according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my abilities so help me god oh help me god congratulations and here is your certificate and we'll um we'll call you up in just another minute to take a photo is that okay all right thank you oh christina you've done this before 12 that's a good number it's a good number all right if you want to raise your right hand and repeat after me i'm steve watson hi christina ruiz you solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that it will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and laws of the state of arizona and the constitution laws of the state of arizona that i will bear true faith that i 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 faithfully and impartially discharge 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.
it's tricky again my little cautionary piece that's in the report this year middle school implemented a completely new grading system and so it's this was difficult in the sense of we're calculating um standards based more of a standard based approach to our quasi standards-based supports to last year they were doing the a through f model so it worked there there's a blending of two different um methodologies here on how teachers grade and so i i do want to i'm putting it out there just as a caution but certainly we can see that there are fewer a's um awarded this year than last year yes sir um i guess that's kind of my i read the cautions that you put in here and i i see that i guess that's my general concern and is that when we when all these new grading policies were explained to us and we we gave our support to the board we were told that we remember asking all of us asking the questions has everybody been trained is everybody on the same page is everybody doing this and this cautionary tale tells me that nope nobody's doing this consistently pretty much throughout the whole school whether you're in primary elementary or middle school um we i mean the question or tale says some teachers indicate that they mark students as developing because they have the entire year workforce proficiency while other years mark students is proficient um i i'm having a really hard time understanding this like i don't know how things can be changed but yet nothing explained and nothing set in stone i thought that part of the change when we were told this was that the subjectivity was being taken out of this and it was being based on the standards like you just said but yet it seems like it's highly subjective and i guess that's where my concern is um i don't know that's what i would i don't know if you can answer that or not but that's kind of the problem i see the numbers are the numbers um regardless of what the grading policy is the numbers are the numbers i mean we've gone down besides just in grades everything very sad very sad and shocking all right with the amount of f's to go from three to twenty-eight is pretty shocking i mean even if we're in school or not in school that's what i was looking at um i don't know it's i guess that's my general question and that's i'm sure it's a little both you have covet and then you've got the grading scale right so you've got both for a lack of work students aren't turning in their work correct but we implemented something that wasn't ready it wasn't ready and that's said right here if not everybody's on the same page it's not ready to go and that's kind of where i'm concerned right i mean for the proficiency i guess that's more of the elementary and primary so can't the teachers can't there be a i don't know just a same even grading scale when it comes to proficiency because i think it's kind of absurd that no kid technically can be proficient at something the beginning that you're expecting at the end of the year that they can only reach it yeah i think kids can succeed and get an a because basically you're saying they can't some teachers aren't giving them proficiency so they're technically can't get an a until like the end of the year until they follow up and earn it correct yes and so actually one of the reports memos that i put together this i just finished it this past weekend i believe it's for the january board meeting addresses this very thing okay um i wanted to just kind of communicate out to the community and all of you of course the professional development that we have already begun and next steps because of that pd um i can tell you that just being in the district as long as i have been and just working in all three buildings i would say the um the missing piece has really been someone to oversee the work that's happening in all of the three buildings to make sure that we can avoid some of this subjectivity and to make sure that practices are aligned and you know that goes all the way from assessment to you know instruction so that memo i wouldn't be upset if mr gold shared that with you early if you wanted to read it but we definitely have a plan in place now and you know we've worked as an administrative team to make sure that like i said we're bringing some consistency and some cohesion to this whole process because essentially with middle school stepping in with the standards-based reporting initiative it's obviously going to be trickling back down to elementary and primary which you know different districts do it in different ways but we need to now align all three buildings so that a fourth grader experiencing some sort of standards-based reporting initiative can now go to middle school and expect the same sort of system so that is a huge goal of mine professionally and we do like i said have some next steps laid out and that will be a process that it tends to be time consuming and somewhat cumbersome i'll admit but it's very valuable work and it's very necessary work right now so i'm very excited about it but i'll caution you as as dr king has used that word many times tonight it's not going to happen overnight unfortunately it's not something that you know one person can step in and try and bring cohesion overnight but i will tell you that i'd like to take a very systematic approach especially at the primary and elementary building so that we can't move slowly on this i recognize that but we need to be very cautious because if you try and do too much too fast it's going to fail and we need to make sure our teachers are all ready for the expectations that they will be given as far as assessment and grading so one of the other things i just wanted to quickly address is the rubric development and the assessment practices that are going to be happening i would say very very more quickly here at the middle school because we want to make sure we get this right so the training that we're providing for the rest of this year it's sort of an accelerated version of what i would recommend but it's very necessary so these the teachers have identified priority standards they've already received training now in learning progressions which is part of that scaffolding that dr king developed and so once now that we've got the learning progressions done for basically every subject area here the next step then would be to come up with agreed-upon success criteria and that's where the assessments come from and that's where the rubric development comes from and that's where the consistency comes from so that you know teacher a and sixth grade classroom is doing something very similar if not exactly the same to the teacher across the hall that takes time but we're committed to it and now at the primary elementary level i will also say that like i said a standards-based reporting initiative is our very very next step because of the work that we're doing with some of the regional office of education coordinators so every single opportunity that we've had this year we started hitting the gas pedal with it so the same thing taking apart the standard figuring out how to make sure it's scaffolded so you can as a teacher very diagnostically identify where a child is starting to struggle and catch them before it gets to that summative assessment so all of that just needs to be put in place to be completely honest and you know i appreciate the support of mr gold and all of you because the pd that we're doing right now to me is the most important work in the district and it's it's already impacted our students and you know we don't have any excuses to give you except that we can tell you moving forward you'll see improvements hopefully very quickly but like i said we want to be cautious to and do it right i think that in my and tell me if i'm wrong here but this this situation has exposed some things that uh that we i think have sent that has created some urgency and some things that we didn't see they surfaced on us that we didn't see or that we knew we needed to do but just in a pandemic right we weren't sure how to juggle some of moving forward with that too because do you implement it once you've started an initiative do you do that in the middle of a pandemic or you know we had talked as well um mr gold i had asked him earlier this year like what how do you want pd to look how you know are we going to move forward like a normal year and at that point we just had said right now we need to get you know a good solid remote learning plan rolling and so then our priorities started you know started changing as things have moved forward so we're kind of back on that track of providing the pd that is just very much needed right now you have more are you done oh okay awesome thank you okay i'm gonna jump back real quick matt can i get your help on this okay i'm gonna now jump back to uh our conversation uh now that we know uh the impact this had on our community entire community i want to steer us back to where we are okay i'm going to refer to a document here on the cdc website that is a uh something you might not have seen up to this point i'm not sure uh the information that's that our county health department has used has been based off of this data as well in fact actually our today they told me that our county actually started the data collection proc or the the creation of the data variables and the cdc followed suit so some of what our county has created is reflected here but you'll see that they say the far right the greater than 200 in the first column number of new cases per hundred thousand persons within the last 14 days greater than 200 is the far right that's the highest risk of transmission in schools is what it says they don't say like you need to be in virtual you they just say this is the highest risk of transmission in schools well that number 200 correlates to the the 14 number that you see on our uh our county's website where they say greater than 14 because they do a rolling average over uh the last seven days so that's 14 per day if you take 14 times 14 days like the cdc's got that's that's just under 200.
well then you know we should probably share that um and I imagine that there's other there are other uh things that maybe should be considered that we haven't considered so for instance uh the amount of uh you know ICU beds that are being taken up at at Good Sam right now I mean I I would think that there may be other factors that might that might actually point to you saying Hey listen that 9% number uh May a you know we can't we yeah we're below nine but you know look at what's happening in the community so we're going to have to constantly be looking at this as you always have so far um is it anyone to think that that's changing yeah I don't I did not interpret that that is what was changing I thought what we were talking about is this is the plan going forward this is how we're going to address it and as things come up because this is an evolving situation that plan may have to change I don't think I don't there ever position that this is it going forward and we're done I never thought that was the understanding Nancy this is such this is I just say I'm an architect and I know that when I put uh when I put a plan in front front of somebody it better you know it has to be something that I'm really you know behind because they're going to see that and that's what they're going to remember and and it's going to be hard for me to walk myself back from that and you know if I see a different direction we should go and so I'm all I'm suggesting is that is that we we at least share because the presentation t i Hank very thorough um but uh you know there we didn't there wasn't any discussion about hey just as in the past these things could change you know you know this 9% number might might change we might be looking at 10% or we might be looking at 7% um that's that's what I'm that's what I'm getting to here is that is that people need to understand that this is going to continue to be something that influx and is is worked out and as as as thorough as this presentation's been tonight um you know data can data can change this and sure Mike you mean the other thing you need to consider is when you talk about 9% that's 9% of what a month ago the the Dage County Health Department or Illinois Department Health Department changed these numbers they decided a month ago to include probables so now probable cases are included the 9% so this isn't even a real cases number that we're looking at so I don't I doubt the 9% I don't have any faith in the 9% number to begin with actually Dan I disagree I believe the the positivity rate the 9% is based on pcrs the incidence rate which is the 100 whatever per 100,000 Nancy look look at the Northwestern page it says beginning November 7th probable cases were being used and cannot be separated do you do you know the definition of a probable case it doesn't matter I'm reading what the health department but I'm I'm telling you the definition of a probable case is somebody who had antigen testing which would be screening test or somebody who was diagnosed as being covid positive even whether they had access to a test they may not have or they had a negative test but a healthcare provider determined that they had Co right I had four family members test positive and none of them had covid so we're putting our faith in a number that doesn't work that testing isn't we're treating that's that's why I like Mike's idea of having a buffer that the board has more input into because we're relying completely on numbers that had been proven to be inaccurate at best however Dan those are the only numbers we have that's why I think a hard and fast number because you can't tell me my the kids are safe at 8.99% but they're not safe in 9.01% it makes no sense you know what but Dan it's not just the kids are safe there's other factors involved that Hank was explaining to us it's it's the nursing staff it's the CMG staff which we can have that all explained to us I think this would take the heat off you know if if we discuss it as a board and the community sees that discussion then Hank doesn't take the brunt of it but Rick you hire me to take that heat yes you H this is such an unprecedented I I do not want to relinquish I think as a board this is we need to discuss this this issue going forward then the Board needs to dial in every day every week and spend the four this decision is not made every day you would know not every day you're gonna shut down tomorrow hey Rick let Hank let Hank finish his thought please the board pays an Administration and superintendent to become experts as much as we can in this data and make a recommendation to the board and run the day-to-day operations of the district this is the daytoday operations of the district we have done the researches an Administration we've worked with other superintendents we have worked with the Health Care Professionals there needs to be according to the CDC there needs to be a metric and what we have heard from the community is they're tired of moving goalposts of week to week it feeling like they don't know what to expect as to how this is going to operate and work what we've put together is a plan here based on our experience from first semester and based on the recommendations of the CDC and based on hundreds of hours of talking with the health professionals over the last nine months of something that has a solid predictable metric that we as an Administration points to that green zone in that range and yes it sits at nine and yeah what's the difference between 89.99 and9 9.01 but then where does the slippery slope go when does it become 9.5 and then 10 and then 10.25 we need a number that people can look they can see over a 14-day period that we're approaching it and I hope our community shows that they are responsible enough when they see that number growing that they do something to change it and drive it in the other direction and this gives them the tools to do that the more that we put in n nontransparent numbers like Hank picks whether or not he feels comfortable enough with school returning that doesn't take the heat off of me that puts the heat right back on me these are predictable measurable transparent factors that tie back to the CDC recommendation and I recommend that this is what we do moving forward for at least the foreseeable future after break and then we do it like we always we'll talk about this at every board meeting and we can re-evaluate if if it's the right thing to do but ultimately you have hired me to make these decisions to make these recommendations and to live with the repercussions of them and I believe I have done that for the last semester and I just I just want to say remember we don't need to get into the weeds that's why we've hired Hank so I mean Hank I shared this with you be email to me I I'm not a big fan of the 9% number I mean I believe again my opinion the only number that matters to me is the outbreaks in school so if we are if we have no outbreaks in school and we can do what you have set up in the plan wearing masks sanitizing wearing face Shields the mitigation steps of the kids in school the kid should be in school if there's an outbreak in school that's a different story we should take them out and fix it but as long as there's not an outbreak in school my opinion the kids need to be in school yeah the question is are we going to be reactive or proactive to riseing community transmission if we wait for the outbreak to happen we have students and staff that could be getting sick when the community metrics indicated that they shouldn't have been there in the first place and that would have prevented them from getting sick when we knew it was likely that that spread was going to occur I believe we have a responsibility to keep people healthy in our school and our community and to based on the metrics we've been provided there's an indication that we could predict that those outbreaks are about to happen because we're passing up those thresholds and metrics right but Hank when when an outbreak happens the numbers go up when the numbers go up they tell you to wear a mask wash your hands and saniti you know keep your distance that's what you're doing in school so you're doing exactly what they tell you to do no when the numbers go up they tell you to move to stop mixing groups of students and to separate and to eventually keep everybody home that's what the CDC says is that you're supposed to on those risks of instructional models I walked through them from remote only to lowest risk to medium that's what those are there for and they indicate as the risks in your community go you should move to those different instructional models in response to that that's what this program does right but if there's no outbreaks in school it is safer for the kids to be in school than to be out of school no Rick this is like all of the other safety measures we take at school we did pedestrian safety on our campuses to prevent people from getting hurt from traffic accidents to make sure that that didn't happen we do safe uh we put in all of the blueo systems and we put in all of the safety training to make sure that we're preventing the possibilities of people getting hurt from violent acts we do fire drills to make sure that people don't die in fires we put in metrics like this to make sure that people don't get sick in our hallways because of covid it's all preventive medicine it's all pre preventive safety practices I want to get kids and everybody back here learning but we need to follow the science as to when it's safe to do that and that's what I've presented tonight is based on this this expansive this large expanse in instructional programming we've also narrowed down on the metrics and expanded them up into that 99% range and narrowed down on the factors that we believe as an Administration indicate that we can keep people safe in this model and that's why I'm recommending where it is now and and I I like the plan I mean if you looked at a 3-week period in the old plan kids are in school for four half days and a 3-we period in the new plan they're in school for 12 half days I'd like the plan I just don't think it goes far enough I mean again in my opinion only but if we were if we were to vote on this tonight or put a plan forward I would say that kids are in school unless there's an outbreak in school now again that that's my only opinion but and and it's about you know we have these different levels of comfort that we have but based on everything that I've been trained on and the conversation the understanding of how schools work and what we're trying to do to keep people safe this is the plan that we believe does that I I I agree but a lot of those other issues you talked about blue point and pedestrian safety don't have have the side effects that are impacting our kids today being home so I think there's this is a bigger deal than to say we we put stop signs up to keep the kids safe Crossing pedestrians yes we do this isn't the same thing and we're putting a stop sign up in the form of metrics to indicate that okay shouldn't come to school because it's like it's likely that it'll spread if it's here yeah like I said I I think you're doing you're you're doing what you think is right and I like the plan I just don't think it goes far enough and again my opinion only obviously not the board's opinion but I would want to be more uh aggressive in looking at metrics and getting kids back into school fair enough but again again this will be an ongoing process so if we get kids back and they're going under this Hy and they're they're they're flourishing under hybrid and we're able to continue to keep uh we were able to get community transmission down and we're able to control outbreaks in the school then we would look at improving our uh increasing hours or increasing days or or somehow changing it right right and if we're able it's not an end off if we're add able to add things like testing or any of those other you know vaccination of our staff any of those things could that could changeed or any additional guidelines that we get from you know the science on this is changing as we saw the quarantine language change in the last week if the CDC adjusts bans or metrics or guidance that would cause us to come back and say we should change it but I really feel like I I you know go back to that slide about first semester and changing guidelines and changing goal posts I think we need to enter into this semester with people going away for break knowing what the numbers need to be to get back for second semester and and these are numbers that I I feel our staff our administrative team feels best represents the science that's out there and indicates that coming back to start second semester under these numbers is the safe way to do it any other comments Mike asked based on current metrics in the presented plan we would not be in the hybrid now as of today no but the cohorts would be back under the numbers as they sit today Hank I just I in in in your presentation I just made a couple of quick notes of things that I had questions about um several community members have asked me um with the 80 minute classrooms they get a a five minute break in that classroom and and uh every one of them have said could it be 10 minutes instead because you know if my kid has to go to the bathroom or you know uh get paperwork or something from somewhere you know that 5 minutes goes by really fast I think so that's it it's just a a a a quick uh thing Terry as I men Terry can I address that one as we mentioned earlier as we move into this model where we have both inperson and hybrid going at the same time the flow of the classroom is going to change very differently than when it was 80 minutes online everybody there at the same time so you know I I think everybody will experience that the structure of that 80 is going to flow very differently than it did in the past oh good because you know you know how it is at home it's just a little more um distraction and and and that sort of thing okay and then my other question was is you were talking about testing um are are we uh looking into you know uh purchasing test kits or um I know the University of Illinois has done that uh that rapid test testing and they're extremely successful with where they're going and um from what I understand they're they're at a uh you know 100% uh learning and and all of that because of their testing and um they've developed that rapid test thing so um you know maybe if you could talk a little bit more about what your plan is for that so as I mentioned last week we submitted the Clea certification so that's the first step in being able to bring testing on campus with that we will look at um uh two possibilities one is uh kind of that surveillance which would be kind of like an example that would be like the similar to what they're doing at University of Illinois where it's uh maybe based on saliva testing or or that kind of a a test where you would take a random sample of students and base that base your community spread on that random St statistically significant random sample right and then you would know the spread inside of your schools and that that could be a whole different metric than what we're looking at right now in the community that could be a variable that comes over time um there's also the like the binax now testing which is the nasal swab that is returned in 15 minutes and gives you uh like a rapid response test test um that one would be more typically used for somebody that was already showing symptoms it wouldn't be used as a surveillance tool the binax now Tool uh is provide or test is provided uh or there's there's test kits available for from idph but we would need to get work all the way through the waivers and the qualifications set up all the tools and protocols inside of our school this isn't something you start next week right this is going to take a month or months to come to fruition the other tests are not available at no cost I see Mike asks a question here and they cost the cost per test ranges from10 to $20 per test wow currently so who knows where this goes and if costs change or whatever but it is cost prohibitive both both in the cost of the actual tests and Logistics and human resource aspects that that play into it but um you know there'll be a lot more discussions with the board and the community before we get to a a testing uh a realization of testing as I said we've started the first step by filing the for the Clea uh certification well I if if we're going also with um um uh the the vaccine you know are we going to need to invest a lot in in testing if the vaccine is going to be widespread you know we're going to get hopefully her immunity by then uh Nancy can probably speak a little bit better Terry I don't know if it's one or the other I think it's a combination of both hits us there right now testing vaccinations yeah uh but you know the the cost is really you know as Mike said um you know that's that's the scary part you know we don't have a lot of extra money for that right we don't know what funds will become available what additional you know what might might become available like I said right now it's making sure that we're poised to go in that direction should it make sense to do that well those were those were my few questions so I'll give it to somebody else any other questions maybe take a uh can we take a quick break my bladder is about the about to burst sure that's up to Nancy uh let's uh what I would suggest is uh what's the next thing on on our agenda let me just look real quick we're going to talk about goals okay let's take a uh can we can we limit it to like a five minute break yes okay five minutes so 9:18 please be back thank you restrooms are in the hallway over here if anybody's looking for them had day rate it's possible yeah on which one slide was it well I think the okay possible that I had a cleric said it was like 3 or 400 and it's 922 oh so I must have copied over the seven thank you yeah good catch well I know it's so far away5 yeah well which is why that's not our only variable right we're going to be a long way from but there could be a point in the future where that flips right we're well under there but the positivity rate is yeah that rich oh hi Rich nice to put a name with the face this is why I know these yeah yeah yeah you've been looking at them very closely yeah yeah well hey I love that you're interested in digging in as long right right that's yeah corre but you could see a world down down the road a few months from now where people are getting vaccinated that that uh you know it's dropping and then the number number of new cases is very low but the people who are going to get tested probably have it and the positivity rate could be high so that's why both of them are in there I know but what it concerns me is at that point closer May by that time oh we might yeah I don't you know I don't know you know so I know I know I look at it I see what inale is doing they [Music] yeah but they're also only bringing back 25% of the students at a time so you know it's a much smaller pool of students you're bringing into the building for spe e e okay okay are people back I see Mike and Terry Joanna Dan so we have a quum back so let's get started you ready Hank hey we're back you ready to go Hank I am ready okay um so I'm I was thinking about this when we left so have we come to a decision about this last discussion that you'll simply my the expectation is that you'll come back to the board with a weekly up with a a uh updated every meeting and in between meetings via email and that if we need to meet to discuss anything we will is that a fair is that what is fair that fair for people any board member can request that we call a meeting and all it takes is two for that to get on an agenda so uh or Nancy you could call a meeting at any any point right so yes the board could call us back so we we'll do that is that does it does that sit okay with the board members Dan Mike um Rick I'm seeing a thumbs up from Mike Dan thumbs up from you or no okay and Rick I can't see well we're going to go with that okay um we'll be back on the 11th one way or another and if the board would like to meet before then we can absolutely make that happen we we did it in the summer so we can do it again if board members feel like we need to come back and talk about this more I see Zoe just put something on the chat so we should probably take a look at that yeah let's hear from it seems like Zoe and Sam both have uh have had a chance to think about it let's have them wait in because they're leaving in some chats here so Zoe go ahead or Sam oh there you go Zoe hi I see you hi guys yeah I just in the chat all I said was that after listening to everybody talk that from a student perspective I just wanted to say that even though like I personally I like to think I'm a pretty organized person so I do appreciate consistency and I understand the concerns of you know like Mr Davenport was talking about earlier like having that you know solid indicator of when to stop going back to school and I understand that because a lot of people do appreciate that consistency and are having a hard time with you know adapting and changing their schedule but above all I think that the students in the community appreciate more so than that consistency that you guys are using the facts and whatever metrics you have on hand to make well-informed decisions like I I think when you weigh the two together consistency is more of a luxury and we just really appreciate that you're using the best facts that you have on hand and you're trying to make the best decisions possible that's all I would definitely agree with that I think that maybe this is just speculation but in my opinion I feel like most often when there's tough um decisions to make the loudest voices that are speaking out are always the ones against you I think that we're not necessarily thinking about as a board all of the people who are happy with the process and are happy with the decisions being made by DR thely who aren't necessarily constantly coming into these board meetings to say by the way good job because I think there's less people that will be doing that than people that will be coming in saying I'm unhappy so I think we have to take into account the amount of people that are satisfied with what's going on that doesn't mean that people are everybody's happy that doesn't mean that what's been happening is perfect that doesn't mean that we don't have any work to do but I think that we should you know think on the bright side a little bit with what's been happening so far and definitely appreciate the administration's efforts so far I think thanks guys we appreciate your comments absolutely much appreciated thank you both good remind remers okay returning uh to our agenda then um Hank was there more to talk about regarding student academic supports and chat Bas tutoring with paper education Company Incorporated absolutely yeah okay I'm gonna turn that one over to Gina okay so I'd like to share with the board just some of the academic supports that we have in place um and also about a tutoring program called paper so this list is not meant to be an exhausted list at all but I just want to highlight a few things that are newer um or that have been expanded either in the spring with uh School closure REM remal learning or now so strive tutoring we have had strive tutoring for many years and this fall it was expanded and it went virtual and the focus of strive is not exclusively on Executive functioning but that is certainly a primary focused because what we're finding is that students need help organizing themselves their work organizing their time planning self-management you know how to focus on several different things at one time and so we're really working with that program we've seen a complete overhaul of the programming to to help our students and a lot of that work is literally one to one with a teacher working with uh with multiple students but one at a time we also back back in August um purchased Alex math uh programming for the majority of our math classes so everything from our lower level math classes all the way up uh past math 3 that was new in the fall and that's an online support for students to complement the coursework that they're already doing in the classes we also adopted a this fall a couple of science programs um one that uh primarily helps with online Labs since students are not person as much as uh we certainly would like as we well heard um that helps with doing labs in on a virtual basis we do have a math specialist itself and while that's not new we have had a math specialist um for a few years this is one of the the first years that we have been consistent and able to keep the same math specialist over time he worked with students uh last year obviously and even during the remote learning time and continues to work with classes math classes and also students in a in a tutoring type of atmosphere and that's during the day of course as the board knows we increased our bilingual support for both students and families uh that was somewhat new in the spring when we expanded the role of our home school liaison our Spanish speaking home school liaison uh at North High School and she also does do some work with South families as needed we also increased our bilingual and E support for our students by adding additional classes so we were able to add another bilingual class for example in science and or in social studies excuse me we were able to also add another resource for our students many of the students that are in resource resource are mainstreamed or they'll just be in one eel class and so as a transition out of the program it's very important that they have that support we also went online with virtual academic Resource Center that was new this fall as well as well as peer tutoring and our peer tutoring program is not just uh during the day um there are opportunities obviously during the day during lunch periods four five and six and 8th period um but also between 3:30 and 5:00 and then later in the evening 5:30 till approximately 7 o'clock you already heard us talk a little bit about office hours that was new in the spring and expanded um and that's something that we're looking at both uh Dr th and I talked about a tool for scheduling students into office hours as well as the resource period that occurs it's half an hour uh Tuesday through Friday we also talked a little bit about our Access program and our connections programs those were new this fall these are students who for any variety of reasons we have reached out to and invited them to come into the building it could be a connectivity issue it could be that they don't have an environment at home that's conducive to learning there could be a host of situations and so those students have been invited in um to do in person to basically be remote but within the school setting and we do have an adult working with them and then the cohorts um that we already mentioned as well and that certainly is an academic support for those students who um elected to come in in the various cohorts that occurred this this fall so the question came up actually a little bit when we talked about the survey to talk about what are options for students so what are credit recovery options our course repeat options and that's very different depending on the student and oftentimes these are on a case-by casee basis we're we're very fortunate because the approach that our counselors take and we're our staff is trained at this is kind of working through this and kind of doing what I almost call like a wraparound approach right the counselor's involved the teacher in many cases involved the department chair parents students if it's a special education student might be a case manager if it's an El student it might be an El facilitator and they look at the situation for that indiv ual student to determine what is the best option for the student and those recommendations sometimes can differ by a year in school so if the student's a freshman versus a senior if the time of year um whether there's open seats in in a course it could depend on the course or the level of the course even so there's a lot of situations where we will look at to determine what is the best placement for an individual student now our current repeat options and part of the reason I put this in here was to explain what some of our options are for students and where I think um we can be effective at working with many of the students that have been showing that they are being unsuccessful right now we of course have the repeat option that we've had uh for a long time where students will retake a course within the school year or in summer school um they get a letter grade second time around and if it's due to failure both the failing grade and that passing grade does factor into the GPA if the student repeats a course they previously passed so for example if a student passes a class with a d they can still repeat the class and whatever grade they earn the second time unless it's enough does factor into the GPA so we do have course repeat that happens for two different reasons able is a program we've had in District 99 since August of 1999 it is a program that is really designed for individual students that have experienced some kind of a hardship and able is an alternative based learning environment and they work with a staff member through an online uh process of completing the course and they fully participate in that online experience whereby they earn the letter grade and those courses we use a program called uity um when the program first started we didn't but we use that program and that letter grade does factor into the students GPA and then we have credit recovery and Credit Recovery is primarily for juniors and seniors um after a student would fail a course a student can take the course in Credit Recovery that can be before school it can be after school we offer it the summer too um they take a test so a diagnostic prescriptive type test to determine where what they need to learn and then that's where the focus is um so they have to achieve a 70% for the areas they do not that is the focus and that is pure for Recovery of the of the credit so if a student is missing a credit that they need for graduation and they complete the work they get a passing breade Co has forced us to kind of look at our practices to look at these practices to look at how this how these programs I just discussed help or in some cases could hinder students so a current practice of ours is with course repeats if a student Pizza course that they previously passed the second the second grade the second try that grade is what factors into the GPA even if that grade is lower than the first time and as we started to look through this as an administrative team we started to ask why shouldn't the GPA reflect the highest grade shouldn't the GPA reflect what the student learned and so uh the change that we'd like to put that we're planning to put into place is that the highest grade whether it's the first time the student at the course or the second time would be what factors into the students's grade point average another practice that we looked at or we've been considering is when a student repeats a course that they previously failed so student takes a course they fail the course the failing and the passing grade factor into the GPA so while passing the course does help the students GPA that failing grade is still out there and and so while that grade would appear on the transcript we're we're looking at changing it so that the highest grade is what factors into the GPA the failing grade would no longer calculate and again for that same rationale that same reason that the GPA should reflect the highest grade it should reflect what the student earned it should not be punitive if a student is retaking a course we believe that it should not be punitive and then the other practice that we looked at is that when a student repeats a course whether it's because the student failed the course whether it's because the student wants to retake the course and get a higher grade those courses were not counting into the five class minimum required for athletic and activity eligibility so we started to question why it's not an ihsa requirement um and so we would like to move with that course counting if a student is taking a course it should count towards that minimum and our students have far more than uh five classes in in the vast majority of cases so those are some changes um that we're pretty excited about and obviously we're looking to use our practices that we have in place to help those students who may not be successful but another support we're looking at you heard a lot tonight about office hours and resource periods and virtual things that we're doing for students like strive and and and like some of the academic Resource Centers and peer tutoring but we're also looking at a program called paper and paper is an instant chat-based online program to support students and students basically go online it syncs with our student information system so they go online once they enter the system their classes appear they click into what they need help with let's say it's math they click into their math and then a tutor comes online to assist them they can type their questions and and and dialogue in English or in Spanish so it provides for both in English and in Spanish so we're very excited about that especially as for El families it's chat based and it used the Socratic method um the Socratic method is a questioning so they're not just giving an answer students can't go in and just add you know what is the answer to this problem they will not give the answer the tutors are professionally trained they undergo about a month of training actually and they are content Specialists many of of whom are um working on becoming teachers some of them are graduate students some of them are even PhD students and they have a wide range of subject areas from English math social science a lot of our elective areas as well and they go all the way in math which I was very impressed by all the way to calculus 3 so they go from the very basics of math and this program exists for elementary students as well very basic math all the way up to Cal 3 there's also an essay feature where a student can upload an essay for class or an essay for a college applications and they can get feedback on that within 24 hours and it's annotated feedback and again they're not giving answers they're just they'll be making suggestions asking questions what are you trying to say here those kinds of things so information about which students access the service the date and time the questions they ask basically basically a transcript of the chat is there for teachers so the teachers and administration too of course can go in and actually see which of their students are going into to paper and they can even see what time I mean obviously we want our students to use that time during resource and to reach out to teachers or be scheduled into office hours with teachers but our teachers are not available at midnight and we do know that many of our students will work much later in the even evening um so this is available to them 247 and then the um access to the essay so any essay that paper has provided feedback on is also there for the teacher to pull up so this this is just a graphic off of their website kind of gives some idea about the instant help they can receive how the teachers are getting feedback there's an entire um teacher portal that they can go into how the written work looks you can see on here the wife boarding so students can actually submit questions and whiteboard with um to demonstrate or draw pictures graphs charts those those kinds of things and in in checking references and speaking to districts um District 68 is using paper this is a quote from Greg wott my counterpart there um but I also spoke with Greg on the phone and um learned that they're very excited about the number of students that are using it El students that are using it um using it in grades 3 through eight so a little bit different obviously uh than it would be for us um but they're really excited about it and have have had a really successful launch of the program also spoke to individuals in other districts as well not just District 68 but in other districts that have been using it for a number of years because Woodridge has only been using it for a few months and they've been pleased with providing every student with a tutor so it's not just students who can afford a private tutor every student in District 99 would have the opportunity to have a tutor so if the district um moves forward with paper if the board approves to give the administration the power to sign the contract our next steps would be to continue the tech integration process we've had meetings obviously to talk about what that looks like and get things set up to finalize our onboarding plan and we've just laid out parts of that we'd like to conduct teacher training on January 4th we already have an Institute day so perfect timing to train our teachers on how to use it and how to roll it out to students and really to to see how the system works and then further planning on rolling it out to students and families and inviting parents to ask questions and learn about how they can encourage their students and how their students can use paper so that is paper in a nutshell yes so just responding to the chat so paper uh paper is a program that is expensive we would be purchasing we' get us through the rest of this school year and all of next year so 17 months would be the contract um we would be funding um part of it out of title one and part of it out of other local funds any other questions Gan I have a question uh looking at the numbers of increased uh students who probably will not pass a class that may be required for semester 1 is there any worry that if we don't maybe push Credit Recovery over retaking the class that there could be a down a down the road effect with uh electives and teacher teachers with um staffings that maybe we'd have so many students having to repeat the class that there would not be students available to take an elective or teachers would have to be switched because of the the the the numbers absolutely I do think we could see an increase in Credit Recovery um typically Credit Recovery is not an option for students who are freshman for example where the of course bills you know where you need that you need to be successful at the first level to be successful at the next level um I think where will see also an increase will be in our able program where it's really targeted on what the student missed from the course and I definitely see that you know Able's designed for special circumstances for those students and we've had you know situations and they're they're few and far between but we might have situation where it could have been a pregnant student right could have been there could have been financial hardship on my family there could be all kinds of reasons and at least in my way of thinking and in talking with our um our department chairs and Associate principles that oversee counseling and student Support Services I would see CO as a hardship so I think it really depends on the student you know if it's a if it's for example a math or science course where they need that Foundation then able might be a better option for the student also that letter grade then factors into the GPA right I think it just depends on my worry was I guess I wanted that credit recovery door a little bit more open than maybe it would normally be in a unid environment I think it's have to be I I I think so too I there's going to be a ripple effect into next year absolutely um and my second question I want to make sure I heard it correctly the 173,000 is for 17 months not for four months right it takes us to the rest of the school year and all the way through 2122 so it's basically January I'd have to check the exact dates January 4th I want to say until June 4th but I I'd have to verify that but it's the rest of the school year is there a financial is there a financial incentive for signing a 17mon window versus a 4month contract to see if students actually use this or not because part of me doesn't think it's going to be utilized to the effect that we're paying for so the difference was about $330,000 when I had originally got a quote from December right if we activated in December versus January I did not get another quote to activate January 4th but when we were looking at the same end of the to the end of this school year versus to the end of the following was about a $30,000 difference so4 4 some, to 170 some so we figured it would be in our best interest to provide that support when you're looking at only a $30,000 difference and you're getting a whole another year right and I I think you know I'm part of me doesn't Part of Me Part of Me doesn't believe that the Maj that this is going to be utilized as well as as it potentially could be and and that's where I work about this expenditure um and and so I I would much prefer a trial and say boy this is great they utilized it now we'll buy the next year no problem right the company does not offer trials we asked for trial they will not offer a trial or even just by a half a SE I guess a semester version of this and say hey show us what you got let's see if our kids are going to utilize this before we go ahead and buy a year and a half and we don't even know if by next September anybody's logging in right well we do get monthly reports so we will know who's logging in but you're but I can certainly see your point it would be somewhere around $140,000 just to purchase it for the rest of this year and then if we purchase it for the following year but I did not get a quote that way I did not get a quote for just next year right I had the quote for the remainder of this year and then the remainder of this year and next year but it was certainly more than the 30,000 I I you know I if it was Rick I think if we were looking at you know $50,000 to go the next four months or 170 to go the 17 you know that would be a there'd be more conversation about that but the fact that they're hitting us so hard I mean we're we might as well go to the extra $30,000 and get the get the following year no I understand I guess Part of Me Part of me I guess I see how my school has implemented and instead of hiring an outsourc it they have utilized the staff um with tutoring hours after school and at night and on the weekends where kids can log in and they get an actual science teacher at Downers Grove North who knows how the curriculum is being taught versus somebody who may not know how the curriculum is being taught at that individual school um maybe they get their actual teacher on a weekend from 9: to noon in the on a Saturday in the Sun Sunday or um maybe from 3:15 to 4:45 on a week night a math teacher a science teacher an English teacher I guess that's I part of me would rather spend the money on our staff and and asking them to tutor the students because I've seen the success that has happened at my school versus farming this out and it's off our plate and now we get a report and and that's it rick we we're already offering that with resource Tuesday through through Friday every week with that resource hour and every teacher has three hours of Office hours outside of the school day we already have those resources and students aren't taking advantage of them we're looking at adding another tool to schedule students into that time so that they could get their teachers this isn't a replacement for this this is an additional tool on top of that so that uh every student could get a tutor at any time of the day or night that they wanted one uh and it also is you know an equity like any student any student has access to a tutor where right now some of our more affluent families do have access to tutoring and do go out and hire tutors to work with them outside of our staff but this option gives every one of our students uh access to those resources it is this also available for those who might be taking summer school School classes right now the way we have it spelled out yes it would be for this summer but the contract would only go until June of 2022 right we would have to decide by then right yeah and that gives you that gives you 18 months worth of data to see whether or not it it's worth 175,000 right it or 173 what whatever number that is the summer school kids will have a chance to use it too because they might be the ones to really need it so I'm also concern you know I'm also concerned you know Rick Rick brings up points and about how well it'll be utilized and hearing how uh our students are already not utilizing the office hours as well as they could it's a legitimate concern but I think in our current environment um we're kind of I mean I I feel obligated to give the students every possible resource every possible opportunity um uh we we've all been reading the emails I mean there's there's a lot of students that that need additional help and and hopefully over the next uh several months we can just do an even better job at messaging as as Hank is alluding to how you're looking at tools to try to get these kids to schedule in um and and I'm sure that the the the teachers will be putting forward this as you know as an available option of reminding the students that this is something that's available to them and uh but I I don't see how we can't do this um quite honestly other questions anything else thank you thanks gtin you know just as a little housekeeping Tip since we do have people in the room um when you respond to a question in the chat maybe summarize this is to everybody responding to questions in the chat maybe summarize what the question is so that the people who are sitting in the room know what's going on uh 2020 2021 District goals these have come to the board word over the last couple of months as we've refined obviously they're delayed these usually come in August but as we've been working to return to school uh we haven't put as much work into these we have been obviously working on improving the district over the last semester uh so formalizing these uh the board has seen them several times before tonight it's the last opportunity to ask any questions before the board approves them and then uh as we've done in the past then we will start a tracking spreadsheet for the board as to our progress on those goals and then do probably you know every couple of months from here on out the rest of the school year do a a more formal report for you so um same process we've done in the past just a a midyear approval of these rather than in August I'll take any questions on on the goals as they stand at this point I I have nothing I think they were we're fine Mike says fine all right they're they're up for uh approval later on in the meeting any other questions okay moving on the school report card so the school report card we usually bring to you in November and this year we are off a little bit in the timing however this is going to be a much shorter presentation than it usually is because the the school report card is fairly incomplete R if you can thank you so in the past we've talked about the landing page and I've even shown it over the years but this year the landing page is riddled with statements like possible covid-19 impact to 2020 data so just so you know the data is not there for some things for example the five Essentials climate survey data is not there sat students didn't take the the Juniors didn't take the school day sat in April the data is not there um the Illinois Science assessment the dynamic learning Maps those assessments the data is not there so even that add a glance sheet which I have shared with the board in the past it's not even available but I do want to kind of point to a couple of things um there are many parts of the report card you can you can go ahead Rob thank you um that are still in place and it does still have some limited information in each of the these areas next slide please thank you there are some key factors and again most of these say possible covid-19 impact our summi of designation which the board may recall from last year was commendable that is just carried over the designations are just carried over they're not reassessing because the data isn't there some things we've looked at in the past I'll mention very briefly because we have looked at our data to ensure that it is as accurate as it can be and a couple of those are here that I will mention chronic absenteeism treny ninth grade on track and graduation rates and then I just wanted to point out again that the assessment data is not there so chronic absenteeism just as a quick reminder is when is students who've missed 10% or more of the school year with or without a valid excuse so even if um they were sick that factors in certainly that could be impacted by covid and then chronically chewing students are those those who Miss 5% or more without a valid excuse so I just wanted to share chronic absenteeism very quickly because last year you may recall that I brought this up that the state had kind of changed the way we could Factor it in and we were looking at our practices and we did and while it is possible yes that co could impact this we did see our rate come back which is exactly what I had anticipated um so we did look into it further and make some adjustments and you can see it changed for the state as well chronic treny did go up a little bit for us and we I did comb through this a lot of this data um but that's probably to be expected since the absentee rate came down um we're still at about 11% and we've range between six and 11% the other areas that I typically talk about that I'll just share really quickly with you ninth grade on track and graduation rates are also positive possible Co impact um but ninth grade on track is where students have to earn at least five credits and they cannot fail more than one semester in English math social studies or science and while there is a possible impact especially with the Do no harm of second semester if you could skip ahead um we did see our freshman on track rate go up so it is possible that that's been impacted but that has been a huge focus in this district for several years now and so I do believe that number is looking uh is definitely on the upswing and then graduation rates again could be affected by Do no harm but you can see this is the fourth year the next slide is the fifth year and then the sixe rate and you can see we have pretty much stayed the same all those years or been in the same area on graduation rates so I don't think that that there was a negative impact by Co which is why I wanted to point that out and then last but not least um as I mentioned earlier we did not give the PSAT 8910 or the sat in April our seniors did come in on October 14th and we were very happy that we had a huge turnout for that testing we really didn't have that many more students than we typically do that were absent for the test and I do want to point out the SAT is still a graduation requirement it was waved for the last year's class class of 2020 yes it was waved but it is not wave moving forward at least not at this time so we're very happy to have uh the outpouring that we did have of students come in and take the SAT in October so a shorter presentation on school report card for some data again it's just non-existent um but I'm happy to answer whatever questions you have Gan I just want to say thank you for everything um another great presentation and um thank you thank you I agree Rick thank you hearing nothing else uh we have two curriculum proposals we have two new courses coming to the board this year we're very excited about them one course is coming out of uh English English Flor uh four excuse me black American literature from our English Department and incubator for entrepreneurs so what American literature from English I'm going to turn over I believe our department chairs are with us um Tracy Sebastian Andor Chris Brony so I'll turn it over to them we are both here um good evening everyone I'm Tracy Sebastian I'm the South English department chair um Chris Brony is here with me as well um I'm going to start off just by saying that this is a course then that is for English 4 so it will be for our 12th graders we currently have um our students are able to as seniors take one of three different year-long courses or they can take a semester long course in critical reading in a semester long course and a writing in testive course so this would be adding one reading course to our list we currently have five other reading courses um this past year we actually eliminated a course because of lack of interest and low numbers for the past couple of years so we're actually just going to be looking to slide that in and take the place of the one that we just recently Replay that we would be replacing so it would not be in terms of adding on to what we normally had it would just actually be getting back to the same number that we've had for years um so it is a semester long class so they would get a half a credit the other half again they would take in a writing intensive course um the prerequisites then they just have to be a senior so they will have successfully completed either English three or normal junior class or AP language if they are coming in from that track so let Mr Roy tell you a little bit more about the actual course yeah thank you and to the board of ed thank you so much for for having us tonight uh I'm Christopher Bry the English chair newor that I'm just going to kind of do a little overview of what the course is in of itself uh I think it's important when we when we start with thinking about this course that we think about the actual title um we we spent a lot of time and I want to make sure I give um a shout out to Britney Mitchell at North and Riley love at at South who were the The Architects of this course and as Tracy and I work with them on designing this course we spend a lot of time with the title the original title was actually going to be uh black literature and um as we looked at what they were proposing we realized that that what they were trying to focus on actually was more what is truly the Black American culture and it came at the right time um obviously uh there's a lot going on you know this summer um and into today and when we when we worked with them on the coret and we asked them questions about it you know it really aligned with a decision that the Associated Press made this summer uh to to capitalize the be in black as its own unique culture um and what they tried to do in designing this course was to create a course that celebrated the richness of black American culture um for what it is and through the literature that that sort of you know helps support that and so that's what this course is is seeking to do um this course is seeking to explore what what it what it means to be and celebrate Black American culture um in particular one of the things that we're trying to do at this course is to push back against what is traditionally the sort of oppressive narrative um of black culture and so um the course is going to be structured in a in a chronological sort of historical uh landscape but within each sort of time period the goal is going to be to sort of connect those historical works with contemporary works so for example um and this isn't an actual necessar example that would show up in the course as of yet we're still you know flushing some things out but um it might be a poem from Phyllis wheat leaf from 1750 that you know looked at uh uh the concept of Oppression but it also might be paired with a poem by Nikki Giovani um or an excerpt by tanesi coats um or something from Tony Morrison to celebrate great writing simply for the fact that it's great writing um and and was was written by a black author as opposed to we're studying it simply because it was written by a black author so that's um what this course is trying to do um we are trying to look at you know really adding in the robustness of the Black American Experience so it will be obviously a literature course first and foremost um but we'll also look to bring in other text uh speeches you know all the things that are listed there music uh to to Really you know to have it look at you know this culture um and it's a culture that you know a lot of our students don't necessarily always get to see um day-to-day in in our current curriculum that said I think it's really important to note that this course is abs absolutely in addition to uh not in place of the work we are constantly doing as English departments uh to teach as as robust of a selection of authors as possible um from you know a wide range of of black and African-American authors to Latin xau authors uh to lgbtqia plus you know themes and authors we strive on on a regular basis and work with our course teams to have as robust of a selection um of authors and and of characters as possible and so it's just worth noting that this is not trying to replace the fact that you know nth 10th and 11th grade English will still have all of that that layers of diversity uh this is just a more focused area for students to study this particular culture with that I'll I'll send it back to Tracy so we wanted to stress that though it is about that culture and that's the Thematic element to that all of our reading courses have thematic elements we have science fiction we have rebels in literature all of our courses have a thematic element but they are all centered around the common cor St standards for reading so just as would be in the case of any of the other five courses everything that they do is going to be anchored in these standards so they will be analyzing style and structure looking at author's crafted message and and in this case particular really looking at the actual message how the message was communicated the multiple perspectives of those different interpretations of messages they'll be looking as Chris said at varieties of different types of literature and incorporating things like slam poetry songs things that we consider literature that not everybody always considers literature because they are specifically part of the culture and then we'll also be looking at all of the other standards that we use in terms of we read but how do we assess the reading we look at Reading Writing listening and speaking all working together so they will be doing a variety the same way they do in the other courses a variety of things to produce works that show their understanding and their critical analysis skills of the reading by doing things like personal Reflections other creative Works have Socratic seminars they'll have discussions they'll have presentations they'll do research they'll write about informing people persuading people all the same things that we would do in any of the other courses so they'll be based in those same common core standards that all of our reading courses are based in this will just have that thematic element of the Black American cultural L that would that would go the same way all of our other courses have that same type of thematic element to [Music] them and with that we'll ask if there are any questions for us yeah there any questions for Chris or Tracy I have a question would miss Mitchell be the one teaching that class at North should it be passed through yeah Sam that's a great question and you know obviously we we don't necessarily know at this point who would be teaching what of of any of our classes um but she has a strong desire to teach it and I have a strong desire to have her be teaching it so um but but we also uh you know to to the full you know extent in in in conversation within this that was a big conversation that we had and you know to to the board as a whole you know we thought about um who who would be given preface to teach a course like this which could be a little bit you know different than you know teaching Shakespeare um and and we thought about things like you know will will we want to look at perhaps a teacher who has been through our seed training um th those sorts of um layers to make sure that you know what what could be you know at times perhaps you know touchier subjects um someone has a little bit of a background in that Soh so yeah that's kind of where we're at with that but yes I mean you know Sam yes we would love to see her teaching that course like Zoe had a comment as well go ahead Zoe yeah I just said that I mean I've I'm a senior so I've pretty much taken all my classes but I really would have loved to take an English course like this I think that both the English departments and the history Department could really benefit from classes that educate students about different cultures and especially like it's not necessarily the fault of the teachers it's more so how you know we in America have told our history but viewing history and culture from a non- eurocentric lens I think is a really important value that we need to establish in our departments too so I think this is a great idea you for that Zoe that's that's very much appreciated it's something we are as Chris said trying to work on in all of our courses and I would also add that uh I've been interviewing a lot of people for a newspaper article about um topics about race and the curriculum and stuff like that and a lot of things that uh were continually brought up were changes in curriculum so I think that this is definitely an excellent step in the right direction to addressing the problems that continue to you know persist in our our community just as much as they persist throughout the country so I think this is definitely great stuff thank you Sam for sharing that so this this is Nancy and I want to just say I agree with both Sam and Zoe uh but I would like to add and I'm gonna say this for the next course that's coming up too I think this sounds like a fabulous course I would like to hear after it's run one or one or two years I'd like to uh at some point it would be nice to have some students come back and tell us about their experience with the course we can do that thank you any other questions before we transition to the next course okay our next course comes out of our CTE current technical education department um and we have our two Department chairs here with us Melissa danwood from nor North High and Pat fary from South High so I will turn it over to them to explain the course to you so um just to start off uh we want to again uh thank the board very much for having us out here tonight um this course incubator for entrepreneurs course has been a long time in the making I think we've been researching this exhaustively for uh I don't know how many years Gina has been extremely supportive with us in uh getting this course up in uh hopefully on the books for next year um and then also as Chris made a shout out for his teachers we have uh two excellent teachers Andrew heims and Paul North and Paul cricket south who have have worked in putting this uh course together uh along with Melissa and I um so incubator is set up as a a year-long class um that is going to replace our current semester-long entrepreneurship course um it was created by uh a company called Uncharted learning um Uncharted learning uh created this as a way to Foster entrepreneurship um in a sense of bringing together um Community uh to engage with the students um so instead of just a teacher for in our case for a semester U going through the typical curriculum that you might see you with the incubator curriculum you are bringing in mentors from the community you're bringing in coaches who are going to work work with teams of students uh to actually uh start their own uh business plan so they're going to go from um the a concept to an actual plan to implement starting an actual business and by the end of the year they will then present that business idea to a group of venture capitalists who can actually give money as seed money to you know winning groups in order for them to actually start their business um The Hope is that eventually um we'll add the second year course which is the accelerator uh incubator course where students will then actually be able to run their business during the class period um this course is set up though um in working through all the different components um with the students within those teams of students in order to from the the Inception the idea of the actual U product or service or whatever it may be that the company they want to start um into actually getting to the point where they could begin uh that business itself well said do you wantan to Rod if you can advance the slide yeah sure great yeah I'll just let you know Rod um so what we'd want you to know is that this is a year-long course it's going to replace our current um semester long entrepreneurship class and what we're really excited about is that even if a student so uh Sam and zo you can spread this for us uh even if a student took entrepreneurship they can still take incubator uh for the next two two years and still receive credit so that way if a sophomore took a class this year and then they said oh wait a second now you're offering incubator wait I missed out they don't have to miss out uh they can still take it uh we're going to use this uh grades 10 through 12 and the idea is um they can ideate develop uh their own product and service and a startup to gain that investment funds for that final pitch event that big pitch event which we're going to make it a huge celebration at the end of the year um invite all our Community Partners we're so thrilled to have such a strong community outreach um and we really want to celebrate that so Pat and I are both looking forward to a big party right when we're finally all ready to get together um so why we're excited about these Community Partnerships is because we'll have coaches and mentors from a variety of areas um they can be traditional entrepreneurs which is wonderful but sometimes our best uh entrepreneurs are people with entrepreneurial Spirit but perhaps they work for a large company or organization all mentors are good mentors and they all provide a lot of uh help to our students our teachers will work closely with them so even if we have uh possible Community Partnerships where people are a little nervous like oh what's that like to work with high schoolers our uh teachers are going to help them to feel really good about what they're doing we'll all work together to help that student so we have some uh foundational program elements uh we have the experiential learning uh connected learning and then Competency Based um in CTE as you know we love our competencies and our standard based learning uh and this is no different what Pat and I are really excited is that this um um career in information is already really situated for our teachers that they do not necessarily have to create this from scratch and also we get the value of the fact that so many other high schools like neille barington Elmhurst are already all using this so we know that these are really great standards and competencies and then what's exciting is as Pat mentioned these are real uh these are real cases not simulated um there are situations we've already had where students have started their own businesses from this class and now we've always felt like oh how do we help them get to the next step you know they have this great business how do we take it to the next level and now with incubator we feel like we're ready to help them take it to the next level so it might be as simple as a small part-time business where they have figured out a way to capitalize on a market or it might be the start of something really big in general um what we know for sure is that this is what colleges want to see um they want to see practical applications of what students have created so when we're looking at uh when Pat and I research and we look at our data to see where students are going to school and what they're uh majoring in when we look at the business field we know that students have to show those top competitive business programs that they have created um a real product and so this course is a a wonderful course for our students to be able to to do that and then finally students are going to leave the course with a completed uh business model canvas competitive analysis financial model minimum viable product a pitch deck and a future communications plan as Pat mentioned our our long-term vision is to eventually expand this but we're really pleased with this class as is in the sense that students will leave after the end of the year with a solid piece of evidence to support their learning any questions although as my son would say as I look at the clock it says 10:15 he came in from his first semester of freshman year college and I said why are you up so late and he said Mom time is a construct and I can appreciate that but for all of you time might be feeling very real right now so uh if you don't have any questions that's okay too no my only question is to Gina Gina this is another reason why every single year I keep asking you about changing summer school to open up opportunities for later in a a student's career in Downers Grove so they can take these types of classes because here's a great class but historically it's almost impossible to get to it without sacrificing maybe another love that they may have whether it's art or music or an extra English class or an extra science class I mean it's this is a great class both of these but how do you get to them in Downers Grove when there's no way to accelerate your education in summer school once again Rick after the master facility plan is finished this summer we'll look at expanding it in future s Hank I've heard that for eight years I've heard that I've heard that response for eight years years from heard me for four in all four years we've been doing major summer construction as soon as this summer is over we'll look at expanding it for future years I think this is a great class I mean I would want to take it myself so very good class and it gives a different uh for everybody that's not aspiring we talked about at one point giving people other options because everybody could be successful regardless of what path they take give them opportunity to to look into something else absolutely I'm a big fan of a multiple career Pathways and although this definitely I won't deny it colleges love this class I'm going to own it because it's great for us but that being said many of our entrepreneurs might not choose a traditional path and we are very responsive to that I just I just wish that you had uh had this class uh probably about 10 years ago because my my daughter had um has a BS in entrepreneurship from depal so um she would have gotten a little more experience to to go there so where does she live I'm hearing guest speaker well right now she's getting her M's in uh interior design at scad in Atlanta wow wow so she's going to use both of those things in her future than yeah I would just say please in this is Nancy I would just say please invite us either to the um presentations or a presentation to the board and a few years love to hear how this works out it's exciting absolutely yeah this sounds like a fabulous class I wish I could have taken it myself I I'm curious are you able to share with us uh who some of these mentoring Pro uh people are or businesses yeah absolutely so we're really fortunate to already have some great Community Partners we're always looking to grow um but we're really fortunate for what we already have in place and Downer's Grove and it's extending all the other areas I'll be honest Han I did not realize there were that many suburbs that fed into Downers Grove High School District um and so uh we're really thrilled and so some of them are a traditional entrepreneur so they are your classic where they've created their own company um they are maybe a consulting firm or for example uh we have some sports retailers uh things like that but we also have used um people have started their own business we have some wonderful local business owners who have volunteered their time um but admittedly as the program grows we're hoping to grow too thanks so so this is Nancy again how are you going to protect their intellectual property yeah you know so that's the great thing about incubator they actually have um the paperwork in place so we can utilize that paperwork um as far as when we've talked to our friends at neighboring high schools uh they haven't had any issues with that there's been definitely a lot of um honor among among the class and because I think everyone's working together as a team but that being said um our our vision is to grow and so when we do grow those pieces come with this program which is one of the reasons we really like uh incubators so much they've thought of everything cool yeah awesome and I have some guest speakers that I could share with you potentially that would be able to help there's a group in Chicago called Chicago inventors and they work with a lot of people to get on uh QVC and different um different organizations like different um to get these products in different places Walgreens different places like that if it's a product oriented um eventure by wow that's great thank you we'd really appreciate it all right well thank you Chris Tracy Melissa and Pat for joining us this evening appreciate it thank you very much uh moving on Master facility plan progress yeah and just uh both of those are up for approval later this night action so just really quickly in the master facility plan um we continue to close out uh phase b a few of those incidentals have cut into the contingency a little bit but we still remain on Pace to have uh you know the the goal was always a million dollar in contingency heading into the last summer will be well above that and then we'll be bringing plans for the remaining portions of it uh in the coming months as we uh finalize the FF and the furniture and fixture and Equipment budget for phase C in the Commons which is enormous uh over the next couple of months and uh get rolled one on phase C uh it's almost completely bit out on the projects and uh you know we remain on schedule and ahead of budget so things are trending well great any any questions comments hearing none have we had any Freedom of Information requests um uh Nancy let me just show a couple of quick pictures oh I'm sorry it's all right uh so South High Auditorium and and the the front side of South High in front of it uh then moving on Broad uh there's a nice drone shot of the commons uh coming to form in the middle of South High and then uh North High Commons uh all that internal work is beginning you can see everything's boarded up so we can do the work inside of that space and then that's the outside uh patio that will be the dining area outside of that common space so just a few quick shots to show you some of the progress over the last month now for request okay uh Hank let me ask you though since we're talking about starting back to school have you heard anything more about dropping the speed limit on Dunham and on um Springside by the school I I have not but I can follow up with the village Downer Grove on there okay next time you talk to him please thank you sure for your requests we had some and we filled them and they're available on our website okay great uh the tax levy request Mark can you put my there you go um this is the summary of it and it's getting late I'm just gonna cover it briefly here uh the potential Revenue to us 4.26% is what the requests would cover um we don't expect to get all of that but um CPI factor of 2.3% is something that is a given uh because that's how the tax caps um give us cost of living increases uh but it gives us up to 1.96 of new construction growth which is just a guess at this point um because we don't know we have we have some guidance from our assessors um which pretty show us that we should get at least 1% or 95% but we're adding a little bit extra there just in case more growth comes in because they gave us preliminary information they don't of course haven't had it through the end of December because it hasn't occurred yet um so that's where the the 4.26 comes in adding those two numbers together if you go to The Graphic please um I think we there should have been a graphic in there so that up again um I was going to just show you I just going to show you the calculations and if you'd like to see it I'd be happy to share that with you um it's it's um asking for a little bit more for new construction the new cost to a $300,000 house would be around $41 um a year in taxes if we um you know that's what we expect to have occur so it is it is an increase in taxes because it's we we do have um 2.3% of tax cap limit added to our our last year's extension so we'll be asking for you to approve the ly request it has to be be approved before the last Tuesday in De in December so we need to get it on the books and then come March or April we'll have um actual data for what the new con what our eav is and what the new construction is and we'll be able to tell you exactly what our revenues will be for the U for the next fiscal year any questions on the ly hearing none okay so the next item I have is the uh just proposed amended budget I think we we've um heard the concerns about it and so we're responding to that doesn't uh bother me too much to put it this way technically the cash and Investments should be restated this way but it for us the form itself the state form that we use is very rigid and and um doesn't really help us explain how we what we actually expect to get in our taxes so I'm fine making a change like that we've had it shown like that in in past year some years too so um we're going to make a change two changes to the budget um it's been on display for more than 30 days it's almost 50 days 60 days and so uh it needs to be approved as well at this meeting that's it any questions and those changes just just to remind me Mark those changes we made they were like putting it in a different line item it wasn't a substitutive change right one was it was always there it was just reassigned right one well one was the cash and investment which when we add cash I put it in there without the early taxes because it lets us keep the the exact correct Revenue line item for the taxes um but the way you overcome that is you you have to subtract it below before you get to the fund balances so you have to put it in the beginning line item and then you have to subtract the early taxes out of another line item um I shortcut it it I and and honestly I it was incorrect do it that way technically but I think it it showed where we were on a fund balance level just easier to follow the other one was just to break out the fire prevention and safety out of capital projects because it is a capital projects fund by Gap with General accept accounting principles what uh uh it's it's for the cfer and other you know nationally made documents it shows up in the capital projects is accumulated there um and it has to be spent out of Capal projects but um the state does have it on a separate column um for whatever purposes for their tracking I guess even though they get data um but yeah so it's just breaking out some line items on it so it doesn't change any revenues or expenditures which are really the the life blood of the budget and actually the county level we only have to give them revenues we don't even have to give them expenditures so every different body has different reporting things that they want to see and I have no problem reflecting it this way okay any other questions or concerns hearing none we'll move on to the public hearing on the 2020 2021 proposed amended budget uh during this hearing the board will adhere to policy 4.10 and its public participation policy 2.23 we are going to allow members of the public to speak for three minutes at this time since we have a number of people who want to address the board tonight um and we expect that anyone to who who presents to expect to conduct themselves with respect and civility while members of the public may ask questions neither the board nor Administration are under any the obligation to answer questions from the public so this uh the proposed amended budget has been on public display for 30 days as required over 30 days as required by law now the administration brings the proposed amending budget forward to the board for final approval this is the final opportunity for the public to provide feedback on the proposed amended budget before the board takes action later in this evening is there anybody who wishes to address the board does anybody wish to address the board about the budget uh none here and there are no uh online submissions regarding the budget okay so we will close the public hearing on the 2020 2021 proposed amended budget and move on to the consent agenda I think we need a motion to close the hearing and take a vote on that if thank you thank you thank you I'm getting tired do we have a motion I move that we close the uh um uh what is it to the 2021 Terry we never opened it so we have to open it then close it I thought Nancy opened it yeah but she didn't take a vote for the public portion you don't have to have a vote public hearing don't vote to open it we have to we vote to close it vot to close it yeah yeah so I I vote that we close the public hearing on uh the 20 uh one 22 202 20 20 2021 I'm sorry I was reading the wrong sentence that's okay 2021 proposed amended budget thank I think Rick seconded yes yeah thank you p pavich i Rick panado hi Jo Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport hi per Fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi and Nancy kupka hi the public hearing is and the budget is closed now we're gonna move thank you now we're gonna move to the consent agenda is there any um uh item that any board member wishes to remove hearing none we need a um motion to approve the consent agenda which includes the Personnel report appointment certified leave of absence certified the Personnel report retirement certified the financial pages and the IGA with Downers Grove Township regarding PR the Prairie restoration project so moved Terry second Rick Rick was that Rick seconding that is correct thanks Rick thank you k pavich i rck panado hi Joan vasus Drexler I Mike Davenport I charell fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi and Nancy kupka I the consent agenda is approved we're GNA move to the rec uh recommendations for a action the approval of the service agreement with paper education company Incorporated so moved excuse me there's a whole motion that you need to read if you would bu please I I'm yeah I'm just sorry I was just moving over on my computer I need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the contract with paper education Company Incorporated in the amount of $173,300 us and that the administration be approved to sign and otherwise execute any related documents pertaining to this contract I think I heard Dan motion so moved thank you second Mike go ahead Mike Dan Dan Nicholas hi Mike Davenport hi Ro Fuller i k pavich i Rick panado I danan vasus Drexler hi Nancy kupka I the motion is approved next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2020 2021 District goals as presented so move moved go ahead Mike I think it was Mike and Terry yeah that's fine Mike davonport hi Terry pavich hi Rick panado Hi D Vasquez Drexler hi Dell Fuller I Dan Nicholas I and Nancy kupka I the motion is approved next we need an uh a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2021 2022 curriculum proposals for black American literature and incubator for entrepreneurs as presented I heard Joan in there yeah andelle Joelle thank you Joan vasus Drexler hi dra Fuller hi Dan Nicholas I Trey pavich I Rick panado I Mike Davenport I and Nancy kupka I the motion is approved next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the certificate of tax levy the certification excuse me certification of certificate of tax levy and the certificate of compliance with the truth and Taxation law as presented don't move Joanna yeah and was that Mike second yes okay Joanna Vasquez Drexler hi Mike Davenport hi charal Fuller hi Dan Nicholas i k pavich i Rick panado I and Nancy kupka I the motion carries and finally we have need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2020 2021 amended budget as presented Terry Terry second thank you very much K pavich hi Mike Davenport Hi D Fuller hi Dan Nicholas hi RI panado I Jo Vasa dlor I and Nancy kupka I motion carries moving on to the second reception of visitors public comment this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments will be limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary Mrs nidek visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone State their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting me excuse me accurate meeting minutes and are being uh broadcast live the board's pres uh I reserve the right to modify these protoc if circumstances weren't and we appreciate the observation of these protocols but we do we do have people that actually made it through the evening thank you all for making it through uh they're going to come up in a moment we did receive 22 comments through the online forms nearly all of them encouraging the board to return uh students to school second semester to consider changes in metrics like those that we discussed this evening and to continue supporting our students in any way we possibly can can as they return recognizing that this semester has been very challenging on many uh we had uh nearly 12 more people than what you're going to hear from in here tonight uh appear to to show up but unfortunately because of tier three mitigations we had to limit the amount of folks in the room and we did have somebody that needed to leave earlier and left a written comment that I will provide to the board after this meeting along with all of the ones that were submitted will be forwarded to the board and become part of the board minutes so with all of that being said we can have our community members start stepping up to the microphone uh to address the board for up to three minutes all right can you hear me all right all right Rich benma to quote from the CDC page each indicator or combination of indicators should not be viewed as hard cut offs by School District decision makers rather than serve as broad guid guideposts of inherent risks of to inform decisionmaking Dr thely cannot use the CDC as a scape coat for this second semester plan despite what he said during discussion the CDC does not require a metric nor does it Define or require a move to full remote at any time in my opinion Dr thely seems to be overly afraid that the risks of inperson for those under retirement age he's overly afraid of it well not afraid enough of full remote here's what I'm afraid of I fear the proposed second semester plan sets the bar unreasonably High I fear it'll become full remote and hybrid clothing just like first semester with the inflation of probable cases the 9% of January will not be the 9% of October Nancy you correctly defined what an antigen test is but there's a math lesson addition means numbers go up tests not previously included are now being counted this is not Apples to Apples it's apples plus oranges what is safe full remote is not safe either it is undeniable students are being hurt physically socially mentally and academically granted it is an incrementally small amount each day but it is cumulative and it is piling up remote learning has and continues to damage the students on Friday teachers were telling students that they should prepare for in person how many kids now have their hopes up what I fear the most is what will happen to them if you pull out the rug from out from under them again the risk of inperson is a low probability of a one-time large amount of harm the risk of full remote is a high probability of small amounts of accumulated accumulating harm neither option is inherently safe both carry risk I along with most parents hinsdale's District 86 Administration and board and even the CDC believe that the realized risks of remote outweigh the potential risks of in person stop hurting the students with full remote don't say you want students in person prove it add an adjustment to the thresholds to account for the inflation due to the newly included probable cases bring them back keep them back thank you can you hear me yep go ahead uh good evening Carrie Norris I'm uh earlier today I submitted to you an open District 99 petition which reflects a sample of our district 99 community members and their desire to see the kids get back into person instruction in January I hope you will read those signatures and the comments I'm standing here as one of those District 99 community members who signed the petition but more importantly in this moment I'm standing here as a district 99 mom of a boy who is serviced with an IEP my husband and I have seen our 10th grader unravel emotionally and academic academically at a much higher degree than our quote regular ed kids so the issue of special ed students not receiving what has been set up for them is very close to our hearts I have been actively communicating with District 99's administration and special services leaders inquiring about what they can feasibly put into place to better service the learning disabled population Dr thely mentioned reaching out letting them know that it's not working and we have we've inquired about smaller groups he mentioned cohorts but there's no cohorts available for the general specialed population who have IEPs and 504s we appreciate the administrators and teachers responses to our inquiries and their offer to place our son in the access program access would allow our son to be in school all day he would be placed in a room of 10 or less students and there would be two staff members supervising him making sure he attends all classes and is on task in the access program for our special ed student there are no CER certified teachers no one-on-one tutoring noal resources and no direct teaching or in-person presentation we feel the only thing that's going to get our son back on track is in-person teacher presence in our minds the lack of face-to-face lessons is the biggest culprit of our son's listless academic attitude and Rising anxiety since a portion of District 99 special services students were not offered a specialized pandemic program we really lean on hope that our son's situation will improve in January when a more regular hybrid plan is put into action it is a dire need for many that an in-person instruction model be implemented immediately and remain in place thank you thank you m hello my name is David lewood Community uh Community District board 99 Dr thy the CDC and the hwo agree that the safest place for students is in school the board and administration have an obligation to put kids back in school science class without lbs is not science English class without in-person presentations and discussions is not English ban without performance is not ban and the list goes on and on I informed by many teachers at District 99 that the curriculum has been cut by at least 30% from years past to accommodate remote learning remote learning does not provide our students with a quality education and saying otherwise is disingenuous moreover we are putting our students behind other students in our state the country and the world the recovery rate for people under 70 who contract this virus is 99.95% and 99.998% of all students fully recover the board voted 7-0 for a hybrid in August and it is the duty of the administration to make that happen the administration should make this happen for the start of the second semester further all the science and data dictate that students should be in person full-time the choice of of whether or not our students return to school should be left up to the parents it is our responsibility to weigh our students risk until they reach adulthood to make their own decisions I think the district should not tell me what I should do for my student but instead allow me to decide what is best for my student moreover there is no data or science behind the arbitrary and constantly changing bench benchmarks implemented by District 99 our students are being deprived of academics activities social interaction leadership opportunities and sense of community until some arbitrary threshold is met why are the students or staff more at risk if these metrics aren't met where are the studies supporting these theories there aren't any there is simply no reason not to have in-person school how do these kids get this this year back once once it's gone it's gone forever there are no doovers it's nothing less than a dereliction of Duty not to do whatever it takes to get these kids back in school thank you thank you Mr my name is Jim debit good evening I'd like to begin by telling you a conversation I had with my daughter a senior here at dgn the other day we were discussing me speaking here tonight and I asked her if she wanted to go back to inperson warning and she said of course she did then she told me something that greatly disappointed me she said that no one meaning the board wanted to hear what her or any other students had to say how terribly sad is it that the student population who you all ultimately serve feels they no longer have a voice over 3,000 individuals took it upon themselves to sign a petition to be back in the classroom and nothing changed these kids now see many other schools going back and they see news reports one after the other stating the kids belong in school yet they remain locked out in the cold what they do see however is very frightening at the very least they see their grades falling my daughter's a perfect example she stated that she does better when she's in a classroom because it's easier for her to focus on her work without the distractions at home such as the dog the TV the warm bed or the sandwich in the kitchen from there things for quite a few kids get much worse much much worse suicides depression anxiety drug and alcohol abuse has risen dramatically this year our kids should not have to live in a world where all this becomes The New Normal they should be able to be in a nurturing environment for learning with positive examples and positive role models it falls on you the school board to give that to them and so far that has not happened our kids got short Taste of school just enough to remind them of what they were all missing before it was taken from them again what do you think that did to their morale take a quick drive around town and you'll see kids being kids trying desperately to have some normaly in their lives they did not social distance they did not wear masks they become kids again and most kids that age think they're Invincible in fact the latest data regarding the virus backs up that belief for the most part if they were back in school Under supervision they would have on the proper PPE they would be reminded to social distance to wash their hands often all the things that adults know that we have to do to stay safe when they leave school and return home to their families their parents won't have to worry about where they were who they were with and if they took precautions don't know they were safe and sound under the supervision of School District 99 in closing I beg you to allow our children to return to inpersonal learning so the learning that they so desperately want and need right now show them that they are what's most important always no more excuses no more finger pointing no more anything but could putting kids first thank you thank you Mr hello my name is D mystery uh first of all I'd like to thank uh Dr til and the board and especially the parents who came out here to present their thoughts and they have covered them you know suly really well what is wrong with the way we are looking at this and to me the biggest thing is you can use a matrix when there are known known this is an unknown and a dynamic situation we have to be very agile and be ready to adapt we cannot be setting in stone saying 9% is our threshold that doesn't work because as everyone has pointed out as testing increases the chances are the positivity rate might even go up and even at 12 they might be safe so we really have to start looking at this from from a much broader perspective and being adaptive and agile about it instead of just setting things in stone I was severely disappointed to see that in the first semester we had a plan to go hybrid and then last minute we decided to change that other districts are in the same boat they were able to continue their education in a hybrid model I I don't understand how we were not able to provide that the two weeks that my daughter not really two weeks that was four half days that my daughter was in school she was the happiest she at least felt connected she felt like she was getting proper education nowadays every single day she has a headache every week she has a H down this is not a daughter that I'm talking about who has been struggling she used to be an honor student and even right now she has tried to maintain her grve but the amount of effort she has to put in is is unsurmountable the teachers are not aable to teach they they don't know how to teach in this environment I I I don't blame them this is a new Norm for everyone and they just don't have clues of doing it you talk about social emotional learning or soci emotional wellbeing of the students how are you even evaluating their social wellbeing what Matrix do you use how do you even know that they are doing well I just don't see because without seeing someone in person I have no clue how you can tell that someone is doing well or they're not doing well so all these things that while on one side we are talking about that we want to do the right things I don't know we are open I don't know if we are open-minded enough to act be ready to bring students in class if we really start with the idea that we our first thing is to bring students in school and we will adapt as things on you know reveal themselves I think that would be better instead we have continue to hide behind Matrix to me that's that's basically a you know cya it really all it is it really is cya and I'm sure all of you here know what a cya is so I'm not going to go into details of that thank Mr Min you're out of time your your time has expired okay that's good thank you thank you anybody else that's all of the visitors in the room that wish to speak thank you um okay moving on then to Communications and announcements Dan do you have any update on lend or Hank no update um yeah the uh the last time we met was with representative Caston I I think we're meeting again after the holidays they are spending a lot of time looking at State Testing requirements and how they are tied to graduation requirements right now and trying to determine how to Advocate with State leaders around those issues thank you uh Joanna anything on Sid no no report Terry the Educational Foundation sorry sorry I was muted um I do have a couple of quick things um we are um uh donating gift cards uh for the schools to uh assist families that uh need help during the uh uh covid uh crisis so uh we are doing U donations for that if anyone would like to donate and uh we received a um $1,000 uh donation from um ASB which is the um um Association of school board or a school business uh officials uh in honor of uh Mark stalen and his um uh mamar I hope I'm pronouncing that right Monarch award Monarch award yeah yeah so um that was really greatly appreciated and and uh uh we would like to thank and honor uh Mark for that uh uh for his award and uh we are also thinking to support uh it's called feed six and it's um going to be a pass through account uh for any District 99 families that would like to um uh put food baskets together or food cartons together for um the hungry so those are the three things that we're doing right now very cool okay thank you uh Mike anything on reporting the Illinois Association of school boards uh no report but wondering how giving Tuesday worked out for the foundation Terry uh I have we have a meeting tomorrow or no Wednesday I'm sorry so I don't know about that yet so I will report that next month okay anything else all upcoming board meetings are January 11th which will be a workshop meeting at 6:30 p.m.
with our guest speaker being the honorable Judge Kelly Benjamin each of these sessions have lasted between two and two and a half hours with 30 participants next slide please and I'm going to wrap up before I'm before yes that's fine we can stay on that slide thank you for a final note I would like to say each of the guide team directives have about 10 to 12 members from within bcsc including Community stakeholders all guide team meetings are held every Thursday except when school is not in session all four teams are in the third quadrant of the stakeholders process will and we are currently focusing on developing strategies for future implementation while also creating Innovative projects and future Target dates to measure measure progress three of the four guide teams are working on their second Zoom workday sessions each team will host either again a 2 and 1 half to 2our work session on Zoom with identifi goals and outcomes as for the family academic achievement Network also known as fan it's working on the gateway to a connected Community a mentor partnership with the NAACP that has a talented list of local volunteers ready to address the systemic gaps in academic achievement to assist our African-American male students in particularly the NAACP plans to introduce the gateway to a connected Community Partnership to parents this December 15 2020 and December 22nd 2020 I'd like to thank you for your time and attention to the work of the Multicultural diversity office thank you Kimberly and Charles uh hopefully have a moment just for some questions perhaps if we we have some from our board members Mr cwell any questions board members yes so I'm curious Kimberly and Charles if you could speak to is it the group or your Collective committee that's working on the high ability issue and what goals you might be setting for cuz that process comes up already in Spring of 21 great question Charles would you like to start with that I'm happy to speak to that that uh so the high ability issue was something that we uh talked about early uh on in the uh life of the diversity Council so that work was something that we looked at uh pretty hard early on and again um so so what we did was we reached out to schools uh we wanted to know how kids uh were tested into the high ability program um and then what what what we found was that um not everyone was being tested and so um there and there were good criteria in place for you know the folks who were tested but one of the things that we talked about was well let's just test everybody let's just see let's just see what happens um and so that is something that again uh with the help of the um Elementary curriculum director uh was that that that happens now everybody gets tested so what we didn't want is we didn't want kids you know slipping through the cracks because what we found was when you start young and you're challenged young uh kind of that success builds upon itself it's like a muscle um and it it works on your own selfefficacy like you know it's like hey I belong in these class I belong here so when you get to high school and you have the opportunity to self- select into a class if you haven't been in a challenging curriculum like that it's really hard to just kind of self- Select in and just dive in as opposed to being in that group the whole time they kind of move through as a cohort your friends are in there they you know what I mean so it's easier when you start younger and you just move through the system in that way we just wanted to test as many folks as we possibly could and get as many folks uh uh that opportunity so that is some of the work that was done uh I know that um again back when we first started we were making phone calls to folks we were talking to Department chairs are their kids uh in the English uh General English classes that should be in you know more challenging English classes or kids in you know science classes or or or social studies that should be a more challenging you know social studies math classes that sort of thing and we were we were making phone calls home so we I mean we really got in the Weeds on that and got in the trenches and tried to up the number of of students that we were offer in those opportunities too fabulous can so when did we start testing everybody oh um I'm not sure I can answer that question okay um but it was it was I don't know maybe maybe five seven years ago oh okay so have we seen the percentage at that lower level increase that in the I'm I'm sorry I can't hear you has the percentage in the elementary AC increased as we've been testing everybody um I don't have an answer to that question I don't have an answer to that question so what we did again was kind of you know start that work but um other other other conversations and other issues have happened uh so I I don't I don't know that I have um those numbers okay thank you it's a great question though rich thank you um I'm really excited about the important work that you're doing and I I know that by the time you get to the third quadrant you've already identified what why we're doing this and and who should be at the table with us um I'm interested have you identified particularly for the category of underrepresented teacher Recruitment and Retention have you started to identify some catalytic projects and can you give us some teasers some ideas about things that you'll be working on yes as a matter of fact um we had held two two and a half work sessions and there were recommendations and these are just you know initial recommendations that we would hopefully like to work on some more and kind of redefine uh before presenting them to the actual school board but I'll give you some idea uh of what can now that that recommended recruitment strategies for possible adoption uh some of them were you know marketing you know what are we really doing on social media uh and and let making sure people know what bartholomy county has to offer perhaps teachers and administrators who would not think about naturally moving and living and working here in Columbus Indiana um maybe also you know considering mentoring maybe Pro potential underrepresented substitute uh substitute teachers or people who may have a desire to eventually become a teacher and and Coach them along uh connecting them with other established entities once they do get here because once we get in here we want to retain them um as teachers and connecting them with perhaps you know Columbus young professionals or or or other community groups and churches where they feel a part of the community so that we may keep them so that recruitment a part of that recruitment is also retention keep them as well um and then you know the Strategic creative recruitment where we have control over the you know finding people that we in places we have control over like um our recruitment fairs Etc but being willing to leave the area to find underrepresented teachers uh maybe go as far as um you know Tennessee or Washington DC or Chicago and really go to fairs where we know there will be underrepresented teachers potentially looking for work uh so there were a number of um of of suggestions that were uh that came out of this and we're excited because we're going to have another underrepresented teacher Recruitment and Retention work session right before the recruiting session on February the 10th thank you Kimberly this is uh Jeff calwell I I think this is a fair question because I think you've been with us about a year and a half now um on whatever your wish list looks like as our our um uh leader in this work what more could you ask for from us as a school board is are there are there actions uh visibility what what do you need what how can we help well that's huge and and I guess if I I'm speaking on behalf of of four different guide teams and we always hear um sources and resources and having the resources to actually be able to implement some of these some of this work and uh that's a challenge across the board as we all understand uh however with upcoming recruitment one of the greatest needs appears to be making sure we have the resources to be able to send our human resource team to areas where they can recruit active recruit from uh different uh Career Fairs or universities HBCU or wherever we need to go uh to make sure the funding is there so that we can can do the job and do it well so that is one of the the immediate needs uh and and working with family academic achievement Network um making sure that we have a very diverse pool even though the NAACP is offering its group of people to help with the with our African-American uh multi-racial boys I think it would be also really really awesome if we we could also help in that regard and making sure uh we are assisting um the students with the help they need immediately uh that is one of the pressing needs for the family academic achievement Network and so you know unlike the Latino education group uh and program the African-American students do not have a com a very strong at this point a strong enough base to actually get the information to parents that their kids can be in uh High ability courses they just aren't getting the information and the students aren't getting in early enough to be to be a part of that process and by the time they learn of it it it's a little too late for them because they're not going to do well because it's they're behind the eightball so there there are several needs of course and I I I wish I I could wave a magic oneand just like you do um but I I do think you for asking that question because I'm able to at least present some of the pressing concerns that the guide teams have okay fair enough thank you no other questions thank you Charles and Kimberly for the your time this evening and and for sharing that information with us much appreciate before they log off Mr cwell let me second that Kimberly and Charles thanks so much for your work extremely important stuff and I want to acknowledge Bill's work as well Mr Jensen working alongside supervises Kimberly's position and and works closely with Charles on this and and whether it's identifying opportunities like with the high ability piece and trying to put those things into motion and and and get rid of barriers that exist uh we we do need to to pull up some additional information to make sure we can share that with you but but it is is they're working on uh that identification that removal and hopefully resulting in some very positive change for us as we continue to to develop our strategic plan our plan on the page those kinds of things I think we're working we're doing some very important work every day I'm not sure what's more important than the work that those these two individuals are are doing and I would acknowledge when Mr cell you ask about Kimberly and and things that maybe we could do to help making her a full-time person would be one of those things and so we we're going to do that and make sure that she has uh I would say to make sure she has the time to put in I think she's already putting in the time we're acknowledging that she's putting in the time with moving to that position good it's a pleasure to be here and to serve thank you thank you okay great presentation by those two again very important work that is happening within the school corporation and will make a difference as we move forward uh with with many of the strategies that are being implemented uh next topic for us from a presentation standpoint for tonight is covid-19 it's it's a constant on our um agenda uh as I noted at our last meeting we had reopening plan here at the top and we've kind of moved past that since we're now at the end of first semester incredibly uh we began this this work to get into 2020 2021 with uh uh a lot of time and effort in June and then solidified some things at a Schoolboard meeting in July finally started school on August the 10th uh moved into fall break after 8 weeks of inperson instruction with 29 positive cases and here we are in e-learning today and so uh just uh to to summarize that with all the time that we were able to spend in in-person learning uh we initially went to e-learning which is where we are today uh for all students uh on Monday November 9th started that uh we originally said let's get to Thanksgiving week which would have put us through Tuesday November the 24th prior to getting into that week and taking a look at our current circumstances whether it be still Staffing challenges Andor the increase in numbers uh locally we made the decision to stay in e-learning uh from Monday November 30th the Monday after uh Thanksgiving break through winter break so that's where we stand today is that right now we are uh We've announced uh with the statement we put out around Thanksgiving that we would be in e-learning through that time so we're not looking ahead to what comes after winter break just a reminder our next scheduled school day after we start winter break is Tuesday January the 5th I want to show just some information to you that Kelly Thompson put together Kelly has been as I mentioned Bill and acknowledge his efforts with with Kimberly and Charles with so much work with our diversity Equity equality inclusion efforts Kelly has been in the lead uh with Dr Boseman and other members of of our cabinet myself with just trying to tackle this covid-19 stuff and putting together the necessary data so we can make some decisions I I think the next series of slides will all kind of show the same thing that whether it be our students or our staff we got down to a point around fall break so that point there that's October 3rd October 9th where we had kind of zeroed out the number of students staff members who needed to be out because of positive test cases and or being identified as close contacts or had symptoms or whatever the case might be and then after we got back from uh fall break and started school and got through the month of October we we hit a big spike around that November the week after Halloween so October 30th and through November the 6th you see secondary elementary and and programs represented there for all students and that again that huge Spike uh and then we see that with elementary students you see a similar time frame that's each one of our buildings represented there at the elementary level and don't worry we pay too much attention to the numbers on the left because we scale it differently based upon the group that we're looking at um but you can see that we we got down to around zero for fall break and then started climbing after fall break and secondary students large increase end of October 1 November we jump into staff large increase in of October 1 November uh here we have non-school meaning buildings that that that don't have students in them a secondary elementary and some of our programs that we have and then we have uh Elementary staff out of the building Spike at the same time second staff out of the building Spike at the same time and then our Administration ISC and and tnm buildings Spike at the same time so just again just an interesting situation in terms of how we started the year um obviously the community had some cases we had a few cases we had some close contacts with other people that we were keeping out because of symptoms whatever the case might be but then at the same time uh we see that Peak uh where we had a lot of people out of our buildings and and just reminder that as we saw our uh number of cases increasing within our school corporation within the community a driver to us going to e-learning at that time was the number of people out of our buildings specifically from a staff member standpoint and specifically the impact that was having on classrooms and school buses interestingly enough as we got into the e-learning time and also needed to continue feeding kids our cafeteria staffs took a hit uh so as they were all coming in to work at at the same time we had a few buildings that that uh suffered from a positive case close contacts and so forth and as I talk with colleagues across the state and when it comes to staff the main challenges are in those three areas can we staff our classrooms can we staff our buses can we staff our cafeterias if we can we can we can kind of hold on and and maybe weather the storm uh if we can't then we run the same challenges that that bcsc did way back at the beginning of seems way back now at the beginning of November uh just to bring you up to speed there on today current state uh this slide is uh up to date as of December the 13th so yesterday so our our positive cases uh on a per capita positive rate from that standpoint have gotten over 100 as high as as about 106 uh they are down uh as of yesterday to 82.7 so we've had a a decrease over the last few days again a very high number so acknowledge that uh when we were uh having Schoolboard meeting meetings in in July and August and looking at red as a as a as a 10 uh we're we're higher than that and and still in the red obviously um in terms of percent positive test rate uh that number has been going down a little bit uh so we got as high as in the 50s and now are at 40.4% that's the most recent number with with pending numbers still to come that that rate trend is also decreasing again acknowledging that's still a very high percent our test turnaround time uh thanks to the hard work within the community that's a number that that went green uh a week or so ago and has stayed there with with the most current number being a test turn around time of 2.4 uh which helps us to get information back identify close contacts and and just contain the spread a little bit more easily uh hospitalizations remain high theyve been as high I believe as 59 I think that's the high water mark thus far so about 60 right now at 48 uh so staying that that red number so that's again uh the data as updated as yesterday and this is the uh chart that would be on the uh community's covid-19 task force website today so most up to date just a reminder that when we put together our our plan back in July and into August that we had a a green yellow red where substantial spread as determined by local officials uh we would make some decisions uh on instructional model model and e-learning environment uh might be that and that's that's where we are today today additionally something that occurred during this semester that wasn't in place we made some of our own um created our own metrics and started following them in July and August is this state map or excuse me this county map so the state of Indiana 92 counties each County listed here um the colors go from Blue to Yellow to Orange to red blue and yellow blue would be the best yellow would be the next best for a long time we were in one of those colors um and now uh the ENT ire state is either in orange or red you can see where we are with a 2.5 staying in Orange We Believe based upon the data that we have that will be in Orange again this week so we're treading water so to speak in in terms of that color and staying with that color and as a reminder we also had you take a look at this based upon the state coming out with their color chart we tried to align one locally with that color chart still paying attention our own local metrics but also paying attention to the state's designation and in that case with our bcse operating model considerations based upon recommendations from the governor's office and the State Department of Health we said in Orange that elementary schools may continue full-time Anders option however we made the decision to go to e-learning uh around November the 6th in large part because of our staffing challenges uh middle and high schools may consider a hybrid learning model we went to e-learning for the high school or Secondary School to same reason challenges with Staffing uh classrooms buses Etc and then face coverings and other preventative measures in place we would of course continue all of our mitigation strategies and no assemblies or large group activities and we had scaled those way down from the beginning of the school year anyway from an extracurricular standpoint extracurricular activities may be postponed or limited and consideration given to hosting events with no Spectators we have continued our extracurriculars and other and co-curriculars other events with limited participation mostly family members of those who are participating uh school buses would run all regular routes if we were on the hybrid model that would uh continue to be the case although we do not have students necessarily in school we actually do have about a thousand students in our buildings every day we are running some school buses for for prek or for some special education students or for C4 uh legado is still in session so we have a variety of of programs or or opportunities for students to be our buildings and we still do have buses running for those students as well as delivering uh food to certain locations within our community uh meals are available at the schools there's a bus at each one of our school buildings that is providing a c a curbside service from those cafeterias to students who come from a meal iare continues to be provided in three sites I believe about 150 students somewhere thereabouts uh that we've been able to accommodate uh C4 classes follow the school instruction model that is continuing to be the case um our our C4 students are in session and secondary school buildings are open for Wi-Fi access uh so and actually we have Mount Healthy also open for Wi-Fi access it's been kind of interesting to see that number of students grow from when we started being in e-learning at the beginning of the year uh if you go through a high school building now you'll see many more students um in just trying to get access to the internet than you saw in early November for example they might be at at a cafeteria table or in the resource area or something like that so that that is managed if it goes to Red then um we have a list of things there to consider as well but I'm highlighting the orange just given where we currently are uh and and reiterating reiterating that we are in e-learning but the models that we put out were to at least give us some flexibility some options uh in case we we found uh it able us able to get back into inperson learning at some point in time so on that note um as we look to move forward uh we are considering just uh again local metrics State designation of color and then our just own internal numbers so since Monday August 10th our first student day we've had 305 positive test cases that is 178 students 95 support staff members and 32 teachers if we put put that into perspective going into fall break so Friday October the 2nd we had 29 cases uh basically a month later the end of of the month Friday October the 30th we had 82 cases so from 29 to 82 since it was that following week as we saw numbers increases increasing we had cases uh with staff members we had close contacts we had symptoms and had to start having people out of the building uh we made the decision to go to e-learning we've had 223 positive test cases since October 30th the average per week then is 37 the range of weeks since that time has been between 27 and 47 so relatively consistent and even as our our most recent data point this past Friday December 11th when we released that information publicly 39 positive test cases were reported at that date so we're actually pretty consistent since the end of October to the to this Friday December 11th so what are our next steps well I mentioned at the beginning that um we we had announced that would be an e-learning through winter break no commitment as to what was going to happen after that so right now we have this Tuesday January 5th that's out in front of us a few weeks away so we're trying to determine that potential for re for a return to in-person learning on Tuesday January 5th so the things that we are doing to try to understand and figure that out um if we would be able to there's a question mark here because if we would be able to get students in person what might that model initially look like well based upon uh the thing from our orange designation uh we could consider our elementary schools uh continuing full-time in person and our middle and high school is considering a hybrid model so that was what we established in that orange designation so perhaps grades prek through six in person 5 days per week with that remote learning option and that is a big piece because we started out the school year with a very robust uh e-learning option remote learning option for our students and we had over 3,000 students take advantage of that when we got to fall break had a pretty good August September in terms of numbers parents decided that all right I'm going to send my kid back to in-person learning just at the elementary U level alone thinking of bridge specifically we had 700 students come back into the building so as we look at January 5th there may be parents that are are saying the numbers are still too high for me I'm still not comfortable with sending my student back to the building we want to ensure that if we do go back to inperson we have made sure that that remote learning option is made available to parents because we once they committed to being back in the the building we didn't have a lot of wiggle room at that point in time Following fall break we we we tightened that down and tried to become more consistent from a staffing standpoint on how we could approach both the inperson and remote Peace So opening the door back up here and saying asking parents um if if you're interested in the bridge option let us know uh grades 7 through 12 hybrid uh the hybrid model uh allows us to maintain physical distancing you have half of your students in the building it doesn't change the number of staff that we would have it's one of the reasons we didn't go straight to that model back at the beginning of November because it didn't change again the number of buses we were running necessarily the number of people we had in classrooms because I I I don't reduce the number of classroom teachers I'm using because by keeping the same number reducing the students I can have half the students in my classroom and make sure I have uh physical distancing or uh I can maintain physical distancing so as we move forward and look at these kinds of options as our models for January 5th We are continuing our dialogue with state and local medical health professionals I was on a call again today with Dr box and ktie Jenner at the state level just talking about what schools are doing what the options are what is what is best practice um we are surveying our elementary teachers to expand the pool of prospective teachers for bridge so as we look at January 5th we believe that we might have more students going back to bridge if we start in person that would mean we need more teachers in Bridge what is our pool for that the deadline for completing that survey was today at the end of the day so we should have that information accumulating now we also put out an enrollment form for bridge to all parents of elementary students again this is a planning situation looking at January 5th um deadline for completion for parents of all students is Wednesday December 16th and notice that the wording is enrollment form versus survey because we are wanting people to to commit to that it's hard to make Staffing decisions if that number is is constantly moving back and forth and not only are we asking for it to be an enrollment situation and not just the completion of a survey but committing to it for all of the third nine weeks so not the semester but at least the third nine weeks so that we know what our our maneuvering movement of Staffing is so we can lock that in and then the last bullet point is preparation time for staff members and so as we look from now to January 5th or a date thereabouts what preparation time do we need for our staff members to to transition from the environment we're in today to a different one whether that be in person um as stated here with Elementary and perhaps hybrid with secondary or whatever other model might might work for us but this is where we stand today I think that is my last slide um we will continue to uh look at the information we uh I mentioned the meeting I had today that was a state level one uh our covid-19 indicators group gets together again this Thursday at 9:00 that will be I guess the last Thursday in a while probably Kelly because the next Thursdays are Christmas Eve and and New Year's Eve and not going to require necessarily somebody to to meet then that doesn't mean we won't meet at some other point some other day other time to to stay on top of this information the interesting thing here as we project forward it was one thing for us to head into the Thanksgiving break a break that actually had three days away that weren't work days and then come back here we're talking about almost two weeks and so as we commun continue our communication with our public uh we look to have another statement out to uh our community into this week first of next week saying here's where we are today and if we're able to do it this is what we're going to do and and uh put that in place because as we prepare we don't want this when when the week of January 5th comes up or again thereabouts as we look at that day and and maybe some some flexibility we don't want to say we can't start because we didn't get this information we didn't know how many teachers we needed for bridge we didn't know how many students were be going to bridge we're trying to get that information out so we know so whether it's January 5th or some other date we go back to in-person learning we have the information we need to make that that transition and and the proper preparation time in place for for our staff members so that is where we are on Monday December the 14th and as I State often we will reserve the right to be smarter tomorrow than we are right at this moment thank you Dr Roberts board members any comments or questions for Dr Roberts this evening Rich I'm I'm wondering Dr Roberts do you think there's a clear uh a clear understanding among staff and parents and teachers about the duty to report during the 14 days off and when when you're in school I'm wondering too about the number of students we're out of school yeah so so I think Rich your question is in regards to since we've been out on e-learning uh if we have a positive test case are we getting the reporting of that information uh like we would have if if the student hadn't been at school for 10 days and developed a case of covid-19 they even think to let the school know yeah and so so based upon our relationship with the health department if there's a positive T Test case who that is a student we get that information it if and if we're the employer are we getting that information as well I I I believe so Teresa any reason we wouldn't be getting that information now we're made aware of Kelly any seeing the head nod that that that has indeed been the case that that we feel comfortable with the test cases that that have occurred we've been made aware of those and then I'm wondering too if we've been able to develop u a sense of the ratio um one positive confirmed case means how many bodies out of the buildings yeah yeah it's a very good question I don't know that I have a number it it it ranges yeah uh secondary has has taken a lot more people with it than Elementary and then based upon the nature of that staff member and just what that job entailed how many buildings he or she is in or was it confined to a single classroom at the end of the hallway or there's a lot of factors there we could average that out I I don't have an average number though for you Mr sen I'm just thinking of that that Spike that you sh sure yeah and and driven the large number that time driven primarily at the secondary level with with the scale on the left and seeing that that numbers but what was interesting I think with those various graphs was regardless of how high that number was there were spikes occurring that the the largest number was occurring during that uh latter part of October first part of November thank you you're welcome other questions um just checking online James or Julie any questions from you no not right now okay um just just to confirm Dr Roberts if if this plan as laid out here on this next steps if we're able to provide that that would imply that for grades 7 through 12 we would not provide an option for a seventh or eighth grader to be in school 5 days a week that's correct that's correct okay all right they would be able to maintain the option to stay remotely which we'll have students do and we'll continue doing that and might even have some that will um even with the hybrid move to that now fulltime again um but but yes it would be just the hybrid bottle for at least a transition time frame here okay all right uh we could have 7 through 12 total e-learning is that what you just said no I said we could have 7 through 12 and if my seventh grader was in the hybrid they would be in person School two days a week but the other three days they're not in school right I I misunderstood with Dr Robert in response so so Dr shed we have students involved in either um our Columbus virtual pathway or or Bridge already and and that's 5 days a week so they would be unless they choose to come back because maybe we're in hybrid they would stay in that so they're in remote learning 5 days a week and we may have students who opt to to go to that that that aren't comfortable being in the building at all and would want to be in Bridge or CVP and would have the opportunity to do that so did Bridge enrollment forms go to 712 you only listed element right because because of of how we're we're balancing uh staff across the corporation with the greater levels in need it's just a different there's different mination that's that's occurring with those two and so at the secondary level as enrollments would occur they'll work with that individual building principal and or guidance counselor to to see if there's a to see how that could work out Bas on schedules classes uh the variety of options that are available there okay that was just our staffing conundrum earlier so I'm trying to figure out what we learned from it but assuming we have let's say 5,000 students in grade 7 through 12 y whether 1,000 of them on a particular day or in e-learning or and now in the future at least and and then another 2,000 of the other 4,000 are there you're going you're you're going to have about two to 3,000 every day yeah yeah all right and except Wednesdays in this model then you'd have 5,000 right the entire Corporation actually on Wednesdays so so all teachers are going to have to be able to to handle e-learning uh classes and all yeah and all students are going to have to be able to accommodate e-learning classes in that model yeah that's you yeah thank and all students are yeah right it it's complex it is complex and and and this is where the the important thing is is trying to look look at what's what is the best situation instructionally for our students and trying to balance that out with with safety right and then also trying to look at the situation from a staffing standpoint and what we can manage and address I I I will say that the hybrid model with with secondary teachers going back and forth the entire week with inperson and remote is is the biggest challenge they have uh it's it's an easier thing to be either all e-learning or all in person balancing both is what the secondary teachers would be doing in this particular case which is why Wednesday is an important day to be able to to navigate and have a have a pivot day in there to try to balance those those two pieces yeah that's sort my ACT I did not I should have for tonight put those models back up there since I I've mentioned hybrid but a reminder with our hybrid model is that we have half of the alphabet half of our students in on Monday and Tuesday same kids everybody out on Wednesday and then the other half second half in on Thursday and Friday Dr Roberts um a couple of your comments here just in the last minute have made me we've talked about it before but the idea of professional development or sharing best practices among teachers and the learning must be ongoing every hour of every day do we have formalized opportunities for for folks to say here's what's working for me in this subject matter yeah yes we do and and whether it be our udl facilitators or our technology team regularly organizing times for for teachers to uh log in and participate in those professional development opportunities uh and then I'm I'm sure each building is is having some either formal formal or informal opportunities and we all know how teachers collaborate and get together uh I don't know Nick or George if anybody else wants to speak to to that grab a microphone please if if you would but uh we we definely have plenty of of opportunities uh available yes so some of the not yeah for for those online we have Nick doing a number of things here come on Gina step up back there how about we see an opportunity for improvement Nick we're going to put a microphone back on your table now to okay so yes um that is a great question and it's actually been quite inspiring because support staff training for example we've added more and more because every time we offer something 80 people show up to a zoom over things that we just wouldn't have time or they wouldn't have time to attend and now with zoom we can record so easily and make it available whenever they want and we've seen the same with teachers I think um we had one professional development piece go out that we did similar last year and within the first day we had 90 people putting in entries of completion so it's been inspiring um the work that the teachers are doing with students but also improving themselves thank you yes go ahead George um just to add real quickly Ronda lawell and Tina green our two udl coordinators are also working with building principles on uh sort of specific request to to for them to do trainings whether it be virtual or visiting well obviously they're not visiting classrooms now but uh when we were in they were visiting so they're still continuing to do that work as well and working with um Nick and breny so that we're all connected yeah they've done a phenomenal job and and and take the opportunity just to thank our our teaching staff for uh the back and forth that they they've had to do it's been quite an interesting year uh as as we we've navigated back and forth between a few instructional models and uh appreciate the work of of the professional development individuals we've talked about here are administrators and then recognize the job our parents and kids are doing as they've had to navigate back and forth with this as well I compared I I gave this analogy a couple of days ago that I don't know how many of you grew up that one of your first big roller coasters was the beast in Kings Island but it was mine and and that first of all it's it's a lot of ups and downs but it's a wooden roller coaster and it shakes you a lot and this year uh it's been like that we've been up and down and shaking all around in terms of just that that the kind of of year it's been and that's for every single person that's our teachers our all of our staff members our parents our our our kids hopefully at some point second semester we get in that Rhythm and this is the way it is uh for the for the remainder of that of that time but right now we're we're we're preparing to be back in school the week of January the 5th uh we need to do that and and be ready if if circumstances and conversations and and and so forth allow us to do that and so that's that's what we're working to accomplish at this point in time thank you Dr Roberts you are welcome I'll then move to public comments I don't know that we had none y okay unless Dr Van Horn had something he wanted to say I think we're good on public comments any more thanks George okay all right thanks um board commendations Mr stanner thank you Mr cwell just a big thank you to everybody that's trying to keep the wheels on uh working to keep things going uh and then especially tonight uh commendations to all the folks that are participating in the diversity inclusion and Equity work I'm really excited by the the potential that they've identified thanks thanks thanks Mr ster any other board members Mr cell I'll just make a comment I had to be on our website today doing policy homework and I noticed that our applications for prek and Legato and CSA are up and they'll be accepting them until the end of January and I I don't know it just felt good that we're planning for next year in a semi-normal way it was really nice to read so just to say in a little like yeah fill out those applications good all right are there no other board accommodations School Board member reports I'm guessing very few that's corre if any I don't know that we've had not a lot of outside Comm meeting right stay halfwire yes the uh education Hall of Fame met on December 4th and the committee went through the nominees and after you know a little bit of deliberations it's tough going through all the applications because they're all worthy of the award and everything but we can only pick one so we did uh have a majority of uh to choose an individual and that individual and uh name and everything will be released uh next early next year so then we can uh have a reception and things for our new uh education Hall of Fame so that's in the form of a teaser there isn't it all right thank you thank you Kathy all right good deal thanks to Kathy for her continued work with that that committee and team and and yeah made look a little different this year Kathy as we plan for reception and giving the award and whatnot but we'll see if we can we'll celebrate it properly or at least as properly as we can well let's move to Cabinet reports Mr Phillips before I have uh Chad respond on cabin reports and I'm not a board member but just a quick commodation in terms of Nick and Josh's continued work to make this these hybrid using that word differently here not instruction but for making our meetings go and then you may have noticed in the Republic there was a nice article about the efforts that our kids are doing with Josh's assistance and Leadership of streaming a lot of ball games as we've cut way back on participation or attendance we've tried to make those available to to our community members so nice job to thanks to the public for covering that and thanks to Nick and Josh for their work J Josh and I can speak from experience I know that's not only important to our uh Community uh have a friend who's a Brownstown resident uh his his father had not been able to see his granddaughter play ball this year but when the Brownstown girls came up and played uh they saw our live stream they just loved it they thought that was the greatest thing you know that here they could finally see their daughter play in her senior year so you you guys have had some really far-reaching effects so that's been very cool awesome right Mr Phillips just to add the comments on on that topic I think it's one of the many things from Co that won't go away demand demand for that will exist for uh for a long time to come and not just because we get to hear Dr Boseman on Friday nights that might be one thing we change oh yeah so even The New Normal might not be as expected okay that's right I've heard the students do do a really good job too your report yeah thanks so uh just a just a piece of good news our the the department of local government Finance dgf returned our budget order for 2021 they've gotten much better at getting that back to us early uh used to be mid to late January after we already started spending the money before they told us how much we could we could spend so the the final tax rate for 2021 is a dollar and 1.1 so 1.0 one10 our goal was 1.01 so we were within one/ tenth of one penny of where we were trying to get so um just a piece of good news for you excellent thank you Chad that includes the referendum tax right he's shaking his head yeah I could hear r y I say that Shing his head yeah exactly it it was almost exactly uh 15 points the the referendum is 15.6 cents yes the increase is 15.7 cents over last year's rate okay perfect and that's been some continued good work in maintaining that tax rate while we've improved the ucation quality that's we've we paid with each dollar thank you Mr cwell we should probably never pass the opportunity to say that we're still below the state average which 101 yes yeah it'll take a while before the DG puts out the 2021 list but um as more and more districts pass referenda they're going to continue to go up across the state yeah that number would be that rate would be 7 cents less than the average that we were um sh in last year during the referendum process we'll assume that that dollar eight or so is going to go up I don't think it'll go lower it's not going lower okay thank you Chad Mr Cole I just added a couple of slides under cabinet reports um I'd sent out a message just checking about legislative priorities Chad provided some information and as I looked to edit those I didn't need to do a whole lot so there they're basically some things that we just went back and forth with so just an FYI as as the legislative session kicks off and we have a lot ofver ation with uh legislators uh we want to make sure that they're investing where the critical needs exist today uh looking at summer school Appropriations or mediation Appropriations to address loss of learning uh that certainly are are good possibilities making sure to still keep up with per people funding with inflation addressing virtual education that's extremely big Chad just mentioned things that won't go away uh we're going to continue to have virtual education in a higher enrollment than we had previously protecting schools from liability uh might be some frivolous claims that that are made and so we want to have some protection and then just other unnecessary legislation that sometimes comes the way of school so just a a few ideas uh that that we might look at to uh uh have conversations with our legislators about moving forward if there are things that you would like for us to add to the list or to consider please just shoot me a message or give me a call and we can add that to the things that um we'll talk about we do regularly have the opportunity to meet with our local legislators as well as people at the state level so interested in having that that continued dialogue the content of those two slides is no different than what you shared with us corre email right yeah with it was yeah uh officers and and Chad I think had seen that all right thank you nothing up there about Labor Day or teaching handwriting yeah no no no calendar conversation or or cursive handwriting or other things trying to stay with big rock topics right now Mr Stenner so boring let's move to item four on the agenda uh Dr Roberts I think items 4 a through I you have for us thank you Mr coell so the list of of items I have as my request for approval starts off with the minutes of the regularly scheduled board meeting back in November seems like a while ago since that one occurred uh a list of supplemental contracts that you have in front of you uh we did not have any fi trips for professional leaves or school fundraisers on this list uh we do have claims and payroll two sets of claims there from the month of November uh one that's a little over $3.6 million one dated today that's a little over $2.1 million and then uh three sets of payrolls November 6th 20th and December 4th that included uh new contracts retroactive pay as well as teacher appreciation Grant monies and some stiens for support staff that aligned with that teacher appreciation Grant uh and those those amounts are over or near $8.7 million and then we do have a three-year calendar approval for you and so here is the three-year calendar um I think the the most the thing uh to note uh probably most importantly the beginning of school is is relatively the same if you think back to this year 2021 2020 2021 we were supposed to start on a Thursday or August the 5th I think think the calendar kind of lines up again for next year um and then uh off on Friday uh excuse me Thursday Friday this past year next next year's calendar would have us starting on a Friday uh Labor Day fall break similar fall break I think is one week later Teresa so October 11th through the 15th so all of those individuals may be paying attention right now who've been waiting on us to certify a fall break October 11th for to the 15th is what we're putting in front of you uh Thanksgiving break still being three days winter break basically being two weeks uh and then we have the Martin Martin Luther King Jr day um snow makeup days would actually be done from an e-learning standpoint uh we would not use that spring break uh we would not put two weeks at Spring break where the first week would be used to make up days we would instead go straight to spring break one week uh March the 14th through the 18th so with everything that we've learned about e-learning we are comfortable with saying if we have a snow makeup day in 2021 22 uh those first 5 days we will do e-learning and after five we're not so comfortable anymore we want we do need inperson and some days might go toward the end of the school year a good Friday would be no school Memorial Day no school and right now the last day for students is an early date so we have some room between May 20th and graduation on May 28th to add some days if if we felt that was necessary but um basically uh in terms of what people are looking for uh in this calendar fall break a week later October 11th through October the 15th spring break one week because in the past we've designated a a first week of two for makeup days we eliminate that one and we go to e-learning for makeup days it does get us out earlier May 20th does give us some flexibility flexibility with makeup days in case we need to go a different direction than the first five being e-learning and that repeats itself over those the next two years of that calendar 22 23 and 2324 questions well we can get into questions when you ready to approve it um the next piece besides the calendar is a revision of board policy 3112 we had the first reading the last meeting and really two changes one was changing some language under the social interaction uh part of the policy to um get away from that uh uh U it was it pretty harsh in terms of the wording and being unethical conduct I believe it's not on here but unethical conduct yeah and so just just strongly discouraged given the potential legal liability making sure that people are clear that we have to be careful when we're interacting socially as board members and the and members of our staff and community and then uh from a public comments standpoint wanted just to make sure and clarify that all staff as any member of the public may make comments or present concerns to the board at a public meeting in compliance with the procedures of all other speakers which we post and publish each meeting these procedures include refraining from using the names of individual students and or staff members so this is the second reading of that and up for approval we have our 2021 tax anticipation warrants which is standard at this time of year really key this year to being able to start spending some referendum dollars as early as January and then we also in your packet had two bids for eate internet access uh naming some vendors to to make sure that we have appropriate access within our buildings those are my items for this evening thank you Dr Roberts do I have a motion to uh approve items 4 a through I as presented so moved so moved thank you Kathy deal dwire and and I'll get a second there from Mr peringer thank you James what questions do you have for Dr Roberts on items 4 a through I Dr Roberts if you'd go back to the calendar I would note that 23 24 looks like one of those awkward years where you you get to start school in the second semester on a Friday if you're a student and go back on a Monday for the last day of the year isn't it that's yes it is no way to slide that I guess un unless you really go on much later right yeah it's also a leap year that one day is it a leap year okay yeah 2024 I guess so yeah Dr Roberts I was not on the calendar a different topic I was wondering if we could get Mr Phillips to review the uh tax anticipation warrants just got a little confused looking at the handout that we received Mr Phillips sure no problem Mr Stenner the uh looks a little different than what it has in the past although this is an annual step that we take every year uh we used to use a private attorney that did this calculation for us and then went out to bid these this is the first year we're using the Indiana Bond Bank that provides financing to to all municipalities across the across the state and by we feel like by pooling our borrowing uh with other school districts cities counties and those kinds of things um we can get a much more competitive rate and and many of my peers use the the Bond Bank so this form U that's in your board packet just looks a little different than what you've seen before um and basically uh the total that we will borrow for 2021 is about 18.3 Mill ion that's that column uh total to be received on 128 2021 that compares to Prior years last year we were at 22.8 million and the year before about 23.5 million so we did uh reduce the amount that we're borrowing even with the addition of uh the referendum fund the operating referendum fund and and the main reason for that is we're not getting anything in investing our money right now so borrowing that and keeping it in the bank you we're just paying interest on it and not getting anything back on a return so uh the summary is 18.3 million and again that's about 4 million 4 A5 million less than last year thank you Mr Williams the the other uh question I had was on our our providers are are either of these changes the WAN internet for you service is is a change and it actually matches our the WAN that you guys approved last year the the other one that provides internet access for half our district is actually going to be with the same vendor but it's about $358 43 cheaper per month okay per month okay thank you Nick thanks Nick any other questions hearing none I'm going to ask for a Voice vote first all all in favor um uh those online uh Dr bills we still have Julie do you know yeah but she's muted okay she's calling in so I'm not sure how she reverses that if I could see you Julie you could hold a hand up but I can't I may have to just have you as not voting here so I can't hear you Mr Persinger I thank you all others here present uh in favor please raise indicate your right hand I guess it really didn't matter which hand I believe we have Dr Bill's unmuted now okay Dr bills yes I vote Yes sorry I was trying to unmute myself thank thank you Julie okay so that motion carries unanimously thank you thank you Dr Roberts hello Miss honey item five is a request for approval of Human Resources recommendations thank you I request approval of the human resource recommendations as presented this evening you do I have a motion to accept this Z's recommendation so move thank you Mr Bryant is there a second second Dr shed thank you for the second any questions from Missy I have a question but it's not related to your recommendations I know that you have you have been uh pushing for some substitute both uh support staff I think bus drivers primarily of the positions any success in the last couple weeks I was just looking at the list we have about a hundred folks that have applied or indicated their interest in being a sub so that that's very positive that's fantastic at least you've got a a new pool of candidates to be talking to outstanding thank you for your work on that thank you so we have a motion the second to accept the recommendation from Miss honey all in favor I'll do it the opposite way here in the room raise your hand please uh Mr Persinger how do you vote hi Dr bills how do you vote hi thank you that motion carries unanimously thank you Miss honey let's move to board input and review and we'll also start with our our U members online Dr bills anything this evening no thank you thank you Julie Mr peringer no nothing for me thank you James Mr Bryant I want to thank uh Mr person here for serving on the board he's truly going to be missed and then this other guy next to me yeah thank you for being on the board and gu you are love there Mr Mr healthware um I too like to thank both you and um James for serving on the board um you know I appreciate leadership and um just being able to talk differences and everything is just really I think brought a lot of different uh thought processes and experiences to this board that really kind of make us help to make good decisions or recommendations so I appreciate both of you serving on the board thanks Kathy I'll I'll Echo that I've I've learned from working with Mr cwell and Mr ping here I've learned some really important things that will live on in the board as I continue to serve because I will continue to use what I've learned from working with both of you uh as we try to fulfill the mission that we've got as an organization so thank you both for your service and thank you for being teachers to me Mr Stenner I don't know what to add to that I'm I'm sure there's so I've I've learned so much from both James and from you Jeff I appreciate that you both were leaders um I think we are a very strong board and we're very strong because of what you brought to us um we're a crazy wild diverse group group though people may not think so but um just the very the experiences the perspectives asking great questions and making us think hard um I just appreciate it so much and I think we're a stronger School Corporation so thank you thank you Dr Roberts anything for us this evening I'll wait to uh say something about you and James until the next thing on the agenda which is recognitions um echoing everything that we've heard so far but I do just want to acknowledge and i' put a placeholder on this slide uh we don't necessarily have you approve some positions or some changes um so the human resources piece already done but uh just reminding everybody since it is now out and about in the public that Columbus East has only named their third football coach in their history 1972 I think the first year of Columbus East High School and this is coach number three uh Eddie has some big shoes to to fill I think the first coach is the stadium might be named after him and I'm guessing coach Gattis might have something sometime somewhere great success by Bob and and Eddie is is stepping in that role and it has deserved that he's he's uh the great assistant for Clum in that program so good luck to him and his family as he embarks upon the football coaching job at Columbus East and then I I was able to reference Kimberly in moving to full-time status that's an important part an important step for us as a school corporation to designate uh the time um to to that make sure and prioritize that position and its time and and how important uh that work is so just wanted to reference her moving to that that level thank you Dr Roberts and and I would I would also say again I'm excited about the the new board membership next year I I I know the both James and I will regret at times not being able to be a part of the the process uh but uh I I I know personally at least I felt like it was a good time to move on it's been um 12 years since I've had a student in my household that was here at at the school corporation and I know uh specifically uh uh with Nicki Weldon who's replacing me has three that are uh middle school and younger age so so I I I value greatly that perspective on the board of someone who's living and breathing uh every day the the um experiences of parents in this so I think both she and Todd will be terrific additions to this board next year Todd obviously as an educator also helps by bringing that perspective and I think that's always a strong uh voice on the board so thank you guys all for your kind words and for uh the the mutual learning that we did together again uh if if there were bad times Kathy Rich Jill Pat you brought it on yourself sorry you you guys you guys hired me 10 years ago uh so um and then the voters uh uh uh agreed that let's let's keep him in there for a couple of terms so I appreciate that but thanks very much uh you have one more uh item assume involves me it says he did school board members recognition so uh we do have two board members that are this is their last meeting uh for us uh we do want to thank both Jeff cwell and James Persinger for their service to our school corporation uh I was uh pretty new to the school corporation when James came on board so we kind of learned together over the last few years me in my position and he in his in in terms of of what makes this Corporation tick and learning a little bit about each of you and as Jill said I each of you bring Jeff you James you and then the other board members as well some diverse thought and and challenge Us in different ways and that's great in terms of of helping us be better and meet the needs of our students I just want to thank thank you Jeff for your leadership of the board we've had a lot of breakfast meetings together I think you've been an officer for much of the time that I've been here and appreciate your leadership guidance uh I think Dr shed mentioned the challenging questions those are always important I I think we I have a quote that says you don't get better um by by what you just say and do you get better by the questions you ask and it's uh those those questions that are asked sometimes uh most of the time take us forward and make us a little smarter uh and James again appreciate everything that you've done I know you've you've been all over the place and had to work extra hard to to get to meetings and and and make them work in one way another and and have been able to do that and again appreciate uh your perspective as as as Jeff indicated having kids in the system it gives you a a unique perspective on what's going on and it allows us allows you to challenge us and make sure we we're doing the best job that we can so thank you to both of you I do have some gifts from the corporation to provide to you James will have you pick yours up when you are able and Jeff I'll hand you yours thank you so for both of you from the bartholomy consal school Foundation uh architectural book Susie has a few of these and she's making one available to to you and James additionally make sure I have the right one here we plaque for you and recognizing your years of service James four years of service to our school corporation and Jeff you with 10 so this plaque says Jeff cwell bcsc School Board member thank you for 10 years of support and service to our students staff and Community 2020 thanks you're welcome all right I'm just going to say it's here okay J James we're going to have to get out of here quickly before Bryant has any more uh Wise Cracks uh is there any any last comments from you I just want to thank you all for your kind words and uh appreciate the honor of being able to serve on the board these last four years um it has been an incredible learning experience and I want to just say thank you all uh you know to the five of you that I've served with for these past four years that really helped me out and you know kind of show me you know the ropes from the get-go uh you guys made me feel very welcome from the beginning and I just really appreciate it thanks change we remind everyone in closing that our next um school board meeting will be our uh annual reorganization meeting that's on January 11th we'll meet right back here at this room uh at 6:30 p.m.
thank you miss dolly you heard the recommendation approved resolution 787 edition of the inprs covered positions do we have a motion to approve so move moved by mr babjack second second by mr hoffman do you have any questions or comments from stalin that will do take a vote david warning aye scott angel aye scott baby aye brian smith all right and tom hoffman all right motion passes 5-0 thank you ms dowling now moving on to 5.04 is the disposition of absolute curriculum materials mr harvey thank you mr president uh periodically we do have curricular materials that have been adopted uh that need to be disposed of uh because they're not being used currently uh these resources that you see in front of you were adopted in 2011 they are taking up space at crown point high school and uh so there is a process by indiana code for us to uh to dispose of those and the first level would be to give those uh resources away to students we can seek to donate them uh and if we can't uh um dispose of them that way uh it is appropriate to uh dispose of them by uh discarding them seeking your approval this evening to uh to dispose of the curricular materials thank you mr charman for the recommendation to approved administration dispose of the curriculum materials listed in the most economic manner that best meets the requirements of india code 5-22-22 and net code 20-26-4-5 and administrative guidelines 7310 which may include sale donation or deeming it worthless and disposing of its normal refuse do we have a motion to approve so moved moved by mr angel second seconded by mr babjack and do we have any questions or comments from mr hardman well the only comment is that i'm sure we have better ways to dispose them but i think back in the day those were probably homecoming bonfires homecoming bonfires [Music] any other questions or comments from this department i will do a take a vote david warning aye scott angel aye scott abject aye ryan smith hi and tom hoffman all right how much carries five zero thank you mr harvey thank you let us know when you have that so we can get more insurance all right um before we move to information let me just take a quick second i i should have mentioned this before closing the public hearing but i wanted to um i wanted to thank our representatives from skillman for you know coming this evening and answering questions and gibraltar and uh um you know brock who is here speaking from baker tilly uh appreciate the work that you guys put into helping us through this this project and i also want to you know appreciate the time and interest and the progress of the future of our community and the those that part anybody who else has participated and uh please note that this is just the first step in the legal process and the board will continue to work with the administration and for and its professionals to look for efficiencies to conserve tax dollars while meeting our educational needs and i also didn't ask just as we were closing i thought we should just ask back to that if anyone from the board had comment that they would like to make didn't give an opportunity to speak if anyone has a comment well as i said before the last meeting this is we're doing what's right for the kids and their education and the process and to be able to do that with no additional tax tax payments tax dollars being thrown out to our community and our tax holders and parents it it's just an amazing position we're in so i'm hoping that everybody's on board with this because once again it's right for everybody involved including our teachers staff administrative people and i'll just the sentiments that david mentioned to our individuals from our partners um it's just amazing that they're you know showing up to make sure that we get every question answered mr clink who's been helpful in the project our attorney cheryl and her firm so thank you to all that are involved in this and once again i just it's the right thing to be doing and to be able to do that in a situation where financially there's no better time thank you i would echo the sentiments of mr angel and i would say that in my 18 years on the board tonight from the building of the high school uh colonel wheeler middle school and jerry ross elementary this is this is probably the most significant move that we propose and i think it's long overdue and as mr angel said in light of our financial situation this needs to be done benefit both of our students our teachers and staff and our community certainly is going to support their valuations of their property and keep their tax rates low as as they currently are so thank you mr often okay we can move into uh item six information items we have superintendent discussion groups uh anything to report from our community cedar lake winfield crown point not from cedar lake no okay how about mr hoffman anything you'd like to share i i shared with dr carroll the last crown point board meeting we got the annual tiff report and that is available for review and if the board desires at some point they can arrange the brief explanation by the city's consultant with respect to the tif districts to go through and explain that okay thank you and uh moving on uh mr hartman you want to go next or would you like to okay we'll go to uh chief academic officer mr hardman thank you again mr president uh you know we come to the close of this year and uh i was reflecting on the continuous learning plan i think it's better maybe described as a continuous plan for learning we've been planning throughout the course of the last nine months for learning we have another change potentially coming up as you know the survey is out to to our students parents right now to make a determination for the second semester uh so we continue to plan continue to work with sabrina and mark and heather and you know artie and katie and dr terrell and the staff and our students and trying to do what's best for our parents and our our children so it's been a continuous plan and in some ways i'm excited about coming of a new year i think we've taken the opportunities that are that was laid before us to be able to improve the learning environment for us digitally and hopefully we will continue to capitalize on that as we move forward into the 2021 uh calendar year as we move into that we are merging a couple of projects together uh we have a couple of projects one is through the uh it was a big found it was kind of it was based on the lilly grant for counseling and social emotional and we've been working through that with indiana university and also with the audit that's come out with special education we're reaching now for the high hanging fruit we'll be doing that through some work with iu also in the next uh next probably 18 months and we're going to merge the two together so that we have and we can address the needs of the whole student in crown point community school corporation so we're excited about moving forward with that uh with those goals over the next uh like i said 18 months in the school corporation thank you thank you chairman director of elementary education mr mears thank you mr president and board members i'd like to take this opportunity to provide um information regarding the current process that we are in as a district in preparation for our we to access testing that will start taking place in 2021 in january this is a federally required assessment that our english language learners will be taking and it measures their proficiency in listening speaking reading and writing i'd like to thank and advance jennifer grill who is our english language learner district specialist for her leadership of the english language learner team and for a training that she will be providing when we return in january to prepare our test administrators and test proctors our english language learner team members are currently preparing students for an effective test administration as well we also will be holding our parent advisory meeting for english language learner parents on january 5th to inform them about the assessment and how best to prepare and support their student during the testing window lastly i would like to thank our parents guardians and caregivers i'd like to thank them for their effort feedback and support we know that teaching and learning has looked very different this year and i thank them we thank them for their commitment to working in partnership and we look forward to continuing to learn and grow together i think as mr hardman referenced this has been a process that we've looked at very strategically based on where we are at in the phase of our educating of students and we've always remained steadfast to making sure that their engagement and the support of our students is a collaborative effort so we look forward to continuing to work with them in 2021.
along with that payroll came the accounts payable again for fica payroll taxes retirement uh total accounts payable for the november sixth payroll 124 thousand eight seventy three twenty one second regular payroll in november was dated eleven twenty for a total payroll of four hundred thirty three thousand nine thirty 33 15. along with that payroll came the accounts payable again for payroll taxes and retirement total accounts payable for the 1120 payroll 123 000 720 11.
um um ian have you had a chance to review i actually have not reviewed those minutes sorry okay um i can look at them real quick okay why don't we do that so that we can um share those tomorrow night at the board meeting i can uh re-share those out with you right now and let me have them available and i could send them right over no so are you sharing screen with them or are you uh emailing them i was going to share them with you in google drive and it via email so you could take a peek no uh i might have trouble getting them then i will in the chat it is linked on the agenda also if you've got the agenda open i just included them in the chat for anyone who wants to take a peek oh okay again it's all coming back to you now isn't it yes it is okay um okay you're good okay do i have a um do we need emotion we need a motion to accept right yes do i have a motion to accept the minutes from um october 19 2020 curriculum committee meeting i move so move my second all in favor okay so we're good um next new business next item is new business a new textbook recommendation um college accounting and a practical approach thank you faith and tonight we have a special guest with us who you have met before we have leslie pair the business department chair and she is here to talk to us about the newest textbook recommendation thanks for being here leslie sure so did i mention to you guys how excited we are to be partnering with tungsten community college and that four of our business classes next year um will be articulated and our students will receive for each of those classes three column credits and we're just thrilled um we're we're still in the the final working out the final details but um we're moving right along so i know my intro is getting a little long i'll bring it back to the book uh the book that they would like us to use uh is right there college accounting a practical approach and um it's really uh lynn talian who is um one of our accounting teachers she went through the book chapter by chapter um looked at it and really thought that the book is going to be a great fit for our students so we currently teach an accounting one class with a different college level book this is the um book that tunxis wants to use and she really likes it so i'm i'm very happy to share that with you and the other thing that you might really want to hear is that this book is not going to cost the cheshire public school system any money this is going to be paid for by the perkins grant so the way the perkins grant works is this is actually this is not the cheshire public schools perkins grant this is the tungsten community college uh perkins grant and because it's a new course for the first um when you purchase a textbook the first time for a new course perkins will pay for that and the total we typically have about three classes it's around 60 students every year that sign up for accounting one and if we had to pay for 60 brand new textbooks the cost would be over thirteen thousand dollars so we're very fortunate that um along with um our courses being articulated that the perkins grant will pay for this textbook excellent um and this has been on review for the past month too hasn't it in the office when we approve it to when and if it's approved tonight it will be unre it will then go to to be on public review okay okay okay um do i have a motion to uh recommend or accept the recommendation of the college accounting a practical approach i would move to to uh accept that do we have any discussion just to note that the motion would be to recommend it to the full board recommend thank you kevin um yes recommend to the full board um approval okay um do we have any discussion hearing none all those in favor and then second okay all right all opposed no okay it pays us all right awesome great great so we will good good tony's not here what the heck good thing tony's not here he might not have gone along with us i'm just not true counting majors out of it no i mean okay thank you um leslie thank you you're welcome all right um item number four uh informational items um so we will now hear from dr mary gatt about um just the updates in the cheshire high school learning hybrid learning plan take it away thank you thanks for having me how are you this evening i hope we're all right good uh so from from the october 19th meeting so i've i've been which one the last the last one we talked about um the the hybrid plan following that meeting we had a couple of questions that emerged uh some about the kinds of syllabi that are shared with parents so in the document it's attached to the um to the agenda there are just some examples of the kinds of syllabi that were sent out to families in the fall one from our required business course uh personal finance one from actually two from world literature and you'll see that teachers uh in the same course typically co they typically collaborate on their syllabi and in both of those there were some this was the beginning of the year there were some clear instructions about how to be a good citizen online as well as in person uh and there's a there's a syllabi actually a full presentation that a teacher sent instead of a paper syllabus she sent home expectations um and so there's a there's a presentation attached and finally uh for something completely different world uh from world language ap german uh the syllabus for that course so you'll see uh just just some some a cross section of how teachers communicate with parents so that's in that in the document following that meeting we we engaged with parents across a series of parent meetings we held five uh one on october 27th that was our first one that was the hybrid model instruction discussion and that meeting had about 27 attendees on october 28th we had a meeting where we discussed student support opportunities at the high school and that was co-presented by our special education and sel administrators student student i'm sorry social and emotional learning which kristen pell's assistant principal at the high school supports and and helps to further in our school and there were about 20 parents attending that one on october 29th we held a meeting about student expectations and attendance in the hybrid system and our two assistant principals explain expectations for students online and in person and that was we had about nine attendees for that one on november 4th we held our social and emotional learning meeting with about 11 attendees and on november 11th our final meeting in that series we talked about student activities so that's clubs athletics and what that looks like in this very unusual year and that had about 13 attendees so overall about between nine and 25 attendees at each of those sessions and it was it was really helpful and important to have those discussions in in the midst of that work we had our november third professional development day and teachers led 12 teachers led sessions with their colleagues around their expertise and strategies for synchronous instruction and how to make that work most effectively and then that work also included focused focused sessions on the best practices for school messenger use cami classroom class flow and screen castify and the objective for that day was share strategies for supporting synchronous instruction which we moved to this full expansion of that as of second quarter which began on november 9th and the other objective was to increase communication with parents so the next outcome was on the week of november 9th every teacher sent home either a video message or email message articulating updated expectations from what they sent out in in september updated expectations around well first of all how's it going let me reconnect with you it's been a few weeks uh your kids are doing an amazing job which was uh featured in a lot of their videos just thanking parents for students who being so um thoughtful and i don't want to say compliant because it's not that so diligent about wearing masks remaining socially distant distance communicating with their teachers our students have been out absolutely outstanding and so their video messages included some of that information how to get in touch with them and if they didn't recall that from the qualify that they had sent home and their updated expectations about students being on camera which was which was a significant piece of that move that we've had some kids who would turn on their camera turn it off so they really wanted to reiterate let's make sure we're all visible we're all participating together um and so that is what we uh what we move toward following our meeting on the 19th okay thanks um do we have any uh and you have any questions go yeah one quick question so um how do parents get this information is it through the google classroom so which the syllabi or the information features so syllabi teachers would it is in their google classroom and they also emailed that to their students so it's typically associated with their their google classroom and they also did explain to parents where you can access information sit down with your child ask them to show you google classroom and show you where all the materials are that's why i was wondering i was wondering if um if it relied on the students to show it to their parents or the parents have access to it but they do through the google classroom and teachers also will email material home to them and many did attach documents to their communication great thank you mary sounds like sounds like you know we're doing our due diligence and i must say i have heard from parents who um generally are pleased with the extra effort um could you could you explain how the environment has changed or how the model has changed from what we're looking at in early october what is how is the day look now versus how a day looked then in in terms of you know obviously they're getting information in the syllabi but um you know accountability both for students and for teachers and um all of that so we surveyed our teachers and our students in all of this implementation and our parents to hear what their thoughts were and i know that that material was shared with you at a recent board meeting so a number of students did say i did like having more time to work on my work i've also heard that from parents i did like having some independent uh self-directed time but you know i also understand and it's it's it's good to be connected with my classes i don't think it was that ex dramatic a change from where we were because many many teachers were already having their full groups together simultaneously and so it's just an increase across the board to make sure everyone was maximizing the amount of time students were were in contact okay all right um and so when we come we'll still be well in to just the second turn second semester but do you foresee further adaptations as we go into the third semester and the fourth semester or um quarter i'm sorry sorry um one one piece that we are working through now is how we want to manage midterm exams and given um given the the complexity of of trying to hold a traditional exam time where we had everyone come in for their class period we're going to hold exams during class time we have thankfully 80 minutes of time and teachers are working to provide students with um an exam that will fit in that time period or a culminating project but we're not holding formal midterm exams um again it's it's it's complicated for our students who are fully remote and complicated for uh for for all of our students especially given this time so they're looking at meaningful culminating projects ways to close out the the first semester of work and have students really demonstrate what they've learned but in a way that will support what they've learned not over complicate the experience that they've been having we are not alone we are in step with virtually every other district that is in our derg and in our area okay and in terms of i i think maybe you're asking are we going to go fully returning uh i think that all is is is um really dependent on the you know the health of of yeah i wasn't i actually wasn't asking about full returning because i don't want too much as we all wanted um that's always what's on you know on our minds back to normal um yeah wouldn't it be lovely oh it wouldn't no i just didn't know i mean you are you're listening and you are adapting and i just didn't know what else might be in the pipeline um as you get feedback and um because again this is almost a whole new system from last year or from last spring and so it is still in the formative stages you're you're adapting as you go so i just was wondering if there were other things that parents should be on the lookout could be on the lookout for that kind of yeah we keep listening and responding so yeah if i could just add mary um so we're doing that at the college level too because um you know you can't give exams the way that you once could and um i personally have adapted my classes to have these project-based kinds of assessments going on so in response to that it got me thinking and i don't think it's a bad thing that we're changing some of this the way that we do testing or assessing um and uh so i'm actually kind of glad to hear that you know they're not taking the pencil paper um midterm exams they're showing they're demonstrating their knowledge through more uh i don't know hands-on authentic ways more authentic ways so so i think that we can be looking for the good things that come out of what we're doing with education out of what we're maybe being forced to to re-look at some things and i you know there are some good things happening so yes thank you for that description thank you so um tony's joined us do you have any questions tony i know you've missed no i caught some of it the only thing i would add is no it's got to be listen all cps has been commended on the fact that we've had to change or they've had to change the folks in the trenches how we deliver and assess and it seems like it's almost evolving you know every month you know to get ahead of it so i mean we all acknowledge i know i speak for the whole board that um i don't think we're surprised that we're evolving how we're assessing i mean it's it's expected so and a lot goes into it and mary did catch the fact that you were you know listening and responding and i i know that it's got to be difficult sometimes hearing a lot of feedback um when you know folks are not to speed on how we're doing things but what i have heard is you know as far as your feedback and outreach to parents uh has been outstanding and seems to have clarified a lot of uh questions that folks had just in the hybrid model where we're going the only thing i would add on the assessments is the only thing that parents would worry about is you know if we're changing from pen and paper based testing to uh project assessment as a band-aid and i don't think that's the case i think we're doing that because it's just the reality of what we're doing and i agree with ann if when and if we can i'm all for project-based assessments i'm i'm a firm believer in real world scenarios and i think the kids respond better to that so look forward to the outcomes and uh but you know i thank you and i did catch most of that so i appreciate faith you asking uh any questions that's all i have thank you leslie pair has used that request and how to raise my hand so she has a comment or a question i do so i i can only speak for the business department but um many many of our courses that's the direction are individualized personalized projects where the kids can really apply what they've learned so most of our class or not yeah i'd say most of our classes are semester classes and that's what we'll be working toward working on once we um once january comes around is you know the students putting to to work through a project-based based assessment um they're culminating projects so definitely the way that we're working now yeah and i would like may i just add one quick one i'm sorry um ece and ap courses who who require a midterm exam of course will do that but within the context of the 80-minute time period that was kind of where i was going more what is also happening now that we're on the area of testing um with sats have you heard from the college board what's going on or yes we are fully poised to administer the sats in the spring we did the psats we will set up the sats it might require us to spread out across the building in in in more ways than we typically have we've been able to utilize one specific area now we'll have to utilize more um and it might it might be a little bit of an interruption how the day goes for all the other students and we'll try to figure out ways to support them as best we can but the sat and the ngss are both on deck great okay um i know it's it's not specifically on the agenda but um marlene are there any comments that might have come into the or questions that might have come into the covet site oh okay i mean i did take a quick look we have four people on on um youtube so i didn't know if they they listed any questions or not um any further questions from anybody otherwise um dr yeah thank you for updating us and i know it's been a long haul for you and um constantly coming to talk to us but i do appreciate it thank you my pleasure thank you okay um i figured i meant to say i apologize for being late i respect everyone i was running behind on something so thank you for uh being with me good to see you tony good to see everyone happy here um okay uh item b under informational items professional development update so dr gad shared a little bit about what was happening at the high school for the high school staff pd so kevin hanlon will share with you k8 happenings and and all of our pd this year is really going to fall under two umbrellas it's going to fall under that concept of acceleration sorry that we discussed at the end of august or september and or the technology tools to help support the work so you heard a little bit at the high school about some of the technology tools that they're using to support synchronous learning at the middle school level we focused on acceleration and one part of that that was really about um engaging academic tasks for both in-person and remote learners so they really focus on the academic tasks that they're developing and really trying to to make what students are engaged in both whether they're remote or in person meaningful full and substantial so they spent spend a little bit of time in the morning looking at some research related to that not very much before they dove in in their divisions the math division science division so forth to really work on framing that out for themselves at the elementary level we did some work under the umbrella acceleration around in english language arts and reading taking a look and it actually mirrored what they had done in the fall taking a look at some of the standards that are taught in the second trimester and what texts and resources we want to use to help support those standards essentially we're using a fewer numbers of texts to teach multiple standards so they had done that work for the first trimester and they carried that forward for the second trimester math did similar work on the priority standards piece and also looked at some ways to assess students prior to going into a unit to know exactly where they are so they can help respond and provide support on the technology front and they really had an open and collaborative session where teachers shared with one another they're spending so much time in figuring so many things out with our technology tools but didn't have the opportunity to necessarily share with someone who's in a different building or a different grade level themselves so we fostered some collaborative shares among teacher groups across the district so that's our pd update that's primarily from our last full day pd on november 3rd and the building basically are all carrying half days we're all carrying on with that that same work oh any questions on the professional development company no anybody not at this stage yeah i feel like this year we we put in this standing report um part way through last year to give keep abreast of some of the things that were going on um this year we'll probably be able to say almost every single time we're working under the umbrella of acceleration and technology tools to support that so if this year feels a little bit like a rerun on that we'll get try to try to continue to give you some insight into some of the tweaks that we're working on but um it really is all under under that large umbrella the other report i have for you tonight is on our el parent night and that is uh was held this year on november 10th and that's an annual event uh similar to many of the school related events we held this one by google me i was joined by pat castle and kristen castellano who oversee the el programming at the elementary and middle schools as well as maya wiley who's an el tutor at the high school um we our attendance to this was fairly strong i think by virtue of being in a google meet it provided an opportunity for many parents to attend and also our communication around several parents who couldn't but we were able to connect with them offline as part of this presentation we really walk through how students are identified for english learner support what that support looks like in the school um and who they who and how they can connect with people when they need help this year obviously we added in a layer about including ways to support our remote yale uh english learner students um who uh you know at least at the elementary level we have a fairly good percentage of our ell learners who are remote so ways that families can connect to support for the uh for our remote el students as part of the presentation so it was fairly well attended about um eight to ten parents uh at that moment which was actually a good portion of uh our el families and um probably another half a dozen who we connected with who couldn't attend the meeting but reached out and said we can't make the meeting can can you um help share some of the information so that is our update on our eel parently all right um all right um does anyone have any questions regarding this um kevin can what is the level of um of english fluency are we talking about completely um so first we do look at um english proficiency it's um both from an oral language standpoint and a literacy perspective so uh listening speaking reading and writing um and it is a native it's uh the assessment that we use is called the lost links and it's on a five point scale um if you were to receive a five on that it's you're essentially a native speaker we're looking for one level below below that a level four on that and there is a high level of proficiency that we expect for our english learners and we have a range of we have newcomers who have very little english at all who are not going to have a good amount of english proficiency when they begin with us um but through the support that we provide and in class instruction and time just immersion in in an english environment they do grow but the state does have a pretty high level of proficiency it is often but not always the case that the oral proficiency will develop ahead of the litter the literacy side of it so the whole proficiency will come before the reading and then the writing um and actually at our at our uh meeting today uh pat castle shared that you know the writing portion of this assessment is is pretty rigorous um to show to be able to demonstrate proficient proficiency in english uh language from a writing standpoint i hope that answers a question thanks it did um all right any other questions all right well seeing none um we have moved through in record time um i'll say wow yeah um all right well we needed this what's that we needed this i know i'm in was it wasn't our last minute wasn't our last meeting two and a half hours it was it was um but there was any curriculum right board of ed's been longer but we're gonna we're gonna try to beat this thursday night i can't make promises all right well with no other items on the agenda i will entertain a motion and to adjourn sure so moved second it's a second all right all in favor hi hi all right gang thank you um thank you dr guiad and leslie thank you and kevin for coming thanks
okay so like that's the mean score and one cool thing about this program and the graphs in here is it's pretty user friendly so if i wanted to know some very specific information here about this group i could double click this bar graph and then i can go in here and see i'm specific so i have this in top secret room so you can't see student names but these all these numbers over here are student names and this is showing me like all the red scores for those kids so i can see quite a bit of information just by taking a peek at that so is there any way for you just to miss to put what the what the test max score was i don't know what the text is where you can actually get just to just for me it's more of a curiosity so if what i would like to see on this is kind of more what we see when i get down here to some different tests so this is the star test here and this is uh tiering the kids like showing us the different colors are showing us like the different performance bands so on our data wall that we use in sit we can get this a report where we can see it by like percent power rank so i could see like so many kids are in like zero to basically we consider anything under 40th percentile kind of at risk the 25th to 75th is average you know above 75 is above average but you can see it but that's not an option right now on this graph so that would be i mean if it was me i would probably put it in a support ticket for because you can support it you mean you'd like to see it divided into color so you'd have your number one at rest students would give you the number of students yeah but that's not available that's what you're trying to get yeah all right but you can see us that like here's our fall uh score or four map and then if you come over here everybody's going up and then this is the district so like i have district access so we can see that um you know if we click on these here with kids so um again like these bars just mean not very many kids eight kids took that at that grade level um this year so but the the data line is improving um so the next test what does this one say fall winter star 2020 okay so that's our star test and so again this this one is more color-coded so this is showing us yeah below the benchmark and these are the kids that are above benchmarks so more green is better than not and then same thing the district um the middle school uses some star tests so we can see that again as well by performance here so this would be your highest achieving tier and then you know these down here you're at risk and again all these graphs are really interactive so you could click on it and see exactly what kids are in there where so that's pretty useful information and then the same thing that happens with our aims web testing as well this is basically by risk category anterior so tier one tier two tier three and then they have tier two's plus and tier three plus gene's high achieving and very high achieving in general terms so we can just see that um you know the same thing these are basically our average scores here we're seeing that go up which is very good um there this is a test like a subtest for all the grades there and then uh kindergarten and first grade kind of have some different tests so one of the things on this one that looks you know like there's a lot in the red um and usually every year that's what our about in the past we've shown triangle graphs that show when we give those small benchmarks we usually see lots of kids in the risk area and then by the time we get to the end of the year we have a very small amount so we see our interventions work so this is just um i just thought maybe a different way for you guys to see the data actually i was hoping that i could figure out how to make it because i know that's something you guys want to see is over time like maybe how one grade is performing but i haven't quite figured out how to get it to show like multiple years at a time so that would be something i'd have to also ask them to have support for how about like for one student can you show data for one student only yes so just randomly pick a number and put them can you put that kid in some a graph whatever graph to show but you can see one kid in his progression yeah and there'd probably be a better one i probably wouldn't use well i don't know i don't care but you're are you going to put a cts in here [Music] like we so we have probably more assessments than the other buildings but it we do have to use the technology because monitoring and the programs don't always talk nicely to each other so we have to ask for a lot of help but they have a program so it's supposed to upload automatically so like the winter maps we literally just completed last week and that one's already in there so it interfaces pretty nicely with nwea but the aims were test it's just a pain in the rear and it's like we constantly have trouble getting the data winter tests are in there we just completed those and they're not in there yet so it's kind of a work in progress but it's very handy because i mean i can just click up here on district or school and drop the grades i want the test i want um you know and it's and then i just basically pin those on onto does it apply to the high school not not as much because we only have the map test and they're only done for two years there what it applies to is we can see that you're going to get a trend line from his group and from her how that kid is doing if we can get to that point and we can see where that student is at and can you use it then in high school with the acts and pluck in you're hoping that community the three activities is yeah or even the eighth graders if they get if they're that good put their act in there yeah right i mean and then so our goal is to get it from you to you right to you well and if i i'm sorry because i just can't see well enough but like if i didn't want to get to cody long's data wall like i would see all of them so the nice thing is like so if we want to look at a kid i can bring that pudding along and i could see coach long's attendance and cody long's grades and i can see okay long's test scores so you see all the information we have about a kid on one screen i don't know what kitty lines up there because [Music] you can see a lot of information about kids on a quick glance so it's nice because the teachers don't have to go looking they don't have to walk in the map they don't have to walk in the starter like we want to talk about a kid we can just type in their name and like all their information is there it also talks to skyward too so if we have a kid that we're concerned about grade wise i think it's upper right hand corner will show their attendance rate yeah okay or whatever so there could be a correlation if we have somebody that's 70 percent and has these these and as well there's probably a correlation there and an act really right now we're just seeing classes this class did this then the next year this class did this give you the individual scores oh what's that they don't give the individuals we have those but they don't i don't know if we could ever download those yeah they're in there the i mean we're looking at this mainly for interventions that usually don't correct by the time act is their second semester of junior year first semester so i'm thinking the progression so if you see a kid who does this then their act scores tend to do this then the next kid that's trending you can intervene back here somewhere so one of the ones like i was trying to figure out what how to make those graphs look so like i could change those graphs like what i want to be showing me they won't be the percentile ranks right now but um so it like a lot of the tests get indicated on how they think kids are going to perform on the state assessment so i can format those bars to show you like yours right now it looks like varsity assessment scores might look like this spring it wasn't pretty i mean it had color coded as level ones or twos and then level threes or fours i mean our bars were really red like shiny that right now it looks like we're gonna have a lot of level ones and twos on our state assessments so that kind of tells you if you're looking at the graphs that way that kind of tells the teachers maybe there's a little work to be done i don't think there's any doubt that we're seeing some impact of kids using last year's instructions i think our scores are probably coming in lower than they did a year ago in the fall but you know when we give that winter test you know we kind of talked about it as a building that we want to give those in our tests we don't get necessarily but let's kind of see if our how our kids are catching up and growing and we saw some good growth in this uh semester of school so that's going to be my question if we compared last well i think this is like you said last time you showed it to i think this is a great tool if we can get it to work right for it's a great tool because you can see the graphs and but that requires a lot of education on the part of it takes everybody to use a very powerful program that again i still i mean trying to learn it it's just it has so much capability that you know you just have to get in there and mess with it and see what it can do but it's it's that one-stop data warehouse where everything can be put into place instead of pulling up four or five or six different programs so it's effective that way well i think that's a tool that today's world needs is something to predict other students you can't you know a senior and a junior you're not going to predict anything but if they're if you go back and look at their test scores and where they ended up with acts or if they went to college or didn't go to college then it's a trend to the next kid and then you know because i guarantee that kids my age we didn't think about anything beyond the day we were existing until we were seniors in college so if the student the teacher can have that conversation with the kid and say look this is kind of where you're trending i've had kids ask kids all the time what do you want to do they're like what do you mean what i mean you've got four years of high school what what is it i don't know i've never really thought about it yeah so i think this helps with that conversation and i mean you can sit down at your parent teachers conference and i truly believe the kids should be more involved in some of those now that's grade limited right having a second grader there is not gonna help but somewhere in that seventh or eighth freshman year saying look this is what you do test wise you seem to love math you don't do so good in english where do you think you're headed i think that i think it's a good tool and i think we it's good you're using it it'd be nice to be a little maybe user friendly it sounds like the learning curve is steep who is that access to this the administrators um i mean i'd say [Music] i can tell has questions that test the student test the test and test the question so if you have a teacher teach a student how to take a test sometimes you can figure out the questions that are testing the test and you understand how to answer those your points will jump for that so that's understanding test taking and that would be because there's type h questions there's type wy znf you know all those different types there are people who are educated enough that if they teach a kid how to take a test their scores will go up now the going down part is probably has something to do with not enough sleep but that's just as much as the other side yeah that's why i always say all right motion to accept the math results monitoring report as a reasonable interpretation of the board of education's results policy stacy a second discussion load on your computer driver education fees uh there's some information right here uh has shared with you his public content in regards to the driver's education fees again we've got a proposal there to leave those fees as is make a motion to approve the driver education fees for the summer of 2021 at 100 per resident student and 300 for non-resident admitted to the program second so question just about do we ever have kids that want to do this in district and can't afford it uh no i don't think we've had any yet all right and if we usually vote on your computer 6-0 motion carries concrete bid this is the yearly concrete bed that we put together for the district doug rohrer does quite a bit of the work here uh he also again likes it looks at the different aspects of all buildings district uh you know throughout to elementary middle high school board of education uh bus bar and so on and so forth so we did want to try to go a little bit lower this year with our concrete bid because again a couple reasons one we've gotten a pretty good hold on concrete in general in the district which is good again the bids have varied anywhere from since i've been here in that 125 to 200 000 range um again we wanted to try to like be a little bit like a smaller amount on concrete just be a little bit less on our projects so there's three different projects that we have did the bms north east building so in terms of thinking at the middle school right outside of the the locker room areas there's a small patch of grass there that just the grass when they mow it it shoots they try to keep it away from the building but it ends up inside the building it's where the kids uh for football practice at times they're out there um they're they're they're just it's uh those doors get open quite a bit the grass in especially during the spring and summer and even in early fall it just becomes an issue they want to concrete that area they're kind of giving those those kids a chance to i say to have a place where it's not just grass grass clippings all over it's blowing into the building and so on and so forth so that's the bms northeast building questions is that going to get rid of the curb no no the curb is going to still be there well you just make them park on the outside that's something that i didn't know and i didn't discuss so i don't know even if that's why we don't have people walking out of that and stepping off a curb it's just cut i would have to check with him and see it's very possible we could do it of course if so you're basically concreting all the way to the building correct because it's what six eight feet of grass and then something it's not a lot yeah probably a little more than that but i don't know exact dimensions on that but yeah it's just flat it makes more sense to me curve at all it's kind of a nuisance area so uh that's what we're trying to do is get rid of that area where it ends up blowing grass into our that's where they four square right yes all the four squares it's on the parking lot side where they do the four square i was feeling kind of bad because those pictures are you just going to put the concrete from the drainage to the it's going to fill in that whole area so that there's no grass don't have to worry about mowing it and also we don't have to worry about it tracking into buildings so it's going to help our custodial staff and help our maintenance staff could help even potentially more drainage from the building even though we have those concrete sloughs there that come down off of the drainage the gutters it'll help it even more and the young ideal scenario is to keep as much moisture away from your building as possible so anyway that was an area the other second second project too is the north end of the bhs parking lot i think i shared some pictures with you guys about that and that's the next i guess the next big chunk of concrete at the football stadium track and field area you'll see some pictures of some pretty fractured concrete there it's just a safety piece and and so forth like i said in our own wood these are the two main areas that we really need to look at doing this year project number three is uh one that we at least want to get a proposal on we're not going to look to do that this year that's the area in the visitors bleachers of the football field again it's more of a grass and weed type area that they've got to constantly mow underneath bleachers and and so that area is just that we spend a lot of time upkeep in that area for our visitors because we kind of want to i don't want to have a nice area for when they come to tractor football games or whatever but that 58 is a little steep for us this year we were trying to keep concrete in that hundred thousand dollar range because of some other projects that we were doing uh one specifically again the baseball softball restroom and concession stands so we we feel like this project three could be won at a later date so that would be my recommendation to do project one and project two um in the amount of a hundred thousand two hundred fifty seven dollars and fifty cents so when you're looking south at this picture the stuff to the east is what we just did for all the flooding and stuff right and then to the west is where all the new stuff is going to occur are you talking about the middle school pictures no the picture of the large parking lot because we just we did the west side right yes it's going to it's going to be the east side yes it's going to continue on that next section west it's going to continue to move to the west yes it'll tie in with it with the section that we just did the new section okay good question because it looks like part of this picture is the new stuff but i think that you're just trying to give us a to show that that's where it's tying in tying in right there yes yes good questions okay most improve the concrete bid in an amount of 1257.50 from birth construction for projects number one and two only seconds although in the discussion all in favor vote on your computer six oh no motion curve negative session i don't have any things anybody have people another session move on to retirement second all those in favor both on your computer [Music] um debriefing i think it was a very good discussion of discussions tonight so appreciate that and i do appreciate the work that everybody's put in on all this testing yeah yeah i do appreciate our administrators and the tough decisions that they've been making lately um you know i do appreciate parents bringing concerns in a respectful way i think we do uh need to make sure that we get my computer set up i think he has a valve input so we need to make sure that he's brought up his feet so nothing else before the board good job great
according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my abilities so help me god so help me god all right congratulations and i'll i'll give you your certificate as well and we'll we'll do another photo in just a minute is that okay thank you all right all right tiffany congratulations all right if you'll raise your right hand and repeat after me oh you you ready yeah okay hi steve watson hi tiffany schultz do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and laws of the state of arizona and the constitution and laws of the state of arizona that i will bear true faith that i will bear truth 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 born and domestic and that it will faithfully end impartially and i will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties start discharge 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.
so their 14 correlates with this 200 same same number so this is the data that the the cdc has put out there and i'm just making aware of this because there's a little more to what they they do as well is that these uh primary there are three primary indicators core indicators the incidence rates the percentage of positive tests so positivity rates you hear a lot about positive rates i think governor pritzker has shifted that number around a little bit they're now in illinois they're kind of using it i think i think it's 12 percent is a uh it's kind of a number that they're sticking with the but the ability to uh for the school to implement five key mitigation strategies you built for consistent correct use of mass for social distancing at the largest extent possible hand hygiene cleaning disinfecting and contact tracing those are five mitigation strategies that they have put on their website the reason i bring all this to you is that um i'm gonna bounce back and forth here apologize matt i might need some help here sorry i'm gonna bounce back and forth but um because the the cdc gives us this guidance uh i just need to get back to our uh to that okay they give us this guidance yet the um i'm going to read a direct quote from the cdc director so the guidance is that that's high above 200 is highest risk of transmission schools yet you know just a couple weeks ago the cdc director says the truth is for kids k-12 one of the safest places they can be in perspective is to remain in school today's extensive data that we've gathered over the past two to three months to confirm the k-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning and they can do this safely and do it responsibly here's the challenge so let me start by just telling you this i i'm not a healthcare professional and you know so throughout this time i along with my colleagues have had to lean really hard on the recommendations of health professionals and from the county the state national levels and back in august we had we didn't have data and and so we had to really press the health department on we need to know is this safe or not for kids and for staff we need to know and they and they in our health department in lake county has been very good to work with us but we need to know what the severity was in our community all the way down to our zip codes and we were promise metrics on the way which which is why we chose to pause the return in august because we were promised metrics were coming and they did and once we were given those metrics it pointed to us having being able to return in a hybrid model so that's why we came back in october using those metrics to support that decision and then what you know as soon as we got into school the metrics went crazy on us and so uh and so now we for two months we've been kind of pinned in this corner we've got these local metrics that are very high levels and we've got state and national health leaders that are saying kids should be in school and and so we're stuck um we're stuck talking you know i've had some very like every every wednesday morning eight o'clock all the superintendents lake county we meet with the health department director and he and uh we spend at least an hour and just going through all this and what can we do what do we need to do next and what and we're all frustrated because the guidance we've been given is that we shouldn't be in school but the the national figures are saying kids should be in school and it's the same documents they're giving us so how do we interpret that last document on the screen and there's so you know so quite honestly we feel like we've been we've been given guidance and then thrown under a bus that's kind of what we feel like has been going on we just don't we don't have when the when the comments are made publicly the kids should be in school yet the documents they give us show that there's a high risk of transmission we interpret that is we shouldn't be in school um but obviously so the conversations now with the health department are what how should we interpret this do we interpret it that it's a high risk of transmission but we could be in school or what is it because because what everybody's saying at the national level is that we should be and again i'm not laying blame on our health department because they've been very supportive and really worked hard with this but we're having to figure out how to decipher what this guidance means if they're giving us one thing on paper stating another and so what it's come down to what's come down to is really the health department has acknowledged even just last week a shift um and the shift is i i tried to explain it the best i could in this first bullet given more guidance on the impact of mitigation strategies the impact of of hand hygiene wearing mass social distancing giving the impact of that they're recommending that we move to what's called a risk stratified model and what they mean by that is that if we have solid mitigation strategies in place even with high incidence rates you reduce that risk so what they're seeing is that our schools across the state of illinois across the country even in other parts of the world who have come back to school after after a government shutdown and with good mitigation strategies the schools have functioned well and have not been seen as super spreaders so the health department is shifting but even as of this morning having a conversation midday i had a meeting with them we're trying to work with them on how to change their their language on their website because it's this is a shift and it it's a it's a it's a i've been focusing i point blanks tell them is that i've been steering my community to these numbers and now we can't just ignore the numbers but what they're what they're telling me is that uh and i want to come back to school i said i do feel like we could do this um but i need i need to have some reassurance that um that that i'm not gonna get thrown under the bus by the health department saying we shouldn't be in school if they truly don't feel that way and um so the the talking point is that the shift away from the numbers the metrics are the metrics and they're not going to change that 14 number that the health department gives you and gives me that 200 number you saw from the cdc on the board that is the number that's for for pandemic when it when there's uh greater than that number is a sign of of possible significant transmission in the community that doesn't change but what it does but what again what they're saying is now with these mitigation strategies in place with the blended hybrid model because we have fewer kids on campus that are wearing master with that in place we reduce that risk in our schools so i've got i've got a link to our dashboards on my presentation due to time i won't go to those right now i'll just tell you that you know our school dashboards right now you can see it's online both these are online they're our numbers are high still the county the our zip code numbers we're i think the 14 is the bar we're probably in the low 40s right now um so we're it went way high and then it's kind of gone down and it's leveled off so we're that right mid-range right now um it's a lot higher than it was early in the school year when we were out of school uh it's higher than it was um the reality is it's probably not going to go down anytime soon and uh and so that's what um that's that's the piece that's difficult the covid the other dashboard we have is that we keep track of uh staff and students that are quarantined or have covered uh and so you can see that online as well right now i want to go through mitigation strategies that we have in place and these are things you've you've seen but consider i'm just going to read them real quick consistent use of masks social distancing to largest extent possible hand hygiene cleaning dispensing contact tracing testing for staff we do have tests now we we've tested a couple staff already our nurses can do the testing it's 15 minutes results we've improved ventilation we have signage limitation of visitors screening of staff and students each day loosening our sick leave policies for staff and we have we have physical barriers in place um i'm i'm kind of speeding through this but i'm going to get to some more things at the end here so update on vaccine because that's a big question when's the vaccine coming for educators as of right now i've got a link on this on this sorry i keep forgetting to click this sorry i've got a link on my presentation which i'll share with all of you uh the vaccine allocation chart is a uh kind of that will tell you uh how the vaccines can be distributed in lake county phase 1a is our first responders our health care providers and our probably our highest risk person people in the nursing care facilities phase 1b is where educators will step in i think uh best case scenario from what i'm hearing right now is that possibly by the end of january phase our educators will have a shot at getting vaccinated it's a six week process because you get one shot four weeks later you get another shot two weeks after that everything's kicked in your system so it's really a six week process for it to get done but that you know that's that's kind of the best case scenario right now for vaccinations once the vaccination if that all process goes well then that's a whole other conversation for what we do at school at that point once our teachers and staff have an opportunity vaccinated roadblocks if we do return to school roadblocks staffing issues are going to be a roadblock i heard a lot from the presentation that our administrators just did we heard a lot of parents frustrated about last minute decisions or two weeks here or two weeks there and i totally get it i i completely do i know this is causing a strain on homes and there are people that would just like to say let's just either get back and stay in or let's just stay out and plan for the rest of the year what do they want to do but the i want to i want you to know if we do come back it's still not going to go away because we're going to have issues we're going to have we're going to have staffing issues where we can't staff if we have to quarantine there's going to be issues and and if we have to shut a grade level down or a building down or whatever it's it's going to happen it's going to be last minute but if we come back that's that's going to be something we are going to have to deal with this year during this pandemic so that was that gets in my second bolt there possible back and forth from virtual in person so there's going to be there's if we are back in person there's going to be a chance that happens uh the third bullet i cannot emphasize this one enough and i don't know how else i can say it but it is imperative that students and staff do not come on campus if they have any symptoms or if someone in their home has symptoms the issues that we have had to this point are because of that even as of today so we had we have you know someone that was in our building knowingly having symptoms and then now has tested positive we gave him the test found that was positive and now we are quarantined people because of that so that is that is going to hurt us more than anything and that's that's for our staff and our students as well so if we do come back on campus this will be that third bullet is going to be what shuts us down and i just i can't emphasize it enough and i'll i'll keep saying it to our parents too and our staff but um everybody self has to self-certify and if they don't feel well they don't come just they shouldn't be coming here because it's going to cause it causes a massive ripple effect through our system and when i and when i start having to quarantine people we just don't have people to serve so so that's that's going to be a roadblock that we we can't emphasize enough so a few key additional points all families if we do come back all families will continue to have choice between full remote learning and blended blended hybrid schedules have been modified to to issues that were raised during our first attempt as dr hedfitz mentioned we've made some adjustments both at primary elementary and middle school we are increasing the bus capacity to two students per seat there's just in talking to superintendents across the state of illinois and just reading what's going on in other parts of the country busting has not been a source of of concern or problems as long as we do it right so kids wear masks we'll probably keep the buses won't be real warm because we'll probably keep some air moving in that bus which means some windows gonna be open but it's a sacrifice we'll have to make uh right now so we are increasing the busing that will help us with traffic on campus if we're gonna do a blended hybrid model any communication changes any communication of changes that we make after as of our discussions tonight will be shared the next couple days um i included on this and again i'll send this to everybody including our parents and staff when i'm done but i include a couple of links to articles that are related to this but the way i feel is that we have three options as we go forward sorry i keep changing my ipad but not apologize uh next steps we have three options that i feel that are feasible for us to move forward uh option one given that we're not in a state home order by the governor we return with our phase two on july january 11th um phase two meaning we we bring back one more grade level in each building we've already had kindergarten second grade and fifth grade so phase two would be we add first grade third grade and sixth grade as well and then the following week on the 19th monday the 18th the holiday then we would bring back the remaining grades option two would be we just wait until the 19th bring back everybody in the full blended hybrid model so don't phase it in just bring back everybody at the same time the benefit of option two is that we get past the new year's we kind of get the two weeks kind of get a natural two-week quarantine for everybody i'm a little concerned about coming back too early after the holiday because i don't want to pay the price for that by having illness right away so option two would be we just wait till the 19th to wait till after that's the martin luther king holiday weekend and we come back on tuesday the 19th with a with a full blended hybrid and option three is still there that we remain in full remote learning uh until local metrics get below thresholds currently set by the health department again the health department is going to be changing that website not and again the emphasis is not the the metrics are because i i want to make sure i'm very clear about this because i don't want because some schools have not been clear about this and the health department is getting a lot of negative feedback the metrics are not going away 14 that that bar they set is still is still a bar that they set that they set as a signal of of higher transmission in the community possible transmission community however the change in their viewpoint is that's the science the science has now been tested in schools and they're finding that schools can function in higher incident rates if there's good mitigation strategies that's the that's the change here it's not that they're ignoring the numbers the challenge that we have is our numbers are high and they really are and it's weird because just down the road in other communities they're not as high but up here up here right now the numbers are pretty high you know we're like i said we're over 40 in our incidence rates right now where 14 is the bar so most of the fall we were between probably seven and 12.
and January 25th which will be a regular business meeting at 6:30 p.m. we'll update the public on the location whether it'll be virtual or in the um south or wherever it will be uh when we know closer to the date uh so we now I think the only thing we have left is a motion to adjourn oh so moved second Terry and Mike all those in favor I I anybody opposed we are adjourned thank you very much and thank you for to the people in the audience for uh sticking with us yes was it
if there are no questions that's all i have thank you thank you and director of secondary education mr gene furman well as we kind of close out this crazy area i was kind of reflecting on what group i i was saying how impressive they've been so i'm kind of go with our extracurricular our our coaches our co-curriculars all our band directors choir directors orchestra theater our coaches that have been out there because if you think about it all the extra time they put in to make sure that our kids had that ability to perform and compete and they've done it and it's been pretty amazing to sit in my living room and watch a middle school wrestling match one day and then watch the high school play the next day so they not only you know abided to all the rules and regulations and reduced attendance but figure a way to get it out to everybody so you could still see our kids shine out there so just a a great job too many to name because they're everywhere they're from k to 12 doing all these extra things for the kids but just so thankful that they were able to do that and our kids were had those opportunities and just uh closing out 2020 it's been quite a year gentlemen i have been around other corporations been here for a long time this is the most i've worked with the board over a school year i appreciate your approach and and your support throughout it and look forward to the challenges 2021 brings so happy holidays to all you and your families as well merry christmas thank you we also need to give a shout out to brian gill who's made it so you can sit in your living room he and his team and watch those events take place excellent well director for exceptional education ms pasquez good evening mr warney and members of the board i come to you tonight with some really exciting news for not only my department but the district as a whole for the 20 21 22 school year crown point schools will be able to offer preschool to our school community at large so right now we just offer that early childhood program for students who go through our preschool diagnostics and qualify for speech or developmental delay this will be for three four and five-year-olds and we're looking at having eight programs two at macarthur two at winfield and four within the learning center this will be an inclusive preschool program which means our students with ieps will be able to be embedded in two classrooms with their non-disabled peers which is huge and was one of the recommendations of our special ed audit so you are approving a preschool coordinator position tonight which is going to help me oversee that preschool program and coordinate the hiring of those teachers and paraprofessionals and placing students and programs so we're hoping to share some more information with the community in january and then start our pre-registration process in february before you sit down could you talk we had a question last time regarding preschools can you talk a little bit about the future vision for that and what that could look like sure sure so with our renovations at elementary schools and the additions our end goal is to have one preschool classroom housed at each of our elementary buildings so our students will always hopefully have been in their home school from the time they started as a preschooler through fifth grade they'll have remained in their home school so i think that's important and offering it throughout the community any questions that's exciting stuff nope and especially the combination with our special learners so yeah it's great to know that that's part of what the audit asked for good stuff yeah meeting that demand thank you good thank you mrs your resource officer mr aquila yes thank you mr president board members um sticking to the theme of uh online interacting with each other not just with instruction and how we're delivering our educational services behind the scenes it's forcing us to sort of re examine and re-evaluate how we're handling some of our operational uh protocols we are you know currently looking into streamlining and improving our registration process you know we're used to seeing people come in and fill out all kinds of forms and trying to figure out how we might be able to become more efficient you know given the landscape we're dealing with it's also about something we're working on here in the next couple of months is also improving the tracking and management of our foster families and those that are considered to be homeless or mckinney-vento families again it's it's really have just the landscapes forcing us to examine how we manage uh our data within our school corporation and also to echo mr g inferma here just i want to just say thank you for you and our team uh for everything we've had to keep our knees bent about and be able to react i think we've done a really good job working together it's been a joy and i wish you a a wonderful holiday season and if you're like the akiwas andy and i are trying to figure out how we're going to lose the 20 20 20 you know anyway thank you mr aqui i saw in the new i saw on a newsletter i may have missed some in the past that have gone through but a little bit of a a plug or solicitation or information may be a better way to say it about becoming a substitute and trying to you know almost essentially recruit some substitutes that may not know what they need to do so i just want to mention i hope that that helps us out and i hope that we can you know um gain some subs through the community by just you know i'm not is that something have we have i just missed it we've been no you you're hitting the nail right on the head i mean frankly the labor supply for substitutes uh it's been a unique um phenomena you know we we probably have had more applicants for substitutes in the last 12 months than we've ever had in a 12-month period the challenge is are they able to actually go sub you know many of our subs are home with their children um and so they're not able to get out and get into the buildings as much and there's also you know some concern as well you know in this landscape so i do believe we've got a healthy supply out there and it's our hope and wish that you know as things improve uh in our community and the nation you know that we get some more folks out there but you know now that you're just saying subs uh i'd be remiss if i just didn't say the subs that we do have and those that are coming and helping our buildings and have helped are just phenomenal people yeah so yeah you you notice that correctly well thank you sure about chief financial officer mr i want to add to mrs preschool presentation that we did build this into the 2021 budget as well so it is financially planned and built into the existing budget that will begin in january to echo your sentiments about um our partners working through this skillman baker tilley ice miller gibraltar design steve klink and cheryl zick without them and especially with stillman and gibraltar on the three years ago when we started this study none of what we've been talking to you about would have been possible so without them just it wouldn't happen so i think that makes you all the just to give you an update we get an annual update on our circuit breakers study which we're working on right now with policy analytics um fortunate here at prom point we consider to see in our corporation boundary growth and our assessed value and so we do this as a preventative just to make sure um nothing unexpected we plan as well as we can so that we don't have any surprises going into the 20 21 week of 2022 budget year as well as working on a demographic study as we talked about an update it normally comes after the census um dr mckinnon has some concerns about the census data and reliability so they actually have a whole new set of factors and data sets and they said he said indiana tracking mechanism in the country so very hopeful we'll get started on that next fall to prepare for an updated demographic study i know for for me personally the 2021 legislative session although i'm happy 2020 is coming to an end for a lot of reasons 2021 brings a budget budget session for the state of indiana which is always of interest to all of us for a lot of reasons for us in particular because it's a budget year for them and so we'll be anxiously monitoring that um going forward and then to echo the sentiments just merry christmas happy holidays happy new year i'm improvements that we've been discussing thank you mr question for mr dr terrell superintendent of schools mr hardiman mentioned the strategic plan that he and the directors of education are going to begin working on and i just i need to tell you guys i'm just really proud of the work that is being put in from our cabinet level to begin this process as we move through looking at the audit that took place last year but allowing that to then springboard us into not just looking at the exceptional ed learners and what needs to happen for them but really allowing this to be that continuum that's going to drive all of our educational experiences for our kids and one of the things that we all talked about very early on was common language and our approach as we continue to develop our continuum of education and so while this is going to be that driving part the spark if you will that started with the audit now is going to go into pre-k 12 all the way through looking at how we do things coming up with a common plan not something we just put on the shelf or have boards sitting in a conference room but things that are actually living documents where we can continue to change and make those adjustments in flight to meet the needs of our kids but even beyond that now is as we're going to use that as kind of the springboard to then across our corporation bringing in finance bringing in our human resources and every other area of our district to really allow this then to help us develop our strategic plan which will include all of you then in the as we move forward with that looking at our board goals looking at our mission our vision just so that we're all aligned with where we need to go we've got some incredible exciting things on the front that are coming for our buildings and meeting the needs there but also as exciting as as we look at the educational experiences and the things that we can provide for our students i think when you partner those things together it's really putting us in a position where we're going to be able to take that next step forward and put crown point even higher up on the list if you will when it comes to school corporations in our state and i've got to tell you that i'm so thankful for the way that our students our parents have responded to the issues we've been going through as you've heard surveying them again about second semester again it's really tough to know not know what's going to happen out there and see some promising things but at the same time just not real sure the way that our students and parents continue to step up and meet those challenges and support us i know being out in the district in our community and hearing from people and talking with them was at a restaurant last week after a middle school wrestling tournament or meet between taft and wheeler and was stopped and four or five different parents just talking about how much they appreciate the board's willingness to support what's best for our kids and best for our community so thank you for that our teachers and staff again as it's been mentioned they just go above and beyond meeting the needs there and i think finally i just want to leave it with thank all of you for your support leading by example with coming up with looking at what might not necessarily be the most popular at time to support but yet doing it because you know that's what is in the best interest of our kids of our staff members and for our community as a whole and looking at that bigger picture rather than singling it out into just one area so thank you to all of you for your continued support and look forward to what's coming in thank you thank you thank you have a 7.01 is other board business does anybody have anything this evening to discuss um has there has there been any talk on the superintendent calls or just any word from the governor at this point as to how vaccinations will be rolled out and where teachers will will fit into that picture i know we're very early yeah in those phases but i was just wondering if you have any health department perspective on that so pretty much just like you um you know we're hearing that they're gonna make teachers and educators at the forefront of the line for vaccinations there has not been any information released with any further detail other than that we hope that as things start to progress and get ramped up they will be able to bring more information back to you um as to what that's going to look like okay yeah not right now anybody else have anything i have i have a couple that i'll start with this one uh you know we don't get the opportunity to to kind of iron these things out but if you guys notice we had a discussion a couple meetings ago of how the board emails should be represented on the crown point website i either misunderstood maybe or miscommunicated what i was picturing so right now we have it listed as individuals with a with an cp email address underneath them but on that main page there's not a cp board link that i can find i think would be more beneficial i'm not trying to waver back and forth each time but i think it would be more beneficial to have a cp board link because we all need to you know if someone in the community wants to seek me or brian or scott or anybody out individually to discuss something that that's up to them they could find our personal contact information that's not a problem but i feel like when someone's going to the cp website to email the cp board it would be simpler for them to just hit cp board um does anybody and we could we could shelf this and discuss another time but if anyone has any thoughts of agreement i'd like to just iron it out yeah i think there's a couple so what what i see right now is our each of our individual emails are there what is your suggestion then if there's a one central email so this way they hit one link to email all of us and it'll go to each of those cp emails it would be an automatic forward automatic proposal but they can do that yeah i would just think it'd be easier for that community patron to be able to do it that way and then obviously if they know us individually or have a connection someone with us personally they can send it yeah no i mean that makes sense because once we don't act yeah we don't act alone we don't act as one we're just fine no i can follow up with dr terrell though as long as i just wanted to make sure we all agreed on what we visualized there if we could yeah we could add that into the hopefully very future revision of the entire website that would be awesome we're working on it all right okay there's a lot of things we're working on lots of tabs and clicks that's a big one mr hoffman you agree with those thoughts okay thank you yeah so let me ask for clarification and as a possibility so as we i've got the board of school trustees page pulled up and so at least it lists david warning president with your email address underneath it now and then it goes through with each one of you at the bottom of that list we could then put cp board as a group where they could click if and make a group one as well but still have the individual access to you as well do you want both or do you just want one that comes to all of you and i'm fine with either one just giving you options that are possibilities i say you leave the individual ones and just add a group add a group one that would be i wouldn't have a problem with that sorry he couldn't hear you scott yeah i'm sorry tom i said i'm fine with right now our individual email addresses are are listed on there our school corporation email addresses um i'm i think it makes complete sense to have a board one board email address that goes to all five people and then people have the option if they want to reach out to you individually they can use that email but i've found that so far people have not had a problem getting a hold of me if they if they really want to social media and the like so i would suggest whatever we can do to put them all on dave that would be great i don't have to be bothered so whatever system we can do perhaps a flow chart where it all just funnels into it i think because the board president speaks for the board all the emails should come into the board there should not be people contacting individual board members on the board website or email so let's go to the board board issue is not an individual issue that is my recommendation and i would concur with that so have a board email that then forwards to each one of our personal can you hear brian tom what can i do he said that he concurs with your your thought okay thank you yeah i suppose i'm not hung up on the format the the item that has to happen is that we all have to see the email i don't care what what format that takes if somebody wants to email me individually fine if i get a forward from a group box i'm fine with that also but how about i propose a recommendation my to take what we've just discussed i would recommend that we remove the individual names have a cp board that goes to all of us equally all the time as tom said the whoever may be holding board president position would then be responsible for replying to those but you know we all you know have the opportunity to interject when necessary so my recommendation would be to clean up the website and have just a cp board address listed there would it allow just for that just based on that which i'm i'm for that but would allow then for a response to come let's say scott maybe knows the person to where our email address can send it to the individual's email address in a response if there's something more than what's needed i mean once again the board's going to reply so you're going to reply as our spokesperson but i just didn't know so if there's some correspondence that for some reason maybe scott knows him in the pub so i'm getting the thumbs up from the man behind the camera who's the one who sets all this up so that that definitely would and i just think it would clean up that aspect once again we act as five we don't act as one right sure yeah it's a tough it's good thing we have the discussion and it's worth having because we are even though we act as a board we are elected individually correct we're not elected as a group um so there's a balance and i'm just i'm not sure what that is but like i said um as long as i get to see it and it's coming to me i feel i don't necessarily feel like it's dave does speak for the board and represents the board as president but it's also workload that's being placed on him that if there's a i think a couple meetings ago what we what we did do in a positive move agreed about by everybody was we made sure that those emails were being seen by everyone that was and that was the big step in the right direction so and i think you're very good with that making sure that everybody's heard before the response is given if a response is justified in that case i think this this discussion is just nothing more than that it's stemming off of the fact that we for you know however long saying that we all need to be better at communicating and as a board we continue to be better as in communicating we're trying to iron out you know simplify the process a little bit so and if we need to hash out the final details this we can do that maybe when we reorganize in the second week of january sure so that everybody you know with brian suggesting that all the emails going maybe we vote him elected president and then they will go to him [Laughter] oh yes you do okay well then we'll get that all cleaned up in the in the near future then um the other thing is that i had i could probably put this into the statements appreciation but i just want to recognize miss maloney and the continued effort to provide food for our students and then the breakfast if you guys uh make sure you saw dr terrell's email that there's going to be a breakfast um thursday morning the 17th december 17th uh miss bologna the um of her helpers are going to be providing breakfast for the staffs at the at the schools and we can choose where we'd like to go then yeah so what i'll do is i will get the times from the principals okay and that they're gonna take place and then we can just create like a group email response so that way we don't have all of these show up at one building but i think it'd be great if you guys could spread it out my guess is secondary is probably going to be a little bit earlier than than elementary just simply because of start times but if you guys can stop in just to say thanks that's the whole intention i had a conversation with a couple of you about what can we do uh for our our staff and our our teachers and so we just thought this was a great way to just um and also we want to showcase our food services they've they've struggled with this too you know our beginning of the year new teacher dinner they usually i mean they go all out and it looks unbelievable and it did this year too but they still feel a little hampered by what's been going on and just give them an opportunity to really show off as well um so we thank you guys for supporting that and if you can get out there that'd be fabulous well i live out in the winfield area so i can have breakfast twice at jimmy ross there you [Laughter] record i'd love to go but it's a little bit far for me to drive the last two things quick because uh michael adamson from the isba missed my initial when i reached out to him initially dr terrell was copied on the email he got back to me by last week to say that he had certainly missed it so we're looking he gave me a handful of dates in january to get together with him through a zoom to just review evaluation the purpose and process and whatever we we have in place and then as you guys should have seen make sure that you remember the january 13th reorganization meeting what 7 30 a.m and mrs green sent us that reminder last week so just wanted to hit a couple of those items and um it's not time for me and uh do any other um for other business anything else okay then we can move to um for statements appreciation and recognition we'll start with mr smith yeah thank you dave um you know i feel like this year was like four years putting the one i'm sure so many you feel that way and just really i'm grateful to work aside and you know right alongside with all of you and so we have a great administration great building leaders great teachers i really think you could see that our community really rose up this year in a big way wasn't perfect but they really pulled together and it's what makes crown point special and so i just want to say you know merry christmas to all you guys happy new year i really appreciate it from about my heart everything you've done and so there's an old saying that if you're not moving forward you're moving backwards and i think we really put that to a test this year so todd i appreciate you coming in and and not missing a beat and just moving i mean moving on things to to improve this corporation and so you know with a heavy heart i i really am thinking about all those that have lost loved ones that have students in our school system that have been impacted teachers that have been impacted by the virus i know we had a uh just a tragic story we didn't lose him but he was fighting for his life one of our students just a few weeks ago we pulled through but there's gonna be long-term effects so you know i'm thinking about all those things going into this season and this holiday and it just really weighs on you so i just want to let everybody know that he's lost a loved one or who's whose child is you know struggling or they're struggling with their health that you're in our thoughts and prayers and we haven't forgot about you and we won't forget about you and so i just want everybody to hear that and understand that i know it's going to be difficult things may look different for families but like everybody else here said i'm glad 2020 is over very much i'm looking at 2021 so we got great things on the horizon and i'm excited for that thank you yeah i mean i i obviously um what what a crazy year um i you know i look back everybody had a chance to reflect on you know what their thoughts were on the year and and for me what stood out was i've been a part of a lot of teams i've been a part of a lot of teams a lot of different companies teams within teams and what's been really awesome to watch is how this team like rose up to the the challenges that you had to face and we've made improvements you know when you when you think of the third week of march and how this all went down to where we are today um with the improvements we've made and curriculum and um just adapting to the situation it's it's been nothing short of of amazing so i'm very proud to be a part of this this team and grateful to be a part of it for um another four years here so i'm very much looking forward to that and then you know on top of on top of that what mark was saying about the extracurriculars i think the extracurriculars are the the only thing keeping me and my family sane at this point one boy wrestling others playing you know flag football just still being able to get out there and do those things where there's a little bit of normalcy and think about how we've got um you know how our teams are performing now we've got a number one ranked state girls basketball team we've got a wrestling team that's going to possibly win a state championship as well and they're having to do this you know with all the with all the additional adversity and challenges that come with having practices and managing contact tracing and all that stuff so um cheers to to all the coaches that are putting in that extra work to to make all this happen so thank you thanks guys thank you scott miss rachel so let me start um brian mentioned seriousness of covid but i like to give out public service announcements psas so mine would be if you ever got to go into a store and you're in a rush uh wear a white mask but the night before have a nice meal like at one of our local restaurants dip the mask in like veal lamone and then walk into a store with a huge stain on a white mask because i will tell you people run the other direction so that was all by accident but was the only mask i had in the car tried to wear it the next morning and i'm telling you i don't think more people moved out of my way a wise way in my entire life i smelled that i don't know what it was what was the dish again yeah viola which is one of my favorites at the local lacretures here i'll give them a plug sometimes you know everything is serious regarding it but sometimes having a little humor on the part of safety protocols because i did have the mask on and once again kind of felt when i looked at it oh my gosh i gotta walk in the store like this it was all good but uh my thank you recognition is to the community first of all that community taxpayers parents supported three of us for reelection with everything going on between coveted letting go of a superintendent hiring a new superintendent and they've remained behind us and that's even for those that sometimes behind the scenes don't agree with everything we're saying and we still want to hear those opinions because everybody's as valuable so i want to make sure that they're they're aware that us as a board sees them hears them not all the time can we respond based on the situation and not all the time are you going to agree with us and are we going to agree with you but we do thank you for that support as we look forward to doing this project and i think it's nice to know when people are silent they usually like what's going on so we're hoping that this moves forward like i mentioned before for the best interest of those kids our staff our administrative leaders and everyone involved in it including themselves the taxpayers who will see no additional costs so with that happy holidays merry christmas god bless you all as we move forward through this let's get to 2021 and wish for the best thank you scott mr hoffman a couple of things uh first i would like to report to all of you not related to this school business but my 92 year old father-in-law successfully underwent a valve replacement surgery has a second to go but he's doing fine if you're a reader i would recommend to anyone to read the book by dan crenshaw who's an ex-navy seal and now a congressman from texas the book is called fortitude and it addresses all the uh problems created by social media and some of those things and i uh it's a highly recommended read so i'm interested i i'll be happy to write each of you a copy of the book and i think it's it's well worthwhile i will send one to todd and i think it's there's a lot of valuable information as well so i look forward to it tom i also i also commend our administration as brian did others that undergoing 2020 and i am one of those who will be happy to see it go by the wayside thank you mr hoffman and for myself i just want to uh just say merry christmas and happy new year to everybody and uh thank you again for letting me uh almost be a part of your team it's it's an honor to be a part of the crown point community school system so um that's it for me and uh do we have any other board comments before i look for a motion to adjourn that's [Music] motion by tom hoffman and second by mr angel last call of the night dave warner eye hi angel scott jack aye brian smith and tom hoffman thank you good night everybody tom if you can hang on katie's got a question for you
the mini payroll that i spoke of was dated the following monday 11 23 20 that total payroll was and 21 272.21 and along with that uh payroll came just some fica taxes for payroll taxes or fica for payroll taxes for total accounts payable on the mini payroll of 11 three twenty forty one sixty six did anyone have any questions about the payrolls no no okay we'll go ahead and we'll move on to um prepays we've got prepays dated november 1st through november 30th total prepays dated november 30th 323 828 98. nothing unusual just the usual suspects with the the biggest expense being health insurance to the trust yes what's the what's the wayne wayne township yep um actually the reason why this probably threw you off a little bit this month i normally label those garnishments and i just did employee deductions on all of the memos on those it's a little bit easier for us when we're doing a little while we're doing history searches but anything that you see a putnam county clerk wayne township small claims clerk of hendricks county and in some cases indiana department of workforce those are all garnishments employee garnishments when those are sent to to the schools we need to honor those and and do those proper garnishments until their debts paid in full but that particular one would be for a garnishment for an employee okay you're welcome and next in your packet you're going to see a list of claims dated today december 14 2020.
according to the best of my abilities so help me god so help me god all right congratulations thank you and actually tiffany if you'll stay up here and we'll just have all three governing board members come up and if you want to bring your certificates that's great and anyone who wants to take a photo now's the time and then you and i will jump in in just a minute yeah actually the best way to do it is if you open it and fold the top back over and just hold it yeah with two hands on the sides laughs all right let's let's hop in there and you guys can stay in the middle and we'll we'll go on the two sides here and after having a very tight jacket yesterday i hadn't worn it in a few months i i want more war one today with a little bit more space in it all right congratulations that is the the end of our swearing-in ceremony and we'd just like to invite any anybody with families who want to come and get a picture with their newly minted elected official um that'd be and i'm not talking about myself to come up and do that you
so something definitely happened in in october that kicked us up but it happened all over the state of illinois so so those are our three options and i i go round and round on this i mean i i want nothing more to have all kids back to school nothing more than that right now because uh the one week we were here you really got to see some you could see smiles through the masks and and so you know you just knew i knew we were doing good things for kids that week and they had to pull them back out was really hard as a board i just want your input you know and i i want to i know this has been a long presentation we just put together for you but we want to give you the impact this has had on our community we want to really lay out the facts to you i know as board members you've heard in our community you can i mean feel free to share what your what's on your mind and i'll answer any questions i personally like the option two um i think it gives families that 14 day break and grace period after the holidays and on day one all of our kids are here so nobody's gonna feel left out everyone's gonna get the fun of going to school if they choose to i also like that you put in here that remote learning's not going to change that was a struggle during the first go-round right so that would be my selection as long as you know for the families that want remote learning as long as they're taken care of and they want to be at home for remote but then for the families that want to be in school i think option two is great the one thing i should because this is going to be a question that comes up and i i know that you know i've got i know i've got a staff of 200 that are very nervous if we if we do this and i know that probably half of them right now are are uh really upset if if if we do if we do make it come back and half of them are really happy but um question's going to be is well what's going to take to if the if the numbers are this high and we're coming back what's what is the how does how do we determine when we have to go back out and what i can tell you on that is if if we start seeing cases then we know that our mitigation is not working so that's when we got to back it out so if we if we start seeing that you know and one of the issues like i said that i think my biggest issue i got to figure out is how to keep people from coming in that have symptoms or or aren't feeling well and so that's that's a but that's a mitigation strategy that's a self-certification situation that we're not doing well right now so that's what we have to uh that's going to be one but yeah if that's what's going to speak to us if our if our mitigation's working then we this should go well i know i know districts that i've talked to uh downstate particularly people that i know really well their community numbers are as high as ours right now and they've been in the whole year and they're doing fine but they you know they have good mitigation place and uh they didn't have a health department tell them they shouldn't be in school so uh but um so i'm confident that we if we do this right that it will be fine but i also know that uh anything can happen too and so that's that's where that's the stuff that keeps you up at night because i know that um no matter what we do you know something could happen but i have people getting covered right now and we're not even in session and but you know the last thing i want is for a student or staff member to get sick and uh and again that will in the end that'll you know i'll feel responsible for that but if i'm i also know right now that uh you know what's happening in our homes and our with our kids right now is is tough and uh so are you confident in our mitigation strategies i am okay yeah i am you know what the incident from today with the staff member yeah that's i mean the the one i'm the one i'm frustrated about is that because i can't people have to give us a true unless we're going to do a physical exam everybody walk in the door that's the one that we're relying on people to be you know like truthful with us when they come in the door that's the one we have least control over but i see like the screening like what i walked in today i took my temperature does everybody have to do that who comes in this building they uh they the the staff who have to get them they get on skyward and they certify that they do not have any symptoms uh so they don't take their own temperature they don't take their temperature did they take their temperature at home before is it one of your questions is your temperature above 100.4 is that one of the uh is that one of the questions yeah that is okay so they are yeah so when they take that they're certifying that they if they're not sure they have a temperature gauge when they walk in the door they could they could do it so do you identify the staff who have not taken the survey before they come in we have actually melissa that's a challenge but we do it yeah we know who's in the building and and uh because they signed in when they come in right now but when everybody comes it'll be a lot easier because everybody will be here right now we're not sure so she has to double check who signed in and have they self-certified do it every day and i usually forget so then i guess melissa do they get past you before you check that they self-certified yeah so yeah so that would probably need to be adjusted she might need help with that because if they're in the building they're already walking past people right yeah touching things so that if you ask me if i'm confident kevin that's the one that i'm not it's it's not because i don't it's just that it requires us to rely on everybody to do their thing so we have to we have to that's something we'll have to we might have to adjust how we're doing it i know it can be fixed but uh i mean i think for community and students that that's going to be tough no matter what you do but i think that for staff it it's got to be a lot easier than yeah it seems like the struggles you guys are having yeah i mean i don't know every day it's definitely going to be an issue we uh i have to hit really hard with them and uh do we have enough subs um because if i was a sub and i was like say i got sick from a student i might have like i'm not getting paid so we're what we are doing we've hired uh one sub for grade level so like in middle school there's four subs and they're coming in right now so we when we we started that in august or october when we shut down we kept the subs on because we don't want to lose the subs and so they've been helping us you know with safe center and things like that and so so do we have enough i don't know if we have enough like uh we have um so i was you know roughly one for every eight teachers but we you know we'll also have to if we get to a desperation we'll have to you know we have other certified people in our buildings including us who can step in classrooms so uh but yeah the sub there are and there aren't many other subs out there um even on our list i think we we actually we exhausted our list and we had to piece together some positions some would only take two days so we'd match with another person take two days so so bob i do like i do prefer option two over option one do you feel confident having everybody come back at once i do i do i didn't the reason the phase-in was more appealing at one point to me was that was the whole transportation the whole uh traffic flow i was worried about managing traffic flow and just trying to work through that but if we can get and we've already put dealers out to parents about signing up for transportation if we can get i'm we're really going to have to push more to ride the bus the more kids we get riding the bus fewer cars on campus then we're okay that's my biggest concern is that is the is the uh navigating the drop off and pickup of all these kids but if we got more kids riding the bus we'll be okay and then it's still going to be about two and a half hours on campus for them yep yep so two and a half hours in the morning and then go home and do their asynchronous middle school is they've adjusted their schedule so that they are not they're doing all of their specials and pe as asynchronous so when they're here it'll be just the core subjects okay and is it the same system in place with the card yeah okay yep any other questions because it and again it sounds it was also very clear that people want to set a date so we would be setting a date and [Music] you know we just have to see as that date approaches if there's anything else that's stopping us you know i don't know if we go through some other spike again that we all you know i might have to bring you together and say what do we do but um i think we go with the date we stick with it and then we you know we see how things go well just like you didn't wasn't there a drop off in attendance in the safe centers when there was a spike in yeah cases and you know 40 is pretty high yeah right now we have fewer parents at the middle school i know they were trying to get more students in the safe center but we uh we have fewer parents that wanted their kids to come at that point when it got pretty high there for the week that we went back to school and then we had students that were just doing uh remote and then students on campus was there any lessons learned from the students doing remote and teachers trying to juggle that well primary elementary are all but like four or five teachers uh i know one one teacher one fourth grade teacher in elementary has students in the morning and afternoon so he so it was mr summers and i know he has to have uh students on the zoom at the same time all the other elementary teachers have a section in the morning or afternoon with in person and the other part of the day was remote so there was no balancing both primary had a few kindergarten teachers that had to do that primarily both and i can ask the principal if you learned anything that did they they have any problems with it or i was so impressed by did teachers the changes i saw from monday to thursday were amazing they did a really nice job you had your fifth grade middle school middle school is where it's more of an issue they've gotta their kids are they have kids at home and kids on site same time how did your teachers respond um they said it was a little weird um but they did great i think it was just it was a it was a change that's all it was for them but they adapted well and the feedback we got was that 45 minutes was a difficult time to not only the ones that are the other grades that were still remote they felt 45 minutes was still a tough time um and then when they were here trying to get the kids situated get zoom calls going and then ending and then by the time we dismissed we we try to we dismissed about 10 minutes before so we lost that last period so that's why we adjusted to push electives and pe and ben and choir to do remote learning not asynchronous but they're doing remote learning with the kids in the afternoon or opposite of when they're here so they'll essentially have almost a full day of learning either in person or remotely so so now the periods when they're the two periods are going to have will be 75 to 70 minutes long and then we also reduce one of our passing periods which helps with that mitigation plan so all right that's all i've got on that oops sorry about that um in the agenda uh i have a motion there if somebody would uh kevin does anybody have any more discussion on the mobile learning schedule um so does everyone have to say an option or no or just yeah i mean i think if somebody if we have it we'll have to do a vote for each option i think that's not right you could do a record somebody can make a recommendation that includes one of the options just do that okay all right um okay so remember we're directing him to only do that option two yeah yes that's what this calls for as i'm saying so then you cannot do any other version right okay all right um it seems from just a discussion a lot of people recommended option two okay please have a motion to approve option two for the blended hybrid remote wearing schedule question second vivian uh all in favor is the motion say red oh it's a roll call vote yes yes yes yes yes yes all right okay that might go down as the longest single item in my superintendent's report history so let's jump to uh item c uh the board policy update first reading exhibit 13.
did anyone have any questions in particular about a certain claim i had a question about playing 12 15 okay this might be more of a jeff question just it's the moisture management sure yeah so excuse me so we contract with moisture management they did some tuck point uh repair and some through flashing basically we uh to keep the water out mr cox does that answer your question okay anyone else have a question about regular claims dated today we've got total claims dated today at december 14th 164 588 ready to move on to the fund report okay um next in your packet you should see the fund report these would be ending balances for november 30th twenty education fund balance a one million fifty six thousand eighty dollars and ninety six cents and we'll go down a couple lines to operations total balance november 30th 2020 695 700 and 78 cents and the next line down we'll look at rainy day today total balance the end of november 1 million 647 726 the last page of your fund report total balance for all funds is if i can get there 5 million 139 719 if you want to take a look at the depository statement for november 20th you'll see the bank balances at the end of november total 5 million 329 684.76 next line you'll see the outstanding checks i have yet to clear the bank and then you'll see an outstanding deposit for one cent total balance for all funds ended november 30th 2020 5 million 139 7 19 69 if you go back to the last line of your fund report you'll see that those two items match i'd like to submit all for approval okay thank you you're welcome the last two items on the consent consent agenda are personal report part 1 and personnel report part 2 which are posted on the website and on the door at the central office in case anyone was curious to see those reports um that brings us to the end of the consent agenda so can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda here we have a motion in a second any further questions or discussion hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes i believe we are back to recognitions thank you for your patience i apologize as dad i kind of overestimated how i could pick up my son 6 30 who also needed to be here and do this so i apologize for that so this one is really cool and i'm glad i get to be here we had a game that got cancelled today and i really didn't want to miss reading this one so our trait was citizenship in the high school and mrs dianna meyer she's also our student council teacher and i don't know if you guys know about this one but they organized thanksgiving meal boxes and she's the one that did this one of the cool things about high school is you kind of just like let these students go and so mrs meyer said that lauren hop lauren hopper embodied citizenship this month by seeing a need in her community and acting to help she recognized that as humans we have the opportunity to help our neighbors in times of need and stepped out and found a way to bless others in other words this is not something we've normally done this was just kind of an idea from she and her classmates she was the driving force behind our thanksgiving meal boxes and as a result of her hard work 40 gcse families were given an entire thanksgiving meal and by meal bird and rolls and what else i mean like what pie i mean like it was entire meals 40 of them and so with that she's our student of the month congratulations again thank you for your patience thank you hi good evening if i could have well here he is jackson so uh at greencastle middle school our character trait of the month was leadership and jackson rogers was nominated by his teachers for that here are two statements that teachers made about jackson first jackson is a student that is always willing to fill a leadership role he is detailed organized and eager to help guide others in addition another teacher wrote in her class while she was out of school for a few days jackson was willing to lead the class and work individually with students while the assignment was all new to them but she knew that jackson would be serious about completing the task and willing to help guide others she said it was very impressive the students made a lot of progress while she was gone so greencastle middle school would like to recognize jackson [Applause] rogers okay thank you everyone next item on the agenda is reports the superintendent report yep so just a couple of uh brief updates this month um it was asked at our last board meeting about how many families we've impacted thus far with their gear grant excuse me and today um 92 families 47 through comcast or xfinity and 45 with a verizon hot spot so we still have opportunities to impact even more families so we just need to continue to get the good word out so that we can use those dollars to support our families while we have been on a hybrid schedule at the middle school in the high school i'd like to thank mrs carrico and the food services department we have they have continued to provide free meals for students in the middle school in high school and so they've been timing it up and scheduling it to where students will receive breakfast and lunch for three days the three days that they're not here so that's been certainly been a need and that's an nice thing that we can continue to support our families we are still waiting on our 1782 budget budget order from the department of local government finance we expect that to uh to arrive hopefully any day now um hopefully before we leave um so we're we are obviously awaiting that and planning to work with that to finalize our our 2021 budget um we had another good meeting uh today with the core planning team and looking at our facility uh master planning or our building study that is taking place with with krm so one of the main things that we're doing with that is working through a potential site map a long-range site map for our campus making sure that any any work or any construction that ultimately we believe or is recommended to move forwards with making sure future projects area doesn't conflict with any potential future projects so they're still studying our facilities studying costs um and so we hope to have a completed report at some point in january at the beginning of january so that work is ongoing and certainly exciting we did have the community input session or participation both in person and also in virtually prior to the november board meeting so just excited again to kind of move forwards with kind of the draft draft plan or plan of that we are meeting with uh admin team um administrators and uh gcta this week to discuss um second semester discuss our instructional model our learning plan um certainly we're gonna review um you know the pros and cons of what's taking place any changes um that need to be potentially made um it's my goal to announce any uh announce our plan for starting second semester by december 30th um at least um if not excuse me by december 30th if not this week um so that way families have enough time to plan um the reason december 30th is um the state updates their data their their dashboard um the county updates their metrics on wednesday so we just want to make sure that we're making a good informed decision and at the same time that we don't overreact um but we we do have plans to obviously get information out and share that obviously with with families and you know and staff because staff will also obviously have to plan for for whatever option but i appreciate the patience and cooperation um of our families and of our staff nothing's been easy this year but everyone's been willing and flexible um to uh just continue to meet the needs of our kids and and that's all we can do um in this situation and uh that's what we'll continue to do um moving forwards um last item before we go into our other stuff is just hope that uh everyone has a safe and uh and happy holiday because obviously uh the end of this week is the end of our first semester here at green castle schools and so hopefully families are able to stay safe and well but also able to enjoy each other's company best they can thank you next item on the agenda is old business and we have no old business so which moves us to new business the first item is an approval request for permission to pay late arriving 2020 invoices yeah so as is customary at the end of the year we're finalizing or wrapping up the 2020 financial year we want to make sure that any invoices that we receive after tonight's board meeting that are in the year 2020 are paid with budgeted dollars from 2020 and then a follow-up report will be provided at the january meeting [Music] okay we have a motion in a second any questions or discussion hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda or next item is an approval request for the 2021-2022 membership renewal bids with west indie cooperative yeah so mrs carrico is putting forth this recommendation and what this is is it is a cooperative purchasing program for food services by pooling resources they're able to get more competitive prices at a reduced cost so i recommend that the board approve this agreement for 21 and 22.
again this is first reading i met with the committee really some just very small changes this this route go around most of it's with footnotes or legal language uh so you can see my notes at the top of each of those policies but it would just be uh recommendation to approve those is written for the first reading all right anybody have questions on the board policy update news can i please have a motion to prove on first reading the board policy update motion second okay all in favor's emotion red all right any opposed eyes have it uh anybody have any questions on the bylaws for the bilingual parent advisory committee i just had one do we have to have bylaws to have a committee like this like apparently we have bylaws for the cac and uh we do have bylaws for african american parent advisory council we're working on them for the aap the african-american group okay yep we're working on bylaws uh we're in the process michelle did you you had to have them for yours right yeah you did okay i do have a quick question is there any crossover between these groups you know the african-american parent group and the bilingual are they are there any representatives on the cac any representatives on the cac from those groups um i i can say on the african-american advisory group that there have there are the one of the co-chairs was a member of cac last year i don't know if he's participating this year on cdc i don't think so cac was opened up to everybody to apply but uh and as far as b-pack i'm not positive i would say no okay anybody else have questions can i please have a motion to approve the uh b-pack bylaws motion second all in favor is the motion read say aye aye aye aye opposed eyes have it the african-american parent advisory committee yeah just real quick uh dr king and i want to give you an update um we have met with this group a few times already this year it's it's taken a turn for uh the better uh i think we got to a point where we were they were wondering the same thing like what's next we've met we talked we hash out things what's next and uh so it's been really good um we have two people that are co-chairing the committee now we're working on bylaws uh uh we have we've secured a uh uh consultant that's gonna kind of walk us through some things uh there's some next steps and dr king if you to i'll let you take it over and kind of talk about that what's happening with that because vicky's been working with our consultant and it's been it's been good because it's let us kind of uh step away from the leadership as people that are not african-american and let and kind of listen and let this consultant who does this work kind of help walk this group through it so yeah so her name is jessica oladapo and she's with diversity to inclusion and so she has a date that she's going to meet with our leadership team and the so she's going to do two pieces she's started working with the african-american parent advisory committee but she's also doing work with our district leadership team and our we we now have a district equity team and so i believe there's a participant from the board that will be also on that and so we've got that meeting will be january 7th it's a two hour virtual training that she'll start with that team and then january 22nd she'll start working with the individual schools to help them i think address things in deliberate and meaningful ways so it doesn't feel like things are too rushed or too hurried at any of the the building so the bm the middle school excuse me the 22nd then she'll work with the primary on february 5th and then the elementary on february 19th and so they're very short uh concise conversations with each of these buildings and the the the teams that they have in there so we'll start with our leadership team and then the entire building work but it's like i said her her goal is not to kind of steamroll any of the any of the buildings or the staff but really to help kind of address identity work first before we start going into different types of different aspects of the equity inclusion and diversity work she'll do so i'll really begin she her methodology is that it's in a way to bring understanding between all of staff so it does not start pitting people against each other so thank you very much it's really good work right now on that so the illinois youth survey results we do this once a year with it's a it's done across the state of illinois and i'll let mr whipple jump in and share a little bit on those results exhibit 15.
basically this just gets us more purchasing power right correct yeah pool our resources with other uh other school districts and corporations i make a motion to approve i know okay we have a motion in a second any questions for discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next is an approval request for a resolution to author a resolution of authorization to sign agreements for alternative services and private residential school placements yeah so uh this is a this is a grant that's a result of excess cost for a student that is placed as it says in private residential school placement and currently in order to or excuse me currently the board president is the one authorized to sign this so this resolution would allow me to handle signing this grant in agreement in the future as is customary with the other agreements so it's my recommendation the board approved this so that we can file with the department of education i agree take motion i'll second that okay we have a motion in a second any questions or discussion hearing none all in favor all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for about six donations i think we can just go ahead and prove all these at once we have a donation from or to the green castle middle school from greencastle middle school pto to the green castle middle school in the name or the amount of 1 300 we have a donation from the gary and linda huber fund for cultural arts and learning to greencastle high school art department in the amount of 500.00 we have a donation for the putnam county found community foundation to the heist crew castle high school in the amount of five hundred dollars we have a donation from putnam county community foundation to greencastle middle school for five hundred dollars and we have a donation to the punta cana from the putnam county community foundation to redbath primary in the amount of 500 and lastly we have a donation from walmart distribution center to redpath primary in the amount of one thousand five hundred thirty five dollars and fifty eight cents this is always the easiest part of the evening is taking money so can i get a motion to approve i like to motion okay i have a motion in a second to have any questions or discussion hearing none all in favor opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is other business and i have a couple of items that i'd like to bring up um one um i think it's noteworthy to recognize that our doorway that um to mention that mr michael tasonicus passed away a couple weeks ago he's obviously who our school is named after the intermediate school and for those who knew mr tazonicus i think i was ill everyone will agree that uh is a pretty instrumental guy in green castle school history um he was my principal for seven years at that school and uh still kept in touch with him periodically and he was a great guy just he gets worth mentioning it's kind of funny i was explaining to my wife that that school is pushing 60 years old and jennifer rhodes is the fourth principal that that building is at which is pretty remarkable um so i just thought i would bring that up and share for anyone who did not know that um the second thing it kind of ties into this a little bit um i had a conversation about a month ago with mr gibney and and have since been approached by a couple people about the same thing um asking me if i thought the board would be willing to or interested in dedicating the new transportation center to um dan creek uh naming it today transportation center or whatever we choose to name but um just in his honor or memory or all the time that he spent with green castle schools and how dedicated he was and how instrumental he was building that facility um so i just wanted to bring that up but really not asking for any action tonight i just thought i'd bring that up for the board to consider and um possibly do something like that it's free if we decide to do something like that i think 38 years 32 years a long time and there seems to be a precedent for doing that for people that have long term positive interaction with their school there is um so that's really i mean nothing we need to act on tonight you know just something to bring up for everyone to consider so that is my other business of the evening does anyone else having um jeff i just wanted to say whenever whatever decision you guys make on students um it's perfectly fine but i will say it's been really nice i've gotten a lot of positive feedback on having the elementary kids in the school buildings i think that was really a good plan um even when we had to go to hybrid on network so thanks for doing that anyone else yeah we're getting ready to wrap up the first semester i just wanted you know i know mr kevin has already already said thank you but i just want to give a thank you to just all the teachers and staff and just just everybody um and i mean i don't not in the classroom or in school or anything like that but i know it's i know it's tough and you know i've got a student myself and so you guys are greatly greatly appreciated i know it's a tough tough time and so as we look forward you know um just just i know everything will just continue to be as the effort will just just be the same going into the next semester but you guys really are appreciated how we started off and how we've we've continued through some tough times so so i just personally as a parent and community member want to thank you i would agree anyone else okay last item on the agenda is the tournament can i get a motion to adjourn make the motion second here we have a motion and as seconds all in favor all opposed motion passes yes thank you uh have a good holiday good break and we will see you in a month thank you you
let's go on okay so um super exciting stuff talking about the illinois use survey alcohol drugs that kind of stuff so i'll go through it quickly i want you to um think about it this is kind of a 30 000 foot view of data that we collected this survey is done uh we did it one time last year in january and then prior to that in 2018 so it's kind of like a little bit of a dipstick for of our student body so right now the current data that we collected is their their freshman at grant and then prior to that they're now juniors so we do share this information with grant so they can kind of use it because i do believe they take it as juniors as well so one thing just little disclaimers this is like one point of data in time of our students a quick survey we did in january with them it's perception data so how the students are feeling in that moment at that time and then uh we did a cohort i did a little bit of cohort comparisons of the group from 2018 and 2020 but obviously they're the same students but some of it are related to school culture so i wanted to share that and show the improvements that we've made as far as perceptions from our students 170 students participated and at that time 200 students were enrolled here is kind of the breakdown of how the survey went they give a lot of student characteristics demographics all that stuff i didn't share that in this presentation i can share the full report if you want it we thought i'm going to go a little bit into drug prevalence and behaviors drug use contribution contributing factors interpersonal conflict violence and delinquency a little bit in the academic and school experiences and i didn't dive much into this one about mental social and physical health there wasn't there's not a whole lot of stuff there i think some of the physical part they ask like how many fruits and vegetables you eat in a week so i'm not sure if you guys wanted to know some of that stuff but there's bigger more imperative data that i want us to talk about is the drugs alcohol that kind of stuff so this kind of gives you an overall snapshot of the different it says substance use in the past year for our eighth graders as you can see alcohol um 30 of our kids it's i got to get into a little bit more of the data says 30 which yes is an alarming number but it talks in the survey of talking about like a sip of one or two sips of alcohol in a year or in the past 30 days and then it there is questions out there about binge drinking which you see our numbers so that 30 is alarming at first but as we go into some of the questions you'll see that it's it's really coming down to have you tried a sips or how many occasions have you taken one or two sips of alcohol so alcohol e-cigarettes and marijuana seem to be our highest numbers as you can see lake county does this survey and they put out their averages we are above that lake county averages i'm not sure exactly how many middle schools i can't remember top of my head participated but i want to say like maybe 14 schools overall participated in illinois school survey last last year this was in the same graph but in retrospect to the last 30 days of when they took that survey as you see we're about comparison 2018 and a little bit higher than the average for alcohol and i only use alcohols that's our number one or that's our highest factor for our students so dive in a little bit about alcohol so really you can kind of see that they kind of laid out there you can see that most of our students if you're going to drop down to cigarettes e-cigarettes marijuana over almost 90 of our kids or more have never used those substances 72 percent have said they never have for alcohol and then our numbers are a little bit higher for alcohol as far as consumption you can see it says drink more than a sip or two of the following so it's not getting um not binge drinking it's a sip or two so nothing i don't want to that's that's where that 30 is not so alarming it could contribute to just sips how many occasions have you used alcohol so you can see in the past 30 days eighty percent had zero and then one to two and then our numbers taper off drastically for both the 30 days and in the past year so we don't see as freaking of vacations so i would say that's more of kids experimenting with it trying it but it doesn't go much further than that here's binge drinking and they they classify binge drinking as five or more drinks in a row and i'm assuming in one setting but that's the language they use on the survey so obviously 99 of our kids said they do not have more than one or five drinks in a row and one percent said on one one occasion and then another student one percent said twice and one percent kind of translates to about one or two students of that 170 if i did my math right some other things just kind of threw this on there and highlighted i'm kind of going back to that kids that are consuming one or two drinks highlighted with parent permission if you can see sometimes or often is 11 of our kids this could be culturally acceptable in some homes where celebrations kids take a sip participate in that celebration whatever but also there's a highlight of when adults with a different adult's permission and that's five percent so there's different factors uh so kids just aren't on their own doing it less about six percent of the students said they got it at a party so they're not going out to get it most of it's happening in their home really readily available to them e-cigarettes and vaping was another big one for our students as you see last 30 days 96 percent of said students said they never have this actually surprised me i was thinking that would be a little bit more higher just because of the use and the popularity of e-cigarettes and how it's marketed to our students but as you can see then it kind of tapers off and then same thing with our in the last year 92 percent said never have used it and then once or twice and then it's very small significant numbers of one percent on more occasions marijuana and inhalants again marijuana in the last 30 days or or past year all in the 90 again going to that one or two occasions and then they taper off quite a bit so it's not as frequent of a use for our students still not appropriate it's still not good but it's better to see that it doesn't continue on or the numbers don't go higher from three to five on inhalants kind of similar data so 95 most of our kids are not using inhalants so really just kind of throwing in there a little bit about how contributing factors what we do with our students here at school talking about the fifth sixth grade health curriculum we talk a lot and i put fifth and sixth uh this year was the first year we were trying to put health in that wheel for 5th and 6th but so it was just 6th grade initially but they're get some fifth graders getting this as well this year so we talk a little bit about social emotional health the interpersonal relationships conflict resolution and anger management we know that coping strategies unhealthy coping strategies could be using some of these products inappropriately as a way to deal with stress so they tackle a lot of that social emotional health to begin with in seventh seventh grade we talk about tobacco vaping and alcohol and again really focus on what influences healthy choices and then why people might use these drugs alcohol tobacco and then eighth grade would get into marijuana and then the heavier stuff with the illicit drugs and again talk about healthy choices throughout that and then why people would continue or why they would people would try drugs alpha alpine tobacco drug use and contributing factors kind of go through this quick personal disapproval how wrong do you think it someone of your age to do and i was actually um a little bit shocked that a little bit wrong or not wrong at all that students actually think it's less wrong to use vape e-cigarettes or vaping than it is for and marijuana than it is alcohol so there's not as it's not as wrong to use um e-cigar or drink so i thought that was a little surprising i thought it would be a little bit differently but then when you go down to the risk factors actually there's a higher risk of using alcohol when the kids take this survey than there is to using marijuana or e-cigarettes so i thought that was a interesting kind of counter it flip-flopped a little bit there um parents um disapproval so they obviously they're they're listening and they know so most of our kids can see that um i mean alcohol the 82 to 82 plus 14 was at 96 percent of our kids that it's wrong and they shouldn't be doing it from their parents point of view and as you can see the numbers are relatively high from very wrong to wrong so they know they're listening somewhat this one this one is kind of interesting that when you look at the numbers at 55 about 50 percent of the time students are saying yes my parents have talked to me about these things and then the not surprised they don't remember about 20 of the kids because they are middle schoolers they are eighth graders they don't forget what they ate for lunch that day so um just keep talking to our kids about uh not using these these things at home perceived access so obviously like the numbers would go higher i mean you can see that the beer the wine the alcohol is higher students have easier access to it along with e-cigarettes and vaping and then obviously prescription drugs it's a higher access but as you can see the kids are not taking prescription drugs as much okay go through this um this data is not necessarily correlated to school it's just in there so it's in their social life in in and out of school but in a physical fight um surprising that 24 have said at least once or twice but then you can see that carried a weapon sold drugs and then been drunk or high at school are relatively low i'd be remiss in that last one to say that that doesn't happen but it hasn't happened within my careers that we do have kids that have come to school under the influence um unfortunately this graph really this one is related to school and i put these up there as a comparison about bullying so 2018 data compared to as you see called names dropped from 44 to 30 percent threatened at school 22 to 11 so i think that's 22 or 27 i can't read that from here but more than cut in half hit threatened punch uh punched pushed dropped from 22 to 8 and then we have cyber bullying dropped from 33 to 19 percent and then extensive bullying experience any type went from 55 over half of our kids in 2018 reporting that it had experienced at least some type of bullying dropped down to 37.