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yeah we don't that's 15 would be about the cap for the pre-k okay that's what we typically see [Music] so that's about seven you know seven classrooms um you know so my question really is because 700 in elementary school is a big elementary school it is i think ann went on sorry what what did you hear uh it's a big elementary school so so how how big then is our second biggest elementary school with highland um i'll bring that right up i think we have that here highland 738 students 106. so highland is 700 students as well it's more than 700 isn't it 740 according to this 2020 enrollment yeah i was showing that 2738 i believe as of october 1st john that was from malone um and they're projected obviously higher highland it was 900 back in 2005 or so about 90 almost 900 wow yeah projecting 9.74 sorry it's really small the projected 974 right out 20 this is your 29.30 for highland right here um as is this is the as is projections okay so thank you you're welcome thank you all right i think tim has a question and then adam thanks andrew um so with regard to uh one thing i always want to look at with a construction project is the lifecycle costs sure so we're talking about capital upfront cost right now is part of what you're going to do is it going to be um incorporating lifecycle costs whatever that is 20 30 40 years operations maintenance stuff yeah and in our study and our engagement we're i i'd have to double check our our contract i don't believe we're in including life cycle costs um on those oh i have to check that tim i don't believe we are okay all right all right now you shouldn't be looked at obviously you know over over the cost of it we're looking these are capital capital project costs yeah so i'll just make my point which i think that's an important perspective for people to understand the life cycle costs in terms of you know supporting or rejecting the idea i think i think for something particularly of this nature this is a huge project for the town of cheshire i think it is extremely important anyway thank you for that um i think i have two basic questions and i'd like to be brief if possible but i'm not sure if it will be um six hundred dollars i'm looking at this at six hundred dollars a square foot total project cost is what you're talking about yep okay so i i had in my mind that this was probably like a construction project new construction ignoring land you know more like 300 a square foot i know you mentioned some adders um is is i'm just curious you don't so i know you don't know the basis of where i'm getting the 300 or actually it was even less than 300.

and when i talk about that i'm talking about a meeting that i recently went to with what i believe are knowledgeable people talking about net zero new construction school projects sure in the range of 250 to 300. is that almost like a hundred percent difference there could that constitute the all the adders like site work playground uh furniture would would that be could that come up between it um yeah we hear this quite often tim and essentially sometimes when people talk about cost per square foot a lot of times it's just the building alone a lot of times they don't include site costs furniture fees and expenses and that's one thing we train internally with our with our people is is when someone says hey we can build for 300 a square foot you can't build any we're actually doing mansfield elementary school and if you want actually um some actual budget numbers tim i can provide you those we're working on that right now it's a brand new net it's gonna be the first net zero if you just want to see a budget on that i'd be happy to share that with you just so you can see a real budget on that yeah just for reference yeah and you're talking for that you're talking 600 bucks a square foot and you said that's the first school in connecticut or first elementary school net zero in connecticut i believe so yeah like our colleague scott pellman's uh working on that project and um uh that i believe is the first net zero um elementary school i'm just bringing up the budget i'm just kind of curious myself um the latest one um that they have that is going to bring it up for you just so you can see it so 76 000 square feet our budget is 373 a square foot [Music] so if you take 76 000 square feet tim and the total project costs on this looks like it's 50.5 million okay and that's a net zero project i believe i pulled this up quickly um you know here just to try to give you some quick uh and i'm just gonna check and make sure that's still the current budget we're getting ready to go out to actually getting ready to go up a bit on that so okay so what i just saw if you're looking at probably like a 10 adder because it looked like it was is it 660 a square foot no maybe not so the high on the on the 700 is uh total project gross per square foot is 642 in this example that doesn't include your financing and bonding costs and then the low is 580.

yeah oh so that's actually kind of in the same range 600 580 to 640. okay so the the projects you're talking about here are they net zero in close to it i forget about your panels they have to confirm that high performance which is equivalent to uh lead silver standards we just don't go all through all the certification on it but it's it's connected high performance building okay so it's extremely low energy use basically yeah yeah it's got to be efficient um we have there's a whole process we have to have a commissioning agent on board with these projects and they're efficient but they do use more electricity i'd say some people sometimes mistake oh they're more efficient so we should have lower bills well they're bigger buildings you have bigger systems your air conditioning they're efficient but they still use more energy okay okay more electricity yeah the bill's not going to go down the bill is going to be higher it's just efficient efficient systems your percentage of efficiency yeah not necessarily the bill because you have more systems and say you know you don't have air conditioning in chapman so your bills aren't going to be as high as you know per square foot okay okay that's i think that's a whole other conversation i could have yeah so i'll just i'll jump off of that um so my other question i so i just want to i just want to give you my background on this which is so i've been kind of involved in the local in this local stuff for about 20 years now and generally speaking and i'm just going off of memory right here it seems to me like every year i always see the projected enrollment going up in the out years and it generally has not uh so probably like go back to 2000 it was going up to about 2005 and for the last 15 years it's kind of been decreasing even though i've seen projections saying it will increase so i come into this with a little bit being a little bit skeptical about increasing enrollment you know starting a couple years out and then going up i will caveat that and say i think it's pretty easy for me to see um you know there's new construction for probably the first time in like 15 or 20 years going on around town going on around town um which would drive enrollment but i'm just curious is there um and i know i've asked this question before but there's probably other people who are watching right now or will be watching this video um what do you have a couple of the main drivers for enrollment i would i would actually i'd have to defer that to melania mcbroom we didn't do okay so i i wouldn't even want to speak on their behalf okay um what those are for for what it's worth is tony uh there was a snc committee meeting maybe a month or two ago where my loan did present those projections is a it's a great video to watch goes on that detail we'll try to dig it up and link out to everybody okay all right thanks tom thank you chuck you're welcome all right adam thank you um uh two quick questions uh this time uh i guess i'll well um all right first question um for if for the new if there's a new elementary school and or and i guess i'm skipping ahead to uh 1b um with the light if the potential like new renovations of all the other elementary schools is there additional capacity built into these construction projects whereby if we were to exceed let's say um exceed these projections and there was some sort of uh gigantic population bump in uh 2040 let's say would this system be able to handle anything larger because like we see um um highland being pushed to the limit at what was it nine was it nine hundred students is that yeah for the existing as is is around 974 right and so you have uh this new school projected at 700 is that maximum capacity or is there additional uh room built in is is that assuming a like a a 20 to one ratio or like what are the pop what are the the ratio assumptions when you when you build for 700 students is i'm i'm guessing there's capacity there okay so the the the way um so when we look at the square footage we obviously use the eight-year enrollment right like so the state of connecticut says you can look out eight years for a maximum in this case here we're assuming because we haven't finalized the malone hasn't finalized the scenario to go exactly what it will be we're we're we're kind of in that still in between mode a little bit but we know it's in this ballpark so we're assuming 700 the state of connecticut if we said hey state of connecticut at 700 for the next eight years that's all they're going to reimburse a district for um on the size of the building so when we're talking about you know 2040 they're not looking out that far however what we what we what we try to do when land exists on a project is identify a location for future expansion um for a project like if you take a wing of the academic wing and okay can we add on six more classrooms to a certain portion of your building um the other side too is when you look at enrollment and when you actually develop the ed specs and i'll use our pleasant valley project in south windsor because they've had a population boom in the last um three or four years it's grown immensely we've been updating your their enrollments malone did theirs they update them every single year so we've been tracking them every year because it's been so hot we've added additions on to the last two projects we just completed we added a total of seven classrooms between two schools midstream um but what we what we would do in this type of a program is because it's projected to you know increase we would recommend each october you update your enrollment projections to see where it's trending against your prior years and see if there's a trend going on to see if if it's holding true so that when you get to say if you were to renovate and potentially add on to these uh your existing elementary schools we want to know do we need to accommodate and change that budget and change that ed spec to accommodate for more kids so you're cut we'd have to constantly monitor your enrollment in a master program like this um but at pleasant valley they're enrollments 803 but if you look at the homeroom seats and the actual capacity it's about another 150 students actually when you look at the classrooms you say we can do 24 kids per class from here and 26 for here and you multiply them by the respective number of classrooms it's actually a little bit higher than what the enrollment number is based upon the ed stack and if if we were to uh you know this would uh from the other plans uh when we'd redistrict um do we plan for 85 of 700 or like when we decide what population is moving into this new school where i'm guessing it's going to be 100 of whatever chapman was going to be and then what and then i'm guessing we're i guess picking off some of doolittle i guess so that they can have the kindergarten back so at that point when you figure that out what at what occupancy would we be at after we've moved those the uh the maximum occupancy in uh 20 what is it uh where are we in 2030 or whatever whatever the projections go out for uh what uh occupancy rate are we at at that point so um in malone's study you if you go back to that one they'll they'll talk about the 100 full capacity of a school but as a rule of thumb they i call functional capacity they look at uh trying to keep it closer to 90 because you're going to get fluctuations in your sectors in your different grade ranges so you may have three grade three and four grade four next year but then it may only it may fluctuate as populations come through so you want to have a little bit of a little bit of room to grow with as the bubbles come along um in those so the goal i believe when malone looks at it is a 90 functional capacity um when they redistribute okay um and i just had one other quick question it's sort of a one that tim inspired me to ask i guess um if we did like new renovations on all of the other schools or all of the schools would our roofs be strong enough for solar panels that would have to be evaluated on a school-by-school basis um when we do the new ones we typically accommodate for an additional five pounds per square foot for the solar panels and so we would have to have this structural engineering value do an evaluation of the system to see if it can accommodate that i know they're not now that and then we are talking about our operational costs going forward for the next you know 20 years and we're able to you know decrease our our electrical costs which is a a big uh sore point here in the state of connecticut that something like that would be beneficial yes we look at those at every school and at the very least we try to accommodate put in conduit and so forth so in the future if you use a ppe or something like that all the conduits there they install them and it's it's it's relatively simple wiring less disruptive not tearing apart the roof etc with the with the penetrations great thank you all right anybody else before we move on to the next uh scenario okay chuck okay so um the next the same scenario one with the twist is as we're talking is the renovation so uh instead of doing the cip um for your remaining elementary schools we're assuming that they would be again their case six uh um renovations uh without additions again we have to fine-tune you know what the numbers would be uh with malone to go hey do the what would the what's the projection for these and and these are some numbers we did get from malone for this scenario and uh they're pretty much right sized for that and i can show you the numbers if you want um but as you can see those numbers for a renovation you know go up quite a bit again similar exercise um as the new construction except our reimbursement rates 45 percent versus the 35 uh in change so these numbers are similar to the ones up here um and so uh obviously total project total scenario budget would go up uh in this case uh your estimated district share would change um but if we were just to flip back um just say the low district shares 224 million here you look 200 million here so you know if you you know assuming you know these numbers are in the ballpark for 20 another 25 million we're saying we can run you know renovate those schools the challenge what we have in studies is okay there's phasing obviously associated with these these are just numbers based on square foot they'd have to be looked at for how do we phase them they're elementary schools so there's more challenges associated with that and creating space to move children around in that case maybe you know chapman might be used for swing space that's something we have to develop further in these scenarios so that's the only difference there in these first two here um and it's going to be similar moving forward scenario 2a is a new 6-8 middle school assuming a new chapman and that that came about i think that came about it was i'm trying to remember how we came about with that one because it was going to remain online i think we said it would be remaining online and uh and we said well what's the difference between renovating and doing a new chapman and it wasn't uh we showed both of these here in this scenario um there's a lot of comment public comment on chapman and sensitivity to it so in this case i'll zoom in here new six to eight middle school 1172 eight year high enrollment uh varying from two hundred thousand two hundred twenty thousand gross square feet using those same numbers that we kind of shared with you before and the factors um for that uh a low uh total project budget range from 112 million up to potentially 136 million again assume that's on town property we have not included any financing and bond origination costs here i think your prior studies back in 2017 were around 115 million if i remember so you know that that kind of that's fallen in line there with that and your district share would be roughly 75.3 million to 91 million for that school uh for a six to eight pretty very large school uh you have a higher population there uh chapman we looked at both building a new one on your existing parcel uh for the projected enrollment and and also renovating between those and this one's pretty interesting because uh the existing building is 51 200 square feet a new one would be anywhere from the the 42 575 to just under 47 000 square feet so slightly smaller but uh your your total project budgets are they're very they're very similar um in in these cases um you know you look at the bang for the buck you look at the site you look at programming that school code you know ada accessibility south windsor was in a similar scenario for philip r smith and pleasant valley and they decided to go new because of the challenges associated with bringing it up to code in ada requirements but in our in our scenario we're assuming new in the bold there and then we again carried um in this plan um you know doolittle um highland norton would remain online darcy be taken offline and pre-k brought into highland here um the the unknown in this one and and um is is dodd and i think some preliminary discussions were uh potentially bring central office into dodd in the alternative high school over here and maybe reuse the rest of dodd in a in a different capacity with the town i think that's still being discussed and considered um that's why we kind of highlighted it we're not really sure what that is at this moment um what to do with that and then again renovating the high school making sure we we um address uh that that one as well in here so uh obviously you see the total project budgets and the re the reimbursement on these as well uh check hold on faith i think wants to jump in with the question sure sure i thank you um as i recall it was chapman that was maxing out the most um in terms of capacity right in the enrollment in the enrollment presentation and i guess would you bleed off enough sixth graders from chapman to justify a reduction in the size of the school if you were to build new versus renovate you know let me bring up that scenario firm we will so how we looked at it and john feel free to jump in here too is um the enrollments again these were updated uh these are enrollments from maloney mcbroom and so what we what we did here is you know i'll bump this up here forgive me so what we have these grade combinations that summarize these and so uh in in these here we can see grades six to eight um and over here we show grades four to five but what we've done in in chapman for the enrollments in in this scenario that they provided to us um and i'm trying to remember here um if we just simply move six day we took we took those uh grades out we just said okay what is it from k to four uh in that scenario that sound right john this is the refresh my memory right so when chapman um okay to five depending on what you know what middle school we end up proposing yeah so for the six to eight we would be you know if four and we essentially did a highlight here and said okay for those projections and just simply not really redistricting much in that regard leaving in the schools for the most part we're saying what what's the projections for the board and this is out to 2930 by the time we get to it to be in the eight year um grades k to four would be 327 students based upon the projection so that's how we came up with that number for for chapman okay i guess okay uh chuck when we look at that cada or six through eight model yes basically what we're saying is the elementary enrollment projection is so high that you couldn't do six through eight and take both chapman and darcy offline correct yeah i i don't uh chapman and darcy i don't think we were able to do it in that model i'd have to double just want to double check with malone because they they assist us with this model right um let's make a note just to double check them alone but i don't believe so yeah actually i did discuss that and that is true the the chapman cannot come offline that is correct okay in the in the seven eight model um if if dodd say went five six they they're saying their preliminary numbers is that you could take chapman offline in that model subject again right they haven't really dove real deep into that that study we're going to talk with chuck and jen tomorrow on that to say do we really want to study that but yeah if it went five through eight then yeah you could take and you pull a lot of kids down you could probably take somebody off but i don't know that there's really much appetite for that from either a parent or a from an instructional perspective that's a huge that's a large large school um the only model i seen there i think jeff i think is francis walsh which we're doing is a 5 8 model yeah pretty rare bird yeah yeah it is for the reasons that you just said it's huge and then instructionally it's not really advisable i mean in our district would be huge yeah it's culture it's a it's a cultural thing too and yeah but we rarely we never we already ever see a five to eight five to eight school it's very very rare yeah um but yeah i think we had to keep chapman online here okay and um we're like okay well you know and part of this stem too is we we had done a preliminary assessment we looked at the existing parcels for all the elementary schools and at a very high level i took a google map i took the gis map um from the town site which has topography in it and we're able to kind of scale them against each other and draw over the property lines bring the setbacks in and look at and i can show you some of those but at a high level just looking which which schools have the best opportunities for either additions um and room to grow and and chapman surprisingly probably has the take aside location on route 10 everything else just the property itself has some uh potential i'll say on that northern part where the field is at um for a building of this size of being you know 45 000 square feet that's not a big that's not a big school um and uh that that's when you look at the dollars you take the opportunity to build new program how you like you know have it fully accessible uh re reorganize that site so i think there's some advantage to that if you were to to go in that direction all right and then um the other again just the the flip side is is is going okay what would the cost be to renovate and bring all the schools up again assuming um you know not assuming you know there's no uh additions per se uh to it um again these numbers that are similar we have the enrollments uh given to us we would go um you know again k to five here and you know add the numbers up and um that gives us our square footages here for them adam you want to jump in with a question sure thank you um so that was a little bit of um i guess some enlightenment there jeff about not being able to close chapman and uh darcy with a with a new um uh middle school six or eight middle school um so i i guess so that was just a comment um there was uh during the presentations i guess a few weeks ago there was an examination an examination of the norton school property uh where there seemed to be a um a decent amount of land behind norton school but you couldn't get to it um was there a possibility of like new norton instead of new chapman or something where you know chapman is renovated ada compliant compliant and you can build capacity uh at the at the norton school property and shift everything south i don't know if i mean i don't know i'm just thinking out loud here just because of where the land was because i know doolittle was like built up against a ledge and highland is already kind of at capacity and i just wasn't sure if that was something that was uh yeah so um yeah yeah adam you're you're right like too little where this the parcel is good size it just in this wooded area behind it it does climb in elevation quite a bit not to say you can't do it but then you're you're building large you could be building large retaining walls in here it could be like a large site cost and again that that's you know up to the town um but that was just a first pass um and then you just have this field up in front and maybe some opportunity you know on on this northern side here um and i think there's a right of way through here if i remember the parcel is correct um [Music] so with the topography it made that one a little bit tougher doolittle norton there's it and this is pretty flat there's it's it's a pretty it's a pretty decent sized part so you can see it relative to the existing school however constructability i think would be tough you're surrounded all by residential obviously so the only access that that we're aware of is is really you know coming through the main part of the school which is difficult um when you have a school in operation um you know in a case like this and i'm throwing this out is ideas where if you said hey we want to let's build a new norton in this case after you say you built the the middle school and relocated you could and we did this in south winds you relocate norton over to dodd for for two calendar years while you take this whole entire site over and you give it to the contractor and now you got some really good options there um and we've done that um and that was very very successful um in that case they they relocated for two years in the old orchard hill that was replaced we kept it online we moved them completely over for two years moved them back and the they they never saw none of the kids in that program have ever actually seen occupy construction fortunately it's been very fortunate for that elementary type of school to if they don't have to be in the school when we're working that's ideal yes that parcel there okay um and then i guess the the last question because i breathe through all the other scenarios there is no scenario for renovate like new all of the elementary schools and building capacity because there's no swing space oh i think that is that scenario five john is that what sarah i'm talking about here just renovating without doing any other um new schools adam is that what you're referring to yes yes that's right we are looking at that john i think uh we just we haven't put that uh spreadsheet together yet adam oh okay we're going to be working with not in the packet that we got tonight correct okay right so we're working actually on uh scenario we're still finalizing scenario four which would be a new high school um and looking at okay if we built one on say assume the existing parcel then you go do we demolish the existing high school or what do you do with that you know you demolish it or um if it came first do you renovate it but i don't know if you know looking at the site if you know that's a lot of building on one site a lot of congestion probably on route 10 but you probably demolish it we're still looking at those scenarios but problem is it doesn't address your uh what the data is telling us is a space need at your elementary level at least immediately right so if if you if you renovate like new all of the elementary schools and build in the the additional capacity that we needed the swing space ends up really being the problem and if you have an addition right if you had an addition a significant addition like we've done where we had even a six classroom edition you basically you build that addition you take a section of the build and move in addition you're kind of playing puzzle pieces around the building until you get it fully renovated problem is is you're you're you're working in and you can't you can do it we do it river in fairfield all the time where we do an addition and then we move you know a certain number of classrooms we take a certain section over for three or four months renovate that portion do another shift over the summer and you kind of you're kind of playing a a jigsaw puzzle with the with the occupancy so that's what go ahead so so that's what a revenant a renovate like new of all the or of all the schools would look like is basically a big shift around for 10 years because there's no actual swing space to to basically vacate an entire school gut it redo it that that's not possible kind of is what you're saying it would be based upon what we know now i think that would be a challenge unless we've found some type of a place to put them to displace them to make that room to do so right and and that brings me back to the um the old project that we're looking at a few years ago uh jeff is is leasing like commercial real estate an option for a swing space is that i mean i'm guessing that's a massive amount of money in itself but um i mean i'm just you know just thinking out loud that's all i'll just move on but i just wanted to put that up thank you and the state doesn't like portables it's it's flushing money down the tubes that's one thing they'll tell you all right [Music] anything else there andrew that we're i'm not saying i think we we're all set for now i would think the portables i hate portables but everybody does but we get to adam's point you know if we're renovating if their plan if our plan is to renovate several uh buildings in sequence portables may be a decent investment there you know because you could move them literally from one building to the next when they need to be used to ease and facilitate construction but that's a long way off i mean in in this scenario and again high level if you were to do a new 6a in in dodds available yeah in that scenario yeah that's a lot that's just a beautiful scenario for yeah swings move in move out move in move out um and what it does it it it actually yeah you may have some a little bit more transportation costs depending you know what school it is i think kylan's pretty close to there and do a little but norton might be a little bit more but what happens is your your your construction time is less with with with construction so your your general conditions go down it's safer for kids the parent the stress level on parents goes way down because if you're renovating you're typically dealing with materials that nobody likes to talk about and have their kids near and you know with asbestos and everything um so that's a that's a beautiful situation if you have that swing space to do that the asbestos is a great point because given the age of our buildings and it again they're safe asbestos is safe until you break it apart in a renovation process they we have to abate all the time over the summer people can't be no children can be on premises so like when do you do that it would take forever it's very timely yeah somewhere yeah it and that escalates cost obviously when you protract it out over time yeah and there's a lot of hitting conditions where if you say okay contractor you have if you're going to renovate the building first thing they're going to do is go in and they're going to gut that thing renovate it bring it down to the bare bones and then they can see what they have to work with and we can make adjustments that we didn't know about and and it's one it's it's safer's number one that there there's no doubt about that um you know we've done it but it is difficult like you said jeff it's only over the summer that we can do it so we have a lot of plan it's usually about a two-year project in a lot of these all right so um so that's the two-way that's the the the 6a and again the renovation and i think you know that movement does you know support those in in that scenario 2b the difference is is a 7 8 middle school certainly with the enrollment coming down your square foot's coming down your cost is coming down um you can you can see these costs here um again we we we you know kept in line here this um you know uh chapman either maybe a new renovation in that situation um and again a lot of these parts and pieces can be interchanged we talked about that at the last meeting that we can interchange a lot of these parts in a lot of scenarios i think we have at this point all the ingredients for a scenario it's finding what's the best combination at this moment um the way we see it then the other in this situation is now you're seven eight now your your your dad is um is pretty much vacated and again do we bring central office and don't you know um that the alternative high school over the problem there is you still have um if you're only moving seven and eight you still have a demand for your space on your elementary schools in this scenario if you didn't move five and six over or even say just six you'd still have a requirement for those so um not sure if this one's even as attractive uh check that it's funny i was gonna chime in quickly in the five to six uh and again it's too really little too early for us to say you know there's anything that's off the table we have some more work to do but i got the consensus you know time various board members that a dedicated fight assist school is probably not going to work out and that was my that was my gut feeling and i think i think in large part from her superintendent sullen um early on it's not the only issue but i think separating siblings etc could be a problem but this is the one this is the one where i i hear you know i see folks on the board get a little harder i'm like oh i know there's something we really want to do but you know i just put it out there because um as as a team as i've seen moves forward if there's any you know additional supporting detail that's driving that you know we'll certainly look at it because we don't want to make a you know poor choice early on so just doing something that we're not really you know lukewarm to yet gotcha gotcha no totally when i heard this one i'd go well this is to me this is my experience a heavily aborted ed influenced one you know yeah it has to be um well of course so it was just to look at it you know before sun's decided yeah tim you want to add something i think tim has a comment yeah thank you thank you andrew yeah i just wanted to comment on the five and six so just so you know chuck i'm i'm here with a preschooler and a first grader what goes through my mind is what i've never studied but i know i've picked it up along the way which is my understanding of the basis of the elementary school is a neighborhood school where oftentimes the kids could walk there and my understanding is this goes back decades you know maybe a century or more it's nice to have the kids near school and to be dropping that grade range down i don't particularly care for it i like having i i look forward to having my kids being able to go to school like until later years beyond fourth grade um let them be kids for a while right exactly exactly yeah that's just like very prevalent in connecticut um very much so um in a lot of towns that we've we've seen is you know um and especially you know ever taken a school offline is very um emotional um and sentimental and it's a difficult difficult process to to do just redistricting alone and not taking them off is hard but when you start shifting that dynamic it's it's difficult thank you um so this one the alternate to the 2b again this is just you know renovating all the schools um in these in these scenarios so i won't spend too much more time on that unless anybody you know has a question um the 3a um this one here is renovating who would say okay we're going to renovate the high school first um that was put out by some of the members on the committee so we're investigating it again this one does not address your space needs it's your elementary level not at least for probably five to eight years out i'm guessing depending on what we do with the schedule um and this one if you were to you you look at the the total the budget the low and the high for the high school compared to the first scenario where 122 and 150 that's dramatically different from 153 to 189 and that's that escalation factor that's purely that's pure escalation there in in that scenario so i just kind of want to highlight that um and same math for you know the district share there are some assumptions here and then the difference between 3a and 3b is whether we do a new middle school or a new elementary school that's the only difference between this and again we're shifting parts and pieces from one and two into this scenario and it's just changing the order of how you do things um so we carry that you know we looked at the costs for the six to eight we're just carrying them over we're changing some of the escalation uh with it and then again assuming um some capital improvement plan for the elementary schools assuming the space is uh addressed um again this this this doesn't address space needs same scenario with renovating all your elementary schools again similar um and that came from the the subcommittee saying you know let's look at both and let's look at modernizing all your schools that's why that's why we're doing this and then um 3d again like i said is is just taking the basically scenario one and and putting the high school first in that in that case um let's say you can't do them both at the same time it's just a big lift financially obviously um if anybody was you know at the last meeting the town council is concerned with mill rate impact um net impact to the town um so um you know this would be 180 to 222 million um if you were to do those at the same time and then again cip we're not sure about hummus in here and then the final one is again just you know renovating your elementary schools um in under that scenario so so as you can see it's just a lot of really shifting around of these projects and and modifying the escalation to the proper year in the order and there could be other scenarios where we mix and match these we at this point we can do them relatively efficiently um unless there's some other you know scenario out there chuck do you have it broken down anywhere where you have the cheapest option versus the most expensive option for a district we're gonna we're gonna be working on a summary sheet andrew we don't have that yet this one came hot off the press but yeah once we get this dialed in i wanna have a summary sheet with all these at a super high level that's you know that shows them all just the the you know um you know just say scenario 3b you know with just the bottom line on it and not all and have all the detail behind it if you will but we are working on that once we get all the scenarios kind of figured out um we're also going to be working on schedules i think we mentioned that in the last meeting is working on timelines for these so now we can see you know okay when are these occurring at least get an idea um if there was a case of a redistrict what year would that be in ideally just one and evaluate that is as well um so that's kind of our next steps in this process um as well um and then doing some cash flows chuck i had a general question on the run of the high school option although really any option for any school renovation but considering cheshire high school honestly are our largest and very busy area there if we're going to renovate a place that building that location um would that take a little longer than a let's say an elementary or middle school innovation just because of the sheer size and well i guess i'm one what i'm saying is like they did running in high school it's gonna be addressed at some point in the plan i'm not sure if it's sooner or later but um by when that pro if we don't do uh you elementary school in parallel to address that uh space issue we run a risk of um doing high school taking two three years maybe longer and we're not addressing the elementary enrollment um unless we do something parallel right i don't want to assume that the high school's going to take longer to do in place but that's my gut's telling me if it's accurate i i think your gut's right tony um we did just for sake of comparison east hampton high school a couple years ago that project that building wasn't nearly as big as 120 25 000.

that took us about 30 months so you're looking at a solid 36 months here um plus or minus anything on the plus um in place we're altering benny dover middle school now we're getting we're working through bids uh that one's one around 130 as well and we're at a three-year um schedule on that because there's no really no it's a small site there's no swing face so that's part of the trouble with that but you're looking probably 36 to 42 months i think just in construction and probably at least a probably close to a two-year pre-construction between design and bidding you know solid 16 i'd say 16 months for design another three months for bidding you know then you got to put you know other factors in for you know any potential delays or whatever have you but you're probably looking at four to five year project there you know from from start to finish realistically got it thank you chuck yes sir all right tim has a question thanks andrew uh yes uh um two questions uh first thing you just mentioned you would design bid and build and andrew i don't know you could might speak to it too or chuck but have has there been any discussion on design bid build rather than just design build there not yet now tim okay okay that's okay i just because i heard you mentioned design bid build and it's two different different directions you're you know i've done some design build not i can't say a whole lot when i was in the higher education for the state and um there are certain projects that i think are at more advantageous form and keeping with those is you have to have a really really good program up front for that design build entity to to know what you want to do and your your your you may give up some control on the design of that because of the fast process associated with the design build job um but we i haven't seen that employed in connecticut in my experience yet does the state allow it chuck does the school building programs allow like do they allow that or do they also allow cm at risk well in these cases um so i haven't seen design build i don't think they would prohibit it but they'd want to analyze it and know what the advantages are because as a district from my experience the reason for these is because they're going to move faster um you're getting that architect and that contractor on board with each other you know they're getting fast track and you have to make sure you have a really good budget a really good program and that means almost putting the program like here's the finishes here's what we want for program space you almost have to design part of it out front anyways and have a really good program architect for that um i haven't seen it happen i i i really haven't talked with the state about it so that i really don't know that answer with respect to construction manager risk that's almost what we do every project with now these days uh we're doing that that mansfield project that's going on general content they're going gc on that one the state is pushing that you go back to some gt because i think they they the perception is the cms markup they're higher than what they'd like to see but in renovation projects we highly encourage construction manager um typically at risk the other one's as advisor which means you hold all the contracts that wouldn't go there but having a construction manager as a partner in a renovation project is huge um they're not self-performing the work uh they're acting as a professional partner it's part of the team got it thank you um adam or timmy another question yeah just one more thing um so i apologize i bounced out of here i lost internet i haven't been in here the whole meeting so you can skip it if you've already addressed it but i was just wondering about the renovate high school does that include new square footage being built no that would be as is um only because the ice was oversized the space standard for the projected enrollment uh is slightly below um below that um at uh that two the existing size of the high school that's why okay that's why it's the same in both for 278 and 278 because it's bigger than what the space standard says you needed it might depend on the edge back you might say hey we need another ten thousand square feet but typically they say after you program fit that in okay and then i guess it's one more thing for jeff programmatically um all right do you have something in your mind about uh where there'd be a benefit you know maybe the square footage doesn't change but the internal design i've mentioned to you having more opportunity for vocations rather than the more academic you know reading writing and math um is that something that you've got in the back of your head about what what you would want to do with the buildings for high school renovation specifically yeah no i think you know the the space that we have in for the uh career technology education area is pretty pretty solid and what you know it does need to be dramatically updated to you know if you walk into one of the rooms now you'll see a lot of old dated machinery try and then we try and jam in the new machinery like the cnc machines and things like that um it does need to be tidied up but wise it's pretty good and and we could clean it up to make it look you know to update it and just be re-updated is really it hope you have nice spaces down there we do yeah thank you hi adam thank you i apologize for all these questions i guess i'm all pent up from the uh all of the smc meetings i've watched all right i finally i found you right now you gotta check yeah um okay so firstly now and and just direct me to the video if i missed it uh firstly why does the high school population flatten out um where the elementary school population climbs and then there doesn't appear to be a correlation to the high school population because it would be it would make sen because if if there was a direct correlation it would seem like you'd want to build a high school first to capture that population increase at some point i don't know maybe i'm just getting my head down years out adam to be honest because where these population increases we only went out 10 years also since it's not far enough out so were you seeing that climb if they carried out another 20 years which the state doesn't even allow us they don't even look at that um you know theoretically um you know if they stay in cheshire um yeah you would you expect to see that to carry that population probably to carry into the high school maybe in years you know 13 14 15 i'm guessing you know um but then there's also the other choices that are available when you get to that middle school and high school range too that i think they factor in i don't think they went far enough out to see that okay so eventually we would get back up to that uh i think what was our peak was uh 2015 i think at the high school level if i recall jeff does that sound right like we were at our peak population it was somewhere around there yeah it may have been a little bit earlier than that um but i know we you know we were at 1600 when i was there yeah um okay so uh those are two okay so um jeff or chuck or anyone it has any town our size not including the cities because they have really good reimburse their reimbursement rates a lot higher than ours are there any towns our size who have incurred the amount of debt that we're talking about like at least 200 million if not more has any yeah i mean even over the span of let's say 10 years south okay and that's your elementary school plan which um jeff's very familiar with and we're actually going to be meeting with dr carter tomorrow the superintendent um we're on um hundreds it's gonna be 160 million total total program for four schools there and that's four elements four brand new elementary schools and then what are they doing to solve their what are they doing to solve the rest because i'm assuming they probably have similar problems to us or did they invest in uh new structures a while ago and they don't have that uh you know uh six through 12 problem that we have as well they they might be they i think so what happened with with theirs adam is um they started with uh their their their program that got passed in 2013 was a one two one a build a new one um renovate and build a new and then renovate the last one um subsequent to building the first one um orchard hill that was supposed to be the largest we opened with 630 students when it was designed enrollment of 576.

so we immediately saw a spike in in that district and it kept going and we think malone was the demographer there and they attributed to an affinity group coming from overseas and working in the insurance and the i.t sectors and you know groups you know they they want to they want to live where you know i think there's a lot of folks maybe from middle east and they they tend to they want to live where each other at and they were going to south windsor and it and that's one part of it but it's in a you know attractive community like yours it spiked up it kept going um and uh the sizes of the schools have grown since the original plan pleasant valley's double the size of what it was supposed to be originally seven years ago um so um they just it's like build it and they came scenario wow okay because yeah because i'm looking at all the figures and the the question is well what do we do about the high school and yeah middle school i think um if you were to ask dr i think she's concerned about that um and then ultimately the high school so we might be looking at that next but that's been i've been privy to that one well i think that's why you said earlier you continue to do the demographics you know periodic at least periodically if not annually to to be able to project that out yeah because if you're tracking a master plan like this you're right jeff it's you want to track those and go okay because these are projections and and they have models and and malone's you know they're they're probably one of the best this you know in the area um but there are projections right there there are certain assumptions that are made in these models and to project them year after year now you're going okay how are our assumptions in in are they accurate and there's something going on that we didn't account for as you model is so you can tweak those out as you go and and that's definitely a master plan like this i would you know if not every year every other year at the very least unless you know you guys see your numbers you go hey we gotta spike what's going on then you may call them in or if it's hitting where you expected okay we'll wait a year or something like that so all right adam you all sat great question all right faith yeah um you've mentioned this once in one of the scenarios um i'm curious about the administration in the housing of the administration um i mean you know we're going to be taking pro homicide offline where do you envision putting them and i assume the administration is going to grow as the district grows that's not an insignificant amount of space that's required and so uh have how's that going to affect all of this yeah so in a couple of the scenarios i think you know for dad where the middle school that scenario there was discussion of you know maybe relocating there um that's one of our honestly faith that's one of our questions that are still out there that we haven't uh provided a solution to um on on hummus then yet um you know whether it can go into one of the other schools if there was space made available or do we find it do you find another space that's something we're honestly still working on in all honesty well that but obviously that's going to affect the cost of the project sure he could it all depends on okay where can we go i know you know obviously hummus and everybody's thinking hey we we have to get out of hummuston um and find it i think for the central office to find a new home i think it's a question of you know where would that be within the facilities that are here if it's not say died um i'm not sure if there's other space in another existing facility available um the other the other the other option and i guess it will i guess one question i would have just speaking a lot is does the alternative high school accompany it in the same facility and we understand there's an importance to keep that um program um i'll say uh isolated for lack of a better term we don't want to have it in high school or others so i think there that's a unique challenge in itself of having a facility amongst itself because there's some districts that'll build a central office within a school like brantford uh they're going in francis walsh the central office is going to their intermediate school torrington high school there there's going to be a high school middle school and a central office in that in that program um so that could be looked at but if the alternative high school is coming with it that might present some challenges with it so for the town and i think the town there there's a not insignificant um portion of the town that's thinking we're going to reduce the physical plant of our school system and it may not be the case because we may perhaps even use darcy absolutely that's another yeah that's a great point you know if you take darcy offline you may want to reuse that we were talking we were talking about some of these savings that i think some folks may be assuming or shoot a goal for in our opinion the only time we're going to see significant savings with taking the facility offline is if you either sell it or demolish it because you still have to maintain it you still have to heat it you still have to insure it it doesn't go away it's an asset to the town and it's still an expense maybe not as much as if people are populating i know ben we did some numbers and we vinnie's ben's done some numbers assuming over a 20-year period with you know reduce electrical reduced heat but it's still an expense it's not it's not going to be zero and i think some of the assumptions we've heard and then i think we've talked about it is okay because you take this facility offline you still need certain amount of staff and administration and support per student you know there's so there's a certain factor there of so many kids you've got to have teachers teaching them and custodians cleaning the spaces and administrators administrating that program it doesn't go away because you changed the building um that at least from a human resource perspective i think i don't know anything been there that i didn't cover there and what we've talked about or no the only thing i would add is that you know once we know the scenarios we can analyze the cost because there's a big difference between if you take darcy offline altogether versus um you know one of the snares we had in the previous master plan where you're taking dot and using it as swing space um and then you're replacing it with a newer building so you still have a middle school you know it's more efficient so you'll save money in the efficiency but you still have a middle school that you're maintaining so we could my point is we can model it out once we know what the scenarios are whether whether we're closing a building and shuttering it all together or replacing it with a newer one or even renovating it but you know i think the the thing that i want to say is we will not cover the cost of a new building you know from savings in the old building i mean you know there's be a cost offset but it's not dramatic by any stretch of the imagination and if you sell a property which might happen you know that would probably give you more of an offset than just cost savings from an old building that you're replacing with a new one chuck i i'm wondering i mean given the scale of four elementary schools if we were to renovate all of those i'm wondering you know if we were to do those without a swing space as we know there's significant additional cost to that and time i'm wondering if like what if you build a six through eight middle school and then you're therefore able to use dotted swing space how much money would that save versus not having a swing space because i think that would have to be a factor calculated into the overall plan you know what i'm saying yeah i think it yeah i agree john i think at a high level and again these are ranges um i think one of the primary factors in that calculation is the construction duration because the cost of the work is still going to be the cost of the work it's just a matter of um you know when when you incorporate phasing there's a cost to doing that uh cost to inefficiencies temporary work you know kind of what we're talking about and you know for these schools you're probably talking anywhere from you know an additional six months to a year on each project so when you look at general conditions you know i'm just saying high numbers for a cm on these projects you're looking at probably 60 to 70 000 on an elementary school probably 60 to 70 000 per month you know for uh just for the for the for the construction managers costs you know so say you know six months uh you know say the average nine months times 60 you know it's half a million dollars in in construction manager costs you know again that's high level i'm using some rounds yeah so you're talking about a couple of million dollars in total plus years yeah you know over the course of four buildings you're talking about several years and just just the impact of having the i think the the part that you can't really put a dollar on is you have kids in a school where you're you know um getting and you have traffic moving around and some tight sights just from a safety perspective you know uh to me it makes sense um yeah decade of headaches and a couple it's so much cleaner and it's so much more attractive for um you know we're going to be doing um newington anna reynolds it's 66 000 square feet we're gonna create about six to eight classrooms of swing space but we we're not taking them out of the building we're gonna be just working our way around the buildings probably 18 to 22 months uh we're identifying um we're gonna have to be very strategic with that with that plan um but if they had swing space to go to let's move them on over let's spend the moving costs you know to get a movers and costs it's probably to move over and move back it's probably 80 000 round trip um with a moving company to do the heavy lifting a little bit of organization and scheduling with the principal but i tell you what once they're planted there for two years now they're not being disrupted again yeah now if you're using a middle school space check for elementary school the other factor i think about is you know like our elementary schools most of them have bathrooms you know you got to scale them down right for the for the population yeah i think we'd have to look at a case by case for like maybe you know grades what k to two maybe jeff um you know and you know where we would program you know because if you're gonna do this really think about it if you're doing it for three or four schools right um you're gonna repeat this multiple times right so let's program the space for okay here's the kindergarten in first grade and second grade wing in here's you know three to five um you're gonna get you're gonna be able to use it multiple times in in the program like this if you renovated all of them right so i think we could you know we can come up with creative solutions to facilitate you know i think uh you know it's it's some time you know work it's not going to be like brand new but um you know you have enough room and you have a large that's a large facility the only one that would be you know filling it up quite a bit is probably your highland school because it's kind of comparable a little bit smaller but you'd fill it up pretty quick but the other ones are smaller so you'd have room to move yeah i like the idea of it a lot though because it just takes a lot of stress off you know the the non-dollar factor the stress factor it relieves a lot i think timmy a question thanks andrew yeah i was just mentioned a few minutes ago about uh cost savings uh just in in theory if we knocked down a building and sold the land vin or jeff do you happen to know who owns the land is it boe or council i'm just curious i'm assuming that's a council decision not a board of ed decision really yeah that is a that is ultimately a council decision and technically all the land is owned by the town okay by the the council being the controlling authority correct okay okay yeah i was just thank you adam thank you i'm just i guess i'm uh processing in place i suppose um and so and i i had this conversation with catherine i think uh a few days ago uh about so we're we're back to deja vu which is our re we're back to three years ago uh six to eight new sixth grade middle school using dot as a swing space um and i don't know if in that old facilities master plan which seems very much like whatever the new facility master plan is going to be that the if we do not build new elementary schools um and if we renovate so if we have the swing swing space we renovate we renovate like new the elementary schools uh to the new k through five configuration that i think vin said that gives us 20 years if we renovate like new once all of the schools are done and perhaps maybe highland would not need a renovate like news since it's technically the newest of the buildings i don't know um so after that 20 years that the then our capital improvement projects become what they are now again they're just changing the windows fixing the roofs and and that kind of stuff it just buy it just buys us 20 years basically and after we've incurred all that debt is that i could buy you more than that to be honest if you maintain it well i we say 20 years because they say that's the bond issuance is 20 years so the state of connecticut if you renovate a school they go you know they'll say you know you can't come back to us for any grant applications for another 20 years they're not going to give you any more money but realistically you know you guys maintain your schools well you're you're you should be looking at you know 30 35 solid 35 to 40 years on windows and stuff and stuff you know the roofs got to maintain those your mechanical systems if you know it's all about maintenance and this stuff doesn't unfortunately some people think okay hey i got a new school and i got to maintain it like a new new car i don't got to maintain it you know it you got to maintain it's going to cost money in these systems now they're complex so having the personnel on staff or you have to you know hire a service to maintain these complex mechanical systems um if you do that they'll last a lot longer for you highland schools 45 years old then 40 so high on school is almost 50 and that's our news looks great so well i guess for me if we weren't whatever we do for renovate like new i just from the energy perspective if we could get rooms that could that could i never thought i would say this but if we could get roots that could hold solar panels it's it could completely wild out everything like that but because just because of energy costs and the efficiencies of solar panels that if we could get some technically free energy out of our school that would be a a decent win to help knock back the cost if we can't achieve any additional savings from from physical plant that maybe we could get it on the energy side which i'm assuming would only become more expensive as as we go through the years um so i don't know thanks i think we just need massive solar farms if i could just ask one more question um for for jeff uh because and i was asking about high school before and building giant complexes of middle schools and high schools uh is five through eight just unorthodox or is is it not educationally sound is it can you just speak to what five through eight looks like because i know that was a discussion on smc as is that a realistic thing or just something we're not willing to do or is it just too radical or i don't think it's quote radical uh i i do i don't think it is necessarily favorable from an academic perspective whereas i think i you know i can make a really good argument for six through eight uh i think you lose that argument from a curricular perspective in five through eight uh not to mention there are pretty significant developmental differences when you get down to fifth grade i know it's only a year but it's another year younger i just it wouldn't be my preference if there were no other options and it was something you had to do then we would certainly make it work you know you do that structurally by segregating the building differently and stuff like that um but you know it just wouldn't be my preference um first developmentally i guess it's probably a tie with academically i just don't think it makes great sense unless you have to do it then you make it work big question since i'm out of turn i apologize has smc toured a sixth grade middle school i don't recall if there was any say again town there's smc the week tour i think it wasn't some of the tours but what did we ever pour a sixth grade middle school not that i wasn't yeah i would not not through smc i would recommend it because there's been some comments and smc from folks you know uh foreign against that um more from a personal side of things i know there's one in middletown i've actually been there a couple times earlier this year it's it's phenomenal but if and i would say if and i'm sure obviously chuck probably has a list to that you know if we decided to do this but you know if the sixth grade middle school materializes in some form in an option when we get down to it it might be good for some of the board maybe even some of the smc to tour one just to get an idea that's like maybe here or there but you know i want to waste people's times i am again i have no idea where we're going to go there's more options being refined but we haven't haven't seen that yet might be good to see yeah i think um didn't that didn't the subcommittee go to north haven middle school i know ann you just referenced it but that is a six through eight middle school and it's relatively new yeah yeah i can't i can't keep track of stuff anymore maybe maybe he did so if i'm speaking uh speaking i apologize smc did tour north haven and we did it years ago as well because i've seen that school now in two different iterations now that it's all finished but we toured it three years ago when it was still under construction and it was one of those where chuck was talking where they were piecing it they were moving it around as they were doing it and it it yeah it's it's not it's very disconcerting um i can see why parents would be very disconcerted uh with a project like that where where the kids are in the school it's yeah how's it talking about getting construction while they're in there north north david it came out it came out nice it just uh the the new part was was the easy part and then you know redoing the auditorium and in the cafeteria we pulled the roof off the cafeteria and this steel deck was like it's cheese and we had to pull off all the steel you know and it just it came out good it came out here we did it under the budget but it was uh challenging yeah i know i know i've shared the dirt b uh stuff in half of the durgby schools are six through eight and the other half are seven through eight yeah and then there's one where madison's five six seven eight actually i think they're actually six eight now jeff they re they re they i thought they re redistricted i think a year and a half or two years ago tom was down and uh brown is now four or five yeah they took island ave offline for the elementary went k3 and because polson's so huge it's 150 000 square feet so um right i think that's six to eight now i'm looking at the other ones here on your list um brookfield five eight yeah i'm sorry to extract around with this i was just thinking um for the new board and smc but let's see where this ends up i don't want to waste people's time storing stuff if you don't have to a lot of these um comment uh thank you um so with the with the six through eight the i guess the the only thing that that bugs me and i guess i i guess the old plan this is the part that bugged me in the old plan too was um i know and i've spoken this many times that dad was you know meant to to be at least having a lifespan of at least another 11 years that was three years ago so now it's eight years ish um and i think what needs to be answered and i'm sure you're gonna uh cover the subject is what happens to dodd after this is all over because that's a really large space um that i mean sure you could add administrative offices you could even add hummuston in there but what there's still a lot left over after that um and so that's that's the question is what happens because that's an awful large space to to leave unoccupied because it's not even where we've even talked about town view space more gym space more uh whatever recreation space it's it's just not there um so i i don't know what can be done without spending even more money on dodd afterward anyway so i don't know but i'm not a creative type so i'll leave that to you guys but i just think that's an important issue for smc to broach at least to brainstorm a little bit as to what to do with that space afterward if six through eight renovate all those uh elementary schools what happens to dodd after that would be 15 years out right but roughly yeah yeah probably yeah adam if i could speak to that a little bit um because you're exactly right but i i attended a week ago um a cave some webinar on the board's role in the budget process but at the end of that webinar near the end there was a lot of discussion on shared services so and i think we do some of that between uh between the border bed and the town and shared services means why couldn't we have hummuston and the board of ed offices and parks and rec and arts plays yeah other other town um entities all in the same space i mean i just i just think that there's some creative thinking that that goes along with this as well and um that's part of what we're charged smc is charged to do i think and so let's create let's let's solve that problem right and then that leads to millions of more dollars as well because you're going to want to add if you're going to have office space you're going to want to have climate control you're going to you know you want to have amenities for for those office workers as well that they may have been used to in other office spaces so i mean again those are all just challenges and plus we still again have not broke the subject of the high school after all of that um so yeah i would imagine though you know if the middle school if if again big if we'll see what comes out of this but if that is repurposed um i would imagine there's a lot less capital approved by projects due because it's no longer an educational facility maybe it's not half of it whatever that percentage is so you know dodd didn't have a lot of va compliance issues if i recall the buildings are really good bones the roof i'm not sure so it's going to be something because dodd worn down it's still evolving something has been done with it but the last time i looked at this one and katherine you know three four years ago or you know we're at the point where if that were going to happen we have to work with the town to figure out you know what can we do with it we just never had a discussion and i think in any assist in these options what ann just talked about we're gonna get creative um but that's a good point adam just because if a new movie was done there still has to be something invested in the old building and whether it's board board investment or town it still comes from the town so it'd be good to know what that cost could be right tim thanks andrew uh jeff or anybody else i'm not then you might know how how many classrooms standard classrooms do we have at dodd so take out the cafeteria take out um uh the gymnasium uh the what the i won't call it an auditorium of you know a lecture room how many classrooms there were standard ones do we have four offices type of thing uh it's just a ballpark 30 40.

yeah i want to say it's in the 40-something range but i'm going to look it up while we're talking here it's in the 40s because we have um four teams four classrooms per team in each grade level world languages and special ed classrooms you it's probably just a shade over 40.

okay thank you yep according to melania mcbroom thank you 98 at the high school i knew that it's somewhere all right does anybody else have anything else tonight i mean i think we covered a lot of information i think there's going to be a lot of uh further discussion and contemplating and reviewing the different options um but this was really beneficial i hope everyone thought so on the board got to see it all and have chuck here tonight to go through everything yeah i if i could add i want to just thank uh chuck and collier's team for this is probably the third night in the role maybe that uh or or you know that's you guys so i appreciate you hanging in there uh you know chuck and and john again it's and it's only work you're doing it's been very helpful and you know for the board members uh i know they've been paying attention to the smc meetings over the next 60 days i think the intensity is going to pivot quite a bit quite a bit because smc has to finalize options we have to review them town counts has to be doing the probably some back and forth so you know i asked and jeff to kind of set this up to get going um i would say if you have any questions um if there's data points you're looking for concerns of feedback you know let myself andrew and ann know and you know it was uh our goal is to kind of get feedback quality as they move along right versus waiting until january are getting the culvert so if there's something that doesn't make sense you know raise your hand you know let us know but um but thank you everyone for staying tonight and collier and jeff i think jeff was driving at the end of this meeting so be safe pleasure yeah thanks go pick up my son thank you everybody all right with that motion to adjourn oh motion to adjourn tim second faith all right thank you everybody all right

hi wildcats i'm brianne ferrero i'm the honors biology and ap biology teacher here at west chicago community high school i'm also a mom i have three boys at home so i'm definitely outnumbered as a mom i'm always trying to share wisdom with my boys to help them grow into confident young adults one of the things that i always try to teach them is if it doesn't challenge you it won't change you if you ever lifted weights before i'm sure you know what i'm talking about sure you can go to the gym night after night lifting the bar but if you're not actually adding weights to it are you gonna see any gains most of us feel like 2020 has thrown all the weights on the bar that we're trying to lift whether we're prepared or not the key is to see these challenges as an opportunity an opportunity for real growth and it all starts with a perspective shift is life pretty challenging right now absolutely but hidden in these experiences is an opportunity for us to change to grow and to come out on the other side stronger so embrace the challenge wildcats because it's the only thing strong enough that will change you you

and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so we have one member of the public which is biggest oh i'm sorry uh is there any uh addition to the agenda like motion approved all those in favor i'll read it motion approved agenda as presented second thank you all those in favor we're going to do a voice vote because we have some missing monique are they on the computers is everybody on the computer yeah lucas yeah i'm here right are you on your computer can't you do it on your computer yeah i can yeah it'll show on the screen okay okay we'll go ahead and do the computer we'll do the computer start by a boat on your computer all right no if you don't want it that's fine too i don't i'm just asking your monitor is either not turned on or it's done broken okay uh linkage meeting from november no that's consent public comments now i'm not your patron okay so we are there we go [Music] okay concerns of usd 244 patriots i have one right now is there anybody else that's signed up i think that's it that's five minutes um okay so my name is beth's lawyer i have a senior at burlington high school i think i know everyone in the room um in one way shape or form so um i've been told that i'm chatty and that sometimes i'm emotional so i have myself written out and i'll try to stick to it the best i can my son is a member of the boys basketball team on december 4th the entire team was quarantined although the absence t rate doesn't reflect for all of those in quarantine i've heard that the halls felt rather empty throughout the full week britain attended classes his teachers had to log him in it wasn't the ideal situation but he was at least allowed to participate i committed the teachers and the technology staff are allowing that to happen because he did feel like he was part of the classroom the best that he could at that time i'm sure it was a nightmare for the teachers to juggle both remote learners as well as attending to the needs within the classroom and i understood as it went along why the need to consider going to remote learning became an option academically i'm not as concerned about brayden as i am his social and emotional health the concern i'm bringing before the board is a decision by administrators to suspend all vhs activities in particular the boys basketball practices and games without consideration of every single program or activity circumstances to my knowledge there is currently only one program that are under local restrictions i was notified by administration that everyone that was involved in this decision was a complete agreeance in the decision however the board would have the ultimate would get to ultimately decide it was also included that the board may not agree with the decision that was made and has the opportunity to change moving forward i'm sure you're going to hear later about details to that um but my concern was going remote learning you can you can learn remotely but i don't feel like activities and athletics can be done remotely things that i would like um i'm here tonight in hopes that moving forward consideration to a plan to consider activities even though remote learning is taking place would be reviewed the boys team things that i would like for you to consider the boys team was quarantined until 7am this morning there have been some that were released early because they took tests there are some that are quarantined longer but as the entire team has been cleared by local health professionals this team wasn't around family they weren't around friends they weren't around their team for the last 10 days according to guidelines they are potentially the safest kids to be practicing since last summer our entire family has made changes to protect our loved ones the best that we can knowing the entire time that we were allowing braden to participate in things that he chooses to do a responsibility that we took seriously and we accepted when basketball was suspended we were completely blindsided the boys had done their part and there was absolutely no benefit for what they did by allowing school sponsor activities games and practices to resume it lets the school set the guidelines and precautions ensuing that children will be in a safest gathering just as important that all kids that are on the team are included kids are going to gather today's kids with the rec center because we're um restaurants um i'm pretty sure the entire teams weren't included it just had it just depended on who called you or who invited you to go do that although the kids can attend classes remotely they cannot participate in school sports or activities remotely for years we've had the belief that keeping kids engaged and involved in activities is the best thing for them and i'm curious why that has been disregarded an argument can be made now more than ever that high school students need to be included and involved in structured school activities in a responsible way so tonight i am respectfully urging the board to recon to reconsider their support of suspending all of high school activities in particular boys basketball at a very minimum please allow them to practice i appreciate you listening thank you so we have some communications very very well received and many administrative reports do you have any changes any questions for me middle school that he is not here tonight because we've got middle school music program going on so he may be here a little bit okay what's going on middle school music program okay so um high school okay yes ma'am you got in first seven questions any questions uh either for doug or matt i sure can uh relay that and share that with you on my friday emails to you guys so let me know please i guess my question is how's the well i know that we shut down the school so the technology steps is starting starting tomorrow yes remotely so we're all ready for that uh we are we have uh shared with the public the sites that you can get you know access to the internet throughout the county i've connected with darren dougherty at the library there could be some people coming to the library we've talked to the rec center i visited with scott jeffers there could be some people at the rec center again uh just uh we will know more tomorrow we'll be in touch and figure out you know all the things that uh you know could be possible you know roadblocks that we need to work on and staff's ready i've been in the building they're they're doing quite well american to a lot of you have already been in remote learning scenarios before okay thank you superintendent's report okay just a reminder for the linkage meeting for graduates that will be january 4th that's 5 45 we have that instead of being on that same day as the as the regularly scheduled board meeting because of some of our graduates may be heading back so we do that the week early so january 4th is when we leave the building cage with our graduates so absolutely awesome news with the jones trust grant loaded grant for 325 000 for our community daycare project and it was funded i was a little bit pessimistic as time was ticking and we didn't get any news from the grant the grant committee but finally it was the day after thanksgiving so it was a kind of i guess poetic justice there thanksgiving came a day late but anyway we're very excited this will allow us you know to have this uh this project that will allow us to meet the needs in our in our area with daycare is so vitally important you know early learning um it is just again so so important and we have such a lack of daycare in our community and again we do have some local donors there that helped us with this grant as well as of course the jones trust with a couple of great donations there so we're very very excited to get this to get this going we are hopeful again hopeful that we can have this maybe going on june 1.

hey oh sorry i usually start out quiet trying to test the audio and then i just go alright hey my name is steve watson i'm the maricopa county school superintendent and it is my honor to be here uh so one of my responsibilities one of the great things i get to do uh is to help swear in our governing board members and so here in maricopa county we have an elected treasurer we have a sheriff we have a county assessor i'm the education guy and i won't go into all the details of the responsibilities of my office but needless to say one of those is just working with and supporting our governing board members and it's just an honor for me to be here uh you know kovid has created just some challenging circumstances normally what we do is we get together in my office at central and indian school and we just bring people in large groups and swear them in and because of actually starting a few years ago shane he's got a camera in the background he's with me in my office he's our government relations representative and max some of you might know or will get to know he's in charge of elections and bond and override and governing board elections but so shane had the idea a few years ago hey why don't we take this on the road and go out to wickenburg and go out to buckeye and go out to queen creek in chandler and gilbert and swear do some swearing things so we could have more family be available and i didn't know at the time which we we did do but i didn't know at the time it would prepare us for an era of covet 19 when we were doing the majority of our districts on the road and so yesterday we were in aguila if you don't know where aguila is if you are headed to vegas and you hit wickenburg instead of going north to vegas you keep going west almost to the county line with la paz county there's a district called aguila out there with about 180 kids and then we took some back roads down to buckeye and did some swearing in a buckeye and then i went home to almost the cave creek area and then today we're out here and so we're putting miles on the car and i wouldn't have it any other way because this is just a lot of fun and it's great to be able to celebrate our governing board members and before we get to the actual swearing-in the oath of office i do want to just take this time to just talk about what it is to be a governing board member people when we think of elected officials we think of presidents and congressmen and women and town councils and cities councils but we don't often think about school boards and our school board members are constitutionally elected officials and that's a pretty powerful word you know we talk about kind of the constitution and constitutionally elected and that's that's pretty cool to think about and i frequently get calls on the phone saying hey you're the county superintendent get rid of a school board member in district x and i say i can't do that because they have a responsibility to their constituents they are constitutionally elected or occasionally appointed officials who have a responsibility to their community and they get you get a job performance review every four years and that's that's just a pretty awesome thing to think about and then lastly i'll say i was at an event we had many elected officials there we had a member of congress we had several county-wide elected officials and some state legislators and we gathered all the elected officials afterward for a photograph and three of my good friends who were school board members where i used to teach and also where my kids attended were also in this meeting and before the photo was taken i said hey we need to have those three come into this picture because they are elected officials and in many times they've received more votes than a city councilman or more votes than a town councilman or even sometimes we're state legislature because we have some really large districts here in maricopa county and so afterward i just talked to the person who was hosting the event i said hey when we do this again i don't want you to forget our school board members because they are constitutionally elected and so i've been spreading the good news i mean you know the people in this room know this um but i just want to let you know that i'm trying to spread that that news as well and we do we have to i think more so than ever during covet 19 we've realized how important it is to um elect good people to our school board and i'm grateful to be in a room with five of you right now all right and with that i'd like to oh we are going to do this one at a time we've been doing this um could i have uh max do you have the oaths or the certificates with you i'll take those thank you shane all right let's start with michelle since a for anderson you can stand right there all right and if you'll raise your hand and repeat after me and now i'm going to say my name but you'll just say your name okay just it's okay it can get a little nerve-wracking at times and then just repeat after me and hold that mic nice and close okay do you want to test it out testing perfect all right i steve watson i'm michelle anderson do solemnly swear you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and laws of the state of arizona in the constitutional laws of the state of arizona that i will bear true faith will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and allegiance to the same and defend them against all enemies and defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic foreign and domestic and that i will faithfully and then i will faithfully and impartially and partially discharge the duties charge the duties of governing board member governing board member of the higley unified school district number 60 of the higley unified school district number 60.

yes yes yes yes all right for the month of november the administration would like to honor the following individuals who've been nominated by staff and selected by the administration for the following awards are the first is student of the month mr mason martin second grade student hey mason come on up how are you doing congratulations i have a couple of things for you and mr lyons is going to come up here as well first of all you're going to take that and put that on your desk at home okay and here you go and uh we got a couple of your teachers here that nominated you okay let's get a picture with with congratulations joe come back here and all right so i'm gonna let a couple people you can stay right up here okay i'm gonna let a couple people share it go ahead mr russell awesome awesome great great awesome renee jackson [Music] um that's great congrats bud thank you thank you all right in our employee of the month uh [Applause] you were nominated by several people let's get a picture real quick here with mr lyons and i got it okay so you were nominated by actually several people i'm gonna let mr whipple your principal first step up and say something because doing a great job of collecting data and getting books that are more um equitable and really making sure that our library represents all of our students which is phenomenal um she thinks of things that i don't even think about going above and beyond to make sure reading is a priority getting into all the classrooms of our ela teachers even convinced me to spend money to put a dropbox out there she's very convincing so we did it to make sure that families when they want to return books can do it after hours and don't have to worry about our kids having to bring it in so she does phenomenal work down in library just really branching out to all of our staff and making sure reading is a priority for our kids so she's done a fabulous job i will i will echo those comments and i'm just going to read you i could pick out many of these but here's one that just says kiera has become a valuable part of big hollow our library at middle school has blossomed in the two years she's been here she has students getting books delivered we now have a book drop outside the students to return their books she has put our library online for access to students has put collections together for all content areas as well as co comb the books in the library to make sure that we have what kids actually want to read her dedication library has been unparalleled to any other aid we've had that's pretty well said there so thank you so much anything you want to say yeah you've done a great job and i just gave you all the comments that your colleagues made so all right thank you thank you thank you very much all right the next item is item number seven board member quote of conduct review tiffany you're up okay i will strive to keep my board focused on its primary work of clarifying the district's purpose direction and goals and monitoring district performance all right thank you anybody have any questions on the consent agenda i have a quick question guess i saw that were put a bunch of like was it five thousand dollars into the boiler repairs and then i'll have to check because if there's that much we do this is the time of year we do a lot of preventive maintenance to get ready for the winter season but i don't know if that was it or not so i'll have to check i know i saw when i was like i can't remember that terminology when it was written up from you know what there was issues with a boiler when they went to look at like the um i can't remember what it was let's see here sorry the health safety oh life health safety was that the boiler being repaired in connection with that or was that no um no that was yeah that was just a minor issue there i'll have to do some checking on that for you tomorrow i will get that because the boiler ready to go yes no major yeah everything's good no major repairs other than just preventive stuff to get ready for the year but i'll double check and look at back at our invoices and just make sure that uh i'm telling you that correctly but yeah anything major they'll usually come and talk to me about it and there was nothing at that point so all right anybody else have questions okay please have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion second yes yes yes yes yes were there any public comments the superintendent's report okay starting with starting with exhibit 11 we have the monthly board policies and when i met with the policy committee they asked me to bring up a couple extras i don't remember that conversation okay one was policy 430 revenue and investments just i think there's some question as to how do we do investments when do we do investments those kind of things and pma in fact i thought i'd have it for this board meeting but i'll have it i'll have it at the next board meeting pma does the cash flow analysis for us every year and uh the purpose of that cash flow analysis is to determine if we have money available if we have money available for uh investment purposes and so they determine how much cash we need when we need it and uh and then what we have in the bank at the time if they if we have money that doesn't need to be liquid for six months they'll put it in a place where we can draw some interest on it so that's pma's role in our investments that's up until just a few years ago we didn't even have the cash flow to do that now we do and so they just they basically take our fund balances and make and assure that we have as much uh that we're getting as much interest out of that as we can so bob do we call them the chief investment officer if the board policy states um so i i would probably be that but i'm but i'm using pma to do the for the service okay okay and then the next policy was just another reminder on board communications and uh i think that uh in fact i might have when that might have been before that one yeah yeah two 140 this first one yeah just just a reminder for us it uh it's a good one to throw in there and um there's confusion sometimes as to uh when emails go to when is it appropriate for board members to email the whole board about a topic as long as that topic's not going to be something that's going to result in a formal board decision then it would it would be okay so if it's something that's going to lead eventually to a decision that's going to be made voted on by the board it's not something that should be talked about in email so and i'm trying to i'm trying to make sure that i get better at emailing the entire board uh with you know when i've got issues that come up i think i sent the whole board of email today with something that i was responding to so so it says in here electronic communications limited to disseminating information and messages not involving deliberation debate or decision making so that's that's even something that we don't vote on but we just discuss correct or i think the decision would be that's the uh to me that would be voted on but because support when a board makes a decision as a board you're voting on it i think it where it could the way the the isa attorney explain it to me because i asked him this question just kind of because i know i want to make sure we do this right it's if we're deliberating over something that leads to a decision by the board that we can't do okay and you guys are really you know we have very little uh email action that goes on across the board and i think when it that's why we have questions because when it when it when it does happen because it happens so rare uh we'll make sure we do it right so so i would think for decision making that's any decision we would give regarding any directive not necessarily you know just to vote on but if we're you know given a directive to you to do something that needs to be at a board meeting yeah where we're all here to discuss it in front of the public right so any decision that we're making needs to be in front of the public at a publicly convened meeting that's why i take the policy because we don't always need to vote on everything but we do need to talk about it as a board okay so that's a good point so i guess if anybody ever senses a communication that's gone bad then we just need to bring it up right away like a communication email you know an email that's gone it's gone you know it's gone over the line all right i'm going to jump into item b so i'm going to start with this i'm going to go ahead and get head up to the podium here we have a few guest speakers here tonight so i'm going to start by just letting you know we've gone through the last few weeks just trying to prepare for you as a board what our what our impact has been of the covet 19 pandemic on our schools and our families our kids staff kind of talk about where we're at right now how do we get here and where we're going to go what are we going to do next and i'm going to start by letting dr king kind of take take the lead on the start and going to talk about some of the research that this they've done not research but the the data they've gathered through the focus groups and surveys and conversations so i'm going to let i'm let them start and then i'm going to take it from there so go ahead thank you okay yeah we could i mean i guess we're socially distancing but okay so okay so thank you all for letting us present to you tonight on the impact of colbit and remote learning we're going to start with introductions and i'm going to start with simon if you can go ahead and introduce yourself and i'm going to kind of jock you around the microphone to the speaker so people at home can hear the presentation as well okay good evening everybody my name is simon vasey and i have a daughter in sixth grade evelyn and a son in second grade oliver and i helped facilitate a few sessions and it was a lot of fun very interesting i'm glad i participated i'm looking forward to sharing what we learned with you all tonight hello my name is laura grimes and i am a parent of a fifth grader who has been a big hollow since kindergarten and i had the pleasure and honor of actually doing two focus groups for uh about the pandemic uh hello my name is abby sofsky i'm a seventh grader and i led some student focus groups hi erin pittman director of student services hi jessica coletto scott i am a fourth grade teacher at the elementary building dr hetrovitz director of curriculum and instruction okay thank you all right and i think it's important that we just recognize that we had a variety of facilitators so abby like she said she did student focus groups we had jessica she led some teach some staff focus groups so we wanted to really get a full picture of what we were looking at moving forward so so our agenda for the presentation is um on the second slide um so we'll start by kind of going over the inquiry process and how this whole report was developed and where we got our data from and just the steps that were taken and then we'll talk about our student findings our community findings staff findings and then we'll talk about some conclusions and some next steps so the first step or the first task that we have on our list is to discuss the inquiry process so there were two phases for this project the second phase of this will be sharing data about how our students are currently performing based on academic and social emotional data and the report that will be presented at our next board meeting will be a fuller picture but we we do want to talk about our winter map assessments at that point possibly some desa data and other data to compare current outcomes to previously earned outcomes okay so the first phase of this um it is a research project that we did um the first phase conducted we did a data collection utilizing focus groups interviews and surveys to better understand the perspectives and feelings of our community focus groups are different than any other and interviews are different than if you were to do like um having just parents come or family members just come and just talk off the cuff they are really developed around specific themes researchers are looking to answer and we were looking to answer questions related to feelings of safety and feelings of control do people feel like they're in control of the situation they have in their households and and beyond and do they feel like learning is making like progress that they should be making and then overall impact so when you look at a focus group and then the survey data the beauty of the survey data it helps reify and confirm our focus group we had a lot of students and staff and community community members in these focus groups but the the way we would design them it intentionally forces themes to come out versus allowing there to be just general ideas to be shared about random things so we forced a conversation around specific things that we are looking to answer to help in it help you and make informed decisions that anonymous survey that we gave i will talk about specific data that was collected from that but what i'll say is we had 47 participants in the community district and students participate in this focus group and then we'll also at the very end of this just in case we have some people that do need to get home from our facilitators and we'll go over some of the the academic report card data and share that we were going to weave it through and then we realized it might be a longer conversation and so out of respect for our facilitators we're gonna i pushed it to the end okay so we're gonna move into our student findings and when we look at our student findings we had first through fourth grade for our surveys we had 172 responses on the online survey that went out um and that's from about a 690 total students in that age range that gives us a six percent margin of error and i tell you this because the smaller the margin of error the better chance that you can feel confident that the data that you're looking at reflects the community um and then fifth through eighth grade responses we had 437 responses by the time i closed out the report so i could start analyzing it out of about 795 total students and that brings us down to a three percent margin of error so i'm going to turn it over now to abby she conducted our interviews and our focus groups for students and so she is going to share and present those data hello isn't it surprising that 77 percent of the student survey responses for students in grades one through eight indicated that they learn and pay better attention at school and one of the main challenges expressed multiple times in the student focus groups was a feeling of disorganization and insecurity about meeting teacher expectations students share that they can chat with their teachers but it is not as helpful as being able to raise their hands and the teacher just walking over to help them in the same way over 80 percent of the students who participated in a survey indicated that they feel more connected to their teachers when they pay attention to them in person over 90 percent of the students surveyed and 100 of the students interviewed or in focus groups indicated that they see their friends more when they're in school while there are some students who are nervous about coming to school 57 percent of the students survey stated that they are not afraid to come to school if safety measures are in place and these are some questions that i answered what were your overall impressions of the comments shared during the focus groups you facilitated and i answered everyone seemed pretty positive um there wasn't really that many negative like opinions or yeah and what were you most surprised about hearing um i was most surprised that everyone was comfortable returning to school like right now in this current situation we were in and the most common concern i heard was um that they were worried about getting coven spreading it yeah that's all i have thank you abby thank you very good very good job so the survey was also sent out to all of the families here at the hollow and we received 396 responses so it gave a four percent margin of error so again like dr king said that sorry a a good representation then of what the community is trying to say so we have we had several um parents facilitate some of the meetings and so ally and sasha hearns could not be here but they had facilitated some community meetings as well but we have laura grimes and simon daisy who also gets more information okay can you hear me okay yeah okay uh so we we took a look at uh student learning and about 87 of the participants that were surveyed actually indicated that they believe their child learns best when they're in person compared to remote and that left you know still a little over 10 of the participants that were expressing that they were indicating that their child is performing well in a remote setting so um while many of the participants in the focus groups indicated that their children learn better at school we did hear some responses about students who were actually doing better in the remote environment and the others were showing confidence you know because they could work on their own pace this was usually more often distinctively seen at the older grade levels and was kind of determined on the student learning characteristics so the comments that were made by some of the focus group participants indicated variations in perceptions of student learning there were comments that were indicating that maybe one child maybe felt real benefit from remote learning while it may not be beneficial for some others maybe those are maybe more at risk or struggling and the survey data would suggest that the majority of families are worried that their children will fall behind in school because of remote learning for the next slide if it's up there i can't really tell sorry yeah yep okay so i'm gonna talk is that good sound good okay um i'm going to talk a little bit about feelings this is one of the themes that we talked about during the focus groups and as you can imagine there was an extreme amount of emotion that went on and you can even feel that through virtually to be honest with the parents and the passion about their beliefs and what they were feeling there were there are a couple of things i'm going to talk about one is work life balance was mentioned a lot and it described their experiences of trying to imagine manage a kid or multiple kids as the remote learning plus doing their workload what i also heard within that even if they weren't working parents working with kids remotely was very challenging and difficult in addition to families experiencing some severe symptoms to covet itself was pretty heartbreaking to hear uh safety was another common theme among the parents and you know they were trying to really do their best to prevent getting the virus so that was one of the things in terms of safety other parents felt truly that the big hello staff have really done everything they could to kind of put safeguards in place and with that feeling comfortable with them as soon as you guys open the door that they want to come in so they really have valued all the efforts that went and thought process that went with that in regards to statistics the results also confirmed that 66 percent of families plan to send their child back when the doors open so it's 66 is the statistic on that from the focus groups in the survey and then 60.4 percent would like the district to set basically an established date the two week two weeks here and there it's just too much for families to kind of plan and kind of have a routine with kids so telling a kid you know nope we're not going back i mean it was just a lot on the household so thank you okay we also um talked about feelings and social emotional aspects for students and parents and it was pretty evident in a lot of the responses some of the parents felt that their child just desperately needed to be back in person so that they could make connections with their peers and with the other teachers however there were several families who also tested the opposite being true in that they really felt like there was maybe too much emphasis on social emotional activities and discussions around that and they would would prefer to see more conversations sticking to kind of academics um and i think like the quotes is up there i remember the parent mentioning this that for them they felt their their child was they were fine they were happy they didn't need so much of a focus on social emotional and there should be more academics but nevertheless there was uh 55 of the participants in the survey did indicate that their child does feel more stressed about learning remotely um than before switching to remote learning okay we also we looked at multiple community participants describing their experience unfortunately of losing a relative to covet 19 and the the grief associated with the loss for their family in addition community members stated that they felt the school district administration and the teachers were extremely responsive to their individual family needs and really appreciated the district asking for parent feedback to figure out how to make the best decisions for the big hollow community community members explained that they did appreciate the flexibility and understanding being offered by the district in this really uncertain time and frankly it was it was good to talk to people face to face even though it was through zoom versus arguing about things backwards and forwards on facebook groups it was i think it was very respectful conversation and i i think it was a good platform to to really hear all different sides and aspects of the story um personally i i've i definitely found it surprising that your parents uh were concerned to send back their kids but it was often because they were more worried about the things that were out of their control you know what other families were maybe doing if they were respecting social distancing or mask wearing not so much the plans at the school i think they felt confident that the schools were going to be able to do everything they possibly could for the kids once they did come back a common concern i picked up within my groups was kind of a feeling about the amount of teaching time or contact time with the teacher was less than maybe it could be they were you know like i mentioned earlier they were a lot of parents were hoping to see more academics come through in that contact time and parents were in both the groups i worked with were very concerned about what they were seeing with the uh the kind of loss of physical health of their kids um you know with the with the drop-off of sports and physical activities and they were very concerning you know the for the health uh worries for their their kids as they're missing out um oh another thing they were they were talking about kind of the rigor of some of the asynchronous work i think maybe um that could maybe be a little tighter that a lot of the parents were mentioning kids were finishing quickly with their work and maybe jumping on youtube and other things like that um so kind of some concerns more about the asynchronous side of things i think that's over to uh that's me thank you so i did two focus groups as i stated before my overall impressions i have a few points with that and um that they were really pleased with the teachers and the hard work and the dedication that they have for the students that came through loud and clear so thank you very much to all the teachers and all the ammon that have really worked really hard with this the communication with parents was really good when concerns arised so that so the response from teachers or administration were really helpful trying to navigate through all this and that parents were really happy to have a voice in this forum so they are in hopes to actually continue this forum moving forward at least they had a voice and can kind of express themselves parents shared the difficulty with the balance i've definitely heard that loud and clear throughout both of my focus groups just the pain and agony of trying to i think it gives a new respect to teachers to be frank so that was great um there was a lot of inconsistency with asynchronous and synchronous learning so although that some felt that they didn't have enough time with the teacher and the way they got off quickly and they could do um a little bit of the asynchronous work others actually felt that they were on the whole time and that there was so much work that they were doing it after hours at the end in the evening uh so there was a big con i mean i don't know controversy i guess or inconsistency with that across the board so i found that um quite interesting actually and then just the last minute changes were very difficult for parents and fridays especially that was a real tough kind of topic about you know we go from nine o'clock in the morning and then we go to 7 30 in the morning so that's switching and then changes that happened in the building last minute meetings being on that was very confusing for kids to kind of navigate the struggle for students in special ed was ex was very much expressed um in regards to both groups so getting their iep needs met or firefox or needs which i'm sure you all know but that was pretty strong in the groups and then just the emotional impact and struggle for students and for parents being overwhelmed in the household somewhat just unbearable about deaths that have happened through the pandemic the aftermath from having actually coveted and having lesions on their brain and headaches i mean it was just very heart-wrenching or people losing their job so that was really tough to kind of hear you know as a parent for sure um most surprisingly honestly the the honesty from parents and the respect and just being respectful even if they had different views i thought was awesome i was a little worried about that so i wasn't really sure how that was going to go and just the spectrum of people either really so focused hard on academics versus social emotional learning or vice versa that was a very strong impact for me and i was really surprised about that um i already talked about my overall impression which kind of leads to my i was surprised about the inconsistencies in regards to the asynchronous and the synchronous learning and that um that there were there was a several parents that talked about not really wanting social emotional learning and i was really surprised that in the same breath they were concerned that their kids weren't connecting so i guess it's just how you i was surprised by that because i feel like that is social emotional learning connecting with your peers so that was a little controversy for me the most common concerns was the needs for 504 iep students um friday's schedule was a hot topic if you will and then just really wanted the kids to get back in the building i was really surprised about that so i thought that was really um they just really want to get kids in which is good i mean they they do need to come in the building but i would say that just the strain i leave with the strength and the meltdowns that are happening at home with kids because they're really struggling academically was painful it was really painful to hear thank you thank you okay so part of the staff findings we did um we did collect data from nearly 250 staff members um i'm sorry 140 out of 250 staff members 96 of the 129 staff members who have interactions with students on a regular basis participated so the margin of error is below 5 with a confidence interval of 95 percent and jessica um like we said has conducted some focus groups with our staff and so she's going to go over some of that data and we also wanted to acknowledge sue morrison and stephanie colada as they also facilitated staff focus groups hello um so there was a lot of conversation um centered around um how disconnected teachers are feeling from students um so even though 63 of the survey respondents said they're able to have one-to-one conversations and they have the face time over zoom and the synchronous instruction um it's just not the same as like that true connection that you have like when you're in the classroom face to face with the kids because it's just not you know with the technology and everything it's just not exactly quite the same as a normal face-to-face conversation um and then overall one specific comment that really um touched on two themes were looking at learning and feelings um so the question was what part of the teacher experience has changed due to remote learning and the pandemic and how does that change make you feel um so there's definitely more of an emotional toll for all of our stakeholders kind of going along with the threads of parents and community members so again it's just not even though there are those synchronous moments which is better than in the spring it still just hasn't had the same effect in terms of social emotional and building those connections and relationships this is some of the survey data and results so um there's definitely a divide between um feeling safe enough to return um and not again everybody has kind of their own circumstances but it definitely came through that um overall the staff did prefer to have a set date just so that for plans with child care and other situations that that could kind of be established and then again that could also be influenced but that again that work-life balance it was very difficult to manage you know the work life balance of kind of planning for remote which is a lot different than planning for in person and then again having child care and different those kind of different aspects and place too and again this is just how staff kind of felt about a set date rather than the two two weeks so these two quotes were kind of just again in line with a lot of what you've already heard just about not knowing and kind of just meeting that set date for some plans is how a lot of people feel and then this next one was very impactful too just to hear how um stem staff members lives have really been affected by colvin and having lots of family members or just different situations and family situations occurring just due to the pandemic and the quarantining kind of just being kind of more isolated so it just was very kind of just i again my situation is different than maybe other staff members so it was just interesting just to see really truly how affected some of our staff members have been as well as some of our families okay all right so then these are just some of my impressions um so overall um the comments shared were that the limited social interaction really did have that impact because again it's just you know having to also just you know balance that at the academics and sel like just finding that right balance has been challenging because every student does need it a little bit differently and just being able to access students is a little bit different than when you're in the classroom because when you're in the classroom you can kind of be like all right i'm gonna pull johnny here for a little extra you know whatever social or emotional or academic they need and now you have to kind of schedule it and make sure they're on zoom and everybody's available so that was kind of different and then just kind of balancing being safe and then wanting to still be in school because a lot of people despite their situations they understood that it's better to be at school with kids but then you know again just balancing what's safe and what's what's in the best interest for kids social emotionally and academically what i was most surprised about was that in all three buildings no matter if it was primary elementary or middle there were very similar challenges just even hearing that in eighth grade most of these eighth graders are using the chat instead of talking on the camera like that was very impactful because i would think like the older kids would be maybe a little more willing to be on camp like you know using their voice on the camera than some of the younger kids and vice versa so that was kind of interesting and just having similar technology difficulties and varying levels of home support because definitely depending on the home support and circumstances it's more successful for some students than others and then last one was most common concern was just the lack of feeling connectedness with students so just again not having that connection and it's not the same or as strong it's better than it was in the spring because we've had more synchronous time with the students but it's still just not quite where we want it to be um and then also just um balancing the work life balance too because just a lot of us want to i know we all want to make sure that we're doing what we can for students and it's rigorous and it's appropriate for everybody but it ha it has just been a lot more hours spent trying to make sure that the level of instruction that we're giving is the quality that we want it to be in school so that was a lot of what i heard too is just everybody's trying we have a lot of great resources from the district to utilize it's just figuring out that balance and what what can we do to make sure that the instructions as good as it can be like as if we were in school so so overall looking at the focus groups and the survey data you hear a lot of the common themes throughout all of the information that was just shared one of them is looking at safety and setting a firm date to return so you're hearing people say that they would like to know when they're coming back if there is a need to close whether it's a classroom or a building they'd like it to follow the guidelines of the two-week quarantine but not necessarily shutting everything down but really focusing on the set date the second one is again looking at safety as far as being cautious but ready to return to school so people would like the schools to reopen following the safety procedures if they don't feel comfortable sending their students back having that option still of having virtual learning but people understand quite personally the cost and many still want to send their children and then the sel component so we're hearing some who say that it's overdone and that we need to focus on academics but then we have others who feel like we need a lot more but the majority still say though it's best served in the school okay so those were the basically the themes you were trying to pull out from the survey and the questions and but there were um also two aspects that came out in one of them came out in every single focus group um and then the second same the learning theme so i'll talk about technology um and i'll then i'll let dr hedgefits talk about asynchronous and synchronous learning so these were all the other pieces that i i couldn't not include in the report because they came up so often that it required us to follow up um and what i want you to know about the the technology piece so there were several items and you'll read in the report some of the specific things teachers or excuse me the community staff and and students that have all talked about in relation to technology as some of their concerns um but what i can say is that the director of technology so matt has had on his radar it's already been on their roadmap to address purchasing new devices and that was done prior to things starting to fall apart and yet it just takes time for certain budget items to be allowed to move through the um move through the process of when we're allowed to purchase them and so those are gonna there's a good handful that's gonna be rolled out in the spring so that that has that is being addressed it's part of the road map and so some of the frustration that people were talking about um that you see in the report it's more as a result of like many comments referred to stuff that's been kind of the back and forth on social media or bad or old devices um a lack of preparedness to respond to remote learning that that's on the road map and and it's being addressed already so i just wanted to make sure that i put that out there so because one of the other aspects of focus groups is administrators and the facilitators were not allowed to talk during any of those and i we weren't facile administrators weren't on all of the focus groups and in some cases the facilitators liked us there to make sure that the recording went well but we're not allowed to address any misconceptions or misinformation and nor are the facilitators allowed to interact it really because that's part of this research is to allow the community to speak up and so when that was happening and i wanted to make sure that because this is information to share with the board we wanted you to know that that is something that's already been addressed and the director of technology is addressing it and then the asynchronous and synchronous piece came up in almost all of the focus groups as an area that needed to be responded to and so i'm going to let dr hechowitz talk about that because like the director of technology she's already addressed she addressed this before it even came out you um so in many of the focus groups like dr king said the asynchronous versus synchronous um was stated as an issue um and one of the other things that was mentioned was that this fall was way better than spring so i wanted to acknowledge that that that was you know a lot of the comments from the parents um they did mention that there was an improvement from last spring to this fall but um overarchingly we've worked with the principals to find different ways to schedule the teacher's instruction so it was nice having the opportunity to try the hybrid for the one week that we did and we even learned a lot from just that process of how will hybrid look and how will we make sure that we're getting that two and a half hours of strongly recommended synchronous um time as as b has stated so um prior to the focus groups even occurring dr biancolana mrs janis mr whipple and i all had a chance to touch space and so moving forward the teachers schedules you may have already noticed but the teachers had up until december 4th to incorporate more synchronous instruction and so a memo was sent by my department just stating various ways to make that happen simple ideas of switching the social studies and science instruction to synchronous learning would be a huge step we outlined some things in the memo and then middle school was encouraged even when they're teaching their classes maybe if they're working with a smaller group to leave on the zoom so anyone could jump on leaving that availability of the teacher for more students who needed that access so one of the highlights from the memo i just wanted to state that this quoted portion in the report was a collaborative communication from dr biancolano mrs janus and myself um and mr whipple and it's just basically stating here that we we wanted to make sure that any changes that are being made with students schedules or teachers schedules they've been very small tweaks but impactful tweaks but we wanted to make sure that those were clearly being communicated to families so they knew all of the opportunities that would start to become available by december 4th so like i said hopefully you've seen or heard of some improvements that have been made but the last sentence there just says that making sure the live learning opportunities that are being provided are communicated in addition to the offline opportunities and that is just in direct response to the the varying comments of it's too much for my child or my child needs more academics so what we're hoping to do is at least provide opportunities for students who who would like more on synchronous to get on and interact with their teacher and those parents who need maybe a little bit more flexible schedule and need just some maybe some more flexibility in general that they would have the opportunity if their child's available to get on with the teacher for those additional minutes or not depending on that family's individual set of circumstances so we will continue to monitor this because like i said up until december 4th teachers had a chance to they were given the opportunity to make some tweaks i know that moving forward if we were to go into a hybrid situation dr biancolana and mrs janus have already made changes not big changes tweaks um to the hybrid schedule to ensure that we're honoring that two and a half hours as well so i think that's about it yeah so that will conclude the portion where we are we're going over the focus group information and any of the interview information that we have unless you've got questions or comments that you'd like to ask any of our fabulous facilitators abby don't leave i yet it's great you guys did that yeah yeah i think simon said it really well this had an opportunity for people to have civil discourse and conversation uh in a public forum together was was good very good well thank you so much all right i'm going to now slide into the portion where we're talking about the grades um we will continue to i'll continue to share more with you on the reports for the grades but let me just explain why right now in your report you only see you'll see third grade and then we'll talk about the middle school trying to download all of the data for the elementary is very time consuming is when you look in the report you'll see it's done by standards because in the elementary they c and the primary they are grading by standards and so every standard has a different whether it can be proficient it could be developing it could be limited so there's there is a lot of information to try to gather and pool but what we can look at is a sample group about third grade i do i have to do this i have to preface these data with a cautionary note because a couple of things come out um one it starts to show that there are a little bit of differences between the teachers on how they give a proficient versus a developing beginning versus limited evidence and that's and they're communicating that with families but when we try to pull it for a report like this what we sometimes find is michelle might give a proficient to her students um she may not give it to the very end of the year because the standard is not supposed to be learned like fully mastered until the end of the year to be proficient so she might might mark all of her students developing just because that's part of how kids are learning it's going to be developing until we the end of the year just to be proficient in this i however might mark the student proficient because on this that portion of the standard i gave a version of an assessment a little informal assessment and i found that on way on the way to the mastery you are proficient on that little step to get you towards mastery even though mastery isn't required until the end of the year so we might be in the same grade and we might be across the same hall but we might be giving the grades a little differently but we're communicating with that with family so families know what a proficient it like why my student is proficient versus developing so that's when we look at the numbers part of it's a little tricky in that it's hard to know because we might just be doing it differently however it's a easy to see in the case from 19 2019 to 2020 versus 2020 to 2021 in this trimester there were last year there were 211 proficients at this time and currently there are only 121 i mean in the same way you can move down to developing um like it where it says 1394 versus this this current year 1018 and so on um so that's that's the third grade we'll i'll continue to provide we have more it's just to get it clean for you it's taking a little bit of elbow grease but we're working on it it's not as easy as just to tell the system to tell us how many proficients and developing and there's a little bit there but it does tell you the story i think that in relation to the fact that um being outside of the classroom for as long as we are it does it is making a difference like it's not as positive of an outcome as as we would have liked or hoped but obviously it's a trend we see across the country all right so um fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade so in your report the board report you actually have i you've i've given you information that gives you by subject area and i need to give and i say i this was very much uh mr mcculley did a he's the one who had to go and pull all these data and so he was the one who had to spend hours and hours trying to pull it for all of us um so thank you um and so instead of doing percents of a whole and what you need to know that these grades are all weighted differently because ela there is an advanced section in math you've got advanced sections you have different number of students in different courses so we can't just divide by a whole number because they're all weighted differently so what we did was we provided you the number of a's given for fifth sixth and seventh grade we could not do eighth grade and because and i'll explain why we couldn't do eighth grade in a second but when you look at fifth grade the number of a's given in 2020 there's 366 versus this year 271 and it's so on and so forth for each of the grade levels so if for example if i am a sixth grader um the sixth grade if we look at sixth grade the number of b's that were awarded last year at this time was 250 whereas this year it's 338.

okay we should be live Hey Jill can you look when you have a sec and confirm we're streaming Rod awesome thanks okay we're ready we're ready let's go ahead and uh call to order Julie can you do the Roll Call certainly Nancy kupka present Mike Davenport present Dan Nicholas here Rick panado here but you got some serious Echo Joan Vasquez Drexler here um Charelle Fuller no and Terry pavisic no okay um s Zoe Boyd and Sam B here thank you okay we have a quorum uh we are in session let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the pledge of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation under God indiv and justice for all okay I believe we're going to start with students perspectives uh yes board member uh board member uh uh student board member questions and comments and I believe Sam is here this evening yes sir okay just give me one moment to pull it up all right so it's been an interesting few weeks at dgn I would say um is somebody's mic on I I feel like there's a echo I can hear the echo's terrible there's mute Rick can you mute your microphone yeah I I've been muted that's why I said everybody's muted you still have terrible Echo well it's all right for me so I will just continue um I sorry I don't hear an echo you know what I think it's gone now okay go ahead Sam all right sorry about that um so yeah like I said an interesting few weeks I think definitely the most interesting um little time section of time since we've last met and last talked about this has been since that new schedule was released um so actually on Saturday I put out a poll on my social media and I asked a few questions and the main one was do you like the new hybrid schedule for next semester and only about 110 people responded from North but of those people there were 56 votes for yes and 84 for no as of 5:00 pm on Sunday but yeah of course it's important to note that's less than 10% of the student body I have no idea you know what factors go into what they're saying but um that was just the the data that I received and so later I asked a couple follow-up questions um and it seemed that of the no people it was not against going to school it was against Minor Details um maybe such as the the alphabet bet change with that one letter or um continuing those 80-minute periods I know a lot of students wanted to have 50 minutes or uh something a little bit lower than 80 but I think that the general consensus is that we're still happy to be going to school we're still happy to be back in the building at all I just think that there's a lot of people who have you know minor frustrations with some of the the bits of the schedule but I think that of the people that voted yes and of a lot of people of a lot of of the people that voted no they're still satisfied and happy to be going back to school it's just there's little small things that they don't like uh in terms of student activities for Fine Arts uh there's been a lot of recording and presenting music recently for working on a final project which is to be performing for the Mosaic which will be continuing virtually um and be uh presented on Thursday which will will be exciting because it's it's really nice you know VI L still presenting despite all the the limitations that we have um for some of the clubs the NHS National Honor Society had a food drive on Saturday from 9: to 12 where members brought in Food Supplies and canned goods to be donated uh to various places like the Woodridge food pantry West bman Humane Society Westmont food pantry so that was really really nice um getting some community service in and also the giving tree uh the statistics are in and 337 gift cards were collected for over $8,000 so um definitely some great great uh community service work and donations going on in the last uh couple weeks so you know like I said going back to that schedule I think the mood is is excitement is satisfaction with coming back to school it's just you know small little things that that people are frustrated with but obviously you're going to get a lot of that when you make a schedule the same for everybody there's always going to be people who are upset um I just think there's there's some things that that students don't like but I think the general consensus is you know excited to be back in school so that's all I have uh feel free to chime in with any questions thank you all right I I don't see Zoe here yet um so we can move on and circle back to Zoe if she's able to attend later Sam it's Nancy can I just ask that you uh like you said there's just like a few little minor things but could you um summarize those and send send it to everybody please thank you can you hear me yep yeah okay he gave you a thumbs up Nancy to go I'm sorry I was looking at my at my um agenda okay so Zoe's not here so we'll move on to the approval of minutes we can always come back to her um we're looking for a motion to approve the November 16th 2020 business meeting the November 16th 2020 close meeting the December 7th 2020 Workshop meeting and the December 7th 2020 closed meeting minutes so moved second Terry and Dan thank you Terry pavisic I Dan Nicholas I Rick panado I Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport I cherelle fuller hi and Nancy kupka I the minutes are approved we'll move on to then to the first reception of visitors and I'm apologizing to everybody for some reason my camera is not working tonight um but this meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience this first reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote the second reception of visitors is intended 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 and equal opportunity to address the board any individual needing more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary Mrs nidc um please uh uh come to the microphone or and state your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meaning minutes and they are being broadcast live um and I reserve the right to modify these Protocols of circumstances warrant we appreciate your observation of these protocols Rod can you pull up the action items for this evening on the slides please all right uh we do have visitors in the room uh these are the items that are the action items for the evening if anybody would like to address the board on any of these topics uh now is the time to come forward no the curriculum is on two new course proposals the second semester is not an action item this evening it's a discussion item all right uh I have none here and I believe all of the comments that came in through the online form are for the second reception of visitors as well they all pertain to second semester all right so I'm com back to my okay we're gonna start then with the so hany because I'm having trouble hearing you so we have nobody there who's gonna address the board at this moment regard there's nobody that wishes to address the board regarding one of tonight's action items okay thank you okay we're going to move on to the recommendation reports of the superintendent return inperson learning Etc uh Rod can you advance one more slide for me before we get started on the superintendent's reports I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Janice on being named uh the enoy principal Association uh dup page High School principal of the year um obviously we all know she is well deserving of this award and we appreciate everything that she does in District 99 and this uh recognition allows her to continue forward and uh be considered to be this Illinois high school principal of the year so I would just want to take this moment to uh recognize Janice for everything that she's done and all the hard work that she she's put in and that it uh and recognize that she's received this impressive award on behalf of her peers uh in uh the Downers Grove area or the the DW page area so congratulations Janice all right this is out you want in the fridge no leave it out so we're going to turn this over to uh to Jill and Gina to provide highlights of the November survey on uh the school year up to this point good evening everybody um I know the board appreciation day was last month but I want to thank you again for your service to the community and for all that you do as volunteers am I getting an echo am I causing an echo no you sound fine Jill okay thank you um we issued our second survey second climate survey of last month and I just wanted to share some highlights with you and detailed reports of these are on board docks for all of the board members to view and they're available to the public as well um we'd also like to thank those 3,295 people who responded to our survey we heard from almost a thousand students and we heard from almost 2,000 families we also read every single one of the 7,839 comments we asked in the survey about in-person learning remote learning and the current schedule now we didn't like Sam's um survey we did not ask about the the second semester schedule but we will at some point but I just wanted to share highlights from what we heard and most importantly Gina will explain what um changes that we're considering and um doing as a as a result of all of your feedback um what we heard from students like Sam most people who most students who did um experience in-person learning found it to be very valuable um said one student it felt normal um they also like that um 91% found that the Monday schedule it was short 25 minutes per period but they really enjoyed seeing all their teachers for the week and being prepared for the week um we heard again as we did in our last survey that many students are uncomfortable on the zoom breakout rooms and that was a theme um they're also uncomfortable initiating meetings with teachers and we saw that as a result they're not really taking advantage of those office hours what we heard from Stu uh teachers and staff they loved seeing students during imperson learning this is what are our teachers for they want to see their students and the majority felt safe at school they're also confident that they can provide effective instruction but straddling that remote and in-person teaching at the same time is a big challenge for teachers like students they find that the Monday schedule is very valuable to see students um and set the tone for the week um they also uh want a way to Target those students who are struggling with remote learning and they're disengaged they want to require them to help to attend help sessions and they want students to use those office hours that they have um they also have concerns with the cameras being off of course there are technical reasons for that but um it's difficult to reach students when you can't see them that's what we heard from teachers and then finally what we heard from families they find iners learning to be valuable the majority want their students to be back in person they also have concerns was struggling and unmotivated students they're concerned about their academics they're concerned about their emotional health just like teachers families are worried about their students um in fact many said that they would appreciate some help from teachers and the school with how to best support their student at home um but bottom line they they repeated that they appreciate their teachers and all that they're doing for them now and appreciate all the communications that come to them from their teachers so um that's just a very high uh level of what we heard um but Gina is going to address how we are responding um and to some of these themes and what changes we'll be making thank you jel good evening everyone um I'm gonna talk about the feedback and how that feedback has led to proposed changes or feedback that perhaps we didn't um change in the proposed schedule so as you can see students and parents and Jill said this very well as did Sam um really report a need for greater in-person learning time they want to be back in school and so the proposed change and certainly Dr th will talk more about the schedule that's proposed is an increase in per in-person learning to two mornings a week and two afternoons a week the Monday schedule would still remain remote as it currently is students and parents in reporting that need um we certainly heard that need but in order for the bus company to meet the increased transportation needs the schedule needs to be changed just slightly in other words so on Tuesday through Friday the buses after the morning classes will drive students home sanitize the bus turn around and pick up the students for the afternoon class so in order to do that we are going to cut the passing periods down to 10 minutes to allow the morning session to end five minutes earlier and the afternoon session to start five minutes later therefore before we will have about an hour and a half a little bit over that for the buses to drive the morning students home and pick up the afternoon students teachers uh suggested removing those scheduled fully remote weeks you may recall from our previous hybrid schedule that we had scheduled weeks where we were remote for example election week that was one of the weeks that we were remote and the suggestion was to eliminate the scheduled fully remote weeks teachers reported needing more transition time on Mondays teachers engage in professional learning in the morning and then start their day seeing obviously their classes as Jill said for 25 minutes a period but that transition was just five minutes between that professional learning time and first period And so we're going to end professional learning time on Mondays 10 minutes earlier than we did before so allowing more transition time for teachers we also found that time is needed for various activities and so once a month we are planning to extend our third period class so that we can have students engage in PBIS lessons we have the five essential survey coming up other building and District needs so just once a month it'll be extended so that we can meet those needs and that's on the Monday schedule so on one Monday per month the schedule for third period will be extended the survey data also shows as Jill stated that students are not taking advantage of the resource period which is basically Tuesday through Friday from 11: to 11:30 and teacher office hours so we're in the process of evaluating and potentially adopting a tool that would enable teachers to schedule students into either resource or office hours so that they can take full advantage of those opportunities survey data also showed that students need academic help in various areas and we are concerned because in progress grades do show that there is an an increase in the number of students who are struggling academically so we looked into various resources that we could adopt that would help students and you'll hear later tonight about a program called paper it's an online 247 365 day a year chat-based touring program that actually is used in District 68 and so we're considering uh moving towards that I also should share and I Jill may have said this we had a committee that worked on the um the schedule so they basically looked at all the survey data and provided input um based on the survey and based on the proposed uh changes we were planning to make and many of them too were concerned about some of the same issues such as students not using resource hours such as um students struggling academically and so uh we're moving forward with hoping to to adopt paper there were other topics that came up um students struggling emotionally and we will continue our counselor and Social Work psychologist Outreach our counseling and student support services department and really targeting those students who are struggling and that happens in a variety of ways phone calls Zoom meetings um home visits um those will continue as Jill mentioned lots of concerns about the cameras being an off mode and we really need to research that as to why do students why are students not turning their cameras on or turnning turning them off um in some cases we have heard that it could be connectivity um but we do have several solutions that we can afford our students but there are concerns that there could be other reasons like motivation behind that and so we certainly want to remind students and families and teachers that the expectation is that students will have their cameras on as Jill explained there are uh teachers who are concerned about balancing inperson with remote learning simultaneously straddling the students that are in front of them and the students remotely and teaching in that way so we are examining uh further professional development and instructional coaching on best practice so the teachers can be more successful and feel more comfortable with that as I believe Sam mentioned in the beginning the length of periods did come up so we have black scheduling so Tuesday through Friday they're 80 minute periods and on Mondays they're 25 minute periods and we heard feedback on both of those topics we did examine the feedback one of the concerns was the 80 minutes on Tuesday through Friday but in order to accomplish the goals of seeing you know all the students and the busing and having students in person more we feel the need to continue with the block schedule which will allow us to preserve the instructional time we also heard as Jill said that students and teachers like seeing every student on Monday so in order to continue with that schedule we'll continue with the 25 minute periods we certainly do not want to to let go of that professional learning time for our teachers some students voiced a concern about the length of that midday break so currently the schedule the morning ends at 10:55 from 11: to 11:30 is what we call resource and then of course the afternoon classes and some were concerned about that break some students even commented that they would prefer to run all the classes in a row and get out of school earlier um so we are concerned about students not using a resource and so we are looking at scheduling uh a scheduling tool for that but we also need to have that break in the middle of the day so that the morning students can travel home and the afternoon students can travel to school so we actually are extending it by 10 minutes by reducing the passing period time so those are just again the high level key ideas that were brought up in the survey and you'll hear more from Dr thely about the changes that I just shared with you are there any questions about the survey that Jill or I can address hey Gina this is Dan um quick question and maybe you'll get into this later when we talk about paper is there a way for the students that are struggling um to require the usage of paper or to require the usage of the resource hour to to proactively schedule that for the students is there a way for us to to do that or is this entirely voluntary so paper is voluntary we can certainly encourage it we can show students how to use it we can't necessarily require students to go in and use paper unless of course that's part of an activity that teachers do in class that would be different of course in terms of the resource we can certainly schedule students in and that's that technology tool that I referenced um but in terms of requiring it I mean certainly if we're encouraging students if we're scheduling them into and they do not attend then that obviously leads to a greater conversation with families about iend those times yeah I'd love to make sure that we somehow make the parents aware of both the resource and the paper so that the parents could be proactive with their students and and with their teachers and sign them up I mean that resource period is a great time to connect with a teacher um but only if it's being used and I I want to try to figure out a way to make sure that the students are actually using that that resource and we too are very concerned about that we certainly want students using the resource we want students using office hours as much as possible I mean even in the committee the suggestion was brought up that perhaps students that are fully remote be require to check in during resource you know one day a week for for a short period of time so we too are very concerned about that we are planning if we move forward with paper on doing a roll out to families not just students great thank you Gina um have you noticed um an uptick in um lower grades or failures with this semester so we are in progress grades because we don't do quarter grades we only do semester grades are in progress grades we have seen an increase in the number of students who uh for in progress grades are earning a failing grade uh We've also seen an increase in students who are earning a a d earning a are we um are we talking about any type of recovery program to help those multiple FS yes so absolutely so when I talk about paper I've got some charts and I'll kind of walk you through some of the models that we're looking at and I also want to talk about some of the changes that we're proposing actually to put in effect for this year that I think will encourage students to take more advantage of some of those options okay and have the guidance counselors because we have received some correspondence from the community have the guidance counselors may be going to have an extra responsibility to reach out to the parents of these students to get everybody on board certainly teachers counseling student support services are are counselors in some cases if there's case managers certainly um we encourage to reach out we expect our teachers to be contacting parents and and responding or sending emails that may not be always a call obviously um as students sometimes the emails aren't valid addresses and sometimes the phone numbers aren't valid addresses I know I've run into that quite a bit so we have found that to be true absolutely and that's one of the reasons I I think I believe one of the reasons why we've definitely increased our our home visits because we're having trouble getting a hold of some families no response to email phone calls those kinds of things and so our counselors have gone out um and and really done a great job of reaching out to those families who can't seem to get a hold of because maybe we can get some of those students back on track for second semester so that doesn't become a wash out either absolutely uh since we're uh we're talking about the survey right now right um uh notice that you know in terms of the summary of what we heard from students um I'm not seeing a bullet point there that says uh that fully remote isn't isn't effective or you know that they that they hate it um is that a fair fair statement all right and then um uh I do see though that with with uh teachers or I mean with the families that there is um concerns with struggling unmo unmotivated students um and I think we've seen we've I we certainly heard a lot of that in the emails that are being you know people that are are are being have sent to us um other thing that strikes me it looks like we've got a a pretty good response to the survey it's always hard to get people to take time and I mean I mean normally we would be really thrilled at this level of response to a survey and uh of our community uh in District 99 but um but I noticed it still I mean there's 1951 families responded 989 students responded um and we have somewhere around 5,000 students in the district so you know uh fair to say that there's a number of people that didn't that chose not to respond or uh didn't feel the need to respond and I don't know how how to interpret that except to say that uh when people uh when people are upset about something um they tend to uh speak up as we're you know as we're definitely seeing right now so um I yes I'm I am feeling good that there are a number of people that did not feel that they needed to say much at this point um and I'm grateful for those that did um respond to so that we can have this um you know this this feedback and and do something with it and I think we've done a nice job of adjusting the hybrid schedule to respond to it so uh thank you Gina Mike I do believe that uh the more that we go through these cycles and we share the feedback with the public and then connect it back directly to the changes that we're making in our programming that the you know the students and the parents and the general public and our staff understand that we're not just asking to ask we're asking because we want to improve and make changes and get better and I think as time goes on and you know they that everybody you know everybody's dubious when you fill out a survey will anybody do anything with this I think what Jill and Gina have set up for is what's going to come next where we do share uh the changes that we're making in our programming in response to what we heard any other comments thank all right uh so thank you Jill and Gina for setting up uh the return to inperson learning overview uh we're going to go into the information here into what we're looking at doing for second semester uh and this is um on Friday we emailed out to everyone in the community kind of the overview of what we were planning on doing second semester um and then tonight's going to be some details and then uh a short discussion on uh some of the metrics pieces so Rod if you could Advance it before we get into all of the changes that we're going to make uh I do want to point out that uh although it has been an incredibly challenging last nine months for everybody in our community and our greater society that District 99 has done a lot of good things uh over this school year um I know there's a a lot of things that people would like to see differently but I I think it's a a moment for us all to stop and to recognize that our students have been thrown into a learning environment that they never expected to be part of and we never expected to have to lead them through it and our kids have responded amazingly um you know I I am so impressed by the resiliency of our students and there were their interest in learning and improving and uh you know the the type of of children that our parents send us uh is pretty amazing and uh our staff have really worked hard to try to meet the needs of kids during these very difficult times and our families have been so supportive of the work that's been going on in our classrooms and and all of us working together to try to meet the needs of kids and we've still done some really cool stuff uh over the the course of the Fall so before we get into all of the changes I think I just think it's really important for us all to you know stop and reflect and and to be thankful for the good things that have happened uh over the course of the first semester I know we're all focused on getting better and improving and and finding ways uh to offer more opportunities for our students but I just would be remiss as the leader of the district if I didn't stop to thank everybody for working through some of the most difficult times many of us have faced uh perhaps in our lifetimes so um just a a kudos to our students and our staff and our families uh for everything that they've been doing over the course of this semester to make the the best of a difficult situation so thank you everyone I want to reiterate what I shared over the summer uh what you can see there in that image is some of the the first messaging that we communicated this summer about returning to school uh I have always shared with the community that our goal is to be at school and that I believe that teachers and students have to interact daily for teaching and learning at the high school level to be effective um but we have to balance that between the safety measures that are in place in the time of a pandemic um but for anybody who who might question my sincerity or my interest or my wish for students to be in school learning personally in person in front of their teachers every day I'm here to tell you that that is my number one goal my default is to have students in school if we were going with Hank's bias about school kids would be here the the challenge is is that the science points differently to how we should be handling teaching and learning in the time of a pandemic and throughout the course of the presentation tonight I'm going to point to the science and the evidence that goes along with this for those of you that don't know I am a science teacher I believe greatly in in science and the process and looking at the experts and understanding the information in front of us all of it and using that to our best of our ability to make sure that teaching and learning moves forward but it does so when a way that we keep everybody that we're responsible for at school safe Rob so a couple of quotes and a couple of uh leaders that have been that have had quotes sent to me greatly over the last few months are Dr fouchy and Dr Redfield and uh earlier this month uh there was some sound bites that were played from Dr fouchy and Dr Redfield that seem to indicate that students should come back to school uh right away for in-person learning pull out all the stops kids should be back at school all day no questions asked the challenge with those quotes is that they were they came out at a time in response to New York City schools that were choosing to move from an in-person learning model to a fully remote model at a time in which their Community metrics were indicating about a 3% rate of community uh positivity in their Community many of these quotes that have been circulated and sent to me were aimed directly at New York City schools with much lower rates of community transmission than what we've seen in Illinois or in our own community over the past month and they're also pulled out of context of what these other two leaders have also said consistently going back to the summer months and through the fall and even today so Rod if you'll Advance uh we'll focus in on some other things that Dr fouchy has said and if we start putting his comments in in a more Fuller context you'll see here that he continually talks about sending students back to school he really believes the safest place for kids to be is at school just as I do but only when Community metrics are low enough that it is prudent to bring students back to school and those metrics are really based on where you are specifically where your community is at with those metrics you can't just make a national statement about bringing students back to school without considering what the spread of covid is in the community that you're looking at and then Rod if you'll take a look at Dr redfield's comments he also talks about schools are connected to the communities that they live in and that we should be using the data in front of us to determine when it's safe to go back to school and when we do that we have to consider the students but we also have to consider the adults in the schools that are working with students and also the adults that kids go home to at the end of the day because the school is part of the community and we draw our students and staff especially here in District 99 our staff from our community and then we send them back home to our community at the end of each day so all of those factors have to be considered when we're making these decisions BR so what I've put together here uh is kind of the simplification of my mindset and the administrative team's mindset is we're determining whether or not it is safe to return to school and you can see there there's a threshold here from when we're 100% remote we can't spread the virus at school because nobody no students are here right all the way up to if we just open the doors and said come back to school like it was preco it's highly likely based on what we know that covid would spread here within our hallways and then there's a kind of a middle Zone where it'd be likely to spread and then we have to get into what the CDC says and the other health experts say about conditions at school that might tend to to spread um covid and then what we are aiming for on our team is that green box there how can we design school in such a way that when students are here covid is unlikely to spread that is the risk level that we are comfortable as educational leaders and at at trying to design for within our community so that's what we're shooting for is unlikely to spread I know there are other other members in the community that believe we should be planning for one of those other boxes um but what we are doing administratively is aiming for that we don't want to we want it to be unlikely that if a student comes to school or a staff member comes to school without covid that it's unlikely that they go home at the end of the day with covid right we we don't want that transferring here at school rod so in order to determine how to do this this is the the website there if you go to that you'll see these are the key considerations for schools as to how to operate in a time of covid um tonight's presentation you're going to see I'm going to walk you through a lot of the information on this site nearly all of it and I'm going to highlight for you the key pieces that we administratively are considering as we build this programming much of what is here on the CDC website is mirrored on the idph website in their guidelines and also in the DuPage County Health Department guidelines Rob so some of the the things directly from that CDC website is that we're supposed to collaborate with state and local Health officials to the extent possible I meet once or twice a week with the Dage County Health Department I have met uh several times with repres representatives from the Illinois Department of Public Health or with the Illinois State Board of Education over the last nine months to discuss what our programming should be what the the science says and what the guidelines actually mean then we're supposed to take all of those that information we're receiving from them and adjust it to meet the unique needs and circumstances of our own community and tailor what we're doing to meet our needs so I hear a lot from people that that comp compare District 99 to other districts within our own Community or to other communities uh nearby or across the country or uh public schools to parochial schools or private schools and when we take a look at what that the CDC is telling us is that different schools and different communities are going to end up with different programming it depends on what the priorities of uh of the community are of the administration the board but also logistical things the size of your schools the layouts um just how your different courses work the technology you have available to you all of those and a thousand other things play into building a program for our individual schools and in a school district our size and in buildings our size making changes to programming is a very slow process I know that many wish we could change things quicker and move faster but making a change in this district is you know turning an aircraft carrier style type of change it is slower change than even I would like at times um but we have to recognize that we are trying to build the best program for our own schools and our own Community R when we do that one of the things we have to really do is look at at the level of viral Transmission in the school and throughout the community once again this is directly from the CDC guidelines for how we're supposed to run schools and we need to work with the health authorities as we do this so uh our strategies need to adapt on those Community transmission levels that are there R and then as the CDC points out you know the CDC is a federal organization uh public education in the United States is very much a local uh Endeavor however the states have a lot of say over what we do in schools so the CDC is structuring the overall big picture guidelines and we're using those but we still must comply with the idph and DuPage County Health Department guidelines most of those are entirely based on the CDC guidelines but uh to for today's presentation I want to go all the way to the top and start at where that top guidance is based upon so we won't spend a lot of time on those other guidelines this evening so what we're essentially doing is taking our instructional program how teaching and learning will work at school we're considering the strategies and guidelines that are provided to us from the CDC the idph the DuPage County Health Department other health experts and then we're also considering the rate of community transmission so those three things we Factor together to try to aim for that green box on the diagram where students will come to school and it will be unlikely to spread now we have we factor in everything that we can and we do our best to hit that I understand different people might make different choices than we have as an Administration or a board but please realize that we are factoring all of those things in in all of the decisions we're making and trying to aim for that green box we're not aiming for the no chance of spread and we definitely don't want it to be likely or highly likely that it will spread when students come to school uh so that that's the goal of the exercise go R so in the hybrid program that you're seeing for second semester there's some beliefs built into that into the instructional programming so that top box that you saw of the three uh one thing that came through clear in the surveys that we heard we saw from the students and from staff is that if there's a very small number of students in the classroom that it's not as meaningful of an experience as if we have a larger number of students in the classroom since we started building models over the summer we have looked at smaller models 25% models like you've seen in some school districts we built and shared with schools across the country one of the first 1/8 models models where one8 of the students would be able to come into the building at a time when we evaluated those models sure those models can run during times of higher Community transmission but the feedback from everybody was if there's not enough people in the classroom if there's not enough students in the classroom to have true authentic conversations then what you've essentially done is run the virtual or the fully remote form format with a couple of kids coming to school and then just participating in the remote format from school that there's not enough like enough students in the classroom to really have a a dynamic conversation or to do activities or to do those things and and we heard through that feedback that that was not valuable in those couple of weeks we had where students or staff had were in classrooms with a very small number of people in it and that uh really if teachers can count on a consistent number of students that can show up on a daily basis that that will help create a quality learning environment that's part of the reason why you're seeing this model change to four days a week one of the things we we heard was that two days a week is just not enough it's not worth it it's not worth the lift for families to get to school two days a week There's No consistency so by coming to school EV every student coming to school every day um even though it's for only a half day uh we believe that that will uh help create a more consistent learning environment and will get more students to attend and then make it a more valuable experience when they're here we also know that while students are here we still have a group of students that are remote whether it's the other half of the classroom or it's the students that have chosen the fully remote model for whatever reason so uh we did look at models that would separate those groups from one another almost create time chunks and our early hybrid model that you saw over the summer did that where we separated the a group from the B group at all times so teachers uh would only focus on one group of students within the same space of time so we administratively carved out the time and allocated it for teachers for each group but what we learned very quickly was that that doesn't work for every classroom depending ending on the students that are in there and the curricular objectives for the day teachers need the ability to structure that specific class period maybe they do need all of the students in the space at the same time to do uh and and to teach all the students together maybe they need to break them into smaller groups maybe they just need to meet with five kids at a time while the rest of the students are working on their own uh maybe it's back and forth maybe it's one student presenting to their whole class half of them there in person and half of them remotely there's any number of lessons or activities that our teachers are going to set up as experiences for our students and we trust them as professionals to structure that time appropriately for who's in front of them and what what they're trying to teach that day and and the experience they're trying to let students have so what we need to to do is to trust our teachers to structure those classrooms appropriately the lessons the activities the time how they group kids and then ultimately the assignments they give and the assessments that they give um but as we do this we need everybody to understand uh we need students and families to understand and we need teachers uh to recognize that they're learning as they go along as well and uh I know uh teachers will be frustrated because they will they will not be as effective as they were before covid because they've never done this before and it is scary and frustrating our teachers every time we change the programming become first year teachers all over again and have to relearn how to do a lot of this um none of us went to school uh and learned how to teach a group of in-person students and remote students at the same time that wasn't a thing and it is now and um we all just need to to be patient with one another because we figure this out out and realize we're all trying to do what's best for kids and and try uh to meet their needs through this model um so I just I ask everybody to to be patient as we move into this new semester 2 programming so let's dig into the details a little bit about what this is going to look like all right so as went out on Friday and the communication we're looking at four days of in-person learning uh students will come to school each week Tuesday through Friday and we're keeping that Monday day you heard from the feedback survey that both teachers and students found that day really important for setting up the week and having it successful and especially with so many moving parts that are going to happen here where each class period might have students coming in and out of it at different times or doing different activities while they're in the remote or in person or even blending the the students in the classroom with students that are at home that Monday day is going to be really important for setting up the success of the week and the fact that it is fully remote allows us to get all of the students in that same space with the teacher at the same time and set up the expectations for the week then we keep the groups in group A and B you'll see group a comes in Tuesday at Wednesday mornings and then they come back Thursday and Friday afternoons in doing so they get to see every one of their teachers over the course of the week and participate in every one of their classes in person group B is the opposite schedule so Tuesday and Wednesday in the afternoon and then Thursday and Friday in the mornings it accomplishes the same goal and another benefit of this is no group of students is only having to come in in the morning or only in the afternoon uh every student gets an opportunity to not have to get up and run out and catch the bus first thing in the morning and every student has the opportunity of doing that so it kind of creates a balance in how the week works for students and there some consistency in that we in our old model we didn't know if we would be able to do a midday bus run part of the great part of being able to run that hybrid model for The Limited two weeks that we were able to before the metrics got bad was that we learned what worked in that small snapshot of time and we learned how we could tweak the transportation schedule to make this a possibility if we would have known what we knew knew then what we know now we would have tried to open with that AB schedule with morning and afternoon what you're seeing here or something similar to that but we didn't know if we could pull it out pull it off or how how everything would work now we we know it it's doable um to do this is we mentioned earlier we have to shorten the passing periods to uh to 10 minutes from 15 so that saves us five minutes of passing periods in the morning and five minutes of passing periods in the afternoon which we then take that 10 minutes and put it into the lunch block that's just the right amount of space that we need to make sure that we can drop off the morning students sanitize the buses pick up the afternoon students and get back in time for the afternoon classes what we're also going to do is put the resource periods always following the morning courses that provides a level of consistency we heard from uh from students and staff that there was a lot of moving Parts in the way that that hybrid looked in the fall so we're trying to make things more consistent by putting those always in the morning um first in the first semester we made it so that students could opt out of lunch study periods and almost all of our students did uh very few students were on campus for those lunch or study periods so uh just to make the the mechanics of it easier and the logistics easier we're going to we have that form out that if students want to opt in they could remain on campus for those lunch study periods and if we ever have a day where a student is on campus and had planned on coming home they just need to reach out to an administrator their counselor and let us know that they aren't able to make it home that day and we'll make arrangements for them uh you're going to hear about some of the additional supports tonight some of those were in the earlier discussion uh things like paper and a variety of other supports like uh being able to teachers being able to schedule students into resource periods and also uh this tool that we're looking at also uh allows students to let teachers know that they are planning on coming to their teachers resource period and what they need help with so that a teacher can plan for what those students needs are when a student drops in to a resource period and should make that time far more efficient uh as Sam mentioned earlier tonight we needed to make a change at North High uh and move the group a to a through k uh as many of you know the classrooms at North High are very some of them are very small and in order to be able to keep the size of the classes balanced and maintain social distancing the alphabet breaks closer to it breaks at a through k at North High uh so to get the the balance we need across classes we needed to make that slight adjustment in in the alphabet um South High the break actually comes more clearly at a through L uh you're going to find I'm going to explain later why this next one is so key but we do need additional nursing support at both schools to uh make this hybrid plan work and I'll go into details on that there's some changes in the metrics that's coming up to explain that and then what we're going to do is commit to this model through spring break so we want to get it up we want it to get it rolling uh as long as it's safe to keep bringing students back in this model will keep doing that and then we'll look at more feedback and hopefully changes in the world and how we're responding to covid and hopefully have more opportunities coming back from spring break for the last quarter of the year uh this is just a quick graphic this is up on our website that shows visually how that hybrid schedule Works throughout the week and this is the document we'll keep pointing people to uh that are looking to to follow the hybrid schedule this is a great one uh to put on the fridge at home or to save on your phone uh so that you can access it quickly and easily all right so talked a lot about what changes but uh there's a lot of things that remain the same we still maintain a fully remote learning option so for families that wish to keep their students at home and not come in for inperson uh that's still there uh if you're if you were fully remote in the first semester and you'd like to come back under this new model you can do that as well um and if you're a hybrid in the first semester and you'd like to go back or remain in the fully remote learning option you can do that as well uh the form went out on Friday that only needs to be submitted through the student logging in and filling out the form if you wish to change what is selected there and in those instructions we sent out Friday it shows you how to go into hack and to see what you're signed up for which learning model so you only need to fill out that form through your students account if you'd like to change what that model is and if you're stuck or you have questions on that please just reach out to your students counselor and we'll help you through that process we'll continue all of the safety measures that we outlined in the first semester for in-person learning bus transportation will continue just as it did in first semester however um instead of uh more staff on the buses the drivers will be the one monitoring the symptom slips and PPE but students still need their slips and still need to be wearing their masks and shields when they come to school and board the bus we're going to maintain those teacher office hours and resource periods and as we've said multiple times tonight add additional technology tools to uh make it easier to get scheduled into those places and easier for teachers to request that students students attend those sessions so to schedule them in and then to be able to follow up with families if students don't attend those sessions um we will still have staff with approved accomodations that continue to work off site so if that's a classroom teacher we will have an a staff member in the classroom helping to supervise the students while the teacher learns remotely um this could be for any variety uh of issues where there is an approved accommodation that that meets that criteria that we need for them to work offsite so there's still going to be a few classrooms where that occurs and then as long as we're in phase four of the state plan we will continue our connections or Access program uh what that program is is a a program that allows students that don't have access to Internet at home or don't have a a safe learning environment uh or any number of situations that would make it so that they can't learn effectively uh or safely off campus so we continue to bring uh students in those programs in uh Tuesday through Friday uh to participate at school um there's still a lot we don't know about covid and what will happen next um you know the the current wave that we're in right now we seem to be coming down off of it uh and hopefully we're on the way out of where that current wave is and uh we'll talk about how those metrics impact us later but I'm hoping uh especially in our own Community we're heading in a direction where the rate of community transmission is is dropping and it doesn't turn around an increase over the holidays also today an eventful day in our country as vaccines started to roll out um but it's still a lot is unknown about the impact of the vaccines and how they'll affect us ultimately here at school um we we know that it seems as though the vaccines are effective uh we just don't know effective across the entire population yet what that's going to look like we're not 100% sure of the duration of the protection will the vaccine last three months or three years or a lifetime um we also don't have all of the details yet on how distribution and prioritization will work uh across the country or within our even our own Community however we do know that the first phase of distribution is uh it's called group one and in group one are three separate uh groups the first one is uh medical professionals and uh people in long-term care facilities that's group 1A and if you were watching the news today you were seeing it start to get rolled out to those locations and distributed in DuPage County that's 58,000 people in group 1A um once group 1A is it's been distributed fully to that group they'll move on to group 1B which is all essential workers those essential workers include School Employees so they're in group 1 B and then one C are any adults with uh at risk conditions um so that's the distribution we don't know if group one uh everything will be distributed to them by the end of February or if it'll be over the summer we uh we don't know yet about uh how fast uh we'll be able to move through group one then there have been no tests yet on no tests done on the vaccines yet on children the first group of of uh testing is supposed to begin in the next month um so the ability for the vaccine to be used on children is further away than what it is on adults it may not be until the summer that we see our students being able to be vaccinated for covid so uh we also don't know how the guidelines might change for the better or the worse depending on whatever your perspective is the guidelines we received from the CDC the idph and the DuPage County Health Department you saw you're you see the flux of one of those changes right now is they're learning more about uh quarantine periods and how fast the the onset of uh covid is and how long people need to quarantine away from one another uh to keep keep each other safe so you're seeing this kind of dispute right now between the uh the medical professionals and it getting lowered from 14 but the guidance is a little in flux as to whether that's seven days with a test 10 days or 14 days so um those guidelines will probably solidify in the next couple couple of weeks but could have an impact on how quickly we can get students and staff back in the building uh if they've been exposed to co we also don't know how the rate of community transmission will fluctuate in our Community we know we're we're on an upward Trend after Halloween we're on a downward Trend after Thanksgiving uh but we don't know how it'll fluctuate uh over the winter break and in in through January in the coming months uh one of the other things that's uh becoming an increased uh push in Illinois and across the country is the possibility of increaseed testing in the school setting um this was something that even a few months ago wasn't being talked about or even recommended by many health professionals and now it is something that we're talking about uh several times a week with uh the health experts so to build on that testing possibilities um we are beginning to investigative testing is possible for us and there's two ways that we're looking at it one is surveillance testing where you would just do a statistically relevant random sample of students in a adults in the building to find out how prevalent is covid inside of the school um and that would provide for us you know a view as to is covid more or less uh prevalent in the schools than the community we also are investigating the possibility of targeting testing uh so doing like a nasal SWA BX now type test of somebody who presents symptoms at school to try to to indicate do they actually have covid or not do they need to go in for a more formal test uh PCR test as a result of of uh of that test and that should help us with also contact tracing and for exclusionary protocols knowing how long that individual needs to stay out of school or out of work uh as a result of that so in order to get started on testing the first step that you need to work through is to receive Clea certification of waiver and we filed uh that paperwork last week it takes a few weeks to get a response on that um so it's one of those you need to wait three to six weeks to hear back on that um so we expect that in January we'll continue to work forward on whatever options are available to us I think if we are able to get surveillance testing up and running um that will serve as another metric that we need to consider is to you know if if we have really low spread that our tests are indicating within our schools it's probably easier or more likely to continue to have students return for iners even if the community metrics are growing if our metrics aren't growing at the same kind of rate so um a lot a long way to go on this uh this is uh obviously nothing that anybody in the schools was trained to run uh Scott wazer on the district team has been spending the last uh several weeks getting learning about this being trained on it I I believe he had to go through a lab some a lab trading certificate that he had to go through and uh so he's been putting in a lot of hours uh understanding the possibilities and how we might do testing in the schools in the future all right so as we're all aware uh first semester if we go back was a Time full of changing guidelines and metrics I heard from many people that they felt like the goal posts were being moved and and that's exactly how I felt as the superintendent you know over the summer we received these guidelines we built a program we were we obviously went through all of the due diligence with the community and the board to get us to the point where we were ready to return at the beginning of the school year in a hybrid model and then the week before school started uh all of the guidelines from the Illinois Department of Public Health and the CDC and the DuPage County Health Department changed and that require that made us move to a fully remote model uh if you go back and look at those board meetings from at that time I I told everybody I believe that that would be the safest time of the year to have students in school based on what the community transmission was however we had to redesign our programming to meet these new guidelines things that were introduced that we never expected to be there especially around Transportation around nurses need nurses and custodians needing to receive be fitted and be trained in the use of n95 masks and any number of other criteria that were introduced just in the days before school started that caused us to move back to that fully remote model um then that guide those guidelines continued to change over the fall until at the beginning of October we did get to the point where ninth grade returned for a week as we tested out the the hybrid model at the same time as getting ninth graders back into the school because there was really no ninth grade orientation opportunity this year and that gave them a few days to get back and to find their way around the school and to experience uh the physical layout of being at school in person and learning we followed that the next week with uh seniors coming in for sat testing uh then our guidance continued to change and the metrics continued to then grow especially heading into Halloween and then after the Halloween uh weekend even within that we returned to two weeks of hybrid learning and added in to the uh the mix our own internal metrics and factors that we've been Guided by uh from the end of October uh through this week after Halloween we quickly passed that 8% positivity rate and the 100 per 100,000 cases now this number is going to come back a few times this evening as we talk about metrics but what happened at that 8% positivity is we moved into the range called substantial by the DuPage County Health Department that's we moved into there at October 19th around that time uh and then continued to grow deeper into that towards the end of October what happened internally was at the beginning of October even though numbers were growing we were still able to follow our safety protocols and one of the Key Safety protocols is following up in a timely fashion with people that are ill or have been exposed to somebody who is ill what we know from talking to um schools across the country you know as a superintendent I'm in meetings with superintendents in the area in the state and across the country uh as many people are aware Illinois's guidelines are different than those in other states and there's a lot that we can learn from those other states and I have and one of the key things is I talk to superintendant in Arizona or Iowa or Wisconsin or Indiana or you pick the state that has different guidelines than Illinois is that wearing masks and keeping people who are sick home are the two most important things that they point to as to how they are keeping their students safe and what's started to happen in District 99 as we got up to that 8% and we were running the second week of the hybrid is our nursing staff was hit the end of its capacity to be able to follow up with students that had covid or could possibly have covid or just were sick and we have all of the the protocols that we have to follow to make sure that they're not coming to school ill and we really felt internally that 8% number and the stress that it put on the nursing staff and our administrative team and everybody following up with students on illness so remember that 8% number because that's going to factor into what we do in the second semester then what happened is as we went deeper into November the metrics didn't improve and the trend continued to go down uh we continued to get worse metrics and eventually we moved all students remote As a result of it as everybody's familiar with r so if we go back to the guiding principles in that that website in the documentation that the CDC gives us uh they say what we all know everyone's goal is to prioritize the reopening of schools as safely and as quickly as possible and that has been our goal all along but in doing so we also have to make sure that when we bring students back to school that we are doing it in a way that it slows the spread of covid inside of the school and in the community as the CDC points out many times as and I pointed to those quotes at the beginning schools are not separate from their communities and the risk is lowest when Community transmission is low that's when those metrics are low that's when it's safe to bring students it's safer to bring students back together and if we're aiming for that green box of its unlikely to spread at school the higher the worse the metrics go the higher the numbers go um uh the less likely it is that we can hit that green box and bring students back to school bro and then uh you know I know that some of this information is very well known in the community that yes children are less likely to have severe symptoms than adults and that Co does present a lower risk to school- a children especially this is key especially in areas with low Community transmission as the community transmission Rises so do the risks for the entire Community but also for students we saw that as those transmission rates went up in uh went up in October and November it was also partnered with skyrocketing rates of Youth cases so uh they're all connected to one another and not separate from one another and I I've heard this from a few community members that student that kids don't spread covid and according to the CDC they do so I I just want to point this is the evidence that we're working from uh I've heard from a lot of folks in the community that want us to trust the CDC this is this is their guidance that we are following and that we are trusting Rod next slide then the CDC is also this is not off of that website but this is a CDC report that looked at uh what we've learned about Co amongst School AG children so this is a CDC report it's just on the CDC website not on the page I pointed to earlier and uh one of the key things that we need to recognize is that uh covid spreads much more rapidly amongst adolescence than it does of young children right teens spread it much quicker than kids do it makes sense I mean they're running together in more social environments they're commonly you know it's the age where we're giving them a little more freedom they're not around adults that are monitoring if they follow all the safety protocols they're being teenagers and uh many of them are working or on athletic teams or clubs or activities or those kinds of things it it totally makes sense that it's more likely to spread amongst big kids than little kids this is the exact reason why you will see many school districts and even Unit School Districts where they're K12 districts where the little kids will be back at school and the big kids will be learning remotely because we know that it's it's less likely that it spreads amongst the littles than the bigs we also know that uh it impacts our students of color uh much more vigorously and frequently and M in in a much worse way um and especially students with underlying conditions uh which is why we've built in fully remote models so people that feel like they are more risk or are are more at risk have opportunities to still learn from home that really builds a lot of the way that our instructional programming is so when uh you know we heard earlier that that people are concerned with 80 minute class periods but in order to build a a setting where students can participate in the in-person classroom and also be in a fully remote learning environment and not have to change their classroom their teacher uh their classmates and get pulled out and put into some separate section we need to be able to build a class period that's long enough that a teacher can work with both the in-person students and the remote students within that same time and space so I know 80 minutes can feel long um but we we believe that as we move into this next phase and hopefully uh our metrics continue to go down and we come back for semester that the 80 minutes will move much faster when there's this more of this Blended time in there we know it definitely will be much faster and crazier for our teachers managing uh that 80 minute space uh we know that we need to M you're going to see this in the metrics that we present later that we should be monitoring multiple indicators of covid uh and then layer in there our safety measures that we use with that so you're going to that's why you're going to see these these multiple metrics these multiple things that we're considering as well as all the safety procedures need to be in place um and this is a key thing that came out of the study that uh learning absolutely can be safe in communities where Community transmission is low but if Community transmission is high or on the rise if you reop schools or send students back to school then the community rates will also increase greater because you've opened the schools right you've returned to in-person learning with just you know when you talk to health officials they tell you it just makes sense when you have people returning to schools for in-person learning you're putting more people out of their homes and into the communities and mixing with one another and you know maybe stopping at a store they wouldn't have stopped at or or seeing somebody that they wouldn't have seen and if covid is very prevalent in your community and then you start mixing more people you're now moving to where it's likely to spread between people and drive up uh the incidence of covid in your community right some other things that we know about students and staff and the risks um children don't end up hospitalized as much they also don't die as frequently but they also are impacted by it we still don't know what the long-term Health impacts are of students that um can trct covid so you know obviously our responsibility is to make sure our students don't die but it's also our responsibility to make sure that our students don't get sick and don't face long-term repercussions from getting this with so little being known about what those repercussions are uh we also have to contextualize that about yes students are coming to school but so we're adults and we have you know over a thousand adults that work for us in in the district and uh as much as it is my responsibility to make sure students are here and learning and are safe and are taken care of and the whole child is taken care of I still have over a thousand adults that I'm responsible for and I'm responsible for those 5,000 students the Thousand adults and their families that they go home to every night I feel the weight of that in every decision I make so please know that I don't take any of this lightly or flippantly or um don't underestimate the impact that we have on all of those people every day with every decision that we make Ron okay as well as now when we get into returning to inperson instruction you know once again they point back to we need to make decisions about school reopening based on the available data on community transmission you'll see this coming back over over and over through the guidance that we can't make these decisions separate from looking at the level of transmission within our community but of course we also have to balance that against uh our students risk and well-being when they're learning fully remote right when they're not coming into school all of our safety blankets and measures and everything else throughout schools have been built around kids coming to school I believe the kids belong at school I've dedicated my life to that there is nothing that drives me crazier than having to tell kids that they can't come to school that's not what I built my career around but we still need to keep them safe when they're here and we have to factor all of those things in as you've heard from Gina earlier this evening and what you'll hear from tonight is we have put supports in for students while they are are learning remotely and we are factoring in students social emotional mental health we factoring in feeding students we've served tens of thousands of meals over the last nine months for children in this community um we're still providing special education services we're still supporting our kids and our families and if you as a student or you as a parent need more support and and you don't think we've given you enough yet you just have to let us know where we looking at a lot of factors to determine whether or not we believe a student needs help we look at grades and attendance and and their Trends over time but you mom or dad or you student you know quicker than we do if you need more help and all you have to do is ask for it and we're here to provide it for you whether we're in person or remote whether it's during times of covid or we're back to normal if you need more from us let us know and we're here to provide it for you right so here's what they say we need to do next okay we need to monitor the local data in our community and we're going to have a discussion in a little bit about what data in our community actually is uh we need to use this to determine whether School closure closures may be necessary we need to use our safety protocols to make sure kids are safe and staff are safe at school and we need to know what to do when somebody gets sick all of those things are in place right now and then what we need to do is establish and this is what we tried to do with the Illinois Department of Public Health and we did with the DuPage County Health Department we were talking to Illinois I was on the phone with District 86 and Senator Curran the week of the 4th of July with idph saying Illinois needs transparent criteria of when it is safe to be in school and when it's not we have been advocating for this since the beginning um ultimately it's to ended up on the the shoulders of local superintendents and school boards to make this criteria for better or worse you know we always cry for local control and now we have it um but what we need to do is provide transparent criteria for when we're going to suspend in-person learning and when we're going to return to in-person learning and tonight we're going to do our best to provide that transparent criteria to our community all right so back to this so as we look at metrics we're aiming for that green box so we have this instructional hybrid model right we have the model that we've outlined for the community where we're AB uh there's one passing period students are going to come in contact with other students in mix for about 15 minutes throughout the day at the beginning the middle and the end of their morning or afternoon there's a transportation possibility for students to intermingle with one another so in that instructional model when is it safe to bring students back at what rates of community transmission is it safe to bring students back and still hit that green box where it's unlikely to spread that's what we're doing so now we go back to the CDC and they talk through well you know if you're considering different instructional models here's what you can consider so if uh the lowest risk instructional model as we know is remote only right if everybody is at home it's really difficult to spread covid at school um now is the there's some risk if you're bringing students together in small very small groups we call those the cohorts right that's t99 that's our life skills classroom that's driver at behind the wheel it's any number of uh English Learners it's these small groups when they come in when you when you're bringing in students in those models it's the same group of kids in with the same teacher there's very little mixing of those groups of students so there's some risk to that but uh you know is you're still lower risk then medium risk would be our hybrid learning model what I've just described in the earlier part of this presentation there's some mixing of the groups throughout the day those are the the three different models that we're building in in our schools the reason why is once we hit that Medium risk once we're running our hybrid model here at South High we have between 1,400 and 1,600 people possibly in the school at a time for each one of those blocks of time so we can't move up into that higher risk model yet higher risk involves in-person only learning so all of our students are back in school um there might be some things still going on like math masks and uh contact tracing and those kinds of things but we're not there yet to get to that point we need to have a vaccine available or a treatment or we need some kind of a robust testing program those kinds of things would allow us to to start moving into school looking more like it did in the past okay but there's still going to be you know before we get back to preco school there's going to be this higher risk time where um whether it's testing or other protocols allow us to bring student all students back at the same time but it won't look necessarily like it did before and then eventually we'll end up at that highest risk one because covid will hopefully be leaving our community or will have left our community and then we're back to back to school like it was preco so the CDC gives us these thresholds that we're supposed to look at and consider this is where the metrics come in and point to us of when is it safe to run higher risk when is it safe to run highest risk those kinds of things so what we're going to look at uh Rod if you go to the next slide is uh the indicators for the higher risk this is when we're running our hybrid model so they give us some ranges here to Target and then it's up to us as experts to pick where in that range we should sit okay and we're supposed to consider our local conditions and and what we know about our environment to decide where in that range we're going to sit is it going to be on the low end the highend the middle um and then the highest risk of transmission would apply to groups like our cohorts and the the difference between higher risk and highest risk is really that mixing of groups in the higher risk in our hybrid model we have groups mixing on the bus during passing periods those kinds of things um in the highest risk we get into cohort so once students are here they're staying in their own small group so we're eliminating that mixing of group factor which allows us to run those cohort those smaller programs like t99 and life skills and those kinds of things um at a higher level of community transmission than where we can run our hybrid model in any of these models we need to make sure we're following the mitigation strategies all of those safety protocols so when we look at this if you remember I talked about 8% in our hybrid model earlier if we were going to base this on what only what we saw in first semester it would make sense to set the threshold for when we could return to school to be at 8% because once we hit 8% our nursing team and our administrative team couldn't keep up with the rate of illness in and out of our school and make sure that people were not returning to school while they were sick if you remember what I said what I've learned from school across the country don't have kids come to school sick don't have staff come to school sick that's the best way one of the best ways you can keep your school safe so once we start to pass that 8% threshold I can't guarantee that we can do that that we can follow up in a timely enough fa fashion to get there but I still want us to get a little higher than eight so what we're doing administratively is we're going you saw earlier we're adding additional staff to our nursing team so that we can get more into the middle of that range get up to 9% um and monitor it and see how it goes and make sure that we can keep up on that and get in the middle of the range rather on the low end of the range Rod if you go to the next slide all right so what we're aiming for in the higher Community transmission that's our hybrid 50% of the students are remote learning and 50% of the students are in person or up to right and then in the highest Community transmission level will'll have the cohorts going on t99 in their AB Model uh like they were in the first semester our life skills programs possibly English Learners drivers at behind the wheel a variety of those different settings but when we move beyond that highest level of community transmission we then we'll move back to a fully remote model hopefully we never go back there again in our community Community but if we do we will go back to the fully remote learning model R so here are the sa here are the indicators that we're going to use to determine if it's safe to return and this is what the CDC says to use one or both of the first core measures of community burden so they talk about Comm those measures are either the positivity rate which you saw there in the 8 to 10% before or the number of cases per 100,000 what we're looking at is the middle of that range for those two factors so if we are hitting one either one of those metrics then you we we've checked off the first box on safety then we add a third core indicator which I'll show you what that one is in a second and then we need to be able to follow all of the key mitigation strategies with Fidelity and you see those listed below those are all of our safety measures R the next slide so the metrics that we're looking at for second semester is a positivity rate below 9% that's the middle of the range it's also above what our threshold would have been based on what we could have handled with the rate of community illness remember that 8% in the first semester but we're going to push that up to the 9% by adding additional nursing staff uh or we could hit that 125 per 100,000 new cases now I I know that that right now sounds really unrealistic because we're in like the three or 400s I can't remember where we're at today uh for our 14-day rolling average um of cases but it's important to have both of those metrics there because I I see a world in the future where um maybe case numbers start to drop drastically as people get vaccinated and we start to get this under more control and we could be at a 100 cases per 100 th000 but we're doing uh rapid testing for individuals that we believe might be positive and the people that go and get the official testing probably know that they already have covid so it could be that there's you know a very small number of people going to get tested and they all know they're positive when they do it or likely know they're positive so there could be a low number of CA new cases in the community but a very high positivity rate because everybody who's getting tested probably has it so we need both of those factors in right now it looks like well the only way we're getting back is positivity rate somewhere down the road the only way we're getting back might be cases per 100,000 so that's why we're leaving both of them in there to be able to adapt to whatever the current situations are that indicate whether or not it's safe to be back um and that's going to be all of the data talk or all of the guidance talks about following Trends so we're going to do that rolling on the past 14 days so it's a 14-day rolling average so that metric has built into it Trend data we need to be able to follow all of the safety protocols when students are at school our second metric remember we need three our second metric is no ongoing outbreaks at school and I'll explain what an outbreak is in a little bit and as I keep going back to we need to be able to follow up on student staff illness and close contacts within a 24-hour period we need to make sure that those that are sick stay home the best thing that our students our families and our staff can do to help us out as we head back into second semester is if you're sick or don't feel well air on the side of staying home especially our students that don't feel well and can participate still in class remotely this is why this model is so important and we believe effective the 80-minute class perod s allow both the in-person and remote students to be in that same class period so if you are sick if a student is sick you need to stay home parents if your kids are sick keep them home but if they're feeling well enough get them on that call get them into that virtual classroom they're in the same class with their teachers and participate in class remotely that day and keep learning moving forward but keep them home so that we don't have the spread going on at school the less illness we have have at school the less we have to follow up on and it's more likely that we won't cross over that third metric because we won't we'll be able to keep keep up with the amount of illness in school and then finally adequate staff and students available is always a factor I know that that seems very nebulous you know that we'll be able to have enough students and staff but I'm going to go into detail in a little bit about what that looks like for our cohorts those small groups t99 life skills English Learners behind the wheel a variety of those different things because those are those cohorts built like we explained earlier the metrics move up a little bit so we move into that highest range and we get up to that 12% or 200 cases per 100,000 that's the first metric the other metrics remain the same we did feel that 12% um not right at first but as we stayed in 12% for multiple days and then multiple weeks we did start to see uh a combination of things happen we did start to see illness make its way into cohorts we did see uh the number of students that were close contacts from being in the community or staff that were sick or close contacts uh increase and then the number of students or staff that were able to come to school dropped and then we also saw a increase in the number of families that wanted to keep their students home as the metric started to move into the twel and 13 percents many families chose to keep kids home and then the number of students in those programs started to drop so small that what we were doing in that instructional model uh was very challenging and difficult and uh difficult to to continue and then we we finally reached a a a level of transmission in the school towards the end of November where we had to follow these safety protocols like not closing distance between other people uh at such a high level with such high fidelity that we didn't feel it was safe to continue to run these at school next slide Rod so once again those cohorts t99 drivers ad behind the wheel activities Athletics multi- needs all of those those small programs are what we're talking about in those cohorts the program schedules inst structional models with those because they're small groups might change over time and then some of them have outside factors that play into it like Athletics has ihsa that plays into to how this works or the governor's mitigation strategies or there's other factors outside that we have no control over that might also play into uh these programs and how they work uh out uh programs that are happening outplaced out outside of our school district uh Technology Center of DuPage our work program sassad other outplay students we are going to just keep an eye on what they're doing at those locations and defer to to their decisions they know how things are working in their locations and what they're doing as long as they're keeping our kids safe we will defer to whatever their program is at that location and once again our connections and access programs will continue as long as we're in phase four as long as we don't go into a lockdown we'll keep that going so what do these metrics look like we use the Northwestern dashboard to pull this data this is an example of uh what the metrics look like as we pull them for the 14-day average so as of last Friday uh I believe that was 1211 uh if we look at all eight zip codes that we draw from you can see where the positivity rate was we're 049 away from hitting that threshold and returning to in-person learning if you look at that metric over time for all eight of our ZIP codes you'll see that Trend that we've talked about all night where we were in very low numbers in the fall as we were redesigning our instructional model and then Halloween hits around that orange line and we see the the DraStic increase and especially the increase amongst youth cases is driving that and then everybody expected after Thanksgiving you saw we started to drop just a little before Thanksgiving and everybody was like oh here it comes you know here comes the next Thanksgiving bump like after Halloween and that did not for whatever reason come so um I've got to believe that uh especially within our community we're not seeing a post Thanksgiving bump so that says to me that our community is following safety protocols did what they were supposed to over the Thanksgiving holiday and I hope that we'll continue doing that in the coming weeks so that we can return after winter break okay so uh as we've release this and even in advance of this a question that has been raised that's a very valid question amongst our community amongst our staff uh we've been asking it on the administrative side is what is a transparent metric that represents our community accurately you know we floated to begin with the eight zip codes that we draw from and that's that's kind of an easy way to do it when I think about transparency there's obviously the access to the data and being a for anybody able to find it access it to validate that its accuracy uh all factor into the word transparency so let's talk about some different options here I'm going to have a recommendation that we change a little bit based on what we floated out to the public last Friday here in a little bit and uh an opportunity for the board uh to weigh in if they would like for us to consider something different than that so on Friday we Flo the idea of all eight zip codes and when you look at the CDC they talk about well you know you need to look at your larger Community to draw your metrics from and uh you know all eight zip codes represent present all of the communities that our students come from it's very accessible to get that data that that helps in the transparency you just type in the eight zip codes and you can see all of the data you need to see uh it allows the community to easily see Trends because when you type in those eight zip codes you graphs like the one I just showed you underneath it that show you that data trending over months uh periods of time it's also the largest sample of residents to draw from however the dis advantage to this is that it could skew data towards communities with fewer District 99 students in it um so if you take a look at this table you can see uh here is the number of students in the district by ZIP code and we have a few that start to become problematic especially that first one Bowling Brook where uh 60440 we have 94 students in the district that draw from that attendance area uh you know if if we were going to say literally that's the community they come from that's their zip code that zip code represents 52,2 46 residents um so for every student in our building that student is representing 556 residents where our Downers Grove students are representing you know between 20 and 30 residents uh for each student that's in in the building um so although it does draw from the largest community it does skew where students that are coming when we have a smaller number of students coming from a large community like Bowling Brook there could be you know there's a statistical bias in the data that's being introduced there so option one would be to keep this model in there it's the the long largest community that we would draw from it represents every student's Community Based on zip code but the question is does it actually accurately represent present The District 99 Community another way to look at this Rod if you go to the next one oh and this is once again this was yesterday's data for those eight zip codes okay so that's what it would look like when we pull it another way to look at it would be all eight zip codes and we would wait it by that attendance area based on the number of students that draw from those attendance areas so still we would represent it still represents every Community our students live in but we would base the metrics off of actual enrollment um there is ease of access in this data but it all needs to be there's a lot of huge disadvantages in doing this you're going to see this in the next diagram in a second but it's there's no website you could just go to and type in the zip codes and get this data I mean you can pull it easily but then you have to manipulate and calculate it um and just because these are the zip codes we're drawing from this isn't necessarily the demographics we draw from each day right because we're GNA have some students that choose fully remote um so to truly wait it you'd have to wait it by the students that were choosing in-person learning which is a whole another metric to introduce so you start introducing complexity into the variables and to me with the more complexity you introduce the less transparent the metric becomes uh it becomes difficult to map Trends because there's no website that'll do this for you you have to actually track the metrics on a day byday basis and we would have to build the graphs for the community and it would be very hard for the community to double check our work and our math but this is what it would look like if we did it next slide Rod so you can see here where you take the percentage of students you multiply it past the positivity rate you would also do it for the cases per 100 you would end up with a weighted number you add all of that together and you come up with a positivity rate or the cases per 100 for the community on a weighted Factor if we were going to use option two which staticians might really like Rod don't move on yet if we were going to use this one um you know I think there's a lot of stats people that would really like this model but it's a pretty heavy lift to maintain it and it's really hard for people to I think believe in the numbers because there's just so much crunching of the numbers every day and the only over time the only way that people would be able to validate those numbers would be to look get our math not to go to an independent website and check our work now the next one around option three was raised to me by several community members which would be to just take Downers Grove and Woodridge those are our three largest communities and only look at their metrics that uh represents the majority of our student body 81% of our students and it eliminates the over representation of communities with small enrollments the data is very accessible that helps with the transpar and it allows the community to see those Trends but in doing so it leaves out five of the eight communities that our students leave in and rem or live in and it removes uh 19% of the students from the the factors we're looking at so although this was raised as an option this is what it would look like when you pull those data just those three those three numbers or those three zip codes um uh it was raised to to to solve the problem of the smaller communities but we do end up leaving out a lot of student representation by doing that so finally the last option and spoiler alert this is the one that the administration is recommending is that we modify it and go to all of the zip codes with greater than 5% of the enrollment so that's five out of the eight communities uh that we draw from from the zip codes that we draw from and uh this will reduce the over representation of the communities with less enrollment it actually reflects [Music] 96% of all of our students so that that is really close to all of our students and we believe administratively more truly reflects uh the student body that's actually uh attending each day um this is also the 60% of our staff uh actually live with within the District 99 community and the great majority of our staff come from these five communities as well so this is a metric that's both reflective of a great of nearly all of our students and a great number of our staff so Rod this is what it would look like that's the 96% factor it's those five communities that we would draw from actually if you've been tracking the positivity rate current doesn't track much differently across all of those communities as we they're all within like three or point4 of each other um it's you know it's not an argument over picking the metrics that are best for us it's about picking the community sample that best reflects us and that's the the question here so um what we're recommending is option four we use the five of the eight communities that make up that represent 96% of our students uh one of the biggest benefits from this is It's been raised by many of our community members and even staff and even our own administrative team there is a challenge in including that Bowling Brook number just the size of that zip code with the low number of students that are actually attending school from Bowling Brook um creates a factor that could skew data in all different directions you know either lower our data inappropriately or raise our data in appropriately but it is kind of a a statistical outlier that we should probably eliminate from the the community data as we we pull it as well as we believe those other two zip codes so Rod if you could just throw us in gallery view for a second oh got a leftover slide there can you just throw us uh quickly in gallery view so at this point um we'll just take a break from from the presentation there I just want to know you know we're recommending after a hearty discussion on about this with the administrative team over the weekend and then this morning that we modify from what we first released of the eight zip codes to do the five of the eight um and just want to take a pause here since this is a a pivot from what we introduced last week to see if there's any board members that have concerns with moving on to option four or uh you know one of those other options sounded more attractive to you and we should consider that anybody all I need to say is that the only option I'm for is getting everybody back as fast as possible um this remote learning um we need to get to the hybrid model as fast as we can all right anybody else so I agree with you Rick um you know obviously my preference being a numbers geek is I prefer number two just because it seems to be statistically most accurate but I completely understand and agree that option four is a a great way to go um it provides a transparency that I think is really critical here um so like I said I I lean towards option two would be my personal favorite but I can be completely in support of option four based on the transparency yeah Dan I'm I like you you know I like crunching the numbers but I think it's important that people could crunch the numbers on their own so that's that's how we end up with uh that's how we as an administrative team ended up with FL truthfully I was I was favoring option three until you mentioned uh the staff component I mean uh uh you know in in truth the you know the 515 516 and 517 area codes probably most accurately reflect what's really going on for our students because even those students that live in uh Westmont Darian Bowling Brook what they're living right on the edge of those communities and and what's happening specifically where they are they're living is um you know is still just on the edge of our of these area codes right so uh but understanding that we have a lot of you know by including uh 559 and 5 61 as well uh uh it captures more of our staff uh that seems to make sense to me so I I I think I think four is the most simplest uh approach to this and something that the public can clearly understand and and probably wouldn't question much I like um option four of all the options but to be this is Nancy but to be honest uh uh one of uh I'm on another uh Committee in the community for my church and one of the other nurses I work with tracks this every week she actually tracks the incidents reports uh the numbers per 100,000 and we really do for DuPage uh because our church Community she looks at basically the same areas Downers Grove uh Woodridge and Darion and um Westmont and our numbers you know sometimes were a little bit higher than the rest of you page sometimes we're a little bit lower than the rest of you page but it kind of is that same Trend so you know I'm fine with number four yeah and uh interestingly you know in September and October that was really the case but over the last four to six weeks our community has been outperforming DuPage County um so you know it is it is good news that our community specifically seems to be doing their job in following the safety protocols and and slowing the spread in our community and and if we can keep that up then I you know I believe we go right back to what Rick said we want to get kids to school as quickly as possible our community should have the opportunity to do that by following their protocols and driving down the numbers in our community and then be rewarded for doing the right thing and get our kids back to school because it's safe to do that in the District 99 community and we're still going to take care of those kids who choose to do remote learning they will be taken care of yep so it it is a personal choice and let the families decide right but I still have to be in that box where it's unlikely to spread when kids come to school so I can only do that if we're hitting those metrics in a Range that that we feel our instructional programming does that the instructional programming that we are proposing for after winter break is far greater than what you know I said don't compare communities and I'm about to do that right so here's hypocritical Hank for a second but uh we are trying a very aggressive program here after winter break to run an AB daily schedule and get every kid to school you know every week so we need to make sure that those metrics are safe and allow us to take that aggressive approach you know this isn't a 1/8 model or a one quarter model this is 100% of the kids coming to school every day in two separate groups um so it's a pretty aggressive approach and and we need to make sure that it's safe to do that Rod if you could go back to the presentation thank you board for the the conversation the direction on that and I'm glad we're in agreement there I left a bad slide there Rod if we can move on all right so that first metric will draw from those two factors based on the five out of the eight zip codes that we draw from in our community um secondly we talked about no outbreaks this is another metric that's changed in the last six weeks um but it's now defined as five or more cases that are linked to a common location in a 14-day period so uh five cases there are confirmed positive cases that track back to the same location uh in 14 days that wouldn't include any offshoots of those connections so you know we have five kids in a classroom within a 14-day period they all test positive that's going to be considered an outbreak at a school those need to be five unique students that aren't also living like in the same household right so siblings wouldn't count you know or if they're living you know two twins that both have it they would count as one not as two okay so that's what those secondary cases are so it's got to be five uh single unique cases that are linked together so is what that hold on Rob don't go on yet what that does though introduce the possibility of is one school having an outbreak and needing to move remote while we let that building quarantine while the other school continues in person okay so there is a possibility in this model where an outbreak occurs at one school and it needs to move remote while the other school continues in person um so realize that that's what that metric means okay next one rod as we've talked about being able to follow up in a 24-hour period and explain and follow those exclusionary protocols that goes back to being able to keep people that are sick at home and then finally following those mitigation strategies that's our safety strategies we've been able to follow those with Fidelity at school okay so this last one that was hanging out there I know that this one seemed nebulous but there's two ways that we could also end up needing to move fully remote if we have too many student absences due to anything it could be the flu it could be measles it could be covid the health department can make a recommendation that we take an Adaptive pause at one or both schools and send everybody home and until the rate of illness amongst our student body drops okay so that's what it means for availability of students uh if we just start to have too much illness in our school we're going to have to take a break then also staff absences due to illness or quarantine could cause us to go back to a remote learning period this is especially true in certain areas of the building and it starts with our nursing department if uh all of a sudden illness spreads across our nursing department and we can't staff the health professionals within our school we will have to move remote until we can restaff that department it is critical that we have the health experts here within our walls to keep everybody safe so you know if we had illness spread amongst that team we could have to move remote same thing with our uh CMG Department if we can't clean the building our our custodial maintenance group we can't keep the building safe and clean that could cause for us to have to take one day or or whatever while we turn turn around a new team to get a building clean or you know we'll have to see how that goes bus drivers if we don't have Administration here to monitor the building and and to make sure everything's running and to make sure all of this stuff is working if we can't get enough subs or if we have major outbreaks of illness amongst any of our employee groups where we couldn't staff the building safe y or appropriately that could lead to us uh lead to a pause in some way hold on Rod skipped uh or I want to make a point here we are in no way challenged by our teacher unions or our support staff Union or any of our employee groups that is preventing Us in any way from returning to school uh we are adequately staffed um we are able to run school the only thing preventing us from returning is our rate of illness in our community due to community metrics so I I know that you know this is different in different communities across Illinois and across the country and how different bargaining units and different communities are responding to it but I want to make it very clear that neither our teachers union or our support staff Association in any way is preventing us from returning to school all right Rob go ahead so once again we're aiming for that green box everything that I presented tonight is a pathway back to that green box and a pathway back to school if we're hitting these metrics on January 1 that's when we'll next look at the metrics if we are under 9% in our community we will be returning that next week to school so we need our community to do everything they can to follow the safety protocols to limit the mixing of groups if you're going to mix go out into the public wear your mask keep your distance wash your hands do all of those things that we've been talking about for months you're doing a great job right now you're outpacing uh the community or or you're outpacing the county you're outpacing the state let's just keep going in the right direction in our community hit that 9% and get back to school to start second semester um Sam uh the fourth method of matri uh yeah those metrics will go into effect starting now so we'll start tracking that 14-day number and if on January 1 that 14-day rolling average of the positivity rate or cases per 100,000 is under the threshold of 9% or 125 for 100,000 we will return back to school for this new model on Tuesday January 5th but Hank what are you calling our community what's your definition of our community five out of the eight zip codes that represents 96% of our student body all right and then on that day group a will come in for periods 1 and 3 in the morning group b will be in for periods 5 and 7even in the afternoon and we'll start rolling and we'll be back in this new model for the second semester for as long as it's safe to do that and uh we will follow these metrics that we've introduced and these will be our guidelines and our thresholds for moving forward um the only things that could really greatly change that would be obviously widespread vaccination widespread testing or some miracle cure or treatment that could cause us to re-evaluate this but we have also heard from everybody that people need some consistency and uh need something to to get used to here so that's why we're going to we're going to keep it this way through the third quarter and re-evaluate heading back into the fourth quarter I think at this point Rod uh it's just any questions that we have amongst board members uh this is Nancy and um a very thorough presentation thank you could you speak a little bit I I know you talked about the teachers union and we've always had a good working relationship with our teachers could you speak a little bit just to um any input the teacher any any kind of comments you've heard from the our teaching uh professionals about the plan or specifically the schedule because I'm sure they've raised some you know you're always GNA have people who are for or people who are against but I'd be interested to know what their involvement was in the in the development of this of this schema and how we're support them going forward so there's two formal ways one is uh obviously through our DT our district leadership team which is made up of our Administration our department chairs and our department chairs are teachers and members of the teachers union so we lean on that group of teachers heavily as we build things but we also have a teacher feedback group um that we uh we run all of this information past and get their feedback plus we listen to the teacher feedback uh in the surveys that we built um and uh we also uh this time we earlier than we had in the past shared this with the the teacher the dgea um boy Allison is here and I'm Gonna Have Allison good timing Allison is here representing the DGA tonight uh what is your leadership uh team called Allison uh the DGA executive board executive board so so one of the changes we made heading into this round was we started sharing information with the DGA executive board earlier than we were in the past because we had more time to plan than we did in the other Cycles around um Alison I'm actually going to since you're here and the question came up uh Al the DGA asked this evening for the opportunity to address the board uh very typically when a bargaining unit asks to address the board in a in a board meeting we allow them to do that so Allison since you came up now why don't we just uh uh hear from the DGA now at this point sure thank you um my name is Alison ply just for those that don't know me I'm on the exec board I'm also a math teacher at North and um I just wanted to share the following statement um the DGA is here tonight to support Dr thely and the board of education's use of the CDC metrics to make decisions for second semester we feel that the use of these numbers allows students families and our members to have clear guidelines we are appreciative of the time thought and consideration that have been put into these very difficult Decisions by Dr thy and the Board of Education thank you thank you Alison so Nancy since you asked I figured it'd be just best to hear from Allison right there so uh thank you to Allison and the DGA uh the SSA support staff organization has uh mirrored the similar thoughts in our conversations with them as well Hank um I'd like to talk about the uh 9% number in the um less than 125 per 100K number um I'm concerned about having a hard line drawn in the sand i' i' I'd rather I'd rather see um a discretionary Zone um for instance to and I particularly I I see a you know you see where the where we are at right now on that positivity rate I'd hate to be in a situation where you know we keep bouncing back and forth between uh 8.9 and 9.2 or or you know we're at 122 per 100,000 the next week we're at 130 or something and and it would seem to me that it would make sense to have a you know basically just to say hey at between maybe between somewhere between the upper eights and you know up to 10 or something based on how our nursing staff our staff in general is able to keep up with uh uh tracing and and um things of that nature that you might you might say hey just don't so that people don't just automatically go oh I see where're at 9.1 that means we're we're definitely um going remote in which case but in fact maybe maybe that's that's not what we need to do at that time and i' I'd rather have there some sort of a some sort of a a caution discretionary Zone that um that you would make a call one way or another and I know you're every Monday you're going to be doing an update so but that's a fair point um that discretionary zone is 8 to nine right uh eventually whether it's eight nine 10 10.5 there's going to be a number somewhere where you're going to say this is where it's no longer safe we felt that number before at eight based on where we're at here we're moving that to nine based you know because we're going to have additional Health Care staff and we feel we can keep people safe at that um yes there is a chance that we hit and bounce between low eights upper not whatever that is but somewhere we've got to draw a line and we're drawing that line based on it's the middle of the CDC uh guidelines you like we're right in the middle of that and it's based on our experience from first semester of where we were tracking the amount of illness in our schools um so we feel that those things together point to a fair number at nine is there any way we could have a discussion as a board before that decision was made call an emergency meeting and we get together and we could all vote on this well up to this point the board has not requested a meeting for that last time the board took a vote was in August and they gave the administration the authorization to make those kinds of decisions but I guess I thought I at that time I thought we would be more in-person learning than what we ended up becoming this sem so did I rick but the unfortunately the the spread of covid has been too great in our community um you know I I always thought that we would be in for for more than we were but that's just not how the spread of illness has played out in Illinois or in our specific Community this provides is a pathway back to that it's based on the science it's based on our experience because that would allow Mike then to have his decision whether he wanted to go at 9% or 9.1 or 8.5 also are you concerned it's too high Mar Rick no I'm just saying before we shut everything down bring it to the board and let the board vote yeah I'm I'm saying that that over you know just as everything is changed in our past you know these past several months and everything's evolved so much that it just would make sense to me to say you know that this is what we're looking at right now but in fact there could be a week where you know we we pop up over the over the line just to Tad but in looking forward uh all the projections have us dropping Back Down Under the line I I just I would just I would just like to see a little discretion excise versus their Being Mike and Rick though what plays into this is that it's not just a day-to-day number it's a 14-day so you're not going to just Spike or drop because you're going to slowly move One Direction or the other because it's that rolling Trend number that's built in well if we if we start to see an uptrend and we're going to be pushing that limit why can't we have a meeting as a board and decide hey if we do break this threshold then we all are in agreement whether it's four to three or 7 to zero okay can I can I interject something I thought that all along with this number it is on a um a week or a two- week basis so it won't happen uh here today gone tomorrow here today gone tomorrow kind of thing you you kind of let it have an average for like a week or two weeks and then you make a decision that was my understanding from the GetGo we have a discussion before we make the decision Terry that's what the 14-day rolling average does is it doesn't allow quick Spike or quick drop it allows you to average out over time and show you the trend that you're direct you're going in which is why we've selected that number it's why the CDC tells you to use that number right and then and then you you um decide you know hey for the last week we've been going up we need to we need to slow down a little bit or it's going down let's let's see how this trend goes we may have to to add more classroom time you know what I'm saying right yeah if we if the drop drastically it's going to be and and we get co under control in our communities yeah we definitely need to discuss do we need to change our programming now to allow for more inperson instruction because it's much safer you know that getting into that green box you can change your instructional programming and stay in that green box oh absolutely absolutely and I don't think you know us having a meeting every time it changes is g to um help you Hank I think I think we need to have an input as to when it everything gets shut down as a board I think that decision needs to be discussed between all of us so Rick this is this is my question I don't quite do you mean you want to have more discussion about these numbers as they stand today as for when things would be shut down or if we reach that number and the determinate and we would shut down you want to have it an emercy I'm much more in agreement with Mike as we start to approach that 9% before Hank pulls the trigger I think the School Board needs to meet and we need to discuss this as a majority rule well then you need to make a motion and pass a resolution to take away that granted the administration we gave that to to Hank to to Monitor and I'm not very happy with the first semester's outcome well and I think now what Mike Mike's I don't want to line drawn into sand like Mike said maybe we can maybe 9.1 would work for a week is it possible though instead of potentially having a meeting every time to put some parameters around it as a board uh for a discussion does that work as a well that's what that's what tonight is is the introduction of the that but I'm talking about the balance of what Mike and Rick are talking about if we further you still get Authority but we have some more parameters that we can discuss as a board within that Authority well I thought I thought that's what we had done earlier um you know a few months ago I thought we we gave them Direction I I think so but it sounds like there think it's changed I think going forward we need to have a little bit more control so let wait wait chelle's got excuse me excuse me chelle's got the floor Charelle finish your thought please I was just saying I do agree with Terry but I guess the request is some adjustments that's all I'm saying around the par based on things being changed from you know what we had expected which you know which is hard to expect anything based on lack of control of the virus that's all okay and so then Rick your point was followup point my follow-up point was I agree with Mike before I think before everything gets shut down and goes back in remote we need to meet as a board and say hey we all believe the metrics are trending in this direction and maybe it maybe it's 70 and maybe it's four to three where three of us say hey keep the school open and maybe four say no I think we should shut everything down I'm not advocating for us to have that vote Rick what I am advocating for is that the N that the number not be a hard line drawn in the sand that the the idea here is that uh Hank is in in in our staff here has come up with uh metrics based on our experience during the hybrid model in the first semester that indicated that somewhere around 9% somewhere around 125 uh or less per 100K was a point at which it becomes uh we can't it becomes uh impossible for us to uh follow all those safety protocols that that make it safer for our kids to be in school and our staff to be there as well and what I'm suggesting is that that it wasn't it's not the 9% number or the 125 per 100K number that really matters it's it's our ability to actually keep things safer that really matters and what I'm suggesting is simply that there be some sort of a thoughtful uh evaluation in the time you know we we get further into January we get further into February maybe we get to a point where hey actually when we're at 10 or 11% um as Hank was saying uh that that when we have people that those are the people that are getting tested are the ones that know that they probably have it and and that positivity rate is going Sky ey but in fact you know uh and and maybe that you know I'm just saying that these numbers um are here for a reason and I like them as guideposts but I'd like to see some discretion used in in evaluating versus just going automatically boom we've crossed % we're going fully remote that's I to I totally agree with you and I think we as a board need to have that discussion yeah a couple of points to what you said Mike administratively one is the board and the community going to be supportive if I hit 7% and I tell you yeah we're at seven but I I don't feel like I can keep the school safe at seven I'm gonna have hear people screaming that we're not at at nine or 10 like we introduced he I think this board has actually demon rated that that we would I mean I mean we we we we're trusting you um and uh following your guidance and so that's I mean that's that's the um you know that's the the power that we've we've we've given to you um to you know to make these calls and so uh I I certainly I'm not questioning your 9% number am I I'm not I mean that's the you say that's the number I get it that's the number based on our experience so far but as we go forward and we get more experience um I just I I think that these are things that would constantly be be looked at and they're not a a hard line forever uh and I like for you to have the discretion you know to to to not to say Hey listen I know we're at 9% but based on what we're doing how we're handling things I think we're still good we're not going to go to remote or to say Hey listen that 9% was too aggressive we're having trouble right now SE it's 7% or it's 8% I would absolutely back you on that um I'm I'm I'm but I'm looking for what I'm what I'm trying to avoid is for the public to be looking at these is is hard lines that automatically mean that this is what we're doing before they've had a chance to hear from you on Monday um and because these are numbers that people can get on their own we're we're adopting the you know we're adopting it in a way that people can get this on their own so uh I I I just I I I think you need to have some discretion I think there needs to be this sort of Zone you're saying it's 8 to 8 to %.

look at the is beautiful yeah it really does look nice yes they done a good job it looks bigger you know it is got it I'm ready all right well welcome everyone um we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order and if you would please rise and we will say the Pledge I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible withy and justice for all thank you we were just commenting on how beautiful the room is it has just been um what seems like more than I I more than redone it's had new fabrics and it just looks fabulous so please um let South the staff itself South know thank you for letting us come and see their new Auditorium we will move on now to celebrating Oreos our favorite um activity of the whole month and I'm going to turn it over to Dr wendam thank you Mrs angelart members of the board we're really excited to recognize uh two individuals uh from Avon High School and we will start with Mr Matt Hines so Matt if you'd like to work your way up here uh Mr Hines was recognized by the Indiana Association of School principles as the district 8 High School assistant principal of the year just to give a little context there are 12 districts that make up Indiana and District District 8 represents the west central part of the state and is made up of nine counties and Mr Hines was selected uh from that District uh Mr Hines began his career as a math teacher and then became an assistant principal at Western Middle School in Frankfurt high school before coming to Avon in 2018 he has focused heavily on building collaborative teams and promoting a positive culture at Avon High School and Mr shley has shared uh that Matt is a of ideas and action with a laser focus on creating a school culture that inspires students and staff to be the best that they can be so particularly with all of the CH challenges that we uh have faced in a very unconventional school year uh Matt's leadership at the high school and and really within our district has been Monumental and it's just great to see him recognized uh within such a competitive group uh to be the district 8 assistant principal of the year [Applause] well we would like to you letter and have our picture congratulations so um probably have you stand here I'll give this to you and still I want to there we go there we go yeah that's good congratulations we appreciate you so stand out here then Matt you stand in the middle in the middle okay where's the middle the middle of the you just stand and we will and we will yeah there we go aome perfect that's perfect right there congratulations that was such a fun night to me would you like to introduce your family with here too yes absolutely we do on microphone sure yeah so my wife uh Kristen is here and my oldest daughter Addison and then my youngest daughter Emma are all here so thank you I just want to say thank you uh to to uh the school board for for recognizing um this award and accomplishment for me this has been awesome uh to to have and I appreciate an uh coming to the banquet and Scott and Terry um being there and it was really awesome to be there with uh Matt and uh his family as well so I appreciate uh everything and um thanks to my family uh they sacrifice a lot to allow me to be a part of uh this school corporation and work really hard to to help serve our students so uh thank you to all to you and really appreciate you Matt um taking a chance on me a couple years ago and uh feel like uh super grateful to have you and and ultimately work on the team that we have at the high school because uh I feel very blessed to have a fantastic staff uh and administrative team and and a great group of students so thank you you Jason I'm probably going to need your help at some point clearly clearly not doing this right sure so the next recognition that we would like to do is for uh Mr Matt shakley principal of Avon High School and uh we are so fortunate to have Mr shockley's leadership in this community and at the high school and I will not uh State everything that I know Mrs anglehart is going to read in the comments ation uh but I will say uh Matt was selected as the district 8 High School principal of the year as well but then he was also selected to represent or to be awarded the state level recognition as the high school principal of the year so we are so proud of Matt and uh in addition to everything that Mrs anglehart is going to read no school has been impacted to the level that Avon High School has this year and that's leadership and his steadfast calming presence in leading over 3,000 students and uh almost 200 staff through a very challenging year cannot be overstated so I am so thankful for Matt's leadership and the way that he leads our uh high school and I will pass it over to Mrs anglehart to to uh read the Commendation well it is my honor and privileged to read this resolution of commendation the Avon Community School Corporation Board of school trustees would like to congratulate Matthew a shley with passage of the following resolution whereas Matthew a shley was named the 2020 Indiana Association of School principles High School principal of the Year whereas Matthew a shakley is the only principal in Indiana to have received this honor Twice first in 2009 as principal of Cent Gro High School where Matthew a shakley has been the Principal of Avon High School school for seven years whereas B shley has been named the 2019 Indiana music Education Association outstanding administrator of the Year whereas Matthew B shley has established the Junior Day of caring jobs for America graduates program and work-based learning program whereas Matthew B shley has demonstrated excellent work ethic determination and commitment whereas Matthew a shley earned the respect of the entire School Community for his high standards and expectation whereas the highest level of Distinction given by the Avon Community School Corporation is commodation for the from the board of school trustee therefore let it be resolved Matthew a shley is thereby commended for his success and achievement and I'll entertain a motion Board second motion by Greg second by Kim is there any discussion all high five fin congratulations sooud there go congratulations conations sir congratulations perfect right thank con just to uh follow up with what Matt said um I am in the middle of my e8th year and uh I'll be forever grateful to the board Dr hornman and continued support of Dr Windam and the administration here uh in Avon uh when I first came uh this has been uh just uh the best uh place I could be uh at this time in my career and I know it's been a great thing for my family uh having a daughter graduate from Avon High School and my son here in May doing the same uh just could not be more grateful uh to be in this community serving in this community uh with Avon schools it's been uh just the the best part of my career no doubt about it and uh as I said I I've said this in in a couple of news things I know that people have reached out to me about is that there is no way that I could be getting this award without others around me i' I've got a wonderful administrative team uh teaching staff secretarial staff uh it's truly what we've been able to do together to get to where we're at and uh I am grateful for them because with without them I I I would not be getting any honor like this so very humbled and grateful uh for the support of the Avon Community and the Aon Community School Corporation so thank you very much and thank you to my wife I do need to do that yes my wife huge thank you huge thank you board members would you like to share any thoughts uh well I'll I'll start um you know m there are um I I have often said to my Indiana Schoolboard Association Compadres we have the best um principal in the state of Indiana and I've repeated it over and over again and this year it's true so uh I think it just took a while for that to catch up with the reality that um you really do exemplify the very best in teaching and learning in the state of Indiana um and a lot of accolades could go to us as a board and to central office ad administrative team but uh the true measure I think of the um effect of a leader is to see what those subordinate to that leader how they react um there have been few things that have touched me as much as the day after you were awarded this you taking that long stroll down the middle of your school with every single teacher and administrator substitute teacher uh bus driver lunch l everyone um standing up and cheering you is just an example of true servant leadership um and I appreciate that U more than you'll ever know because it is through acts like that that you not only teach students um the way to be great citizens but you teach um our adults that work um that have the honor to work in your organization to be the same congratulations on a very very Welles daughter I too would like to add my congratulations I'm going to start with Mr uh shley and it's quite the honor for being named the principal High School principal of the year for 2020 congratulations there uh what an honor for you Mr shley and the Avon High School also um another congratulations goes to Mr Hind for being named the state assistant principal District 8 for 2020 uh it looks like these two administrators are work quite well together uh and they make a winning team because they both won awards now and they've got Avon going so they're a winning team there I know that principes are always busy with their duties when I attend um outside the school functions I see often them all the time there at different things uh I know it's been busy even more busier this year 2020 I admire that you two administrators for a job well done congratulations so I'll um Echo what my peers have said I think to both of you gentlemen first of all thank you first I always want to start by thank you for bringing your talents to our town as a parent before I got on the school board uh I always knew all along the way that I trusted the building administrators that I gave my to and that so I knew Avon had Strong building administrators in all of our buildings and I still believe that very firmly um as I got on the board and get visibility to more I actually see all of the extra things you're doing the superum things you're doing the um culture you're trying to instill the way you're trying to bring groups with different opinions together to have be pulling the rope in the same direction to lead that High School even when there are differing opinions at the beginning of the day and those extra things you've had to do especially this year which is probably I would guess both of you would say one of the more challenging years of your careers to shine in that environment um you know congratulations and and again just thank you so much for doing that without our kids thank you to both M and congratulations uh you have time to set more records and that's it's an honor I think to have two at the same school so congratulations well only thing I want to add is um Mr Hines you have really come here in a short time left an impact and I just really um I just really want to point that out that that is the heart of a true leader a true um follower in in a healthy in a healthy thought and um I just want to say thank you for that um coming here and just jumping in and obviously making such an impact and I'm just really excited about your future I just think you have you know the sky limit for you and I'm really excited for you and um thank you for coming here and taking a chance on us I mean you don't always know right so thank you and thank you for sharing your family and thank you for family sharing your your husband because it the family of of assistant principal it can be really daunting and I'm so thank you for that um Mr shley I'm just was not surprised and I'm just so proud of you I'm so proud of really when Maggie first told me Harman first told me who she wanted to hire and I just thought oh my word we have landed on the moon and um you have more than proven that really we landed on the Mars and um but um but thank you so much for taking a chance on us thank you for coming here thank you for um just giving your very best every day to our to our students but also to our community and you know what we left off of there was the was the lifp up I mean my goodness he's a star but um and um thank you Mrs shley for um for the daunting task of being the principal's wife and I know it can be very challenging and this year especially has been very challenging and there's been a lot of critics and that's okay that's leadership there's times in leadership that we have that and um thank you for being at a side all right well we're going to move on to our presentation um with um can't remember if we start with boundaries or with boundary presentation thank you [Applause] you C it okay good evening uh members of the board thank you for allowing us to uh present to you kind of our final wrapup of our boundary adjustment process tonight we would just like to explain a little bit about the feedback that we've received kind of where it's come from and and give some input we did give you a uh a packet recently but we'll go ahead and summarize that publicly for you also and uh I I asked Dr L to help me tonight so I'll turn this over and let him do a few slides and then I'll jump back in thank you drun um members of the board thank you Dr wendam um first we have uh a few goals uh this evening for an overview we will review how uh the community feedback was received we want to touch base and review each map uh again and then we'll revisit sces demographic background breakdowns and then give a short recap and feedback based off of the survey that uh we sent to the community so just a to touch Bas take us back a little bit um from Community feedback standpoint we had um two evenings where we had Community forums uh on November 12th and 19th really want to give a special shout out to all the members of the board that were able to attend uh Transportation was well represented with Teresa Clark and Keith hon and really uh our principls were able to attend as well to to just answer questions for anybody that uh had wanted to discuss what the plans were looking like um we did have they weren't well attended certainly uh for good reason uh with the pandemic but uh we did have U parents attend as great questions they varied from you know just trying to figure out what school their child would attend uh you know I had uh a conversation with parent she just wanted to be able to share with her daughter which friends were going to be in which model so just parents seeking good information and it's always our practice to make sure that we want to give those parents an opportunity and a form to to ask questions and share thoughts we then um shifted in really knowing that the uh environment that we're in and that um it would be challenging for parents to attend the community forums really um promoted our survey uh it was sent out to all elementary families uh we did have 344 responses and as Dr T mentioned those are in um your uh board packet this evening um again that survey provided a means to leave thoughts on each map so every single model we had gave parents an opportunity to provide feedback and that gave us good information that we needed to take our next steps so this was kind of a breakdown of um who responded um River Birch had a lot of responses uh because they could be impacted significantly by a couple of the MS so that's not surprising you can also see Sycamore same thing they could also be impacted by several of the maps and then this just gives a breakdown by the grade fourth grade had the fewest responses but those children are moving on to the intermediate so it doesn't impact them nearly as much but this just gives you a snap shot on uh who responded by what grade so just another piece of information for us and then we will turn it back over to drun to go over um this is what you're seeing now the current map but then we'll go over the details of each map and the survey results as Dr L said this is our current map uh you can see the current configurations it was designed about 10 years ago and we have just unfortunately outgrown that map and with updating our buildings and things we're in a position now to uh begin to to look at our boundaries once again so we will start with the southern two options first uh we labeled those uh 1B and 2B for South and the distinctions would be white oak uh all the white oak children that are south of us36 will go to pine tree and in this particular model 1B um the biggest difference is that Glenfield will now go to Hickory and Glenfield is a small subdivision um just kind of by the roundabout there just south of the high school or yeah so recapping briefly we shared this last month but of the two models this happens to be probably the best balance as far as free and reduced goes El is pretty similar and again our diversity looks as balanced as probably we could get it on the south side but looking at comments um both of the Southern boundaries a lot of people made the comment that they're very similar and they really are uh our committee found that um really the options presented uh just were very very similar and and allowed just simply the fact that trying to give uh Cedar the amount of room to grow as much as possible was one of the the objects so in this particular 1B map um it moves fewer kids um but it it probably moves the most of the two maps again probably 25 to 30 kids children uh it does allow for the more growth or the higher growth potential at Cedar uh SCS is slightly better in this one and a lot of people commented they like this one the best uh out of the responses uh negative comments were that um people do not like how far uh pine tree is from their home and that was more of a personal response and I will say in every map all five options on the positive and the negative there was always comments about my child either having to move schools or my child does not have to move schools so I'm not going to say that again but just note in every map there was a positive or A negative and it just depended on whether their child had to move in that particular map um moving on to the next map this is the one where Glenfield would stay at Cedar and the sces the one difference is hickory's free and reduced count goes down just slightly uh is probably the biggest difference in this particular model and as far as the summary goes uh there were 37 positive comments 29 that were kind of negative uh overall some people preferred this model uh and again it was because of keeping Glenfield with cedar where it started um negative comments pertain to SCS disparity is not quite as good as the other model again they're very very similar but not quite uh and again many people said it's looks about the same as the other map and it does we'll acknowledge that those are the two kind of Southern boundaries moving on to the north our First Option 1 a u is the one where maple kind of wraps around part of Sycamore and then a little shorter distance Sycamore would include uh Windbrook and Avon States up kind of in that upper corner uh this map uh interestingly enough had the most negative comments of all three of all five of our Maps I'll say that definitely all the most negative comments of any northern map but overall it actually had more negative comments but it did positive comments um but on the positive side someone noted several people noted there are some Transportation efficiencies that would be found in this model um the largest comment again was about children moving and then that was a positive that their child wouldn't move and then there were comments directly related to Windbrook moving to symore which was noted as a shorter distance for students in that area on the negative side uh demographics and the SC are not nearly as good um on this particular map which is up here right now and you can see it's got a bigger spread there's about a 10 point spread on free and reduced rate in this particular map which is probably the greatest of of all three Northern maps and uh other notes would be that this happened to move the most children which was kind of viewed as a negative and that was one of our goals was to move as few children as possible and then white oak students traveling to River birs was seen as a negative by many white oak families the second northern map 2A is the one where Maple extends kind of a long US 36 and then wraps up into the Oak Oak Bend area this map had um the most positive comments it had almost 2 to one positive comments over negative 198 positive comments to about 102 negative um clearly the strength of this map is the free and reduced count and and the demographic breakdown this is the most uh balanced of all three Maps if you will for the northern section uh responses from our survey were were just that that the sces and demographics are are most balanced and the most balanced of any of the three Northern Maps uh this one moves fewer students than the first map which was was noted several times about 20 times and some people felt it was the right amount of students to move if you have to move some kids they felt like having some of their friends go with them was seen as a positive but not too many uh White Oak students moving to Maple was viewed as a positive and uh Believe It or Not 32 different people rated this as the best map or the preferred map that they saw which was interesting because that wasn't asked but but they went ahead and left that in the comments in negative there were about I say 100 negative comments and one of the negative comments was that new sub divisions no longer go to Maple and if you think back to our current map where anytime a newer subdivision was built we kind of added that even though it was not necessarily in the maple area uh bus routes may be too long uh Windbrook is still a long way from River Birch for some people um Oak Bend residents said moving to Sycamore would make more sense or to stay at River Birch and one person noted that Sycamore has high eel demands and our final map is one that is kind of differentiated by Avon Avenue if you will uh Sycamore and Maple's boundaries kind of go right up to Avon Avenue which is a nice way to kind of differentiate it as well as Maple retaining some of those those uh areas that that we have given them as they've been built the demographics um not quite as good as as 2A but still really good and within our boundaries or within our parameters that we were looking at so it would be an acceptable map or a good map for us to use and then comments um it's good to know that there were more positive comments on this one there were 134 positive comments but there were 104 negative uh the single biggest response to this was uh again That Someone's Child didn't move and even though this was not as balanced as 2A it's significantly better than our current status as several people said um that our our SCS and disparity is is at least reasonable it moves the least overall amount of K kids which was a positive White Oak students still go to Maple uh those newer subdivisions stay at Maple and clean boundary lines people like clean boundary lines one of the problems with the very first map on the Northern side is people did not like how it was broken up they thought it would be a problem for transportation I said no no problem they can get kids from anywhere uh that's okay but people just did act like that negatives for 3A uh include the sces and ethnicity could be better addressed through 2A the distance for River bir children is still a long commute and some children from River bir are going to be relocated to camore Or Maple um and with that that's kind of The quick summary if you will of the positive and negative comments that we've received mostly through the surveys a few of those would have been through our feedback from our our public open forums but we'd like to say thank you to the members of our committee uh thank you to Transportation especially Teresa and Keith They they've been at everything we've been at we appreciate all your work um Dr wendham and his support and then our curriculum team Vicky Ling Jason's helped quite a bit even though he's not on the curriculum team uh Brianna moss and and Barb marot and then also Stephanie for continuously updating like my Powerpoints and different things and greatly appreciate with that finally what we'd like to say is uh as we wrap up the process uh we'd like to help begin your discussions I know you're about ready to kind of maybe discuss things uh from The District's point of view if you look at the southern boundaries we would like to say that any map that gives us the most room for Cedar to grow would be preferable um map and I don't want to say this is our choice but map 1B kind of helps get that in the right direction uh for Northern Maps either of the options 2A or 3A probably have the best overall combination of moving fewer kids along with kind of meeting some of those goals for SCS and demographics and with that we'll turn it over to to Mrs Englehart right well thank you thank you so much and thank you for the 11 member um group that came together and I know worked multiple times and for multiple hours and did it all with trying to be socially distant wear mask and thank you so much for a really a very effective um red Dix routine and um just really appreciate everything that you've done to help us get to this point um board members I'd like to go ahead and open up some discussion um why don't we start with the southern boundaries um where there's two maps and get your thoughts on those um two two maps of the Southern um part of the of the township um Dr trun you I caught that 2A and 3A were preferable by the study group that and did you say that 1B was also the one that um the group felt was most equitable I I would say 1B gives Cedar the most opportunity to continue to to have space to grow okay because it does move a small group of kids kind of out of the Glenfield area unfortunately but that does allow for more grow okay um well one thing that you know I realize that we have what might be called the natural barrier which is us36 um but it is bothersome to me as I just did the highs and lows on what I feel are the two most um sensitive Andor time intensive or resource intensive groups those being free and reduced in elll um it's scary to me that we have such disparity even in these models with a high of 42.9% at Pine Tree in two models a free and reduced and then a low really uh 19% points lower than that um at River Birch in one of the models um and I'm sure that there is that the team did as much as they could to create that Equity uh but that has been and I think I've said this before that's been a Hallmark of our um school board over the course of time is the belief that we do not want to create a situation of um those are the Hales and the have not schools or a feeling or Sensation that any of our schools is valued less than any of our other schools so I think it's important as we cruise through this information that we keep that in mind and that we as a school corporation despite the fact that there may be this natural boundary which which creates those highs and lows that it is important that we as a school corporation be able to devote the necessary resources to make sure that those schools that are not as Equitable as other schools get even more of a share of the resources in order to overcome that um you know I I definitely believe that um some of the things that you reflect in a survey are change related right that's why every single survey had I like it because my kid doesn't move I hate it because my kid moves on you know because what's in it for me is typically what everyone's lens is uh but certainly looking at an ad opting the model that best um um allows for teaching and learning in an equitable environment while creating less disruption um you know especially when our world has been upheaved in this pandemic I think to be able to minimize that disruption is um important um so you know having said that um I really did like like model 1B uh personally um as I reviewed those models I felt that um that it was a good model although I didn't really the team's work has been exemplary because I didn't really have one that I just discounted and said no that's outlandish that we do that I do think that obviously in elementary transportation is of utmost importance and what that travel time is um and we've been talking tangentially about that I think that that is an important consideration also and we did try to provide you with a kind of a snapshot of kind of the longest Transportation times across the district and then some average from larger districts or larger subdivisions around that Raceway area to give you some some perspective on and again there was a huge disparity in that you know I mean some of those total travel times were near an hour um where as others were total travel time of only 34 35 minutes so I mean it is what it is and when you get to those outer edges uh priest will tell you it gets difficult to get a short time because our schools are located where they're at Cally yes exactly right I had a comment on the 1B I like it too but there's a difference I thought a noticeable difference between the enrollment of Cedar having 665 how many students will that building actually hold and then I heard you say that there's room for it to grow yes that building will hold 700 is designed I guess it say to hold 732 okay River bir has shown that we can go a little over that but we don't like to do that if we can help it breathing room we can give them right now especially as the settlement that subis and and Open Homes and things now will the fairwoods go to Cedar also correct no fairwoods would in this in both models would go to Hickory Hickory okay okay and that was one of the big changes was kind of preparing for that that actually was Transportation kind of foresight to to to rec that one of the models in our group really like that idea okay all the other items there were well balanced uh I thought that was great but I just couldn't grasp the difference in the population are right behind High School okay used to be cedar or it's current okay okay I wanted too to ask um the people that work in transportation what are your feelings if you're would like to share what are your feelings on all this do you think it's all going to work or is there one you think would be better or do you have any insight on this we kind of looked at everything but like Dr said we can make anything work some of it will put the children on the bus a little longer and uh there could be a few more kids and adjustments there okay okay and we appreciate that you guys are all stars too but we we recognize the gymnastics you guys have to do to make this work so thank you um I have a bunch of thoughts I the travel time thing makes me lose sleep I mean I feel like I live in the middle of Montana when you're telling me that I have kids that have to ride the bus for 50 or 55 minutes to get to school but that's total time too in PR school right yeah but but you know and I and I from conversations we had around this parent nights I realized that a lot of that time is actually in their own subdivision spinning around picking up lots of kids so I it it would be a little bit of a culture shock and I recognize I've been in this District long enough to know that it's only been very recently when we weren't picking up kids at every house which I thought was insane that day I moved here um I I served the breakfast too and yeah exactly ballet service and so I I would really I think we're going to end up with a river birch model that still picks up in book and I I would just really encourage transportation and the administration to bring us a policy change where we do maybe two or three stops in that subdivision the parents got to you know the kids got to go a little bit longer under in the you know under their safety guidelines and things that we have to pay attention to there but anything we can do to get those buses spent less time in the subdivision to keep those kids off the bus I and I will say to to Transportation credit and Teresa can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe they added a bus route there this year to shorten some of those times and things to help with that uh very pause what you mentioned so you can't have good you always have to give something up I'm probably going to give have to give that up to go to get at peace with some of these but that that commute bothers me um when I went into this there one b and 1 a I was just thinking and I I learned and so thank you for this if you're going to move that one subdivision you need a really good reason so it sounds like we have a really good reason which is the preparing for Cedar growth I think it's really really important we roll out to those families we recognize that it's not ideal for you guys to mooving you're taking one for the team here and just be honest with them that we're asking them to take one for the team in order to not have to do this again in 3 years but so I think we have the reason but the way we roll that out to those families and that sub I think is really important um I wholly agree with everything Kim said about free reduced in English language Learners you're still going to end up with a 10 or 12 point difference no matter what between your highest and lowest in any of these models and that's a little bit disturbing but and I I will note when we did this 10 years ago it was I think a 12 or so Point difference between the high and low at the time those numbers were lower increasing but but about that same ball which is I I'll say probably for the record that consideration would be the primary consideration for me and then River Birch growth I think it's it's bursting at the seams right now we know that taking it down to six something I don't remember the exact number just under 600 so it's going to have without trailers it's going to have room to take on another 100 120ish so it just I guess based on what you all and Ann and some other people who are familiar with real estate and Anders County Indiana know that's going to last us a couple years CU that's the growth that I'm worried about I feel like like it's going to be that growth that's going to make us do this again whether that be in five or six or seven or 10 or 15 or 20 whenever the next time we do this again it's going to be River probably that puts us there so I just want to make sure I think everyone here kindly see Dr I think we would all agree with your your estimation right there or your your your opinion that that area it was really important to get it under 600 or about 600 which is hopefully where we'll end up at and uh with the thought that grow comes it could rise pretty quickly again the only other thing I common I want to make publicly we don't really have a whole bunch of the parents that F the survey here but I would take Kos to the parents they're you always have your outliers where you say where did that com come from but the the most of the comments I thought were pretty on point and showed that they value the same things we value and so that I I was impressed with the amount of people who who said you know this really does a good job of of balancing ours or this does a good job of moving and they're thinking about travel times and they're yes so it it it it was I just it made me feel really good about our community that that's a community that cares about the same the student athlet the student well-being and the the um you know the the diversity and all of that breath of the whole child that we talk about our our parents without saying whole child did that in most of their comments and so I just want publicly recognize that okay and about everything been asked but I did have one B for the South and 2 a for the north for mine I'm sorry I'm sorry you said 2A was your preferred and what was no one B for the the souy one for the 2 a for the 2 a for the north yeah so um something you've alluded to in our this conversation is growth we talk about it a lot and um I know that in the area that where Cedar um is districted there are some rather large Parcels that are being looked at pretty heavily for development and um I think one of them probably will impact Us in the next five years so I I agree that we need to give Cedar as much um room even if it's 25 students it's still a classroom and I I think it's important that we give them that space I I I I hate moving those students but I think it could potentially put us off a couple extra years by doing it now as opposed to sooner um and so I and I think that's kind of the um what I'm hearing and I would enter so let's go ahead and have the discussion for the second part so we can take take motions together let's um have a discussion um and I I think some of us alluded to it but let's talk about the northern um aspect the northern Maps the model 1A 2A and 3A um what I've heard from many of you what's so what's most important is both that balance of moving as minimal students as possible in the sces and I think given what these Maps provide I think that puts us really on more of a 2B or I'm sorry a three sorry two I get them mixed up the 2A and the 3A seems like that's probably in more in the ballpark that fits the criteria um and again I you know we talked about development I also was weighing which one gave um River Birch the least amount of students and they're virtually the same 584 and 590 so I was glad to see we see seems like that's as low as we're going to be able to get the river bur because that whole Northern flank that Northern corner of our Township is now receiving sewer it's probably more than you want to know but development always follows sewer so we know development is coming in that area in the next 5 10 years so um so I'm really interested in your thoughts of 2A and 3A probably more specifically is I see on there that it says white oak students to Maple is that all white oak students all that are north of us and all the South go to a pine tree right okay so it's just a two two divide okay that's just and I thought that was another aspect yes I saw that yes any thoughts on the 2A 3A well um you know River Birch has always been the the boundaries that span the entire breadth of the entire Township and you know the 2A and 3A model don't really change anything about that one thing I wanted to go back to on Transportation is it is a little troubling on two-way that um some of the comments were that there were the bus routes were too long on 2way but it's hard for me to know in context is that really with regard to um our present bus routes or is that specific to the two-way model I mean I don't know I don't think we're going to know that um and I also know that we have never been able to really quantify the number of students that are transported daily versus those that that are transported on the bus daily and I think that um it would behoove us to find out um to make a concerted effort to do a little more digging on the transportation side you know are you transporting your child yes or no and if you are are you doing that because you prefer to spend that time with your child your child doesn't want to ride the bus for whatever reason or because you find that you can get 10 more minutes sleep or your child can because if you transport them due to these long bus routes that becomes problematic I just really think that getting more information about transportation and how we can best serve I think will be an important dialogue um I again will say when you take a look at the El and elll and the um free and reduced this model really doesn't um change a lot between three 2A and 3A in terms of those two demographics but again it's quite different from the south for sure um one thing that I do like about uh 2A is it always seems outrageous to me that we have this big swath in the middle of Sycamore that's carved out for Maple and that you basically bounce across the school corporation um probably making things difficult for car pooling parents or parents that are um you know trying to um uh maybe Child Care issues become a little more difficult in that scenario um but I do agree that 2A and 3A definitely look to me as though those are more B bed models then 1 a I kind of just to tip my hand I discounted 1 a as the model right out of the gate I agree with everything Kim just said um while pre and reduced and E are similar between 2A and 3A 2A is R 4% more free introduced fun from 3A so everything else being more equal um having lived in Stratford of Avon for 17 years and knowing that River bir is two minutes away I can tell you it would not have bothered me if you told me I had to drive four minutes to get the m so um those other considerations I would say would probably mess in my mind yeah I would just try to boost the streu number as much as possible and I had two a of the north that look said the most Bal looking at the fre well and the difference between those two is um 115 more students are moved um with two-way and I think that's something else that we need to weigh is that's all the that's the strap of Avon and no kids not going through the Birch anymore in order to balance them over for free and then 3A the um the sces the is still within the 9% of what we um requested so 3A probably fits our request best but yet I also agree I just have thought it was odd to put a part of Maple in the middle of Sycamore thought that was kind but it was it's like that now there right so not really anything new but I've always agree that that's kind of like that's kind of odd mhm any more thoughts on the 2A versus the 3A I don't feel like I um I'm I'm will entertain a motion if anyone is is feels like we have a good consensus do we need to move these tonight yes okay Kim talk about getting more information so I in the process oh yeah just overall for transportation I I think that we um you know we sometimes don't have we have a lot of of ability to use our great sophisticated technology tools to plot um bus routes but I don't know that we have a great deal of information about why that service is not what many many of our parents choose I think I would just like to know that because if really it isn't at all about ride times cool I I I believe it will be but I think we should just know more data about what is in that service botel that isn't fitting a number of families can I put you on the spot a little bit then if we have to vote you're an open parent mhm what do you think about the trade opportunity moving us to get a couple of percentage points closer versus the impact Onision well you know openend them before and openend them now are really quite a bit different um as well yeah the the um younger demographic there are a lot a lot a lot of U Middle School and Intermediate School students returning to Oak Bend and that was not the case until just several years ago um so I think that it is disruptive I think that if we can achieve something similar without moving that subdivision um just due to the the nature of how many students are there I I think I would be in favor of that um but that said I have to believe that that's happening all over Avon and not just in those two subdivisions you know that there is a ever younger population um that will um be impacted by this simply because we have a lot of families with elementary students that are returning to those older subdivisions any other thoughts I I think I land on um 3A because I really wanted to move as few students as possible um I um you know I shared the story of my children and never thought about it but my children were the two of 39 to have not been moved and that was kind of devastating to them and so I again I always go back to when we have these discussions I go back to that story and that reality of what we faced at our house and um I just want to keep as many students together as possible especially during times like this where relationships are so key and that's um um to me that's what stands out to what is important to me personally um so I just wanted to share that you just said something that resonated with me that I want actually make you to turn into one of my public comments we have a generation here of disaffected kids from this pandemic their social opportunities are much fewer than they had been we're going to be seeing the mental health impacts on these kids for years to come and so relationship preservation probably should be more important to us than it would in a normal time right and that's where at the end every time I've gone through these and we've been through it a few times I've always that's what I've always just kind of landed on in my heart as you know it's yes as trustee but also as a parent um I want to want my kids to have those relationships as intact as possible um is anyone I can make the motion if um if is there any more discussion before I make a motion no um I move that the board of school trustees approved bound re adjustment option um 3A for the North and 1 B for the South as presented second motion by an second by and I lost my pen is there any more discussion all in favor tesi all right well again thank you thank you thank you to our seven parents um please um share with them um we are so grateful for their time and so grateful for the work that they have um and just the service that they've brought to our community and now we're going to move on to the discussion on proposed school start and end times 2122 Dr W thank you so in addition to um working through the redistricting process one of the other pieces that we have been looking at over the last couple of months has been the look examining school start and end times um and given that the board has taken action on redistricting we wanted to put this as a discussion point for today's meeting not so that the board can take any action uh we talked about this briefly with you at uh the November working session we wanted to come back and go through it in a little bit more depth for uh another discussion um so that you could feel prepared and give us some guidance ultimately uh our goal is to make a recommendation in January for board action uh but we wanted to talk through what that process would look like so so our work looking at school start and end time has really kind of gone along parallel to what's been happening by the great work of the redistricting committee so we have had a group that's been providing us some feedback representing um every school in the district and our friends at Transportation who seem to be working even more overtime than they typically do because of all the different uh jobs that we are looking at and different research that we are doing we've had a few meetings with this group talked about it at the November working session have talked about it with our uh the Avon Federation of teachers and then wanted to provide you an update this evening as well so one of the things that I would like to start with is to talk about uh and the board is aware of this from our previous conversations but our Focus as we have studied our growth and focus on improving academic achievement uh our work at having a consistent Focus across the district on professional learning communities or plc's collaborative team time for our teachers and so uh our schools have pockets of great work happening across the district and what we've really looked at uh with Dr trun and Dr lame and our principles is that we need to have a a district approach of how we use we harness the power of the wisdom that our teachers have and build in some time each week for that job embedded professional development professional uh relationship that they are having to improve what what they're doing for their students in their classrooms so this group really started with two primary goals the first one being to establish a consistent time each week for plc's to meet k12 and then also explore other avenues for efficiencies that may be gained by examining school start and end times and this was the perfect time for us to do that because we know we're going from seven k4s to six that more evenly sized elementary schools and and having a preschool Center at White Oak that we need to be planning for so the the timing was perfect for us to really study this and make sure um we could we could work towards these two goals so why is consistent PLC time a priority one of the things that we know about uh improving the academic achievement of students is that teachers collaborating with other teachers is one of the most powerful things that we can do but what we hear all the time is we just don't have enough time there isn't enough time for teachers to do that work and so that's one of the primary reasons that this is a priority we also know that pulling teachers out for professional development days has an impact on academic achievement a best thing for a student is their teacher in their classroom every day and if we are pulling teachers out for professional development too much that can have an impact so embedding that into the schedule is important not to say there aren't times where we need professional development days but we believe there's a more effective way to to do that um across the district and then finding that dedicated time so that we can uh have provide to our teachers the time that they need to have the conversations that they they need to be having to improve the work that we're doing for our students so as we looked at how would we accomplish structured time each week for our teachers to have those collaborative team times we looked at five or six different options and we threw out three or four of them and we really spent most of our time looking at these two options because we felt like these were the the best approach for what uh we were trying to accomplish the first option was to look at a weekly delay or early dismissal for K12 uh for all of our K12 schools that would allow teachers to have that collaboration time and you can see that is what happens in many of our U neighboring districts or districts that we are often uh compared to in our conference and in our league uh Westfield Brownsburg Greenwood caramel Grove um is so that is a model that is frequently used the other model that we looked at was to reduce the instructional day slightly 5 or 10 minutes to allow us to bank that time for our teachers so that they could work longer one day a week with uh and accomplish that PLC time without extending the teacher day that's a model that Mor moresville had recently implemented and as we studied this we really landed on option two and the reason that we land landed on option two was for the consist consistency that it provides to our families option one means for instance on Wednesdays kids might come late to school or might go home early and we know that that's an inconvenience to parents to have to plan for that one day a week versus this model where we can have a consistent school start and end time every day and as we dug into this a little bit more when we talked to you in November we were looking at 10 minutes a day the model I'm going to show you we've reduced that to 5 minutes a day so shortening the instructional day just 5 minutes allows us to bank that time for our teachers uh to accomplish what we want them to accomplish with plc's and allows parents to have a consistent schedule 5 days a week for their their children in both of these as we explored this with our team the monthly 1hour delay days would be removed and that is something that we've heard from parents that those days sneak up on you I felt that as a parent uh that those days sneak up on you and so uh if as we move forward forward with this process and with these conversations that would be a part of the recommendation because we have found a way to build that in on a weekly basis we would not need that 1 hour uh release time uh once a month the other piece that uh I mentioned earlier was looking at Transportation efficiencies and again this is the time to do this as we head towards redistricting and our new structure of six K4 schools so one of the things that we have been working closely with uh transportation is to look at three tier transportation and what that means is basically we would divide the district into three bus routes that every driver would drive in the morning and they would drive in the afternoon right now we have drivers that do two routes or even one route this would make sure that we have three routes for every driver to do that you have to lengthen the day a bit so you have to add some time on the morning and add some time on the afternoon and kind of spread it out a little bit to accomplish the efficiencies of that three- tier approach this would reduce the number of drivers and school buses that we need by about 15 to 20 and would allow us to increase the pay for those drivers as you know one of the biggest challenges that we Face even pre pandemic is finding CDL licensed drivers to drive our buses and keeping them here once we've trained them and and helped them obtain their CDL so recruiting drivers maintaining drivers is key and to uh be more to to be able to offer a stronger package to the drivers that we're hiring because they're guaranteed three routes um and to to reduce the number of drivers that we need would be very uh helpful as well as we know that through attrition those 15 to 20 drivers that's not we don't expect that we'll be cutting 15 to 20 drivers We Believe through attrition we would be able to accomplish that Franklin Township Wayne Township IPS Perry Township have already moved to a three- tier system Hamilton sou Eastern is going through a similar process now with redistricting and looking at three- tier transportation and we're aware that others are studying it as well this would lead to a cost savings on the conservative side of about $900,000 a year to our operations fund so very significant cost savings and that's even accounting for paying the drivers more to do the three tiers so you might think what would we do with $900,000 into our operations fund that would allow us to make more progress in replacing our Fleet of buses so when when we looked at that 28 of our buses are 15 to 16 or 15 or 16 years old in 2021 82 of our buses are more than 12 years old that's 55% of our Fleet not because we don't want to replace buses but because of property tax caps we have just not been able to replace the buses at the rate we used to all of our buses even our 15 16e buses pass inspection they are safe transportation makes sure of that and their team they're inspected often but there's no doubt that a bus that's 15 or 16 years old poses challenges and has additional costs so uh that's a significant cost savings that we would be able to better replace our buses on a more consistent basis than we have been able to I don't know if it's the mass or the amount of talking but I need a drink for and it's War mhm the other piece that we have looked at is the research on school start and end times and I won't go through all of these for you CU they're in your packet and we will we will share these on our website but as you know you can find a study to support just about anything you want what we looked at was what are some of the really respected organizations that focus on student youth adolescent health and the impacts of school start and end time so you can see we've got the Centers for Disease Control CDC that talks about the importance of adolescents getting enough sleep and how early school start times impact that the American Academy of Pediatrics that talks about school start times before 8:30 for adolescents poses challenges Center for Applied research and educational Improvement again high schools that start at 8:30 or later see more benefits because students are getting more sleep the American Psychological Association found numerous benefits as they examined studies of schools that shifted to later start times for their adolescent aged students ranging from attendance to discipline GPA assessment scores attention in the classroom American Association for the advancement of science look specifically at Seattle schools and progress that they had made when they pushed back their Secondary School start times the national sleep Foundation focusing on again schools for adolescents that start at 8:30 or later New Jersey school boards Association talking about the power and the positive impacts of delaying school start times for secondary schools so this is our current school starting and ending times so you can see the variation that we have across the district with our earliest schools Middle School South and middle school north starting uh earliest at 7:45 Avon High School starting at 8: then our elementaries uh start somewhere between 8:25 and 850 intermediate East and Intermediate West being our latest schools and then our preschool time as well so now I'm going to walk you through three options that this group study We examined more options than this but these were the three that we spent our most time on so in option one this model keeps all four schools together in tier three so you can start to see middle school north and Middle School South South are still earliest Avon High School gets moved a little bit later to 8:20 and then all k4s stay in that third tier this does shift the intermediates to be a little bit earlier in the day well a lot earlier if you're Intermediate West going to 7:20 from 9:05 when we looked at this and studied the pros and the cons of this option as with anything there are both there are pros and there are cons some pros all k4s having a similar start at end time is helpful we don't have that now they start at different times but that certainly is a pro both middle schools and Avon High School would be home before all k4s would be home for families that maybe rely on a middle school or High School sibling to watch their younger siblings we like but you'll see this in all of the models the later start time at Avon High School all three models push the start time of Avon High School back to 820 we weren't able to get to that 8:30 Mark but we were able to get to 820 um we address traffic issues at East and West because you can see that they are separated by an hour um and that's the reason why Hickory and uh is separate from all the others is from transportation and working with uh Chief Le that even that 5 minute Gap allows for some traffic between uh to to be uh relieved a little bit between Hickory and Cedar that's why that that distinction is there um Pros West and East being earlier was something that was viewed as a pro simply because at West and East we start to see some more behaviors from kids as they're getting to 2:00 3:00 4:00 the that age group tends to do a little bit better in the morning and we're keeping them there until 3 or 4:00 some cons for this m model are the different start and end times at East and West we' worked really hard to have those schools have consistent starting and ending time times and those buildings collaborate closely with one another and have some shared staff so that poses a challenge the biggest concern for this and for option number two is moving North and South even earlier than they are and so North and South start at 745 right now to expect adolescents uh to come to school at 7:20 is a concern um when especially knowing what what we just talked about with research there's also a challenge when it relates to our middle school students who partic who parti ipate in athletics so right now when school ends at um 2:35 many times our students who participate in athletics have to go home at 2:35 and then come back to go to an away game because they typically leave at 4:15 or something like that so that poses a challenge to our families that have to figure out how to get their child back uh for a 4:00 for or 415 departure or in many cases our coaches or our teachers will say you can hang out in my room for an hour half until you have to leave to to go to the bus so uh pushing that even earlier would make that an even greater challenge that gap between um 205 in this model and when students would have to leave for an athletic event and then of course West would move significantly earlier and for some that might be a positive for some that might be a con we felt like that was a pretty significant change for West to move that much earlier but I know some people really like that idea and even at West have even said I like the idea of being there a little bit earlier option number oh so we did when we looked at this we really felt like the reason we could not recommend this model was moving the middle schools even earlier that was the biggest challenge why we didn't feel like this was a model that we could recommend um you'll see the difference in option number two this keeps the this is the most similar to what we do right now in that it keeps the middle schools early and it keeps the intermediates later and then the elementaries are sprinkled uh across all three tiers and again Avon High School is moved to 820 some pros of this one it is the most similar to what we do right now again the later start time at Avon High School it does help alleviate traffic issues at Hickory and cedar because they would be in different tiers uh it would the F minute offset between East and West would allow us to uh try to offset that as much as possible this model does allow West and East and North and South to be on about the same schedules so that they can and collaborate among teachers uh among those buildings and also for the purposes of shared staff one point that our transportation colleagues made is by spreading out the elementaries across the tiers that does actually help our our families who use our commercial dayc carees that provide a bus to pick up children um I see a lot of those at Hickory uh every day but I don't know if that's cuz I drive by Hickory a lot that's where most of them are um but this would allow them potentially to hit more schools cuz when the schools are all on the same time the bus can't be at all the different schools so that might help some of our families um cons of this model the k4s having different starting and ending times again we don't have that now um that because they are on different schedules but we felt like this that would be a con to this model that they would still be on different schedules the biggest one and the reason it's bolded is north and south being 20 minutes earlier than what they are now uh the same challenge with Middle School athletics pine tree and Cedar and bus model would get home before Avon High School for any families that need high school students to help supervise younger siblings and then kind of the same thing with uh West that we talked about earlier Cedar and this model is moved significantly earlier again I think that's could be a pro that could be a con depending on what you prefer so that led us to option number three and option number three um really tries to solve the issue of the biggest con that we had in option number one and number two was the Middle School piece and moving Middle School even earlier so in this model we said well what if we flipped middle schools later intermediates earlier so that's really the difference in this model intermediates would be in tier one middle schools would be in tier three and then again the elementaries are sprinkled across the three tiers so the pros of this model it accomplishes the later start time at Avon High School it allows that collaboration between East West and north and south by keeping them the same it moves Middle School starttime later which is supported by research and does solve some some of those challenges we talked about with Middle School athletics same thing with commercial daycares that would be able to transport students at different elementaries and shifting East and West earlier in the day um may be helpful for our younger students that are uh better equipped for school earlier in the day than they are at that 3 or four time the challenges of this model are the different start and end times at k4s which we've already talked about this would put Middle School getting home later than most of our k4s for supervision purposes and Avon High School would get home later than pine tree and Cedar and then the final challenge of this one is just it is a significant change for intermediate and north and south to do that flip and the other one that should probably be on there is Cedar it's a significant change for Cedar as well going from a later starting school uh to being in tier one so that is the model that we um would we have spent the most time talking about and that we feel like solves uh the majority of the challenges that that we have talked through this model is this uh slide I'm sorry is really just to highlight for you how we would structure the the PLC time that we started this conversation about so the yellow is the teacher day you can see how on Wednesdays we would extend the teacher day uh a little bit because of the time that we had have um set aside for for plc's the blue being the student day staying at 6 hours and 45 minutes across the board and then this just shows you uh this is an example of a school on Wednesdays that might PLC before students arrive in the morning because of their schedule and then this is an example at the bottom of a school that based on their schedule it might make more sense for them to PLC in the afternoon after kids have gone but the consistency across the day across the week for our students for their starting and ending time so our next steps as we um have kind of processed this internally um is starting tomorrow uh we would communicate with parents uh sharing a link to information on our website as well as a chance to provide some online feedback particularly about that third model um because that's really where we feel like uh the majority of our um challenges that we work through as a group are addressed in that third model we would hold a community Forum on January 6th in the auditorium for anyone who would like to come get this see this presentation get a little bit more information and share feedback ultimately leading us uh to giving you some feedback in advance of the January 11th board meeting uh where we could uh request your consideration of school starting and ending times the reason why we want to accomplish that in January is is is um due to a couple of reasons one being that by the end of January we really need to start the redistricting process for our staff that need to identify teachers at White Oak that need to be reassigned to to another Elementary School teachers at riverb that may need to be reassigned and we all of our teachers licensed at the elementary level will be a part of that redistricting process and will identify to us their preferences and we feel like it's important for them to know what those starting and ending times are when they're making those preferences known and we also want to provide our families as much notice as we can too if we're going to make changes particularly some of these that are more significant we want to give our families as much notice as we can ultimately leading us to July 29th which would be the first day of the 2122 school year so that is a an update of where we're at on school starting and ending times I'm certainly glad to uh answer any questions transportation is here as well if uh there's any information that you would like uh now or that you would like us to gather as we go through the next month getting feedback and uh working this through uh in in even more detail um I have one data request in one com comment U my comment is that I think going to the three- tiered approach makes a lot of sense for us not just the cost savings not withstanding but um also because um filling our driver ranks is getting more and more difficult um and even once we're past the pandemic I think it will remain so um so to the extent that we can beef up and make fulltime and um lucratively compensated a smaller number of drivers versus trying to get more to do a few routes I think is a step in the right direction um the only thing that I will say and this is a big wrinkle is this um so on the three tier you mentioned Franklin Township Wayne Township IPS Perry Township and Hamilton Southeastern right my belief is that not a single one of those School corporations has the configuration and grades that we have I don't know that there are I think there are only three other schools in the entire state of Indiana that have a K4 56 78 High School model so that being said is there any additional efficiency in terms of Transportation Route reduction the time spent on the bus and uh redistricting because that is a big moving part in you in allowing a K4 and a 56 to travel together on the same bus because that is what we would find in those models um I believe that the the equation is a little bit different because school Township Wayne Township for example has K through six correct um and so they going to a three- tiered approach for them is a is quite a bit easier because you're you're taking one entire swath of schools out of the mix and you're then dividing uh the remainder in the three tier so I would I don't know what the answer is I don't have an an opinion about it but I think it would benefit us if we're sending a bus in to get all the K through six and delivered to two schools I think we just need to look at that possibility as well and we certainly can and I know there are some routes especially I believe you call them combo routes where you are able to do that if the schedule allows it but what we can certainly look at is if there are any additional combo routes that could be added around those purposes but I know that's part of what Transportation does if they can in certain situations middle middle school with high school those kinds of things right we obviously don't want high school students in elementary students ever populating the same bus but uh K through six is a different matter just in my opinion and I should say and I'm glad you you said that too one of the things that that Transportation shared as we looked at this structure when schools start at 7:20 one of the things that they that we looked at was you know what does that mean for our kids that ride the bus how early could students be picked up or how late could they be dropped off right now our earliest pickup is at 6:45 in the morning in our current schedule in this schedule our earliest pickup would be 6:30 so it moves at 15 minutes earlier and it's the same at the back end of the day so on the back end of the day our latest drop off right now is 4:40 in this schedule our latest drop off would be 455 trying to make sure kids are home by 5:00 so we do have to lengthen that day but we felt like 15 minutes on the front 15 minutes on the back is not uh too significant when you think about the efficiencies that that this would gain as well looking at those times let's go uh East is is that 7:20 when the class begins or students entering no that's when school begins so so the kids in what time then 10 minutes before 10 before and then that's when school ends at 2:05 or they're out the door yep okay so you know I made the comment in the last discussion that we were going to talk about moving some families and I they we need a really really good reason to do it as you talk to the community about do this $900,000 is a really really really good reason to do something so I don't know that you have a choice I would like to petition my friends of Transportation D part that $900,000 an extra bus out the wind BR it all connects right we 15 passenger something um I'm thinking white bues too you know so I I don't know that you have a choice to save $900,000 and to the person issues that you're talking about and that $900,000 specifically in transportation when we're in our fund constraints right you you have to do this um so yeah um I it whatever I guess I toly agree that you if you can get the high school and middle schools out of the early mornings that's I'm the brainer and use the phrase I Ed in last discussion there are some folks that are going to take one just really important talkity about why yeah we have to do this well and I think that's a great point and and one of the reasons why we focus so much on option three was as we worked and and to transportations credit they've been talking about three years or three tier for years uh because of the efficiencies that it's gained the the efficiencies that it provides but really we looked at exactly what you said there's really there there is such strong reasons why we need to do this but if we're going to do it why not solve as many problem as many challenges as we can as we do it and that's where we really looked at that research on school starting and ending time so and I say that so this is going to make me wake up early yes I know right but I'm willing to take that for the team to save the 900,000 you're such a guy that's awesome sign him up one of those two elementaries thinks about being what I call Early school you know I think so much of it is on your personal preference and your your family Dynamics I think there are people that will love it there are people that will hate it and I think that's why we we just want to make sure our teachers know that when they're looking at where do they want to teach next year right um now our families don't have that same luxury um to to to make that decision but that's why if we can give them six months to plan and six months to to um work together and figure out what this would look like there's no doubt it's an impact on on a family and could require change to your child care the nice thing is we have the why um in in all of our schools but some families uh don't can't can't or don't access that and and this gives them time to make other arrangements but I do think so much of it is just driven by your personal I think you're going to find that with the teachers too A lot of the teachers uh particularly Elementary would like to get up and get going and get out of there yep and uh I'm I'm anxious to see how that goes when I was a teacher I I taught in an early school and I taught in a late school I Lov the early school cuz when you when you left you had a pretty good chunk of your afternoon still free but others would would prefer the the the the later start you know it's just what you prefer and what works best for your family I think when I was teaching it was 7:50 the kids came in at 8:00 class started and then they got we started getting them ready to go maybe 310 250 something like that now they start kids come in at 7:15 and they start school at 7:30 the them all the elementaries and which Kim said are K through six so as we have looked and and you made reference to you know the importance of how we message this to to our community we really have talked and Mr car has been very helpful talking about really focusing our communication on this option and talking about what the advantages are of this option and getting feedback on this option as opposed to getting two bog down in one and two which which we're not sure really solve what what we need to solve to so if we can get some feedback on this option and maybe there are some some tweaks that we can make with transportation's help maybe there is some feedback that we'll get on this that would allow us to make some adjustments but we' really like to focus our communication on this to guide us and to come back with with a solid recommendation down the road um let me two things um one with the efficiencies in transportation and and I agree with you by the time this rolls out we may already be down 10 15 drivers but not I want to accommodate them um because our drivers have really been there and theyve really they they really take great great care of our kids I mean we just have so few issues and I really want to make sure we accommodate if we're not at the 10 to5 um and then I think my only um my only concern is the and again it's up there that all the elementaries um start at different times and that concerns me that you know are all the fourth grade teachers really going to be able to work together are all the first grade teachers going to be able to put together the great um curriculum and discussion I think that's that's a real concern because that's that's K through four that's five of our 12 grades and so that to me is still really concerning and I I can't say that I have peace on it at this point and I'm sure we'll get there and I I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out but that probably creates the most concern for me is those teachers being able to have that time and and we spent a good deal of time talking about that as well that that was a concern for us and the reason why we were comfortable moving forward with this is a couple of things number one this schedule at least allows for the fourth grade teachers at each school to have time built in to collaborate so while they might not be able to collaborate Cedar to Hickory to pine tree at least the fourth grade teach at Cedar are going to have time built into their schedule the other piece that we looked at is right now there isn't time uh there because our lfk floors don't start at similar times now there really isn't a lot of that cross School collaboration the way that there is at East and West and north and south so when we talked with those representatives from those schools it felt like taking a step backwards to split up east and west and north and south when they are so used to collaborating across cross schools that this felt a little bit at least at K4 this is this is status quo at the K4 level and maybe I think better because they're able to collaborate um time built into their schedule at least within their school and preserves the great work happening across buildings at intermediate and middle school can you remind me I should know this does this get rid of the one hour delays right yes so and we're going to look at in minutes some alternative things for this year days I think we just shouldn't lose s of what just mentioned we've heard from intermediate teachers that they can tell which elementary kids school the kids come from and we need to try to not make that the case so we still now would have with some e learning some other things we should think about ways to make sure we allow those elementaries to collaborate across at least May monthly and a lot of that too you know with our structure that we will have in January with a director of teaching and learning at the K4 prek fourth grade level Miss Al day when she starts part of her job is to help ensure that consistency at the K4 level while Dr trun focuses more on 512 so I do think in January um we'll have some additional things in place even at the this school year that will hopefully help to sum of exactly what you're you're describing any other questions we will if not we will uh continue to work and and pull together information and start communicating tomorrow um to get some feedback on this right so parents can look for emails yep that will um give them the updates give them an opportunity to give feedback and um and that's correct we look forward to reading their feedback so thank you yes Dr W the teacher will they have a big say in this between now and yes I'm so glad you you asked that question so that that survey would go to parents and that same survey would go to staff okay and so all of our staff teachers bus drivers assistants Food Service would be able to give us some insight we would be able to to distinguish um based on what school they work at or attend and what their role is thank you y all right thank you for a great evening of discussion and um it's been been it's been really nice to be able to think about the future and think about how we can provide better programming for our students and um so thank you to everyone that's been involved to Transportation thank you we're going to move on to the consent agenda

join bartholomy Consolidated School corporation's team as a substitute teacher or a bus driver bcsc will help you become a substitute teacher by covering the cost of your background check sub license and offer $140 a day as a bus driver you will be offered full benefits retirement contribution match and pension 183 days of work per year guaranteed first shift hours and a potential $30,000 a year if 8 hours are worked the best part of both of these positions no weekend or evening hours work on bcsc's school schedule and make a difference in the lives of students every day to show your interest in becoming a substitute teacher or a bus driver fill out the form labeled become a substitute teacher or bus driver at BCS schools.org [Music] e for e okay Josh good evening uh welcome to the um regular school board meeting tonight's Monday December 14 2020 the Bartholomew consolidate School Corporation um I'm Jeff calwell I'm the president and uh we usually start every meeting with one of our board members sharing Reflections um I get the honor to do that this evening I am um I'm pleased to be able to close out a 10-year run as a member of the bcsc Board of Trustees this evening having retired from Cummins last December after 38 years there I do have some experience now at stepping away from things and at the risk of sounding TR you do tend to miss the people much more than the work I think that's a trism of many I think that it is a trism of many in my generation that your personal identity is defined by what you do with your time and I'm pleased that part of that definition for me has been being a part of this body the various roles I've had on this board including this my third year as a president have all been both challenging and rewarding I do recall when considering the role of board president for 2020 I had already decided to step away at the end of this year and with the tough referendum on the docket I thought I was ready for what the year had in store but Co what remember that a short year ago it was it was a new item on our in our language when I joined the board in January of 2011 to complete the term uh of p o Conor who had joined the County government at that time a former board member told me that two most important things School boards do are one reflect the community and our policies and our approach to education and two hire a good superintendent if the if the that opportunity arises it's clear that our policies evolve as our community evolves and and I believe that we have continued to reflect those changes including some of our most recent changes reflecting new state and federal requirements and even our board uh and bcsc employee communication policy that's up for a second reading and a review this evening I've also had the Good Fortune to work with two terrific superintendents during this 10 years I think all five of us that are on the board today who are a part of Dr Robert's hiring in 2016 can continue to feel that we hit the mark on that important piece of work as he has led us through the tough work of educating 11,000 plus students every year he's shown the ability to listen exhibit a sense of humor and identify and promote a strong leadership team at cabinet Administration principals and teachers level to enable us to continue to maintain the high standards our community expects Kathy Pat rich and Jill were all here when I started in 2011 so you guys have got no one to blame but yourselves for the past 10 years and the fact that they will continue along with Julie and joined by Todd and Nikki in January really make this an easy transition for me like all state customers I know we are in good hands I do look forward to encouraging you all in the years ahead I'll be away from the center of activity but I'm available if needed I miss you guys ready I really do [Music] thanks if you're uh able to would you please stand join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all we have um five members in attendance and two more joining us uh via uh Zoom are we on Zoom yeah I think right Zoom this evening so we have a full attendance the Quorum is here I'll call this meeting to order our bcsc mission vision and high expectation objectives are listed on this room and will continue to be um guidelines for us as we work this evening Dr Roberts I'm going to turn it over to you for a couple of uh recognition and presentation items all right thank you Mr Co well we do have some student recognitions to start off our meeting to tonight unfortunately just with the conditions is the way they are we we are doing it virtually or at least having some photos of them but what we know in uh Bartholomew County uh in our school corporation we have students that Excel all kinds of things and one of those apparently is spelling um and we have a couple of very specific examples of that for you tonight so um if we look at uh this year's spell bow um competition it was done differently just you mentioned covid-19 Mr cwell in your opening remarks and covid-19 has affected just about everything and and certainly the spell bow uh competition was one of those things and so it had to be conducted virtually but our students just miss still understood exactly how to go about the process of winning and did a great job doing that in the at in the Middle School rounds or at the middle school level both Northside and Central Middle School qualifi for the state finals and then in going through the State final competition Central Middle School emerged as the 2020 State runnerup so congratulations to Central Middle School you see a list there on the screen of the team of spellers as well as the perfect scores in the round of state competition a list of near perfect scores which means they missed one the perfect scores in all rounds of the state competition and then our near perfect scores in all rounds of the state competition I'm going to change the uh screen a little bit so you can see each of our our students names but a tremendous uh job by uh Central Middle School and our students there uh we do have a nice photo of them with their pass on in the hallways of Central Middle School so a round of applause for the Central Middle School State runner up Scholars additionally at the high school level Columbus North High School participated in the state championship and was determined to be the 2020 State Champions so congratulations to Columbus North High School you see the list of spellers there as well as the the two perfect scores we had in the individual round of the state competition you remember I'm sure that Columbus North was here last month and we celebrated uh the boys and girls cross country teams including uh the state champion boys cross country team and here we have a Columbus North uh state champions in spelling and there is the team uh on on Zoom uh congratulations to our Columbus North High School spell Bowl state champion team team all right always great to celebrate the success of our kids so we'll put the spell piece aside and move to our presentation uh for tonight we are fortunate to have uh with us this evening via Zoom Miss Kimberly Easton our Multicultural coordinator uh for the school corporation and Charles Edwards who chairs co-chairs our diversity council with Mr Jenson and serves as assistant principal of Columbus East High School and so I am going to turn things over Kimberly and Charles to you you guys uh once you give us a little test there make sure we can hear you good evening all right yes Kimberly nice to hear from you Charles good evening all right awesome well you guys just let me know I will start uh working through the presentation here and when you tell me to hit go I'll I'll keep moving through the presentation sounds good uh but before we get started I'd like to uh um take a quick moment to thank the board for this opportunity to present a snapshot of the kind of work being done by the diversity Council and by extension the Multicultural and diversity coordinator um my name is Charles Edwards and I'm a long time assistant principal at Columbus High School and uh as Dr Roberts just stated along with Bill jinon I co-chair the dcsc diversity Council next slide please Emily H hello everyone good evening it is a pleasure to be here thank you um for inviting me to this meeting tonight it will be a pleasure to share what uh we've been doing with our four District directives um we have been we are now in our second Academic Year Charles thanks so diversity doesn't mean inclusion um it simply means we have differences and there are any number of ways that you and I can be different as a school building with over 1,400 kids or a school district with 11,500 we know that no two individuals walking in will be the same and that presents both a challenge and an opportunity for us next slide please oh inclusion is the goal but diversity is where we have to start right because again as a school building with over 1500 different people faculty and staff included we have to first be able to recognize appreciate and value our differences before we can get to this idea of this concept that everyone deserves to be included and not only they deserve to be included but they have a right to be included which is what we're talking about because we don't want to just be diverse that's not an accomplishment not in and of itself we're diverse by Nature what we want is to make sure everyone is included regardless of what those differences might be now slide please and this is what started it all for us how do we provide Equity of access how do we provide a seat at the table for everyone no matter his or her identity that's the mission of the BCS diversity Council to ensure that no bcsc students success or failure is ever determined by any part of his or her identity because identity should not matter whether it's an opportunity to learn or an opportunity to Le and that's a big charge it's a pretty lofty goal so where do you even begin next slide please for us we started by looking at the number of faces of color and the number of those from underrepresented populations present in high ability programing the thinking was that this would give us a snapshot into the equity of our program was in high school you can self- select in the high ability classes but when we looked we weren't seeing diversity by contrast the makeup of those classes was quite homogeneous that didn't seem to make sense to us because statistically there are high ability students present across every demographic in each of our school buildings so then we looked at the pathway and what we found was kind of a pipeline from AC uh which are of course the academic challenge programs that students had to test into in elementary years and then they're supported with more High ability specific programming in middle school but we we saw kind of a pipeline from AC to high ability courses in high school next slide please and that caused us to ask questions uh questions that eventually led us to look at our processes our personnel and our environments all of these questions later became conversations and then uh we looked at them as identification of issues really is what they are next slide please so once we know what those issues are we want to know how it affects our students so we study then we look at recommendations and implementation so the council meets every other month and we focus on the identification and study of issues that affect Equity of access for all students but we also zoom in on the equity piece as it relates specifically to our underrepresented populations next slide please because what we know is that when we make learning better better for some we make it better for all next slide please so each of these conversations has turned into an opportunity to improve our practices for those who are marginalized and for those who are lucky enough not to be next slide please in a few seconds you'll hear from Kendall Easton the Multicultural and diversity coordinator for bcse she's going to talk about the work she's doing in the district and in the community and again uh the work can be framed as people processes and or practices in environments next slide but at the end of the day as a council our job is to solve complex problems so that more of our students have more opportunities to be more successful Kimberly thanks Charles wow I get to show you a little bit of the nitty-gritty work that we've been doing to accomplish all the work the the diversity Council has been doing for the past several years so it is a privilege to present the work of four District directive guide teams they all use the bcsc stakeholders process to do all of their work as you will see the family academic achievement Network also known as fan its articulated challenge statement is to support underrepresented students through an organic parent Guardian engag engagement Network the second districtwide directive underrepresented teacher Recruitment and Retention focuses on administrators and teaching staff to reflect our diverse student population third the diverse curriculum guide team it strives to ensure instructional practices are culturally responsive and restorative justice to it works to on a uniform process of discipline but also to restore and repair harn done to the victim next slide please so all of our district initiative guide teams as I mentioned are using the bcsc stakeholders process to do all of their work currently in the co cocreation phase with that I'm going to talk specifically about the family academic achievement parent Guardian Network now within BC C we have found African-American boys have the most difficult time transitioning from grade to grade and school to school the team is working on projects and partnership to address such disparities disproportionately affecting African-American students specifically boys at one point during our last Academic Year we had a group of African-American boys at one of our middle schools all failing at the same time our underrepresented teacher Recruitment and Retention next slide please so that you know about our underrepresented teacher Recruitment and Retention guide team it was sparked by data showing very little representation of underrepresented Administrators and teachers especially teachers in our classroom bcsc data show student population of our under represented segment is currently 30% and growing while the number of white students is showing a decrease in numbers and has been for the past 15 years the current percentage percentage of all under underrepresented staff is 8% but underrepresented certified teachers and administrators is only 6% with no significant change in the past decade despite the changes to the student populations our underrepresented particularly Black and Hispanic students are not achieving academic at the level of their right peers and are over represented in behavioral referrals and under represented in gifted in advaned placement courses according to the long impact of same race teachers published by Seth girther Cassandra Hart constant linday and Nicholas papor an IA discussion paper if a blackmail student has at least one black Mill teacher in the third fourth or fifth grade he is significantly less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to Aspire to attend a 4-year College This research also States a disadvantaged black Mills exposure to at least one black Mill teacher in elementary school reduces his probability of dropping out of high school by nearly 40% diverse curriculum has had one uh work session thus far it was sparked by the concern for a lack of diverse teaching materials in our learning environments especially in regards to our stem courses this guide team has been proactive prior to the recent election results and created the post- elction document for our district to guide potential post-election conversations this was also well received by the Collegiate and business community at large now this guide team again recently held a work session its very first and had a whopping 70 people in attendance with our guest speaker Gracie patino a former bcsu student and kindergarten teacher from Clifty Creek Elementary School as for restorative justice it was sparked by continuous Community concern and outrage over the flagrant use of racial ethnic slurs directed at one of the least represented student populations within bcsc our African-American students restorative justice is a Cooperative process based on repairing harm healing and the prevention of future occurrences of said Behavior restorative justice will hold its very first virtual work session this week December 16th 2020 at 7:45 a.m.

we're good [Music] okay everybody good all right good evening everybody welcome to this december 14 2020 regular business meeting of public hearing board of school trustees the start time of six o'clock this evening if we can begin by asking mr angel to lead us in the pledge of allegiance i'll rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible yeah item two we have uh patrons registered to comment that'd be registered to comment for the regular business meeting do we have any anybody register to see from diner no thank you and we can move on to uh item three um do we have we look for a motion to uh could have a motion in a second to suspend a regular beating to open up the public hearing a motion to suspend the regular meeting and to open the public hearing motion by mr angel second second by tom hoffman and uh second by tom hoffman good evening tom um everybody so with uh with tom with you being present through zoom we're gonna roll call for votes so uh rather than all those rather than doing all those in favor saying five by saying aye we're going to go down the line so uh scott angel hi scott babjack hi brian smith hi and tom hoffman opposed that motion carried 5-0 now we'll suspend a regular meeting and open up the public hearing so the next item on engine is for the board to hold the project and preliminary hearing on the proposed construction projects if you're interested in speaking at the hearing please make sure you have signed the sign up sheet in the back of the room which excuse me i'll pull this down back of the room which should include your name and address after presentation by the administration and its advisors there will be an opportunity for the public to make comments about the projects at the hearing we will ask that each person limit their comments to three minutes and that the topic be limited to the proposed projects under consideration the notice of this preliminary determination hearing was published as legally required on november 26 2020 in northwest indiana times the first preliminary determination hearing was held on december 7 2020 at this time i'm going to ask cheryl zick our school attorney to explain the purpose of this hearing good evening board good evening community members tonight's hearing is being held pursuant to indiana statute pursuant to indiana code 2026 737 before school corporation may spend more than a million dollars to build repair or alter a school building that will be financed by lease or bonds it must hold a public hearing at which explanations of the potential value to the project of the school to the school corporation and the community are given in addition pursuant to 61.1 203.5 a school corporation must hold two public hearings and adopt a resolution to preliminarily determine to issue bonds or enter a lease for a project which has a total project cost in excess of a non-controlled project these public hearings and the adoption of the resolutions are the very beginning of the legal process and the resolutions will establish the maximum financial terms for the proposed projects so after the close of the public hearing the board will consider four resolutions this evening the first of which which will be the project resolution this resolution is required by statute when the school is planning to spend more than a million dollars per building it contains the estimated hard and soft construction cost and the cost of issuance and establishes the total project cost it also contains the estimated tax impact the second resolution the board will consider tonight is the preliminary determination resolution it requires required when a school is planning to finance more than five million three hundred fifty thousand dollars for a given facility it contains the total project cost maximum annual payment and the lease term and other financial terms such as the estimated principal about principal amount and tax impact the third resolution and some of these do cross over each other but they're based on statute is for the resolution determining need for the projects this is required when the board has conducted an investigation as to the proposed projects that the school corporation cannot provide necessary funds to pay for the projects it's determined that the project's need exists the resolution allows the school corporation to take steps necessary to secure the projects and the leasing of the projects from a not-for-profit school building corporation the fourth and final resolution the board will consider tonight is a reimbursed reimbursement resolution this relates to the financing of the construction of the projects it would permit the school corporation to reimburse itself from bond proceeds from any cash which might be spent on the projects prior to the closing on the bonds it's required by federal tax law in order to preserve the school corporation's ability to reimburse itself thanks mrs yep now we'll hear from dr terrell about the process of determining and communicating the project to the community and the need for the projects thank you president warney good evening board and members of the audience this evening what we'd like to do at this time is to go through our project list again and also give information regarding how we got to this point tonight first one just to review again briefly of the timeline so the facility study here for crown point community school corporation began in 2017 with a district-wide facility assessment to 2020 there was a continuation of the assessments in the study with priorities items such as winfield elementary which is currently taking place and that was given priority at that time and then now at this point in time in the review considered with the my team as we went through this and looked at the needs for our district throughout this we have been very mindful of keeping the board of trustees strategic planning goals in mind one recommendation should support the mission of crown point schools which is to ensure that all students become lifelong learners through the highest quality educational programming to maintain renovate or replace current buildings as appropriately supported by verification of need and three keep the school corporation tax rate at or below the current level as we've gone through this we've identified facility priority needs first is driven by the enrollment increases that we continue to see throughout our district at all grade levels second is identifying robert a taft middle school a building that has served us well in this community and at this point in time is in need of replacement overcrowding at crown point high school and looking at the curriculum opportunities and the need for advancing technology our elementary schools addressing the overcrowding and capacity issues and then our additional student learning facilities and getting all of those up to where they need to be to meet the needs of our students at this time i'm going to ask miss dolling if she will talk about the overall student population the trends we're seeing there thank you as you all have heard from us a lot we have continued to see a growth in our population since the 2009-2010 school year we've seen an overall increase of 19 in our total student population and at that time we've also grown programming and student supports and we just don't have the ancillary space to house them all efficiently just some high points for reference in our elementary schools we've seen buildings with 25 percent of the 65 enrollment growth over that 10-year period at taft middle school in particular they've had 25 population growth and crown point high school has had a 15 growth in their population we continue to utilize our demographic study we did outperform it we are preparing for uh our next study but at this point um we we have our actual numbers so we understand the growth that we're feeling and we also understand that the residential expansion continues um some divisions are continue to be developed in winfield there's the area in st john the center township that's 207 acres and approximately 600 homes and then last the business development we're very fortunate the three communities that make up this corporation have continued to develop their business corridors which drives the development in the residential area because these are high quality areas to live in thank you so the solutions as we have gone through this and identified the problems is to look at a new taft middle school again these are concepts there are no hard plans that have been drawn up yet looking at a the ideal situation would be a 40 40 acre site would house or have a capacity for up to 1400 students grades 6 through 8 including technology safety measures that are in place making sure that we've got a separate entrance for those who are car riders as opposed to those who are coming on the bus along with sufficient parking for our staff also looking at the alignment of the programs and objectives for the middle learner and again as we have talked about making sure that the hvac systems the mechanical systems are energy efficient as we go through this we are also looking at crown point high school the renovation and addition there expanding the current student capacity from 2800 to 3400 looking at a new two-story classroom edition adding a robotics lab with stem opportunities new science labs expanding the cafeteria new lockers and commons to help improve the circulation of our students and relieve the congestion there also looking at repurposing the construction lab into a cte program and again making sure that our arrival and dismissal for our students and the circulation there is as needed and necessary improvements have been made we are also then looking at major additions at a couple of our elementary school the first one we'll talk about this evening is macarthur elementary school looking at expanding the student capacity there up to 700 with that means classroom additions and additional classrooms a new project lab for stem activities upgrading the cafeteria new gymnasium that we will put in a position that will allow our community to have access to that building that portion of the building on the weekends and evenings without going through the rest of school adding large group instruction making sure that our main office and student services areas are updated to meet the needs of our students and our parents as they come to the buildings sensory rooms clinics again restroom upgrades technology upgrades of course furniture upgrades and again looking at really working on the building systems the hvac plumbing electrical systems and improving our arrival and dismissal for our students we also are looking at major renovation and addition at timothy ball very similar to what we saw at macarthur again trying to get that student capacity up to that 700 mark one of the things that is a little bit different at timothy ball from macarthur we are looking at ramp accessibility to the second floor for our students so that they do not always have to use the elevator there is an elevator there that meets all of the requirements as needed just giving them another opportunity of how to get around the building at this point in time we want to talk with you just a little bit about the preliminary estimates for our program budget and i'm going to ask mrs dowling if she will go into the this as well as the other financial implications that go with the projects thank you dr terrell so the project since dr terrell outlined them we discussed a new taft middle school additions and renovations to prom point high school additions and renovations to timothy ball elementary school additions and renovations to douglas mcgarker elementary school preschool and early childhood development renovations district-wide playgrounds which would impact all of the elementary buildings the other district-wide improvements would include an expansion or renovation at wheeler elementary school additions and renovations that are to be determined based on the facility study and then technology upgrades district-wide that would sorry that would ensure that we're technology-ready in every classroom in the corporation and so the total project estimate at this time is 214 million five hundred thousand dollars which is on screen this includes all the construction contingency soft cost is an estimate for this next is our comparison on 19820 the combined debt and project referenda tax rate within lake county school districts you can see they run on the low to the high end where that nice bright yellow right in the middle at 75 cents which is middle of the road for us the most important part of this that we can stress is that our intention is to keep that rate where it is right now even with this new project so it would be no school tax rate increase just to give you an idea on our existing debt service the yellow is our existing debt and you can see in 2024 going into 2025 we retire a significant portion of that debt from some of our other larger building projects including cronkwein high school wheeler middle school jerry ross elementary so what we're proposing is to replace that with the debt for this project which is what you see in glue so keeping the rate steady sorry and then still giving ourselves room in the gray area for annual bond issuances if necessary to continue maintenance based on that same capital improvement schedule part of this process we have to uh which they'll talk about the legally required components but for us we have to for the public's prep purpose excuse me show you the worst case scenario but we want to show you also where we expect it to be based on the information we have in front of us right now so at 2.1 interest you can see that gives us an assume repayment of 13 years and 8 months if you do the five percent which is where we're sitting the maximum that's where you see that higher number but we do anticipate that being significantly less at the point that funds are sold but by law we have to present to you the worst case scenario if you will as a part of this project i'd like to introduce next voucher from baker tilly he's our bond financial guru i'm just going to go through the components that we legally have to review tonight to be in compliance with the station thank you thank you ms dowling uh president warney members of the board it's a pleasure to be back here a week later at what seems to be midnight based upon how dark it is outside so as as ms dowling mentioned uh we've been working with your team for the past several months on this project to prepare for last weekend this evening so we have established the maximum parameters for this project they heard ms dowling talk about establishing that the maximum amount of the projects would be issued in total of 247 million fifteen thousand dollars that in working with your construction professionals targeting a total project estimate of 214.5 million dollars and we'll show you here in next slide or two how that breaks up into individual accounts based upon the strategic needs of the district the total bond issue at that max parameter 214 million fifteen thousand dollars there will be three accounts on how those dollars are allocated the first one you heard ms dowling and dr terrell mentioned 214.5 million dollars obviously the largest share will go to that pot of money to pay for the new construction and renovation of the projects the second one they component called capitalize interest which we are setting aside dollars from the bond issue to help pay bondholders back during the duration of the project and that is being done intentionally to keep the tax rate at an estimated 75 cents so this is part of the overall strategy to avoid any increase to taxpayers during the duration of the first couple of years until we have our current bonds maturing to wrap around the existing so again dollars being set aside as a maximum amount to avoid any increase to taxpayers then lastly the maximum parameter for cost of issuance which is being set aside to pay for banker fees underwriter fees banker underwriter fees attorney fees bond council local council municipal advisor fee or financial advisor fee where we would also be paid out of rating fees title fees and any other type of professional fee related to this bond issue so this again is a maximum parameter that we're estimating as part of the project so again i want to reiterate back to ms dowling's point that two main drivers for why this is a good time for this community to consider these investments into the assets is that bonds begin to mature after 2023 which enables us to strategically fit the repayment structure into the current schedule without increasing those annual payments to to taxpayers and also the interest rate environment currently the interest rate environment is the lowest it's been near the history of our country so we've built the max parameters assuming a 5 interest rate however what we're seeing the current market is 2.1 so again the interest rate environment and how pragmatically the this board has managed its debt really affords us this opportunity and again just to reiterate back to ms dowling's point in this chart the gray is the outstanding debt that you just saw on the prior slide the shaded blue is the capitalized interest you heard me refer to a couple moments ago those dollars again are being being paid for from the bond proceeds to avoid any increase to taxpayers but most importantly the blue is represented by the estimated or maximum repayment term of these bonds so again we're setting a maximum parameter a maximum repayment term of 18 years and eight months however based upon the bond market we'll condense that as much as we can to avoid any increase to taxpayers but make certain we get the best pricing available for this community those who have impeccable eyesight and much better than mine is the maximum repayment term and you can see the most important column under the assumed interest rate of five percent then how we built the actual individual assumed semi-annual payments beginning with the july 15 of 2022 payment schedule thank you thank you any questions at all for brock before so to give you our tentative timeline and what we're looking at here we would like to begin uh in the spring of 2021 and then with all projects being finished by december of 2024 and that concludes our presentation this evening thank you well this time we'll open the public hearing remember if you'd like to speak please sign in on the sheet which is located with this screen in the back um or if we have anybody viewing from home that would like to dial in i'll give you the number you probably have that in front of you uh if you join the agenda but i'll repeat it at 219 663-3371 that's two one nine six six three three three seven one uh wait for the extension prompt and then dial the extension one zero two five one it's extension one zero two five one as i mentioned earlier we ask that you state your name and address limit your comments to the proposed project and financing and keep any comments to three minutes avoid being repetitive please if possible um ms dylan do we have anybody uh signed up this evening or do we have a sign-up sheet okay so present here at uh the building we don't have anybody that would like to oh somebody walked in oh yeah take your time also as we said we're accepting uh collins as well and i'll ask mr angel to be our time keeper if you want mine thank you [Music] um come forward to the podium please and just if you wouldn't mind as we said restating your name and address my name is sandor bradstrom i live at 270 east 124th avenue my daughter goes to washington i mean eisenhower school i just wondering are are these bonds bundled with other bonds and then purchased as a bundle group or are they put out on the market by themselves so that you know is there opportunity depending on how they're put out onto the market to possibly pay them off earlier or do you stick by the strict schedule i'm going to refer to brock or katie for the answer for that great question so these bonds are part of a public offering so they are a group of their own par mount so as we sell these to the public at the lowest interest cost so we establish ahead of time the amortization schedule so investors know their bid and what their interest rate that they want to receive back on these individual maturities are so they're part of one set of bonds being issued at a public offering it's part of a public offering that's correct this is part of one dead issuance exactly right thank you brock thank you for the question coach do you have anything else here thank you please give kind of a 30-second uh window for any collins to take place again we if nothing happens and we have a call we can accept it as long as we're still in the public hearing part of our meeting and that the next item we have um is approval of the resolutions that were summarized by ms zick we're going to break these down individually and we'll do a roll call for vote so to begin with we're looking for a motion to approve and waive the reason reading of resolution 788 project resolution we have a motion too moved by tom hoffman second second by mr angel any comments or questions we'll do a roll call um david warney aye scott angel aye scott baby hi brian smith hi i'm tom hoffman all right that motion pass 5-0 then we'll move for the same a motion to approve and waive the reading of resolution 789 the preliminary determination resolution tom hoffman second moved by tom hoffman and second by mr baby do we have any questions or comments about this resolution we'll take a vote now david warning aye scott angel aye scott badger aye brian smith hi and tom hoffman all right and motion pass 5-0 and then we will move to resolution 790 the need for project resolution a motion to approve and read the wave wave the reading moved by tom hoffman and second by mr angel any questions or comments about resolution 790 we'll take a vote now david warning aye scott angel aye scott babjack aye ryan smith hi and tom hoffman hi motion passes five zero and our last resolution this evening was the need for product resolution do we have a motion to approve and waive the reading resolution 791 declaration of official intent to reimburse expenditures about moved by tom hoffman and second by scott abject if you have any questions or comments resolution 791 we'll take a vote now with david warney aye scott angel hi scott babjack aye brian smith hi and tom hoffman all right this is a 791 pass 5-0 also i believe we've covered all of them so last call to receive any public comment we voted on these resolutions all were approved unanimously last call before we close the public hearing no phone calls are coming through so we have a motion to close the public hearing and resume the regular school meeting so move moved by mr babjack second second by mr smith do a roll call to take vote david warney aye scott angel hi scott fabric aye ryan smith hi and tom hoffman thank you we'll now continue our regular business meeting uh item four would be the consent agenda dr terrell for your consideration this evening we bring to you the executive session meeting minutes from 23 the regular business meeting minutes from 11 23 as well and then also the 12-7 2020 special session public hearing proposed project minutes we also 4.02 then is our year in business office procedures 4.03 our personnel agenda and then 4.04 the voucher registered checks as listed thank you dr dr terrell for the recommendation to approve the consent agenda as presented we have a motion so moved moved by mr smith second second by uh tom hoffman with a roll call for vote david morning aye scott angel all right scott babjack hi brian smith and tom hoffman i've got one correction on that i'm sorry on the personnel agenda item i'm trying to work with my phone so i apologize well there's two e eights with respect to kyle hanaway there's an error correction will be made by says l-o-w-i-n-g the one time i'm not sure if that's allowing or i just want to make that clearer in a minute yeah we're looking at it right now is that on the personnel agenda yes it's number eight is it's number eight at the bottom prior to the appointments that should be following you should be allowing okay that's what i assume but i did want to examine yeah thank you with that correction i approve thank you ms goffin all right and we can move on to action by action items this evening 5.01 policy revisions and additions second reading and adoption of policy 6320 mr aquila thank you mr president board members um in november i brought to you a edited version of policy 6320 which uh is purchasing in that update with the help of mrs dowling we updated terminology and limits that affect the process of perch purchasing in that particular policy so there have been no other changes to this editing as i come to you now here in december so we would like to request that the board weigh the second reading and approve the policy this evening thank mr akiwa for the recommendation to prove this to approve to waive the second reading and adopt updated policy 63-20 we have a motion to approve so move moved by mr babjack okay the second by mr hoffman we'll do a roll for vote david morning i have questions for you sorry any questions or comments from mr aquila i i just have one regarding the comment from the previous meeting uh for our attorney cheryl zika review did we take care of that for the compliance aspect i think we're in good shape yes yeah okay i just saw the one so i just want to make sure we have that covered thank you any other questions or comments from mr ikea david we need to wave the reading of that as well yeah please okay got it just who motioned we do motion yeah yes do we have we started we have a motion to approve thank you scott and your questions comments this on my second thought it was tom it was tom brady sorry yes so scott babjack motioned to approve and and waived the reading and uh tom hoffman did second that it will take a a vote through a role david warner i scott angel hi scott babjack hi brian smith hi and tom hoffman all right thank you that motion passing five zero thank you mr akiwa thank you and 5.02 is the accompanying high school cnc equipment purchase ms dowling thank you mr president director of secondary ed i would front load with this purchases coming b40 because it meets the threshold of over 75 000 and that's why we bring it to you for approval for anything at that level and this is for our current technical ed program to support purchase for advanced machining equipment and with that i'll refer to mr james yeah the high school is very excited at the potential for this acquisition the state is moving all cte programming into a next level programming of study if you will modernizing the standards and increasing the standards for all these pathways and dual credits that our students progress through this equipment will allow us to stay relevant and keep our programs moving forward there will be three programs we'll be able to use this equipment not only the machining program but engineering and the robotics program i encourage you if you haven't viewed the couple two-minute videos of the machines you'll see how advanced it is our students that complete these pathways will be really marketable be able to go into industry and get a job immediately because this is what they are using so we're very excited for this opportunity mr trap our machining teacher mr leblanc our robotics teacher mr mulasky lynn alkier from the high school all worked very hard to get this proposal together and get the right equipment and of course mrs dowling helped make sure that we were financially ready and and in the right lanes to do this so we are excited about the possibility of really moving this forward i'll answer any questions about it if you'd like i'm going to get a recommendation and we'll look for questions um we've heard recommendation to approve the purchase from haas factory outlet in amount of 79 976 dollars for a lathe and a mill to support our advanced machine programming at crown point high school we have a motion to approve still moved moved by mr smith the second by mr hoffman now do we have any questions or comments for mr g firm or mr i just want to say i'm excited for the cte program i think it's great to give them some love if you will and show them some support give our kids our students the best opportunity to succeed so real excited really check those videos out you'll see this is really really cool stuff i would say thank you thank you i agree with mr smith i think these are somewhat unrecognized programs that are very valuable to our students and certainly to the community so agree i'll do a roll roll for vote david warney aye scott angel aye scott fabric all right brian smith hi and tom hoffman all right motion carries five zero and 5.03 resolution 787 edition of the inpr s covered positions missed out thank you mr the state pension system the indiana pension retirement system requires us at any time that we add a category or position to be pensionable eligible that we have to actually pass a whole resolution that is before you six full pages simply to add those positions and so in this case what originally created this need was the director of communications position in the past we've used specific positions and categories and so we don't have either of those available that would suit the director of communications the same to be a little forward thinking would apply for a social worker which we've added into here as well we do not currently employ a social worker in that capacity but having some foresight wanted to add that while we were here before you as well as the preschool coordinator position which is new as well because it doesn't fit under any specific category that we have available so once this resolution is executed we'll send it down to state this bonits the benefits coordinator will continue to make those contributions it's really a perfunctory act if you will administratively that the state wants us to do going forward for these type of positions so the administration would recommend approval of resolution 787.

so [Music] justice well good evening and welcome to the regular meeting first item on the agenda tonight is adjustments to the agenda yeah so we just have an addition to the personnel report it came in at the last minute mrs courtney dickey is requesting a leave of absence for the rest of the school year can i get a motion to approve that adjustment to the agenda i'll make a motion second okay we have a motion in a second all in favor aye all opposed motion passes next item is public comments regarding agenda items are there any comments from the audience okay hearing none next item is recognition mr gibbon yeah so miss miss johnson would you like to begin usually he knows exactly what i'm gonna do redpath is nominating michael knuth a current first grader in heather miller's classroom he is nominated because of his generous heart and thinking of others michael took cookie dough from our fall fundraiser and encouraged his mom to deliver it to beyond homeless so families that live there can experience the fun of cookie making too michael realized families that live there don't have the opportunity to do the things like he does make cookies experiment in the kitchen and other typical experiences that we all take for granted michael i want to thank you for your kindness and for showing me the meaning of the season so congratulations i'd like to introduce you to tatum shadwell tatum is a second grader in mrs ripple's classroom and he is our november student of the month mrs rivel writes tatum shadwell was the first student to come to mind when deciding on november student of the month there are many compliments i could give tatum to show how deserving he is of this award tatum is one of the most thoughtful kids i've ever known he likes to talk to me every day while i'm on recess duty and share everything he did night before but he always asked me about my evening too he is genuinely interested in my life and even follows up with things i told him on a previous day one time he asked me about a headache from a previous day that even i had forgotten about he not only listens but he cares too last week i told him i had a big list of things to do after school and he offered to send his mom to do my walmart pick up for me [Laughter] tatum's effort at school is something i admire about him he tries hard with everything he does and he keeps a positive attitude while doing it he's not afraid to ask for help when he needs it and he will correct work if needed tatum also is a caring friend to his classmates he'll be the first person to help an injured student at recess or report the injury to me he shows empathy for his friends who are upset tatum is the kind of friend who will stop what he's playing or working on to comfort an upset friend i can't say good enough good things about tatum and he brings such joy to our classroom i'm proud to have him as a student mrs riggle is all right so i am proud to present miss haley baker as tz's student of the month haley is a fourth grader in mrs lakin's fourth grade class mrs laiken says haley is one of the kindest sweetest most caring and friendliest people that she knows she brings joy into every room she enters and always has something positive and uplifting to say she encourages others daily and celebrates their successes she does her best on her school work asks for help when needed and offers to help others haley is pure joy to be around and i am so thankful she is in my class i would also like to add from myself and from the office that we also love haley as she brings a smile to everybody she meets she's the first to give a hug off the bus and is always a uh a hello in the office right around lunchtime when she peeks in every day right so she has overcome many hurdles in her life and she is just a great example of what student of the month should be so tz is very happy for haley good evening our green castle middle school student of the month is jackson rogers he is not here yet because they have basketball practice so he's getting cleaned up he should be here in a minute but he can text me because that's who he is the character trait of the month was leadership and this is what two of his teachers said jackson is a student that is always willing to fill a leadership role he is detailed organized and eager to help guide others another teacher commented that in her class while she was out for a few days jackson was willing to lead the class and work individually with students while the topic was all new to them she knew that jackson would be serious about completing tasks and willing to guide others it was very impressive as the students made progress while she was gone so jackson rogers so i think we're correct to assume then that with um jackson running late that mr rogers is running late so we will recognize our high school student of the month as soon as as soon as he arrives okay because we can move on for a minute okay next item on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda um going down the line of the consent agenda do we have any questions or comments about the monthly or the meeting minutes from november 23rd 2020 a work session or 2000 november 23rd 2020 the regular board meeting minutes does anyone have any questions or comments about the minutes okay um next item in the consideration is allowance of claims mrs romer hello everyone hello first in your finance packet you're going to see the payrolls for november 2020 there were two regular payrolls in november we also had a mini payroll there was someone that didn't quite get the pay they needed so we did a mini payroll to get that person uh their funds in a timely manner the first payroll in november was 11 6 of 2020 for a total payroll of 441 952 07.

um do i think we're all set okay cool thank you hi there good evening um my name is deidre cuffy gray i'm the college and career advisor as you can see from the banner i like to actually refer to myself as the friendly neighborhood college and career advisor but it was too many characters so i had to uh go with the short version but um i think most students know me as the friendly neighborhood college and career advisor and and mostly um that is to uh de-escalate what is sometimes a very stressful uh situation which is thinking about life after arhs my hope tonight really is is to speak to parents and guardians of juniors or maybe ninth or tenth graders um about this process um knowing like really acknowledging um that uh in as much as students who were the class of 2020 or the class of 2021 were were immersed in what covid um realities meant for the college planning process or they they sort of were steeped in that water either as seniors who whose process was upended by covet and not being able to visit colleges that they've been admitted to in the spring or juniors who have been really living this since uh march of of their junior year so much so that that the they took an sat on march 14th maybe it was the saturday before school closed so that they they have sort of been tracking the changes whereas a parent of a junior might not and so just wanna take some time to to maybe uh bring you up to speed around that um i think my other title is buffer um and the reason i say that is is that you are essentially launching your juniors into adulthood with this process um and it's stressful and it causes tension um and uh and a lot of that is because um you are having conversations that you might not have had before with your junior even if this is the third junior that you've gone through this process with um that that here are some young people uh sort of on the edge of 17 and on the edge of 18 trying to be independent um and then they are also in the midst of this high stakes uh process um which i think we we attribute a lot of like are you winning or are you losing to um and so so it's so it is stressful and they're trying to do it on their own and you're trying to get in there they don't come home and show you every piece of work um that they've done and and it has the the added stress of money like affordability like what can a family afford what are your students what do you expect your students responsibilities to be for this really probably the one of the larger decisions that they'll make in their new adult lives um with with money that's not theirs and so um all those things that independence right from that from that junior and and these issues of um like all these pieces of this admissions process come together and really literally collide so um when i say buffer um i my hope is that um that that that i and the counselors who have been doing this for a very long time at arhs um can provide um an opportunity to sort of add into the conversation of your junior you know lots of times like if i say if i'm talking to a junior who's named deidre i said we're on team deidra and that is a big number of people so just just to go ahead and name it that that there is the college and career advisor but there's also your counselor of a number of years who knows your student um for the length of time that they've been their counselor um and christo garrity who is the guidance secretary who does an incredible job of managing the process with us so um so we're we're here to be part of your team 2022 um junior um with this process um and so just just to sort of give you a sense of what what i'm hoping for tonight is as i i want to just spend a little bit of time outlining the process um uh as as we know it here at arhs um and thinking about life after a rhs and also really um highlight the fact that the conversations that i'm having with with with students with with juniors and seniors is not just about college that that there are a number of pathways that that students explore i think emerging in this role at arhs which has primarily been about college is also conversations about um career and and and uh and that that also speaks about a gap year or are getting a certificate or getting a two-year degree or getting a job or enlisting in the military or or signing up with just an incredible range of americorps programs like figuring out what what a next step is going to be for your for your junior and senior that makes sense um and so uh that it's a work in progress that broadening um and so i'm learning um and and uh and just really here to sort of engage in conversation with you and your junior about about what what the possibilities are um and so so that's just sort of the initial piece so um so i'm going to spend about 20 minutes or so talking a bit about uh what what happens and and during the junior year for juniors at amherst regional high school um and and sort of what's in place for us um uh in terms of support and and and in logistics and then um i want what i want to do is open it up to questions um so uh so the the first thing is is that we want to start with your junior um and so uh i have uh spent a little bit of time in some classrooms and will will do some more spend some more time um meeting with juniors um to just introduce myself and talk about the process um but the first question that that i ask them is is what's important to them like what are their values what's what's important really personally to them in terms of values and then um move into preferences like what what deep preferences do they have for their next step what kind of community do they want to be a part of and participate in and learn and and grow in um before we start naming colleges which has it's inevitable we can't avoid it you know i think one thing that stands out in my mind is the fact that oh geez um maybe it was 10 years ago there's going to be some basketball fan that's going to set me right on this but uvm was in sweet 16 the men's basketball team was in the sweet 16 for march madness uh and the uvm's application skyrocketed um and it wasn't because they had some amazing program um that suddenly came on on the horizon um it was because people saw the the uh uvm team in their green and gold uh i say outfits but uniforms and they added uvm to their list um and so there's a lot of sort of non-sequitur or sort of hard hard to know why a school is on a student's list um but i i really want to emphasize um that that thinking about their selves thinking about what's important to them what their skill set is how they want their skill set to grow um and what what kind of school community they want to be in is a good first question to ask um so so that's um really where we try to start um and with with juniors you know the knowing that some of the reality is that um there's a there's we have this pull of urgency right there are timelines that are connected to this process um and so we're we're sort of running around circling around sort of that sense of urgency but you know i think it's really important to put the brakes on um speak in quiet tones when you're talking to your junior give them space when they're freaking out or if they are freaking out and um and i'll and allow time to step back and think more carefully about them like who am i as a student what what what are what do i enjoy studying what kind is this is this is a school that has 950 students or so feel too big or too large or just right to me um how far away do i want to be from home what do i want to study what kind of relationship do i want to have with professors do i want to continue to play the sport or be in the activity that i want to be in um is is the campus um one that's comfortable for students who are lgbtq or do i want to be at hbcu after being a student of color in a predominantly white school so those kinds of questions i think we should start with with our juniors rather than this is the form you need to fill in here's the common app like take the sat or not um so that that that they are just a little bit clearer about who they are and who they're becoming or who they want to become um so that's sort of my first want want let let's let's le it's all about you let's talk about you not it's all about you let's talk about colleges and what you need to do it's all about you let's talk about you um just just sort of the the pieces of the pie just in terms of calendar what happens is i go into junior classes in mid-january and introduce myself and introduce the process um and uh and in years past i've handed them what is the junior handbook um and that we are we're actually going virtual with sort of the pieces of of that handbook is going to be more of um documents different documents that are looking at specific parts of the process that will be in the virtual office that is the guidance office and um i will talk beefy and i'll be honest i haven't figured out exactly how i'm gonna get to juniors um i'm what i'm hoping is that that they'll they will hear from me and they'll have a number of opportunities asynchronously to to learn about the process and then we will open it up for um meetings family meetings that are include the junior and their parents and guardians um uh it's using google meets which has been worked really well really just to sort of for me to learn about you and your student and first students to ask questions and for parents or guardians to ask questions so that happens in the spring um admissions reps visit in the spring also um and and they are um very aware of the fact that we're we're not able to get on campus and and trying to use lots of different ways to provide information to [Music] families and students without the ability to get there it's some schools have opened up and have had drive drive tours or vert or or self tours abiding by the the safety precautions of the campus for instance smith college is you know they have signs all over campus that say you must wear masks and they have provided sort of audio tour so they're just lots of ways that you can take a tour without sort of the traditional there's a student that's walking around but they also are providing information sessions opportunities to sit in on classes um opportunities to meet with current students um because they realize that that we are kind of we're having to suspend disbelief um and and and not being on campus um and so colleges are are working very very hard to connect with you and your students in in this remote reality um so that's um something just to realize that there that that colleges are refining how they are um talking to students and uh families and they are really working hard to to find ways to to get to you and your students um so so that that is kind of one i think one piece that i that i want to um point out uh so so there so there's that um i think one big question that that people have um is is what impact does covid19 have on on this process i think the the there are some i don't knows um for the class of 2022 but one reality that is that a number of schools that uh have been really score driven when i when i say score driven that have relied heavily on the s.a.t or the act for for entrance are test optional definitely for the class of 2021 some schools said that they were test optional just for the year others we're really going to have to wait to see what what they say um about the the next year but i think uh that schools are figuring out a holistic admissions process which which i think is good for students on a number of levels that colleges are taking more time to to read applications and they are um and then and they're i think looking much more subjectively at students not just looking at a gpa and an sat score and and deciding whether or not a student is admissible i you know i think in in my career i've seen some really amazing students who are really capable who who haven't scored well and and and haven't gotten into selective scholars colleges and i can point to their sat scores um as as the reason and not whether or not a student was capable which doesn't isn't really i think looking deeply at an applicant when we're when we're that score driven um and so uh what that reality right now is that uh while arahs it has um spring s.a.t slots dates that are available it has everything to do with health and safety and so those dates um um while they're up may get cancelled and i just i think you know i'm starting at the end um and and just saying that that what you want to think about with your junior is what you can control versus persevering on what what we don't have any control over which is whether or not the date is going to get cancelled in march whether or not a school is going to be test optional what students do have the ability to control is uh is what they're doing in school what courses they're taking what how they're managing extracurricular activities even in the world of remoteness um what kinds of relationships they have with their junior teachers um because those are the people that are gonna write recommendations um and uh and just sort of thinking about what they you know being engaged in the process um around essays and and all those other logistics those are things that you control can control um whether or not a school is going to be test optional as something that is that you're not able to control um and so i think focusing on what you can control in versus what you cannot control is a really super duper healthy way to go about about this process um so um and so i you know i think uh that's my two cents like focus on what you were able to control and and and uh and and don't perseverate on what you can't control um i have a little smile on my face because at this moment my brother is texting me about his senior um who is uh refusing to log into college board and send his scores so uh and i'm not gonna answer that text i should have turned my phone off but those are those are the kind of the the sort of the the uh the the uh struggles that that that we are entering into with with our juniors and our seniors like i you know i think if i had to cycle island advise it this senior is trying to have control and his dad is on the other end sort of asking auntie to try and help out so if you you know free college counseling from anti deidra um so i you know i think i think you know if i had to say there are five things that that you need to pay attention to it's you know getting solid grades and appropriately challenging classes so that's not to say take as many essay ap and and and honors classes as you can take an appropriate number of challenging classes um get stay involved in extracurriculars in meaningful ways even if it's remote right so that's that's important um i think thinking about the summer um as as being sort of enrichment opportunities like starting to have an eye even if sort of traditional summer approaches can't happen like thinking about ways that your youngster can be involved or thinking with them about ways that they can pursue their their interest during the summer is is also important um and then start starting you know after you've sort of done the internal personal um review starting to think about a list and starting to spend time just going online and looking what college at what colleges have to offer and then lastly like if there's some schools that are really pushing um like have have been really just only when i had a one-year hiatus on on the sat or act like looking at your list to see what schools are saying about um testing policies um i think you know certainly um some of that standardized testing is happening at home that definitely happened with the ap last year so that's kind of that's my my really my short list on on what to think about in terms of process um and then you will be invited to schedule a meeting in late january early february um with me and it's it's a good sort of first step um students will be asked to prepare a survey where they where they answer questions um prior to meeting with me and we we use online links and so you you don't we're pretty accessible um and and in terms of um being able to set a time to meet with me um as well as i think it's perfectly appropriate to have conversations with with your your for your student to have conversations with their school counselor because they know them really well about sort of what they think they should be considering as well i don't feel at all um territorial about the conversation around um college and and career there are lots of people in the building are that can sort of engage your junior uh around um this um so so that i think you know that's those are that's sort of my my my sort of two cents um about process i i guess um it makes sense to open it up to questions um uh that that you might have about the process ah that's a that's a great question um so the question i guess oh it came it came up um here's here's what i think your junior is experiencing school in the same way that juniors across the world are experiencing school like some are hybrids some are like outside running around in the snow some are are in person and so colleges are all looking at it in the same context they understand that but i think here's some things that your junior can do there are office hours still right checking in with a teacher um a couple of times for office hours to to have a conversation i think is important um that's important no matter what it's what i would what i tell college students that i'm working with like stay for office hours ask questions like establishing a relationship um that is remote is is going to be important they colleges have not backed away from the idea that they want junior and sometimes senior year teachers um they're really sticking to that and some of that is developmental who a student is as a junior or senior in terms of emerging college readiness is is has much more weight as a junior or a senior than than a 9th or 10th grader it is great if it's a teacher that you have as a junior and and you had them in 9th or 10th grade so they can chart growth but they are still going to prefer i haven't heard anything different junior year and senior year teachers that's a good question and just to elaborate on that here's what they're looking for an english or social studies teacher so one of the humanities and a math or science teacher so we have a process in the spring that we managed actually pretty well remotely where students connected with their junior year teachers granted they had a little more time in the physical classroom but um but they we do guide them through the process of asking for recommendations and thinking through who who they will ask and um and it went pretty well actually in some ways better it was actually a more accessible process in some ways for some students um because it was remote but but thanks sarah for asking that question that's a good question so landing on junior teachers maybe senior year if you're applying regular decision meaning have a january deadline and just just in terms of timeline um uh one thing that didn't uh change uh interestingly enough despite covid were early deadlines and regular decision deadlines so the first deadline that we encounter is november 1st which comes pretty quickly there's november 1st and november 15th those are what are called early decision or early action deadlines um early decision is this is your love the person that you will you will never leave early decision is a binding um uh uh agreement where you say i want you and uh if you pick me i will never leave you um and so uh that's early decision early action is i like you uh and i like to date you maybe not marry you um but uh will you date me um and uh and that is it means you apply november 1st november 15th december 1st december 15th and the new fun thing is that there are some january 1st and january 15th early action 2 dates were where students here early and they they are not it's not a binding decision they um still get to apply to other schools so students that apply earlier um get a decision earlier they do not have to commit until may um and early decision students essentially are saying if you say yes to me i'm i'm i'm locked in um and then regular decision is uh tends to be january first some there's some january fourth date which i'm not sure what that's about um and some january 15 dates um for regular decision and there's also um rolling which means uh colleges just give students um their answer when their application is complete um they they disburse scholarship money as they have it until they don't um and uh and so you can apply rolling sometimes as late as june uh so they're they're just a range of ways to to apply for students um all right uh let's see so jessica asked um what other college search websites do i recommend besides naviance um and you're welcome happy to be here uh the website there's a couple of websites that i like um are um the let's see what's a favorite of mine there there's one that is called college express which i'm trying to see if there's a i'm learning this technology is there a way for me to put it in the chat box maybe not um let's see um so it's called college express i that is a good one it's actually connected to um a fellow named steve antonoff who wrote a wonderful book called college match the reason i like the book college match is because it starts with self inventories who am i what do i care about and then it goes into colleges but all he he compiled all these different lists of schools um and and um and so it's like what's a great school for cafeterias who has the best cafeterias that might be a little more esoteric than than really is there but just hundreds of lists that he has put in one place um and so i think that is a great way to just sort of for students to skulk around to to think about different kinds of of lists so i i tend to start with college express when i'm when i'm talking with students um college board is fine um they they um i think in some ways the the graphics are a little bit more um friendly to a 17 or 18 year old not being a 17 year old 18 year old myself but i think um sometimes it's just a little bit more user friendly so i do do like college express as well um and then another website um is is one that sort of came through is through the federal government the the doe the department of education which has um is called a college navigator um which i think is is a fine search site but there's so many it's amazing the energy that has gone into college college search sites um so um and i do have um we on the guidance website uh in my office there are a number of those lists are there uh let's see doug is asking can i talk a bit about uh how how colleges are taking are looking at taking a gap year what do they perceive as useful time spent and how do students document their experiences so there are a couple of ways to do a gap year one is to apply to colleges sort of the both and apply to colleges and then differ a number of students deferred from the class of 2020 and in schools ended up becoming more versant around deferring and gap years so umass amherst asks students to um document their learning um and and provide that before they go to umass some schools are really totally free and open they say they you say you want to defer you want to take a gap year they say yes and then you come the semester or year later um so it all it all depends i think um there i think so doug the answer to that is it really is i think if a student can speak to their learning and growth it's it's considered acceptable a student can work at uh uh as a babysitter or an au pair for an entire year and learn something and grow and so the documenting of their experiences if they've deferred at a school the school will tell them what they need if they haven't i think really sort of thinking about journaling and and video and vlogs and and blogs um to document sort of what you've done um is is a is a good way to sort of actively um record what what a student has done over time ah um the psat so um the p we didn't the psat is the preliminary sat um and um we didn't offer it in october for safety reasons and there is another date that college board has announced which is january 26 and i think that has everything to do with whether or not that's a healthy time to have 30 kids in a room uh in the middle of the winter taking the test and so right now this is a great i don't know question generally what college board has done for people who have missed the psat because it is something that qualifies students for the national merit scholar qualifying test which is scholarships money they provide an alternative so they might say if you take the s.a.t by june um then we'll use those scores for the national merit scholar um qualifying test um but we haven't heard from college board to my knowledge sort of what the alternatives are um again i you know i think there are a couple of i have a couple of thoughts about about like i i think the best thing a student can do is is sort of engage with their academics um like that's the best prep that exists but um preparing for the psat or sat khan academy has a free website for that sort of really is what what khan academy did was contract with kaplan and to make the prep um more accessible but so many schools are are really test optional meaning you don't have to send your test in or test blind meaning they're not going to take your test so what's a test blind school mcla massachusetts college of liberal arts is now test blind they said they're not taking sats um at all and the university of california system is saying they're not using sat because they're biased along racial lines um so they're just they're not going to use sats or acts ever again um and so i think sort of one question that i think you want to ask is the degree to which you know what what is the value of a score driven school for your student um and and are they going to be better served by schools that are looking at students much more holistically um and and so i think that's a that's a sort of a half answer to your question lisa thanks um it's it's definitely sort of where it's a wait and see answer that's one of the things we can't control let's see make sure ah there's a great boston public library has test prep materials available free thank you yeah there's a there is a there's also um uh now it just totally slipped out of my head i will remember and and say what it is but there's a there is another site that i think is pretty good and i'll it will come back to me hopefully not at two in the morning uh early decisions okay so a common app is um a cool site common app is like a clearinghouse um maybe you applied to college and you filled out 10 applications 10 separate applications you had the same name the same birth date the same social security number but you wrote that 10 times what the common app allows is is to to fill the basic information in once including the essay the main essay and then schools ask very specific questions what we call which we call supplemental questions um the common app is open right now students can actually sort of create their common app now it it does a little dishwash um and and throws away all the supplemental questions um but the the basic information stays um on august 1st it reopens after having shut down for a couple of weeks in july you know i think for students that are applying early and students that are flying regular can start to to fill fill that in in the summer and again you know this is like you as a family deciding what level of push and pressure to put on your students to get started early like you're gonna start to see where they are and how ready they are for that like don't turn it into a knock down drag out fight if your junior isn't interested in doing that in june right so like i think having de-escalated conversations um sometimes actually scheduling um conversations um is is is is a good healthy way as a family like every other saturday we're gonna talk about your life after ahs process right like um even step back from college don't assume that that's the next step and and start to have regular conversations so that you can gauge sort of what level of stress your junior is willing to take on and what level of stress um you're able to take on and again like asking for the buffer asking for the auntie or the the neighbor or you know sometimes outside consultants to help um de-escalate this conversation let's see um i guess one one other piece one one piece that i think comes up for students is the ncaa clearinghouse speaking of clearing houses athletes who are hoping to play division one or division two have to meet requirements that are set by the ncaa and they create an account um through the ncaa i mean we're don't have a ton of students that that that that utilize that reality but but if you are a student athlete or you have a student athlete um spending time on the in in the ncaa clearinghouse like creating an account and and being aware of what the requirements are around athlete a is a good idea to sort of begin now if you you haven't already i think um one little caveat that i have around athlete recruitment is um is that you you you i think it really really makes sense to to be alongside your student um because coaches sometimes are really enthusiastic and they sell some uh you know i don't know they they they sell a kettle of fish sometimes you know like you're my top recruit i really want you and then they're not always aligned with what the admissions office is saying and so sort of really closely modernizing the conversation asking where does my student stand in recruitment is really important and being in touch with admissions offices as well as coaches um to make sure that that that the the conversation is um consistent um and aligned is is a really really important piece so that so the ncaa does have a website that talks about recruitment and talks about sort of what what kinds of contact is is acceptable division d3 schools don't offer scholarships um and have a slightly different set of requirements sometimes division three schools strongly encourage students to apply early decision um and and if they're if they're a top recruit um and so that again like is your student ready to make that level of commitment is like as a conversation that you would want to have as a family ah any other questions something i didn't cover uh i you know i i do want to just talk a little bit about about ways to look to sort of get more information about colleges they you know they they all have websites websites obviously are giving school putting schools in their very best light but it is a start i think going deeper than the admissions page is really important so going to if your students are saying i want to study psychology going to the psychology department looking at what's required to be a psychology major taking a look at professors and seeing what they've written what their focus is um finding out about if you can sit in on a class that's in the psychology department i think is important talking to students that are studying psychology asking can i talk to a freshman um that that is studying psychology to see what their experience is like um is is is really important just in terms of going a little bit more deeply than um what what is a real sort of manicured approach or a way of of talking about a school right like you're going to put your best foot forward on a tour live or online um but but beginning to to sort of dig a little deeper into websites to know what's being offered um and then i think using less official um ways to look at schools like instagram accounts you know i think one thing that happened after the george floyd murder a lot there was a lot of conversations about access and equity on college campuses and so a lot of websites called black at umass black at yale black at uc boulder came up and so regardless of what your race or ethnicity is if you're someone that's concerned about social justice and equity um going on instagram to see what students are saying given knowing that it's their opinion is another way to sort of look a little more carefully at a school looking at and going on instagram plugging the collagen to see what what's going on social media wise about a college campus is is just a way to just get a little more honest and and real about what's happening um i think and there's another website that um is is doing a little bit of tracking of that which is called admit e-d-m-i-t dot me forward slash browse which is doing a great job of both pulling recent news articles about schools looking at their financial health um and and and also reporting on the demographics so that's it's it's also spending a lot of time um outlining the college process 9th through 12th um and uh and so i think i i really love that website i think the affordability question is one that we all have um and so they answer quite a bit about affordability on that website and it it allows families to compare apples to pears as opposed to sort of apples to to lego blocks i think you can sort of look at each school that you're considering and see where they stand using the metrics that that admit me has put forth any other questions um there are more and more virtual websites that aren't sponsored that are that are sponsored independently um uh let's see if i had to name one it would be campus real it's um real as in the old-fashioned movie reel so c-a-m-p-u-s-r-e-e-l org is a is a is a great um website but they're they're online college fairs which i will i will send all of that um naviance for juniors will be up and running at the new year and so that you will um parents will be invited they'll get a registration link and and juniors already are connected it's connected to their ar ps email email coming to some agreement with your junior about email this is the deal email is not the way of communicating for high school students it is remains the the the uh the mode of communication for colleges and old college and career advisors like me um so agreeing coming up with an agreement for checking email is really important because that's how colleges are communicating with students that's how colleges are saying you're missing this part of your application and so if they're not checking their email they're not getting that information if i'm saying hey i'm offering this common app session and it's coming through their email and it's it is an ambience as well um so we're i think the college process is a little behind the times around that um and but i think it really just really impressing and we do too upon your your junior to check their email once a week even is a good idea for students that want to go to college but don't have any idea where they want to go to or what to study what is a recommended way to take the next step if a tough subject you know i i think sort of the the having the values conversation like what's important to you conversation is is a good first way to go um and then um there's a another website that i i really like um which i actually really encourage juniors to do before they meet with me which is this um app called corsava card start so it's c-o-r-s-a-v-a um um.com um and it really is is is it's about 168 questions um that allows students to go a little deeply into sort of what they're interested in um and like do you want to go to a small school do you want to be a big smith big fish in a little pond what majors do you want to have access do you want to be on a liberal campus a conservative campus like uh a religious is do you want to study do you want to go to school that um is connected with the catholic church like they it asks all these questions and then to sit down and look at what the student has done i think is is a good way to go i think using the relationship that exists through school counselors as well like asking your student to meet with their school counselor um just to talk about it because it's you know it's good to have sort of once removed conversations i think they're they're a little bit uh less uh activated when there's when they're talking with somebody else i think that is a good way to to start to have that conversation um you know he you know somebody peeks over the fence and says where are you going to college grandpa says where are you going to college like you walk in the store and the person knows that you're a junior where are you going to college like it's a little bit fraught and so i say think taking a step back is is is totally way to go i i think something real good question for parents and guardians is how they encounter stress how do they deal with stress stress and knowing you know you've been watching your junior you know how they deal with stress sort of really weaving how do i handle difficult conversations into this process i think is really really important oh yeah sure it's um c-o-r-s-a-v-a dot-com and that and that's something that i will provide um when i when my first conversa first email that i send to juniors it's awesome i love it it now here's the thing about of course and you do that and it doesn't spit out all these names of schools that's not what happens it it says here's what's important to you here's what here's what you must have here's what would be nice here's what you don't care about um and so then sort of it it just sort of it's the beginning of a conversation about what's important to me right um so um i think we're so used to plugging things in and and having schools spit out um or you know the results spit out to us um but it it really what it is doing is asking people to reas juniors and seniors and ninth graders too what what's important to you and you know centering the conversation around your student versus around the schools that they're going to apply to but there are just so many ways to learn i you know i think that's really important to to just talk about like they're just these rich americorps programs that students can can engage in their their um certificate programs at community colleges that give people incredible skills like i can't tell you how much i love every phlebotomist that i have had has drawn my blood that knows what they're doing because they spent 16 weeks in a certificate program they are so much different than the pediatrician that turned me into a pink cushion when i was a kid um because they have high training so you know i think they're they're just um they're apprenticeships they're you know there are a lot of things to explore um with students and so so that's important um if students if schools look for sat scores are there programs not that i'm aware of i think you you have to sort of do the work of um going on the act website and the college board website to look to see what what test sites are available in your area um yeah and you know i think the many many many schools put on hiatus for more than one year um the sat the i think ivy leagues maybe said we're not going to do it for a year there's a there's a lot of conversation amongst um admissions officers on the on the high school side of things um around access and equity really pushing schools to to think carefully about the sat and and you know it's where where it is in terms of bias you know like that that we just know exists and so asking schools to really consider landing on looking at students holistically but um that's i think in terms of testing sites uh you know safety is a big deal um is if your students there and nervous that they're gonna get coveted like are they being their best self like those are are two sort of questions that i think you want to ask as a family um something that we have seen happening is that like like families with a fair amount of privilege are traveling to other places the new york times has written about it um and uh and so asking colleges to also sort of be aware of sort of the pressure that's being put on families and what what is kind of a untenable situation right now um maybe that will feel different in the spring but but really asking families asking schools to take this off the plate of families because the level of anxiety is is high around it um another great website around testing fairtest.org is tracking schools that are test optional or test blind um even if temporarily so that's fairtest.org um and they they just have you know that list has grown really exponentially um and so so that's a good site to use to track whether or not a school is is going to be test optional they're really tremendous um and and doing the work that they've done the national association of college admissions officers also has has a website so i i that that site is um nac a c n e t dot org um and then you'll they'll you can it points to what is called the newsroom um that is is tracking what schools policies whether or not they're open right now if they're remote it's a it's a great site to just see where schools are in terms of their policy um and then the the um the test prep um uh site that i've mentioned that i'd forgotten it's called compass prep c-o-m-p-a-s-s-p-r-e-p dot com and they actually have a number of webinars that can be helpful all right any final questions from people i'm gonna what i'm gonna do is in in my in the uh guidance office my office i'm gonna put something that um that is just a list of of what one can be doing um along with with the links that i mentioned so that i'll put it i'll post it up in in my office uh and uh you can the the that's in the guidance office which um i'm trying to think the best way to get to that um it's in my signature um but there is a link um that that's available for the guidance office and then you can then their doors for every counselor um and i'll have in my office the the notes um from tonight with the links to the to the um to the sites that i mentioned and some links to sites that i didn't list as well so um yeah thanks for being here tonight um and i'm looking forward to working with you and your students and breathe breathe read that's really the key to this process and i guess i'll text my brother back about his senior

and we're almost 30 um let's rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um so uh can we have a roll call i guess i should have done that first but you're here and harrigan here i'm here tony peregini faith you have a quorum with two out of three great thank you um first item on the agenda is public comment do we have any at this stage give me a second to check there is no public comment at this time okay thank you um review of our minutes from wow october 19th um 2020.

good afternoon we are calling our uh anaheim union high school district board of trustees meeting of december 15 2020 to order at i lost my time 2 30 exactly at pm the following members are president brian o'neill anna l piercy catherine h smith and adam randall trejo you know there's interference coming it's very difficult to hear colleen could you mute your computer please yep thank you all righty thank you so page 16 of the agenda pool item 15.17.3 somebody's causing problems here i can't hear you there you go i think we're good right now would you repeat that please okay page 16 of the agenda pull item 15.17.3 it's exhibit y the origami club kennedy high school exhibit g we're replacing pages 1 through 29 the changes were highlighted and sent to you exhibit triple b replace page one to include joanne foley diane johnson under section one replace pages two and three to include vanessa don donato and gennine or janine valverde under section 3b anybody want me to repeat anything okay may i have a motion to adopt the amended agenda so moved second okay moved in seconded um calling for the roll call vote mr o'neal aye mr jabbar aye ms piercy aye ms smith hi and i vote i uh are there any public comments for closed session items no there's no public comment for closed session today okay we will now move to closed session it is 2 33 and we will be hearing items four point one through where does it go down four point four four okay four point four and we will see you on the other side

a lot's going to depend on the the work that needs to be done and the timeliness of us getting it done we will be moving forward to look to hire a daycare director and so very very exciting news so yes if you have any questions is this a renewable grant in any way it is not it is not this is money that we allowed to basically make for the grant we wrote it for initial startup costs and and fees to start up you know to pay for the director's salary to pay for renovations to the building to pay potentially for uh you know stipends for enrollment for a certain uh for families that may need some help with uh you know with some fees and so on and so forth so this is not renewable but there are other grants that we may look to look at if needed we do believe that daycare again will be budget neutral and self-sufficient with fees coming in us paying out salaries this initial money though helps us to get started it is uh it is just like just absolutely a dream come true um and prayers answered so yeah good question other questions anybody have any questions so i assume we've had a discussion again i know we did early on with the other day care providers and let them know that we've got to prove this i kept them informed with this whole process they are very excited again like we mentioned before you thought maybe they might be fearful that we were trying to run them out of business they hate that with the people for you they're happy that we're doing this project they hate it when they get people on their doorstep and say please take my kid please take my kid and if they take the kid when the daycare providers go over their allotment and they run the risk of being sanctioned by you know by their inspectors if they turn the kids away they leave parents in tears so there's just such a need for the daycare and with the covet happening we anticipate there maybe could be some more babies happening in the community because there's you know some time some idle time there during march april may with people not being able to work so who knows what kind of numbers we'll have especially with little ones so anyway this has a great potential to help out not only our school system but also our local businesses james and stacy were on our daycare community advisory group this has i say great potential to just you know just be a real big game changer for us has any of the daycares mentioned that they may or may not function anymore because they're covered and all that there are some people considering because again there are some people that are a little bit older they may decide to you know retire so yes there's the possibility that they may not continue on with their daycares in the future so yes it's possible we did make sure that we tell them we told them we want to work with them we want to help them with trainings for example like first aid training and different potential curriculum type work that we're going to do with our kids in our in our daycare we want to be able to help support them with that work much in the way that we did with the the grant that darla worked on for mobilizing literacy thank you mobilizing literacy and the assistance that we have with amanda briggs and our local daycare providers trinity lutheran and rainbows so we want to work with them and we want they we need them to survive because and do well and thrive because we can't provide all the spots needed we need them to do well we need us to fill a void that's there and then also them to do well and and prosper i shared with you some pictures i think uh up here uh in regards to the concession stand restroom project um i think tracy might be looking to fold those up again that project is coming along just absolutely awesome we have had no change orders absolutely zero change orders so far um this is going to be a wonderful facility for the community uh much needed to kind of accent our complex of our softball fields as well as the football stadium and the track they are approximately 75 percent done they've got sheet metal that's been delayed due to covet and factories factory issues they've had a few other materials that have been delayed but overall again it's it's coming along very very nicely that's a picture from inside where the concession stand would be those two windows are kind of ones facing north and one's facing west towards the softball field so there's two windows for people to come this is a storage room area that the rec center really really liked on this project as well as us it allows us to store things in there our dugout storage in both baseball and softball is just inadequate plus it's also very it's it's very tiny sometimes it gets a little wet in there this will help the rec center to be able to have storage areas for their equipment during the summer for baseball softball t-ball so on and so forth and i think you can kind of see the picture of the sheetrock being done in there insulation there's a referee's room an official's room there i always didn't wanna just i never didn't like it that our officials were changing between games out in the parking lot i just didn't think that was very positive uh we all felt that was gonna be a potential problem for people that might not be happy with their calls so they will have a place to change separate uh as a safe location so anyway and we can also say use this for officials during the football season as well again project is coming all along right on you scale get a little bit behind schedule but nothing it'll still be prepared and ready to go in time for our fall seasons urge me our spring seasons um right on budget maybe even a little under i say that now i'm going to not want to do it will see so right now i can say right on schedule to be right or right on budget maybe even a little under is hopeful and we'll go more soon i think you guys will be very proud of the facility as well as the the community and again reminder hundred thousand dollars we got uh donated twenty thousand dollars a year for five years from the rec center a hundred thousand dollars from another jones trust grant i'm going to send them a very big thank you card because they have been great uh to provide 100 000 towards this project fifty thousand towards our um our daycare playground and three hundred twenty-five thousand dollars they are tremendous to support this area with a lot of different things okay any other questions restroom concession stand facility okay the last item on my report um i put this in the report on wednesday and we send the board pack it out on wednesday and little did we know things would change in our world you know in regards to remote learning a week before this report went out our high school attendance scenario was terrific we had one or two staff member illnesses we had a very small percentage of absences and then a week later things changed we stick at six percent seven percent eight percent absence rate at the high school uh we got to the point where stacy reid dave watkins myself lori herman we started to talk we started to see the trend line not going well that's when we felt like we all agreed that remote learning was a must because we were seeing numbers that were going in the wrong direction we were just very concerned about the health safety of the whole of the whole building we were seeing illnesses not just colon some strep throat popping up also rhinovirus other things like like those uh those issues health issues it just happened this time of year you know cold and flu season things pop up uh ultimately we made the decision uh to go remote we just felt like it was a needed a needed choice i i've kind of shared with you guys all along um that you know i think like wednesday if i'm not mistaken or tuesday i mentioned to you guys via email we saw we just were seeing a trend line that wasn't good and this could be a possibility so anyway after we made that hard decision um told all administrators directors that were involved in discussing this topic i said we're going to wait until tomorrow meaning friday to discuss activities so as you can tell in my report here um my initial thoughts were if you're on site you're having activities if you're hybrid you're probably having activities maybe maybe not just kind of depends on a lot of different things and if you're remote my initial thought was no because again what people were saying is if you're remote if you're not having school on site it's not safe to have school on site so therefore it's probably not safe to have remo to have activities as well so having said that i can tell you my my original thoughts they changed because i did survey my local urgent my statewide companions and colleagues and i think if you look up there i've got a remote learning and activities document i asked them basically okay if you're in remote learning tell me are you continuing to have activities are you not having activities and if so tell me the reasoning behind which whichever one you're doing so having said that this was a document that people shared with me again not everybody responds but you can see that quite a few people did in various sizes of of school districts and you can see it's a pretty much a 50 50 split so again these are the people that responded these are the ones that said yes these are the ones that said no it's just it's a mixed bag so then i asked again i asked them to elaborate so then when i asked them to elaborate the ones that said yes we're still haven't even known we're having activities said the exact same thing i mentioned to you before if you're not able to be on site you shouldn't be doing activities because if you can't have school on site you shouldn't have activities if it's not safe to be there learning you shouldn't be doing activities on outside those were the people that the boards the the superintendents the the different discussions that have occurred the ones that said yes they they brought up something i hadn't really even thought about a whole lot they said what happens if you have adults let's say your absence rate for students was like one percent two percent whatever the case might be well your adults if you lost let's say 20 staff members for illness well you're shutting down a program or programs because of your adults well that doesn't seem fair and in my mind i thought you know what you're right that's the case so having said that in my mind that was something you needed to consider the adults so then when we looked at the attendance piece when we met friday the reason that i mean we had some staff illness but it was we didn't have to go remote because the staff illness so much it was the kids illnesses that we were seeing six percent seven percent eight percent and we were told that ten percent uh to help the health department our assuming the health direct um the health officer would be looking to shut us down if we got to ten percent so having said that we just felt like we needed to to do what we had to do to keep everybody as safe as possible at the time we had two teams quarantined you know we considered all programs as a whole and we also considered the boys basketball program individually and separately uh because they were in quarantine um so again we we and and everybody was involved in that decision stacey reed dave watkins lori berman myself doug vanderlin we were all in discussion with this and we we could fight it both ways we could probably fight both sides of the argument and win both sides of the argument the bottom line when we got down to the final the final call and it ended up again it's my calls my recommendation i just had to do what i thought was best for the health safety of everybody i don't want kids to be quarantined i don't want families to be quarantined over christmas spring we we've had an increase in students the the absence piece we had issues with a number of kids that were co-pending tests it just wasn't a good situation with our numbers so having said that i don't know if you have questions in regards to what we decided to do the choices that were made i can tell you it wasn't easy this is no fun at all um but you sometimes have to make decisions with the emotion taken out of it and you have to do what you feel like is best for everybody in regards to that health safety so questions so is this 10 and this and the county's going to shut us down is that something that has always existed or what is that well 10 in regards to what we were seeing illnesses pop up right so for 10 percent building foreign a single building is sick the county is going to shut down the school lori hermann indicated that was a conversation that she had with them it's not a policy so how many of these illnesses how many of these illnesses were quarantined kids and how many were actual sick kids and these are illnesses of kids that were sick not quarantined these are not quarantined numbers quarantine are not ill or not sick because again may be fine they may be exposed but they may or may not be ill so these were documented illnesses and then we had so what was the number of documented illnesses that were in our school in the high school i had 22 if i remember correctly 22 kids 22 kids and that's and there could be more i'm sure there could because again we don't know unless the people let us know in the quarantine they may or may not let us know that their kids are becoming symptomatic or not they may or may not let us know if we um if they are positive or not we just don't always but these were all unknown illnesses could have been covered could have been rhinovirus i know it's not influenza a or b because there's no cases of influenza or b in the count could have been strep throat we had strep throat we had flu-like symptoms we had rhinovirus covered so yes so i guess i'm in a little bit of a loss as to why we went to me that's so the number of kids not in school was significantly more than that correct because of the boys basketball team then right shortly behind that the girls basketball team which another forum unfortunately isn't a big number and other quarantine students that were involved could be banned could be others it could be just right big numbers and people in band so how many people were quarantined at that exact time oh i don't know it's absolutely nothing that we didn't know we were coming up 80 were quarantined and monday how many came out of quarantine 31 31 so there's still 40 some kids in quarantine and they're probably going to get more positives we had a number of kids that were cova pending tests i know of two or three those covalent pending tests end up being positive i know of one or two that their tests ended up being negative but again those kids even if their tests are negative they still they still were ill so that's that was the concern the numbers for us and and again stacy dave laurie and myself we just we all agreed that it was not going in the right direction um we just we didn't we just didn't we didn't like what we were seeing so i don't know that i disagree with the concept of going remote you know it's so close to being on christmas vacation that you know it adds kind of a little bit of a buffer to the whole process the part of the process that's getting hard that a lot of people are seeing that is part of the emotion of all that is that they're seeing all these kids emotional and mental health deteriorating from the whole process so you know the sun the problem i have with all this is that even my profession is not following the science of this disease i have a really hard problem with that that we don't do anything that scientifically has been shown to be beneficial nothing so the only thing that probably will help is the vaccination which that's still up in the air but mass have not shown to stop the disease or prevent the disease in any way there's no scientific paper that says it and none in the works that predict it we have not been able to prevent the spread of it in any way whatsoever it's ubiquitous and it's going to be here everybody's afraid of this because science medicine has scared the living crap out of everybody there's a lot of people dying from it there's a lot of people the number that i'm interested is what makes influenza so less critical because 60 000 people a year die from that nobody gets up and arms over 60 000 people where does the number become that we get so scared does it take a hundred thousand to scare people 200 000 hundred thousand where we're at now with cokin there's lots of diseases out there that kill people that nobody we don't do that process but it's partly medicine's fault for not doing this so then if you go through the studies and you look it's the people 60 years in age and above that really need to be protected that group of people need to avoid contact or getting that disease because those are the people at highest risk less than that age can people die from it yes but people less than that age die for all kinds of reasons and statistically it's not the number one killer of anything less than 60 years of age so then that brings up the concept should you let your kids play and do things with the risk of getting covered knowing that they personally are probably not going to have anything but the sniffles and is it the people in the stands that we should protect and the people that want to come well the concept of keeping only the parents there who are exposed to those kids anyway is a decent concept and not letting grandma and grandpa come into the building makes sense so i have a hard time with the whole process of stopping everything it is reasonable that we went to remote learning hopefully connectivity and all of those types of media things aren't going to be an issue i personally would like to see kids still play my opinion based on everything i just said i would still like to see the kids playing because they have done what we've asked them to do and their risk is the lowest that's just my opinion i i don't know if dave or stacy want to speak here real quick i will say this um i have not heard i have not had an email a phone call a visit upset that we went to remote learning at the high school talked with lori herman today i asked her did you hear anything over the last few days she said no she goes i think everybody was seeing our trend lines at the high school kids were ill i even had some people send me some emails about their kids they were trying not to be sick as far as they didn't want to they didn't want to share being sick because they were afraid they were going to let down their teammates they were they were fighting like heck to not go either get tested or they didn't want to show that they were ill i had some people say that was happening i don't know if you guys have had a nurse as well i have a few things to say to ed shades what you just said kids afraid to say that they're sick well then somebody is failing somewhere not to tell these kids that it's okay if you're sick stay home don't don't try to cover it up i mean that's what exotic animals do until they die they cover it up they mask their effects so sonar and other administrators and teachers got to get this through to the kids if they're sick you know stay home and that's with anything i'll go step farther i i'm i don't know as i agree with going remote with the schools because i'm more of a herd immunologist epidemiologist and then i am trying to run from it you know what what percent of kids were sick with influenza in years past i think i can remember at one time a couple years ago we had over 30 percent of the high school out from the flu correct me if i'm wrong not since i've been here not since i've been here no we've had those times last year it's it's hit us hard but we never thought about going remote i don't know how many of you actually have taken the time to visit with board certified pathologist or epidemiologist or immunologist but i've spent a lot of time with these professional people at different universities over the last couple of months and they one of the first things that they tell me is they don't know everything about cope but what they do know is it's very very infectious and then we're not going to stop and spread and we're not going to stop it by shutting things down this is going to have to get through our population the comments about mask is masks can help some if they're worn correctly i guarantee you 95 of people wearing masks are not wearing them correctly because if they're worn correctly they've got to be so tight that your face to avoid any particles coming out and any particles coming in they're not effective and in fact they can at times make things worse one of the pathologies told me the biggest cause of spread is simply hand to mouth the nose contact when you touch surfaces and some people if you watch them wearing masks they're constantly touching their face moving it and stuff like that i mean nobody's an expert on this but i just i just feel like like shane said people that are older people that are immunocompromised pre-existing conditions they need to take some of the responsibility themselves to protect themselves and if they want to wear a mask if they want to stay home they want to isolate they probably should it's and it's too bad grandmas and grandpas can't come watch their kids but i don't want to be the one that stops them if they want to take that risk basically that's what this is all about is risk and i i just don't even though i'm concerned about it i don't think that our risks are high enough to the extent of things that we've gone to people die every day it's just we died well i mean you guys know that i am a coma survivor and i had pre-existing conditions and i got pretty bad to be really honest with you and hospitalized but could have been worse um i have no clue where i got it i agree with a lot of that there's there's no real true knowledge of a lot of that stuff but i think the same token as we got i mean we heard our kids even though we went remotely and people are gathering and we're going into holiday season so that means that even if they don't get sick other people they now become come around because our families are going to get together for the holidays could be infected and i'll take that that was my biggest fear all along with my parents all along um but i really in terms of the conversation that's on the floor right now in terms of um participation i just want to clarify because kesha has had several meetings and one of them they lengthened the moratorium so that moratorium and might be kind of recruitment does that start next week next wednesday starts on the 23rd right through january 23rd to the 4th january to the 30th so i just wanted to clarify that part of that's out of i mean we're really talking about we're talking about them and i can and now i'll let dave and stacy speak if you guys want to talk about the event rescheduling and things like that or anything else i i can just speak to when the decision was made it put me in a situation where number one i have to let hoover play know that we're not going to be playing carisco we have lost no games all games have been rescheduled uh wrestling is still in the works because that fluctuates and so does everything today there were 14 different schools looking for games for either tomorrow or friday so it's it's out there everyone's dealing with it but under the circumstance because it's more than just roll out a ball you've got to change officials you've got to change locations you've got to get workers there's so many different pieces and we had to make that move so the iowa and the wellsville game haven't rescheduled they'll be in january so that's that's part of where we stand in terms of competitions all right those have had to give you schedules we've got that done and i'll mention too i said you know you have to wait not only in the kids situation but we have adults in our building that have health compromised issues the trend line was going in the wrong direction i've got to be aware i'm very careful of not only our kids but our staff i've got to look out for everybody and our students and our staff are the most important things for us having said that i didn't want anybody to go into a break with with with covet positive or potential quarantine situations we had made at this point excellent we just saw some things going in the wrong direction i felt like sometimes i have to protect not only our students but our staff and i got to take the emotion out of it i talked to met some basketball parents and i know they they have some you know some thoughts here and i understand we did consider basketball separately boys basketball we did we chose to go this direction it was agreed upon by all of us we still feel the same way after i talked to parents this weekend talked to dave and stacy two separate times both on saturday and sunday we did not waver or change our thoughts and again if you guys decide to allow the practices to happen that's fine you can do that it's not our recommendation to do so for three or four days maybe five days of practice that's what they're missing potentially now the decision that we decided to make final decision is mine to to to share with you guys on what what's decided you you could change it if you change it and something bad happens we have covered positives we have kids that are quarantined families there's nothing good about that whatsoever if we leave the decision as is you know it doesn't really again it doesn't it's not going to look negatively but based on the information right here and right now what we had i felt like it was the right decision for the health safety of not only our students but our staff and and again if i'm going to error on the side of something i'm there on the side of caution and uh that's the way we felt i would just go what he was saying about i was very concerned about staff at that point in time because we do have those 16 year olds that are in our building and i i believe that i have to look and carry along the side of caution as well with our staff so what are our thoughts about january then afterwards i think that's that's to be determined i mean if you're saying you're concerned about their staff and you don't want to have kids back in the building a lot's gonna yeah a lot's gonna depend on what we see in the next two three weeks over christmas break so i mean we don't have a crystal ball [Music] hopeful about is that i mean i never wanted to go remote to begin with which i've told you guys that from the word go but i think airing on the side of caution with the number of that you know those were all the factors that went in plus a lot of other factors but we talked and we talked we talked and that's we came up with a decision that we felt like was you know working it was discussed out pretty hard because everybody lucas i had a couple of points or thoughts or whatever um the first thought i have is that i'm not in buildings and i want to trust administrators you guys that are in the buildings and gals that make the decision for the remote if thoughts are about staff or students i heard that protect everybody try to get the education in the best way possible on a bad time i guess but then on the same point with toxic activities i have a hard time go take a test at the school because that might be too dangerous but you go play sports i understand they're different but i'm here to try to you know ensure that we get the best education both both emotionally books everything for our kids and it's a it all wraps up together very important [Music] and i also feel that if our schools and our staff don't feel safe enough to be in the school thank you which way you go there will be somebody that's upset with whatever decision is made and i do have strong opinions one way versus another but um there's no reason to necessarily get into that today but no matter what decision you can argue either way but the administrators that are in the buildings i feel like made the best decision that they could with as much information as they had and i do trust that decision that was made and i support it thank you so i thank you i will say that um i'll just make the statement right here i'm not in favor of mandating the mask out in the general public i i'm not one of those fans to follow the governor's mandate but i do think as a school board member we do have some responsibilities kids we have some responsible kids not only kids but we also have to the staff now with that being said i agree exactly with what lucas was saying is we hired these administrators for a reason and uh our reason is that they need to make these decisions they're on the ground floor they're at the battlefield fighting that battle every day we're not we're just out here having to have them give us the feedback and and if they are doing something that's just absolutely out there then it's time for us to step in and say no i don't think that right now at this point that they've done that i think they've made they've made some hard decisions that are just absolute we have those discussions every day at the hospital we have hard decisions in the hospital we have to make unfortunately it's not easy for anybody and everybody's going to suffer so what mike talked about about the 60 i am one of those greater than 60 year olds so i'm concerned about staff that is greater than 60 at the at the high school that all of a sudden we have all these kids are starting to get co-bit and passing into these what are we supposed to do lay all those people that are over 60 they need to go home because they're supposed to fend for themselves well we have a responsibility for them also so they can't just go home we've got to hire some other staff so so i i think i have a little problem with that so um what that means that i i support with what the administrators have decided well i i kind of agree what you say too also james i had a kid that was exposed in my house i wasn't kicking out of the house for being exposed or i wasn't going to leave my house but i didn't get co-bid from him this decision was made by the administrators board had nothing to do with it and i hope that we don't end up circumventing our administrators on athletics because that's that's not right i don't want to be put in that position you know they made the decision because they thought it was best i will say and i don't like it but going remote is somewhat similar to a snow day if you call school because of the snow day we don't go and have a basketball game that same day so it stinks just like lucy said that it's our administrator's decision we're not going to micromanage and i will say this that we would be bringing a different proposal to you if like we said if the staff center we couldn't have school because of the staff being ill and our student attendance was like one percent absence rate two percent absence rate as long as our coaches were healthy and our kids were healthy we'd be bringing a different proposal to you for continuing activities covet is not a one-size-fits-all decision you've got to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate everything that we're dealing with and choices and again so again i i can say my original thought was if we were remote that you i shared that with you we should be no activities but my mind's been changed this situation though was a kid illness concern we were having i said we just had too many we had too many kids going uh they were ill and then that was going to jeopardize not only our kids but also our our staff we have staff that are either elderly health compromised pregnant whatever we don't want any any bad things to happen if at all possible preventable and again we can't we don't know exactly what january is going to hold we don't know but based on the information we have right now it was the right thing to do for for not only the the remote piece but also for the activity piece we felt like so thank you i will i appreciate the parents providing feedback uh or calling us with that because i i mean i i had a nice conversation with best lawyer and i thought she had some really valid points and then you know and i i weighed it and weighed heavily on me over the weekend and i talked to greg a little bit about it and i was like you know and then i'm a little bit what mike said well i you know we shut down school and then so we just say well let's just go ahead and have sports and so i think we're just kind of not playing on the same playing field there and unfortunately i said it sucks for everybody i mean somebody's just you know we're just gonna have to move forward and then you know the one thing this will do as i said number one it probably gives us a reset you know i just say okay let's reset come back to school first 2021 let's have a new year and and look harder at the decision next time when we have to do it if we have to do it that you know we maybe we have some things like that talked about some other things we think about all of those things and uh and but i i still say it's it's really on the administrators that they need to do so i will say the decision will not take him lightly not taken lightly at all yes we'll need to go ahead okay um i do want to say thank you and recognize our ministry and for working their hardest to try to reschedule everything um i know that that's not easy and i do appreciate that you'll do everything try to get the events rescheduled um that was one thing you know i think is really important um even though we don't need to do it this week it's my best intention i believe in administration for what i was told that you're working really hard to reschedule all of those and i really appreciate that i think you guys know us well enough that uh i there isn't anybody in here that wanted to go remote worse than i did there wasn't uh and i even told the staff i said you guys know how competitive i am and my competitive juices were flowing because i didn't want to go but i also knew what was what was in the right mindset and a lot of discussion and a lot of a lot of argument just so you know between staff you know uh and i'm talking about administrative staff we argue but when we make when we make a decision we move on we know that's yeah but there is a tremendous amount of discussion and open we open the air in there and we go after it and we talk about what's best what's not best and what we think is right what we think for all and i just i i wanted to say i think my big thing has been trying to make sure everything is as normal as i could possibly get it for these kids and that's what i try to do from day one i will continue to do that i want their gains you know i want all of that as much as i possibly can and i think that's been shown with volleyball football all of those sports the worst thing that's going on at that school right now is the club organizations are not able to do what they're because there's a lot of schools most of our schools are not doing those but everything else is kind of hovering along and then all of a sudden it just hit and so there had to be some decisions made and i appreciate your guys's comments about thinking that you know we fought these through quite a bit so i do appreciate that okay well i think you guys should be commended with how far we have made it because many districts have had these hard conversations weeks if not months before we've had to so you guys have done something right and i really appreciate everything that you've put into this year so far keeping it as normal as you can for our kids you guys have done a tremendous job and i think the kids have done a tremendous job i think the staff has done a tremendous job it's just i think things just started to kind of snowball and like someone said well go just make your reset here will be what needs to occur and move forward and you know i'm very optimistic i guess that things are going to get and things are going to go and i want to commend the two parents that spoke to me in regards to the boys basketball i had two parents that talked to me i appreciate them talking to me and asking me questions and not going public like with a social media campaign that's anti this anti-debt whatever i appreciate people talking to me at the end we may agree to disagree and if somebody is sitting in my chair they may feel differently if they have to sit in that chair and if i'm sitting in their chair as a parent i might feel differently too because i have kids that play sports both college athletes i get it but again i appreciate them talking to me people uh you know it's just it's tremendous when a conversation is carried on in an adult manner and you can you can talk about things so commend those people that contacted me thank you good there are a few tweaks that we could make within the two buildings that we've had significant um quarantining with that might keep more kids out so going forward if like practices we could do as long as kids are either distant or time limited the drills are shorter than the 10 minutes that could i mean if we have very strict adherence to that or if they're in masks if they're not being physical and sprinting um we might be able to cut down some of the quarantine the lunch tables in the high school were somewhat of an issue and so if we can just add four more inches to those we can get there i mean a pool noodle was an idea myself let's just put a cool little one on the side of it i don't know but um we wouldn't have to quarantine as many kids so there are just a few tweaks that going forward if we could work some of that out that would be great i know that the elementary school had made some changes with seating charts um and stuff like that so that was amazing and that will help going forward so um that would be helpful and uh weightlifting if we could keep kids the same group together at each station that would be helpful those are just little things that we've experienced that have increased our numbers when we could potentially be increasing a little bit so it just amazes me how every school is different we had a case a positive case and holton shuts their whole team down shuts them down and this kid didn't even play on against all those kids by any means so what we are seeing is a difference in philosophy from different counties all the way through and i don't disagree with lindsay at all there's little things that i think we can do with the teams some things like that there are some things that our school just yes we have some rooms that are just not big enough you know where we're doing everything we can and they're distanced but that we we really started with the basketball team that was 31 kids at the booth just like that that's what happened it wasn't the lunchroom or this or that it was one group that started that and then we had little things that started to pop up as we as we went up until that point in time we had not had that and i think what's unique is um you know when when jeff and i talked about here's what we're seeing here's the interviews we've done we really try to take that information and give it to dr sawyer so he can make the best one that he can but with basketball when kids were exposed five days in a row and you don't know who is with who you just have to do what you have to do but you know like if it's girls possible and we know it's limited to eight minute drills and it's limited to space and it's masked if you're not aggressively running that's different we might not have to pull every kid so it just depends i mean it's it's just each case is different and we try to make the key i know he tries to make the best decision that he can so but it's definitely a local rule when it comes to that and we appreciate any and all information maybe i'll be gathering on your end so just thank you guys for that and i can say i had to deal with three different counties and three different companies were different and all of that so how many of the [Music] yeah we really can't share information well you can't sell them names yeah say that there's six technically we really shouldn't share even an account i mean i we we should not so i i can tell you we've met i've met with coaches we are changing protocols within practice uh wrestling we have just purchased uh because some of the places we're going such as douglas county you cannot step on the map without being asked so we have new mass order so our wrestlers will do nest in all kinds of competition again will it stop it you know but we'll take every precaution than we can [Music] lunch [Music] is uh questions no i only attended one session last week so too many things too many other things that's the unfortunate part about doing online stuff and you're doing it in your office you're guaranteed to be pulled away versus that's why it's nice to go away and then you can't get pulled away so unfortunately like i wanted to uh some of them go ahead good morning oh i i'm sorry um i did see i got an email that they're gonna do some coffee sessions like december 18th is one kxd so i don't know it's rescheduled one is either canceled or rescheduled i don't know uh but they are trying to do some other options uh you know uh via you know the uh the zoom type zoom type meeting so um but yes i did see i thought i saw that one got cancelled don't move me so i'll have to do some checking and make [Music] sure anything else next discussion district mass policy i know we'd love to talk about this now so um i think uh all the board members at least uh received something email about uh oh do you have another nice puzzle it just was uh well we sent out something about that we felt as representatives of the school board and representatives that were making kids wear a mask or making staff wear a mask then we felt that the board should wear mask also and that and again that's one of them deals where i hate mandating masks but we are representing the school we're representing the kids and staff and so we feel like anybody that comes into our buildings same thing we do at the hospital the vendor comes in they got to wear a mask they got to be screened and so so that was uh a discussion was sent out is anybody having a discussion about that so i never got any of that i didn't get any of it either you did that [Music] reports that we would be discussing this at the december board meeting so basically it's as simple as this it says space coverage will be required inside all district buildings that's it's as simple as that so whatever building you're in that's owned and operated by the district and you are a member of the public a member of the staff and we're a student you must wear a face mask so do we have a problem in the school that the kids aren't wearing yet i don't know overall are your administrators not wearing it i'm going to say overall are your is this just a rule for mike thorpe it would probably be a rule for my court but it does apply to my court the reason i don't like the policy is mean then we have to have punishment if they don't do it well that's the punishment there is no punishment for mike if he doesn't wear a mask other than he can do it online so what's the punishment if a kid sits in his class he gets tired wearing it takes it off for three minutes and somebody has to yell at him to put it back on that means he just violated our school policy right and when they violate school policy we have to do something about it and we'll if they don't do something with them so if kids have detentions or we try to have grace and kindness with kids but so nobody [Music] we just tell them that they've been asked to do this and uh it's an unacceptable i think giving people a little bit more courtesy to do it and i i just don't agree with that i got into this right here yeah and how are we going to enforce it ask them to put it up and if they don't and it's repeatedly asking the league and if they don't we're calling the cops correct what's the law's right i mean i i understand what you guys are doing i'm pushing buttons for a reason and i think the buttons should be pushed we should all understand that if we start making policies of something that truly is not effective mask wearing is not so making a policy and then saying now i have to punish the kid i think our kids and kids in almost every district are doing a great job yeah all the teachers are doing a great job nobody's coming out and saying nobody's doing this for whatever reason the people that decide not to wear a mask one we can either avoid them if we believe they have kobits so that's one thing anybody who doesn't have kobit can't give it to me right so i don't care how many people wear masks if you don't have it you can't give it to me so our assumption is everybody has coded and that's why everybody wants to wear a mask but if you look if you guys look at the science all the particles all the spray there is no preventative mask on the planet unless you have a viral filter and there are none unless you have a full face shield with a self-breathing apparatus that has an intact viral filter that's only way to do that i guess first of all i'm going to go to my friday notes november 20th item eight we have some language from kasp for a policy stating everyone in our school buildings needs to wear a mask we will have language to approve in our december 14th meeting once the pandemic is over we will remove this item from our policy let me know if you have any questions so i did share this with you on november 20th on my friday notes i will say this there's a this is highly controversial and very polarizing but having said this everything we are doing is limiting odds limiting chances we're trying to mitigate the scenarios so that we still understand all that and so i don't want to be i really don't because i know the science so i don't want to become i'm just telling you i disagree with the policy that's it i don't agree with the policy that's all i'm trying to say okay and i will tell you that one of one of my reasons for not wearing a mask is not necessarily that i'm defying your policy policy or your guideline it goes much deeper for me we're we're in a country where we have choices and and i don't i really bow when i'm being told what to do from bureaucrats that have underlying agendas and i feel like this is where this is going if they can do this to us with mask what can they do next so i'm pushing back and i think everybody beth best pushing back i'm pushing back i don't like this i respect what the administrators are done but i'm still pushing back and i think more people need to push back because this has gone too far it just has look at the states like california work where people are they can't go to church they can't go to their restaurants they're going broke they don't know what to do well that could just as easily be kansas next week if people don't wake up and start pushing back so i mean i agree with saying there's all kinds of information out there where mass can actually be detrimental lower your po2 level raise your pco2 level actually make you more immunocompromised touching your face when you've got your mask on so i wear a mat don't wear a mask because this is my choice and because i want people to know how i feel about it and there's i think there's more people out there that don't like where this is going but they're afraid to speak up i'm not afraid i'm not afraid okay i'm concerned about the virus but i'm not concerned enough to do what some of the things that have been done i'm sitting at home in my basement as a courtesy to my colleagues on board because i don't want to infect them what i have i see this more as a courtesy to the people around me whether regardless of science i feel like my talking to put particles into the air whether it bed or whatever that might have somebody would actually set them aside right now but i decided to stay home and that's my choice and that choice is also available to everybody else on board to stay at home not wear a mask and still be part of the board meeting and i think that's something that we can exercise and stay away [Music] and so that's what i'm doing sitting here in my basement is trying of other people's property and their policies and you know about your day it's not a matter of it's a matter of choice but it's also a matter of the choice of the debt to try to protect everybody so [Music] one hour or one hour [Music] lucas did you test positive no lucas did you test positive lucus yes last month okay if i tested positive or if i felt even slightest bit sick i guarantee you i would stay home i probably i wouldn't even go to my practice i wouldn't expose my staff or my clients i think i could make that decision mike i appreciate that so i'm just going to add to this so so again my statement stands that you know i think we have a we have a responsibility to the staff and students of the district as elected board members i will tell you that stacy can kind of testify through the hospital we're seeing lots of people i know lindsay's here we're seeing lots of people that have had no symptoms none got tested were positive none so there were carriers so and so mike i appreciate the fact that if i feel sick i'm going to stay home i do that we've had people that have been that way three or four days were positive stayed home never got any symptoms and continue to be positive those people are stressed i don't like it either i don't like the governor mandated and i got to wear a mask everywhere i do but i feel like i do have a choice if a if a business has a thing says mass required i could either go in that business or not go in that business so it's my choice the other thing is is most masks i appreciate what shane says but the reason we wear a mask is so we don't spread it's not so it doesn't come into us it's so that we don't spread so we don't cough and sneeze and do all that stuff all over the place so so that's the big deal and everybody believes that the mask is protecting us from getting the virus it's not the mask is protect you from me giving you the virus exactly with those examples i just said so the information that i read according to asymptomatic carriers is that they are extremely unlikely to be shedding the virus it just almost doesn't happen if they're an asymptomatic carrier so i i've got that from some of the pathology so the fact of the virus and the shedding is that we don't culture anybody who's positive so the science shows us that day zero is the time of symptoms so from day zero to minus three days to plus eight days an 11 day window is where people can actually shed the virus that's a fact that's grown in cultures done with viral cultures the problem is how do you pick day zero right so unless you test somebody and then they test positive you would have to culture them to see if they're shedding because if they're a non-symptom patient day zero could been eight days ago which means they're currently not shedding at all but they still get quarantined the problem that people don't understand is that viral cultures are extremely hard and they're very expensive so medicine hasn't spent the money on proving the cultures and the timeline so if we could prove the timeline because the mask does not prevent the particles from does not prevent it from coming out or going in so if you have it and the mass you can shed it or not the key is who's shedding it we don't have the science to prove that so the mass the reason the world of science has said where one is a probability thing so if i spit out 100 particles and the mass stops 50 of them statistics says you would have fifty percent less risk of getting those particles but it never is a hundred percent so it's never preventative so i know i mean i don't know if you guys look at me as just the button pusher but i am a button pusher because science is failing us in that whole process and unless we could culture every patient who's positive and then say look because after eight days up until two weeks after that you can still get the protein and pcrs which is polymer remains chain reactions which is one of the best tests we have actually can detect the protein produced by the virus when you're not shedding the virus so you could be at day 15 you haven't been infected for four days but that's the day you happen to get tested it doesn't mean you're not shedding virus but we don't have the data to prove that for anybody so the result ends up being quarantine everybody who becomes positive and if you've been within six feet for 10 minutes i'm telling you the virus doesn't care about time or distance it does what it's going to do it's ubiquitous i understand you guys have rules you have to follow because we're in a school district i just want you to know that i'm not an idiot and i have a lot of information that i think people should know i don't think it should change the process i think the school has done a good thing by having the kids just wear the mask and encourage them to wear i want you to understand i'm against a policy that to me if we have a policy we have to enforce it if we just ask kids which they've all agreed to how many you know if you have two kids who are belligerent and don't follow masks i bet you've had two kids that don't follow other things you tell too i don't think it's just mask wearing that you get a couple kids here and there i want you to understand that i'm not against the process of having or asking our kids to wear masks and encouraging them to wear when they're down here like this and they say this and they and they put it back on i'm not against that and i don't think you guys have done anything wrong i want you to understand kids are suffering more than we give them credit for and part of it is wearing this mask all the time giving them breaks outside i think is huge the most exciting part of my kids days is when they gotta go outside to take their mass off that's sad it really is our world has changed and i want you to understand that that my my arguments with policy is i don't want to punish kids for doing something that's an irritation for all of us and i believe strictly that if we make something a policy that we have to somehow enforce that and i don't like that concept it's not that you guys aren't enforcing it already but you're nobody yeah hope is being mean about it i just don't like it being a formal thing that our board is policy driven all boards are policy driven and it's always well don't follow policy so whenever anybody gets in trouble we look at the policy this is your punishment for it that's my that's my biggest beef is with the word policy why can't we just ask the kids and the adults to wear the mask if they're coming in the building and if we don't like the fact that mike's not wearing one as a group of adults we could talk to him and say either please wear one or at least stay home because we can we have that conversation instead of the other i mean that's the frustration i have why can't we just say look it there is an issue with this virus it's not a fake virus it's not a bunch of hulu if this board would say look mike we don't like the fact that you're not wearing a mask or where's your eye and say that to him please chet mike what is your [Music] i'll probably leave and not come back until all this stuff i'll leave the board and not come back until covet is over that make you happy well no i'd love to hear your opinion and i don't hear your voice on this but i think we can do it in a different situation by saying what i'm doing right now you're you're forcing me to do something my computer doesn't do that i think we can help uh we can take care of that i'm sure that laptop can go home right then don't make it a policy that sounds good i think that's what she was talking about right i think the conversation what we're having it might be a little it might be a little tense but it's still a good conversation to have ask him he doesn't do it because why he doesn't have the technology and he's trying to make a point but lucas's point is just as battle he's sitting in his basement because he's positive he knows he's going to give her potential mike could be an asymptomatic carrier i think asking the question and the board looking him in the eye instead of on an email or something else has my only other validity i have is for the central office staff tracy and misty and cindy what three courses they have if someone was to come into the building with a generic [Music] when tracy has a mask on she shouldn't need to be worried if you're convinced that mask well he's asking something different which means she would politely ask the person to wear the mask i would hope and we put screens up didn't we i would i would say back to kind of answer lucas's question if there was any issue with somebody not complying then the ladies would ask me to get involved and i would take care of that situation so it is um mean the reason of this policy is for mike is that why it's in there i mean are we having any others that are important at times i know that the again sometimes you have people that do attend events if you have this again kasp said keep it simple together keep it very keep it very simple right when i shared this with you back in november when i shared this with you back in november that was not necessarily an acacia wording yet now kasp says you can come up with a very basic policy and you you you remove the policy when code is over and i'll be happy we will be happy to rescind this policy as soon as that happens but um so again putting this in place allows you i guess that that enforcement you can put a note or you can put no you put a sign on the front of your door saying uh governor's orders you need to wear a mask but it's not a policy that the board says you need to do this and so that's why kasp said keep your language simple if you do something like this not only for um you know for visitors but also uh for for people that attend your events so on so forth more discussion when he said that we should speak those things or not emails i i don't think we should have to as adults have to have the conversation the science well is a board member i don't think i should be getting anonymous emails from somebody that doesn't put their name on it and then they tell me that people are complaining and i don't have a chance as a board member to talk to those people to share with them my thoughts because they don't want to say who they are i'm not going to jump down their throats i have a conversation with them you had that with me several months ago you said people were complaining about me going to sleep and a board meeting that's correct well i have sleep apnea sometimes i have difficulty mike it's okay so uh this is what i'm trying to be a personal attack on you okay [Music] so that was a discussion so the discussion was uh the the discussion tonight was face coverage will be required inside all district buildings so i just have a question if we're making a policy do we need to be more specific because face covering that's pretty easy next question for you guys social media asp suggested that was the the word covering the wording so face coverings would be i guess you could say approved face coverings if you wanna good question and lucas lucas and i had this conversation before the board meeting via email the asb said to keep the the policy they said to keep the policy very general if you will and again the the approved face number the face coverings are the ones again that do cover mouth and nose that's what we are we're working with right now as far as our guidelines we could we could make the policy lengthy but again no i just didn't know if we needed to be if if we have anybody that pushed back then i didn't know we needed to have the policy be more specific on what we intended by face covering again [Music] so the ones that are worse are the gators so the ones so if you want to face coverage to me there's mass that are mass and they're mass that are different face coverings that are close to your mouth allow you to saturate it with spit and actually make it worse so if you're really going to do that you should say no gators i'm going to vote no for the policy itself but yeah but then it becomes confrontational every time somebody walks in the door with the gator up because i had the question who's going to who's going to go up to somebody and say hey is that a two-flyer one plot well i know but it just is confrontational yes i think you can just say approved facebook now now again the health department went to the health department when they shared with us the five different types of masks that are on our website that are approved again that was good news and then not so good news because again who's going to enforce it who's going to contact trace that we we felt like all of a sudden the building principles now are going to have to be at the morning they're going to have to say okay we're temperature checking you and do you have an approved face mask well having said that uh in talking with lindsay payer lindsay said we we will be the ones to check on that when we have to do contact tracing in other words we'll ask that we'll ask the people involved were you wearing a two-ply mask were you wearing a gator we didn't want to put a specific you have to wear one of these five types of masks in in a and you have to do it to enter our building we didn't want to do that and we didn't choose to do that so are only for people that have exemptions [Music] coverage are they going to be contact are they are they going to contact trace yes we do but we don't allow the other ones because again they're not recovering we could say facebook that says face covering just really generic then they can come with any kind of face covering face coverings we could say face coverings that cover the mouth and nose we could we could we could we could define it that way so what are you currently asking the patrons in every building that show up so i assume you don't have a lot of people with the chin based ones showing up because we're going to hear about it it's a gator or a mask and then as people come in if they don't have one you just hand them one and rarely have i have one that we've even had so everybody's coming with something and almost all had 99.9 of them appropriate yes at the start here we had some issues i mean i feel like i have to get an ass police okay so um we're done with discussion so does anybody like to make a motion promotion to approve the district mass policy as presented motions second any second can i ask the administrator if they want and so we just follow what the policies have been told to us at least not following the practices that's true yeah right you're enforcing the whole thing the executive order yeah right you're just following that item correct so is there a second there's debate whether that's vote on your computer all those all right guys i will be back when you remove this policy i'm not quitting the board there won't be any more meetings thank you michael do without me goes away but are you going to ask them focus okay i will work with our technology staff thank you okay math results report mouse above the national average um i tried to go through and then identify you know what kids backslid and what kids did and so look at different risk factors and different things like that and it was hit and miss there was no i could not come up with something when i looked at various kids and things like that to determine whether or not that happened so like no covet sick kid well i wasn't a trend with sick kids that had no bitter iceland even just being out of school no even being up for being out of school for that nine weeks yeah because some structures are going to be different at home than any car and i could not pinpoint that it was this at risk factor versus this or not i mean i had some kids that that grew quite a bit and i had other kids that did that were from very different households and things like that so i tried to go through just based upon what we turned into the state as evidence and looked at that and there was no definitive answer of why it could be so were we able to look at connectivity like the kid couldn't get online and that was the kid that went backwards i didn't go into the connectivity i just went in based upon where i was working well i don't know if you can even do i don't know how you could do that [Music] so that's why those are the older ones right exactly and just i know the acts are also in there at the end the last year's senior group was one of the lowest groups you've had i've been talking to you guys about that for quite for those four years from their math scores early on but i will tell you this i did they didn't do they did better as they went along uh on the act uh if you look pretty much every student 57 of them uh talls took the test every one of them so i was very pleased with that number of all of them and where we were at because i really thought we would be worse off to be honest so just as a curiosity so if you have 100 of the kids taking it you have a higher risk of having a lower average yeah yeah and that's what happened there a little bit uh but overall i would have not thought they were going to be that high and when they showed longitudinal breath throughout yeah and i can tell you like this year's class that will be on next year's that score's gonna be a lot it's it's just kind of the on on that that's occurred and i've been telling you guys about that grouper but they did better than i thought they were so i'm overall i'm very pleased with them from the standpoint of what i thought they were over the course of those four years even though it's not where i'd like for all my classes to be i'm very happy with how those classes did so did we see well you didn't see anything on this and you probably have no way of testing so it's probably a mute question we did do something this year for the first time we gave what's called a pre-act to our freshman for the first time and that may give us some indication of where they're at how close they will be to their so it was an act test you just gave it in it was a p pre-act for all three same number of questions same test pretty much exactly the same thing they say it is a great indicator of where they're going to be pct was so it'll be interesting in a few years to see that is there any push for sats not around here yes but i think you have to ask go through the counselor to go to get that the state's really pushing for the degree for all students in the state of kansas pre-act meaning freshman only [Music] um administering this test so do we get the data from all the duke kids that took the act because they've got duke scores that's do we've got any of that dude it's probably in a lot of the extended learning groups because that's that's very fun to me [Music] yeah do we get any of that i don't know i don't know i just took it we can go back i have not seen anything but we don't that doesn't like translate into any data we get everything [Music] yeah the first time that everybody takes in this impression yeah that just started very high like very high match scores can get you invited gets you invited to that that's an invitation almost why they got invited but i just thought they didn't want to do it no no no everybody wants to know very slightly okay yesterday right now [Music] if you remember we have a program that we've been working with called edge of climber and edge of time really i decided to try something bigger yes an edge of climber is a program that i say that we are working with with our staff to try to do some analysis some longevity type scenario so uh again having said that um i think darla's going to pull up some information that she's done with elementary school in regards to that lucas did you have something to say um so this is the same program you showed us last year right i should have one that says math reports yeah you're on it okay so um i asked permission just to present my data a little bit differently um number one it takes us quite a while to get those graphs and copy and paste them and put them in powerpoint and i thought the paying for this program let's just see if you guys may like the format of this because i didn't spend as much time doing this but i'm not sure if this is data that you'd like to see but one thing that's kind of cool about this program so i tried to title the graphs i made so this is the bes math scores from this year by grade so we give the test in the fall and the winter so this is our call squares over here it's telling us how many students took that so like the bar is going down doesn't necessarily like our scores are getting worse that means the number of students tested is lower so you kind of have to hover over the chart to see um what like what is happening there um but if i click up here like this tells me i'm sorry i really can't read what's on there right so it says 20 national means 175.