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[Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] live corey we're ready to go corey all right so then i will call to order this the emergency meeting of bullet elementary school district december 6 2020 at 5 00 pm uh roll call corey burgess here douglas here charlene d dr stewart thank you mr president board members uh i've asked you to do an emergency meeting due to a due to a situation at diamondback school that requires one at diamondback school reported to the principal on saturday that he or she tested positive for covid this teacher was at school the entire week in the school had of course conversations and interactions with other staff members and participated in professional development on friday force this individual was masked throughout the week social sensing might or might not have been class and the circumstances mrs godwin notified me late yesterday afternoon and i knew i needed to run this by the count the county health nurse i did have a text conversation with her this morning and then immediately contacted miss county health nurse jerry lawson the epidemiology section recommends closure of the school based on the number of contacts this individual had during the week this is one of those very tricky situations every situation that we have faced in our district has been different and we try to look at all the information before making any decisions at the sites as i as you might know we're making these considerations two and three times a day every school day based on the data and the information coming from our school sites but because this one potentially impacts the entire school this is too big of a decision for one person to make i'll answer any questions that you might have i'll decide to uh close the school we would still this evening try to figure out a method for students and parents to pick up chromebooks at the school site school site least at least like contact people in the office probably the two principles for sure but we would make everywhere available to students and that any parents who needed could come down to the technology department and pick those up and in fact each teacher would continue to teach from home for the next eight school days is that the new timeline dr stewart is the eight days well no we're talking eight school days so that's essentially the two weeks we have okay we haven't gotten we haven't gotten good information yet on dropping dropping quarantine from 14 to 10 days that was supposed to be on the table for discussion between all of the counties and the state this past friday so of course we wouldn't know about what you know what direction was coming from them until sometime next week you know when they when they let us know what they found out and technically that whole 10 10-day or 7-day quarantine issue applies to the person with covid not the people who have been exposed and that's part of the confusion relative to figuring out those those timelines the issue is that anybody who's been exposed the incubation period for covid is 14 days so from the last day or from the day they were exposed until the 14th day they can still contract it the issue is that folks who actually have kovid usually are at the recovery stage by 10 days after their so you can see how this gets really confused with covid or the people who've been exposed in those quarantine times so it gets pretty tricky for us since it's eight school days that's what we're talking about so essentially we're talking about the remainder of the semester exactly for that school that's exactly what we're talking about okay now i do have a a couple of questions and comments um you did state that the prep masks were being worn and were we're taking the precautions for all the ppe for staff and for students um where where applicable where possible is being under that six feet for a longer period of time extended exposure what is it 15 minutes i believe 24 hours our concern in this case or the issue is just factual in this case is that the classes that are taught by this individual are 40 minutes in length as monday you know those kids and that teacher were in a confined space were in a confined space for 40 minutes you know some of the students in that room would have been more than six feet away from the teacher most of the time some would have been closer for us to know who and that's that's why the flex yeah but it's one of the reasons for the ppe is we treat every student as an exposure i mean i know each day as i step into a classroom i have to be concerned that every kid i come in contact with is exposed exactly so that's that's why we use the ppe that's why we have that two weeks until the semester is over then they go into christmas for two weeks um at this point we haven't had any other contact for anyone else um i'm of the opinion that we send out notifications of a possible exposure uh to notify the parents of all the school um they can make the determination if their kid has shown symptoms that they're cons always done in the past um of what decision they want to make on returning to school or not uh hopefully that if you are feeling ill or someone is showing symptoms uh they would not come to school uh we always hope for that um but in this in this situation i'm not in favor of closing diamondback i have a concern with that cory and and that is is that okay we tell parents you make the decision whether your child should come to school or not but how is that student going to get online services or academics because then now we're asking the teachers okay now you're going to teach some kids online and some kids in class and and i and i will tell you that that's a real tough gig to do um i know the way we're teaching i'm not asking us to go to a hybrid model in that classroom or kid is broadcasting and not and not getting a live teacher um but with any decision that comes with a parent that is the parent's ultimate decision we can't make that decision for them but i don't want to take away more education time from kids because of a possible exposure when as dr stewart said we don't know how much exposure is here and if the proper ppe was being in place and enforced that risk is minimized uh to the level that i don't feel we should close and and i and i hear what you're saying i do hear what you're saying i i i'm not one of the the you know people that think that oh everybody's got to be you know locked indoors and whatever it is what it is but um i am concerned because every child have that special teacher every child and so i would rather side with the go with the side of caution or error on the side of caution and say no let's close it for two weeks and and rejoin on january and let the kids be online for the next two weeks that's just my thoughts i if i understood them the targets are fun john you are saying the students would have the opportunity to be online during this two-week period they would be online during a two-week period but the problem the the concern that i have is that what corey was saying is well let's give parents the option to say okay my kid's going to stay home and he's going to be online but but no no no no no i want my kids i'm not so you're saying no they don't go online at all correct i'm saying we keep the school open and do just like we do with any other possible exposure send the letter out uh we'd be very vigilant in the monitoring on our campuses and we continue forward because we don't know what the exposure is right so i'm not saying change the way we're teaching i'm not saying that i'm saying we should continue the way that we're doing it um then we should continue to monitor but any parent has that option if they don't feel their their child is safe even even in a non-coded situation they they they're the parent they have that option but if we close down early because of a fear that we don't know and it really is a fear of the unknown we are taking any any decisions away from them um and could i interject just maybe to answer doug's question and doug you may already know that understand that but i'll make it clear if we close the school then the teachers all the teachers would teach online to all of the students who could join them online if we leave the school open as corey says the students whose parents choose to keep them home would not be online they would just it would be like if they stayed home for strep throat or some other illness and they would be allowed to make up work when they returned only the only students who would receive direct instruction would be those who are in the classroom so you know that's the difference between the two choices there so that's just a clarification dr stewart the i'm not gonna ask the question um so the cdc or the the county nurse is saying close is that what you're saying the county nurse recommended closure due to the exposure to or the possible exposure to every student on campus she did ask me about you know how many students we have on campus how many teachers and those kinds of things the other the other thing for you to consider and and you can see why this is such a difficult and complex decision relative to this because everything that corey says is true the you know we don't really know if our t i mean we do know our teacher was following all the protocols but we don't really know what exposure and the reminder might not have been my guess is that if there were in fact exposures to kids and any of them became ill we would we would start knowing that before the end of this coming week since the teacher was there last monday and so at the point where we might have let's say we end up with let's hope this were not happening but if we were to end up with two or three cases in that school by the end of this coming week then we would need to have this discussion again because that becomes then considered an outbreak and at that point we would have to look seriously at closing the school based on cdc and all of the other definitions relative to outbreak so you know are we okay with continuing school sure we just might have to look at things again by the end of the week and and i don't want that to be you know i don't want anybody to think that if this comes up again at the end of the week that anybody was hiding anything nobody was hiding anything it's just that things develop day by day so you know i just want you to be aware that then the decision becomes less in our control by the end of the week if if there are other cases if there are other cases then the decision is made right because then we have a whole another ball game right now i don't like flying into blind and making a decision because something may happen exactly that's why i'm not in favor of closing diamondback and uh and in the interest of transparency when i sent out the emails to all of you earlier today to see about having this meeting when jeannie and brandi both let me know that they had other commitments this afternoon they both are of the same mind that if we were following all the protocols this past week and if we continue to follow the protocols that their opinion is that students should be on campus and parents can make the decisions of whether their students are there or not how many students do we have on campus there now uh kim isn't it about 300 yeah kim says it's about 300.
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hey everyone my name is miss gentile and after graduating in 2010 i came back and i've been teaching culinary and fashion here at wego for about five years now whether it's something as simple as a hot dog or something more complicated like a five course meal all food preparation starts with the main ingredients think about it would you want to eat a chocolate chip cookie that was prepared by someone who just casually substituted raw onions for chocolate chips probably not but here's the tricky thing sometimes you just have to make the best of the ingredients that you have on hand if you've ever seen an episode of chopped then you know what i'm talking about we're all in a situation right now where we feel like we don't have the best ingredients available i'm sure spending your afternoons at your dining room table isn't anyone's preferred way to do school and having conversations face to face in person is a lot more enjoyable than through zoom these ingredients certainly don't feel like our best options right now but the good news is they're pretty minor we've still got almost all of the most important ingredients to work with your teachers are still here supporting you every step of the way working hard to enable your success and then there's you the student no one ingredient is more important than you and what you bring to the table your goals your drive your ambition those are all of the essential ingredients making a meal you're ultimately proud of comes down to your perspective and determination the good news is the table is set if you work with what you've got you'll still be able to put something together that showcases who you are and all you're hoping to achieve
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it's a little it's a little closing by closing campus we're taking all those decisions away um of any other problems that may be going on and it's all because of what may happen and that's why i don't want to make that decision on what may happen uh like dr stewart said if in this week we see you know two three four uh cases pop up uh then we have to have a hold of a whole nother decision um but by opening monday that isn't gonna change that fact that those two three or four if the exposure's already occurred it's already occurred um so we don't know and i and i'm not in favor of closing well i'm i'm willing to wait it out until the end of the week and see and then you're right if we have two three four kids that suddenly um come down with it then that decision has already been made for us so i i'm willing to wait it out it concerns me but i i i will go with that and cross my fingers that nobody gets uh those are ill oh absolutely we always hope for the best we always hope for the best we're all concerned about the well-being of our staff and of our kids um so yes um doug did you have any additional questions or statements nope i uh i second your motion card all right so actually let's just do it as a direction right now then let's just give dr stewart the direction to send out uh notifications to the families like we always do um and let them know of possible exposure we have we have a letter that we use for that um we can update on our facebook page that they're you know that just like we always do uh we'll treat this like we do any other exposure um and we will we'll see what's going on um and if we need to get together and you know heck i was actually making a joke to my wife the other day that yeah we get two more meetings this month i didn't know we were gonna have three but uh we can uh we'll just we'll approach each day as it comes because that's the thing with this pandemic is we have to do that we have to be flexible and know that each day we're accepting every problem we're facing and we're and we're taking them on a case-by-case situation and thank you for wrecking with that direction thank you for recognizing that corey because that's the way it works i do have a question though president the uh is there a need for the meeting tomorrow we do have some items on that agenda you could postpone it to the other meeting if you wanted if you could if you wanted to decide that tonight there's nothing on that agenda that has to be done this week that's a great idea doug charlene are you okay with just postponing it all till the uh next meeting yeah absolutely all right can we notify the other two board members then and let them know so let's i'll make a motion that we uh or do we have to have a motion to postpone yeah you would have to have an emotion also you would have to have a motion for that one what did we already have a motion on the ball on the floor so well corey said he was just cory just said he was issuing a direction well we did that we did direction for the uh for the instruction to go home right you can use directly you can yeah okay so we have a motion on the floor to postpone our meeting monday until what date is the other meeting it's tuesday the 15th starting at 6.
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combine the two right and you could do your doug that was your motion yeah i will second that motion all right all in favor aye corey burgess hi douglas aye sir charlene diaz okay and then what we can do dr stewart sure and what we can do because the hearing is posted for six on the 15th that will work perfectly you can still have your workshop at 5 30 have your hearing at six and then have the regular meeting start say at 6 because as you know the hearing only has to be open you know in case somebody has some questions so that's absolutely absolutely possible great idea doug fantastic i like it thank you so much all right okay and thank you all um i would like to make a motion that we adjourn i make a motion all right i will second that i'll think of that motion and thank you all for uh being available on such short notice i'm hopeful that we don't have to do this very often but i think you can understand that it might be coming up so i really appreciate everybody being available on such short notice absolutely we need to vote on that everything of the meeting yeah yes i i voted uh doug your vote uh yay all right surely charlene dsa okay motion is carried we are adjourned thank you so much for taking your time this evening and you are all have a wonderful evening thank you you too thank you [Music] you
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good evening chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools here with a brief update there's three things i'd like to cover tonight um one is our current coven 19 numbers for student and staff secondly i'd like to visit about the quarantine changes that the county adopted yesterday and then the last thing is the acacia high school activities association today changed their guidelines for spectators to allow parents some parents to come so first of all our current covered numbers we currently have six students out for being uh covered positive um so that's about a half a percent of our total student body overall we have 68 students who are out for any covered reason at this time whether it's because they have coveted like symptoms or they're positive or they're a close contact most of those are because of being a close contact with a positive outside of school on the staff side we have currently four staff members out for being positive for cobia 19 and as a total we have 10 staff members out the good news on the staff is tomorrow is the first day in a while but we have currently at this time on tuesday evening we have no sub teacher openings for wednesday so that's a good sign that all of our classes are covered i mentioned some changes in quarantine on the last update and those did come to pass so the sedgwick county quarantine you can go to their website and see the details but in general it's a 10 day quarantine now instead of 14 so 10 days after the last exposure to a to a known positive coveted case students and staff can return there is an allowance that if you get a pcr test which is the one that goes all the way up the cavity on day six or after you can return on day eight or after with a negative pcr test so that's not the rapid tests um that's the um the the main uh most reliable test the pcr test problem with that right now is there's more delay in in getting those results then would do much good so if you get a test on day six i'd think it would be unlikely that you would get the results before day ten so essentially we have a 10-day quarantine announced to the 14 if you're symptomatic asymptomatic so no symptoms so that's the big thing on quarantine changes and that's a lot of what has driven our numbers down a week ago we were about 140 students out and now we're 68 students out so that's that's been a big benefit to get kids back in class so the last thing i want to visit about the kansas high school activities association as most of you are probably aware voted to not have any spectators and today they have modified that slightly so limited spectators at acacia activities starting on december 10th through january 28th and you'll be getting more details from our athletic directors but essentially acacia rules now are going to allow two parents or guardians per family to attend events so as an example i have two daughters that are in cheer my family will receive only two people that can come in even though we have two participants so it's two per family and only parents or guardians uh not siblings and aunts and uncles and those things so very restricted um spectators allowed at keisha events like i said you'll be getting some more clarification on that uh that does start thursday and um just got off the phone with our high school athletic director heath elliott and he's working out the details and um you should receive some more communication we're not going to do the tickets like we the bracelets like we had done in the fall it'll be a pass gate situation where your name will be on the list if you're allowed to attend so as i mentioned our numbers aren't too bad we haven't seen a huge spike from thanksgiving six positive students is more than we want but i want to encourage everybody to continue to do the things that can keep those numbers low in our community our community zip code data and the data i just shared is updated on our website on the left side under covet 19 information menu that's all i have for this evening hope everybody has a opportunity to enjoy this unseasonably warm nice december weather we're having take care
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all right we are all set so we have the call to order the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to advance notice of and to attend public meetings at which time any business affected the interest is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provision of this act and Board of Education policy 0162 the Board of Education and the Bureau of bamr has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the uh Board of board office and at the boundbrook uh high school and mailed or facts to the curry news Bound Brook burrow clerk South Bound Brook Board of Education and any other person who's requested individual notice and pay the required fee um Pledge of Allegiance please stand I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the public for which it stands one nation indivisible under God I totally blew that didn't I sorry about that folks having a brain for it all right so roll call Mike Mr Ary here Mr ball here Mr bone here Lon here Miss Martinez here Miss Morris here miss Stevens here M Rosano here V here M fio here everybody's here president's comments uh I just wanted to thank all faculty and staff and parents for doing the best they can to make the best of what is the most unusual set of circumstances I know as a teacher myself I said this last time and each week I think it's going to get easier but it doesn't it takes a lot of work to create engaging lessons for the children to keep on top of students when they're falling behind um and so as a as a board president I appreciate it as a parent I appreciate it uh and the balro community appreciates it so that's really what I wanted to say um I'd like to um first of all I'd like to thank um Mr B and Mr arrey for their service to the Board of Education um uh M Mr archery has been on the board I think for the last three years maybe four and I know Mr bone you've been here um probably eight somewhere around there um so I just like to publicly thank you guys for your service to the community and to the Board of Education um both of you will be missed um I would just like to uh announce that Mr Mr Bale was reelected to the board and the two w in uh winners for the board of education for the other two seats were were Roger zipco and Jay Thomas sy so both of joining the board go ahead Mr I just wanted to concur uh I've enjoyed the tenure that both of you have have had on the board Bill obviously a little bit longer than Tyler but both of you brought uh important discussions different points of view uh and so I really appreciated working with you over the last years so you will be missed and uh good luck and whatever you're going to use to do on your now free Monday nights thank you very much it's been a pleasure serving on the board for as long as I have I enjoyed it a lot yeah I just like to say thank you to everyone as well it's definitely been a a learning experience the last three years so appreciate everybody that helped me along the way okay with that I'd like to uh start with the students of the month we'll start with Lamont lamon Annex and Dr s good evening Lamont Annex school December student of the month are Dyan Lozano and Sebastian olera congratulations and we'll move on over to Lafayette school and Mrs Clark for first grade we have Dylan Alano and Matthew Brown for second grade and we'll go over to small e with Mr Edwards evening everyone third grade we have jayen Arias fourth grade we have Anthony Cruz fifth grade we have Quinn zupco and sixth grade eternity Batista congratulations and over at Community School we have Mr Santa serma hello everyone the Community Middle School is proud to recognize for December students of the month Brandon Ruiz Fernandez and Doris Amaya inestroza okay um and for bber high school filling in for Mr Smith is Mrs Larson good evening bber High School would like to recognize um freshman Kendall Taylor sophomore Eda Luise Torres Junior araseli prago and senior hostway Fuentes for our students of the month this month all right and we're moving on to our gem Awards and we'll start with Lamont Lamont and Dr s again congratulations with Mrs hindol ker um December's gem recipient Mrs hindel is a team player who is a great rapport with students and staff and is always ready to go the extra mile she has delivered materials to her students homes and always willing to assist when need it we are truly lucky to have her as part of the lont anex school family congratulations Mrs hindle and we'll go over to uh Lafayette with Mrs Clark Lafayette Jem for the month of December is Gabrielle an nasta um she's a first year teacher during all the Staffing changes that we had um Mid October to November she always kept the kids at the Forefront remained positive and went above and beyond so thank you Gabriella and we're gonna move over to SMY and Mr Edwards our Gem of the month over at SMY school is Miss Britney chapoli took me many times to pronounce that last name so I'm glad I got a right for her she's been an amazing co- teer this year in fifth grade she usually does science and math but she has uh joined herself and her partner to do Ela and social studies with a lot of enthusiasm where she didn't think she could do it and she's done a tremendous job so this Gem of the month is Britney chipowski congratulations and for Community Middle School we have U Mr s surma the Community Middle School gem award recipient is Mrs Laura Zaki uh Mrs Zaki is usually our Pace teacher however this year Mrs Zaki has served as a maternity leave teacher in our science department her colleague describer is having a calm and gentle demeanor this translates into a sincere and heartfelt level of caring toward her students Mrs Zaki has collaborated closely with her colleagues in the science department to create fun and challenging lessons in both the hybrid and virtual platforms she's been meeting weekly with her colleagues in the special education Department in order to ensure students academic social and emotional needs are being met the little things that she does such as a verbal warning when a student is not participating or a welcome message rather than a reprimand when a student re-engages exemplifies her sympathetic understanding of what is needed during these difficult times I'm truly grateful to have had Miss Zaki in this role at the Community Middle School to begin this school year and as part of our CMS family thank you Mrs zachi and for bber high school we have Mrs Larson bber High School is proud to honor Miss Mrs Jenifer Nichols um Miss Nichols has adopted to Virtual learning very smoothly she has managed to keep the peer leadership and peer leaders going with virtual lessons and meetings holding them to the same standards as when they're in person um additionally she has reached out to students to arrange times to pick up materials as needed and continue to reach out to parents of students who she cannot reach she advocates for her students and their needs while they are home while continuing to hold them accountable she genuinely cares about her students making sure to reach out and ask for help with those that are struggling it has been a difficult year for our freshmen and that they haven't really had a chance to know our school and our staff however they are very fortunate to have someone like Miss Nichols in their corner to help them adapt to the high school life and for the district we have Richard Malin who is our one of our apparently Aon translators uh for the district who has um been extremely helpful with uh with a number of things that we have going on especially during this time with covid uh really reaching out to families working with us with the food bank um and just really uh taking a lot of time and spending time with uh individual parents uh communicating with folks and and trying to help um parents who are in need so we'd like to thank Richard for all that he has been doing and going above and beyond so thank you so we're down to committee reports uh the only committee we had was um operations we had operations this evening and we went over the draft of the audit um Valerie do Dolan from naaia will be in probably the second meeting in January to go over the audit report for the board um and we should have a final copy prior to that which will go out to the board at that point in time um we also went over uh we had a leak a heating leak over in Smalling in one in the old section um that was fixed and we talked about the push back of Athletics into January um from the governor and NSAA so we are now to the point of open to the public for agenda items only so we have two responses the first one is from Melissa Portillo 675 T Street uh Mrs Romero being moved I think speak for a lot of parents when I say I think Mrs Romero being moved location is a total disservice to our kids at small e She translate for so many families Community already has a Bilal staff member I want to know why this is happening um we really can't talk about Personnel matters um but we are making several transfers this evening and she is one of those transfers um we have another one from Kathy X 431 toage Avenue Mrs Romero being moved from to community I find that this move is to service the families in small at this time M Romera has built relationships with family including myself she's willing to bend over backwards for her shoulder moving her during a pandemic in mid year how is How is is that a great service to families that Mr Ramirez helped how is this service to our Spanish speaking families again this is a Personnel decision that um we cannot really discuss at this time and that are the only two open uh comments for the agenda that we have um and I don't have any more so we are up to approval of minutes can I get a motion to approve the minutes from 11:16 2020 motion motion Mr fio second second who said the second I'm sorry I missed it Joanna Jo Joanna uh Miss mson second um discussion extensions okay see none Mike roll call solry yes Mr ball yes Mr bone yes M Muson yes M Martinez yes Miss Morris yes Miss Stevens yes M Amano yes Mr valair yes Mr fio yes all right so we're up to Personnel resolutions district and High School um resolved the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in Personnel resolutions under district and high school that is 6.2 through 6.4 can I get a motion motion motion Mr fio second second second Miss Morris discussion comment okay seeing none M can I get a roll call Mr ay stain Mr B yes Mr bone yes Miss Muson yes M Martinez yes Miss Morris yes Miss Stevens yes M Rano yes Mr V yes M defio yes motion carries we are up to Personnel resolutions middle and elementary resolved the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in Personnel resolutions under middle and elementary school 7.2 through 7.5 can I get a motion motion second Mo motion Mr bone second was that you no Michelle Michelle I'm sorry Michelle it's okay um discussion comment the concern seemed to be that um uh is there another Spanish-speaking individual at SMY now with Miss is Romera moving yes we we have uh a couple other people who speak speak Spanish who will be able help out in the office thank you okay see no other comments Mike Rolla Mr ay yes Mr ball yes Mr bone yes Miss Muson yes Miss Martinez like to have stain noted Miss Morris yes Miss yes M Rano yes V abstain and miss defasio miss defasio um I thought I hit yes sorry it's okay right up to education resolutions district and high school resolved the balber Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined and education re resolutions under district and high school 8.2 can I get a motion motion motion Mr fio second second second Mr velair questions comments discussion I'm glad that we're I'm glad we're adding an investing in the stock market course I think that's a great some sort of investment course for kids is is wonderful I wish I had that I was just going to ask is it just the two highlighted classes that are being added I did I miss anything there no I think it's just and the ra the racial Justice is good too yeah no I think it's three I think it's I did miss one yeah it should should have been three it should have been um I only saw two highlighted either Phil was it philosophy or psychology bring him back which we haven't had probably since God Mark that has to be what 20056 maybe um we're bringing that one back then we're bringing stock market and then we're bringing um the one you just mentioned which was the diversity so yeah yeah so those would be the three yeah because I only saw the two highlighted so I guess since the other one was already a former course it was not highlighted but that's okay yeah big okay again that that that one course we haven't had in a long time so I'm glad to see that one coming back that was very popular class yeah so is there anything um there anything about votch I I know it wouldn't be in here but votch is an option for high school and V does that V votch does that directly with our with our students we send them a complete list all our students and they do a direct mail okay um this may not be the time to talk about it but when when does information about votech go out to um potential students um it's usually sent probably sometime October November of 8th grade of eth grade okay yeah okay any other questions hey Mike broll call alry yes Mr ball yes bone yes M Muson yes Miss Martinez yes Miss Morris yes Stevens yes M Rano yes Mr valair yes and Mr FIA yes we are up to policy resolved that the B Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in policy resolutions under district and high school and that is 9.2 can I get a motion motion motion Mr velair second second second Mr fio questions comments I skimmed through these are is this just a lot of housekeeping yes is there anything substant substantial any major changes um there is under um Athletics the and security um they're kind of tying um security and Athletics together with some training um for security uh protocols they also have under security there some training for um outside groups that use our facilities at night sa Recreation and things like that so there are some training protocols that are going in there and I've already spoke to um our school uh school safety specialist about doing those trainings when the time comes with those outside groups okay okay okay thank you you're welcome any other questions Mike roll call yes Mr ball yes bone yes M Muson yes M Martinez yes M Morris yes Stevens yes M Zano yes valair yes is the F yes okay we are up to special services resolutions resolve the bber Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in Special Services resolutions 10.2 and 10.3 can I get a motion motion motion Mr bone can I get a second second second Mr V comments questions discussion can you tell us a little bit more about the um the second one inspired instruction is this something we've had before or is this a brand new training no this is this is a brand new training this is going to be a 4-day virtual training for our prek through six teachers and teachers assistant um um again I know Mark Mark you want to talk about this a little bit or do you want me to I can give a little bit um it's going to be prek through four not six that that changed because of our numbers and we only train up to 80 teachers um basically it's to address issues that came up in our practices with identification of students with special needs um that that's basically what it's going to address does that answer the question this is from the audit this is one of our yes to work on okay thank you no other questions Mike can I get a roll call please Mr ay yes Mr B yes Mr B yes M Bon yes M Martinez yes M Morris yes Stevens yes Rano yes s abstain and is the yes okay we're up to finance resolutions uh resolve the Bound Brook Board of Education approves the resolutions it's outlined in financial resolutions 11.2 through 11.9 can I get a motion motion second motion Mr fasio second I think I believe it was Miss Martinez yes yes m um questions yeah the uh the the car's Grant um is that's in line with what we thought we were getting how does it affect our bottom line money that yeah that that's additional money that's actually coming from the county freeholders that was they had left over that they didn't use and they they basically gave what they had left over they portioned it out to school districts for reimbursement for of our PP stuff how did that affect our bottom line did that did that fill the Gap that we needed or are we still in a huge hole we're still in a huge hole I think in total mik would they give us 20,000 uh they talking anywhere between 20 and $35,000 depending upon how many districts applied we applied one of the earlier ones and they kept extending the deadline so you know everybody can apply and get it all right and how much how much reimbursement have we gotten all together between local and federal um hold on just ballpark I don't need to i p oh actually noine could just want to eat food the fem Grant is uh still pending right we didn't have takes a while obviously right um but we have the uh regular cares grant that we got District direct that was uh better way I think it was $600,000 but I want to give you the exact number it was 629 629 and then we got the cares from the the county and we got what they called a CRF cares Relief Fund which was direct money another 93,94 that's that's what offsetting our child care that was for the child care child care cost that's offsetting all our costs for the child care that we've been doing okay thank you just like I said the hair under 800 or so over and the theme is still pending so we haven't heard anything back because they thought Co was going to be over and it's not so and supposedly they're they're changing the rules as it comes so I do not expecting a lot back in that okay thank you I have a question on 11.9 can you walk us kind of through what the evaluation would look like and also how how often do we evaluate our program like when was the last time we had we did something similar or have we done something similar okay you're talking about 11.9 yes all right 11.9 is um those are for child study team um independent evaluations so those those are things that are um parents parents may may request um an independent evaluation done outside of our people number one or number two if we don't have say a bilingual ldtc we may have to contract out to a bilingual LC to do something or if we run um you know uh bilingual preschool evaluation if we don't have a bilingual person we need to you know contract that out um these the costs that we would pay for those things and this is this is the cap that we have on those costs if somebody asked for an independent one um this is all we would pay so basically this is kind of like a dual full thing it's one it's what um what we pay when we go out if we have to have somebody come in and help us and number two if somebody asks for an independent that's what we're going to cap it at for an independent one as well so it's kind of a to thing any other questions okay Mike roll call sry yes Mr ball yes Mr B yes M Muson yes M Martinez yes M Morris yes Stevens yes M Rano yes Mr Val yes with the exstension of check 37207 and 37278 noted and M the fio yes thank you carries other matters to come before the board or new business I can't tell if you're talking or not Michelle no I you know it's just I turned to my husband said I I had something I wanted to say and I got distracted and now I I it'll come back to me at some point so just when it does I'll let you know okay this probably isn't exactly the right moment but I I wanted to say that I really enjoyed the online student um teacher I mean the parent teacher that's what I wanted to say it was kind of amazing how how easy it was and I'm not great with this kind of stuff and it went so smoothly I got to talk to everyone didn't have to stand in line didn't have to run up and round and try to find the rooms and had really quality conversations with everyone so I appreciate that how well that went I'm so glad you said that because that is exactly what I was going to talk about um yeah I I mean I don't know if in the future that would be like some sort of model that we I don't know what as far as attendance for for for teachers did most parents were they able to to get an appointment that needed one or there parents that were left without a slot I mean how did that go I honestly don't have an answer on that what I'll have to do is I'll have to ask the principles and and kind of get you that data I'll have it for um next month is that okay yeah because I like I said I agree with I concur with Miss Stevens that uh I have never met all of my high school P you know teachers because I'm I'm busy waiting online or running back and forth I I split the load with my husband and he's running in One Direction I'm on the other um so I I I will say just signing in one right after the other was it was wonderful so Kudos anything else before we move on um if you guys are okay before I do open to the public um we we have to move um we have to do an approval of the hibs um since it's an approval and we're not doing any reviews i' like to do that now if that's okay yeah that's fine okay so we're going to move to approval of Hib cases middle and elementary resolve the bber Board of Education uh approves the resolution Solutions is outlined in approval of Hib under middle and elementary schools and that is 6.2 Mike can you do a roll call oh wait I need a motion motion Mr second Mrs Martinez now Mike can I get a roll call sure Mr yes Mr ball yes yes m m yes is Martinez yes Morris yes Stevens yes Mr Zano yes abstain and and Mr fio yes thank you so we're open to open to the public for discussion and right now we have nine responses so first one is Tatiana 625 Thompson a Thompson Avenue I miss Clash Dojo our next one is from an Marie gonado 15 151 West High Street we need to bring back Dojo it was much more user friendly and easier way to communicate with teachers and get updates younger kids are asked to check calendars mailbox daily they are getting district emails as well as assignments for all classes this calendars uh change during the day and if they don't check again they may not know it's tiresome and stressful for them not knowing what may change from the morning to afternoon parents are overwhelmed with emails this takes time some of them away and allows quicker communication and more clarification uh next one amarie gonado again I know that this been asked several times before but can hyperlinks for the board meeting also where ask questions be posted on a district website asked Mr devido to do that last time this came up um it said that it would be done and it hasn't happened yet I will talk to him again about that uh next question is Amry gonado again I know it's been asked several times same question so we'll skip that one um Melissa Portillo 675 T Street um it has come to my attention I think this the same question we had before uh from the other part of the meeting it's come to my attention the board is trying to place Mr R community school she's helped so many families as smly who need trans translations why we even consider moving her elsewhere to a smaller school that already has a secretary staff who is bilingual we have discuss Personnel um Patricia O'Reilly 745 Schoolhouse Lane do you think it's prudent to extend remote learning from November 30th to mid January what are the chances that students will stay remote until the end of the school year until June what criteria will you allow students to return in person instruction in January is there any chance that students will have a full day of school eating at their desks the original plan when they return in January or is this a lost cause is the protest from the teachers union the main reason why kids can't have a full day of inperson instruction if so what criteria has the teachers union given to the Boe to allow students to have a full day of instruction and in general what is the criteria that will allow kids to have a full day of school private schools have been open more than public schools during this pandemic do you know why this is the case lastly why was a decision made to have Boe meeting fully virtual um there's a lot of questions there I think I'm going to get back to her at with uh or written reply if that's okay with the board well I think um I I'm okay with the written reply but I think that if you're going to to do that that at the next meeting that you should share that so that the public can hear the responses to those questions as well absolutely okay we can just add it add it to the minutes if you would like yeah but I think they need to be heard that's fine but I can put it in the minute yes I mean if you if you want me to I'll go one by one right now I mean I mean I I no if you I think that if if you want to have a thoughtful response and that's fine I don't mind waiting I just think that if you're going to do that that the next time that comes around that it that it's shared publicly so that anyone who might have those same questions would like to to hear the answers yeah and that's no problem I can do that okay next one is TR Riley nursing homes are now requiring all people entering the nursing home to get tested on site every day they using the test that will will give results of 15 minutes is there any possibility that this will come to the schools I have no idea on that can I also say the rapid 15minute test is only 50% accurate so like they could give them to the nurses but it's not as accurate as a regular covid test is which is I think 85 to 90% accurate I also would think that it would be cost prohibitive unless someone else is paying for it I that seems like a to test everyone every single day is just I think I I I think that would just cost too much well not only that it would be extremely timec consuming to try and test everybody every day just think about how timec consuming is trying to get people in through the temperature checks and everything else um now imagine 15 minutes per person at the door just say all right um the next one is Su Del ke from the high school as the board the next board meeting will be the reorganization meeting I would like to thank Mr orchy Mr bone for their service as Boe members um next one is Kelly Helman small school picking back on the board members the virtual parent conferences were mostly successful this year in getting in touch with almost all of my students I enjoyed the format so there's one teacher who is very positive about that um and that is all I have for public comment all right I I just wanted to um respond to the uh the first few using Class Dojo and I have to say I know I I I know that when we originally spoke about it that um the use of the Google Classroom um you was so that teachers were using that the Google classroom and and I agree I think teachers should use um the platform um that's provided as far as um giving feedback on work um grades and all the rest of that but as a teacher that is fully remote from my seat um that I have both and I got to tell you that the the class dojo like every morning like I look in if there's six or seven kids that are not in my class yet I get on dojo I'm like your child is not in class yet and within within minutes bing bing bing bing bing bing like all of a sudden like people go they wake up their kid they're oh you know I didn't wake them up I didn't know they were and then they're supposed to come after back after lunch and and I go your child didn't come back after lunch and all of a sudden I get like I don't always get them but you know the you know Google classroom doesn't do a text it doesn't it it's a different it's a different type of communication Dojo is for like communicating you know like things that you need to be communicated that are time sensitive like I need your kid now because whatever and I I'll be honest it's it's a free site so I I I don't know why we wouldn't encourage any type of communication now now that I'm in in the whole thing um I couldn't live without it honestly as far as I every day you send out a thing your child has not completed this homework and it goes out a mass thing to all the kids that day that did not complete their homework and I'm sending out 15 at one time you know and at least I feel like you know I there's a daily communication that they don't have to go look at an email they don't have to go open something and it it's just a quick way for me as a as as a teacher and and I'm teaching in the fully virtual world since September it's to me it's invaluable honestly it has an autot translate function it's it's so much easier as a parent I've got so many emails and notifications I start to ignore them it's background noise but you don't ignore Dojo it it's like an instant message or a text I just I just think being able to text them and say your kid is not here and they'll be like oh I forgot to wake my kid up and and all of a sudden I now they're there if I hadn't had that thing that kid would have missed school that day and Michelle it's it's it's free yes okay if it's another option that will make this situation smoother for parents and teachers I don't see why and it's not it it wouldn't cost the district anything I don't see why we can't bring it back for the short term yeah I would I would agree as well being here with with two guys getting multiple emails and having to to navigate through and find it as opposed to something that alerts you I mean I need I need I would really like something a little bit more proactive only because you know we as a teacher at home with my own students I'm constantly checking their stuff now I've just got two more things that I have to ly check and if an assignment gets put in right after I check it then I miss it till the next day and then I feel like a bad parent because I didn't see it and obviously my son is four so he can't read so it's not like he can check it himself so it really falls on me to check lots of emails lots of streams and it's as opposed to Dojo which just sends it right to my phone as an alert and I know right away what I need to do so I would agree so what's the disadvantage of Dojo I mean other than the rationale for using all Google platform which getting everybody trained and using that consistently which seems like a good idea why would it be in what way would it be contradictory or problematic to use Dojo as well I just think it becomes a another thing that the teachers have to do because they're going to have to update more than one thing constantly yeah but I don't I think it should be by choice right I mean if a teacher is looking to use the dojo if they're going to use Dojo then they're not going to use classroom well no I mean they have different uses I'll be honest Dr Gallagher what I use my classroom for is for inputting class grades doing all my work I post all my work on the Google Classroom right on the stream on the on on the classwork my Dojo is for like hey your kid needs to show up they're not here why are they not here like I can't do that on Google Classroom that it wouldn't go to the parents by the time a parent got to the Google Classroom to even see they already know their kids's not there like so it's they're two different forms of communication and I can see making sure that the people that I definitely agree that they should be using Google Classroom to put their assignments on to put the explanation to put um anything you know that supports the the students and the families in and having what they need uh for their lessons but Dojo is more of a a communication of of hey I need you to immediately go get your kid out of bed and they need to come to school I mean I I can't tell you every single day two or three times a day hey they left the meeting is everything okay are you having Tech issues no I just and then they pop back in so that's what I use it for well again and I think from my understanding of things was that they they were using it to push out assignments and everything else so they were not using it solely for just communication well then then you can different differentiate between those two things I agree that the the platform of Google Classroom should be for the academics for the for the uh you know for the assignments if because that's what it's there for right I think Dojo should be the informal communication of hey you know like I said I just sent I sent out every day in the morning your kid did not do their homework last night and and I just put all whoever didn't do it and it's just one little and that's all it says and it's just it's then then it's up to the parent to go into with the kid to Google classroom and figure out well what were were supposed to do last night and so that's what I'm saying I just think it's the informal Communications invaluable in this in this virtual world because we can't meet face to face at pickup and the teacher says you your kid hasn't turned in their homework for the last cut we don't we're missing that face to face and Dojo sort sort of bridges the gap between face to face we're able to talk it it's and and I understand and again I will we have a principal's uh meeting tomorrow and I will bring this up with the principles tomorrow and we we will discuss this along with um Google Groups which I thought was what the teachers were supposed to use in place of um Class Dojo and see if that's being utilized or not so I will get back to you on this okay anything else all right um we have to go into executive session at this time so we're going to Executive session um when we come out of executive session there will be no action taken so we'll be um dismissing from executive session so we will be signing off of YouTube at this point in time so we're going to Executive session under number one number seven and number eight so can I get a motion motion motion Mr five you second second who said second Stevens the stens second all in favor
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
here here I have a motion to adopt the agenda hi Mr I thank you um the first stter of business is uh the budget hearing revision and so Dr D thank you m thank you m president um what I thought I'd do this Eventing is go over the rationale for this for the reasons and give you details if you have questions don't be shy about asking anybody in the audience don't be shy about asking um and there's only statute 15 it talks about the fact that we have to have a budget division every December if our budget changes by more than 1% um that's the case uh right now so that's why we're having a budget revision we have to have a hearing this evening we'll have a vote on the budget revision on it's on the Wednesday night agenda uh we were notified by Department of Education pardon me October 23rd that we would need to reduce our current year budget by [Music] $51,500 L of funds um we um this budget reduction does not include a potential another 5% budget deduction of which Springs this year because we're doing online learning um this is something in Statewide uh there's 50,000 students not enrolled in school that were enrolled last year 2000 um when we started the fisal year when we had conversations online with the governor last spring we were told that if you're do an online a class would be 5% budget reduction max if you're doing a hybrid and person if I can't remember was two or two and a half% um that didn't happen this year um the cares act money that the district U received to help keep uh Financial fiscal year 20 in the in good shape that money is gone as of December 31st things that we've done with that money this is not part of the budget off just for your information was we retain salaries for employees last year we spent um we spent we had $112,000 for uh co uh expenses we have spent more than $215 uh things include masks um sanitizer different water fountains thermometers online [Music] curriculum um big um this is something that all districts are experiencing Tucson UniFi the second largest District in the nation state as of about three months ago they spent 13 million accommodate problem C so back to the hearing so we have U reduce our budget by $ 51,54 and that'll be the vote uh Wednesday evening this is one of the challenges we have that we did not have for about four or five years ago we have current GE funding right now this means that every month if our student enrollment changes we receive a little bit more money or less the challenge that is for people that been doing this for a while the current School Finance law is about 38 years old and it's not a bad law it's it's a good law for for a district like because it has an equalization component which means we have a low property tax rate here property tax income do not lot commercial property bedroom schools districts like cart District in West Phoenix it's huge District but it's all bedrooms there very little industry shopping grocery stores and things like that it's not a big mall a district like Osborne phix has all the downtown High build a district like Mountain has the nuclear power plants those districts cannot accumulate enough students to spend the money they so little districts like bedroom districts or small districts like us we get Equalization R to try to equalize across the state so that all happened about 1982 was a good component and at that time up until about I'd say 2015 2016 our budget was based on the previous year's 100th day ADM or what they call Ada attendance or membership that went away so now we do current year funding so one of the challenges we have right now with $510,000 we don't have a year to plan for that that comes off of this year bu um and again we will probably we see another one of these at least 5% because of online learning uh the two months we can do a budget revision hearing our budget increase anytime we choose to but by mandate have you December and may typically in may we utilize grant funding that may not have been accurate projected um so that U is part of the challenge we have we didn't have a year um as I said briefly we have 76 students that aren't here now that were last year that we could use for ADM Aver membership funding that's about 18 .5% of 20 2021 FIS bud that's much more than 1% whatever for um the 510,000 is 14% of the 21 budget so we went over what the state required by 13% to mandate to mandate this this hearing in this book um I was asked last week what what's going on the governor promised us well the governor this is Bob else the governor check they couldn't cash they never anticipated 50,000 students not being enrolled this year public school public condition schools and public Char school so that money was not generated so it it took more they couldn't support those 50,000 students out there in the state for the co um this um also as I mentioned before we spend about and 69,000 out of what should be 510 we received 169 should we should have received about 510 had we had if the car's Mone had gone that far one of the things we use car I fail to mention I mentioned things we bought for kids one of the things we've also been able to do for for employees is if someone tests positive or if we send someone home because they've been exposed and tell them they can't come back until they quarantined for two weeks or till they have a negative test result we we use what we call Co pay in the office we pay them their salary with infringing upon their sickly the plus of that is is some people if they've had chronic illness or they've had surgery or whatever the case may be they may have used that sickly so the person and that's money goes away in two weeks three weeks December unless sure watch the national news we have by partis committee right now and they've agreeded are talking about 900 billion for new bailout that money if that happen I don't how long it take Congress to decide how much each state gets but that money could back fill perhaps some of this but right now we don't have so that is hurting people that are making minimum wage and they have to take time off because of exposure so that's another place lost well um so the governor made deal with the state that didn't have the fund to build so that's a big part of the c um as I mentioned before we have spent as District about $103,000 more than we received and put in cares that Mone and that's money that's things that we think are necessary to support our kids and our teachers um I think I think we are in better shape as far as programming for children we were in March of last year frustration I had in March of last year was Sunday afternoon before spring break the Govern got two lock down 10 days later he locked us down to the remain of the year we didn't have time to adjust like we this year now it cost to do that adjustment again we spent money on Co salary we spent money on thermometers spent money on S thank you he spent money on water fountains we spent money to buy extra grades of uity which is our online we've used in P but we only us 6 through 12 so last year there was in that spring Spring quarter there was not as much a receive this so those types of things have really added up now if deposit to this this is a very shallow POS if there's a postive to this um we have been very very cautious for years on how we spend one of my continual concerns is in small districts it's all Rel unless you get your child whe you have 10,000 kids whe you have 100 kids small districts there's less pockets of money budgetarily that I see in lar I see in larger districts and we one of those small districts one of the things that helped us a couple years ago the state used to say we only carry forward 4% of unspent money for the following year if you didn't get it it went back to state lower the tax rate or just here what we did here often times if we had five or 6% carry forward we call prepaid insurance we pay our insurance bill three or four years on the road and we do that U this past year we budgeted the $340,000 of budget balance care uh we actually have 432,000 Bud teritory so that helps mitigate the $510,000 loss but that money is gone at the end of this year so the big picture to me is we believe that we can squeak by this year Mr and I talking before you folks came in we have saved some money it's not actually it's not the way we want to say it's the way we we saved some money we didn't we haven't had fall sports that's not a lot of money we have elll teacher position we have we kind of we have less mainten staff right now and we have less par staff so that that's some savings now next year help us if we can have a normal here we're still going to need those Services we don't know how get because we have um we as I said before we can make it 20 just year 21 that's the year 22 we're just kind of King the road because we PR just like you were in Arizona on the recession since I've been following politics in the state Governor ADV always have rainy day fund prec away quickly recession taxes people make the same thing happened again best my recollection in Spring of 2020 because again cash flows down business taxes proding funds and so may take four five years to accumulate and go mons so any the statute statute says anytime you have to change the budget by 1% we have to have a budget hearing and a budget rision um M Burns will be on the phone tomorrow night wday pardon Wednesday Wednesday thank you thank you and so she can answer any detailed questions you may have or things I about I can try to answer and here if you have questions or audience has questions this is something that all almost every District I know is going through something like this and there's not a simple solution I know that I talked to the superintendent Sarita obviously District half million and he's he's nervous I've been hearing nous superintendents on Zoom meetings since April and people are just worri keep things so that's information that I have I can share with you folks you have any questions get back and back the school district do we have to get yes so that would here's my here's my um because of current it's more like Mom and Pop business so right now we have 10 for the 2122 school year we budget we budget with less that one of the things that just talking about numbers not personalities noted we have several teachers oral teachers who won't be coming back because unless the government allows like to this excuse me um so if we say okay we can save this money by not hiring three teachers and these young people show upud show up then in a dilemma as to how we're going to provide subes for kids have size want to have I've been I've always been very proud of the boards here in a back when times were tough and we hit nclb I knew superintendents and principles who were cut of all the Arts and physical education art music be because I want kids to spend more time with with math and English language arts those are critically important subjects but life without music and art it's not and we know the music kids benefit academically from music and art having those programs for languages so if we cut programs and then these kids showed up we've got scram to try to figure out how to do this with I've done that as a principal and it's really even in the previous budget style I superintendent work for always deficit finan we always budget more money I'm sorry budget budget more money than we earn so to help pay for that he know staff schools less than he needed so I remember one time four or five years in a row I had to hire teachers after the school year start at that time in the city there were more teachers available than now but the problem was those little kids still bonded with one teacher you had to pull out another teacher two weeks or so into three weeks or month into school yet and it didn't it wasn't B Tri so in the short answer your question has we get some benit we don't know how far go um and the question I don't have the answer to I ask the end is if we if we change delivery system in March or February whenever the 2021 school year get some of money back have that much so that's question that question it's not 208 we won't get funding there until tax is generated the form 302 308 yeah but that won't happen until the 22 take it's like the money that I I was cheap I mean I believe in that our business is supposed to be Progressive but when I'm using other people's money why you can bive and so that's why 3,000 $432,000 we to car for like this that didn't happen and when you walk around here our cus isn't fancy like you see some of the cus I by my grand go it's gorgeous but they have [Music] everything we did have a bond we couldn't we couldn't have remodel this building [Music] you take here here Mr here here now if we have a motion to adopt the agenda for the meeting Mo I'll [Music] second um mes [Music] next on meeting is visitors comments visitors are welcome to speak on the agenda non-agenda items comments are limited to three minutes please state your name and address prior to making your comments please note that the members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore action is limited to directing the administration to look into the matter responding to any criticism oring the matter for further consideration would you like something to say it's not a comment in fact it might not fit into that those requirements um and it maybe something that I should ask at another time but just um like I'm not completely sure about funding it's probably a very remedial question but like in terms of County funding um obviously there's not a city state funding I mean there's obviously schools are funded differently and some schools have more money than others um is there a quick reason for how that happens I think State funding comes from income tax county funding comes from property tax do they divide it up in terms of who pays more with property taxes there's talk about commercial property is there a quick ver how that works and is that an appropriate question for this um and give name sorry so my name is Andrew sis and I live in AO and I work for the newspaper yes okay that's why I asked yeah supp to question and I probably should have asked during that time but yeah ass president since we can't talk about glad okay fin cool one I appreciate all right first auor of business is discussion with the personal items from the December regular board meeting you like me to yes please thank you I think pretty this is pretty this is pretty simple I believe um first item um is class employment of care professional uh Marsha Martinez pardon Mr England has been interviewing for this so Mr Martinez interviewed well and posi reference check so we be recomending her one of the things I would like to say about item eight a one two and three we are all professional AIDS because because the bud situation we will not will the boards votes to hire these people they will not start to ask the holiday for multiple reasons and one of the things we also need to take a look at it's every almost every child School benefit from oneone finci not so I special and we want to make sure that if a child in I has a oneon-one on the I there we have we have to provide but we want to make sure that that's necessary sometimes um it's not as necessary as we think so at any rate we'll take a close at that so we're not hiring people be probably educ the second item under Personnel is again professional ashin Johnson Mr her Rec her application is behind the back of information behind theend item the third one is Jennifer Dillard uh again interview is held we have standardized questions we use with people so get the same question and reference checks were completed and Mr Ed recommends that person for in the last Personnel item is the resignation of the custodial person Petra uh she submitted a letter of resignation to December the 18th um she actually verbally updated that last week so her last day was Thursday um is it's ironic she before she came she worked at the school when my daugh wased the elementary school and's then we go on to V which is the discussion regarding returning to online or person to person instruction I I'm sorry I was just going to read what it says oh I'm sorry um we have had two votes this year on the form ofed constructional delivery uh one was initial history back in July we accepted an online protocol or protocol to do distance learning well in July we had a situation I don't believe severe as what we're experiencing right now wide Nationwide with but Ser the Govern came on and executive order that required us to do [Music] more to do more U safe instructional program at that time the board voted to have an online program person uh the board again voted the first part of October to have continue the online program until the end of the semester the semester ends next Friday 18 so and this isn't potential are things I things we could do uh full opening school noral school year come January 4th uh that's not something Mr Ed ifort with um some going to do a hybrid mod open July 4th for subsequent dat we would like the reason we I'm saying subsequent date would be yes thank you yeah probably not have Su schol um we would same subse dat um if we change late in December what we're going do after the holiday it would be probably more comfortable for students and parents and teachers instead of start the first day back delay that a couple weeks so when I say subse dat that's the type of thing I'm talking about the third option I'm thinking about there is continue online instruction until a riew of the co outbreak is available after the holidays from what I'm hearing when listening news about number one's very present um the first million cases in the United States took three months the last million cases took five days uh Arizona has gone 100% in less than two weeks so we're we're growing up crazy right now uh so one of the things I think about we're anticipating I listening to news the medical community is anticipating Contin increase because of Thanksgiving my assumption is that if Thanksgiving had that kind of impact on the virus Christmas will perhaps even have a more serious impact on virus and again it may take two to three weeks at least two weeks to find that out so that would put us in mid January uh to find out if we have another Spike or problem what I was suggesting about number three was postpone the vote until the first meeting INE in February which is February 10th and then make a decision whether we're going to be online to be hybridation we' have some data to look at I think after the after the holiday season com close uh than any other possibilities the board think this is not a v it just want you FKS to think about this because Wednesday night we have a so I got one today I find it while he's finding that I can tell you over the last four weeks outed 49 cases in the last four weeks um the co numbers uh this came in today about 3:00 um between November 30th and December 4th there were 76 tests and 12 positive so about 10% would be 7.5 so 16% the county health department has said with their metrics their goal is to have one is to have 5% or less positivity rate two weeks we only made that we're in two weeks since March last the last month or% Bas um and the three metrics that they gave us back in August we are veiling metric one and Metric 2's rate will once they catch up they're about three weeks behind on posting but wec one metric two failed for 3 weeks andc three I don't have all the DAT on hospitalization and I believe talking about individual cases in a small community is to me at least more challenging than the large city because we want to respect the privacy of the person invol and Vera applies to kids but we still try to practice that the staff hia applies more Med Community Education we still try to practice that I think this LEL last referen case in ouro that's what us to shut down because and anything else [Music] separate cases related cases to my knowledge one one very very very signant asso the other one I don't know so right now we've had about uh we've had [Music] so students students that are on our campus some of them are and what's what's what's surprises us the students are on our campus in that govern that we provide on in person instruction to students Val also essential workers children and so if we have 40 kids that's a big [Music] day my wor my concern is that's 10% of our orless if we're seeing this kind of grow with 10% you think what potentially if we had right now be all the kids right excuse me the age and time that they were sick starting back in March is it 16 students from March today or is it within the last two weeks so 16 students that would be from August when this started that we' beeno from August and that's just the ones that we know there are probably more than that that we just have had no idea the age like I know that the ones most susceptible of 12 to 18 I can tell you we've had a number ofs sor the thing is frustrated frustra for us I've heard the term uses virus and it's not we can medical medical community can predict we can predict what happens with children child dis small small chicken po things like that this thing so far knew [Music] it's and I understand the antibodies last in decision about the fact that neither one of us are happy the children are seeing face to face teach I but I am concerned about have disease I don't know what could be 10 one 20 for the respiratory system St that people [Music] are I think it's interesting I talked to you about it on the morning talk show on Sunday the director of the CDC to open school and having students here is the safest place that they can be I think for like K2 or K3 kids also something you talked about that is student emotional health causes make have you any from Comm we met with parents and we had a very very small train parents have I think several feeling is this quote several times that someone knew someone Bel was field and my thinking on that is just thinking 50% of the cases the deaths we had right now weing going down that's huge the about child care schools by definition withal nature we provide hopefully a safe clean environment help home so that's AIG and also Athletics student kids like that it's extremely talk to one family kids not because I want to you go ma soci St science also learning is relationship social and that's that's why I say Social Development this week and we also have to understand are many things that we don't have Lot number of not now so that's one of the things that I look at and I one we have people themselves they want is there right answer are there questions we don't have like you have [Music] 25 L conern most the concerns about theal of students then think about theal of the teachers since there are long possible longterm consequences of this does the state have program to help that somebody has life for you know longterm consequences from onity unless something come from I discussing make and I don't tax the first cares over trillion now there's some feeling that that money may have gone to businesses that didn't let Tri 9 I told teach last spring we have fores we are in the pmic there [Music] te what we expect Reg [Music] are how soon you get we can they're talking about teachers getting the vacine the same amount of time as we're probably looking at late January or early February at years but would be quicker than the end of the well that's at the ear that's at the earliest realistically they're saying that you're probably looking at you're prob looking at February anyway for the first do remember it's two doses it's not effective see decision first Phoenix small one thing I like I don't know how many numers ucat these Educators first first ceg C a lot of thean rules hom so if you questions thank you we move on to discussion of business items I this is something January this typic do this in January month forward what I tried to get was the second Monday and Wednesday of each month pardon this is not an issue right now but past a couple conferences that I need to be try kind of around those those are all online these so but any date can be changed by board president 24 so there necess have a second meeting any mon or we can't meet the 13th we got meet the 14th 24 hours all second I believe second Monday Tuesday Monday and Wednesday each second business what we had hearing about Sor shes meeting these meetings are just the Mee V so there's a calendar back up forence if you need it second business item is we talked about he statut 95 I talk about the fact that we have any of change in budget 1% or more we get called notified by part of education and because of the loss of 76 students in the last sentence what I want to emphasize the current estimate do not yet include reduction expected due to distance fing Ali States so change this and then the final item is um you recall about five years ago the Arizona voter voted to increase our minimum wage um because this I thought it was going to be $1250 an hour it's down 1215 because of low inflation rate uh this I believe is the last increase we started out about 825 or 850 and this pass so continue to raise the salary for the the proposition so before we can pay people against law that's good we have to have commission and I have as a backup to that Arizona School business officials is organization Chuck ethics essic I'm sorry former Director of Finance for M School Department of Education Chuck is extremely extremely he's a PhD and a CPA and whenever I call him I get an answer and so he gives kind of what's happened there and the next um a resar of the board to sign um or to discuss the superintendent evaluation and I would like to have that table and maybe because you and I are the only two that and it's not fair to do it just on our um tomor and she nailed it but I've had a terrible time with my you brought I'll email the former against Tracy okay and then um this Wednesday Thursday and Friday I receive no mail at all which is very [Music] un so you people would be all right is that when I get all the information I will compile it um [Music] so we done so just yes we now at 6 thank you should be on the front here
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checking to see like heidi had a bunch of repair pro staff at the high school contacting high school kids starting together you have questions about your work how's it going like the kids that we're not online kids um what teachers do you need to hear from have you been able to reach your teachers your teacher been able to reach you so that's what her staff is doing she like made a script for the are calling so then they can contact the teacher he just didn't need to hear from you good so i had teachers reach out to me today that's fantastic it was good so i know i know that that's how they're going about their k-5 they have staff you know what the teaching staff has the ability to do that and um yeah that was nice yeah i saw that i think i'm ready okay ready yep okay welcome to this special meeting of the um valley school unified school district um stand please the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we appreciate a motion please to adopt the agenda as presented um all in favor aye aye thank you andy did you hear that yeah all right yeah okay at this point we have called in public i don't know if we have any forms okay one i'm speaking but did you feel it do you feel it oh thank you so much thank you oh hi everybody hi again it would last a little over a month before you guys shut us down and i lost the last school board meeting i understand there's issues with teachers not being able to be here which is actually administration's responsibility since last year we had the highest amount of kids out with the flu that you guys have ever had but it did not shut down these kids are not caught up and every time you guys shut down what they're going to want to do is quit they'll get their geds and they're all talking about it you guys are going to lose a whole bunch of students we knew this was going to happen we knew that the numbers were going to go up okay everything wasn't mellow and the kids are just starting to get caught up and then you let them shut us down for another seven days or so so i hope you guys reconsider this don't do this again um because you're just it's killing the kids you guys are absolutely killing the kids you're going to lose kids in your schools and you're going to lose revenue and people are going to get pissed off about it you know i'm just one person i come forward first before the rest i would come in and try to talk to you guys but you made it over a month and then you shut the schools down again it was poor decision making i understand the numbers are up with the exact day that you guys were talking we had over a little over 5 000 people that have gotten sick from it not been affected that have actually gotten sick from it but what they don't tell you is 2 900 of those cases have been recovered so the numbers you guys are getting you're getting a little spurts there's one person that didn't vote the rest of you guys voted to do it i'm shocked especially with you being a doctor [Music] so um that's one thing i want to talk about the second thing i wanted to talk about was um the face masks they're not working they're making our kids sick let me tell you what a high school student does when he's out here or a little kid in general when they drop their face mask they look around and find one on the floor because they have to get into that next class they're not going to make a difference or making them sicker if that kid picked up a face that i can see putting wash stations so the kids are washing their hands um science has not proven that these work or they don't work all we can do is watch and see well we've done it we've done that this started out with becoming you guys way before october 19th and saying this is a this was going to be an issue i've been looking at all the statistics i've been you guys consider the nobody did october 19th we had to come in here and fight with him because once again he wanted to close the schools down again now we're into the third time we're all having to come forward and it's over these face masks it may be a safety mechanism for you for certain people i understand that if somebody's sick they need to wear one if the teachers feel endangered they need to wear one but you guys are making the kids wear them and the kids are it's not it's not productive it's it's the opposite way and then thirdly i wanted to talk to you guys about i came in here to talk to my grandson um my grandson's counselor about what we need to do on scholarships where they are from last year this year obviously the scholarships have decreased quite a bit because we've lost so many students yeah i don't blame these kids for one day they don't get graduation they don't get their sports they don't even get their friends at school i mean i don't blame them if they all wanted to just go get their gps instead of driving another year and a half but this is the way that their school board and their and their administration is going to allow this stuff to happen but anyhow i came in the other day and i came to talk to my grandson's counselor about what we need to do to get them started on scholarships try to be proactive in this a little bit and the lady told me man you have to wear a mask and i said no i don't i do have a medical problem and i'm not supposed to wear one matter of fact i don't even have to wear one here but i'm doing it because we're on close quarters it makes people feel better than sophia and i said no i'm medically exempt and she says well you around the corner right here to those buildings and ask for a camera where the name is now so i started to walk out and my little grandson was here we were on the sidewalk i have ptsd okay that's what happens when you're held at gunpoint for days so it uh i started to walk out and all of a sudden i turned around and i saw mrs wolf principal wolf and some other guy maybe their security officer they have here and i said can i help you guys and they said um well you can't go you can't be out here without a mouse i said i have a medical exemption from where we're in a mess i don't have to arrest and then she proceeded to tell me that i don't have to leave the school grounds and i said no i don't i came in here very specifically to talk to this counselor so then when i started to walk they followed me they kept following me and i she said well i said just i'll be there anywhere i don't care i don't want to go in the classroom so i went and sat in the front and she came out and we started talking and and i asked for jade and i've been going in dropping off uniforms and taking money to jaina for two years all of a sudden i'm not on the list so she wouldn't want me that's fine we fixed that but um they they kept following me around and so i said and today she would yell things at me she goes well do you have papers do you have papers proving that you don't have code she i said just just a minute jason will give him my phone let me record this they left she went and got the teacher and then she came out and they let jayden come over and we sat and talked about everything that dave needs to do from this point forward to make sure he gets a scholarship i did ask her that if there's any other kids out there that might be thinking about it is there a way you can put a flyer out or some sort of a notice because these kids don't even know these juniors have to have these in by name and nobody knows so at that point mrs wolf came out and tried to say something i don't know and i don't even know she was talking to me so i wasn't paying attention and we got all the information we needed and i thanked the teacher and i left at least she thinks she is asking me for papers that's what they did to the jewish people it's not funny millions died i think i did really good considering having somebody kept following me around and they wouldn't say anything good just put their hands down follow me and then on top of that you know what happens when the police get called 9-1-1 to the school you know what they think they think that there could be somebody there trying to kill him or hurt the students she wouldn't call the police on me there is nothing they can do about it it's completely against the law to call the police on somebody especially this is a private property i just she made the big scene out of it she was following me around it was all over the school she called the police they're just like why would she call us on something stupid there's we we're out here actually putting our lives on online so i don't know what you you know if anything he doesn't do anything but i came back to you because of the school closures you guys are planning on opening on the 6th and let's just leave with that but you guys need to think about these masks because they're making our kids sick we haven't had any easy breathing here with covered here so to show you one the masks don't work at all and there's a high possibility that these masks are getting trained with kids which they are that's exactly what they're doing on time all right thank you all right thank you um item seven approval of the consent so public hearings would have to have a motion to open the public hearing okay thank you okay so this is interesting and all the years i've been doing budget this is the first time our december revision or mno decreased so obviously it's kind of coping so our adm decreased 531 we're expecting that to go down even more with the online um so our m o decreased by 244 000.
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we start do you want to just give a update on where we are with the monitors and stuff we have a PO in to the company they're going to schedule a technician to come out and look at it okay thank you m know our clock's two minutes slow just saying no points [Music] put well I don't know should I requested fr call us Mee to order welcome everyone Mr please lead us in the pledge i al to the flag of the United States of America and to the rep for it stands one nation indivisible withy and justice for all thank you much call please Mr MCG M K pres Mr Ry here mrly I'm here Mr Aro like approval of the appr second motion second discussion Mr VG yes oh you're last I'm sorry M SK yes Mr or yes pass pass thank you okay have call to the I have free to read and we have gentl here us evening this is a nice surprise okay we are grateful to the voters that showed their support with a yes vote for the Continental Elementary School override it's override P with a higher margin than previous overrides it shows that we have the support from many of in our community in helping conell deliver the best education possible congratulations to Kelly Allen for her win on the scho our community heard our needs and voted in a parent who cares about our children teachers and the school she would be a great asset to the board with the continued school thank you thank you to all those who supported the condo School override especially those on the override committee both parents and community members who dedicated countless hours of their time to a cause they believe in some may have doubted that we had the support so the voters of Green Valley who clearly value public education and support our local school despite the many efforts both locally and nationally to undermine it I understand the override pass to the greatest margin in its history congratulate congratulations to new school school board member Kelly Allen and to Drew Shelly and Richard for being reelected to another term we value your commitment to this great little school in our community to all the Continental teachers students and staff especially in this difficult time we're so proud to support you go col go col thank you dear governing board I'm an employee of account school and a parent of a continental kindergarten student I'm writing today to urge you to take the students and help staff's health into consideration in the past month we have closed down the second grade classroom an entire preschool and our cafeteria it's very concerning that our school remains open while staff and students continue to contract covid-19 we're putting a community at risk by remaining open I ask you toe consider student and the community and the community's health into consideration respectfully thank you yes sir is that okay up here minutes than um my name is k g I'm the proud parent of uh my son who graduated from here last year moved to Walden I am the found National thank you letter day where three years ago we actually put together the world's largest thank you letter handwritten thank you letter with the help of our wonderful superintendent and all those concerned and what do you do with a thank you letter you actually have to send it so this last year we sent Inge world's largest envelope world's largest stamp again to celebrate National thank you letter day and this year uh our school decided to celebrate by creating uh thank you letter videos in which kids would actually write out a thank you letter uh videotape it and then send it off to the heroes of 2020 anyone local in our community who will helped us through the pandemic so that could be anyone from First Responders to delivery people to grocery clerks to parents and guests who teachers that's right so wonderfully enough we Val news article in November 15th and it was it's so easy to you pass was really how than all right so that was a wonderful success we got a number of interviews we were able to put um con School the app once again nationally and regionally I get the chance to shout it out I shout it out big and strong lastly or second to last we've um the 100 Year Continental celebration closet is finally finished this is where all the gr bricks go out there that was my son's EV project he's as happy as I am that it's finished um we're going to have a ribbon cutting this coming up Wednesday the newspaper will be there to document that and we're going to have some kids on at 10: a.m.
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you for all your work that you do and all your support of continental of our school we're super blessed to have you um on our side constantly so thank you and with that said charlotte president charlotte ace would you like to say anything gary do you have to stop so if you want to come say something please do well we are just thrilled to be a part of this um when roxanna first told us about the concept all our members were on top of this gary started the process so i give him a lot of credit and it's our club and also foundation then district 55 we were able to do this so that is why jim rusk who's the president of the foundation will be up here with me [Applause] well we've also enjoyed uh supporting continental in so many different ways a lot of times spent with birthday books many of you are familiar with and now this opportunity here the foundation uh is really into music and we're happy we also were able to add uh your jazz ensemble to our jazz in the desert event and with that uh not virtual but we're having our fundraiser right now for that but we look forward to any kind of opportunity to help support the kids and and further their education and hopefully we are going to cement this into the ground but we thought for the picture that we would um hold it instead for today it says rotary music park for the continental community and really we did want a place once our parents come in and can walk their kids in for them also to take advantage of the park as well as our rotarians they are also going to be on a rotation for once a month to help us clean the equipment and to maintain it so it's an ongoing project that we really appreciate so without further ado we can cut the ribbon and officially open up our outdoor music park and i would like to invite all of you to the boardroom afterwards our board meeting starts at six and we'll be able to do a formal thank you and get some pictures inside okay thank you so sharnett um sure okay let's get uh one of our board members can you come help us cut because the scissors are really big okay good ready one two [Laughter] three one two three [Music] thank you all very much and like i mentioned we'll transition into the boardroom there's
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for our outdoor music park this project with these three items was a total of eight thousand dollars and we did not anticipate that we were
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thank you mr watson we appreciate the time you took to come and swear in our board members [Music] okay we will call this special board meeting to order today is tuesday december the 8th we are about five minutes behind schedule offer congratulations to mrs eugetti miss wood and mr carr on their election for the next four years on the governing board congratulations we appreciate your service we will go to item 1.02 off of item 1 1.02 is a moment of silence and then we'll go to 1.03 and pledge allegiance led by mr carr would you please stand for a moment of silence please join me in the pledge of allegiance 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 move to item 1.04 we'd like to welcome all who are viewing the proceedings on live stream and thank you for staff two staff for your attendance miss wilson would you please call the roll dr charles santa cruz here miss larry wood here mr reed carr here miss sheila eugetti here ms jill humphries here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson will move to item 1.05 and it is a call for a public hearing pursuant to ars any introductory remarks dr mccord before we move to a motion no sir just uh going to be talking about the revised budget uh for 2021.
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right now okay yeah because I don't see everybody so uh we do have visitors here at the ASC and they can hear and see you up on the screen right now okay okay hello hello they wave back and say hello okay it's 6:30 uh let's call to order Julie can you do the roll call Nancy cupka present Fuller here Dan Nicholas here Terry pavich here Rick panado Rick panado thank you Jo Vasquez Drexler pres thank you uh we have a quorum let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance aliance to the flag of United States States of America and to the repic for which it stands stands one nation Nation Under indivisible okay I believe we start with student perspective student Bo student board member questions and comments no those were postponing for next week okay directly into uh the board workshop and the only item we have for tonight is uh the report on community transmission metrics which continue to be insubstantial although uh metrics have improved over the last week the DuPage County Health Department is still concerned about is there going to be a Thanksgiving Spike that follows in the coming weeks uh they said it takes seven to 14 days for those numbers and those cases to start showing up so um although overall it looks like uh people are doing more of what they should be and the numbers are decreasing so uh good news overall in the last week um but still uh strongly in the substantial area and uh above the threshold that we would have for returning to school at this time so that's my only report um any questions from board members uh next week we're going to talk about the um plans the tentative plans for next semester correct that will be uh next board meeting we'll start with uh the results of the surveys that went out on our last round of learning Gina and and that team are putting together a presentation on our findings from those surveys and then we'll go from that into our plans for iners return to inperson instruction that are heavily weighted BAS based on those survey results okay you know Dan I didn't hear a word you said yeah just ask will we be in person or I I haven't I need to talk to uh District Council to find out uh if under tier three we're able to return but it's likely that if tier three mitigations aren't relaxed that will still be virtual um Hank how are other schools able to go back during all this under tier three Arlington Heights just voted to go back Hinsdale the Catholic schools if they can go back why can't we at least try to to a hybrid model sure um really what it's connected to is a combination of where the metrics are currently and the instructional models that are in place with our instructional model being 50% of the students at a time uh were much different than some of those models that are bringing in much smaller groups of students at a time it's also based on the metrics in our area in DuPage County you know when you look at each School you need to look at both their location and their programming and what the metrics look like in the in our community uh what we had committed to in our community was for the first semester that we needed to see two weeks of improving metrics and be out of the substantial uh Community transmission level to return to our hybrid model that we had in place in our full design that design was built to keep students and staff safe under those levels of community metrics currently we're outside of that we haven't been trending back inside of it since uh well since we left the hybrid model so uh we're re-evaluating all of that data we're looking at the metrics and how that will work and we'll present on all of that next week but under everything that we set and structured for this semester and what we communicated to families about safety and how we would monitor that we're outside of that at this time so uh we're we're looking at everything and re-evaluating if we can modify that for second semester and that's what we'll bring next week but right now we're we're well outside of the range that we said that we would be running School under any other questions all right uh Nancy reception of visitors reception of visitors so this is an opportunity for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary Mrs nidek visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone and state their name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and they are being broadcast um and then I as the board president reserve the right to modify these Protocols of circumstances warrant please uh your uh observation of these protocols is appreciated all right and we have uh some visitors in the room I'll bring them up in a second we also had the online form open uh over the course of the day we receiv received 24 comments uh all of them encourage the administration and the board to second semester have students return to inperson learning and provide a variety of suggestions of things we should consider as we plan to do that all of those comments will be provided in whole form to the board tomor tomorrow and will be made part of the official board minutes thank you Dr with that uh give me a second to turn on the camera and microphone uh for the in the room and then they can come up and wanted all right can uh can you guys hear me yeah a little muffled but yeah um hi good evening thank you for um allowing visitors to come and speak tonight my name is Carrie Norris I have four children and one of them is currently a sophomore at Downers Grove cell could we speak up I can't hear very well is there a way to turn the volume up do you have your computer fully loaded Terry turn up your volume on your yeah you guys are fine it's it's at the ASC that isn't what's your speaker at though uh Terry yeah check your speaker setting it's it Max okay all right we're as loud as we can go here so all right sorry I I don't know so please start over sorry yes I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you that's okay my name is Carrie Norris I have four children one of them is currently a sophomore Downers Grove South and I'm just here to express our fa families desire to see District 99 open up and get our students back into the building next semester um I just I want to tell you why it's so important to us my husband and I work full-time out of the house uh we have no at home option to work and our three kids four kids are on their own uh while we're at work my sophomore son is a part of District 99 special service department he has a learning disability and he's serviced with an ie P his disability wasn't diagnosed until seventh grade so his first experience under the special education guidelines didn't occur until 8th grade at this time late in his education career he was full of anxiety fear tons of self-doubt and it truly was one of the most difficult years that we as his parents faced then he arrived at Downers Grove South and he discovered his casew worker and his team of teachers was full of wonderful people he admired them he felt comfortable he immediately just dug into High School really loved it and during his freshman year we saw a brand new kid he was happy he was excelling he was finally comfortable in his own skin he was easily reaching out to his teachers and getting the extra help he needed when he needed it he was proud of himself and happy he was earning A's and B's we no longer doubted his academic future at this time as we were seeing him rise and Conquer we saw his self-esteem increase for the first time ever now covid is here and of course we did expect some difficulty but we never imagined that his in-person instruction time which is what he needs to succeed would be diminished so greatly we feared the r ifications of remote learning but we felt confident that a hybrid model could at least fill in some of the blanks for him but then our hybrid model seemed to diminish too 12 hours in the building during semester 1 and that was it our son has given up we're at the point where he's he's just done he has regressed academically and socially and emotionally it's like we're looking at that eighth grade version of him all over again hopeless no drive to succeed rising self-doubt Rising anxiety and fear of the future feelings of hopelessness for college andora's sustainable career he feels he can't do it he feels he's not capable of learning anything his grades are suffering greatly I'll submit the rest through the form thank you good evening my name is Kate Benton I'm a parent of three students enrolled with District 99 I am also a pediatric psychologist on staff at lur Children's Hospital board members if you have as you have seen the latest studies and the recommendations from National experts are all confirming not only the safety of in-person learning but how crucial it is to get our kids back in the classroom excuses for not opening the schools are drying up while repercussions of keeping them closed are piling up educational losses are only the tip of the iceberg I'm here to speak to you about another set of repercussions those that are dear to my heart as a psychologist please listen carefully because if you care about the safety and well-being of our students your efforts must go beyond concern about transmission of covid-19 as your only singular objective we cannot simply ignore every other real consequence of keeping our students at home students do not have a shelf life you can't dust them off and bring them out next year and think they'll be just as good our students in remote learning are at high risk for many other negative outcomes and these outcomes are already happening in our community they're already at play let's start with physical health the entire fabric of our children's lives is being changed no place is this more real than in the state of Illinois where Youth Sports have been entirely shut down since March drama music many other extracurriculars closed gone remote when you take away all of those things what do you think happens a lot of bad habits get formed let's start with sleep new sh science is showing that increased digital media device exposure leads to the biological clock getting mixed signals about day and night transition which makes it difficult to fall asleep when you can't sleep at night guess what you sleep during the day when I come home from work it's not unusual to find not one not two but all three of my kids sleeping during the day and then they complain that they can't sleep at night one in four teens aged 13 to 19 reports that they are having difficulty falling asleep or they're losing sleep how about weight gain the average child in the United States gained seven pounds during quarantine in the spring students at home have constant access to food and little supervision during the day they aren't walking to school they aren't changing classes they aren't going to PE there's no sports or activities to offer structure and exercise should we be surprised that pediatric obesity is on the rise does anyone need to hear the long list of serious health problems that will be faced by this generation of quarantined children how about risky behaviors hundreds if not thousands of teenagers being left at home unsupervised all day do you think these students are taking covid precautions but maybe that's not our biggest worry my husband is going to give me is minutes research is already showing increases in Risky Behavior vaping drinking smoking elicit drug use all on the rise you know why kids report they turn to substances boredom and stress do you think these kids have reasons to be bored and under stress now let's get to the mental health repercussions rates of anxiety depression and teen suicide all on the rise a full one-third of teens during remote learning are reporting incre symptoms of depression social isolation more than a quarter of teenage students report not feeling connected to anyone one in 14s and young adults report having contemplated suicide in the last 30 days one in four suicide is the second leing cause of death in youth 12 to 17 years of age these are our kids what are we doing we should be sounding the alarm there's been a lot of talk about the need not to overwhelm Health Systems well I can tell you at lur Children's Hospital we are overwhelmed but not with covid we are overwhelmed with referrals to our Behavioral Health Department we are overwhelmed with referrals to our pediatric obesity clinic and the fatty liver program I can tell you in my division of Developmental Pediatrics psychologists and social Works social workers are going home in tears because they're spending their day trying to talk parents off the ledge kids with special needs who have the highest needs are not getting services or appropriate instruction right here at t99 we sit on adaptive pause if these opinions are not enough to convince you then let me end on one more point back in August one of our school board members remarked that she did not want on her conscience even one student who contracted covid-19 what I say to her what I say to all of you does your conscience have enough room for all of the negative repercussions of keeping our students out of school these are not hypotheticals these are realities which list of risks do you want to live with covid-19 has a 99.997% survival rate in our youth if you care about the safety and well-being of our students your efforts have to go beyond transmission of covid-19 as your only objective as a parent a member of this community and as a mental health professional I am asking the high school districts in 99 open on January 5th with an aggressive plan for full in-person learning it's the right thing to do and it's time thank you okay if I still have 30 seconds then I'll point out what the experts are saying American Academy of Pediatrics their official position the benefits in school far out the way the risks of Corona virus Dr fouchy the default position should be to keep the children in school and get them back to school director of the CDC Robert Redfield the safest place that our children can be from our perspective is to remain in school it's every bit as risky to have students at home fraternizing with their friends not wearing a mask not socially distancing thank you my name is Amy Romano um today I came on behalf of my daughter I worked out at 5 o'clock in the morning at a gym and my daughter works out at the same gym the other thing is I went to the office today I work in the office I've been in the office since March I haven't had a day off and I see Terry playing with her hair and doing stuff this is serious I'm here because my daughter who's a senior she is getting their kids are not participating in class with they have breakout sessions she is doing the frontt of the work and she is being bullied don't talk to me I'm busy playing video games I'm doing this you have you make these kids out that they have the Scarlet sea Brazen on their chest that they are Outcast the society because of covid I have run into friends picking up carry out have your daughter reach out to my daughter she is not doing good mentally and you know what my daughter is doing okay but she's not strong enough to carry everybody you are responsible to get these kids back math cannot be taught online it belongs in school science classes chemistry physics cannot be taught online you there's tiles of 30 kids how do you know if they're succeeding and thriving you have counselors you have all these sources how many of these counselors are checking in weekly with these students I know you have the resources but the kids don't reach out to them you have you are the adults in charge act like it do something for these kids we the parents have been left to pick up the pieces this it's it's the falling on them and mental health has tainted there are kids that are traveling to other states to participate in sports what does that say to you and you think that oh there was a party so we have to close down the school that's you you are driving these kids to find alternatives to find something and some hope and some of these kids are being bombarded with homework and you know what the amount of homework given does not show the value of a teacher a value of a class this year we've been very fortunate thank you we have nobody else in the room that wishes to address the board I'm sorry I couldn't hear you sorry I forgot to unmute thank you all for your comments uh was there anything else you wanted to add Dr thy no I had nothing more to add at this time okay at this time we need a motion to go in a Clos session for the self- evaluation practices and procedures or professional ethics when meeting with a representative of the Statewide Association of which the district is a member do we have a motion Terry Terry moved yeah do we have a second I'm sorry I couldn't I couldn't did I hear Dan believe Charelle second Charelle charel seconds pich I cherl fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi Rick panado hi Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi and Nancy kupka hi we will go into Clos session we will be when we come out of close session there will be no action taken from the board you're certainly welcome uh if you're still in the audience to stay um but we will only be uh adjourning when we come out a close session
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Lor whenever you're ready give him the thumbs up and okay so he can that was a thumbs up to Matt for combing his hair um you can have a thumbs up now too I call to order the asgo community Unit School District 308 Board of Education meeting can I have a roll call please Mr Bowman here Mrs Dole here Mrs croner here Mr Lightfoot present Miss Morgan here Mrs moer here Mrs Swanson here please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance i al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivis andice as we have no public comment we'll go to item 5.1 board member comments um who would like to [Music] begin Tony um I just want to say say that you know some of the comments I've gotten from people in the community is that we need to communicate more about things so I wish I could be more specific but I think in general it's just there's anything that we know about that's going on that we could express at a board meeting that we should express it at a board meeting so it could be anything from our committee work to bigger issues that are going on in the district as far as we can comment on those things and um kind of a renewal to elucidate things because we're board members and because we know that people in the community want might want to know about them and I think that's a good valid concern that I've heard in a couple letters and in a couple other places so I think that all of us just have to take that on and say there's anything that we haven't been talking about that we run across and we're going through all of our board business we should bring it up and talk about it and do it at the right time either board comments or when that particular subject comes across the agenda no Brent I'll go I got a good one for you uh remind your children that there are 10 days of school left 11 if you count that last day right which I don't know if that's a half day or not I'm gonna just not say that but um I did because I also teach and I also have received my first two please help save me emails because that happens so I think first of all parents you should remind your kids that their grade counts it it does count the governor's not going to forgive your semester your grade is your grade right the school district the school board I don't think any of us have even had the conversation about forgiving any so make sure that you keep an eye on your studies and then secondly um contact your teachers right so parents of yeah I have a Junior High kid who I don't always contact teachers although I did today because I got so many emails but um so just remember to contact your teachers unless you're in high school and if you're in high school kids you this is a really good chance for you to take some ownership and to contact your own teachers and for you to say hey you know what I screwed up or I had to work or there's all kinds of situations that we don't understand right now some of the kids are struggling mentally some of them are families are struggling so I think it was a wakeup call to me that teachers at the very beginning of this um we asked the community for Grace so I think we need to remember to do that when we're talking to these kids 10 days out nothing for me no I I'll just tag on to that a little bit so I I've gotten a couple of messages from from folks in the community one was sending I don't know if anybody else just saw it there was an article talking about um a school district I think in in the state of Arizona where something like 30% of the kids were getting failing grades and in a typical year it was 8% I don't think that's the case in our district I hope I hope it sure is not but to to tag on to what Ally is saying you know um when I hear kids issuing frustrations my response is always have you talked to your teacher have you emailed your teacher um so hopefully that's happening at the parent level at the student level and we're making do as best we can we also get we all get notes from members of the community that are you know demanding we return to school tomorrow um we all know we have a plan in place we have a goal in place and we will get there as soon as we can no member of this board or the board collectively cannot W wave a magic wand and make it happen tomorrow as much as we want it to um but I think we all see some light at the end of the tunnel and uh I know this is the last meeting of the year so um I I'm I think I I speak for everyone when I say say we're looking forward to 2021 I I'll piggy back on what Brent said in and I truly believe that every person in this room every teacher every administrator every person at the District administration we all want our students and teachers to be back in the classroom I I don't think that there is anyone who believes that virtual learning is ideal learning environment for the vast majority of students and but at the same time we have to abide by the restrictions that are put upon us right now and follow the guidelines from the state and federal governments and as much as we maybe don't want to do that it's not about what we want to do it's what we have to do right now so I too am very very hopeful that the new calendar year will bring our be able to bring our students back into the classroom I know that's where my kids want to be I don't think they ever thought that they would say I want to go to school um but they do so God bless all these teachers and administrators who are working really hard to make the best of this situation and from what I have seen and heard throughout the community the vast majority of them are doing a fantastic job and have really adapted well and um are doing their best to help kids to learn and it's not perfect but I think they're doing a great job Heather Matt anything to add Matt so I will just add in that we were able to have um at the end of last week uh we were invited to uh go to Village Hall to meet with the asigo mayor and our village administrator in asigo and they wanted to share with us that there is development that's occurring and so I wanted to thank them for taking that opportunity we're going to have um an opportunity to invite some of our various Village administrators and City administrators to come talk about this in the new year I know it seems a little off topic when we're talking about covid but the reality is building is still happening um homes are still being built and sold and um this is one of the things that that we will have an opportunity to look at so that was the one part the second part was that I I want to kind of piggyback also off of what Ally had been saying about having some Grace for the kids this is this is really hard for us as adults this is really really hard for the kids to to accept the reality of of grades meaning something and I I guess I would just say to all of our parents and all of our kids that you're doing fine you're you're doing you're doing the best that you can at least I hope you are and that the grades they count but please reach out there are a lot of people that are there to help you there is nothing to be ashamed of in asking for help even if you're not someone who's ever had to ask for help before that's okay it's it's there it's there for you if you need it parents there is help for you if if you're struggling with what to do or just how to get through the next Christmas break please reach out to your schools we are here to help the kids we are here to help you as parents and also to our staff the same this is not easier on on you to watch all these kids and and to see the struggles and not be able to help and if you're struggling please reach out to this to your administrators to your chain of command and ask for help um that's something I think that is becoming more clear conversations with parents over the last couple weeks is that this is a very stressful time in general and this year especially so if you need something that you cannot figure out how to get for yourself and or you just need help please ask please ask the school please don't feel ashamed to reach out so that's all I want to add and Y 2021 is sort of okay so board committee reports 5.2 [Music] which came first Equity or the teaching or last I think alphabetical uh I think we have Equity first on the agenda here okay oh it's alphabetical I do like things in alphabetical order so Tony do you want me to fill in and just you can hop fill in with whatever I miss so we had our Equity advisory committee meeting and we had asked them to take a look at the budget cut presentation that we had received as a board and specifically sorry having pronunciation problems asked them to look at those in the light of how that would um affect Equity within our district for our students as well as our teachers and staff and really there there is no choice in there that would not affect equity in one way shape or form um both for students and for staff there were concerns about morale there were concerns about um stress to families if we're cutting activities in buildings there's concern [Music] um with um eliminating Sports and activities how how that would be a huge impact emotionally and and especially on those who are maybe economically disadvantaged um but also reduction in staff would have a major impact their concerns were with behavior response um I mean it's just difficult there there is no decision that's easy or quick and I think that was recognized in in a lot of the comments that we received um from our committee and we really appreciated that there's a lot of participation and um a lot of great points that were brought up by a variety of different members of the committee and um I think they all recognize that we're in a difficult position and that you know no matter what we do we're going to have an impact somehow on students and certainly staff um but we appreciated all of their comments and input and I'm sure our administrators who were there as well um took all that in did I what you is I think you got it I think that the people that were concerned about the activities and the clubs and things like that that was one of the biggest concerns that I heard heard at the equity meeting that those things mean a lot to them or meant to something to them as people in their past and to student students in the future specifically the thing that came up about buildings was are there buildings where maybe you have a certain demographic but then you also have special ad house there and what's that going to do so people were bringing up very good concerns that were specific about like you have to look at the building in all these different ways to make sure that if you closed a building those things would be part of the formula not just what the demographer has to say about all nobody's going in that direction so that was good input and then um you know Staffing in the end nobody wants cuts to anything but I think people understand and you know I have said at every meeting I've been a part of that this is going to be a brutal process because it's a lot of money and we don't have anything left to cut so it's not going to be uh great and so my concern is just like I said about communication we need to let people know this is not going to go well this is not it might go well but it's a horrible scenario to have to play through so um being at these meetings like hearing what people are saying it helps put some guidelines on a painful process that's what I would say right and as far as communication goes hopefully the community can can see that we are looking for input on these um proposals from members of the community and we do want to hear right what they have to say and we do want to get their input yeah we don't take any of it genuinely no matter what anybody thinks who might be watching the board does want to hear from the community and we know that that's who we represent and we are listening and we are processing and sometimes the things that you say might not seem like they're getting through but they are and people are trying to make that into something positive and as uh as as we want to salvage as much as as possible in this process thank you sounds like a good meeting any kind of thoughts as to where they ended up or are you saving that for when we discussed that a little bit later there were no conclusions as far as which one as far as I could tell there was no solid conclusion as to this or that or that it was just these are the the guidelines or the things you might want to think about if you did this okay thank you I would agree there was no Direction particular necessarily no direction on like yes cut all of it from this it was definitely more of like if you can take pieces here and there and kind of balance it out a little bit that would maybe yeah be the best of a bad situation I guess thank you for that report finance and Facilities sure so uh similar to what U diversity and and Equity went through we we went um uh reviewed all of the financial documents that the board had seen uh previous to the meeting um took took the folks through that um answered questions as best we could and then we you know attempted to to PLL and get some insight uh from the members of of the committee and uh I'll I'll jump to the ending first because we got to get there I think the consensus and Ruth chime in here um the consensus was along the lines of what we've just been saying don't like it understand it has to happen um it seems like there is a consensus for trying to take uh or realize savings from each of the three buckets although it was interesting I don't know if you noticed this Ruth um there are some members of the community that said or the committee that said well I really don't like this but I think taking some from each of the three buckets probably makes most sense so even folks that you know were were kind of opposed to the idea of of potenti closing a building realized that if we kind of equal things out that's probably better than trying to take all the money from one bucket or two of the buckets is that yeah I would agree it was definitely I felt like um overall I remember kind of writing down like a little poll and really there was no person who said take everything from this just do this one thing it was for sure um if you could again if you could spread it out that that would be there was plenty of like I don't like this because we don't like any of it right but I apologize I'm not trying to it was a good meeting though I feel like there was a lot of great questions that were asked and we were able to clarify some things there was concern like it's 10% why is it 10% and able to clarify like it's it's 10 because we asked to see what would 10% look like not because we're cutting the full 10 so we were we able to clarify a few things like that like we wanted to what would it look like if we cut all Athletics and activities it's not because we're doing that it's because we need to see what would that look like with from a number standpoint so I think that really help like people were kind of on edge until we were able to clarify that a little bit more as to why we were looking at those numbers is so we can see the big picture to get to where we need to be and and I I do want to take a half second to to really thank Christie um because I felt that the way that some of those numbers were laid out made probably more s and this isn't a criticism just I think it made more sense than some of the numbers we' looked at in in years past when we started trying to answer the question what does Sports cost and that elicited at our meeting some questions from parents who have younger children they haven't been exposed uh to the sports programs that we have here in 308 and just helping walk them through well you know why is high school sports a 10 times order of magnitude to Junior High School well because of the types of sports that are off offer the number of kids participating and all these things and on and on on so I I I just wanted to take a minute to to thank Christie because I think it's it makes a lot more sense to folks who are mostly Layman when they're able to see oh this is what salaries are this is what the expenses are this is what transportation is in this section that's where the cost is going because I think I think we kind of recall when we raised Sports fees before and there was this incorrect thought in the community that all that money we were raising was going into the classroom and it wasn't really going to sports because they didn't comprehend no fees only cover about a quarter of the cost of the stiens for the coaches so and that was just the stiens yeah right thank you any the consensus there also was try to spread same as the Y okay and teaching and learning so um we had our teaching and learning committee meeting on um November 30th um uh Mrs Tyler did the the presentation for our committee as well which I think I'll just Echo what others have said that I think it was um helpful um for it was it was helpful for um our committee members to be able to ask the ask a lot of questions a lot of clarifying questions and get that information um uh shared with them you know much of the discussion wasn't focused so much around the pros and cons of the three areas that we were looking at because similar similarly um you know we know this is really really really tough and none of them are super great options um but more um we did spend more time answering some questions hearing and exploring some considerations that the committee had you know for us um many that would fall into maybe those you know categories that we looked at some maybe that didn't um you know there was some discussion around you know looking at um some additional kind of operations Cuts percentages across the board some of that idea of the belt tightening measures um that's something that you know came up for us a lot of talk around the staff cuts um a lot of questions there um very again very similar to why why 10% or why this why this big number um and we were able to give some context around that also though you know that brings up the question well what staff who you must have somebody in mind there must be and we were able to you know again provide that context um around that that it gives us an um it it provides a picture for for all of us um to know you know what our costs are and what things kind of look like so um you know some some discussion around you know when you're think when we're thinking about Cuts did this does this take into account some of the attrition that we know we have lower enrollment this year we also know we're just kind of facing some lower enrollment what is the attrition piece look like um so that was you know interesting and Faith was able to share some information with us there um we you know it was a somber it was a very somber tone you know to the meeting um we're talking about some pretty stuff tough stuff um some information was shared I think that morale is pretty low this is hard stuff teaching in a pandemic um managing in a pandemic um is hard virtual learning is really hard facing major budget cuts is really really hard so none of these were fabulous you know it wasn't fun to explore a lot of these different things that being said you know we know this is hard and the burden will fall on our teachers and our staff and our kids um and families will feel the impact whatever we can do as a board to keep the tone um positive appropriate hopeful but not like this toxic positivity where everything's going to be okay no matter what we do we know that this is going to have an impact let's be honest about what we know that impact may be and how we can mitigate some of those efforts so that was um definitely a big you know big piece as we talked about staff cuts and some of that piece we talked a lot about about um you know recruitment efforts and what this kind of looks like um for um you know for recruiting um staff you know in the future if we're really on such wobbly legs and and how to you know how that's going to impact us so um the meeting certainly ended with a lot of appreciation um for our teachers and our administrators and our staff um because um we have a number of those you know people that sit on our committee we certainly and we had our you know presenters there and um it's clear that a lot of work has gone into um I don't know you know this year this job um and then these discussions so you know um a lot of appreciation you know was was shared for for everybody who's doing a really tough work so um again you know we so we didn't end on any poll of what's one way or the other um but um there was a lot of interest in exploring you know how what we can do to you know minimize the impact on our students and on the classroom and um minimize impact on our most vulnerable students um and you know how how we can move forward in that vein Tony yeah I think you know I was waiting for you to get to the vulnerable groups because that was a big point was that as we go through these cuts it should be stting from places where it is either luxury education extra education or things that you don't need to graduate and then it goes down from there and and then you go to the end where you're you're targeting kids who either have reading issues kids who are second language Learners kids who are def heart of hearing kids who well they would be special in or kids who are struggling in school that would be the last place that you would touch and anything that relates to that would be the last place that you would touch as as far as budget cuts um and just to let people know because that came up with teaching and learning was that people are thinking that we have like a list of names of who we're cutting or who we're getting rid of and that's not how board work works we don't name names we don't pick people what we do as a board is we recommend a certain amount of of financial savings that we're going to have to do or we say a certain percentage right and then from that those decisions are processed by people who are in a position to look at the whole organization and say this is who we might have to let go and I just want people to know too that as we do that we're trying to be courteous to do this as early as possible so that we can send out the notices and things like that and make sure that people know as soon as they are supposed to know by their contract that they are going to be part of that process um I think you know we did a good talk about attrition and how Ken has been giving us very good uh Ken Miller from HR has been giving us really good numbers as far as these are the people who are leaving or these are the people who are close to retirement um we have been doing that for a long time and I think more than ever that I've ever seen in this District we're keeping track of how much are we saving on people who are leaving and how much you know uh do different things cost us that we could maybe save money on you know when when it relates to that huge piece of our expenses which is uh personnel so all of that is something that I'm communicating now because of the things that I've been hearing from people is that they want to understand these things and one of the things I just say again to everybody is the board does not micromanage or should not micromanage the board is supposed to be giving General big picture guidance and not you know creating any lists or any detailed uh forms but we can we can look at a lot of those things that people brought up at the meeting and see if there's anything there as far as savings so that the cuts are less painful we can do that thank you 5.3 superintendence report well good evening board I have a few items I'd like to share with you this evening uh this past Friday night we held our second date for hosting the food pantry here in asgo uh this was our first time to do it at the old trer facility I had the opportunity to stop by and uh what I saw was a very impressive operation I'm told we provided food to over 200 people that night and everything went very well so I'd like to thank all the workers all the organizers all the volunteers uh that were all over there it was a it's very important work and it was very well done very well done um since our last board meeting i' we've had the opportunity to be working on our plan to mitigate the deficit uh that was presented to you on November 16th the conversations are going well and we do look forward to presenting the board in our plan in January uh We've also been working on our return to in-person learning plan and what that will look like and uh how we'll be able to implement that in the second semester and that's an informational item for later uh in this evening so I'll talk more about that then and tonight is our last night of 20 our last meeting of 2020 which means it's our last meeting uh prior to going on winter break um I don't have to tell anybody that 2020 has been a very challenging year a year like no other but what I would like to say is I would like to say thank you to all the teachers the staff our administrators and all their good work this past year everyone has really stepped up to the challenge and I think we' put I think we've provided the best experience that we can for our kids and I'm very proud of our our school district and what we've accomplished um and I'd also like to thank you as the board for allowing my team and I the ability to lead and guide the district during these unprecedented times and as we approach the winter break I hope that everyone's able to take some time to relax uh spend time with their family their loved ones and hope everyone has a happy healthy and uh safe holiday season that's my report for this evening thank you item six consent agenda does anyone have any questions can I have a motion to approve please I make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes from the November 16th 2020 Board of Education meeting open and close sessions and 6.2 to acknowledge the foiler request received by the district second Mrs morer I Mr Lightfoot I Mrs croner I Mr Bowman hi Mrs Swanson hi Mrs Dole hi Miss Morgan hi motion passes 70 item s information item 7.1 is financial statements does the board have any questions as to what's been presented this [Music] evening hearing none item 7.2 is an update on our return to in-person learning plan so uh tonight I wanted to give the board an update on where we're at with our planning and implementation of a hybrid learning plan for the upcoming future our team has been meeting regularly to put together a new phased in plan for when we are able to start bringing our students back to school in the hybrid model the board has previously approved as we've all witnessed in recent weeks the positivity rate in our area and the number of new cases per 100,000 have remained very high on December 2nd Illinois experienced the single highest number of deaths in a single day since the onset of the pandemic and as you all know the governor has issued a statement earlier last week that our state will be staying in tier three mitigation probably throughout the end of this month um the governor's also indicated a widely available vaccine could begin dist distribution in Illinois in the very near future with prioritization beginning with healthcare workers First Responders and long-term facility care uh workers so in the immediate future meaning in January uh we know a vaccine will not help us in regards to bringing our students back in any type of expedited fashion um we all as it was mentioned earlier we all have the same want and same desire to bring our kids back to our buildings and but we also need to be cogent of the metrics and continue to follow the science um so with that said we are in the process of finalizing a plan to phase our students back to in-person learning utilizing the hybrid model with the emphasis being placed in our neediest and youngest students first uh before we go on winter break we will be communicating that phase uh in hybrid re-entry plan to staff and students our hybrid implementation plan will start with bringing our general education and special education um Elementary and early childhood programs back in January and followed by our second students just as we had previously planned with the goal of faing all of our students in the hybrid model by the early February the return plan will depend on the metrics for our area if our metrics are the same or similar to what they now are currently are now in January uh we will continue in our current remote plan until that changes but if this were to be the case we will allow we will inform parents uh within at least at least a week in advance hopefully more than that as I stated a few minutes ago the row out uh of the phase and plan will be communicated um prior to winter break it's subject to change depending on the metrics at the beginning of January um so with that what questions does the board have for us in regards to this item for this evening know I just said a lot but it was H informational item first I'd like to just highlight one thing that I heard you say that I I really appreciate as a parent and I'm I I hope that our parents can at least note that there will be at least one week notice um I know that in several surrounding school districts that hasn't been able to be the case um and I know that that's been a priority of yours is to give parents as much notice as they can to rearrange things so I appreciate you mentioning that um so that we can know to expect at least one week notice very good just just for a little Clarity um I think the last time we discussed this topic um the we were planning for our secondary students Junior High and high school students to return January I think it was the 11th with sixth grade and nth graders going back a day or two earlier for some orientation in their buildings that they've never been in before um So currently it is most likely that they will not be going back January 11th correct because we're going to be bringing hopefully our early child and elementary students back at the beginning of January and then phased in means a week or so in between those different grade level groups correct yes okay all right if there are no other questions uh item 7.3 is an update on our five-year projections um so I'm going to let Christie uh go ahead and take us through the uh updated projections thank you excuse me I have for you tonight updated projections with two scenarios when projections were presented in November fiscal year 20 fund balances were not available at that time therefore that projection model was pointing to a previous year's fund balance uh since then I have received a draft audit with fiscal year 20 ending fund balances and I'm calling this a draft as the remaining work on the audit centers on the narrative portion not on Final revenue and expense numbers so the fiscal year 20 ending fund balances came in much more favorable than anticipated which is brought forward into future fund balances and I know that's very difficult to see but our ending fiscal year 20 fund balance was uh 20 just about $22.9 million um so that is in excuse me fiscal year 21 the budget column um and I just want to point out the budget column for fiscal year 21 does include that 5 uh two 5.26 million deficit however um that was built on the assumption that students would be back in school early November we do expect that deficit to decrease given continued savings uh in PPE supplies Transportation substitute C us uh unfilled vacancies Etc and those are estimated about 400,000 per month so this projection um that's showing here assumes uh evidence-based funding would begin increasing again in fiscal year 23 and does not include any reductions in in the budget so you can see that the deficit does carry into fiscal year 24 with a uh Surplus budget beginning in fiscal year 25 at the end of The Five-Year projection so in fiscal year 26 we would be um our ending fund balance would be estimated to be about 12.56 million chrisy can I just ask a quick question sure as you mentioned that these are updated numbers and am I recalling correctly that on the six our November 16th meeting we were projecting a negative overall fund balance by fiscal year I think that was fiscal year 24 24 if we did not make any cuts and so now we're not showing a negative fund balance I mean it's not very far away from no that but okay I just wanted to clarify that can I ask a question too did you say you're assuming evidence-based funding increases in fiscal year 23 beginning in fiscal year 23 so evidence-based funding would be flat again next year so can we run it flat for a couple of years assuming that the impact from covid on the state is going to affect more like I I mean I can appreciate that we are hoping that it increases but I think at the point that we're at at a school district I don't think that we can assume any increases I would say for the next four or five years from the state yep I can do that christe for clarification so I think what you just said is with the revised number because of the additional um or a higher yearend balance for 2020 you're now projecting 5.2 but that is through November as far as what we're spending on PP and additional costs so 5.2 is the deficit for this current fiscal year okay in the in the adopted budget the 22 million was the ending fund balance for fiscal year last fiscal year we are expecting that deficit to be lower than 5.2 due to the savings for PPE substitutes and so on did you say it was 400,000 per month or you think just around 400,000 yep so because the month of December [Music] were remote should we be adding another or removing another 400,000 from this deficit so at some um my next step will be to put some of those assumptions in now that we will we know we will be closed for at least half a year and then to bring those back so to to kind of fudge the fiscal year 21 budget numbers to be more realistic to what the year is playing out to be does this um I'm sorry you weren't done with your presentation I got lost in the questions I just wanted to make sure I wanted to ask if this changes what your recommendation would be as we're looking at um these budget cuts on what we should be looking at as a target number so I think that goes to the next slide so switch over to that one and this is again um assuming evidence-based funding in fiscal year 23 it would increase then but then it also includes a four million reduction $4 million reduction in expenses in fiscal year 22 so therefore with that budget reduction next fiscal year the deficit is 1.8 million so we have one more year of deficit spending and then beginning in fiscal year 23 is when we begin to see Surplus budgets going forward and if we didn't receive evidence-based funding as allly had asked before what I mean these are Surplus budgets but it would be it looks like if we didn't get the increase we might be looking at one further year of deficit but then even if we didn't receive the increase it would stay about zero balance baned not Surplus or deficit and then maybe do that so is that am I taking the right understanding from that so if we did not receive um an increase in evidence-based funding in fiscal year 23 and 24 those would be deficit budgets uh depending on what that increase would be and if it began again in 25 that may be a Sur budget however that will impact the bottom yellow line your ending fund balance but I'm seeing this as an ending fund balance projected in five years of 33 million as that's correct yes with with A4 million million cut in fiscal year 22 evidence-based funding returns in fiscal year 23 so I just want to make sure I'm really really really getting this how I mean it in my head yep um when you say a 4 million reduction and we're talking about a 4 million reduction in fiscal year 2020 are we talking about a $4 million reduction that year that would be continued each year yes at four million lower or four million and then we could go back to the higher budget no a $4 million reduction that would continue every fiscal year going forward much like the budget reductions the board has done in the past glor I think it's important to carry over what Alli suggested our district has not received funding more often than it has we've only had a few years of positive evidence-based funding I think it would beho us to move forward with the uh projections that it's going to be flat funding from the state moving forward I I would even go the full fiveyear projections I think we need to focus on what how bad it could be versus then hopefully in three years it's going to get better um I it's we're we're project five years out we have to project that things are going to be status quo there are a lot of entities a lot of governmental bodies a lot of people who are expecting to get money rescue money from the state when the state doesn't have rescue money to to disperse so I would be really hesitant of looking at a five-year projection that includes any increase from the state of Illinois so assuming that which is a very good point preparing for the worst hoping for the best of course um if we did not have that so I'm just looking at the Surplus deficit line okay the increase that you what is the increase that you budget each year right now from for evidence-based funding yeah what increased your budget right around 4.3 million it does decrease every year but if it's if we just don't have it at all is it reasonable to just subtract 4.7 million from that yellow Surplus 4.3 million sorry from that Surplus deficit line yes so in five years instead of 7.7 Surplus assuming all things remain with a $4 million reduction and no increase to evidence-based funding it would be reasonable to say that that would be just roughly 3.3 as a surplus which would help do what we want to do of moving toward increasing our Reserve because will have brought it down I'm sorry in previous years so if you're looking at the Surplus deficit Line This it would be negative in 2023 you would subtract 4.3 basically from all these numbers right so then in 2025 and 2026 it would go correct itself kind of and be positive however we wouldn't be looking at that 33 million because you're looking at the beginning fund balance line no I'm not I'm looking at the Surplus deficit it says 9,532 wait for which year are you looking surus the $4 million reduction so you would take oh I'm sorry I'm on the wrong but what on my screen I'm looking at the wrong oh are you looking at the do nothing okay gotcha there we go Okay so yes you would begin to see a positive a surplus in fiscal year 25 okay so we would have four years with a $4 million reduction assuming zero evidence-based funding increase we'd be looking at bringing our be uh projected end balance basically so you would down to about 16 million or excuse me that's correct yeah 16 million at the end of 2026 uh one basically cut it in a half but you're running a deficit budget for five oh yeah no I'm not saying that that makes it better I'm just making sure I understand where we're looking at it with four million right so you would reduce the 33.376891 this including this year including this year well we already know this current year we're not there is no increase and I think Matt I think Matt and Ally are right I don't think it's realistic to expect that I think on the federal level there might be trouble and I think definitely 100% on the state level there's going to be trouble so I don't see how it helps us when we're in precarious situation to pretend like we're getting $4 million that we're not going to get I think it's I think it's important too that when we start considering cuts and you know everybody's talking about taking a little bit from each pot but I think it's I think it's important to look at a number that doesn't have figures in it where we go oh crap now we got to cut more stuff okay do you know what I mean yep like we know that the states there's nobody's GNA save us easier to add back yeah and I know that we're saying that about the three pots being cut evenly I just want to say right up up front I'm not for that and I don't think some people in the community are for that so that's one of the options that yeah it's one of the options that we can entertain as a board but I I'm not going to entertain activities being cut because I went from being a board member who thought that that was a good idea in the early days of being on the board thinking oh they'll figure out how to be on the Travel team or something but I firmly over the experience that I've had in this time I've been on the board feel like that is an essential ingredient of school and so activities and clubs to me have to stay um so it might have to be operations staff and uh the closing the school I don't see that as being a long-term solution if we're going to do it and keep it cut I don't see that I don't see that happening I I have a question um so we are asking for these some other projections um assuming you know maybe for the the next five years that we will receive that we will not receive any additional evidence-based funds does that which I think is good and helpful information and probably realistic um but does that change does I'm for for everybody who as we're asking for that are we does that change our number because our next meeting is in January and they're you know they're working I think off of the the five4 to five million that's where I was heading with this yes right okay so yeah I think I think it would um is just my thought I don't I guess I while I think that information is helpful and important I I kind of assumed that um a couple weeks ago November 16 you know at our November six 16th meeting I think we all thought well I I thought assuming an increase you know in FY 23 back to you know ebf it was is was not realistic and I mean I know that the number is around 4 million and so I've you know been doing that calculation in my head so I guess um I don't think that this is all I guess I don't think that this is all new information um because we've had we know what ebf is we know that it's unsteady so um yeah no I'm interested to hear what the other board members think I I will tell you it doesn't really change my target number because this was kind of what was in my head was the a couple a couple weeks ago but yeah no the four uh the four million what was was it what was what was in your head the F what when I voted on five yeah sorry when I voted on five so what they had presented last time had been what we have now um they've taken out the projection of getting ebf next year right and gone with just that so now some board members are now asking to project that out further without e right so that's the one change the main change here is the audited numbers are better than we'd thought by a fair bit yes yeah I understand um so you know if we're going to look at a reduction based on the same parameters that we looked at Last Time 4 million looks to be what would still get us to a healthy balance if we're not going to look at having any increase to ebf it it might be higher than five for some board member if we want to use that as the premise that we're working off of and and and maybe we don't have a majority of board members that want to use that as a premise so I would suggest that what we do first is would we like to be working under the assumption that ebf will not increase at all over the next five years and ask Christie to change again this projection to be that um at at some point we need to accept the projection as the best we can do right now we know that anything past two three years is very hard to track here too um so I guess I would just ask that if there's any other changes to the projections we're going to ask for that today be the day that we ask for them because we we didn't ask for this at our last meeting and I just want to make sure that we aren't unfortunately postponing further than necessary we're asking to use and not that it's not good information because it totally is but let's make sure that we give all the asks because when we do come back to discuss this on January 11th we do have some hard decisions to make and we want to make sure that we have um no outstanding wishes for what we would like to see on this right so I agree with you Lori I think that we don't really I mean you're free to speak for whether you want those projections or not Al but the idea is if you can just imagine what the difference would be now and then we agree to work with a different number based on knowing or based on most of us thinking that um ebf is not coming then we can start the discussion right if we don't that's kind of where I'm heading with this is I don't want to I don't want to bog down um in projections that may or may not be accurate in six years as they often are or not um just depending on what happens but to use that as a tool rather than the end goal and the tool being what we need to have in our heads as board members to decide what number do we as a board want to agree to cut so that when we discuss on January 11th these big decisions and these big Pathways and pots and all the different ways to describe it that we are not beginning from square one again and asking them to then create something else especially in the middle of reopening at the same time and we cannot delay the process because we have things that we need to you know we need to do the cuts and then put out the notices and do all that stuff so it's not as if and I don't think you're saying that right Al like you don't need six years of projections in order to no I think at the last meeting we asked to see what it would look like with nothing for this year and I don't think maybe necessarily I wasn't clear that right when I said like I just assume that you wouldn't put them back in and I did not clearly specify so that's on me but I I mean I don't no I just want us all to be working from the same right I mean we're not in a we're not in a climate where we can you know I can imagine what the number is going to be and my guess is probably as good as anybody else's but if I am trying to explain to a taxpayer what is happening and why we're having to make Cuts I would like to have some actual like hey look this is you know what I mean without having to say oh by the way just subtract this because we don't think that's going to happen now right and I'm sure I just want to make sure in January we don't ask for anything different so if there's anything else you want to see this is the time I guess what has changed I'm still cut I'm still like where I was last meeting but I all right so um which is five is that what you're I was at yeah I was at five last meeting yeah I mean at first I was at a whole lot more but so let's just go around for the the sake of the order and go through clarify where we are at for percentages so that we can provide clear Direction um percentages or can I just say five million uh we were looking at dollar amount thank you okay so five million Brent yeah five I'm still at five yeah I'm still at five I would maybe think if we're thinking no ebf I would maybe think of six just to be safe um five I would say a minimum of five yeah Matt minimum of five and I want to add that we're looking at the fund Bal balances on these projections but we also have to look at what our increased revenues are most of it based on contractual obligations so um minimum of five and I would ask at um also these projections not to be a constant pessimist but I I would like to see these numbers as um worst case scenario as possible so that we could plan accordingly not again I don't want to go on a five-year projection with a hope that something is going to happen let's just project the full five years that there's not going to be any increase and this Board needs to do what it needs to do to make sure this District um is sustainable I think that we have some consensus that we would then as we've been talking about like to see this with um income received as we do now at the hold harmless amount which is again subject to State Legislative change they might change that too um but for now what we know is that there is in fact a hold harmless Clause where we would not receive less so let's use that dollar amount and obviously we we include in expenditures our regular contractual obligations and the changes that we predict in those based on what we know is there any way to predict any decrease in like Transportation funds and meal reimbursement funds and those kind of things that are affected significantly by not being in person I know you have said we're anticipating changes in that I don't know if there's any way to predict what those might be so we so I did PR estimate what the change in meal um reimbursement would be this year because that would be impacted that Revenue would be impacted in the same fiscal year okay Transportation because we're Transportation has been reduced drastically obviously that impact will in Revenue will be next year because the claim is a reimbursement for the previous year right so are is there a way to um for lack of a better term be pessimistic in what we would receive in that I know our categoricals actually have come in yes as fast as that's ever happened so I don't want to jinx things but please don't sorry fiscal year 22 I did include in the projection a decrease in transportation Revenue knowing that this year was going to be light on expenses for so on January 11th you'll be able to present to to us a better picture of what our deficit really looks like now that we know about where we're at at this point for being gone for a half year um and you'll be able to present this which will merely be informing the data behind the fact that we are looking as a board at somewhere between five is the number that I'm hearing and then there's some interest in potentially going higher if it's needed but five seems to be the number yep yep we I got it thank [Music] you all right that was our last information item for this evening okay item 8.1 approval of bills for payment any questions can I have a motion please I make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of 2,1 164,000 $12.74 as presented second Mrs Swanson I Mrs d i Mrs Morgan I Mrs croner hi Mr bman hi Mrs morer hi Mr Lightfoot hi motion passes 70 item 8.2 any questions yes so we haven't really had an uh informational session on this topic which is fine um I I guess I'm at a loss for what the goal here is I understand we're we're what do you Che are you talking about 8.2 I'm talking about eight 8.2 okay I just want to make sure before we I listen to what you're saying uh driver head cars I guess I'm not surpris I I read an article last week actually that was talking about how C dealerships right now on average have 25% less inventory than a year ago and that most dealers are running under 60 days worth of inventory that means they have little to no incentive to be handing out deals right now which is good for them right uh but bad for us if we're trying to buy cars versus lease or I don't know if we're just trying to see what the difference is I I have some serious concerns about buying uh cars for driver aded um namely because you know we we pretty much have a policy in this in this District where we we don't buy buses anymore we lease them because it's more efficient for us because we don't have the maintenance services and stuff so I I'm I'm kind of curious why we're looking at buying cars when we haven't and we can have this conversation another meeting um and and then the additional cost to run and operate these cars for however long we think we're going to get out of them and handle the maintenance and scheduled maintenance repairs Etc so I'm I'm fine rejecting the bid but I just don't understand how we got here so we did want to bid the driver's ed cards to compare a lease to a purchase just for to see what would be the better deal uh currently we have an agreement with jovic Chevrolet to basically rent cars just like you would rent at the airport so it's a daily rental we looked at we started looking at a lease because it is more economical to lease a car for three years than to rent daily um the one of the other reasons for rejecting is not only to because he did not supply a or provide a bid on a true purchase so we do want to compare that but the other thing is he was concerned this dealer and we only had one vendor um submit a bid was concerned about the uh the month because dealers have incentives that are within the month and if we were presenting this for information like the timeline was to prevent for information today and then approve January 7th um that the incentive would change in that time by the time we approve so he did say that it's best to have the the information and approval the bid come in information approve all in the same month so that he can look at those incentives and then hopefully we would get because of that we would get more dealers interested because we did have interests when we just C picked up the phone and asked for quotes we did have a lot of interest so we do want to try to get more than one bid also so the problem with this is that if you have the informational meeting and then a month later you have the approval approval right that there's too much time between those two things for the purposes of the dealers the the month changes so the information would be in December and he asked me well can you commit to per you know moving forward I'm like I cannot commit until the board approves in January so so he didn't want to commit to the pricing between months so what I think I'm understanding and I might not but what I think I'm understanding is so in December they have $5,000 cash back and so he would B make his bid price based on that current incentive but if we did not vote on that until January the January incentive might be 2% right and then he would be taking a loss so he doesn't want to necessarily commit to that but the other issue is that what the bid was for he did not provide therefore we did not have any valid biders Who provided the information that was requested in the bid provided all the information all the information so if it it had been up for approval we would have had this as an information today rather than an action item to reject I do have one question yes so what is the cost of an asset like a car or some type of major asset what's the cost where it would have to come to the board because I'm thinking back to those buses what's the cost when it has to come to the board for board approval versus when the school district can just decide to blow $50,000 on well the bus leases do come to the board we approve those yeah okay I'm just asking what the cost I'm oh what theost I'm asking what what's the what's the threshold I guess the cost the dollar threshold I say for a bid bidding threshold is $25,000 except on conu any major purchase any one item any one item over $25,000 should be bid and should be approved by the board before it's purchased so if something was like 70 thousand doll or something depending there's there's um exceptions thank you to the bidding like what like what um specialized Services computer software um even computer equipment I believe yeah there are and then there's things that you purchase through the state bid and because the state has bid it you you you take advantage of those bidding prices so then you don't have to go out for a separate bid I did look to so not necessarily like a new vehicle or something or a tractor or a b or something depending on the price and if you can buy it on the state bid or not yes okay so what happens if it's over 25,000 and it doesn't come to the board well it it should come to the board if it's over 25,000 and that's something we are definitely working whether or not it's subject to the bidding requirements if it's that if that's if it's that great a contract unless it's already very clearly in your budget like you can point to a line item in the budget to say the the board basically already said we can buy this because it's specifically in the budget then you wouldn't have to come back to the board I don't oh I see what you're saying but otherwise I it's always my advice if it's any contract of any substantive amount bring it to the board so I have so many more questions about but I think we might might want to have that as a different meeting as an information item to discuss that dollar threshold um and what will warrant a line item in the budget that we would see uh because a lot of times we don't in fact I I think I've specifically had to ask for the line items in the budgets that we're approving so we usually see them at a higher level um so there's there's something we want to take a look at there but um for the purposes of this act action item um that's the backstory U that's why we are being asked to reject this bid um so unless there's any further questions that will help you clarify your answer to this question Matt I think I see a hand I it was I I'm really big or I really hope that we could keep things local when we can so based on the description here I'm reading it as none of our local dealers dealerships opted to provide a to the district for this no that's incorrect um so in the bid uh specs we did indicate that the dealership must be within 10 miles of the um asigo high school so we did send it to many local dealerships and like I said they did respond with a quote when we were just C picking up the phone and calling but unfortunately only one uh submitted a bid and that was Valley Honda I have a question I guess in regard to that as well Matt brings up a good point in keeping it local is there do we when we're using these driver's ed cars is that an opportunity for these dealerships to advertise their dealerships is that inappropriate is that like I would think that we could say hey they're sponsoring you know as we go high school and as we go East High School like good for you buy I'm going to buy a car from them because they support our schools that these are all great ideas so let's bring this back for an informational item as do we want to have this as what are our options when we look at driver's at car I think being broader is what I'm I'm hearing just a lot of General broad questions about which direction to head um so it sounds like we should probably have a discussion for that um I think that what I'm hearing all speaks to the fact that um there's an assumption that we would reject the driver said bid but we just need to yes formally say it okay here we go I make a motion to reject the driver's education bid results as presented second that was close Mrs croner I Mr Lightfoot I Mrs moer I miss Morgan I Mrs Swanson I Mrs Doyle I Mr Bowman I motion passes 70 item 8.3 approval of the Personnel report any questions can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the Personnel report as presented second Mr Lightfoot no Miss Morgan I Mr Bowman I Mrs Moyer I Mrs croner I Mrs Swanson no Mrs Doyle I motion passes 52 can we can I ask one more question when you bring back the information about the shopping local like I'd also like to see that expanded a little bit to some of maybe what our custodial maintenance so we'll we'll add that in at a future meeting um before we make any but so that I don't get told later that I did not be specific I would yeah been specific and feel free to aborate via email so that it can be very specific yep all right so now we are actually going to return to close session so if I can please have a motion to return to close session one moment please [Laughter] sure with [Music] you I make a motion to enter Clos session under statutes 5 ilcs 122-2 C1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals five ilcs 122-2 C2 Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees five ilcs 12-2 C6 the setting of a price for sale or lease of property owned by the public body second Mrs d i Mrs Swanson hi Mrs Moyer hi Mr Lightfoot hi Mr Bowman Mr Bowman hi Mrs croner hi Miss Morgan hi motion passes
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right there we go all right good evening i'd like to call this december 7th 2020 special session public hearing border school trustees for the proposed project begin time at 603 this evening um if we could rise we ask mr angel to lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the violence 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 thank you be seated [Music] item two on our agenda this evening is our board of school trustees accommodations awards uh it's kind of a a neat situation this evening so something we're hopefully going to begin a new tradition here in crown point let's go through 2.01 is the 2020 corporation christmas card design we have luca jordanov fifth grader at solan robinson elementary winning design of the front of the card we'll get to a little bit of an explanation of what's going on once we present the accommodation we have maggie lukowski the fifth grader at seoul robinson elementary the runner-up for the design on the back of the card and our finalists were broden morrissey fifth grader allison haas a fifth grader and ella trapp third grader at jerry ross elementary we have a motion to approve accommodation wars that's presented moved by mr angel and second by mr babjack any questions or comments before we present the award all those in favor signify by saying aye hi opposed carries five zero so like i said this is a pull down speaker this really neat uh situation that dr terrell had you know brought to us i believe right i think you give you credit for this and uh at the last board meeting us board members and cabinet everybody had gone through a process of dwindling down several christmas card cover ideas that were presented from the elementary schools and it was difficult to pick a winner but we all kind of labeled number one number two number three and i think afterwards there was all the votes were accumulated and you know we came up with the winner that go on the front of the card and then the runner up to be on the back of the card so let me walk forward and present this award to you guys we're going to ask how about miss merrell you want we have the when we get to the finals we ask you to say a word about how the process worked at your school okay we'll wait until we get to the past so our runner-ups is not a runner-up for our finalists i'm sorry we're broden morrissey broden you want to come forward you need to come over here we're going to get a couple of finalists up here oh a trap let's bring everybody up all right we also have our runner up was maggie mikowski and our winner was luca jordano oh yeah um we have room in the space house because we definitely want to get the parents in here oh allison come on forward allison how about you stand for 7 45 we're trying to stay stay spaced out but we also want to keep you guys in here in front of your parents we've got some room right up here in the front too right there hey do you want to have the two the winner and the hold their poster so we can yeah let's see here we go after your poster right [Music] i'm going to read you guys i'm going to read you guys your accommodation i'm going to address it to all of you at the same time the resolution accommodation the crown point board of school trustees is honored to commend these fine students for notorious achievement we hereby resolve the divorce full trustee of the crownwood news school corporation wishes to express sincere congratulations to brode i'm sorry for all the students we've mentioned for being named finalists runners-up and the winners of our christmas card design the board of school trustees publicly recognizes this achievement and renders it perleigh to its minutes to be preserved for public posterity day the 7th day of december 2020.
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do you want me to do this little light of mine are we live i think we're live i don't know i'm waiting to see it's live okay good afternoon it's no longer morning miss estes nope it's not hello out there in wildwood land how are all of you hi it's so nice to see you on this beautiful cloudy december day yes it is december so welcome to our wildwood hello lathan welcome to our december assembly everybody it's so great to see all of you in this virtual online universe how are all of you miss estes how are you today i am feeling very happy to be here with you it's um you know winter time is not easy no the sun is going earlier here and we have all these little ways to make it a little brighter as we head towards the winter solstice and that is the theme of the assembly is how wild with students and families can bring joy and light into the world as we all know people all over the world do this at this time of the year as the days are getting shorter and shorter every culture has figured out a way to bring joy and light into the world and today we're going to hear from our wildwood students how they're doing that already so are we ready to begin it's going to be so exciting you know we all different traditions of how to bring that light there's through joy of spending together either through putting candles in our windows and i think our students at wildwood have figured out ways of bringing that light yes so before we begin i just want to remind wildwood students how to use the chat at wildwood we use the chat to send out positive messages to people who are brave enough to get in here in the broadcast booth and share what they're learning so with the chat we also want to remind you that if we notice that you're saying things that actually are put downs or things that are going to bring people down we can block you on the chat and we're really hoping we don't have to do that okay if we see something that's especially a positive message we can put it across the screen as a banner so let's get started we ready let's go all right so ms estes i think you know how we always start every assembly we talked about september go ahead go for it we have three new students that we are bringing our family here is that what where did i get it right nick that's it we always start every assembly because welcoming is the foundation it's the heart of wildwood so we're going to welcome a family of three new students i think oh let's see one is in kindergarten one is in third grade third grade and with these online yes and with these online assemblies we actually have a slideshow to show you and we have our magician backstage miss catherine let's see if she's ready we have to take she's giving us a thumbs up here we go new students at wildwood excellent you want to read the first one miss estes uh yeah i can do that i also have it on my screen so i can see it my eyes aren't as strong as they used to be but this is joshua oh joshua will be in k2 and he likes to be called by his middle name which is thomas so let's remember thomas let's look at that beautiful face he likes to play sports and thomas likes to go to the park to play with his friends and thomas likes to play with lots of toys in kindergarten oh i can't wait to meet thomas welcome thomas and then he has his big brother oh thanks laura in third grade i think coming up here he is edible and roberto going to be a mr k in courtney's class oh there's mr k welcoming him with the banner he likes playing sports coloring drawing and helping others and being nice to others welcome henrvento he wears glasses like me he's in the glasses club yes and we wait to read all right who's next and then the oldest brother go ahead fourth grader juan he likes soccer oh we have something to talk about with miss joyce playing sports and playing percussion instruments i wonder if people remember percussion is like drums so that's awesome he also likes playing with friends and one likes drawing and playing any games not just a few games but any games juan we gotta get together for some monopoly and juan will have to connect you up if you're interested in playing percussion in the wildwood band as well and i love that bruce is saying one has a cool jacket on is that sweet thanks bruce and during this year we're figuring out how to welcome our new students even when we're physically apart so welcome to all of you you're coming all the way from westfield and western mass and we'll make you feel at home here at wildwood all right so then the second part of our assembly ms estes i think you know what's coming up is that we send out a message to all our staff and say who have been who has been shining stars who has been a shining star over the last month and we have yeah i just want people to remember there are always more shining stars at wildwood than we can honor i mean i have seen people do amazing beautiful things and it's not always something that we have a chance to honor in this moment but that does not mean it doesn't happen and we see you thank you so much but this is a this is for honoring the december signing stars and i'm so excited well thanks for that reminder miss estes so here we go and they certainly we call it a shining star because they're bringing light and love and caring to others and do you want to do the first one i can i can't the very first shining star comes from ms applegate's class omar omar hello sir he has been helping find ways to include our new friend giannis in the class when she does not have spanish translation support he uses google translator to help miss applegate he chooses to help without being asked he lets her know when it's break time and when she should turn on her microphone and more i mean omar has been doing so much and he's been welcoming and supportive in art class ms cara has shared and he sends her explanations and reminders and encouragement i mean omar is just really showing the welcoming spirit thank you omar that's fantastic and so the people who are in the same classes as our three brothers they can take on what omar has demonstrated how you can welcome people in this online universe and so the next one comes from miss katherine in music she says i'd love to nominate selena for a shining star in music she has taken on distance learning like a champion is always so excited about what we're learning in music and has been singing her heart out way to go selena oh i love that and another shining star from ms applegate's class is that the class has been doing the jumping jack challenge this is amazing i don't know if you were able to read this number it's a big number i had to practice my place value skills 13 463 jumping jacks the class has been able to do it's amazing it's awesome so stephanie omar drew anna amelia bear and jalen we've been working together supporting each other counting together and trying our best way to go fantastic miss applegate's class mr b is quite impressed and as we've been talking about part of taking care of ourselves is staying physically active so important it is true neil it is amazing yes all right so we're going to keep this assembly moving miss estes because we have a lot to share and the first that's going to be sharing uh a fantastic what i'd call a community service project is a fifth grade the entire fifth grade we have miss bing owen and three fifth grade students who are gonna who are brave enough to come into the broadcast booth with us so ready here we go so we magically make you appear first we're going to add miss bing owen hello hi miss bing owen my name is and then jordan jordan so we understand that you're going to talk a little bit about this community service project that was connected to what is called monty's march right yep are you ready okay i'm gonna close my mouth okay i think we're gonna i think miss catherine again is going to project uh slideshow she's giving me the thumbs up backstage and we're off to the side take it away fifth graders that is super cool okay so i'm not going to talk unless there is a question that we don't know yet but we're going to start with whoever's reading that front page uh well this is monty's march it's and yeah and it's by me ren and jordan in fifth grade which is already kind of new okay hi i'm ren and monty's march is all about raising money for the food bank of western massachusetts and the food bank helps support families and people without enough food to eat montana's team helped raise money for the food bank uh to buy meals for people in eating this year was turned into four meals last year they raised around a million meals and this year they wanted to raise that number even more because more people need food because of the pandemic and they have more people have lost their jobs and they have needed the help of the food bank and monty's march thank you monty's march also a fun fact monty's real name is christopher belmonte wow thank you um it looks like jordan may have been bumped off but yeah i don't see him backstage jordan are you out there with in the wildwood universe can you come back just check and see oh there he is wait let me get him back in sorry jordan hi jordan all right go ahead well um i'm this is my sidebar okay all right we got your back go ahead uh what we did to participate in the monty's march we walked at home on yards and hallways and a bunch more all together many students of wildwood washed 320.67 miles that's a lot of miles we raised a thousand dollars so many classes participated whether in pe at home with families or on your own also remember to participate next year thanks so much for donating we could not have done this without you also fun fact monty's question this this year was a covered cowboy that's not his costume but just another picture yeah well yeah so i'm next right okay how to donate monty's visit you can donate by going to the food bank website then click on the donate button to learn how to donate the food bank can help people who don't have food for their family if you if you donate you can also donate monthly so you're now helping people every month monty visited the fifth grade fifth grade meet he answered questions and made jokes in my opinion he's a nice guy visiting monty it's fantastic thank you fifth graders um wow thank you daniel's class ran nine miles fifth graders can i ask you i just want to make sure people understand did you who did these slides like this because it's very professional um well wren kind of made the background and then i made my slide and gordon mates heads each of us made the slide that we read yeah fantastic a real collaborative effort and is if you don't mind i'll um i just had a question what what what do you remember most about either this project or what really sticks with you or about monty's visit because he came in and did a whole class a whole grade level meeting right jordan thank you for raising a hand it's really really helping everyone who doesn't really have food right thank you yeah ren um i remember a lot of stuff one thing i especially remember is the fact that monty was pretty funny yeah go ahead b yeah um what i remember is everyone wanted to know about his costume it was like the one man that's funny well thank you you know we we got this idea that we can do more we can do and help people over the next three months at wildwood and so one of the ways we got the idea was because of what you did for monty's march there's so many people that need help right now and the wildwood community can be there for them so thanks for getting us started and if your family needs help in this way you can certainly contact us at the school and we also have ways to help your family get in touch with different groups if you need to get some food support because we are all in this together yeah so important thanks miss estes thank you miss bingo and thank you to the whole fifth grade teaching team and we're going to transport you now magically so thanks for being brave enough to join us bye sarah and by ren wow that is so inspiring a thousand dollars they raised isn't that incredible that buys a lot of canned beans which is what i eat a lot of yeah it's so important to take care of people right now so next up ms estes we have sixth graders and they have something with such an intriguing title it's called the finding joy project oh our leaders of the school are showing up let's see those sixth graders let's go sixth grade i'm gonna invite chris one of the sixth grade teaching team here we go and uh there's chris and let's good to see you so tell me this title's i'm i'm so interested aren't you mrs it's called finding joy is that the name of the project uh yeah all right so tell us that we all need some joy right now right um so basically we made a video about a project where you can fill out a google form or something where you can fill out a google form and you could be entered into a raffle to win something okay but tell us more about this google form what is it um do you want to say rosie yeah sure so the google form has questions and the questions will help us uh so we're using a process called design thinking and we're trying to uh we're trying to like create something like more joy in school so we need to hear from user school they're students and teachers and everybody else at the school okay all right so i'll look back to katherine i know she's been working on this and giving me another thumbs up it's amazing okay does that mean you explain because if it doesn't i want to hear from you why do you think people need to find joy at school and in their life why is that important um because i don't i well i think like if you can find some joy then that can make you have like me like a better life and like you can have more fun and have better things happen yeah joy's important okay all right so yeah so uh miles couldn't be here but he was in the video okay great that's important thank you for helping you know that all right so are we ready to see it chris do you have anything to add or should we just go right to the video let's go to the video students thank you rosie dude here we go hello we are 6th graders coming to tell you about something exciting that thing is an amazing prize that you can win but first let's tell you about our sponsor joy not the dishwashing soap just plain old joy in sixth grade we are researching joy by looking at different people's perspectives on it such as desmond tutu and the dalai lama we are trying to make the school more joyful and we need your help we are using a process called design thinking and in order to make something that works and make school more joyful we need to hear from the users which is you you are the users we thought of a quick way to get your answers your teachers will give you a form and put it in the google classroom fill it out sometimes next week if you respond to the extra three questions then you will be entered into a raffle to win a t-shirt if you respond to just the first three then you could get a postcard from a sixth grader this is primarily for third fourth fifth and sixth graders but second and first graders and kindergartners don't worry we will work something out with your teachers have fun making school more joyful oh man i'm loving this i have to say how you all are taking this to another level it's a three-letter word it rhymes with boy but it is not a simple concept i mean we have some of the great thinkers in the world who've explored this idea of joy and you are going there and trying to understand it on a deeper level i mean sixth grade you're just blowing it up i love it so i think you i think that chris and ms estes and and jude and rosie i think you are throwing out the challenge for the entire school so again over the next three months how can we bring joy into our lives into our school but then out into the world so that's our challenge so we're going to be thinking of all sorts of ways to do that so thanks for getting it started and we'll definitely be sharing this in our assemblies and our newsletters we want to make sure that everybody is up to date on how this is getting pushed into our everyday lives in these next three months because we all need it we need to be there for each other go enjoy team i like it madison lee we're the joy team all right so thank you i'm gonna try thank you michaela uh i'm gonna magically send you away thanks for kicking this off and explaining the project and chris um i think we're looking for the sixth grader with the poem so if we could if you could help us out we're gonna i'm gonna laura i think she she's not backstage no she's not backstage oh lord on your email in the stream link oh she just showed up here we go i'm gonna remove rosie bye bye rosie thank you so much and bye bye bye jude thank you rosie thank you jude you are amazing thank you bruce all right and let's bring hola lara out here perfect time there she is this is your second time in the broadcast booth yes thank you so much because it takes courage to do this and you're also demonstrating to your sixth grade classmates that it can be done right so i understand like uh you have a poem to share with us and poetry does bring joy into people's lives for sure do you want to explain a little bit about how you made this poem or do you want to just launch it um so a little bit um earlier in the year we started working on these poems called i'm every good thing which are problems about ourselves and we were like looking into metaphors and figurative language and stuff like that so um uh yeah so all the sixth graders we all wrote poems and worked on them for a while and so chris and nick asked me if i could prevent mine so yeah i'm going to be doing that all right so take a deep breath i'm going to remove from the screen though because i want you to be the focus if that's okay okay all right all right so um here we go i'm really crazy and sometimes not i am a volcano at one point i'm calm and next i'm explaining with level i'm like a light bulb when you flip the switch i turn on and glow bright i'm an artist i'm creative i'm light i'm really bright i'm a fresh patch of bright green grass with the sun beaming upon it beautiful bright and glowing yeah that good i have mistakes and learning and getting things wrong in math but then being reminded to persevere more i struggle and get frustrated but you know what i'm right back on my feet again i'm standing on set looking in the light and camera while saying my lines i am my character i am an actress i'm cotton candy soft sugary and sweet i'm graceful and polite like a ballerina i am an empty split i am empty space waiting to be filled by learning i'm ready to be challenged but succeed i'm ready to be pushed and learn from my mistakes i am going to the mall with my friends laughing talking and having fun i am video games with my brothers problem solving and creativity i am watching movies with my family popcorn and snacks i'm sad when it's all over i am the fast words of rap spreading awareness and deep down meaning something good i'm here for a reason to show people what's wrong and what's not i am the running kicking and scoring of soccer i'm the passing communication and teamwork of soccer i'm the fun laughing and silly part of stonker i am the undisputed champion i am a highlight of re i'm a highlight reel of magnificence i am the celebration the applause and the standing ovation i am victory i am a daughter a sister a niece a friend a cousin a granddaughter and a cat owner i i am real although i am something like a superhero every now and then i'm afraid i am not what they might call me and i will not answer to any name that is not my own i am what i say i am i'm a seed being nurtured every day by friends family teachers and everyone else around me every day i learn and grow more so i can become a beautiful flower one day i'm a miracle a blessing i am brave i am hope i am my ancestors wildest dreams i am worthy of success of respect of safety of kindness of happiness and without a shadow of doubt i am worthy to be loved i am worthy to be and that's it so oh my gosh [Applause] now when i thought it was over she kept going and then i thought she might stop and then she kept going and the whole thing i mean spoke to your complexity and to our complexity as human beings we are not one thing we are multitudes we are our ancestors wildest dreams and olar you took it there you went there you didn't hold back you explored the different facets i am so ex just get excited for you right now thank you uh yeah oh lara the chat is filled up i can't even see it all in one because there's so many uh appreciations um that brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart it was very very powerful so thank you for your bravery to read it so beautiful i have to think chris cuz he was one who was like oh i really think you should uh read your poem because he was like a classic joke because um chris would be like who wasn't allowed to read their poem and everyone in the chat would be like me totally i'm so glad you listened and so powerful incredible over here no was were you nervous to do this definitely oh definition of courage is to have fear to have a moment where you're nervous about it because if it's easy that doesn't necessarily take courage so i am so even more impressed that you were able to come here today and have such poise in sharing your thoughts and your very very interesting level of wisdom for such a young age yeah thank you so much and you said it for everybody a little will each worthy you are worthy and each of us in our own way so what a beautiful beautiful sentiment thank you ah so we take a breath and get filled up with that joy from hololara's poem and now we're going to move on to the next thing so thank you for joining us in the broadcast booth and if there's any family member anywhere in the world who doesn't get to watch this live this is recorded so you can share the link with them right okay i'm sure everyone in your family will be so proud for his proud all right take care a little laura thank you chris thank you chris with these projects we'll look forward to uh bringing joy take care thank you all right so miss esther wow i know and there are many sixth grade poems out there so poetry is something that people are studying in different grade levels miss estes and and actually thinking about how to bring the joy of their poetry to people in the outside world so i look forward to hearing i know second grade fifth grade and sixth grade have i have ideas [Music] and the thing about poetry that i always connected to is that like if we have people out there inspired by olara's poetry i mean think about what she did she was taking metaphors that connected to her and explained what that meant i am cotton candy soft and sweet i mean yeah it's it's the uniqueness of us is coming out in how we think of this so if you want to write like that believe me it's in you it's in you i am blank and then you have to just explain how you're like that thing and it i'm telling you don't hold back because that's exactly what she did she didn't hold back and you have this uniqueness in you that can be shown and shine bright throughout for everyone so don't i'm inspired i'm writing tonight gotta keep my journal going all right so now we're actually moving from writing to bring joy to art and the first grade has been doing this self-portrait portraiture project that is so inspiring as well miss estes and we're gonna just let three first graders we can only pick one from each classroom in their video they're going to explain this project and they're going to show their self portraits and these videos they made all by themselves oh boy let's see it let's see it look to catherine see if she's ready for this one she's giving me the head nod catherine way to go okay and the thumbs up too so here we go these are three first graders representing all the first grades uh who did their self portraits in class and i am done with mine of course so you see i added watercolors to my self portrait and portrait i chose a reddish blueish i mean a reddish pinkish star and i add purple tulips because it's a reminder fling spring and then i got some flowers dripping down and this heart and bunnies because my mom's gonna get a pet bunny and that's it so if you have any questions just click here for more for another tutorial all right i hope you have fun i'll see you in our next video bye wow that was my moon huh and i think we have two and then you're yellow this is my portrait and it shows uh oh i gotta i think we gotta get this is my portrait and it shows that i love horses because there's a horse um right here and my setting is a horse farm and it shows that i love pancakes donuts and waffles because my shirt are those three things and bye ah that was so cool this is my portrait and it's representing who i am i'm gonna talk about my the objects so right now yeah somewhere here yeah right here all these things represent who i am this is my water bottle the one that has the lines on it mixed with see and this is my cat and here's me here's a remote control when i put four hearts because my sister's four i put seven stars because i'm about to feast four and i put um a flower right there to represent who i am oh nick i i think we're coming back right yeah yeah wasn't that something oh wow i mean talk about the evidence of symbolism in artwork i mean i'm thinking miss yon would be really really proud because it took me a long time to realize how symbolism is used in artwork and these kids have figured it out in in first grade oh and here she is myself cara what'd you think of those first grade artists those were amazing i'm so happy those first grade teachers did an excellent job on this unit yes yeah and there's a surprise coming up and they thought of a very creative way to bring light and joy to the world is tomorrow they're actually going to hang all the self-portraits on the outside windows you've heard about this of wildwood so that families and staff can come to wildwood and walk along the outside of the building and cpr um well i am here not just to compliment those beautiful portraits and the wonderful artists who made them but also to tell you about two new things that will hopefully bring us joy um so one comes from the whole a team we are starting a weekly arts lunch so every wednesday from 11 45 until 12 15 any students are invited to join us at there'll be a meet link for an arts team lunch to check in with mr b and miss catherine and catherine our music teacher and mrs wells and me and have social time with each other um the link can be found on the choice board and we'll also publicize it some other places so that's coming great news and then the other thing i'm so excited to share is this virtual wildwood art museum which is just starting out and we received funding from our awesome pgo to create this so it is an online space where i hope every wildwood student will have a piece of art displayed so that's going to end up being you know like 350 pieces of art right now we're around 20.
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school committee to order for monday december 7 2020 if everyone could please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all well thank you very much everyone i hope everyone here and attendance tonight and at home had a wonderful thanksgiving i know it was a little bit different but there is i know i had a lot to be thankful for and i'm sure we all did as well um i'd just like to take this opportunity really quickly before we get started into the meeting and it's something that we haven't done recently in the pa in recent uh memory is that i'd like to take this opportunity to really thank our front line workers in the in the town of dartmouth in our community not not only in our schools our school nurses but also our firefighters our police officers chris misha with the board of health as well as his team and all our medical professionals that live and reside in the town of dartmouth and work for doctors offices and hospitals in the town of dartmouth i think it's really important that we take this opportunity to just really say thank you uh for all the work that they've been doing um through this pandemic uh since marches has come around so uh just a big shout out to all of our front line employees and our front line work is uh residing in the town of dartmouth and working in the town of dartmouth at this time if i could have a roll call please ms guenther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen amarillo here john nunes yep mary wait here thank you very much and uh as a reminder uh you know i'm getting tired of reading this but i think it's important that we do i keep it in the minutes here uh per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law uh chapter 38 section 20.
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now our carryover did increase by 530 so we actually decreased more than 244 but since we had a healthy carryover that helped us a lot our capital actually increased by 22 000 but it's because the carryover increased by 74 000.
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in the morning so for those of you that can get out of work and come on over that would be great and um and as part of that we're now opening that up it's going to be a year-to-year fundraiser for the Civics Club to raise money for the Washington DC trip so the news will have an article concerning the reopening of of the fundraising for the local community it's open first to The Graduate graduating class for week and up to the general public to make to create um to to get money for this year's upcoming Washington DC lastly we have all this thanks going to all the voting public and whatnot but I want to thank the board personally profiles and courage is why you guys sent this override and you started the whole process so thank you so much as a parent who cares about this school as a community member um I really appreciate what you did and you started the whole ball rolling and thank youself and Mr um K pit to help us continue to spread kindness and to thank you we have our V Bell's kindness points that say thank you for sharing your kindness pass it on so in the back they say Continental ESD spreading kindness so I'm going to give you two and if you're at the grocery store or wherever you are and you want to spread kindness get some more great publicity for Continental we really appreciate thank thank you thank you appreciate [Applause] it and at this time we'd like to bring Miss Charlotte gates up to for a formal thank you for everything that rotary has done for us at Continental and continues to do we really wanted to officially thank you for supporting us and the outdoor music part and come on up here so we okay I even came with bells on y [Music] so we would like to present you with the Ben [Music] Bell the back it sayal es kindness and you know you to and we are also going to give you some kindness coins so you can have one Gary can have one you can give one to somebody else so you can catch people being kind this holiday season apprciate thank you all so much thank you thank you very thank you so I just added a few more the pictures that I had last time of us with our project and we update our project for our end of year graph report on our musical playground also our Foundation donor Saro so pieces that were purchased last year at our sweethart G were added during Thanksgiving break so we want to thank Legacy smilees the AUST family the Adano family Bill McNary and myself I got my little honey bird on there sponsors and supporters are displayed with pride and appreciation there in the front so we are doing another we're going to do a virtual sweetart data so we'll be offering some s auction items again so I'm sure we will have owls and hummingbirds up for auction for this year in February as well so stay tuned okay our final election results so I'm sure you've already seen them but again we'd like to welcome our newly elected board member Kelly Allen um she has a she has a kindergartener that's enrolled in our school and two students who have come through Continental who are in high school now she grew up in a family of Educators so we're looking forward to her um participation and contribution to our board final override election numbers we had 12,517 votes and 7,474 votes 543 votes um which was very nice to um to see because I did mention to you that I did go when they were hand counting the ballots and was very stressful and I don't know that I could have done three straight days of six hours of listening to them say no no yes yes no yes so I was very pleased with the final outcome again a testament to our parent and Community Support that we knew would be advocating for our student staff and programs and a huge thank you to our override committee members as well governing board minutes just an update the October and November audio minutes are on our website if you go to Administration then governing board under board agendas the link will take you to the audio Miss Jen R house will be transcribing the minutes um that will be submitted for final approval at our January 11th board meeting next our covid-19 school update so it is still the recommendation of Dr Garcia and Dr col from Pima County Health um to keep students in school um under the hybrid model there's still um we never went to hybrid because we do have smaller class sizes and we have larger classrooms than average schools do which allow us to be able to still keep our students six feet apart um so we will continue to stay the course as long as we can I don't think that they will mandate us having to go hybrid since we've been person but if for some reason things change we may have to go to hybrid but we're not anticipating that at this time and the new CDC guidelines for quarantine and isolation are being shorted shortened so that will definitely help us with um the number of people staff and students that we have quarantined so I put the information there for you and I will also share this Google do with you at the end that you will get it beforehand okay so it's going to be shortening to um 10 days quarantine can end after 10 days without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during the daily monitor um also when diagnostic testing resources are sufficient and available then the quarantine can end after day seven of a negative test results so what it was before is if you were quarantined and you tested negative you still couldn't come to school you weren't allowed a negative test wouldn't allow you to be out of corantin now this will um allow us to bring back people who have tested negative even if it's within that 14-day quarantine designation and I just want to commend mrsas um Mr Nathan but we have been working um closely with County Health and we uh you know we're steps ahead of this County Health is so busy that we have been able to control um the spread here at our school by acting immediately and by not waiting two or three hours till we he for human health because we already know um what the procedures are and what needs to happen and our parents have been very supportive um of calling complying reporting and coming to stud because they do understand we have a zero tolerance for any type of illness so I did send out the pum County mask mandate was sent to parents um and staff last Monday um and I know you've been inundated with emails and blank copies for mrsas because every time she sends it out we just L copy the board so you'll be able to see what's what we're sending out to our parents um I only received one parent um call concerned with the were going to have to be wearing masks at their desk um although they're six feet apart um our students have been wearing their masks um because they choose to and they want to and the students when we met W stent advisory were you know telling us please don't send us home and I just keep reiterating we're trying to stay the course if you help us keep your mask and keep safe wash your hands um we'll be okay so just an update today we had 23 students who were absent due to and there was a total of 62 kids absent so only 23 of the 62 were due to quarantine or isolation so the attendance rate is 89% and our absenteeism rate is 10% which is still really really good if you remember receiving information from sa they had 56% um attendance so we our students are doing well our St so we had 14 students out today nine out of the 14 were due to quarantine and isolation um we have a total of 92 employees so we have a 84.7% attendance rate um 24 staff members have generated 121 days of quarantine and isolation so of the days they've had to quarantine and isolate um those are 24 have affected of our 92 employees and then I sent an update to you today um on food service that is not reflected in this data so again as long as we can continue to provide substitute coverage for staff needing to be quarantined or isolated we will keep students in school and so I really want to thank our leadership team because we've all been in kindergarten we''ve all been in the food service we've been kindergarten snack time and um like we've played librarian so I think everybody has truly stepped in um to make sure that we can keep kids in school and that teachers are still getting their planning time which is important to keep that going as well our enrollment update so this slide we updated and so you can see at the bottom right hand side we're um down 49 students from the year last year at this time so we really are doing well um we are definitely not like other districts who have lost hundreds of students okay our enrollment stabilization Grant so we're excited to announce that we received $129,000 from the enrollment stabilization Grant which was probably triple we were going to receive um so this allowed us to free up funds in our M for additional needs throughout the year um and to also cover additional expenses for virtual instruction second semester so we're estimating um about $8,000 for courses and teacher stiens for students that will remain virtual second semester that have indicated they'll virtual and so here you see that we currently have 34 students that have educated they wish to remain online for second semester six kindergarteners five first graders three second graders one third grader we have zero fourth graders and three fifth graders four sixth graders 5 seven and seven eth graders so with the small mbers per grade level our kindergarten through fifth grade students will move to the adventum online cver learning platform and our sixth through eth grade students will move to the amentum online courseware platform for second semester once they're enrolled they will remain digital for the remainder of the semester we definitely have to reinforce to parents they cannot come back because that's going to we're going to plan for these 34 students and we're going to pay for them to to be on this platform so we're going to require that they stay and I currently have our virtual teachers are sending emails to their parents to say it is our understanding that you will be sending your child to school in January because we do have 105 students that are virtual now of4 rest anticipating will return so again the students will receive all the instructions and lessons through the amentum cber learning and online course Work Platforms our teaching staff will be the teacher of record they'll Monitor and provide any assistance with lessons if needed but it will not be your traditional videos of your teachers doing lessons and K see their online normal Continental teacher um so this is an online course all resources needed for the courses are provided through the platform students and parents to self paace and monitor themselves as they complete the lessons and we are having a parent Zoom meeting this Wednesday at 4:30 um with those 34 parents to explain what it'll look like for January so as we mentioned at our last meeting um Albert and I have been working with our Better Together Coalition and um to connect our students we currently have three families who have returned the consent so we're still waiting um Mr Bret Bonner and I are going to be on the around the Cracker Barrel show the radio station it's not really a show the radio station on December 18th to discuss the participation in the connector students initiative and there will be an article in as well in January okay so now our M RP and curriculum adoption timeline so um you can see here on November 9th we sent out an RFP we've receiv received responses um to the RFP and on the next slide you'll see who um who has responded to the RFP we sat with the curriculum committee and we talked about what programs um do we want to explore and look at we did look at the programs that were also um listed in the top 25 schools when we did that study to we're using what sites we're using um next Wednesday this Wednesday actually at 3:15 the curriculum committee will review the responses so if someone from the board would like to be part of the math Review Committee please let me know and I think Miss maybe um you talked about it before so still fits into your schedule is it this Wednesday this Wednesday I can't do it this Wednesday what will happen though in January the presentations so we'll narrow it down with the committee on Wednesday on the top two or three companies that we want to pursue and then in January the companies will do presentations to there'll be Zoom presentations also that you can participate in from home but they'll present to our board our parent advisory and our committee our staff committee our plan is to in February and Mar um the curriculum for 60 days for public to view and then April will be um recommending and requesting board approval for the adoption adopted material and in May through July we'll begin planning our professional development with uh implementation in August on the other side you'll see that we have hon mland harport they are the current vendors of go map which we are using new curriculum is called into math mcra Hill has reveal math curriculum and Associates has ready math and then we have Illustrated mathematics who also responded to the RFP and um we spent $85,000 The Last Five Years on gold math curriculum so I just wanted to give you a wallpark figure um they will be sending in um quotes as well which the committee will be reviewing on Wednesday to See's doable is that each year no this was a total so it it typically costs about 40 to 50,000 year one and then a lot of companies if you sign a threeyear contract and you know they give you a break for the following next two years so The Upfront cost may be a little bit more and one thing that was real difficult just with go math was we tried to transition our teachers into the workbooks rather than the hard copy workbooks and right when we had agreed that we would do it for this year is when we ended up having to shut down with Co and we ended up providing the books for the kids again to take home so again as a reminders this is not the opportunity for questions or discussions if you would like me to put anything on the January board or need clarification please feel free to call me and just want to remind everyone to keep calm calm and stay alone and it's hard to believe that it's already Merry Christmas and happy New Year 2021 it's crazy so thank you thank you very much report Mr P up can we get a clarification what is average attendance for students and teachers like what's a benchmark we 92% is usually what what district stri for best thing 95% we really do strive for 95% for students and staff each year and we've always been between you know 89 and 92 so it's really not any different no no okay I'm sorry this is I also while she's getting that up just wanted to say um well Mr P said the ribbon cutting for the celebration Plaza this Wednesday um we are canceling our staff holiday potluck um the sunshine committee decided not to have it um there is an error on our early release we do not have early release on December 16th ear releases on Friday is a half day for students on that last resence day and I just wanted to say a huge shout out to the Community Food Bank um for helping us out the next two days in absence of our food service staff I called them this morning and they um we've already received two days work of food for the students for breakfast and lunch so thank you all right thank you so I'd like to start um my principal's report showcasing instruction around our school so we'll start with e8th grade science our teachers have been I know I had mentioned a few months back that our teachers are posting learning targets and um essential questions so this learning Target in eighth grade science is we will use zinc and hydrochloric acid to generate Elemental hydrogen we will test for the presence of hydrogen using a combustion test and this was Mr Ker's 8th grade science class they had a lot of fun they many inquiries that came up things that came up in this lesson in regards to uh them working with the chemical formulas and equations that they had they were using different types of chemicals and wanted to [Music] see how the different chemicals would combust even when it wasn't in the plans for that day and Mr krazer brought to life their questions and made them into a reality so they could see what would happen physical education do you all know what they're learning these sixth graders yes pickle pickle they are learning about pickle ball and they have their learning Target students can recall forehand techniques and cues student can hit by forehand to their partner from partner soft tosses skill student can hit five four hands back over the net from partn TOs and so forth and then they went over their forehand hitting techniques how they're supposed to use their paddles their ready positions so it was very they accomplished quite a bit in just the first 15 minutes of this lesson he asked many questions and Coach Sue Williams was there to support them the students were supporting one another and that was the unit they had been working on and then we have some second math the learning targets I can create and label a bar graph essential question why are graphs important the students were able to uh collaborate across with their Partners from across at their desks and come up with data and you'll see some examples towards the end of class and this is how our teacher also can assess she walks around and monitors as many of our teachers do if students are understanding the Lear targets and the objectives at hand to be able to walk around and help them with any questions that they have but the students were really excited to share with their favorite Thanksgiving dishes and they also talked about the importance of graphs many of them were saying we use this for voting you know they heard a lot this was an election year so they were learning a lot about that and talking about voting and and um elections and then of course their favorite topic which is food and desserts e8th grade General music class learning targets were to generalize and conceptualize artistic ideas and work and to develop and refine artistic work for presentation the essential question posed to these students was how can I create and refine a composition through the collaborative recording process H it was so amazing to see this lesson they are as you can see in the picture to the right they were connecting reps and using applications to be able to record their work and then they were using an application where they could collaborate with a team of people from various areas sitting in the classroom be able to create work together and then check on each other and give each other feedback based on their reported compositions they were utilizing Google Classroom as well and in real time Mr Ferguson as well as many of our teachers when you walk you see their lessons is able to write away put links for to help them if they need to go back into their Google Classroom to refer to in this case they were trying to remember certain rules for Beats and that they're making and Mr Ferguson put a review link for them right away so they could refer to it during the lesson and through their independent work they were having so much fun at one point um I'm not one I heard the student say today is a great day for the yells are really loud and they're really excited they were asking how could we get these types of keyboards could we use these at home if we could order these so they're having a lot of fun with creating music and sharing it with one another seventh grade social studies they're learning about the Revolutionary War the war for Freedom taking notes and um The Learning targets where students would be able to track the technological impact on culture they'll spiral back to what they've studied they'll reinforce PRI knowledge and they'll be able to put US history in chronological order for the time period studied two students had worked on this and they used it as an example in this lesson for social studies and they had a great conversations of discussion the students were learning how to create timelines and then they'll be able to utilize their timelines to create an essay and it's all done in their own words based off of their own memory and at times they can create pictures for the timelines so that's where we're at with that I just wanted to share that with you because it's a testament to being in school right now and being able to collaborate and all of the hard work our students are doing and our teachers are doing to make sure that the learning is challenging and and rigorous next up I wanted to discuss data binders we have purchased ERS for all students Kinder through e8th grade each student in the school will receive one it will have the following but not limited to student math growth testing progress reports student goal setting worksheets daily math skills progress and logs of missing work we also have some other ideas that we've have the teachers brainstorming how they would want to uh create this binder because in a way it's going to be a learning portfolio for our students also when we have parent teacher conferences they'll be able to show their parents what their goals are what they're setting some of our teachers brought up they would like to have their students put a piece of work or pieces of work per subject that they're proud of and be able to refer back throughout the school year from where they started and where where they ended but it's a way to also have the students be excited to set those goals for themselves and hold themselves accountable and um be excited to show their work and their prop us this is just an example of one of the reports that would be in it which is a student progress report and when we have our next testing uh Benchmark 2 which will start taking place the week of January 25th we'll start seeing their their growth from this first Benchmark to the second Benchmark and this is a student goal setting worksheet that would be in the binder the teachers would go over these with the students they would write down their plan what their goal is and it also comes with the copy for them to take home for with their parents so they can go over with their parents and the teacher signs it the student signs it and the parents sign it and it would go in their binders an update on the data analysis tools we had a meeting with our um accounts manager for map for NWA map growth uh the RIT score we discussed the RIT score last board meeting it's a process for through e environment cor and it correlates best for student growth um as opposed to the Six Sigma which you know we had discussed at the last meeting so I did look into it which is a data- driven approach and it uses statistical methodology to help lead uh helps lead to defec and waste reduction Improvement in profits employee moral and quality of products or services but map growth would be best utilized um because it's a scale that helps us in measuring and comparing academic growth specifically scale measures level and AC academic difficulty so the RIT scale extends equally across all GRS making it possible to compare students score at various points throughout his or her education what does a specific RIT score mean it represents the level where students are ready to learn also known as the zone of proximal development the test finds that level by pinpointing where a student would would just as likely answer incorrectly as correctly the point KN and not knowing answers so I just want to show a quick little clip with the right Insight you can shape the future I love to teach and watch my students grow as a teacher and would like to tell you about how I use math from n to benefit our students and our school beginning two years ago our school district implemented the measures of academic progress or Ma on map to assess each of my students unique needs and to chart their growth what's more map helps me prepare for the important skape test let's look at each of these benefits starting with assessment of each student's needs a map assessment challenges every student as the student responds correctly or incorrectly the test items adjust in difficulty if an answer is correct the next question is harder if an answer is incorrect question is easier in this way I'll learn exactly where each student currently performs that's an important difference from traditional tests which only tell me whether a student is at above or below their grade level with math assessments I'll see just how far above or below my students are performing and knowing that I can Target curriculum to their specific needs all students grow at different rates and that enables grow to millions of other students here's what makes it possible map assessments use the RIT scale or R this scale is like a yard stick with equal units across the scale just like a yard stick shows changes in student height the r scale shows changes in student academic growth as the school year progresses I'll use the RIT scale to monitor that growth knowing that every student grows a R for comparison I can also rely on the Norms data built into map based on millions of test item responses and over 30 years of research the norm data give me a reference point as I assess each student's unique growth rate as my students progress through the school year I need to know how prepared they are for the state test again map has the answers nwea researchers scale with State tests for both reading and Mathematics This research makes it possible to project how well my students would perform so I can make adjustments to boost their proficiency so now you know how math helps our students so I just wanted to because we're all learning about math growth and in the coming hopefully next month we have a 4our it'll be over two sessions it'll be two 2our sessions for our staff and for all of us and I would I would let you know when it is so that you could take part in it if you have the time to do so but it's going to go over all the data analysis tools the RIT scores and more information as we move forward with this uh new program so that our teachers know when we're going over the data with their students and with our parents as well and we're all very clear testing updates the NWA macro testing window is closed for this first Benchmark testing data has been uploaded to link it for more detailed analysis report upcoming testing that will be taking place is dual language students will be taking the M grth Spanish reading test at our January board meeting we will review the map growth Benchmark number one overall data and um January 25th our M growth Benchmark testing to will begin have any questions and just I want to say happy holidays to all of our students staff fames board members and our Continental community and I really want to thank parents I'll be reaching out to them individually that came and surprised us um they came on a weekend and decorated the cafeteria they wanted to lift the spirits of our students the whole entire cafeteria has probably about Christmas trees lights slaves and um little reindeer that light up and it was a big surprise for not just our students but for all of us and the love that we have from our parents it's extremely moving and from our community that they would take time out to do this just because they want to show love for our school so I really want to thank them for that and happy holidays to all of you okay thank you very much consent agenda please a motion for the consent agenda I we approve the December 7 consent second any discussion I have a couple of questions in the voucher area um I $2,700 approximately for Co supplies and another almost 12,000 for air purifier is there any cares money left that could cover those so what we did is we used the car's money to free up ML money okay so we use the car's money to pay for salaries and benefits for Miss quas and Mr lean while they were working on our litigation plan so that that freed up all that money which is why those purchases are now able to come out of our account okay uh lastly $1,735 for reimbursement for p County for elections given the debacle of the voting machines and uh and the staff time that our superintendent had to invest to go observe the process can we get a rebate on any of that P county is just like everybody else their prices are set no matter how incompetent their process is Mr President that's my question thank you sir I appreciate that further questions please Miss K yes Mr O yes Mr ol yes and Mr yes thank you motion passes 11 a first semester payment 301 funds so this is motion for approval of our first semester payment of 301 funds um like we mentioned before our committee has a extensive documentation of ensuring that teachers comply with all the requirements of the categories in order to earn their first payment motion please I'll move that we approve the first payment three funds second any discussion questions um was this the total amount that the district has received for for profit 301 for this payment this is so what we did we took the budgeted amount how much we're were supposed to be getting from the state and this is half of those amounts okay um I understand that in the in the account 013 in the proposition 011 is is basic pay 02 is performance pay and and and and three is is uh for actually numerous one of which can certainly be a salary um but there's also a whole bunch of other things that that that that 013 can go for I mean including um uh teacher development uh assessment inter Intervention which would be like uh summer school and some of some of those sorts of things is there any need to allocate some 301 money for those purposes uh rather than all going into salar that is not actually a question for me sir that's actually a question for you well I guess I mean to be to be perfect because the board sets the board sets where that that payment goes to and if if you would like I mean it's set for this year but you can bring this up as an agenda item later on okay that's an excellent point app have that discussion about for the upcoming school year okay I appreciate that thank you you're right it is our responsibility so it appears that we kind of gave everybody the same thing the information that we received was that everybody had earned 100% there were two teachers who chose not to participate within the 301 program so then all the teachers performed equally there were no high performing feates so the way we base 301 is they participation on their committees um so we have our emergency committee we have oure so they meet monthly so they meet mon we meet monthly with category a committees which are curriculum and advis the child support committee so we have those and then they have to attend monthly meetings for their category B so all of them are it really is schol functions and operations so it's really not performance it's no it's aend yes so the 301 money at Continental is being used for attendance and not performance a performance pay component within 301 that is f 12 right okay and that is a one time payout at the end of the year and there are specific Cur specific guidelines in order to receive 100% And what the 301 I I don't have front of me so I can't I'm not even going to begin to to guess at what it says but there are certain components within fun the fun 12 to the 301 plan that each teacher has to make to get 100% of that into the evation system superintendent Rico where do we and I I understand that's something we're really not going to address until the year end performance pay and that is the one2 I guess uh in there but it says that on the performance pay there is a system in place and it was approved at a public meeting of this board as far as how that performance pay is allocated and it's based on like 12 factors where do I find the Continental policy on that I tried to hunt for it on the website and I went into the um the policy section and is all there is in there is asba uh uh policies there I I I don't know where Continentals is I will I will dig it up because it's been the same established prior to my arrival four years ago so I'll go back and hunt it down and go through some records to get that information discussion great all right Miss K yes Mr over yes Mr asy yes and Mr M yes F thank you request for after school elll tutoring isable okay so this is a request for us to um provide some tier three intervention for our all students um we are going to be audited with our El students this next semester so in preparation for the audit we just want to make sure that we can Target the students with a little bit more guided attention from thisable I move that we approve second motion and a second discussion please okay all right call Miss guys yes Mr over yes Mr a yes and Mr Mi yes thank you passes minimum wage increase to 1215 we have two employees that fix so in order to comply with the minimum wage increase of 125 by January 1st 2021 I move to approve minimum wage increase to 1215 beginning January 1 motion the second discussion I do have a discussion I remember when it went from like $10 $12 a few years ago this is just another unfunded government mandate that I know 15 cents isn't going to make your break is but the last time just for the record it cost us like 30 or $4,000 that was unfunded um just I don't know just had bent that out I guess I'm sorry but um this one probably is what a th000 or so it's it's about that minim yeah is this the last of no every year from here on out is the uh cost of living indicator the there's two different there's two different ways it's either this Consumer Price Index or the or cost of living whichever is the least so with this one we came in I I forget what the percentage was I I don't remember it off the top of my head okay but it only came in at a 15 C rate so from here on January it'll be the lesser of those two indicators to a maximum of $5 right yes I believe that was part of that legislation I would have to double check it but I pr sure that that's what it said valid yes yeah that's the elections have consequences okay any further discussion all right M K yes Mr yes Mr overy yes Mr mcin yes thank you motion passes approval of fy21 budget revision number one yes so miss you pull that up I do have to make a a notation on this on this cover page that you were given I have had to make an adjustment I thought the board meeting for this was going to be December 14th so in the documents that you'll be signing today that will actually say December 7th so you have my apologies for that I either forgot or just completely missed it but that is corrected on the versions that you will be signing today that is the only change within the budget forms from what you were given so I just wanted to start off with that and my sincerest of apologies so this quas can go to the next page pages so this budget here that is in front of you today is more aligned with what is actually within our accounting system um one thing that you will notice is that our budget from what we are revising to today from to approved in July as are adopted is about and I'm just going to round the numb about $179,000 light um I was going to bring this to you in February just you remember right when I had my one ones with you I told you that I was going to bring a budget revision to you early um but December is when or late November is when ad sends out their notices for for districts who have to do a December revision so I waited until that came out what ad calculated versus what was proposed at the beginning of the back in June and then again in July there was a difference of $179,000 that being said we are currently sitting with just over $300,000 left unincumbered which means it's just sitting there waiting for a place to call home okay and that does not include the enr stabilization Grant funds that we have which will free up another $129,000 so financially as a district we are looking fairly well right as at that halfway point of the year so you will see on this page you know as I said those numbers more accurately reflect what is in our accounting system um a couple Pages down you'll find the classroom site fund which is also now aligned with what is within our accounting system that's it so this is the salary and all this is is salaries and benefits for teachers out of prop 301 so the 301 payments that you that you made were actually based more on this revision than they were of anything else other than that those are the only two areas that are that are really changed the M portion back on page three is where we had to remove that $179,000 from but again as I stated you know that now actively reflects what is in our accounting data and I will open it up to the board for any questions about the revision is is this caused by like a change in the waiting formula it so generally when when so ad allows you a percentage to be off from them they require you to do one um generally when you're putting together your proposed and adopted budget you do not carry you do not include carryover funds because you have what's called an encumbrance period which lasts into into September okay which is paying bills from the previous year in the previous year with funds from the previous year so in in the budget that that was proposed to you the carryover amount was there it didn't exactly correlate with what ad said but you know so there's slight changes in ADM slight changes in um weighted ADM for our sped students as far as um number of students in each category so there's a lot of small factors that that factored into it okay will you be adding back in for as a revenue Source the uh the enrollment stabilization money that's coming in add in and I'm not sure what you mean by add in but let me answer my question add Revenue so it'll become a revenue within the enrollment stabilization Grant it'll become fund 328 what we will do we will journal entry um salaries and benefits out of M into the enrollment stabilization Grant one of the things that the enrollment stabilization Grant allows us to do is they assume $500 per student as a CO expense so we I went through I did the math um I believe it's like $177 in change for student when I add in the benefits I spend all but $466 of the enrollment St yep I'm I'm good unless you guys have any other questions but those are the only two areas that yeah were any any changes to the budget that you seen in July thank you sir motion please approve second Mo or second further discussion do we have to make a motion about the budget we pass no no there's nothing needed with the previous one okay so this is just approval of budget revision number one Mr overy yes M K yes Mr O yes Mr MC yes motion passes thank you st request for digital teachers okay at this time we're asking for approval the second for digital teachers for our uh one teacher took on two grade levels another teacher took on two grade levels two three and then we had fourth and fifth grade teachers who are doing um both digital and in person simultaneously in order to keep numbers low so as we looked at our budget and met with um Mr schuber and what we had um available and the funds that we freed up we thought this would be a good um thank you for their hard work that they put in this order so can we ask a question I um is this retroactive yes this is for this is for third quarter right okay because moving forward you're going to they won't be doing that because they're going to be using edum right and we're going to be we're going to be designating additional teachers of record but they will not be happy to record less um teach um video record or teach live they will be the teacher records look very different where you might have to transfer grades into our Synergy program so what we are looking to pay the teacher of record for second semester is $150 a semester a quarter so that's just to kind of monitor yes okay that's what my son's doing at wal on the engine right so it'll look very different for the teachers because we are expecting all of our digital teachers to come back in person in January noal respons motion please I'll motion that we the statement second further discuss uh just would this be another item that could be funded with prop 301 money seems to me that it would fall right into that 013 category um the other services it it technically yes it it it could be if if that was part of the the 301 plan that was yes so I just got information from Miss um and she let me know that the governing board approved the 301 plan in May for the for this school year so we'll have to go back to our name right I think we need to probably rediscussed because right now we have it as lack of a better word of bonus um if they fulfill certain things sitting on committees going to the foundation thing Etc versus meeting my CL came up 10% and all that which it sounds like you guys might be hinting to is performance type pay but that's has never been at least until now are um reasoning for looks like we can address that April May yeah so Part B is the performance P part A and for the discussion okay m k Mr yes Mr yes Mr M yes pass thank you okay now we have Mr sh and a school facilities board update so back a few months ago many many board meetings ago I I talked to the board about the wonderful world of the school facilities board and I told you that I would go ahead and give up the board as I had them so just wanted to let the board know the 4 in fire pipe that we needed to have replaced has been replaced um by using the the sfb that save the district 2300 um we are still working on PO approval with Mojave Mojave has to approve all sfd POS U but in order once we get the approval with Mojave you know we'll get the uh compressor placed on the middle school which will save the district $5,800 um we are currently waiting approval from the SSB board to replace one of the 25 ton units on top of the Middle School um this this Project's taking us a little bit longer because when one vendor came in with their bid they had an add on there and when I talked with the sfb about this ad he said absolutely go back your bers and have them added what it would do is it would add a hot water loop within the within the unit which will help us keep it from freezing up so that project in itself is just over it's almost $48,000 or I'm sorry 30 it's almost $40,000 these three projects alone have saved the district just over $ 47,600 so I just wanted to move forward and let yall know what exactly it is we are doing with the sfb and where we're at with those projects can you paint the school too so okay okay so that is actually a good question the sfb will not do beautification but pres but they will do water prooving if we can prove that our buildings are leaching water through the walls the sfb will paint the buildings okay yeah hey Thursday is% so I will see if I can get somebody from the sfb to come up with their RAR tube and and put it up against the wall to see how much moisture is actually within the wall well Greg that is a really great thing you brought thank abolutely thank you sir I look forward to more reports on that that okay that's discussion information we have gon textbooks discussion information so again I provided um information just I did ask teachers what they were using Beyond textbook score so I included it in um on the memo and just looking at what we get for on textbooks for the cost and entertaining questions continue to can you open that what is DMS daily M daily math skills thank you so it's a time test that we use and the information um the assessments come from Beyond textbooks and we keep the data and we're currently looking at adding that data into link it so again it'll be another additional Source on information for us to know where kids are that's the thing you said earlier yes about putting in the binder bind the D thank you thank you any report items see look at the events believe 2021 around the corner mentioned December 16th will be a full day so we'll be we'll make sure that parents know that that's not a half day December 18th will be early dismissal and we are canceling our um staff holiday party thank you governing board information we'll start at the end Mr OS any wisdom uh you know just um continuous thank you for you guys keeping it together this next couple week and a half or so is going to be tough and the only other one I think I I want to say is um you know thank goodness we got the override on the ballot because it was the right time of year to do it um so I I'm just glad that we got that done and got didn't thank you to anybody that's listening from the public uh just couple of comment again I also want to express my thanks to the administration for keeping the school if you read the article I think it on a Daily Star yesterday this morning about the incredible spike in failing grades uh by by kids um uh that are all trying to learn in a virtual environment um the more we keep our kids in class the more we're going to be way ahead of the curve in comparison to the the kids who I I really feel for that are trying to do this virtually um just one item that maybe you could help me with u uh de in your email that you send out every suay um there's there's links in there to open stuff up and it always ask me for if I don't have access or whatever is there a way that I can do this stuff yes I can start making sure that you're I just have to give you permission with your emails so I'll make sure to all okay some of them will require for example the past Weekly News it has um some videos to watch on growth um but that would require logins for you all so we have to look into that because in order when you click on the link it will make you log in and the video we can ask for one for the governing board like we did for beond created that that okay um I guess lastly uh I participated in a 2hour webinar called grade leaders grade school Arizona Summit on excellence and education Governor duy kicked this thing off uh seven or eight panelists that went through most of it was focused on professional development for principles and and and and what resources are available to build great principles um U although I must say that the vast majority of the emphasis of the entire 2hour presentation was except for me so as I'm watching the reports come out from Fairfax County Public Schools and other schools that are just showing these these horrific uh results of students it is it is so cool that you guys have been able to pull this off and keep keep the school open and keep the kids coming and I I know every day just got to scary as can be uh when another teacher or student gets sick or or faculty or you know there's any kind of an issue so you know thanks for um you're showing true resiliency uh managing this every day and I'm I'm really glad for that um Greg I'm glad that we got our override passed and if I've done my math correctly we're good till f 27 yes so um yeah so so we won't see any decrease until FY 26 correct so that will be the first 25 we'll start again well you'll probably do it again in 24 but okay so um I just wanted to make sure I got that um that we agree on that date um and I hope that our new board member enjoyed the new board member training it was um we have a new asba president uh so here's here's hoping that we're off to a great start next year so that was going to be my question because usually the onboarding takes place in January did it already occur through as the new board member new board member orientation was Tuesday the some Tuesday the whatever so I wonder if um if she was notified because I didn't know about it either we didn't get any ASD information on that that's why I was going to ask for January but they're typically recorded too so I'll look into it and um because yeah the new board members at veale were all there and they board member dinner and um okay defit into that to get that on board done um one other thing I wanted to ask we could I just when we met with our account Specialists for NWA um we asked if they'd be available for our board to also present some more data and information for our board so you guys have a good January February good bad times in those months I think late January or early February M training is going on again in late January okay let's look into that and I'll send an email a coup options possible times together around BS training because we really need to get to that training as well um I I think it's been said but you guys are amazing very very could be more proud as a parent um the resilience and just the flexibility you guys have to do whatever needs to be done from serving sandwiches to driving buses to whatever needs to be done I'm very very proud of all you guys for your hard work I know it's not easy I get that and um you guys should hold your heads high you're doing a great job and just keep pushing forward because the reality is I think we're about it in terms of schools that are still have our doors open so least in the area we're the only public um School in compy that Isa and with um the high schools going virtual W that it did provide some relief to poor Mr Lane in our transportation department because we're very shorthanded we did get these two new drivers board approved but we had him and Mr Na and driving buses um so again a true Testament of everybody pitching in to get the job done and get our kids transported so thank you and just real quick I wanted to uh by chance Sergio are you on did you happen to HP on I want to say thanks to Sergio Ado for his service we'll miss you buddy and we hope that you stop by and don't be a stranger thank you so much for what you've done for continental and we we wish you the best moving forward I just wanted to say special thank you to our attendance CL regist Miss EV we've been working around the Christina too trying to find subs and working with our employees and things come up as they come up on the weekends or sometimes messaging at midnight Saturday mornings at 7 a.m.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay is there a moment under santa cruz just as a point or i may have misheard but it sounded like you said 903 i think it's in there if i misheard i apologize but just want to make sure that we state that correctly it is likely that i misspoke it is 1.05 and you were talking about ars 15905 correct thank you thank you for that is there a motion i move that we call for public hearing pursuant to ars 15-905 thank you mr eugetti is there a second bye second thank you mr carr any discussion prior to a presentation if not we will move to presentation before vote so good morning dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord so today we are sharing a short presentation regarding the revised number one uh fiscal year 2021 budget please know that i have staff with me this morning as well so miss jackie matanin the director of finance along with pat donahue and ashley miranda all have been instrumental in creating this revised report as well as the actual document so to move forward so this is what we will discuss the maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital budget details the teacher compensation grid we made a commitment uh last spring that we would update the teacher compensation grid at the revised budget to reflect any changes in average salary that have occurred after all the retirements have been identified and then finally we'll do some federal fund details and share some of the mno budget risks and opportunities and finally next steps dr santa cruz may i ask a question miss fitz miss butts before we start just could you remind us what why we have this public hearing what this meeting is is for like according to the law we have to by december by december 15th we are required to revise the budget due to the pandemic our student counts were significantly less than what we projected in our adopted budget last spring yes and so because of that our stated budget limit on our budget was overstated and because it was overstated we were required to revise by december 15th and that's why the public hearing was required as well okay this is the first time we're really talking about this in detail as far as this revised budget for this year that's correct for the that's correct okay thanks okay so to begin these are some of the notable details that are reflected in this revised budget know that our average daily membership we did anticipate 32 800 or so students and at this time the student count is twenty eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen so um so again we are still working very much on that uh average daily membership to bring that up but you can see that the decrease from adopted is nearly 4 000 students and that's also reflected in the weighted student count so because of that our revenue control limit now the going from 213.7 million down to 188.1 million roughly is a decrease of 25.6 million dollars associated with that drop in average daily membership or student count so note that that that was that this whole uh situation because of the pandemic the governor um signed an executive order during the summer indicating that school districts will be held harmless to 98 of the prior year's weighted student count so we are below that 98 percent of the prior years weighted student count however this is also reflective of the enrollment stabilization grant which we will get through um in a few moments so you can see that that's why we had to revise our budget because of that 25.6 million dollar decline 25.6 million decline in the revenue control limit the m o override maintenance operations override stays the same note the budget balance carry forward however so we budgeted a little over 11 million dollars on the budget balance carry forward and our revised number one that we're sharing with you today shows a budget balance carry forward of just under 31 million dollars that is exactly reflective of the enrollment stabilization grant which is why a week ago we shared with you the revised fiscal year 2020 afr so at this point in time because we moved eight we moved 12 million dollars of 12 million dollars of fiscal year expense out of maintenance and operations into the enrollment stabilization grant which increased our budget balance carry forward by that 12 million dollars along with the addition after adopted of the additional carryover of 6 million dollars that's where we received just under 20 million dollar increase in our budget balance carry forward from adopted remember that we adopt in june and so in august in july and august we are making all these decisions regarding spend and do we want to use the mitigation strategies move some spend into other funds all that work was done that reflects the difference between that 19.8 million dollars and the 12 million dollars that we received from the enrollment stabilization grant any questions on that it's a rather complicated situation we but we anticipated 11 million dollars carry forward with our work over the summer we realized about a total of 18 million then we moved 12 million dollars of expenditures from m o last year into the enrollment stabilization grant last year and that's how we received the nearly 31 million dollars of budget balance carry forward okay which might become quite important as we deal with the decrease of students in the new budget that's correct budget coming up that's correct so i do have a question if we go back to average daily membership you bet um this is a huge loss i mean i've seen declines in our district but this is probably twice as much as i've or more than i've ever seen how much of this is due to the number who are enrolled online because we do have a huge increase in students online and how much is it due to people who have chosen to go elsewhere or maybe are just choosing you know i've heard there are a lot of kindergartners you know that haven't enrolled that parents are just kind of waiting to get through this year and then they'll enroll their children in school so depending upon the day that we look at the enrollment we are down in true enrollment between a thousand and twelve hundred students so the remaining loss of the average daily membership is because we have students that are now being educated purely online now we've got some strategies in place that we're working on over the next couple of weeks to make decisions about some of these students so that we can increase that student count in addition remember that the online student the adm is captured all the way through the end of the school year through june 30 and it's about the number of hours that they're logging in so there's a lot of time to catch up that student count for those online students to get the 1.0 adm which then at that point in time is brought down to 95.95 adm so we've got strategies to bring up that um that loss of 3 800 to be more representative of the true enrollment loss of a thousand to twelve hundred students okay thank you okay but that's still a big loss it's still it's still alive twelve hundred thousand to 1200 enrollment loss is still a significant loss yes the highest i've seen we had 1500 students one year that we lost but that was a little bit we were in the newspaper a lot that year so but keep in mind that this i'd like to share too that this is statewide not just gilbert so statewide there's been a 40 000 student loss across the state and um and even a more significant on a percentage basis of even special education students like 150 or so special education students so so it's been a significant the pandemic has been a has had a significant impact on enrollment statewide so the maintenance operations budget limit you can see that even though we had a revenue control limit of a loss of 25.6 million dollars because of that increase in the budget balance carry forward our m o budget limit only decreased by about 5.8 million and then on unrestricted capital again remember that we're adopting a budget in june and we don't know the final spend analysis etc in unrestricted capital so note that our unrestricted capital budget balance carry forward is also reflected as higher by 1.8 million dollars before i move on are there any other additional questions on that okay great so again the maintenance operations budget limit inc decrease so lower than projected student counts again i shared the revenue control limit and then the bbcf the budget balance carry forward increase due to the revised 2020 efr and of course moving 12 million dollars of expense into the enrollment stabilization grant so in moving forward we are recommending actually jackie's right jackie mattinen had recommended to me that we do do a budget revision in february so that we can keep you apprised of where we are on these student counts as well as any other legislative work that might be done regarding closing that gap between the enrollment stabilization grant award and the 98 of the prior year weighted student count so we're recommending to present that to you in february we'll have a better idea of our current year student count so we can reflect that um and then also in this budget revision we have a a budget in the enrollment stabilization grant for the current year of 18 million if you remember we anticipated a 30 million dollar award from the enrollment stabilization grant our award was just under 14.3 million so the 18 million dollars is no longer accurate we need to revise that down to the 2.3 million dollars that we actually received and then we also did not make any changes on budgeted expenditures out of maintenance operations to put into the esser grant which is the elementary secondary school emergency relief grant it's directly related to the cares act funding and then again as i indicated because of all the work we're doing with trying to capture attendance and minutes for all of our existing students then we do anticipate there will be a budget limit change in february as well so then moving on to unrestricted capital again thus we did have a fiscal year 2020 student account increase which we are able to use for our unrestricted capital recall that maintenance operations is funded based upon current student count but the unrestricted capital is funded on prior student count so we have a statewide recalculation that occurs in july again after the budget is adopted and we did realize some additional 2020 student accounts that helped us with our unrestricted capital capacity for the 2021 school year any questions on any of that okay and then this is the detail of the average teacher salary change if you recall the governor requested that this grid be added to all the budgets to verify the 20 percent by 2020 initiative that the governor implemented allowed to happen whatever the case may be and so again you can see where the adopted indicated an average salary of all teachers employed in the current fiscal year of 54 884 and you can see that after the summer activity the decisions that teachers are making to retire and this was actually more teachers than we expected did decide to retire due to the pandemic and you can see that there was over a 400 400 closer to 500 um dollar amount per teacher on the on average loss due to those resignations generally generally speaking individuals who are retiring are way above the average salary which at the in the fall of the subsequent year that will bring the average salary down so that would represent some turnover savings so we have teachers that are making you know 70 to 80 000 that are retiring and being replaced with teachers that might be brand new teachers or teachers making less than that so you can see the result of the um of the average salary increase than over the last three years from 2018 to 2019.
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