad communication of a case on campus that is something that we discussed this summer with the bcoe planning group and with the school nurses the superintendents etc um as more people hopefully become educated they will understand there's a difference between receiving notification that your child or you know your your person on that campus has been a close contact versus just a broad general notification that there's a case on campus and we certainly understand your desire to be very transparent with your school community and you know just like us at public health sometimes too much information is uh you don't understand it's too much until you have that panic response but we always try to weigh you know how much information will be helpful for people to feel like they're being you know apprised of the situation so i'm sure that as the school year rolls out you'll find that happy medium of you know who to contact when and and how often to send out that type of notification and who to send it to yes thank you thank you very much yes thank you tina i had one more question one's already been answered on the positivity rate thank you miss odestrum um my on step seven when we you were talking well step six and seven about written communication are we also including when the need is there among uh language letter for the families at home yes so if a close contact is determined in the contact tracing with the nurse and administrator looking at seating charts and having discussions with teacher and staff in the classroom within close contact that means within six feet over 15 minutes over a 24 period hour that family will get a a phone call a personal phone call from the school administrator and then followed up with an aries communication of it written down one of the and we did both of those for the close contact because feedback and again i understand this as a parent you get a phone call from the administrator that you're not expecting about a positive case and your child is in close contact and you may want to have the information written and share that later on with your spouse a family member a friend because it is a lot to take in you know we know that this is a it's a it's a very serious topic and and we want people to be able to have information that was not only shared with them in person but also written down and along with some other things to look for such as symptoms reminders of things and such so we do have that in english and spanish uh we do have bilingual hmong uh targeted excuse me targeted case managers um one of the things that can be sometimes a problem is the hmong language in writing is very different and hard to communicate whereas a hmong speaker could be much more informational for the parents so i would encourage us to utilize that resource as well because absolutely yeah thank you yes absolutely tina can you remind me of the date that this goes back to it started with the first day of school it does august 17th okay thank you yes also tina can you it is our understanding that none of these cases have come from um being on our school site um is that a true statement so the nurses have a a possibility of of one situation that could have very early on but it uh we don't know for sure but the majority have been traced to not uh spread within the classroom thank you all right thank you um and i hope that uh mr trump is still here forgive me if i've asked this before i'm trying to figure out exactly what the process is so let's say heaven forbid a student uh gets a positive test result from say optimum serve who communicates with who to notify the school that that someone's been been so diagnosed yeah so that's a good question so typically a parent what we've seen so far is parent get the notifications first and many times you know our nurses will if if they were here standing next to me they would tell you that they have been in close contact and communication with a lot of families that may not be feeling well might be testing might be waiting on results they are working overtime and triple time and doing a wonderful job and our families are doing a wonderful job communicating what's going on in their own lives so the parents may send the or call or send the notification of a positive they might call the nurse they might call public health may call us that has happened too but we do look to get that confirmed positive case because we certainly don't want to cause any distress if it's not a confirmed case who's it confirmed by it is confirmed by public health so optum communicates states often is the site where the test came in sure optim communicates to the family and to public health and yes that that's my understanding public health has the database so somehow and our friends at public health that are on right now can probably say this a little more eloquently than i can but i know on our end it's they go in tandem so the testing location and public health kind of go in tandem and then work with our school nurse so the reporting so at some point we get a phone call from public health saying hey we've got someone who how do they connect a positive test to one of our sites so our nurses get in contact with public health a nurse at public health and they specifically talk about the case yeah so they talk about the contacts close contacts they get information so public health can follow up on their end as well with uh close contact tracing but how does that how does our nurse find out we just assumed that the parents are going to tell us that's where they they have to show us that confirmed piece i'm again i'm not trying to be difficult who shows the second firm piece the parent does that that might receive it or they yeah send it to the nurse if we don't have a confirmed piece because we have had some that the parent has alerted us that has confirmed but we haven't received it yet due to some time lapses on the health care providers section for various reasons so we can call public health and public health can confirm due to their with their database so what you're seeing tina i think what tom is trying to ask is if a parent does not call and let us know that their child's been tested positive we will get the information from the pew county health department correct yes yes this is monica from public health thank you yes we um in the state of california all labs and health care providers are mandated to report positive results for communicable diseases to us so we get those reports and you know most of them don't say oh and this child is a student at this school right it just has it's a lab report so once we have a case investigator calling and talking to the parent and learning about the child's situation and asking what school they go to we would reach out to the school if we haven't already heard from the school but tina i will agree that i'm really impressed with our community thus far almost all parents have been johnny on the spot calling letting their school nurse or principal or teacher know that their child or their family member has tested positive for covid they want to let the school know and then the school nurse has reached out to us and linda and i are both the ones who answer the after hours call line for public health which is 24 7 and we take calls at night we take calls on the weekends we have contact tracers and case investigators working seven days a week and as soon as we find out about a student on campus throughout the county we try to work with the school nurse and the principal and our teachers to identify when the child was on campus during their infectious period and who maybe was a close contact to them while they were on campus conversely if we find out that a child maybe didn't wasn't because of being partly distance learning maybe and it's a weekend maybe they weren't even on campus during their infectious period so then we can relay to the school that although that child has tested positive there was not a risk to the school community with that exposure thank you that helps a lot i guess my last question on that note would be is it possible for a student to test positive in the school not to find out it may be delayed if depending on if there was a delay in the report getting to us and maybe a case investigator getting a hold of a parent and getting the whole story so there is that possibility but i think in the long run you can be you know reasonably assured that your schools will be notified if the parent hasn't notified the school that public health will as soon as we can thank you i am indeed reasonably assured thank you okay kathy did you want to ask this uh this may be uh i'm not sure if this is on the outside of what you can confirm but i think that because of the very sudden move into the purple jumping over a couple other layers the concern is does that then mean that a school that is currently open in some kind of modified in person can stay that way that's one question and then the second question is could a school that's in purple expand its in-person educational presentation i.e go full-time i know of schools already that have done the reverse and have reverted back to online very good question um when this school planning to reopen um was beginning over the summer the guidance from cdph uh discussed all the measures that they were recommending in their guidance for schools to be able to be open on-site and different ways to achieve that safe opening at school were included in that and different schools have adopted different ways to achieve that safety some of those were as you were talking about earlier the am pm schedule or a mixed schedule some distance learning some on campus the goal was that when children were on campus they would be able to be socially distanced in their in their learning environment wearing a mask having different mitigation measures in place to protect staff and students it was determined that if a school opened while they were in the red tier or lower so orange or yellow and then later their county went into the purple tier they would be able to remain open if they so choose chose to do so if they hadn't yet opened like if there were any schools in butte county while we were in red or orange who decided to wait and now we're back in purple they could not now open but if they're already open they may remain open and that's a decision that the school can make if any school wanted to re to close or to to pull back that's certainly their option but they're allowed to remain open unlike some other sectors of businesses that then have to go into the purple tier guidance that decision was made this summer with cdph and the california department of education because they didn't want schools having to ping pong back and forth between tiers they understood how difficult it was to put all these mitigation measures in place and the different learning models in place and they thought it would be much too much of a burden for the schools to ping-pong back and forth so they said if a school was meeting those mitigation measures that were needed in order to open once they got to red they felt that those would be sufficient to keep them safe in purple they did say that more testing would likely be recommended and then of course we talked about there actually could be school closure if the school case rate got to a threshold of five percent thank you so much for your clarification you're welcome just one more question tina sorry all the students that we've had to put in quarantine that have been found to be near somebody that has tested positive have anybody um of that group that's been quarantined tested positive sense uh not that we know of i mean there's one that could be a possible the nurses say but that would be the only one thank you may i ask a question yes of course liz yeah certainly so i actually wanted to speak back on uh what kathy had asked kathy had asked a two-part question and this is for miss slaughterstrom the second part of dr kaiser's question was can schools expand their program now that they are in purple tier or do they have to stay where they are well i think more than whether they can expand their program is do the programs that they intend to have still meet the cdph guidance that's in place so again there was a menu of suggestions that schools could adopt while they were preparing to open their school for in-person instruction this school year and many different schools in butte county have adopted different models for that so i think more than the question can they expand is what can they do that still adheres to the cdph guidance for schools being open and as long as those measures meet the guidance they are allowed they have that freedom to do what it is that meets that cdph guidance very good thank you very much you're welcome okay are we going to do we have more yeah john can we go back to the slides please one of the i'm sorry one of the uh board goals this year was uh parent support for our families that we wanted to make sure our parents had a way of getting support during all these different modified educational models on that link and we won't open it tonight but that link is available for you to see what we're doing at the elementary and the secondary level for those parent support services also if i could get um mr vincent can you give us a laptop update from behind the counter curtain yes so um so our team has been working on the laptops um it's in green right now i'm good so um we had the laptops come in last week we did an all-call got our whole team to come in to work on those and so we'll be distributing laptops to our teachers to 10 schools tomorrow morning computers classrooms will be delivering those and then the remainder we're going to try to get those out on friday so we should for sure be able to get those out before thanksgiving but we're really trying to get those into all the teachers hands before uh before the end of this week so john one of the reasons we purchased the laptops because it would be more effective to zoom is that correct that is correct so these will these are powerful laptops they can handle the the load that zooms puts onto uh to the to the machine and also turns into a tablet so allows them to write directly onto the screen of the laptop and have that show up as a whiteboard for the students thank you you bet okay next i believe this is mr shepherd yeah you want to click forward or j so they can okay so we talked about some of these ideas before and we just want to keep bringing them back because we don't think this these are ideas that we're going to be addressed you know in two weeks between board meetings and uh so i just want to re re reiterate with the board and with our community that we realize as we're changing and adapting to different mandates and different environments that we're going to continue to do everything we can to support our students everything from gathering grade data data to analyzing attendance data disaggregating that data trying to get a better idea of how our kids are um are succeeding and what is presenting some challenges to us so we know when we're going to be having that you're going to be having that conversation soon but we just want to reiterate with the board that as these changes come across our desks we're going to continue to really focus on student needs and that's our goal we realize that the needs include learning loss and their trauma and social emotional needs with the holidays coming up we know it's going to be a challenge you know it's always a challenge regardless of of the of any pandemic or a natural disaster so we're going to be stressing the importance of connections with kids with our staff because we realize we're going to connect with those kids and we also after disaggregating some of the data so far we're realizing as we have always believed but it's showing up in our numbers that the student teacher engagement is the crux of the grade it's the crux of it and if we can improve that no matter what modality students are learning in that's going to help our kids so we're really going to focus on engagement during the second semester one of the things that concerns the ed services team is during the holidays it's usually a happy time for most most of our students but it also could be a very stressful and trauma time for a lot of our students also that do not have the family engagement that some do so when people are talking about what they're doing for thanksgiving or what they're going to be doing for christmas or hanukkah um in new year's a lot of our students don't have those same opportunities and normally they would be on our campuses for our counselors and our wellness counselors to be checking in on them so we're going to have to do a very good job this year if we're at home doing online learning to make sure we're checking in on those students because it's a very stressful time for them all right mr carrots going to talk a little data on for us yeah i'm going to present to you uh attendance data for our students receiving site-based online instruction as well as our students receiving in-person instruction before i get into that i want to point out that i've added an attendance report to be included along with the enrollment report that is part of every regular board meeting and that so that is part of you'll find that in the agenda above for tonight as well so first of all uh secondary period attendance and this is for students that are receiving site-based online instruction so they're zooming in to class likely from home in most cases and these are students that are receiving site-based online to this day and it it's looking way back to august 17th at the from the beginning of school but it's limited to those that are still uh receiving site-based online instruction uh and what we see for all students we see an a period attendance rate of 86.6 which is much lower than we would like to see typically for our all-day attendance rates azure the board is well aware we're looking at a number around 95 percent so this is significantly below in addition we see some of our higher needs student groups significantly below the all students percentage uh my next couple slides are for all-day attendance and these are for only for students that are currently receiving in-person instruction at elementary we only take all-day attendance and so this is going back to the beginning of the year for the kids currently receiving in-person instruction and we see for elementary we see that number right up around 95 typically we're a little bit above 95 around 95.5 um all students are at 94.8 and we do see in particular our homeless student group significantly below that looking at secondary all-day attendance and this is for students that are currently receiving in-person instruction going all the way back to the beginning of the year we see a slightly lower all-day rate and i'll remind you that all-day attendance is students get credit if they're take part of any part of the school day so we see 94.3 which is about a percentage point a little more than a percentage point uh lower than we would see on a typical school year and we again we see some of our our higher needs student groups falling below the the all students percentage any questions for mr karis on the attendance um less a question than a comment i am uh i'm concerned about our homeless students especially in secondary um and i just uh just put it on the the public record i think we're going to bring hopefully having a discussion on the next board meeting about other ways i would like to have this discussion about ways we can serve our homeless students especially over the holiday break and especially during covet and what other services we can provide to make school a place where they can get more of their needs met so they're prepared to attend and learn yeah and tom i would be happy to provide uh trend data on homeless attendance um given that we would have a agenda item dedicated to that appreciate that thank you okay we just kind of kind of go back over the tier stages again purple tear being stage one safety and preparedness making essential workforce and environment as safe as possible the red we've seen all three three of the four tiers already this school year so we've been in purple red and orange i just want it again and then there's a yellow i just wanted to to show the slide once again because we're going to be discussing a lot of this tonight stages of reopening we have um if we can open that up that would be great john thank you again this was back earlier in the year when we first discussed when we went from the stages back to the colors and so if you scroll down again we had different but the board had voted on what what we'd be doing during those stages and then we had the schedules built in for these are again just for you guys to be able to look at so you can see the schedules for each tier what we were going to be doing and again thank you and that was the am pm schedules and then the purple steer and what would we be using for our education okay thank you john we can go back all right i'm going to pass this off to ms staley yes thank you so as the board's well aware we voted on certain educational options tied to stages and again those are online learning online only modified traditional am pm traditional with safety modifications and traditional similar to pre covered and we have since learned that that's really unlikely while there are still the governor stay at home orders in place i also wanted to bring up that there are possibly other options that we could look at for example we don't necessarily have to do the same thing at all of our levels we have heard and i believe mr lando brought up at a board meeting that maybe it is safer for certain grade levels to come back and not as safe for other grade levels so we could look at the possibility of a modified traditional for secondary and a more traditional schedule for elementary when it's safe to do so and likewise we could look at a modified traditional for elementary and an online only for secondary the options are there and it was something that got briefly brought up but really we did not discuss in much detail previously so i wanted to put that out there the board also made the decision that when we moved to purple we would hold a board meeting within seven days and have a discussion about whether or not we wanted to move back and change our instructional model at that time now we did not find out about moving back to purple until monday so uh that really didn't give us a lot of time when you're looking at seven days um you know we really didn't have a chance to agendize that as you would want to agendize it to make a very specific change in your instructional model for this agenda we do have the ability to discuss that however if you look at the seven days for monday we're on thanksgiving break so i do think this is a great opportunity for the board to have some discussions about where they would like to see the district head and in particular where we want to be when we return from thanksgiving break to the end of this semester which is december 18th okay kathy well um part of the rationale for me getting clarification from butte county health and it wasn't perhaps it may not have appeared black and white to all the listeners but they repeated it twice so i'm assuming they they mean it that you would have to be able to keep all your at least three critical points social distancing mask and sanitation all in effect and the commentaries from my own experience with family children at emma wilson and other kids at rosedale and a kid at chico high is those have been working with our staff working very very hard and our teachers they have been working and i think the relatively speaking low case load that we have reported particularly since there only appears even the possibility that one came potentially i will say potentially from experience at a school site so i think it has been working very well i can't imagine the disruption that we would cause to families and to our teachers and staff to have them leave for thanksgiving break some will probably leave early but it would be in two days no matter what and then come back supposedly to school and find that everything was different i just see that as a incredible burden many many parents who have sent emails to us have mentioned the emotional social positive response that their kids have to at least being in school two hours to three hours five days a week so i really couldn't be in favor uh a i don't think we could pull off the social the three markers social distancing mask and sanitation with without even anybody quote unquote officially working during break but much less have an effective schedule for our schools so my sense is we hold the course i think we'll have a much clearer picture by the end of finals of where we hopefully are improving potentially of course dipping down even further okay linda did you have anything you wanted to say yes well i actually agree with dr kaiser on this you know it's just been so interesting to me to see the split the decisions on this mr moretti was kind enough to do a survey with our teachers and just by a narrow margin our secondary teachers would like to switch back to distance learning yet by a very narrow margin our elementary teachers would like to stay in the in-person model that we currently have then in addition we have our incoming board members who are split one wants to have in person the other i think would prefer to have distance learning so it's really it's right down the middle but one of the things dr kaiser said and also miss ottastrom from the butte county health department said the ping-ponging back and forth is not healthy it's not good for kids we even had a parent say that the consistency in a routine i think is so important so i am leaning towards staying the course as dr kaiser said and i would ask anyone to try and change my mind but that is currently how i feel so thank you okay eileen thank you madam president um i'm on the same bandwagon as dr kaiser and miss heavy i in reading every single one of the emails that we've been sent and we got a basketful it is so clear that of the parents do not want us to make any change in going back to online at any grade level the impact of going back even two to three hours a day on the mental health of our kiddos is so significant that there's there's no way i would support going online at this point it just it just makes no sense for the educational and the emotional health and well-being of our kids the only thing that that i would suggest and i i don't get to govern this but um everyone including the parents who observe their kids at school and at schools talk about how wonderful they're doing with keeping their masks on and following the protocols and i agree with the exception of some of the ones that have to walk quite a ways home and they do it in groups and i happen to be on one of those walk home pathways and i see at my home by the time they get three blocks away from school there aren't any masks anymore and so if we could make it a point through our staff to talk to the kids about the importance of following the protocols all the way in their front door that that would help tremendously because as the experts say the virus doesn't know whether you're in a classroom whether you're one block away from school or six blocks away from school keeping that mask on helps both directions keeps you from spreading it and keeps you from inhaling the um the droplets so that would be my request just is for us to do a better job of informing our kids because our kids want to stay in school and if they recognize how important it is that they be part of the solution i think they will they will do a better job of of sticking to the protocols tom thank you i don't know i'm sorry to roll back the conversation a little bit do we uh is miss sodastream still with us yes i think so monica are you there yes okay um i don't know if there's a question for you or for tina i am curious how do we determine whether we believe a case is transmitted from at the school site we've had a lot of people say hey we haven't had haven't had any cases transmitted you know from student to student or student to staff out of the site how are we determining that that's part of the case investigation process when we interview a parent or if it's a high school student and we're able to interview them as well we can really look at where they've been if they've been around anyone that they know has had a lab confirmed case of covet or has been a suspect or probable case has been symptomatic so we look at that we also look at if we have a student who has been tested positive and then there are identified close contacts we monitor all the contacts as well as part of our contact tracing so until that person is released from quarantine we're monitoring them to see if they become symptomatic and then we can start connecting contacts close contacts to that case with that case and we would certainly be talking with the school if we felt that faculty you know staff or other students had been exposed to this case and we can't find any other way that they may have been exposed we actually start looking at possible linkages and then outbreaks so that's definitely part of the case investigation and contact tracing component we also are looking at their household contacts if a student becomes sick were there other people in their household that they first maybe got it from do they go to a child care were they at a party uh were they in some kind of a gym or sport event we look at the whole picture we don't just say oh this child goes to the school therefore they must have gotten it at school you know it's it's very much a full investigation and if we found that we saw links between students on campus activities on campus classrooms we would most certainly work with the school on that thank you i um i ask because i've we've had a staff member actually uh who wasn't sure how she came by a positive result and uh well yeah again i don't i just want to know what you did in the case of someone saying i have no idea where this came from yeah well there's a lot of people who when we first talked to them have no idea you know how they were exposed because this is remember um highly transmissible in the community at this point so even people who are you know being very careful can be exposed in the community under the right circumstances so often with the children what we see is the parent is actually the person exposed whether they're at work or it's somewhere in the community and then the children are getting it from the parents so you know we we really try to work with the whole family to see where a point of exposure could have been thank you very much wonderful to add to that thank you monica one thing to add to it is the use of seating charts so all of our teachers are utilizing seating charts that are updated currently to reflect their each of their classes and that has been a tremendous help in the um in the context tracing between the administrator and the school nurse and public health in terms of close contacts and minimal risk so that's helpful too okay so before we take uh some public comment here i have another question for monica uh so monica in the larger community the community as a whole where do we think this upsurge is coming from why is this developing now well we certainly have a lot of theories and part of it if you look at the timing of our surge is after halloween where there were uh reported to us numerous uh gatherings both small and very very large and not many precautions being taken during those gatherings so that is one there's also been because we were as you remember we were down all the way to the orange tier and i think a lot of people let their guard down so people were actually attending weddings and gatherings after a funeral people gathering with friends and family and maybe having more people over than they thought they were going to have and you're around you're around the table and pretty soon you're closer than six feet and everyone has their mask off for way more time than 15 minutes nobody could maybe seem to be ill at the time but it only takes one asymptomatic person in an event like that to uh spread that virus to the others with them we also have seen some workplaces where physical distancing is very difficult to do and so again much more easily spread and we have had some of an ongoing concern of ours since the very beginning of covid is cases in our congregate living facilities and that could include skilled nursing facilities other long-term care facilities the jail shelters so we're always very very concerned about covet in those those venues and we work really really hard to try to contain the virus and often when we see cases in those settings it's employees who have been exposed outside of work and they bring it to their work and then either you know have exposed their clients or the people they're working with their co-workers so we know that in the past that we could attribute an upsurge before to the congregate living facilities is that really where the vast majority of the upsurge is coming from or is it more widespread now just among the general population yes it's much more amongst the general population so even though we do have some cases in our congregate living facilities right now many more of our cases are outside in the general public and you know the purple tier actually really very accurately reflects the community transmission that we're experiencing right now okay thank you very much monica we really appreciate you being here okay i'm going to take some public comments now and in our rules it it specifically says that priority will be given to speakers who have not yet addressed the board and so i'm going to call on is kimber kimberly snyder here okay i don't see kimberly snyder was one who said she was going to be here in person to talk oh kevin i'm sorry i just noticed your hand did you want to say something i i do thank you and thanks for looking at the survey i sent you and all the um the feedback that i know you guys have read and i know our members are split and i want to say all the parents that are worried about this that none of the teachers are arguing that in face isn't the best option for their kids that's it but my my concern and i'm not picking a side here it's just the substitute coverage in in that logistical problem and i don't know how we solve it so today at pv they had three teachers out that couldn't be covered and they had to find people to cover them on their preps i've got one of my um bargaining team members that's being told you can't come to bargaining or they're asking them not to go to bargain tomorrow because they can't find some coverage but he's still going to go that is a logistical problem that is outside of what's best for kids if we can't find a body in the room as cases are increasing it's going to create some dilemmas that i don't have a solution for so that's that that's a a problem that we need to solve and and that i will leave it at that okay thank you for sharing that okay so um i'm gonna go ahead and move to a few of the people who are on the list who i don't think we've ever heard from before um there's a you would have to call this person um i i do have rebecca konkin yeah on my list yeah and she she has decided to be here in person i understand okay great let's let's hear from rebecca then good evening my name is rebecca konkin i'm a mother of four school-aged children who range from 16 to six years old in addition my husband and i are both essential healthcare providers and i'm currently employed as a pediatric nurse practitioner all four of my children were ecstatic the day they were able to return for in-person learning on their school campuses you would have thought i was dropping them off at disneyland for the day you see despite our teachers heroic efforts distance learning did not meet my child's social emotional psychological and educational needs this is no fault of the teachers it's just the nature of the subpar learning model the evidence is already in as statistics are showing that distance learning results in a 30 drop in reading ability and a 50 drop in math skills but as we know it's not just academics the lack of a school community adversely impacts the mental health of our youth and of great concern it leaves behind our most vulnerable students i stand in accordance with the american academy of pediatrics and their stance that school is important for the students academic instruction as well as their social and emotional development the benefits of in-person learning are well documented and there's substantial evidence that time away from school results in social isolation learning deficits and mental health problems i've sadly witnessed this professionally with my patients as well as within my own children in the height of the lockdown when much was still uncertain about covid we were forced to implore distance learning in my particular profession we decided to adapt and implement telemedicine to triage and treat patients as time went on though we quickly determined that this was in no way a long-term option in order to safely and thoroughly diagnose and treat patients we need actual live contact with them likewise teachers are essential workers and school as we know it is absolutely necessary our schools have worked tirelessly and already have met the stringent recommendations and requirements to return to campuses while protecting our students teachers and staff requirements such as masks desks physically distanced cohorting students promoting hand and cough hygiene cleaning and disinfecting are just a handful of the many things actively happening on our campus to mitigate the spread of illness i have been beyond encouraged and impressed as i've seen our schools working together to create a safe and healthy place for our students to learn at times i yearn for the way it used to be where kids carelessly grab the hand of a friend or teachers welcome students with a hug but i realistically understand that this is the reality of where we are in 2020 and we will likely not return to the old way anytime soon the fact is covet is not going to magically disappear if we choose to return to distance learning this will be with us for the long haul it's our task to not hide from the virus but learn how to safely and competently interact with covid as we would with any other communicable virus thank you rebecca thank you very much thank you very much okay um we are going to go can you maybe try calling kim snyder i i hope she wasn't the woman who was here with the child that had to leave because hello is this kim i can would you still like to address the school board we can put you on speaker okay i'll put you on speakerphone just a second okay go ahead kim hi my name is kimberly snyder i spoke about a month ago i just wanted to say that the changes in my own two kids just from going two hours a day is unbelievable um my son is no longer having anger issues he's happy my daughter's happy please don't take away any more from our kids this has gone on too long with a survival rate of 99 but yet the numbers of suicide overdoses and depression has increased you have to question things especially with kids having less cases but yet we're still only going two hours never in our history has the healthy been quarantined we are taking orders from a man that says we can't gather in groups of six or more for the holidays but goes to a winery with a party of 14.

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