Reader

david is mike gordon hi mike um this isn't necessarily an agenda item that would be uh for the march meeting but uh one of the discussions that did come out of finance committee with mike and ned and shaina and myself was uh the possibility of one of our our work groups uh one of the the um intensives uh that we could we could have a night that would be dedicated to interpretation of finances and understanding just the different um how the different funding streams come together the expenditures there's a lot of information and uh and the reports are very thorough as are always the presentations uh of finance committee um you know one thing when we talked of our service on the uh on the finance committee and having been on there for an extended tenure it wasn't as a uh as a burden of service by any means from mike and myself i just want to make that clear um but we'd like to talk uh maybe more thoroughly about some of the finding not that we would but a presentation to the full board i know we've talked about it before and we've done some but i think we probably just kind of uh as mentioned just kind of the tip of the iceberg so i think at some point for one of our study sessions that we might want to use that as an agenda okay so what i'm hearing then is instead of an agenda item for the next meeting maybe it can be in the subject of one of our work study sessions later in the year i know we have a few uh planned uh regarding the strategic plan uh coming up in the spring but maybe in the summer fall time period do you think do you think that would that would make sense absolutely that's exactly what i meant yep thank you yeah and we did have one you know a few years ago um you know we had a different um uh uh finance director and or business services director at the time and the reports looked a lot different um they're right they're much improved today uh so we're you know we've made a lot of progress since then but i i agree that we could you know i'll use another uh uh hour or so with ms cooper to discuss that thank you okay um are there any other comments about the agenda items for for march 4th okay uh here hearing none the next the the subpart of that um is going to be uh where to hold it whether we're going to meet in phoenix uh whether we're going to have it in person whether we're going to have it virtually uh whether we can try a split um you know hybrid in person and virtual i know we did that with some success in a prior work study session late last year uh you know i think uh wanted to get the board members um opinions on that on which mode uh might work for us i know with you know the vaccine being rolled out um that that you know there's gonna be a time this year i i hope maybe later in the spring or early in the summer where we won't have to have this discussion every time and we just you know kind of meet person like we used to do um but in any event for march 4th i think it's close enough that we we want to have a brief discussion about it um is there any any preference amongst the board members for one way or the other and this would be either in person uh hybrid where we have in person and zoom and then totally on uh uh on virtual hello this is shelly um i think march 4th is still too soon for an in-person meeting right now um people are still getting vaccinated and then people will need their booster shot so i believe it would be better to meet virtually um for the interim and then we'll see what happens later on in the springtime okay um that's a great idea and i guess i should caveat that with any any in-person um meeting that we would have whether it's you know fully in person or hybrid uh you know we'd still have masking and social distance as community transmission rates are as high as they are today we'd still have those um you know restrictions in place it won't exactly be like it used to be you know maybe when community transmission rates go down later in the year hopefully uh you know we we can go back to some semblance of that but any kind of physical gathering i would propose would involve masking and distancing i agree with shelly i think march 3rd is still too soon um and we should probably do it virtually but just until all the vaccinate vaccines kick in and everybody gets a chance and that's my opinion okay this is gordon i i agree david uh particularly here in pima county that the whole vaccination out roll or roll out is uh is quite the cluster so it's going to take a while to get that straightened out for sure so uh i would say hybrid at best but probably totally virtual i think this format works uh well enough okay no i i know um you know i i certainly i think like most people i prefer in person but uh you know i want to make sure that everyone's safe and the staff is is safe and and uh you know even though we we do like to be in first moment can be um it looks like then we will have a and we don't need an action on we're not gonna have an action on it but it seems it sounds like having another virtual meeting on march 4th is is going to be the way that we're we're going to go and then we'll you know likely revisit it at that time for the next meeting and and we'll kind of just gauge uh the board and see what their opinion is for the next meeting hopefully by the summer we'll be able to to meet at least you know in person again to some extent okay uh the next item is an action item 9.01 adjournment uh do i have a motion to adjourn i move to adjourn this meeting is there a second a second uh always linda on favor hi great and any opposed no no great um excellent thank you so much everyone for your time today uh i really appreciate it um next board meeting is uh usually the march is very full so um we'll uh we'll be prepared for that and uh thank you so much and thank you to the the production staff the interpreters and and everyone that was able to produce this and uh and distribute it um i think you've gotten pretty good at it over the last year so thank you again thank you guys have a good day

um i'm much more interested in having job descriptions that actually match what people are doing and bringing those up to date so this is the first set this involves our classified folks at the district office and i don't know if you want to talk about any of them individually if you've had time to look over them you can approve them in mass or whatever you want to do my real only question on this is by changing job descriptions does not change or reset payroll schedules no it does not okay then i yeah i just didn't want us to change the job description and screw up the payroll schedule so i just want to make sure that that wasn't going to be a problem and and one of the one of the things there are some significant changes for a couple of the positions because uh with the split in the iga with the high school district where we were sharing some business office positions we found that we had two of our positions that really each had job descriptions for one and a half people on the other hand we found at least one of our positions where it was really only about a two-thirds position so it let me level out the job responsibilities and do that and then the other thing that i will say to you is that one of these positions may change may i may bring back to you in a year or so with the retirement of some with one of the people in our in our office and perhaps the retirement of another person in the district that we would combine those positions so we're constantly looking at how we can level the job responsibilities for our folks any questions or concerns with the changes all right then i will move we approve the job descriptions as submitted a second brandy dubois all in favor aye corey burgess hi janie borland hi amanda amen aye randy dubois aye charlene so moved item 6.1 future topics any future topics that we'd like to see we discuss the workshop for next month that we'll be meeting any other future topics at this time all right item 6.2 upcoming board events do we have any there's nothing scheduled uh we have several of us are attending boltz which is the leadership conference from asba and um and that's uh i think are we all are we all doing on the same day no no okay so one person's doing this month and then the others of us are doing next month asba workshops are excellent and it's kind of exciting to know that we've got so many people participating training is always great all right so um item 6.3 date time and location of future meetings we have uh on here february 18th 2021 at 5 30.

yeah so every year there's a licensure process that goes on um so it wouldn't have an impact there i think uh i appreciate that perspective because it is an interesting question if we choose not to have the preschool if you choose not to have the preschool program operate next year uh right now it is chock full of tables that we would use in a covert era that's a terrible use of a beautiful space and the other reality is we're probably going to be in a desk world next year too i find it hard to imagine that there'll be a vaccine for kids under the age of by the time school starts next year in fact i would probably make a wager on that if one wants to do that with me not money like cookies brownies you know things like that um so you know i think what would be optimal frankly um is if we're back in the building next year is figuring out a space to put those um tables and actually have that be a separate space so that the specials aren't sharing the gymnasium because right now the gymnast we want to keep the gymnasium as a gymnast like it is as i started the meeting it is lovely there um and so i think if we didn't have a preschool because of the uncertainty and the space was available going back to the original purpose uh would be my recommendation and seeing what we could do with tables or if we're just happy with the desks i mean i'll be honest there's only seven days but a lot of our early childhood educators both in pelham and amherst really opposed to desks on principle and then they got into the building like this is pretty cool i i don't mind these desks right you know it's it was okay they figured out ways if they wanted to group kids that kids could still be grouped and distanced in these days but you could make desks out of you know or tables out of desks uh pretty easily and they're actually really high quality desks the facilities department did a great job they're they're nicer than a lot of the tables that we lost so you know i'd like to think about creative use of the space um but it wouldn't be that uh you know we would rip down tear down walls and it wouldn't be available for a preschool space a year after leaving the space vacant for a year doesn't make tremendous sense either right so i'd like to think about letting the pe teacher have a gym that is not have other things in it other days of the week which then curtails um his or her in this case his his programming and the way he would structure it and also it's a lot of work on the custodial staff to be changing that space multiple times a week for the different programs that are in it so long-winded answer ron i apologize but you know we have you know i do have some thoughts on the topic and and we we certainly have to figure out where to put stuff but i'd rather figure that problem out than our current situation other preschool questions so i've i guess in order to be able to really appropriately recruit people for the preschool and you say we need clarity on what next year looks like as a practical matter and i'm not going to get into a conversation about next year yet but like that's not coming anytime soon so it seems to me i don't what else are we going to learn in say the next one or two months it doesn't it seems like we probably won't right i think the odds are that um you know i'm just trying to have a glimmer of hope that uh the world turns around in the next take away from you know this i just i'm trying to yeah i'm just trying to understand okay yeah i mean if all of a sudden the numbers were one-tenth of what they are now and everyone starts feeling really comfortable being back in schools um maybe that would change things um i think that's an unlikely scenario for us and you know i mean it's in no bad way uh at all but you know we have a bargaining unit and the bargaining unit is a pre-k through 12 bargaining unit so any decisions we'd make would need to be bargained and i have a hard time figuring that we will have a bargaining agreement or any or even conversations frankly that would happen before that's not a knock on the apea at all it's just that's not the way bargaining works yeah that was my thinking just about actual practical process yeah okay yeah i mean i don't if you're asking me point blank now i don't see that resolving by march um and that's why if it if it was to resolve it have to be something way off the typical budget calendar you know um i can't imagine including it in our budget next year and i don't i don't see it probably resolving itself but um you know i just wanted to you know we wanted this bulleted point to be on here both because it's important or this agenda i don't think it's important and also to explain that it's it's not on the budget that you're going to see because we don't have any confidence that we could pull it off in the normal budget cycle and probably don't have much confidence to put off in general but a savvy budget document reader might say where is the staff for the preschool and they could compare it to two years ago and see that it's not there um and um i didn't want anyone to think that that was we came to that conclusion willy-nilly um or just casually it's just i i don't i don't see how we move forward on running the preschool next year and i certainly don't see how we could even contemplate funding it out of the appropriated budget right now where we are okay all right thank you anything else on preschool okay um next up is regionalization so last time we met just in pelham we had a brief conversation about um informally exploring um regionalization to see if it's something that maybe amherst would be open to if it's a conversation that we should restart not from the beginning but just from where the previous conversation left off um so to start that process i met with the chair of amherst and the region um and you know everything that's going on in amherst and the region with the budget and and just everything else um and i say this not critically at all the sense was that like there there is not the bandwidth or the willingness to engage on this right now so i think we should table it i think especially given news about you know an unsustainable budget and you know something that is characterized as just slightly less than dire i don't think we should rule this out forever um but for now i just you know we certainly can't force the issue and i don't think this is the time to really be pushing it so that's just my recommendation but i am not you know this is a committee it's not my decision so i certainly would like to hear what others have to think if anyone wants to pursue something else or has other ideas okay i guess i'll just i just it just seems very reasonable like it is really trying times and everyone has to focus on their own school so i think but i would be in favor of tabling it and maybe uh you know maybe in six months we'll be in a different place yeah okay all right and obviously anyone can talk to me about putting things on the agenda at any time so you know where to find me um all right health metrics and memorandum of agreement so we had we had left this on just to make sure that when we gathered we we are not we're allowed to talk about this um given the vote this past tuesday i don't know that there's too much to be said but if anyone wants to talk on this topic we certainly can is now the appropriate time to talk about fall of 2021 i think as long as it focuses on health metrics memorandum of agreement i mean we can't get into detail and start dating that but if it's if it is closely related to the moa then yes i have two questions one will we as a committee be asked to weigh in on the level or the method of any trigger that may be in place governing the fall of 2021 i mean we were this year will we be next year will be part of the discussion of the moa for fall of 2021 well okay mike go ahead i'm sorry can you clarify who the we is the pelham school the public school committee i mean because that's the only person that's the only committee i'm on yeah i just wanted to make sure that i was understanding who the we was i apologize so um yeah i think that feedback should go through sarah bess and then my original to be clear i only see sarah best and not miss dancer because miss dancer um recuses herself uh from regional discussions at the apa because of a family member who is that so you don't get to hear that i do because i'm with miss dancer at the region uh so i wasn't trying to ignore or disregard miss dancer but miss kenny happens to both be on the negotiation subcommittee and a pelham representative so she'd be your point person in terms of sharing feedback then my original question when will we know whether fall of 2021 will be in person or distance learning and how do we begin to have some input into that i don't know what to say and be within the bounds of the agenda item i mean so because you're talking about a potential negotiation with multiple bargaining units um appsme ufc you know it's the ufcw the food service workers afscme is um custodians maintenance bus drivers and apa which the administrative association my strong recommendation is that you share that feedback directly with sarah bass um and that she's informed by your thoughts as she goes into the negotiations instead of having a public discussion about negotiations and then for future agenda items what is the nature of my question that i put on the agenda for future agenda items it seems like if you want to have a what i heard was that you want to have a conversation not necessarily just about negotiations but about a desire i just want to know how do we most of my constituents want to know when and if there will be in-person learning in the fall how do i do something to tell them that i'm acting on their behalf you would share that feedback that you heard from them what's their best and you'd encourage uh let them know that that feedback's been taken into account by the school committee representative in pelham who happens to also be on the negotiating team there's no fault there's nothing wrong with you ron because what i hear i think i hear you saying um or at least it's implied in what i'm understanding correctly if i'm wrong is that you have some uh opinions about the importance of returning to in-person learning in the fall based on what you've heard from constituents there's nothing wrong with saying that i think if we talk about details about that that's what's negotiated but you're certainly a school community member you're representing the town of pelham and you certainly can be sharing your strong feelings about that issue in any public meeting i think where it gets into how do we get there what do we need to do that's where it gets a little bit more about negotiations i asked this committee to put on a future agenda item when the time comes in this meeting well i think we can we can put fall 2021 planning on the agenda and we can talk about that right yeah we just we certainly couldn't talk about anything related to negotiations but i think people could express things that are important to them related to 2021 all everything people have said about restraints and constraints make sense however there there is one burning issue whether it should affect our decisions or not is will there be full time in-person learning in the fall and i would just like some opportunity some time to talk about that i mean i understand this may not be the appropriate time but when will be the time what are the parameters of our discussion i mean because well period period because everything i say basically affects negotiation which is inappropriate at this time so anyway so so i have a couple things i think one is i think you've you've you currently expressed your viewpoint um in a public meeting so that's good um if we want to have it as an agenda item certainly i'm not opposed for other people to be able to express their viewpoint i don't think there's actually work that you can do on that front the committee can do you as an individual the committee other than express your vote point and make sure that you're communicating with sarah bess um i and i think there's nothing wrong with doing that but when when we talk about a discussion it might be everyone could share their viewpoint on that issue there's nothing wrong with that i think when we get to the how to or what do we need to do to get there that's where the negotiation piece really comes in do i tell sarah best that at a meeting you could do it that's i mean i'm sorry it's okay to keep going yeah um if that feels appropriate what what am i constrained not to talk about because it's not clear well you're you're you don't have to be too constrained because you're not a negotiating you're not involved in negotiations so i think you can express your viewpoint but i think the distinction would be you i don't see work that can be done on this committee other than viewpoints expressed in support of a returned or to in person or not returned to in person right that level of um kind of philosophical discussion or opinion is is incredibly appropriate um i think if you're talking about work you can do or how do you get that done the pelham school based on the policies pelham school committee doesn't negotiate with any of our bargaining units so that that's if that's the barriers negotiations with bargaining units that's not something in the auspices of the pelham school committee and i can't express my opinion on the nature of the proposed trigger for fallout 21 to sarah bess in this forum yeah you're not in negotiating she probably can't respond but but okay yeah yeah i don't see an issue with that in terms of um negotiations or anything like that you know but i think if you have any questions um with the chair's permission i think getting in touch with our legal counsel which i could help you with um you know is something that individual members do have access to the other uh free option would be getting in touch with the massachusetts association of school committees and they have free advice um that you can receive so that it doesn't it positions me a little awkwardly to be answering all the questions because i'm on both ends of this right you know i am in the room for negotiations i'm not a school committee member i'm not a lawyer um so you know what i can do is give advice but that's all i can do um but i think you know there are other places you might be able to get advice um that might be helpful for where those boundaries are and if you're interested in those just shoot me an email i'm sure i can link you to the resources um that might be from outside pelham which may or may not be helpful to you okay anything else on health metrics moa okay um all right anti-racism work so um mike just so you know jessie is getting on momentarily um so we have a special guest star ah here she is um so jesse i'm not gonna give you too much of an intro because i i kind of want to leave it to you to talk about what you're working on but jessie is doing some work with the town of pelham on its anti-racism initiatives um and so she reached out to me about ways that the work that her committee is doing can collaborate with our committee um which i think is a great idea so jesse do you want to just talk a little bit about what you guys are doing and how we can work together yeah great um thanks so much for having me it's great to see all you guys i miss you lots and you're doing some really important work so yeah i'm a part of the pelham anti-racist action committee that was created by the select board i believe everybody in the town of pelham received a postcard asking if they were interested in joining the committee and they got a um 15 responses and they couldn't deny anybody so everybody joined um the committee some have it's dwindled down a little bit but um we have um a group of people and we're meeting monthly and then we also have working groups and we won't just want to reach out to other town committees and make connections um there will be a write-up in the slate when it gets to your doorstep about our mission statement um and our working groups and we've decided to call them working groups instead of subcommittees um so that we can include others on them we feel that it's important you know some people may not be able to commit fully to the committee but may want are interested in any of the topics that we're looking at um with an anti-racist land in the lens in the town of pelham and so there's an education working group a history working group an outreach policy and governance is together and then public safety and as a representative of or a member of the education working group i just wanted to reach out to you guys and see um if there's anything you know to create a partnership and if there's anything that we could do together or anything we can do for you vice versa um with you um and yeah that's that's kind of where we are at this point all right oh i can also say i've met with lee and i met with mike and i've um done some email corresponding with doreen and we've talked about um kind of like the history of anti-racist work in pelham and in the district i do have a document if i can find it [Music] um yeah so i saw mike you had a hand up yep mike there we go yeah i just want to say i think thanks to jesse for facilitating the work in the community that's incredibly powerful and obviously she is her uh school committee cap still ready to put on uh in terms of the leadership so we appreciate that uh but i really appreciate the conversation that i had with jesse and another member of her i believe another member of your committee i mean i know that person from another venue um and i think it's really critical work that is so important that it doesn't just come from kind of educational leaders or others but really that the community is see themselves as leaders and sees themselves as learners and so i just wanted to publicly share my appreciation for jesse and others who are facilitating and leading the group because i think that genesis or that union between our synthesis between the community as well as the school is sort of how change happens um you know it's not often times people want change to be linear like there's one leader and then this happens and this happens and that's not the way it works and certainly not the way in my experience anti-racism works so uh just appreciate jesse and the others who are taking this on look forward to partnerships moving forward yes agreed i feel like the the thing that comes up for me is that i you know this is clearly very important work i know lee on a day-to-day basis is doing stuff at the school that it's not just like the side show it's kind of part of every decision that she makes um and that just seems really clear just from communications that i get as a parent and um you know updates that you give in this setting so i you know i think the thing just as a committee member that i want is like what i i want to find ways where we're doing that as a committee too where like anti-racism work just becomes just part of what we do all the time not like an agenda item that's on there that we talk about in a discreet way and i'm not sure how to do that i feel like i'm sort of throwing out this thing i don't have a suggestion or a solution i to me i feel like that's the the it's a pretty nebulous goal um but that's what where i think we should be headed and i think especially being in pelham and i mean just to be really frank to look at the faces on this screen and just like do the sometimes uncomfortable work of like talking about our whiteness and what that means as elected officials so i still don't have the answers i think i have more questions than answers but um i at least at least like work jesse with what what you all are doing i certainly have an openness to this so i'm not sure exactly what concrete next steps are but um i just want this to be the beginning of these conversations and and then get to a point where it's just this muscle we develop and then we're not thinking about it we don't have agenda items it's just part of how we operate yeah that sounds great yeah mike yeah just that's something that doreen and i have spoken about a bunch recently is what level of anti-racism training can we supply and support um school community members with because we do so much for our staff and we don't think about school committee training so you know that's something that i'm sure there'll be joint meetings school committee meetings to come uh and uh not for that topic explicitly but that you know we do have some thoughts about that and you know um both of us are working we're partners in msan which is the minority student achievement network our districts are partners with that and um and so i do wonder you know there's some leadership um equity pd that both irina and i are doing together this year with um darnissa you know blank i'm not good at names tonight um but i um i will get you the information but we've we've had an outstanding experience with that um and i think it's very much um on the leadership for equity side which being that you're um you all are elected from a governance perspective i i've found it very good um and i think you know with anti-racism work like any other professional development one size doesn't always fit all right it has to be you know particular to your context and so uh we do have some thoughts about that and we do have some ideas and and perhaps you know you and the chair of the other committee the next time we do have a joint meeting um maybe not the next time we do have a new joint meeting but sometime that might be tuesday the agenda may be posted but um sometime when we have a joint meeting uh we should try to figure out a way to have that conversation because i think it's really critical that um if we're serious about it in terms of our staff members and our students then the leaders in the district should also be engaging in that work so uh more to come on that one but i think your points well taken and um you know i feel like in hindsight you know pd for school committee is like short right it's like in the overall scheme of things it often is the thing that gets skipped you know if it's not coming from masc then there's not a lot of offerings but uh you know we could do some thinking about how to fill that gap yeah i think that would be great yeah okay anything else for jessie do you miss being here jessie meetings right mike don't let her off make her i i still keep up with all the news don't you worry all right thank you so much for coming and let's keep talking great thanks for having me good night um all right next up jesse requirements on student learning time yep and so i'll do an intro and then lee will take this one but um as you're aware at the last joint meeting um thank you for endorsing a waiver request that waiver was denied by desi uh which i had my um less fun moment speaking of uh you know having some hard moments and and then i did what probably i should always do when i have those moments is i called and i said you know i want to talk to someone and so i talked to someone whose name is rob curtin he's an administrator at desi and it was really an excellent conversation that put my mind uh much more to ease than it was and what he went over is some change definitions for structured learning time the state has and the reason we were denied despite the evidence we had was that screen time is not synonymous with structured learning time especially at the elementary school level and that there were there were some more flexibilities that are offered um for our students and then lee and i and mostly leah want to give her incredible credit for this because she did a fabulous job very quickly looked at the current pelham distance learning schedule and looked at what we're currently doing any minor adjustments that we were able to need to make and the good news is this won't upend the apple cart in terms of the the programming we have we don't have we don't need to have families worried that they're going to have tremendous mortgage screen time because we got that feedback loud and clear but i think with some of the innovative innovative approaches that that lee and the staff have put into place we really don't have to be a lot of it's definitional changes um and and then moving me the next data collection is at the end of this month and i feel really good about being able to hit the metrics that are uh that are set in the the new state regulations for synchronous learning or structured learning time excuse me i made the mistake again uh for pelham school uh ron has a question but uh after that i'll just go right to lee and she can give some more details okay wrong do you mean screen time because the entire curriculum is screen time you mean asynchronous so the term that desi is using is structured learning time and uh to be very candid what what they're really concerned about and i heard that loud and clear on the phone call there are certain districts that there's one district i know for large district that all of fridays was asynchronous okay so right so it was like monday tuesday wednesday thursday you saw the teacher and friday kids were on their own there were no teachers available we weren't doing that from the beginning so i wasn't so worried about that part of it but it was helpful to know that that was their concern and those of you who heard me in the summer fall i shared that concern right i think teachers need to see students need to see their teachers every day and receive instruction in all the core areas every day right and so um i'll turn it over to lee who can describe a little bit of what you know minor tweaks and adjustments and definitional changes we need to make to the schedule to fit the state requirements sure so i'll just alleviate any nerves by sharing that we're not wildly changing the schedule and so day to day um students student schedules will not be looking very different what we were able to do is look back at how we're utilizing some of the small group time and choice board time and really just modifying some of some of the semantics around some of the language because after mike spoke with the department of ed we were in much closer alignment than we thought we were with the expectations so i'm so grateful that we clarified before upending the entire schedule um so there's two times in the day where we um we're really kind of looking at just adding a little bit more clarity to our definition of that time so the first is that each class has a 30-minute block that we called the win block when is an acronym for what i need um so we're using that for structured tiered small group instruction so for some students that might be working directly with the classroom teacher on remediation or some just reteaching of concepts that they learned earlier in the day some students might be doing extension work they might be working with a paraprofessional or a classroom volunteer or another teacher during that time but all students are engaged in learning even if they're not all together in the same group so that was one time in the schedule where we actually realized we were meeting desi's expectations and we we were using too narrow of a lens um the other time is the choice board independent learning time so that is directed time our teachers are offering students a choice of activities to complete within 30 minutes with options to follow up with the staff member if they have any questions so some of those options on the choice board are on screen some of them are not but they're all related to learning from earlier in the day so for example in a first grade classroom they might be learning about digraphs um like the th sound and the sh sound so their choice board for that afternoon would have opportunities where they could go on lexia and play a game with some um with some of the digraphs they could do a workbook page in the super kids book that has digraph pages or they could play play a game with cards that have digraphs in them so all of those choices would be related to the academic content from earlier in the day and then the teacher would be available to follow up on any of the activities so those were the two times of the day where we're really just clarifying the language and with that clarification we we actually exceed the amount of structured learning time by a couple of minutes so we feel very confident that in the next round of data collection will be well within the parameters of the expectations without causing too much of a disruption for families or our teachers because the feedback we received from the community was really really positive okay great thank you any any questions for lee mike did you want to add something you look unmuted and ready to go i was just ready if there was questions i'm not pushing that there there should be so i think we did a very thorough explanation so i think we're good okay great yeah well i thank you for that for both of you and sorry it took this extra step when we were kind of already cool but at least this was the outcome okay um all right next up is warrants i have several get comfy um i sarah hall authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of fifty thousand nine hundred fifty one thousand thirty five for the warrant dated uh december 10th 2020.

if you look across grade 8 is probably it is the lowest we've been recently but reducing teachers there makes it the highest we've been in a long time and it i really do not feel coming off of a pandemic where a lot of our kids have had very unique academic experiences i do not recommend making a reduction in staffing there it may be that we have to um based on town council recommendations but i would strongly advise against that um in in grade eight as students are preparing to transition to high school coming off of the pandemic i think it's it would be a very poor decision from an educational standpoint so what you see is the class size trend um for seventh eighth in elementary school uh where you see a little bit more uh variability here than you do with the high school what's going to happen is these numbers are going to start to swing back up again as the higher classes from the elementary school transition that next year but the subsequent year into seventh grade and 8th grade those numbers will bounce back and start to pick up again here at the middle school at the high school when we look at staffing the even though the enrollment is down a bit at cheshire high school uh when you look at the number of certified staff and number of students per certified staff member in our uh 21 dergby high schools cheshire high school ranked 17th so it's not like we're flush with staff at chs either uh it's a pretty lean operation and you know like i said we're still finding really good success across the district but it's not a place where um it would be recommended to be cutting staff increasing that ratio again coming off a pandemic particularly at the high school where students aren't even attending every day so again you know if you look at the broad context of factors it really um we are trying to maintain our ratios as we move into the 21 22 budget year this outlines uh the changes in each building and how that with the addition of two staff we're still moving up um in our ratio account the other reality is and myelon and mcbroom talked about this in their report is that we're seeing a huge influx of kindergartners next year there were a number of people who if given the choice decided to hold their children out of kindergarten this year there were also a substantial number of births that correlate with kindergarten for this upcoming school year between those two factors we're going to see a pretty large run in the kindergarten class next year to the point where there's just not enough room in darcy and that's outlined in the milan and macbroom report to the point that we're going to have to shift it's my recommendation at this point to move two classes of kindergartners they'll still be kindergarten at darcy but two classes will have to move back to doolittle and um we have to do that simply because we don't have the space to accommodate uh at darcy and so you know people question the enrollment numbers and people question the my luna my lone and macgroom study this is a real problem that we're facing and it is showing up on our our pre-k doorstep now and so that's really going to be something that both the school modernization and us as a school system confront in the coming years so durgby i i do like to just uh walk you through what do other people like cheshire do what what do other school systems like cheshire uh derg stands for district reference group it was a group assigned by the state many years ago like communities and cheshire spends uh the near bottom of our our group um our return on investment when you look at uh our s.a.t total score in our our connecticut rank in how many dollars per sat point do we spend we're 10th in connecticut still very high and we outperform all those other schools that were above us our s back performance again fifth in connecticut you look at the school systems that are performing ahead of us new canaan you don't want to know what they spend per student our special education performance this is really something um perhaps that i'm proudest of is that our state rank is very closely tied to our increase in special education performance all students are challenged to be complex thinkers they can do well on the state assessment they can do well in labs they can do well in projects they can do well on writing pieces they if you're a complex thinker you can be successful and that is very important for all students to be successful and our special ed students are leading the way there we're very proud of their success our overall ranking for special education also fifth so again something to be incredibly proud of where our students are performing so underscoring the fact that we do present an excellent value it's spending 9.4 million less than the average connecticut school system but fifth in terms of our performance on this back we are we have a national blue ribbon school that we're very proud of highland was just recognized this year by special olympics and they're the first connecticut elementary school named a special olympics champion school so there's an incredible amount to be proud of for the cheshire public schools again the high school it's it's not different we've seen even this past year a very high number of finalists semi-finalists and committed students for national merit 12 national ap scholars which represents an increase in spite of declining enrollment our numbers with ap scholars are growing so we're very proud of that as well and i you know i do like to take an opportunity to remind people and the board is probably tired of hearing me say it and i i have worked in this community for 15 years and have great respect and for the the community as a whole but i've heard from so many parents we move here for education and i jokingly say all the time half joking people don't move here for the night life and protecting our school system is protecting home values it's protecting the vibrancy of the community and there's a lot of research to say that including you know from duke university that they did a meta-analysis of a number of studies better quality schools increased real estate values of houses in their areas improving schools can be a method for improving neighborhoods and stimulating economic growth so this is not just you know for our operating budget for but but for the bigger picture of school modernization it's research based it's important to protect our home values in this community so as i said there's there's three key elements to supporting our school system tonight i'm i'm covering the operational budget last year the town of cheshire made a shift and decided to put the capital budget school building and facility long-term improvement projects on the same calendar is the operating budget review schedule so we're going to talk a bit about that and then of course school modernization is for even longer term so the capital budget just a quick overview we did discuss this at um at the planning committee meeting held on the 11th and vin will go into this in incredible detail i did i just again need to remind you that this five million dollars in the 2122 uh budget and for people watching i know our board is well aware that this is not part of our operating budget this year this is money approved by the planning committee to be reviewed separately from our operating budget to be addressed uh at a later date by the town which we would um implement projects that were recommended and like i said mr maciana will go into that later in our budget process so the key takeaways for tonight as i try and close the book on this opening night and give you time to step back review all the documents for people watching online they will be available on our website immediately following this presentation that includes my presentation and our entire budget book which has an incredible amount of information which so we don't even as a as a school board stop and start asking questions tonight there's just so much to digest tuesday we will return and uh mr maciana will give a more detailed presentation and we'll have the opportunity to uh engage in questions at that time so the pandemic is a is a real wild card that's not considered in this budget process and as i i've illustrated 48 of our budget increase is grounded in uh insurance and i'm going to really try and give a quick overview of that momentarily the remaining 52 is preserving current service as i showed you i think it was twelve thousand dollars would have been considered advancement which isn't even one percent of our increase and certainly well short of one percent of our budget cheshire public schools uh is an outstanding value for our community and i again want to just take the opportunity to commend not just our administrators teachers ias the people who work in our buildings but particularly this year our students have been amazing um to show up and give their best effort every day and in spite of the fact that they've lost so many things that they enjoy in their life whether it be sports or music or theater just being with their friends and as of course our parents as well who've been so supportive of their children and of our school system during this really challenging time in our our history so the finance thing just to kind of put a bow on the insurance right now i'm just going to walk you through a bit of the timeline our budgeted insurance contribution run rate is 725 000 a month and these are round numbers it's not to the penny but it'll give you a sense of why we are where we are i opened by talking about the fact that we made the very reason decision based on our history and the amount of money we had in our medical benefit reserve account to budget 725 000 a month because our expected claims and our history indicated that it would be about eight hundred thousand dollars a month in doing so we figured we would slowly bree bring the pool down to a more appropriate number typically at the low end you're looking for two months of claims reserved um at the high end three and a half maybe and we figured that by undercutting that account we can preserve services and also bring that reserve account down to an appropriate number unfortunately our annual claims from january 1 or excuse me july 1st of this summer to the end of the year our average claim for the month has been 1.1 million it's exceptionally high and it's not got anything to do with covet which is almost shocking uh it's unfortunately due to um several very expensive medical situations and that happens and you feel for those families the way it impacts our budget is that um it's you know not something that you can know will happen obviously hope doesn't happen but that's what we've experienced so the remaining claim reserve we have is one million dollars at this time again if we're looking for two months worth of claims at the minimum right now we have one month at our current run rate the good news is that we are projecting our claim period from january 1st of 2021 through june 30th to be substantially below the 1 million dollars it probably won't be 725 000 which mean we will continue to draw down that reserve but it should be based on our history and the law of averages things should regress toward the mean um that we expected to be significantly lower than a million dollars a month so what we've budgeted in our operating budget for next year that 1.8 million dollar increase that you saw that's increasing our our monthly claim budget to 900 000 a month so that number isn't designed to build the pool back up we we're hopeful that it will but um that would take you know great claim months and who knows maybe that's on the horizon given the very poor months we've had but you can't necessarily predict who's going to get sick when we use our historical data we work with usi our insurance broker and we try and predict the best we can and we'll refine that and then we'll present that later in the month as we get closer to the end of the budget process but i just wanted to give you a sense of not only our history and where we are with our our finances that gives you an explanation of our insurance but also why we are where we are and why we need to fund the way we are um and so you get a better sense of you know what are we actually budgeting so that the board is in a better position to decide if they feel like that number needs to to go anywhere up or down so again um there's a lot to that and mr maciana i'm sure we'll be going in great detail as he always does around our medical benefits account but with it being such a huge part of our budget this year i wanted to make sure we hit on them finally i want to say thank you um to our special budget book all-stars this year they're both students from norton sheridan and colton uh and you know it's it can be hard to read a smile through the mask and these guys make it easy so they were just you know in an otherwise what might be considered a dark budget we wanted to start with a real bright spot and those guys did a great job and we appreciate them allowing us to put them on the cover of our budget book so sheridan colton thank you guys um and again i just want to close by you know thanking the board i don't think people understand the amount of hours that our board members not only put into the budget process but make this 12 month commitment for no pay sure they get to interact with me marlene and ben on a regular basis which is probably in its own right a gift but it's falls way short of what they deserve and i also you know again have to thank our full community particularly during this really difficult time because your commitment and flexibility to our kids and school system has made a world of difference for them it's allowed us to be in school way more than anybody else anticipated substantially more than our peers and again i just want to thank all of our teachers our staff our families and most importantly our students for making that possible so i'm going to jump off of this meeting i'll run back in and join the group and uh i will put up this next slide because i know how mr paraghini likes to make sure that everybody knows and we welcome your participation this is our schedule of upcoming meetings thank you jeff i'll wait till you uh show up the next room to move forward thanks again for your patience no problem thank you dr sullin uh i just want to correct one thing uh jeff it's uh not a 12-month commitment it's a 48-month commitment you know it's so it's a long-term commitment screwing up that that being said uh i'm sure we'll have other members chime in after this but i do want to thank you your team our school district for all the work that goes into this budget especially this current year i know uh quite frankly i'm i'm really pleased with uh this ability to pull this off uh in a thoughtful manner especially with covet and what uh your entire team deals with every day so thank you to everyone on that uh i i was wondering and just for folks watching at home we get these budget binders and uh we did get this awesome photo and i'm wondering uh at some point i can get their autographs on this just to for a nice little keepsake memento but we'll address that later uh that being said we normally don't discuss the pseudonyms proposal in great detail at this meeting but certainly if board members have some comments or uh some high level questions so i'm going to entertain that i know this is a very important budget for me it's and um catherine and it's probably the most important one we've had to deal with in our time on the board so uh before we get into the comments uh and at the end of the meeting we'll through schedule again we will have a series of budget workshops led by the finance committee uh mr grippo and his team uh and usually these are fans committing means at a hall where uh because of so much detail finance community drives the meeting board members get the chance to attend and ask questions those are open to the public and they will be live stream at least the first one uh so there'll be plenty of opportunities over the course of january uh and up to february with the board to submit ideas questions concerns from the public and i urge folks to really pay attention to this one it's going to be uh interesting and even more opportunity when it heads over to the town side for review um in february march so that being said certainly one if there's any comments or questions on the board you don't have to but it's really willing to take them at this time let's go with adam and then tim thank you mr chairman um firstly i i held with tradition and i didn't look at the budget book when it arrived at my house today so i was i wanted to go in fresh to to watch the superintendent's uh presentation and um i i was for the most part pleasantly surprised so far haven't been able to to get into the details yet but uh i look forward to uh looking over uh over this budget with the uh the finance committee uh to get into the details and um and see uh how we can better uh serve the school system for next year thank you thanks adam uh tim thanks tony sorry i have a guest here um jeff with regard to next year just curious your immediate your your current thoughts on covet ending if it does do you do you continue remote learning uh that's a great question tim the state has been talking about that and i think you know based on vaccination timelines and the fact that students school-age children wouldn't be able to access the vaccination that the state is strongly considering allowing remote students again next year but i i there's nothing definitive uh to that point yet okay yeah i'm just i'm just imagining there's probably some parents out there who would be interested in something like that maybe not a lot but some at least um you had mentioned the uh what was it so i'm just curious you mentioned the average annual dollars cost per student versus the state and then you also mentioned the student teacher ratio versus dirt b i'm just wondering if there was like a reason for that using like two different measures or i'm just curious if i if you have those somewhere else and you could send them along at some point i'll be honest the schools because many districts have multiple high schools have to be looked up individually and for me to engage in looking up every single connecticut high school didn't really seem like you know at this point the best use of my time so i just narrow it down to um district group b the towns that are most like treasure now in terms of the per pupil spending that presentation had both the state average dirty schools or the districts listed so they're both all right sorry about that i missed that part we'll cover workshops too thank you um yeah i thought i saw a headline today was there a ciac update today there was um the cfc is permitting districts across connecticut to re-engage in athletics only certain sports those deemed by their medical board as moderate risk are permissible they include boys and girls hockey boys and girls basketball and i think there's one other that i regret not remembering uh no track wrestling uh competitive dance and cheer are not uh considered moderate risk sports and are unable to participate but um our our advice was on in consulting with uh health professionals and our uh attorney cisc is requiring or strongly suggesting that uh parents sign off on a waiver uh and so our attorney's already reviewed that and athletic director will be making that available for those moderate risk sports okay thank you and i think so i think it's the last thing i'm just wondering you had mentioned that uh year to date we're up you said you've added 80 students since october 1st yes do you have do you have any reason to believe like that'll double again and you'll add another 80 in the second half and the thing that's going through my mind literally is do we end up we're trying to deal with space but do we end up in a situation next year where the space constraints are so tight we really have to do major changes i mean beyond beyond where we are right now yeah i think um people at darcy would consider two sections moving to doolittle a major change uh and that would still have us at capacity at darcy we are capable of making some adjustments if 80 students move into the district uh into next year okay it's subsequent years where that trend is predicted to continue where i you know each year draws a little bit more anxiety obviously in our ability to be able to manage that okay thank you sure uh before i go onto the next question uh dr sally i did get an email because my my daughter still joined the high school uh from the athletic department talking about the winter sports uh the letter is actually from uh steve your phone it does detail what's going on in the sports involved it might be good to get out to the board um just so we're all work but thanks yeah that was really literally like late breaking update today so thanks for bringing that up um gonna go back to adam and then to andrew so adam you're up again thank you uh two it's gonna be two questions uh first one is for doolittle um i thought that our classrooms were at capacity at doodle uh so where are those two new kindergarten classes going to be going when i said that we try and find a way to make space i mean that's what we're going to be doing there right now we have some classrooms where we have a couple of different special education teachers sharing a room um and those will more than likely have to be collapsed you know and those people put on carts um and move to other locations to accommodate this there's really no other options you we can't i'm certainly not going to recommend that we put portable units at our schools or anything like that that's a absolute last ditch uh intervention but we're gonna have to pull people out of rooms and share space you know obviously in a global pandemic you're not you want to try and do as little of that as possible but that's that's where we are one second there went over to google yeah i just had a little bit more um you know a little bit more meat on the bone one of the things that we did at doolittle a couple of years ago is we you know basically removed the computer lab which is a relatively large space that we're looking at dividing that and making that a resource area for special education so that we free up the classroom that's currently being used as a resource room for special education so it's yeah it is windowless uh we'll make it work that's you know that's the only solution so you know we go to each building and and we look at it and you know we try and figure out how to you know maximize the use of of the building by making some changes so that one is relatively easy as a first step if this continues to happen it gets a little bit more complex and the sensitivity of course is you don't want to put a lot more kids in classrooms because we're still you know expecting to have pandemic conditions next year hopefully they'll lessen and my second question is um so i think it was at our last business meeting or our last finance meeting we're talking about the dire situation of the uh the medical benefit trust fund and um in the report uh this evening you the wording was at least sounded like you were confident that that high burn rate was going to end and i was just wondering where you got that confidence from girls oh he's going to hand it back to me um i got that from vin matseon no uh actually what we did adam is take a look at the last six years of month over month and the adjustments that have occurred over the years when you roll over into january that's the start of a new plan year for a high deductible healthcare individual so what tends to happen is once that individual has met their deductible usually in the second half of the year the visits medical visits increase and the costs increase over the course of a full year it's still substantially cheaper than going with like a ppo model but our historical performance indicates when you roll over into a new hsa year the claims drop off and the deductible contributions you know kick in mitigating impact so you you really um like i said over our history this is what we've seen but i i feel like uh you know charles schwab add here that past performance does not guarantee future outcomes you know so but the history seems to be that this is what we can anticipate happening so the possibility of actual cost coming in at current burn rate is still there it could double it could frankly double the likelihood is really low that it would double right the the likelihood is and you know i it's hard to put even percentages on it but if i said you know i would say that i'm fairly confident that we're not going to continue with that current burn rate as you should call it it's not um it's very it's unlikely to occur it's not um impossible however which obviously gives all of us pause you know cause for pause here um but we are closely monitoring it there's not a lot that we can do to influence it if i tell people please don't get sick really i don't have a lot of authority there so you know we try and monitor it we try and provide our staff with healthy reminders and take care of their health but at the end of the day it is what it is thank you sure andrew thank you um so tonight we heard about the operational increase of the 5.2 percent and that we'll be getting then we'll be doing a presentation of the cova related operational expenses do you see i'm sure we'll learn this later i'm just wondering do you see this being two separate proposals going to the town council or will they both be rolled into one ask to the town council or meaning that as the world changes over the next several months you know budgeting wise will we be asking for one increase or will it be two separate ass to the town i think you know my recommendation will be two separate the town council designs a budget but they also have a rainy day fund we don't and so i think it makes sense for us to go at this operationally but also it's prudent to inform the council and the community that there is a potential for this and you know like everything else i i'm trying to be very optimistic in 2021 that vaccinations are here by the time we get to the end of a summer season uh that the demand won't be as high but again that's i i don't have crystal ball for that but i think we have to plan for it or at least educate people that there could be a cost for it i totally agree i totally agree with that thank you thank you man uh andrew faith and then we'll go back to tim um just uh back to the medical benefits if i could um how help me here um of those making the claims um how many of them are in the are holders holdovers from the ppo program and and we're moving we're seeing um we're moving most of our staff into the hsa is how is that going to help us and um it may not even be a factor but if you could explain that to me and then i have one follow-on question okay i mean the the simple answer is if an individual is in the ppo or the h or the high deductible health plan or our hmo it's still a claim right claims the difference though is what jeff was talking about come january anyone in the high deductible health plan starts paying their own deductible so those claims aren't coming to us they're paid through the deductible at this point the vast majority of our employees are in the high deductible health plan so i don't anticipate that it's going to change much as i said if you know we're hoping that come january february march we'll see lower claims than we've seen in october november december where most employees have met their deductible and those claims are all coming against us so there's my point is there's not a huge impact because there's not as many employees in the ppo and hmo as they were you know five and more years ago okay so we're not this this million dollars per month is not a factor of just a huge claim of those of those employees or those um staff in you know remnants of the ppo program so to speak and we're liable for that much more no no okay okay and then um okay um that answers that and then jeff you had mentioned you don't want to go to portables so i am i could you explain that to me and and it's probably obvious but if we're up against space constraints just explain to me pros and cons of that if you could i i've worked in a building before with portable units they're really expensive to break in and rent they have to be heated um often cooled because of the configuration of them um just the way they're designed uh so you add a substantial amount of cost they're often relatively unsightly if you to um you know highland and you've seen them out back or norton has them we had a tree fall through the roof they're not the most durable of places in the world either so are they an option absolutely could they um be implemented if necessary yes but if we can find viable solutions that don't have that cost aggravation and look to them that i think you know that's our initial recommendation okay thanks i wouldn't take it off the table okay thank you i'm actually going to go to ann and then 10 because i might finish the round robin of questions but ann and then 10.

there was a provision allowed that if they were on track at the time of the closure that they were allowed to continue and meet the graduation requirement this simply extends that ability for this year for the superintendent to take notice of students who are in unique situations and and hold them harmless if they're on track and making a diligent effort but as you know this this has impacted students across the system quite with incredible variety for some there's thriving but for some it's been quite difficult we can't remove requirements for core content but we could in the case of a student for example who is 10 units short of an elective say that they've met the requirement if the superintendent had that flexibility so that's what 6157 would grant and finally the last one is important that would to make sure that our retention policy mostly applied in the elementary grades but that our retention decisions need to be based this year more on just student grade level standard acquisition think about this if we say that we're going to hold back any student who did not meet the grade level standard this year we could have thousands of students held behind it's just uh unnecessary and not in students best interest it's not that there is no reason for retention there could be age maturity and other things but we know that for some students we don't even have good data on their actual ability because either they've been on uh they've been unable to have the time and attention to spend on school especially during tests because they're helping to monitor siblings or they've had other people kind of involved in their in their school time that causes that to be a complication so those are the two changes for any time we're in a closure which we hope this is our only time we're in enclosure but that would be 61.57 i'll pause there for questions and when you're talking about retention uh the the guideline changed from retention to retain at second and fifth grade is there another grade level or is that now open to retain at any grade when this is when this is done our board policy at the moment does allow retention at at any grade um prior to really eighth grade there's discussion of it and so our our policy does allow for retention typically in our system retention happens in the very earliest grades thank you anybody else have another question for mr strasser i apologize for my um slide problems there i that's all right that's technology thank you for thank you for allowing me to share that information thank you um receive av usd's reopener proposal for successor agreement with a voter mr conrad thank you mr okara um as you know we're in that that time that season we've discussed this about um reopening contract items and the next two uh discussion information items are both related to that uh this first one is just a brief notification to the board to formalize uh the intent of awsc to reopen two articles um our collective bargaining agreement permits this and i'll rather than try to screen share and mess things up i think i'll just read the artifact the exhibit that you have attached to your board agenda but as defined in article 3e of the contract agreement between apple valley unified school district and apple valley unified teachers association av usd intends to reopen the following two articles the first being article 7 association right association rights for the purpose to open and review update clarify and adjust language to enhance efficiencies and support the needs interests and requests of all stakeholders in the collective agreement and the second article is article 12 evaluations to open and review alongside of buddha later in today's meeting as your agency representative for a buddha there is a request to take action to approve these two reopeners so that we can begin the negotiation process on these two articles thank you questions on that any question on that okay mr conrad again for the to receive av uts reopener's proposal for successor agreement with av usd yes um avuda avuta has prepared their reopeners for the board of trustees as well i'll read their exhibit on apple valley unified teachers association letterhead dated january 4th 2021.

that was before you guys made the change so it would be february 11th okay yeah because we're changing that date and that is still a thursday it's a thursday it's the second thursday any conflicts all right let's set that as our future date uh february 11th at 5 30 p.m for the workshop and six o'clock for the meeting okay with that we need a motion to adjourn i move that we adjourn the meeting my second amanda ayman all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeanne berland aye amanda amen aye brandi dubois aye charlene diaz okay we are adjourned thank you very much thank you board member [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] you

this included general fund expenses of thirty two thousand seven hundred sixty two dollars and ninety one cents grant fund and grant fund expenses of eighteen thousand one hundred eighty eight dollars and forty four cents and i signed this on december tenth twenty twenty i sarah hall authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of forty thousand seven hundred forty three dollars and forty eight cents that was all payroll and that warrant was dated december 16 2020 and i signed it december 14 2020. i confirmed with doug that it's fine that i signed it before the actual date of the war i sarah hall authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of twenty four thousand sixty eight dollars and seventy three cents for the warrant dated december twenty first twenty twenty this included general fund expenses of nineteen thousand thirteen dollars and twelve cents and grant fund expenses of 5055.61 and i signed that on december 22nd 2020.

go ahead yeah so um last month i attended a cave webinar on the board's role in the budget process and something very interesting happened in the second half of that webinar there was a lot of talk about shared services between town and board of ed and it seems to me that i know that we do some of that um you've spoken to even about the um medical benefits and um uh not the medical not the the fun but sharing the um expenses of getting everybody town and um and school on the same medical packages and things like that but it seems to me that we do very little of that the when we're talking about not having a rainy day fund but the town having a rainy day fund it seems to me that those are the places that they're talking about having these shared services and having this um they call them rainy day funds special revenue accounts and um what they what i was hearing a lot about was for special ed because that is an account that you just have no control over right and so that shouldn't be maybe maybe that shouldn't be in the the board of ed's budget but that should be in a shared account where you have memorandums of operation or of agreements between the board and the town that clearly states you know what the responsibilities are on both sides but that way it's um it's more of a shared thing than putting the problem on just you know the school side and when you were talking about just now about having a separate budget for the covid related expenses to school that also seems to me to be something that should be have this be in this special account that's that's a shared account that's not just um a school responsibility so i'm wondering if we can start thinking more about um these shared services uh between the town and the board of ed um and really the large responsibility that would fall on sorry jeff you and um and sean the town manager and the superintendent but i really would like to see things start to move in that direction a little bit more and i'd be happy to talk more about it i just wanted to sort of throw it out there tonight but that's all i'll say about it tonight thanks ann shared services pete that i and you acknowledge i just did a couple of quick highlights there and i think we could probably give you some more examples in the workshops uh in terms of shared accounts uh for unique circumstances you know we had talked to sean about that already and um i think maybe one small example of that was at the end of this year this past year where we rolled 200 000 over this year uh for covid expenses um and i i think you know you're talking that that was the exception you're talking about creating more of a rule and you know we can certainly share more on that as we we go through this process thanks anna it's great you bring that up i i attended that seminar with cave i attended two more this week not related but i bring it up because even on our weekly um the cave uh facilitates a weekly quarterback call cheering meeting every thursday just especially during covet uh and i hear costs and shared services talk to that level and um i actually reached out to the chairs yesterday just to say hey you know chester's experiencing an exceptionally high number of high cost claims this year who else is experiencing this and i got a couple responses and i'm i'm i bring this up because i wouldn't surprise me there's a greater push uh from school districts to not to consolidate but get get great efficiencies and shared services so yeah i hope we could talk more about this in the budget process but thanks for bringing that up and that's a valid point um uh that being said i tim you were up next thanks thanks tony uh yeah with regard to the um with regard to the 80 new kids just going back to that for a second the potential for it you know increasing further mid-year first of all is is that like is that unprecedented for you i'm assuming most people historically have moved into town by the time school starts have you ever gotten a number like 80 new kids even in an entire year in an entire year probably in a you know a three four month window absolutely unprecedented okay okay and so just generally speaking about that uh the demographics of those 80 kids are they weighted anywhere either you know where they where they're living in town their age it um is it all kindergartners or is it spread across the years do they all live in one elementary school district um predominantly highland um and it's not necessarily due to um to like new construction but i mean that's the largest geographic footprint so it makes sense um but it's it's not anything where you could say oh my gosh you know 12 people moved into one apartment complex yeah yeah yeah yeah is it mostly you mentioned highland is it mostly younger kids yeah mostly elementary age okay okay all right thank you yeah as seeing as there are no other comments from the board thank you again i want thank you jeff you and your team and the school district he'll put us together it's uh it's always a very meaningful package and uh and for the board for tying tonight and for those that may be watching thank you for your patience uh i i want to also commend jeff that the the presentation was great it was uh efficient and concise uh it's not a not a jab but i'm i i was expecting a much longer presentation giving all the challenges that you and your team are facing this year but i think you cover the topics well we're definitely going to dig into those over the next few weeks that being said um we do have meetings and i'm going to read off the schedule so tonight was the presentation of the superintendent's budget proposal for for fiscal year 2122.

may it please the board of trustees that the president executive board and the entire apple valley unified teachers association respectfully announce a desire to open negotiations with the apple valley unified school district as per the agreement set forth in the 2019-2022 contract a buddha has recognized three areas of concern that we would like to discuss and find solutions to first one compensation article 19. the second one retirement exit strategy also are article 19 and the third one elementary prep time from article 13.

i sarah hall authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of one hundred forty 61 dollars and fifty three cents that was for the warranty did um december thirtieth twenty twenty and that was all payroll and i signed that also on december thirtieth the last one um i sarah hall authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 57 431.16 dated january 13 2021 and i signed that on january 8th um that's it no gifts i will take a motion to adjourn [Music] oh margaret yes sorry i have a question first yeah how can i get the mailings that go out to the parent community i have no student in the school i would love to get them i i would love to add you to our email list okay oh yeah that would be awesome thank you and on the district side not that you're asking but if anyone isn't getting the emails um just email ws moreland um i am not yep so you get the friday update every week so you know please just shoot an email that you'd like it she has a master list that she keeps and okay um please do so thank you all right thanks margaret martin [Laughter] oh no brenda i'm giving you credit you're stuck in that second that all right um all right we'll do roll call vote run run i margaret mark or die brenda brenda i and hall i we are adjourned thank you so much everybody good night you

on january 19th it's tuesday at 7 00 p.m we are gonna have a virtual budget workshop to review uh the first few sections of the budget uh it's going to be mainly diminishing review of accounts on january 21st uh next thursday there's a regular board of ed business meeting it will be virtual on january 26th is a second budget preview at 7 00 pm uh whether that's in person or virtual will be to be determined but the the details that will be out in time at a time in the meeting on january 28th also uh thursday we're gonna have a public informational meeting and board of mental responses to the superintendent's budget possible adopting an abortive budget uh maybe and on february 4th uh if necessary we'll have a special meeting of the board of ed to adopt an education budget we are uh constrained to adopt the budget um i believe it's february 14th in february but we'll confirm that so for those watching plenty opportunities to get in more detail as dr sullivan and team mentioned earlier the entire budget book that the board of ed uses and its deliberations as well as presentation will be made available after this meeting on the cheshire public schools website in fact there's a usual direct link on the board page right to this year's budget process on the material so those will be handy for you that being said there is no other items on the agenda this evening uh is there a motion to adjourn and makes a motion to adjourn is there a second uh andrew first catherine quick second all those in favor uh the motion passes this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone thank you team and we'll be chatting next week have a good evening thanks everybody good night everyone thank you

we look forward to working with the district sincerely under the signature there of christopher watkins lead negotiator and also listed our leslie mcnenley negotiator julie looby negotiator joel lewis negotiator and derek castellanos negotiator um as this is a buddha's reopener for negotiations this year it does not require board action uh during the discussion action section like of avusd's does there is no approval needed by our board in order to proceed with negotiating these two articles i just wanted to clarify why in discussion action we're only going to have one of the two and not both of them so that's all i have for those two presentations unless there's any questions thank you we'll now go to um section number f public comments kylie do we have any public comments we do not have any public comments superintendent's comments lord i just know that there are lots of discussions out there right now about a governor's proposed budget about a grant that has been initiated by the governor proposing that school districts would apply by a february first deadline or a march first deadline to return students to school at this time that grant has not been fully approved it comes from prop 98 funds which are intended for educating the students within a system and the problem with it at this point that is being i think resolved or discussed having to do with the grant has to do with the testing of students and staff this grant would require testing of students and staff on a weekly basis the question that lots of educators are having are when would we educate the kids in the classrooms upon their return or what type of schedule would that look like that would impact student testing and staff testing so more to come on that we haven't said no to the grant but we also will wait until we have further clarification and that it actually has been approved the second thing is is that the governor's budget is out it is much better than um it originally was um proposed or at least anticipated and a lot of the money is one-time money um that we will be looking at from the federal government but there is some good news um it looks like on the horizon having to do with the federal funds that would be coming to school districts right now there's a we're watching very closely full funding of idea many of you know that that's the funding that supports special education students within our system it's an encroachment to serve our students because we're not covered for transportation and other costs associated with that however lots of bills right now that we're watching having to do with full funding so um of course that wouldn't be overnight it would be over a course of several years um right now it looks like about 10 years it would take for it to hit the full funding but any move towards restoring funding under idea is a good move and then just an update having to do with our vaccination i know that there's lots of rumors regarding that as well and when will we have it and when will teachers and staff within our system have access to that initially the phase 1b which covered uh teachers was how it was outlined has been expanded to cover all school staffs which there's you know questions about in the in the phases um phase 1c covers transportation well that doesn't mean that school bus drivers would not have access along with teachers and other staff at a school district so all staff within a district would be covered under phase 1b some of the neighboring counties have already started scheduling with their educators to get the vaccine it is not required but we look for forward to more information tomorrow from our county department of public health we will as a county group of superintendents and led by dr or mr alejandre at the county and be meeting with the department of public health and hopefully have a timeline as to when those vaccines will start being offered to school districts we do know that phase 1a as they have completed the the vaccines for the first responders and hospital staffs if there are extra vaccines those shot clinics or places that are distributing can move down into the other phases which would include education so i will keep updating you as we have further information we have begun serving small groups of staff regarding the willingness and readiness to get a vaccine when they become available because certainly we don't want to turn anything down if it is offered um that's all i have for now thank you thank you very good more comments miss mrs blessing thank you um [Music] i'd like to just say thank you to all the people who have sent me commentary about joining the board and um i would like to encourage you to participate in the district as much as you can so you know what's happening in the district firsthand and again thank you very much i hope you have a great rest of the year thank you miss black saying game mr cell i won't have any really serious comments i just just just want to say that we need to watch out for what the governor proposed in another with the democratic administration coming to federal and hopefully there's a little more money once you but we don't know how much we'll see what what happens that's all i have thank you mr bender well i play expedite the vaccinations maybe we can get back to in-person learning a lot sooner than we thought that's my wish thank you mr raleigh uh nothing uh nothing today thank you uh and for me i attended the the holiday performance by apple valley high school and sandia students it was fabulous and and i also paid close attention to your stock report so i'll be commenting on that a little later and to thank mr schulenberg for the budget report that we had yesterday um it was highly highly informative so if you can keep up with it and begin to pay attention to it maybe we can get this uh the teacher's contract resolved really quickly thank you public hearing due to the streaming process we will take a five minute pause to allow for public comments to be submitted public comments can be sent to av usd underscore board at avusd.org thank you if board members would go ahead and mute their mics then we will call you back when we are done with the delay for the public comment um just for clarification this will be the public hearing on item g1 first and i'll put um a time for it opening as 253 if that's okay with you mrs oppara um it has now been a full five minutes if we can resume okay any comments we did not receive any public comments pertaining to that item okay item number two conduct a public hearing for the public to provide input regarding avuta's reopeners bargaining proposal to the apple valley unified school district starts at 258 due to the streaming process we will take a five-minute pause to allow the public comments to be submitted public comments can be sent to av usd underscored board at avusd.org ah madam president it um has now been a full um five minutes and then also just for records i wanted to clarify that um the first public hearing did close at 258 correct you're muted yes that's correct thank you so you'll want to do the same thing with this public hearing that you close it at what time kylie uh 303 p.m do we have any comments we do not have any public comments okay now we're on item h i need a motion to adjourn to a public meeting of the apple valley unified school district public facilities corporation for a new business as deemed necessary so move second okay all in favor in your pose thank you mr bender the president mr bender conducts this meeting taking roll call then asking for action on any items or approval mr bender you are muted roll call bender here wilson maria present and rick raleigh here items public facilities corporation selection of officers of the board of directors of the apple valley unified school district public facilities corporation president yes it's okay i recommend that we not changing anything this year just because it's not a big but because of the familiarity with the fine public financing especially i agree with that is everybody else that's fine where is that all right with you yeah that's fine with me um we need to find some um position for miss miss uh blessing game so she's not here there are only four members to the um public facilities corporation so you either will make a motion that you want to continue it as it currently is or you will make a motion to um nominate somebody else to take one of those roles and then you would take a vote well i i agree with the team i was just i thought there were five positions now there's only four this time we'd make a change the next time all right all right thank you i agree all right thank you so you need a motion i need a motion um uh to authorize the uh the number the people uh for the annual statement of domestic non-profit cooperation with the state of california is that the one no motion for the president motion for the president that we need a motion for president vice president secretary chief financial officer uh for the board of directors of the apple valley unified school district we're going to maintain the status quo do i have a second our second on favorite one hi i'm sorry we um we do have a vacancy because um mrs davis served as the vice president last year um last year rick did not serve in a specific role um so he just kind of um served in the um unofficial role as director so he can backfill that position or um you guys can can make a decision on who will go into that role i i make emotion that rick goes into that position but yeah that's fine okay so now we can have a vote all in favor hi all right all right so now that puts does that put uh that vacant sport uh spot that um rick left to be filled is that what you're saying yes it's it's um it wouldn't be an official position on the public facilities corporation as there's four um members to that but she can serve um in the unofficial director position that rick would have just vacated when he took the vice president role that mrs donna mrs donna davis last held all in favor aye aye any opposed thank you uh selection of a time and place for the regular meeting of the board of directors meeting uh we stood today january january 13 20 22.

you're taking my job there all right it's almost okay all in favor 1510 hi hi did we have somebody second that motion i'll second it wilson okay okay dennis please finish your job yeah you took right over all right so all we need is a closing time what do you got there 15 11 309 one one moment we have item three um emotion on item three if you could read that out authorization given for the filling of the annual statement of domestic nonprofit corporation with the state of california can i have a motion so move forward i'll second it all in favor aye aye aye aye all right we're gonna go do an adjournment for the meeting of the apple valley unified school district board of trustees for the facilities corporation and the time on that will be three yeah times 310 we need a motion on that i have a second i'll second it let me see all the paper i convene and go back to the regular meeting okay we're still streaming discussion action session it is recommended that the board of trustees discuss and take action on the following items approve the certificated and classified personnel actions as listed so move a second okay all in favor aye aye any opposed number two approve entering into an agreement with public agency retirement service to design and administer a supplementary retirement plan srp for eligible district employees provided there is sufficient employee participation and demonstrated fiscal savings to the district go ahead i'll second it yeah all in favor aye aye new opposed okay number three approved the reopener proposal for apple valley unified school district as per the 2019-2020 contract between the apple valley unified school district and the apple valley unified teachers association so move i'll second it all in favor any opposed consent agenda mr para pardon me for a moment yes um i do have uh as the board has approved entering into an agreement with the pars organization for a supplemental retirement plan i do have a brief presentation related to that item because i do need some additional direction from the board based on plan design and plan structure all right go ahead bear with me i will share screen and i'll take a few minutes to go through a presentation is everybody seeing that screen okay yes the school bus yes thank you yes nice bright school bus um this is a presentation prepared in part by a public agency retirement services for uh your consideration in terms of the structure and design of the supplemental retirement plan that you took action on just a few moments ago uh pars of course uh live just a little history on them they do have over 1900 plans under administration currently with a little under 5 billion dollars in assets under administration sampling of clients you'll see they are widely used in san bernardino county including by the san bernardino county superintendent of schools office and they are used throughout the state of california in terms of structuring these supplemental retirement plans for public agencies these retirement incentive plans typically do encourage long-term employees toward retirement and the savings that these plans achieve really are by replacing the more senior employee with a lower paid employee or not replacing them at all and the real goal behind these incentives is to really increase the number of natural attrition retirements and you'll see as as i've discussed previously in our multi-year projections we always take into account the attrition on the certificated side a certain number of teachers do retire and then a a uh uh a certain percentage of those employees are replaced but we do account for that savings what this supplemental retirement plan it gives us the idea to uh um uh uh it gives us the ability to increase that and increase that savings so in this plan the board approves a contingent plan offering which interested employees must submit a letter of resignation during that enrollment period and at the end end of that enrollment period an analysis is done to determine if there is in fact sufficient cost savings to the district and then at that point the board can determine whether the plan proceeds or is cancelled and as on this slide says that the plan proceeds those employees and their letters of resignation apply if the plan is canceled that particular plan offering in those resignation letters are rescinded um in this proposal plan design and this is the direction i'm looking for from the board is scenario one or scenario two scenario one being a seventy percent of final pay benefit scenario two being a fifty percent of final pay benefit um and i as i have as listed on the slide here the district makes contributions over a five-year period and those contributions are used to fund the purchase of an annuity that the retiree has the choice on how to disperse that annuity quick slide there and here's an example of those different options that the retiree have their first option of course they can opt for a lifetime benefit guaranteed five-year payouts all the way up to a 15 guaranteed payout and i built this slide to illustrate a scenario in that 70 percent of final pay where in in some options mainly i'll take a look at option six your six year guaranteed payout based on the average salary of our target retiree group that payout would cover the current aetna single health health plan cost or the kaiser single health plan cost those are the numbers that are written over on the right hand side to illustrate how those benefit programs would be a a tool to fund health care for retirees in the 50 of final pay you'll see the payouts of course are slightly less because the annuity amount is slightly less um and this again is based on the average salary of that target group but you'll see it still can cover or pay significant percentage of any health and welfare costs for a retiree mainly to bridge to medicare eligibility at age 65.

pars administers this plan they handle all the enrollment they have an online orientation for our employees and they will send benefit benefit enrollment packages to any of the eligible employees and they also have an enrollment line a call center for calls to address any questions that may come up from any potential retirees our eligibility requirements that we have in place or were proposing to have in place for this particular plan is age 55 and 10 years of district service as of june 30th 2021 the two scenarios um seventy percent or fifty percent um need some direction on that and there's some other assumptions listed on that page um just an idea of how many employees are eligible in that target group we have identified 145 of our certificated non-management employees that meet the age 55 and 10 years of district service you'll see the average age there is 61 and a half and the average salary is just shy of a hundred and three thousand dollars so the average individual in that group would have about a three and a half four year bridge to medicare and their average salary would be a hundred and three thousand so at the 50 percent level that's an annuity of just over fifty thousand dollars or at the seventy percent level that's an annuity of just over seventy thousand dollars of which they choose how to take disbursement that's a scattergram illustrating the age and the years of service we have in that target group and this is a important slide because what this does is pars has offered these plans to many districts over the years and they have a lot of data as to how many retirees take them depending on the structure so this is their forecast of what might happen in each of our two scenarios and the numbers of retirements that we'll get over and above our normal attrition you'll see in that 50 percent of final pay they're projecting 24 retirees of course with the higher benefit level they do project more retirees would take it so to illustrate the potential savings that we have this is assuming that 34 retirements over and above our normal attrition if we replace 100 percent of those retirees were still projected to save approximately eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the first year and two point seven million dollars over five years if we replace fifty percent of those thirty four positions at only seventeen you'll see the savings goes up again as not replacing positions there's much more potential for savings the 50 percent final pay of course the savings is still there but not to the same level as pars is projecting we would not have quite as many people take the plan but you can see replacing 50 percent of those 24 retirements we still would save 1.1 million dollars in the first year and projected to save close to five million dollars over five years again these last two slides that are projecting these savings are based on those parse forecasts and this is where at the end of the enrollment period we'll see who in fact has signed up for this and will work with pars to do a a fiscal analysis and give the opportunity and give that information to the board and give you the opportunity to determine if you want to move forward with this plan or rescind the plan offering this is the proposed uh timeline of course we're on january 14th if in fact you have approved so pars will begin working on mailing out those benefit illustration packages based on the scenario that you give me the direction on and we're proposing closing that enrollment window at the end of march which gives our employees that are considering retirement two full months to plan and consider and decide if they would like to enroll and take advantage of this program and then we're proposing the april 8th meeting with the district the board would be given some financial analysis data and determine if this plan moves forward or not and you could see the employees would be would resign as of june 30th and then the benefit checks would commence august first 2021.

any questions i can answer at this point yeah i have a question yes um and the question is um how soon can the employee get this pack this information uh to begin thinking about it i have several questions so i'm going to take it one at a time it's par's intent that all our potential retirees would have the information by the end of this month okay next question uh you did mention something about 50 and 70 can you please make sure you clarify is this 50 every year or is it 50 total thank you the 50 or 70 is a one-time annuity that is created um it is not 50 of their final salary each year for a quick example if an employee at a salary of 100 000 retires and they take advantage of this program and we're at the 50 level um we would the district would fund an annuity of 50 000. over a five year period but the annuity would total only fifty thousand dollars and then the retiree has the option of how to take disbursements from that annuity so you're living it up to the retiree to decide what they do with that annuity put aside for them right it's totally up to the retiree how they how they take the disbursements from their annuity and how they use the funds it's their decision i have a question yes um if the after the five years are up does the uh employee have have the option to continue it on their own well the five-year period is only the district contributions we contribute to the annuities over a five-year period to spread our payments out the employee has the option to take payments from that annuity for up to the lifetime benefit as that slide i showed a lifetime benefit as possible for the retiree or a five-year guaranteed payout all the way up to a 12 year guaranteed payout to continue it without taking anything out once they have that five year period has um terminated is there an option for them to continue contributing that this equal amount of money to that and then decide um say five years later to start taking back from it uh some of the some of the annuity options the disbursement options would be eligible for a rollover option um that would be a question for pars i think to that detail miss blausen game it's really um pars would administer that and work through any of those questions with the employees so i could i could pass that question on to pars thank you so much you go to item j pause for a minute right matt they're going to need to give you some direction regarding which level that the board would like us to um offer whether it's the 70 or the 50 option of the compensation the one-year compensation you need a uh do you need a motion for this i don't need i no sir i don't need motion i just need uh consensus you already had the consent item so it's up to when they when when the teachers get involved they're going to determine if they want to collect at the 50 rate or they want to collect at the 70 percent rate it's not not accurate maria sorry i i may not have explained that well enough the teacher it's it's the district's decision as to what level of benefit we provide whether we create an annuity at the 70 level or we create an annuity at the 50 level that is our decision okay once that annuity is created the teacher then determines how they're going to take the disbursements from that annuity but creating the annuity and structuring the supplemental retirement program is our decision as a district so you did approve entering into an agreement are my my recommendation at this point is to maintain the age of 55 with 10 years of service in apple valley unified school district as was presented on that slide that's that pool of 145 eligible employees who would have the opportunity to retire and enroll in this program but i need direction from the board whether you would like to offer the fifty percent benefit level fifty percent of final salary or seventy percent of final salary in this supplemental retirement program or seventy percent recommendation from the administrative team on this well i can look at the slides if you recall at the 70 percent level pars does forecast a much higher participation and even though it would be a higher cost to the district at that level to fund those annuities with that higher participation we have a potential for more savings both in the initial year and through our five-year funding period well that's not good let's keep it at 70 because i i think like you said it would be a greater incentive when you know that you're going to have some 70 watt of coverage uh in in that period of time so i personally think we need to stay at the 70 instead of 50.

i agree with you okay i agree 70 is beneficial to not just the district but actually the employee or the retiree thank you then i will work with pars to create an offering to uh our employees that are age 55 with 10 years of service in apple valley unified school district at the 70 percent of final salary benefit level right thank you now the final question that i have is if um if the employee lets you know by i think it's much that you had but you don't have the numbers how soon do you tell them you don't have the numbers to continue this this arrangement well uh when the enrollment period ends on march 29th um staff in the business office will sit with pars and we will and pars will perform a financial analysis based on some information of which teachers have enrolled what credentials those teachers have the salary of those particular teachers and they'll do an analysis and project what savings would be if if the board determines to move forward with this plan that information will be brought to you at that's our plan to bring that to you at the meeting on april 8th and at that meeting the board will need to take action to approve the plan moving forward or to rescind the plan if it doesn't facilitate sufficient savings for the district okay thank you so the determination uh final approval by the district board is it have it will generate savings for the district yes it's the intent of this is to generate multi-year savings yes thank you thank you very much consent agenda it is recommended that the board of trustees consider approving a number of agenda items as a consent list consent items are routine in nature and can be enacted in one motion without further discussion this process procedure conserves meeting time for a full discussion of significant issues consent items to be to be approved in one motion are 1 to 22 one through twenty two um the most interference in items one through twenty two i'll say i would like to pull item number four and six except four and six yes so you're going to need a message i'm going to amend the consent items to approve 1 2 3 5 7 to 22.

so move all in favor you need a second second all in favor all right any opposed okay so i pulled item number four uh because it had to do with conducting the first reading of revised board bylaws 9250 and and i would like to hear from mrs nelson about this particular item the um change to this item has to do with the amount of benefits that are received by board members and this follows the csba language and meets the law so as we reviewed policy and board bylaws this was one that was a um had not been amended over the course of time and so as we were changing um and after the you know starting with a brand new board we wanted to make sure that this was in place and we weren't violating any laws by offering a higher benefits package than what is offered to our teachers okay and then i did pull item number six which is a 2020 2021 uh school accountability report cards um and the concern that i have in that one i have already had the conversation with the superintendent but the concern i had in that one was i was just troubled by the fact that there was a lot of safety issues that were addressed in that school accountability report card if we are putting our children in the classrooms we that has to be a number one um priority you know we can't have the kids going into a classroom where the tiles are mis malfunctioning we can't have them in a restroom that is not really good enough and i do know that you know the many of the schools had a score of good but quite a few of them had a score of fair and i thought to myself how can you be a school having a score of a fair fair to me is below c if you were doing a grading period and and that was a little bit uncomfortable for me and i just felt that we that has to be a number one priority to make sure that the children when they go into those classrooms the carpets are not peeling the electrical outlets are working and the tiles are not falling apart you don't have holes and walls and and you don't have leaky faucets those are issues that really concern me because that is our job to make sure that the campus is perfect but after having my conversation with the superintendent i came out of it convinced that this information is about a year behind uh so i'm going to keep reading the sarc report because that is of even though it's outdated it is still a report that gives tells us how our district is doing and this is public information i don't want anybody to get information that has to do with that district that that says we have wires laying around or we have a storage shed that is we make our electrical uh room a storage shed those are the places that you need to make sure that it is safe for our children i don't have children anymore in the school district so i my job is to make sure that any other child that comes through while i'm here that i'm making sure that everything is done right for them um but all all together our schools are doing well but i'm concerned that madam president i can ask um mr schulerberg to do a future um item where we explain the fit report and how that impacts the maintenance and operations department's plan um over the course of time to adjust to any um items that are located um in that that document yeah i would like to have that you know if it's possible just you know instead of because when when we had this board uh i'd what packet it just had too many things that we had to read for for things like when we have to have the sock report we need to have it in when we don't have a lot of things that we need to cover in a board meeting so that we'll have the opportunity to be able to really ask questions i read every single thing that comes to mind it comes to me so i just want to be sure that we don't lose we don't forget to read something that is important to benefit our kids but that's about that's the only reason okay any question on those two yes nelson is the accountability report card based on the williams facility visit the um pat schlosser can answer this but the reality i can let him um take it further than what i'm going to share with you so we have a couple processes we have the williams visits um that as you know were delayed this year um based on uh covet 19.

however we also have a process which we call the fit report which is a group that comes out and walks our campuses and provides information back to each school site which is kind of through multiple layers so our risk management department sees the fit reports to correct any um major issues before they could become a risk problem mr schulenberg's department with maintenance and operations deals with the corrective actions and supports a timeline to remedy any issues so that they go from um fair to good and that includes as we replace carpet within a system as as those plans are laid out they're based on these fit reports um so yes the williams reports do impact us but the fit report is what we utilize to um make corrections on our school campuses because williams is a one day visit right it's not a an ongoing um process so the fit report gets us going through and a much deeper dive on all of our campuses because williams only visits um when you're two days two of our campuses 32 now two two on our district yeah what i would like to see uh uh going forward is some kind of report that gives us a real nice picture of what's happening at each of the schools um you know what are the principals doing what are their assistants doing how are they checking to make sure that the paint is now falling apart that the trees are trimmed so that there is no danger for the children those are the kinds of things that we are paying attention to we cannot micromanage the schools but we just want to be sure that our schools don't come up with these fair reports yeah mr schillenberg does do a report typically to the board in the spring having to do with the fit report and talks about the plans for um often inclusive of what we do over the summer when students aren't present certainly while we've had kids off they have been working through some of the larger issues that they would have had to wait for summer so we can absolutely add that to an agenda in the future thank you so much okay so when matt when do you normally do the um maintenance and operations report i've typically done that either in february or march so it's coming guys we'll just make sure that it's um you'll have a heads up that that's the one that you're asking for okay thank you and now can we approve item number four and six now i'll second it all in favor hi any opposed thank you do we have any staff reports no problem no no staff reports um comments kylie do we have any public comments um we do not have any public comments at this time mrs nelson do you have a comment i do i i want to recognize that both aaron and maisel did an amazing job as they usually do at the beginning of these board meetings um i want to acknowledge that their focus was about connecting students to their school campuses even in these times of coven 19 and learning from home and ways that they have focused on social emotional learning and as a district we are continuing to pay very close attention to that each school site has plans and is working through supporting their students the counselors are are involved and our police department is involved as you know they've transitioned greatly and just this past weekend was law enforcement appreciation day and so i want to acknowledge mr raleigh for being a retired uh officer as well as our entire police force that goes out and knocks on doors right now and checks on kids and make sure they're connected and supported in any way they need so we are fortunate in this district to have our police department and as well as our sheriff's department that supports us when we have to expand outside so i appreciate all of them and and really do um mimic what the students said and we will continue to keep focused on social emotional learning thank you is that it yep mrs blessing game no comments thank you mr so look forward to coming in mr bender no comment mr raleigh i'm not going to add thank you nothing from me um i there being no further business to come before the board of trustees it is recommended that the meeting be adjourned i make a motion that we entertain a german i'm sticking it all in favor hi

aloha i'm senator michelle kidani thank you everyone for joining us here today for our joint briefing of the senate and house education discussion regarding learning loss by students within the do e and our public charter school we have joining us today representatives from the department of education and charter school commission we will start first with the department of education and then proceed straight to the charter school commission for their presentations before taking questions from the members during question and answer representative woodson will call on members of the house to ask their questions and i will call on any senators that have questions so members if you would like to ask a question please use the chat function and message your chair directly with that superintendent kishimoto please start with your presentation mahalo aloha chair kadani uh joe woodson and members of the committee there are a few of us in a shared space so we'll be moving our mask on and off just for added safety i'm christina kishimoto superintendent of the department of education uh thank you for the opportunity to share with you our mitigation strategies to address learning loss with me today i have a team uh that includes deputy superintendent philosomy assistant superintendent for the office of curriculum and instructional design terry ushijima assistant superintendent for the office of strategy innovation and performance rodney luke and assistant superintendent for the office of student support services heidi armstrong if we look at slide two and my understanding was uh are you able to see the slides no dr kishimoto you may share screen though okay nanir kalani is uh it's actually uh driving the slides for us thank you so we're on slides two uh learning loss is directly related to our mission of teaching and learning thus it has been a concern since the onset of the closure of our school facilities that drastically changed conditions for learning this is an equity issue facing all education providers nationwide and we as a national network are all working together to figure this out in terms of defining learning laws and establishing best practices to respond to the conditions at hand which has altered how and where students learn the role of the family how we organize our staff and the resources needed to pro and the resources needed to provide access and ensure student learning success prior to the pandemic we were already actively designing instructional programs aimed at mitigating the learning gap experienced by vulnerable learners students with disabilities english language learners and economically disadvantaged students distance learning has brought to the forefront the gaps that exist amongst our students particularly the technology gap and the family resource gap by design we are better in at in-person instruction therefore not only did we need to have an operational shift to distance learning but we also needed and continue to need quality ongoing training on quality online teaching content and engagement to effectively deliver instruction virtually we needed to ensure students were able to access learning from home a number of our students lacked an adequate device reliable and consistent internet access and an adult capable of assisting in instruction in this new learning environment additionally distance learning has led to an additional subgroup of students who struggle academically we have wrapped our work around learning loss with around a larger essential question the question we're using to guide our work is how do we create a personalized learning a personalized education program that will address the holistic needs of our students while ensuring they acquire the essential knowledge and skills of the current grade level and this is our big picture question as we go to slide three i want to just uh share with you that in october the board adopted the metrics to monitor evaluate and report the department's plans for reopening schools during the 2020-21 school year the department designed an interactive data dashboard to visually track analyze and display key covert related performance indicators requested by the board the dashboard includes data on more than a dozen metrics across three levels statewide by complex area and by school including areas ranging from quarterly student student grades universal screeners and attendance attendance and learning models as well as student access to devices this online resource is updated as as data is collected throughout the year we want to extend our mahalo to our teachers school leaders complex area superintendents and assistant superintendents for their ongoing diligence and commitment of inputting and using the data to strengthen their practice this truly has been a tri-level focus well we are budgeting for our core needs we are also cognizant that funding will be needed for the unknowns that the pandemic may create in the near future if we go to slide four i'm gonna have deputy superintendent speak to some of our data outcomes that we have at this time so aloha everyone i'm just checking to make sure you can hear me fine um so this is the student performance data using the universal screeners last year a federal waiver was granted to suspend statewide assessments for school year 1920 due to the pandemic without the statewide assessment data teachers will are utilizing periodic assessments to target instruction where it is needed most these periodic assessments are referred to as universal screeners and are typically used to see where the students are at the beginning of the year monitor progress at the mid-year and assess growth towards the end of the school year this information is valuable for teachers in schools to provide support for students based on their present level of performance approximately 90 percent of the elementary and middle schools administered the universal screeners at the beginning of the school year that's about 200 schools of the 220 element 223 elementary and middle schools the data shows that the number and percentage of students who performed two or more grade levels below during the first quarter the data is only reflective of the schools that used i ready or star specific screeners in which the data has been captured in the longitudinal data system next slide report card marks or grades are another indicator of student performance and the marks indicate which students are meeting learning expectations and which ones are not teachers work who work closest with their students use their professional judgment of student performance and it is the best measure of how students are progressing this table shows the number of elementary school students performing well below and the number of middle and high school students who received at least one failing grade during the first quarter of the school year it is important to note that the elementary school marks our standards-based this means that the expectation is that students will increase in proficiency and demonstrate growth throughout the course of the school year these are only quarter marks meant to serve as a progress report they are not final course marks students still have the opportunity to pass failing courses by the end of the semester or school year school registrars are currently finalizing second quarter grades in our student information system called infinite campus this data reflects the first quarter performance and will be updated by the end of the month together the data from the universal screeners used at the beginning of the year and the report guards used at the end of first quarter informed classroom instruction and student supports next slide so mitigation strategies we have six major strategies to mitigate the learning loss that have been in play since we closed our school's facilities during quarter one quarter four of last school year we have been implementing strategies throughout the pandemic and i've been flexible in designing and responding to address the learning loss along the way this slide summarizes our strategies along a timeline the numbered strategy the numbered sentences are the strategies and and create the umbrella focus for the department of education strategy one is focusing on essential knowledge and skills of the current grade level this strategy is based on our national recommendations to focus on providing schools with opportunities to learn from their current grade level content of course teachers who teach the essential knowledge and skills necessary to be successful for the current grade level or course content attempting to cover content that may have been missed during the fourth quarter during the previous year will likely likely widen the learning gap strategy two which is focused on formative assessments to close the achievement gap the formative assessments are used to continuously assess student progress toward meeting targeted content standards teachers use the formative assessments to identify their students individual needs to differentiate and attend to them attend to the instructional practices to accelerate learning and create learning experiences that hopefully foster student success study strategy three is continuity and quality education through distance learning the covet 19 pandemic necessitated the need for the schools to utilize distant learning models and this has led to the commitment to provide our students and teachers with the tools they need to be successful and the commitment to provide stu parents and families with technical support to enable them to help their children navigate through this online learning the larger vision is for schools to utilize distance learning as a way to better engage students by providing high quality and engaging learning accessible to in courses not currently available at all schools and flexibility for student choice and voice in their educational process journey this also we hope will increase student engagement and will accelerate learning strategy for in-person learning opportunities the department of education has prioritized students most vulnerable to learning laws to be on campus for in-person learning and has been providing direct services for those in most need for the start of from the start of the school during the second quarter schools began transitioning to blended lotto to the greatest extent possible with more students on campus for a blended model more students will have the opportunity for direct instruction and support from their classroom teacher in-person learning offers teachers greater opportunity to monitor build relations with their students and assess their learning strategy five one two one tutoring one-to-one tutoring when structured carefully is one of the most effective strategies to increase student learning and mitigate learning loss the department is investigating an intensive tutoring program for students in grades five through eight who are two or more years behind in ela and math and we are estimating approximately 25 000 students a focused approach on middle level students to mitigate learning loss can impact individual students who are in most need changing their trajectory of success as they continue their learning to pursue college and career options in high school strategy six summer learning opportunities planning for the summer learning opportunities has already begun complex area superintendents are assessing their student needs considering the types of supports that will be needed to mitigate learning loss and determining what types of summer programming would be most appropriate to offer in their complex areas last summer summer learning programs were spent were expanded to have a wider reach and scope than in the past years with a focus on serving high need and hard to reach students with added opportunities for credit recovery an advancement for secondary students sorry you couldn't hear me i'm gonna go to slide seven on slide seven we're gonna wrap up by just talking about supports for vulnerable students as we look at students holistically we designed our programs to meet their specific needs recognizing that those students can continuously those those needs can continuously change under these pandemic circumstances especially as we consider the impact on the family unit students who are vulnerable who were vulnerable pre-pandemic can face challenges that are exacerbated during a crisis period therefore we were intentional in revisiting our student learning support services for students who receive el services special ed services 504 homeless services and other support services we made it a priority to ensure that our students with disabilities could be on campus for their learning and that their teachers received the supports they needed to effectively deliver instruction and support services both virtually and in person in addition to academic services transportation and related services continued for our students with special needs as appropriate active communications with the families continue to be a priority to ensure that we address specific needs that arose due to the disruption to their normal routine our schools continue to address the needs of their students who are vulnerable to vulnerable to learning loss through models that best meet their student needs and instructional capacity and we'll wrap up on slide eight our schools have been faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of mitigating the impact of a global pandemic and addressing health and safety needs while educating our students and they have done so with true resiliency and tremendous dedication we continue to be hyper responsive to student needs by actively designing supports using data to make student-centered decisions mahalo for your continued support my team and i are available to answer your questions and to engage in this dialogue today i'm sorry i didn't hear chair kidani i'm not sure if you're asking we're ready for the charter school okay thank you so much good afternoon chair kidani chair woodson vice chairs members of the committee thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to come and share with you today i'd like to introduce a couple of people that are joining us our interim i'm i'm sorry i'm yvonne lau the interim executive director of the state public charter school commission i have pj for who is our interim deputy director who will be doing our presentation today i also have two special guests lydia trinidad principal from kuala puu school on molokai and winston sakurai principal school director at kauhau elementary on the windward side of oahu so i'm going to turn it over to pj at this point and he'll be sharing his screen with a short powerpoint presentation there we go aloha everybody wait can we you can hear me correct okay uh so i do need to be able to share my screen and i'm not seeing there we go and wait where is it oh hold on one second i had it up and then it went away my apologies there it is okay um so where we are is slide one so today thank you for having us uh we put together a short little presentation based on the two questions that were asked of us and we put this information out to our schools since we do have 37 separate schools and governing boards that operate we asked our schools to get us the information based on the two questions as um as we can and as you can see uh 20 of our 37 schools were able to reply to us with data and i gave you some information based on where that data has come from and two of the schools that did report i just want to make a note already did have some form of distance or virtual learning as a method of their instructional delivery prior to the pandemic impact so we did have some schools that were already in virtual and distance learning mode prior to the pandemic um and of this we have more than two but of the 20 that replied two of those schools were already involved in that so quickly looking at the data uh our schools use a variety of ways and means to assess students and where they're at the data we received from the 20 schools had a variety of such tools as well so universal screeners such as star renaissance learning nwea iready those are some of the screeners they use also some of the some of the data is based on the grades and the student performance just completion of assignments assessments etc that are school based and school focused so it's not just a universal screener that was used based on the 20 schools that turned in information you can look there the students that were at or in danger of failing that was one of the questions of the 20 schools seven of the schools only have about zero to ten percent of their students that are in danger of failing so they're they're showing that they're doing and performing well you can see there then between 11 and 30 percent students struggling that's another seven schools and then uh 31 to 50 is two schools of the twenty they reported and then uh schools that have over or more than 51 percent of their students that are in danger of failing there are four schools of the 20 that reported that data um a key piece to keep in mind is that our schools are as you know they're all over the place as far as the state and in various areas and they are community based but three of the four schools with significant percentage of students in danger of failing are in high poverty rural areas so i don't want to make a generalized statement because unfortunately that's that's something that we might expect unfortunately however it has been very challenging for those schools uh so i just want to make that clear and then of the seven schools um that are not reporting significant loss that zero to ten percent four of them actually are in um what would be considered urban areas uh close to honolulu or in highly populated areas and the other three are in what would be considered maybe suburban areas so not quite um they're not as remote as some of those other schools so that's a very broad over overview of the data that was sent in to us we've compiled it in a spreadsheet we do have two school leaders to talk about the challenges they've faced as they have embarked on this journey and worked to help their schools and their students and their communities i do want to make a point that the school leaders and their governing boards have worked diligently throughout this whole process to try and create a positive learning environment for their communities each of the 37 school leaders and governing boards that work with them have met frequently and more frequently in many cases to try and meet the needs and the ever-shifting arena that we've been working in with this pandemic but without further ado right now what i'd like to do is keep this screen up and then i'm gonna have um uh lydia trinidad talk about kuala lupu on molokai and then winston sakurai will share his experience with ka ohau here on oahu so lydia um aloha representative kidani woodson and i want to say aloha to my neighbor representative declined to see her name on um as you know molokai uh we've had we've kept our coveted numbers relatively low and that's fortunate for us i want to report that since october we have october to december was our first full full quarter where we did not have to shut down at all so we're really on a roll right now and um although our percentages of failing rate seems rather high i think because we are face to face and we struggle to keep face to face we've been able to mitigate or prevent higher loss of learning i think looking at the data this is actually kind of normal we're not the strongest school academically but our attendance tends to be um we meet the attendance requirement of being in the 90 so our children are coming to school face to face uh what's made this work is that i think during this pandemic our partnerships with the department because of meals transportation with technology and trying to get technology support even from the department have made schools even more prominent in their very basic needs so we can meet the academic needs so i think i think if we can keep the funding for the schools strong we can actually we're actually looking forward to testing i should not say that but we're actually looking forward to we think we can do well but you know teachers are working really hard they wanted the children in school in fact we went from 30 students who are in virtual we're down to half with their parents asking their kids they're coming back face to face um for for this third quarter and into the fourth quarter so as long as we can keep the pandemic under control i think we can keep our numbers and our academic achievement as well as our social engagement and social emotional health of our children well thank you hello tara kadani chair woodson and members of the house and senate education committee um educators across the state and nation have been working so hard during this pandemic and i'm proud to stand side by side with them early last year we saw what was happening and got in touch with principals and superintendents on the east coast uh who shared their experiences with us what their plans were for shutting down schools and so in order to be proactive we actually started on february 26th preparing for extended school closure we asked our teachers to create 20 days of remote learning plans during spring break we did video conference training and then we also distributed ipads to students we talked to families and got them engaged in in terms of this is going to be a different learning environment in the spring we were able to get in contact with 100 of our parents uh during this time and the preparation paid off so 94 of our students attended virtual school daily which is actually even higher than our physical day-to-day attendance rate and the panorama survey also showed that 94 of our students were engaged during this time uh 99 of the students turned in assignments regularly and we were able to conduct 899 virtual class meetings totaling uh 12 000 34 hours and what we found through this whole process is that good teachers are always good teachers and the technology actually amplifies that and amplifies really good teaching and students who are sometimes not engaged in traditional classrooms actually strive in a virtual classroom we had a student that's chronically tardy and absent and was present every single day on time for our virtual classes so preparation was key for our teachers and educational assistants and we found that students now even as early as first grade are composing emails turning in online assignments and even advocating for themselves and these are these are remarkable skills that uh even myself as a child wasn't doing that and so we find this fascinating and we think they're gonna be well prepared for the future even though it's a distressing time for everybody we met every day as a staff teachers governing boards during the summer in preparation for reopening and we were actually able to finally reopen on november 23rd for a full face-to-face learning we followed all of the doh guidelines we created additional classes took up every space on campus for classrooms uh our library and technology teachers went back to the classroom to lower the class sizes and we're so happy that the team came together and made all of this work you know the success of all this is really the teachers the parents the students all are doing their best to make uh the success of not only just uh surviving the pandemic but also thriving during their pandemic and so we're so glad that they were able to not only use you know leverage technology but also return back face-to-face uh to us on campus so thank you for uh giving me the time to share a little bit about our school and so thank you winston and lydia uh and in closing really uh unless yvonne is going to jump on really fast to bring it together i think the the key piece has been that all of our 37 charter schools um which serve their unique communities have been working with as lydia and winston both pointed out with their communities to a certain extent there's been some challenges here and there but they have worked hard to listen and try to meet their needs it's not been perfect but uh we've all been learning constantly and i do want to give a quick thank you to all of our governing board members who are all volunteers who have given up countless hours in governing board meetings to make sure that all processes and procedures have been followed appropriately and that they have met with their school directors and approved plans and listened to plans and listen to presentations from parents and community members so the whole team has come together and i really want to applaud them for that yvonne i joined a pj and thanking all of them for all of their hard work and especially to winston and lydia for joining us today we're happy to take any questions at this time thank you yvonne um can i ask that you send us a physical copy of the slides that were shared today please absolutely we'll do and and members let me remind you now if you have questions please for house members direct them to chair woodson on the chat and for senators direct your questions to me on chat chair woodson would you like to start with the questions please thank you madam chair um house members are there any questions to start off okay we don't have any questions right now madam chair i will wait um we actually just have one question that came in from vice chair capela thank you so much chair um and thank you to everyone who presented um i know it's a trying time for all of us i have a question actually about the impact of budget cuts on staffing reductions um for the doe so my office and i've been looking at the numbers and here's what i've seen to begin the doe is looking at a budget cut that is proportionately far larger than any other department and when you combine all of the numbers including the cuts that the department had to take last year the new proposed cuts furloughs etc you're looking at at least a 400 million dollar funding drop um my question is this though if all of the cuts um that were on the table that are on the table are allowed to stand what will the reduction be in staffing faced by the doe when my office crunches these numbers we think that you're looking at a potential force reduction of 1 700 to 2000 positions including 1 300 teachers and 1 500 1 300 to 1 500 teachers um which is far larger than what you've told all of us and what you've been telling the legislature and the public so i just wanted to know if you could speak to that at all thank you vice chair this is christina kishimoto there there are uh board agenda items that are being published in about one hour or so maybe two hours for the board meeting on the 21st of january i will share that there is very detailed information there by school that you'll be able to see by school and by complex area we've already released it by state office of the number of cuts and the type of position cuts we've been estimated that our cuts will be between one thousand and fifteen hundred of which at least half of those will be teachers the data that's being uh published today which has to go to the board first legally ha will confirm that that is in fact correct that we have in fact i'll just state we have over 300 positions that will potentially be cut of which over 800 are teacher positions this is separate from any further conversations about furloughs which has been held as a separate conversation a labor negotiations question so if there were to be furloughs on top of this where we would have to account for some kind of labor savings i should call them labor savings instead of furloughs at this point if there were additional labor savings that were imposed on the department remember it's about 120 additional million dollars per full year that the department might be accountable to in additional labor savings then yes the numbers would go up exponentially from there right now based on the 164 million dollar cut to our budget for the next biennium each year and the current year 2021 one 100 million dollar cut uh this is this is what we have accounted for and are preparing for potentially unless there are answers let me just clarify though this budget uh this board meeting will include a conversation that i will be having with the board including a vote i'm asking them uh that they are going to be taking on a budget proposal for how the federal funds that we've just had released to us i'm sorry just notified we haven't had the funds released from the federal government yet uh i have a budget proposal for that that will help mitigate some of that capacity loss and so we'll have um we'll have to update those numbers after the 21st once i know what their vote is on my proposed budget and i'm referring to the 183.6 million dollar funds coming to the doe as part of so2 okay thank you thank you dr kishimoto so the numbers that vice chair was referring to it sounds like it does reflect also furloughs or our labor savings as dr kishimoto will be referring to we will have a separate informational briefing as it relates to budget so members are there any questions about learning loss house members if not uh madam chair will kick it back over to you and then i'll ask questions thereafter that's okay okay i don't have uh any senate members asking questions on chat i think that um with the question that was previously asked i would just like to ask dr kishimoto and i i do realize we're having a separate info briefing um on on budget but i would just like a superintendent to clarify the 183.6 million dollars that the feds have designated for hawaii which we have not yet received um is uh to be is sr money which is supposed to be used at the school level is that correct superintendent uh it is approved for uh for education and there are some uh specific areas that are highlighted in that legislation that emphasizes the new types of learning through technology the learning loss uh ppe um type of expenses it does allow us to replace some of the lost dollars to the school level through weighted student formula that's that's the hawaii version of what the feds would be calling out as allowable expenses and then there is a fair share for the charter so charters are encumbered in these funds there's about 10 million dollars that would be the approximate amount of fair share through these monies and just to further clarify superintendent are there any other restrictions on the funds that we will receive from the federal government as to whether or not we are prohibited from furloughing or laying off any teachers so there there will be continued guidance every state superintendent is part of a network that's asked for additional guidance around the maintenance of effort language that's in this legislation and how that will be interpreted in terms of the state's responsibility to maintain some kind of base to the department so that the monies are not supplanting but it does allow for us to put some of that money into what would look like supplanting and so there are lots of flexibilities to this but there is a maintenance of effort requirement the the the strict interpretation of the dollars is that it must go i think we've heard this from our congressional delegation as well that it must be expended in the department of ed and uh as long as we can show that it is addressing covet related matters but also learning loss overall which does not have to be strictly covert related but it can meet all of our learning needs and it provides lots of flexibility for us to design around that and learning needs include staffing and so we can put some of that money towards back into school so that they can retain some of their staff and and this would include also uh the need for the ppes etc superintendent yes um i looked at that as part of my budget proposal to the board and there are areas that are noted in that board item that shows all of the allowable expenses how it relates to hawaii's situation of how our funding works and where we are recommending ppe's is uh it's one area that i have am recommending um an allocation to uh so that we don't have any question as to whether we have enough funds to cover all of our schools it is about a million dollars a month to provide ppe's just for the department of ed thank you chair woodson i still do not have any questions from senators although i do have some i will let you proceed with your questions thank you madam chair we have a question from representative gates thank you chairwoodson uh superintendent kishimoto um my question for you i had a instance where um a constituent who's a teacher uh tested positive for kovid and um was having trouble finding resources and help through doe um to cope with the symptoms and on the illness she was under and so my question to you is uh what support does doe offer teachers who test positive and kind and if you can elaborate on what is the procedures uh when a teacher tests positive or a student at that thank you representative gates thank you for your question i am going to ask deputy universami who is the person that chairs our covert response team for the doe and works hand in hand with the department of health to answer that question representative gates um i'm not sure um if i'm i may get more specificity um because are we talking about what were the next steps after she did test positive or is it that she needed some personal support um in uh remediating her health i'm not quite sure which one how to proceed yeah i guess you could start with um what was the procedure after um that person tested positive but also the it was a a heart-wrenching situation where both of the teacher and her spouse tested positive and they both are teachers and so and they also had two young kids and it was you know a situation where they were in dire need of you know i guess child care or um you know any health support in that matter okay so um so so let me start with systemically is that once they are identified or or presumed that they may have been exposed and there might be a health risk we do ask them to quarantine and isolate and get help from their private provider and it's the private provider that will give them the personal guidance about because we are not necessarily privy to other health conditions that might mitigate how they should care for themselves and their family including their children what we do we do do at the school level is um look at the uh the cleaning of the areas um to ensure that um there's no transmission in the school that we're we're taking care of that piece and then also looking at um even though this person is uh in isolation the question then becomes if they are confirmed positive then they're taking sick leave and if they're still being examined or there's still a question we might consider telework for them when it comes to the personal uh [Music] care of their their students we actually look to the department of health to help us with what are some of the available services for families that are out there we are not necessarily current on every available resource so we actually look to other agencies to support the family in general in giving guidance especially in rural areas or areas that uh because it you know it's the whole state right and um the the resources varies from states um from different parts of the state so just know that we do what we can through the covay response team to uh find out as much as we can and someone is willing to share with us and then point them to resources that are available in the community to help them also know that there is a teleteller health desk in which we have been publicizing since the beginning of uh co-responding covet in which people can call and get information and get support and and that was set up to to be able to respond to individual cases and i'm not sure if that person um knows about that and we are more than happy to share that number again with you so you can pass it on to the individual thank you that was exactly the information i i wanted to have in case you know another uh situation like this arises and uh student uh parents are reaching out as well as teachers reaching out to what do they do once that happened so i appreciate it and representative said we will get that number to you so that um you can share it with that individual but we also want people to know that it is on our website we try to publish it as much as possible so anyone who needs it can get access to that that service great to hear thank you thank you thank you sir uh members any other questions from the house side if not vice chair capela thank you very much chair um so i have a question about campus safety um for the doe and i've received multiple reports from multiple islands um that principles are not always necessarily following doh recommendations regarding colvin with regard to best practices on campus safety school closures etc what is the doe doing to guarantee that teachers are involved in the creation and implementation of campus safety protocols and then beyond that what can teachers do if health regulations are not being followed how can they ensure that these concerns and their own concerns are being addressed so vice chair capela um i i do not have my safety team on uh we were uh informed we were talking about learning law so i have my uh education side of the house on uh so i'm gonna take the this question myself there there has been throughout this process i personally have been on air in the media uh principals have been sharing information out there and complex area superintendents as well that if the community sees an incident that they believe is not following health and safety guidance that uh the complex area superintendent can be contacted the school principal you know depending you know who the complaint is about um there is also out of the office of facilities a hotline um the hotline has been quiet actually the where we've gotten a couple of calls has been directly to a school principal about you know somebody maybe running across campus and didn't have a mask on or a complex area superintendent getting questions about protocols and whether protocol has been violated and so we've been able to mitigate this and we're keeping this at the uh we're addressing this at the tri-level closest to where the complaint stems so if it's related to a school to that school principle if it's concerning the school principal's decisions to that complex area if it's about how the complex area of superintendent is making decisions about health and safety it comes up to one of the assistant superintendents to handle thank you very much dr cashmoto thank you chair thank you vice chair uh members any other questions if not madam sheriff it's okay i will ask a question about learning loss this question is for the department of education if you can please if you're able to put back up the slide that was labeled student performance data universal screener then there if you can put the slide that back up and that slide four i believe that chair is referring to yes this is the one thank you so much so um this particular chart it's indicating with regards to some of your universal screeners that it says here that for elementary school regarding english and math it says 23 percent of students are two grade levels behind or more and then also in middle school the data suggests again it says here 40 for english and 35 for math in terms of students that are two years or more behind where they need to be with regards to their learning my question is um how does this compare to uh pre-covet conditions in terms of where these learners should be in their process and two you made reference earlier dr kishimoto of a national network i'm also curious to know how hawaii as a state is faring against some of our mainland counterparts thank you chairwoodson i'm going to ask terry usuma from our curriculum team to answer the the first part of that related to where we are as compared to previous year good afternoon thank you for that question when we look at previous data on the universal screeners the english language arts data for and the math data for the elementary grades are fairly comparable to what we have seen uh the previous year around first quarter however um you know there it's it's not a straight comparison because you have to also look at the total number of students that were screened in each of the areas but roughly it looks comparable for the middle grades it looks like we have a higher percentage of students who are behind oh it and it's been a gradual increase in the number of students who have been behind but this year the data shows that for math especially it is higher and for ela it um is also higher than the past so the need has the number of students who are performing two or more grade levels behind seems to be increasing even more for the middle level grades okay thank you for that and how does that compare to a national average if you have that information i don't have the exact numbers but that's something that we are definitely exploring and i think now that we're at the midpoint of the school year all the states are looking to see where are we at this point but we know that learning loss is across the nation a big concern there was one study that was published earlier by the nwea and they looked at their particular screener and their results stated that they didn't see so much of an impact in learning loss for english language arts but they did see some learning laws for math and they use their own information but we have to be very cautious with that information also because it uh the the insides or the number of students that were tested was not the same and it's very possible that the report did not include some of the students who were from our most vulnerable populations because they perhaps may not have had the same type of access to these assessments at the beginning of the school year okay thank you for that information and this is most certainly a very challenging situation um but we're where we are with with loss of learning there seems to be some loss it really exacerbates something that i try to allude to from time to time and um that is when we look at where we are with preparing our students for the future in them in an objective sense we have to ask ourselves are our students truly prepared however we're defining that and so i go back to [Music] our nape scores for the viewers that are not familiar nape stands for the national assessment of educational progress and it's a standardized test and i'm not one of these individuals that are for um testing testing and over testing but it is a mandated standardized test in which uh states are see how uh their students do compared to one another and so it's an apples to apples comparison okay so hawaii as a state when you look at our nape scores uh we are below average and that is a level that we have been at for quite some time and then when you expand that out again when you're talking about preparedness you can also take a look at uh the pisa assessment which is voluntary um about 77 70 80 countries participate in that assessment and again it's apples to apples comparison except for state to state comparisons it's it's assessing uh country to country comparison and so for the united states of america the pisa assessment states that we are as a nation ranks around 27th or 28th out of about again 80 countries we have made some progress as it relates to uh reading but we're stagnant with regards to other metrics and so i feel it's it's important that we keep this front of mind again because we're talking about core competencies like reading math at times science and english so these are things that our students need to be need to be able to perform well at and sometimes i believe it's kind of hard to to when you throw out those rankings of those numbers to get a real life application and so what that means in a in an actual setting is as an example you take a country like singapore okay so singapore much smaller than the united states of america of course but still you can do a a direct comparison okay so singapore many would argue have a very high highly effective puppet school system that is able to prepare their kids at the international level and so as a comparison let's take singapore to an average american student okay so if you take as an example an average american student the material that that student learned by the time they graduate high school is the equivalent to what a singaporean student learns by the 10th grade and so already there is a two-year gap in normal situations so what does that mean for our kids it means that if those two students the american and the singaporean student attend college say they attend the same college that means that the singaporean student uh has two years of additional higher education than that of the american student or if they go into the workforce that that means that the singaporean student has two years of skills and training that the american student doesn't have and so these type of reference points i think are important and i would like to see more focus on these types of metrics because they don't say everything but they are most certainly important indicators that i feel we need to do a better job on and like i said before this is not really a teacher problem it's not a principal problem it's that our system is not set up to support teachers and principals like you see in some of these high-performing systems so it's how we structure our system that we need to take a look at um it's not comfortable to hear it's not comfortable to say but it is the truth and uh there's research that backs this up countless white papers countless resources back back to stuff so i i just want everyone to be mindful that that's where we are i would love to hear any types of comments or responses to that analysis from doe or charter schools the chair was sent by may uh superintendent kishimoto again i i will say that i i think your um your overview is spot on the u.s as a nation struggles in competitiveness especially in the area of math and middle school math performance also lags when we're comparing across countries we also know that the more diverse especially racially and economically our student population within the u.s that are concentrated in a district the more challenges there have been in closing that achievement gap again is typically in those areas math and middle school performance overall is where we see that lag a lot of our work has been focused over the past year on the type of supports that are needed in the middle school area and how we rethink engagement of students in the middle grades you can't just keep doing the same thing and so i don't mind a hard conversation a hard truth that i think you're referring to and uh making reference to and i think that there is this incredible opportunity we have by having this kind of dialogue and by um designing having the the leeway to design differently to think about how we continue to expand on things that have been happening here because of support we've got we've gotten to to change up design around early college allowing students after especially after 10th grade to start their college education while in high school at no cost to the student it empowers our poor students to have access it also gives them that confidence that they in fact can do college level work but it also changes our mindset about how we prepare kids for college level work by 10th grade by the end of 10th grade that they are in fact ready to engage so i think that the crisis that we're in has also provided an opportunity across our public school system which includes all of us including charter schools to think about how we design how we take advantage of where we're seeing um surprising impacts of this design design that we've been forced into do we need to have students spend six or more hours in a day in seats in classrooms to accomplish the entire curriculum are there multiple ways in which we can deliver that curriculum leverage leveraging technology so that there are some differentiated pathways we have students who are receiving special ed services where we didn't know if they could be successful or would be successful using technology because that wasn't necessarily part of their design or students that were struggling learners where we tend to say give them more skill building give them more time in their classroom and the fact is that via technology some of those more struggling students have really blossomed via technology and i think someone on the charter school scott was talking about some of those examples that they've seen in their own schools and so i think we we have a lot to solve but we also have this opportunity because of the budget and health crisis but we also have this opportunity to leverage the crisis to say what do we adopt as permanent changes as opposed to saying these were these are temporary changes my biggest and i'll end with this my biggest fear is going back to the old normal because all of the old normal didn't work for all kids part of it did and part of our changes that we've been making work really well we're really excited about the early college and a lot of the progress we're making in some key areas but there are some new um areas of work that i think we've we've we've learned more about and and we need to start moving that into our new normal and i'll toss it to yvonne if she wants to add just from the charter perspective or her team you know just because i know there's so much learning across the board here agree with everything that superintendent um just shared out i think um from from you you've heard from two of our charter school principals and i do think that they're you know the the pandemic forced um all of us into thinking differently about education and we've always that's always been on some something that we've always said we had to do and the pandemic really has forced us into that and i do think that there are a lot of learnings that are happening wherein uh like superintendent said we can't go back to you know when we return when we there's no returning to the previous normal it's going to be a new normal and i think a lot of the things that we are learning our schools are learning and what students are capable of doing is is what i think the positive of this is coming out and that i do think like there's a lot of um things that we learned that we can do differently that i hope we can move forward on so um i share with would send the the data and the information you shared out is spot on we've got a lot of work to do to get our students moving in the right direction but i do think that our schools when they work together when the community is together and they work with their parents i think that's the key um so many of our parents are also struggling but kudos to all of them for for putting in the effort and i think where you're able to see that and where the faculty and the administration and the governing boards and you know educators are able to work together that's when they're able to make up for the challenges um and i think it's that learning that we're gonna move forward on so thank you so much and i appreciate everyone's hard work on that chair if i may can i can i just add one more point because i i would be remiss if i didn't add a point that i think uh ivan and i are would both agree on you know one of the challenges we're in right now is the the predictability and stability of funding for public ed and we're not designed to do long-term planning we do uh annual or by annual uh planning in the and and so we're not designed to say that over the course of the next five ten years we're going to redesign ourselves to be an early college system and this is what we need each year we're not designed that way because there isn't predictability and stability in that funding and i do think that that is you know a related matter even though this is not the funding conversation but it is a related matter in terms of of that predictability if you look at what tennessee just announced this morning um they're gonna announce they they announced a whole tutoring uh one-to-one tutoring program much like we have announced uh that that we'll focus on as a as the next step with our learning loss mitigation but they've also announced additional pay for their teachers to make it more competitive right and so they're saying yes they have a budget crisis but if they don't infuse money into the school system and create stability and longevity in terms of the ability for for longer term planning that that they might lose lose momentum on the kind of things that we would like to do to to really have this change uh be long-term and be permanent and not not an interim step all right thank you dr kishibano thank you both for your comments um i've taken a lot of time i'm going to kick it over to uh cherokee dani i will just say i concur with regards to the funding discussion uh we look forward to continuing that conversation once we have our next informational briefing back to you madam cherokidani thank you chair i think i just wanted to add to that conversation and where we are in the global uh i guess steps of usa and how we how we match up and what dr kishimoto said about our our students at 10th grade you know prepared for college you know one of the things that we have started in the high schools is the early college and um unfortunately what i what i did see in the budget was a 50 cut to that and i think these are some of the things that we have to look at when we start discussing the budget but on to the questions at hand with regarding to learning loss i was curious and i wanted to ask winston sakurai the student that did not do well in person but did really well virtually when you guys went back transition back to school how did that student fare he he well the student actually is doing a lot better and the reason why is because the teacher was able to establish that relationship which is probably one of the most important things in terms of actually educating a child if a child believes in the teacher looks up to the teacher they'll do anything for the teacher and and during the online time he was there to be able to connect with that teacher and so that's where we see them thriving uh when they're coming back to school so yes uh uh it's a student that we've been working with for a while that's transferred in last year and then we're able to get them up to speed for this year so thank you for the question great that that's really great to hear um superintendent i and this also for yvonne after um what are the plans to assess students and learning for the remaining two quarters and what are if you have plans do you know what the cost would be so i'm going to have brent and luke from our office of uh strategy innovation performance uh speak to the the plans um i'm not sure that i have the financials in front of me uh chair kadani but we can we can give you that follow-up as a follow-up good afternoon chair kidani and and members um in regards to our plans in regards to moving forward with assessments uh piggybacking a little bit about what deputy shared i mean it's always uh keeping the the finger at the pulse in regards to classroom teachers so that is always ongoing as we look at informal types of assessments um one being being the universal screener and usually the universal screener is done three times a year typically so it's done in the in the beginning like what we've done to get a handle in regards to student learning and and being able to structure uh the instructional design of what students need and then it's also done at the middle of the school year and also at the end of the school year so it's done usually uh three times a year um so that's one piece in regards to the diagnostic and then um we also know that that teachers are providing ongoing assessments whether it's through a universal screener it's through observations it's it's daily assignments and so forth so although that's not uh uh assessment in a sense it is an assessment in regards to the teacher's um awareness of where students are at to provide the instructional needs for all students the only thing i will add is that we are still obligated to offer also the smarter balance assessment so even though we had a waiver a year ago across the nation we have heard both from the outgoing administration and the incoming administration that that assessment will continue to happen and so there are modifications we're making uh that we're exploring about length of the the assessment and so forth and that but that will give us the same areas of uh feedback uh on how students are doing this year compared to the assessment data we had from two years ago the summative assessment so superintendent is the um i'm sorry go ahead yvonne go ahead and ask your question yeah so so one of the questions i had as to how you're going to uh you know help with the remedial activities for those students that are failing is is the department planning to hire teachers or contract tutors or what for summer learning programs learning hubs so i'm going to have philosophy sami answer a question she and uh terry usuma and heidi armstrong can can answer this question um they are working together as a team with all of the principles and complex areas superintendents um so allah senator um great question we have uh started the planning process with our complex serious leaders to determine not only which students will need help during the summer but what types of designs make sense for what they are experiencing and what they believe our students will need during those summer months and we tend to think of them as extended learning time um the the agreement that we had in the leadership team meeting was that we would give the the complex area leaders timed um up to the end of january to have conversations with their principals the schools to take a look at the current midterm data grades that tell them which students are still floundering and may need help during the summer to also then think about given their unique context and what what they found out worked last summer and what they might want to carry forward what are some new innovation or designs that they want to carry forward in the summer we have put money aside for that but we have not decided exactly what the design will be because we want to ensure that the the influence from the schools and the complex area have a voice and influence in terms of what that design looks like we do believe that there will be summer learning programming that will be done it may look different be depending on the needs and the focus of the students and we can give you more detailed information as we get that back from the complex areas and their designs thank you yvonne you want to answer that question and then we'll go back to the first question and let you answer that sure i i just wanted to note that all of our charter schools all are as public schools also take the smarter balance assessment so that will be as that's administered our charter schools will be administering those assessments as well and they will you know get that information and the data back on how well or not well their students are doing each individual school has their own assessments you've heard the variety of universal screeners and other kinds of formative assessment tools i'm going to ask pj and perhaps winston and lydia to help fill in some of that information for us right so as much as our school our schools will all take the standardized test that's required of us and make sure that you know we do our best on that that being said i mean many of our charter schools uh make it clear that standardized testing only shows a certain portion or what where our students are at and so many of them also develop their own assessments of student performance and student learning and so we throughout this pandemic but anyways as part of our role as the authorizer we continue to encourage our schools to capture that information and be able to share that it's an important piece of the chartering movement so it's not just the standardized score but we also paint a picture with other elements for some of our play space or project-based schools and some of the student work that they portfolios that they put together so it's not just a matter of um where they're performing on the standardized test though those are important and those those do show a picture it's those other elements that our charter schools also work at painting an entire picture of the student not just that um standardized performance piece uh winston and lydia do you want to jump in on that i i'll just share a couple of things we use uh some online uh programs such as ixl and seesaw where we actually keep that open during the summer so students uh even last summer we kept the google classroom and those online platforms on so students could actually progress uh and actually learn during the summer but we're using that data actually to see how they're progressing so the skills development that we're seeing actually even during the pandemic when we're shut down students actually did three times as much online in these programs that is not a replacement for teachers at all but actually help them to mitigate any kind of loss of of instruction uh or skill development and just going back to what chair woodson says you know our our families here look at the test scores uh and expect the test scores to be at the highest and we try to provide uh that as part of our programming uh the core content is so important uh and it's not an uh either or uh but it's a it's a both and what we do that where we do that uh core content the direct instruction we do the project-based learning to supplement the critical skills development and we teach character and we think all those things together high test scores students who are able to communicate and collaborate well and then those who are ethically sound and make good decisions for not just themselves but for the world those are going to be the most successful students and most successful people leading us forward um i'd like to jump in um just so you know that uh kuala poo is a total opposite of uh winston school uh but we do use many of the assessments that the doe uses such as the nwea we use also dibbles and we also use achieve 3000 as part of our assessment program all of that measures or helps us in addition to s back scores so we try to use um many different ways of measuring progress instead of just the expat we also are hoping that we have um we are immersion school also the o uh hawaiian immersion test so i think as charter schools we want to look beyond just the standardized test scores i think that's why we exist i think especially in this pandemic one of our key things was looking at the social emotional health of our children perhaps before anything else it was get the children in school and see how they're doing and if there's one thing that we hang our hat on is attendance perhaps not as a punitive measure but if they like school they will come they want to be here so our attendance was always pretty decent and it's even better now but parents are keeping the children at home so that they are safe they are in quarantine and they are conscious of their community being safe so if they're keeping their kids at home they're letting us know one thing i've seen in this pandemic on molokai is that parents do make a difference and we are shifting our thought from parents as supporters supporters but also as hey teachers let's use the parents as your as the child's personal ea and let's see if we can do even more training for the parents especially if they stay at home it's hard on the parents they want to send their children so test scores are important but i think during this time the social emotional health of children their parents and of the community sometimes have to take precedence before anything else we're happy that we can provide art we are happy that we can even provide pe face to face and that's where the measure during this time i feel needs to be thank you thank you i think uh we are probably a few minutes away from our uh um the end of this uh session so i will ask one more question share woodson and then i will turn it back over to you um so i guess i'm trying to find out superintendent and also probably for uh the charter schools um what data will be used to to determine the priority focus for how we do remedial activities for our students how are we substantiating what exactly our students need i think i'll answer that question again we use our achieve we use instructional data we use universal screeners such as nwea and dibbles but so all of those three and if we can we'll use uh s back scores too so we each school or at least kuala peru we have uh measures in place to determine which students need tier one support would be tutoring or even tier three support um and it's something that we are actually doing now and trying to get other programs do it whatever we can tutoring in school after school um we do have the 21st century funds our molokai complex has those funds um the thing the one thing that i could use help on is sometimes these federal programs require the 48 college credits and the or taking of the parapro assessments these i i cannot find 48 college credit students to work part-time or students who have taken college credits i even cannot have um the alternative is the what's that test um that they can take the parapro assessment that is not even offered on multi or not that i know of anyway and if we can get some of these tests or some of these requirements waived for rural areas that would be helpful so i can get tutors i actually have some money to provide tutoring i just can't get the find the bodies to fill these positions so if i could get help or some kind of temporary waiver for the parapro assessment to be offered on molokai or some kind of waiter waiver for not having the college the 48 college credits and the and the math 100 or the english that would be helpful even if it's just a temporary uh suspension of those requirements right now for we can hire substitute teachers without bachelors i think certain dish complexes like molokai uh we are able to get substitute teachers who do not have the bachelor's degree so um if you're asking for help that's where we could use some help in getting some of the using some of our funds for these tutoring programs that will have to be addressed by our charter school clinician yvonne good thank you dr kishimoto thank you madam chair there are many sources of data we'll be using but certainly the at the elementary level we have standard space report cards students are making progress based on those learning standards and and we can see which students are not meeting expectations at this time and will monitor whether they're going to need extra time over the summer and so elementary school principals certainly are uh very good at knowing how to design uh summer school um what we're going to have is the the potential of more students participating in an expanded version of summer school so it's not just the students who are falling behind in math and and literacy but also opportunities for enrichment engagement and social emotional learning support programming to have that positive transition for students so whether that includes stepping up more around arts programming over the summer for that kind of making sure students are are excited about continuing learning coming back into classrooms you know uh preparing for that kind of kind of transition that's one level as you get up the grades we have the data that we continue to monitor around uh credit completion uh at the at the secondary level and you know whether that's uh credit recovery uh support over the summer and providing that which will certainly happen we expanded that this past summer but also providing time and opportunity for um authentic additional credits right so new credits and and not just saying we're only doing catch-up but there may be opportunities for students to continue to do some unique learning or additional learning and continue to advance including early college we will continue work that we started we started a pilot this past year where we identified several offices in the doe that have other experts other employee groups beyond teachers so whether that's an engineer or communications person an hr person and so for our seniors who are transitioning to college or who don't have a clear pathway we are providing expanded opportunities for internships here or in the doe and and so we provided that last summer it was extremely successful it was small but very successful now we have a model for providing paid internships with based on students interests in some of these areas so that's also part of how we're thinking about some of some are learning uh much more broader than just thinking about credit recovery and more typical summer school design of of mitigating loss but also having that those enrichment opportunities again keeping kids connected with teachers and with the education community but schools have rich amount of data if you want additional information about the specific data that we're using rodney can answer rodney luke aslu can answer questions about the data we collect but we'll let you tell us if you want that additional information okay well i'm certain that uh if any of uh the members listening do want that that they can reach out directly to you chair woodson i will turn it back over to you thank you thank you madam chair uh members i have one additional question but are there any other house members that have inquiries there's no one else okay um i want to circle back to something that was discussed earlier and it's not directly related but i still think it's important to to kind of nail down some answers uh and i'm going to ask this question through a hypothetical um and it's regarding the doh safety parameters and learning models and currently right now um as it as it stands the decision as to what kind of educational delivery system to offer resides within the authority of the complex area superintendent and also the principal and my uh question is let's just say that we're in a situation to where the doh guidelines of a county exceeds the cove positivity rate that suggests that you should revert back to distance learning but a principal or a cas decides to keep that campus or that complex area open with full in-class instruction we know that uh families have the option of of continuing with distance learning or to move forward with some sort of blended learning model but what are the options for educators do they have to go back to campus and teach on campus if in fact we're in a situation to where there's a there's a conflict of opinion between whether or not a school should be open or not when looking at and considering the doh parameters so let me let me start answering that question and then i'll ask deputy running basami again as our covet lead in in terms of the team that's working directly with doh the emergency proclamation from the governor's office does not include the education system that includes all of us across system types in terms of closing down when the the counties in the state is closing down there is a separation so that there are considerations made with doh support and guidance around the scope of decision that we should be making so as an example in recent case escalation there is a discussion with the department of health around uh and and variety of education leaders who are making these decisions depending on region around the uh goal of of continuing to have stability for families and not keep changing models when there are some changes the department of health provides very clear guidance and direction when they are stating to us we are concerned about what the data is showing where we're projecting and the need to to shut down an area they that's not where we've been our relative case count has been low the stemming of cases from the school system that's not where the positivity rate is stemming from so they're balancing their guidance to us between community data data from the school and the overall social emotional health as well of our community our students and our families in terms of providing stability and so the the school principal and causes work together to determine within that range of decision making that doh provides how they're making a decision uh whether to open up any further but in general we're saying if there are concerns about escalating cases as we watch that we will hold to not opening any further but we don't want to close reopen close reopen and destabilize our community and so that's that's a lot of the the balancing uh that is happening and i'll have um deputy owner some provide additional comment if i miss any major points and then see if there's further specific areas you want us to respond to yes and and thank you so we just put out a recent advisory yesterday as we knew that the the changes in the covet community spread was going to trigger some questioning about school models and we reminded folks that the threshold set by doh with um looking at what cdc was reporting at the time were were to use to be used to assist not to mandate because if it was a mandate you would see private public and charter schools all closing down because now it's a health mandate so it's just a reminder that it is act the thresholds are actually a way to assist on people to look at the leaders to take a look at the data um the second thing is that um that the doh in in conversing with them yesterday was uh to really agree on that there are other factors that we should be looking at our ability to hold and maintain the mitigation strat the mitigation strategies from cdc the five mitigation strategies everybody knows what they are but more importantly and and this is something that i'm not i can i can pass the link to you was yesterday cdc came out with a new study um and uh i can share the link with you but bottom line is the discussion um of the study says cdc recommends that k-12 schools be the last setting to close after all mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely cdc officers tools and it goes on to but basically what there's what the study showed was that um that in-person learning is not necessarily related to uh the spread of uh coven in the community and that is that is an important factor in being able to weigh whether or not our school should stay open or uh keep pulling back all right thank you i have a follow-up question but uh madam chair kidani has a thank you chair yeah i i just wanted to note that uh the dui public schools are kind of at a disadvantage in knowing this like the charter schools you know and let their families know right away because they know by school in the doe we go by complex areas so the families are at a disadvantage um to make that decision for themselves for the safety of their families and i just wanted to point that out because it's one of the things that i've uh said over and over that i think the reporting should be by schools thank you thank you madam chair it is most certainly a very challenging circumstance right you're trying to balance learning with safety and it's most certainly not easy if the department education can answer this question we are also hearing reports that if a school is in class instruction full-time and there are educators that are requesting that they continue conducting their teaching through a uh uh um a long distance learning apparati that that request is getting denied or they have to take they define us the teachers have to take sick leave um in order to for the for the school to honor that request i know if that's true but i would like to to hear if if the department is hearing any of that and uh if it is true my concern is of course that there's a lot of reports that are being issued and this is a obviously a brand new virus but we do know for a fact that the virus can be transmitted from child to child and from child to adult and so if there are teachers that are concerned with their safety they might have as an example seniors in their household or they might themselves have a pre-existing condition i just humbly request that there be some consideration and flexibility giving to those educators that find themselves in that circumstance the department of health guidelines does not do does not recommend point in time counts it says you're supposed to look at the infection rate over time and so we are also hearing right now that principles going back with full class instruction and that they are moving forward with things like assemblies and so in my mind that doesn't seem to be appropriate although that is a report i have not verified it but i would love to hear if the department has heard any of that so we have a telework policy that is continuously being looked at and we collect telework data uh in terms of how much how many employees are turned down for uh telework requests and why they were turned down and whether accommodations can be made so that's a you know it's a living breathing policy we're constantly going back to it we are collecting and monitoring that data and we are as a leadership team continuously talking about how we provide the in-person supports to struggling students and balance that with requests to work via technology or via teleteller work uh which would run contrary to meeting the needs for for the in-person instruction and so school principals are constantly looking at their staffing models and complex superintendents are involved with that and then at the state level we're looking at that our office of talent management reviews that as we go into this semester we are looking at where it is safe and we're ready to open up more in person knowing that we do have students who are struggling via technology learning that we don't want to have them lose an entire year and so there's prioritization being made as that happens schools are making decisions about how that learning structure is is designed at the school level knowing that that's not going to look the same as pre-covert times at this point so no one is filling up a classroom fully in their pre-covert format they are students more students being given time on campus doh still has guidance that we are under where we can only have up to 50 of students anyway at one time we still have to meet all the distancing we still have to have universal masking there are very few health exceptions for that in fact you go into our special ed classrooms i know as armstrong hasn't spoken in this session but she has lots of information she could write as well and special ed but you go into our special ed classrooms um and uh students with significant physical needs or are in masks um and so the tremendous work you know that everyone is doing to have universal masking and we hold that very very seriously um and so it's it's that balance uh whether there are um uh assembly assemblies and what someone is calling an assembly you know that's we're going to keep getting questions we get them all the time we will continue to get them as we keep rolling out the support structure for our students there is um a memo that i sent out in this week around you know gatherings and not having those large group gatherings we still have that on hold uh the what we are looking at is uh delaying the decisions around graduations because my heart breaks with parents and kids who who would love to have that ceremony and so how we can have that ceremony uh we are we're gonna hold off a little bit to see you know how far we can go with with having that gathering at the end of the year to some extent uh with certain conditions you know to see if we can do that or whether we're still going to have to do some kind of virtual uh uh graduation but we just provided guidance around that those kind of group gatherings we're still holding to that again we can answer to specific situations um you know if you have something specific to to send to us uh where you've heard something uh but we we have we have quite an extensive network of a team with the tri-level as we hear something whether it's a complaint or a question or is this okay that depending who gets that that gets that gets pushed right into the network so that we're supporting one another with those decisions and providing continued clarity of information um in a complex situation of how we make these decisions um in during this health pandemic i hope that that gives you at least the framework and context by which we're doing this we are we have not opened ourselves up beyond what is this the the already established doh guidance uh that continues into this semester yeah thank you dr keisha but all uh just for reference members the current uh infection number is uh 3.7 the average so that suggests uh blended learning model not full in class instruction these are hard questions and just know that we appreciate everything that you folks are doing the department of education and charter schools it is not an easy task the work that you do is crucially important because it's about the future but we still have to ask these hard questions so that's why we're doing that i think we're going to wrap up here i want to also make reference though for the members and the audience's edification there was a report recently by unicef called averting a lost generation and it speaks to the covet 19 pandemic and the negative impacts uh these negative impacts have in fact been global and we know that 600 million students as of november have been negatively impacted because of learning loss and that's because of school closures and so this is something that everyone around the globe is dealing with and here in hawaii we most certainly have the talent we have the know-how to make sure that we move forward in the future so we have to keep pressing on i wanted to thank everyone for being on this call madam chair um it's it's always a privilege and honor to work with you and your team i look forward to doing so uh this year and um with that i am going to turn it back over to cherokee dhani for any last remarks thank you chair woodson i just wanted to thank you for coming up with this idea i think it was a great discussion thank you all of all of you for participating and i look forward even to receiving the slides from from you that we can distribute to the members thank you so much be safe have a great weekend thank you thank you everybody thank you aloha everyone you

is asked to enter so it was perfectly good good that she's coming in all right well curtis i'm going to start i'm going to call this meeting to order dr foley how about roll call this morning president kaler members of the board please let the records show that we have four members who are able to join us this morning uh vice president reece is unable to join us today thank you very much um i move that we approve the agenda second all those in favor aye aye is tiffany in yet um your mic is off and your camera well my camera's not off it's not working so i'm trying to switch computers just we're voting on the agenda yeah i know i'm here i just can't get my camera to work on an eye or a knee motion carries four zero um so good morning everybody thank you for giving up your saturday mornings for our board training with asba uh nikki whaley will be leading us and she just gave us a little background while we were um waiting for tiffany to join us so thank you for that um i want to kind of preface today um first of all you know if you need to go get a drink get a drink if you have to go the restroom go the restroom this is very informal and also let's just because this is team building i'd really like to keep it as informal as possible i know we do have some doctors in the house but you can call me amy today i would i would love that just because i think this is a very important time for us to um just be a team building exercise so be casual professional but casual and i welcome you all here this morning so i'll pass it over to nikki great good morning everyone i'm so excited to be here um i'm gonna give you a little bit of an overview of what we're gonna do today we are gonna cover some roles and responsibilities and that's really something that you may already know it's always good to get a reminder um especially as things uh progress and get more um notice so what i mean is when we have something like covid where a lot of people are paying attention and a lot of people have input and a lot of people are going to try to want to contact you it's important to remember what your roles and responsibilities are so that you don't kind of get sucked in into getting out of your lane because that usually causes some issues so not that that's happening yet i don't know what that situation is um i also want to preface this with saying that a lot of times people think training comes in their experiences when you've done something wrong or you've messed up that is not the case here um we love when people ask for training when they're just trying to do better they want professional development and actually when we go into roles and responsibilities we're going to be discussing the eight characteristics of effective boards and learning together and doing training is one of those characteristics so you are actually practicing best practices for for board service so i do applaud you all for making the time to do that so just for the audience my name is nikki whaley and i work with arizona school boards association i do training and development which means that i provide training and support and facilitation to school board members and districts throughout the state of arizona i also am a school board member myself in the phoenix area and so i bring that perspective as well as a background in human resources and children and family services so um without further to do i am going to pull up our first powerpoint and of course i want to echo what amy had said that as we move forward do what you need to do but i will let you know that we will be taking periodic breaks um throughout this especially as we switch between the two topics for today the other one being team members style so one participant can share at a time and if people can give me a thumbs up when they see the screen awesome okay so as we talked about today this is a productive space we're to be you know learning and growing together going through the responsibilities a characteristics and then we're also going to talk about policy governing of school boards and and talking a little bit about self-evaluation and continuous improvement so um real quickly i think it is always good especially when we're getting to know each other i'm sure you all know it seems like you know each other pretty well but i'm not really sure how well you know each other so if you could just very quickly uh unmute um and what i'll do is i'll call names so that we're not all talking over each other i'll just call them in the order that i have them here um if you could just give your name how many years you've been on the board and what brought you to board service just in a couple sentences that would be great so i'm going to start with jill is the first person that i see hi i'm jill wilson um i've been on the board for two years um my why is for the kids it's always has been um i really want to just make sure that they're getting the proper education um i've been attending board meetings for probably three or four years before i even became on the board pretty regularly thank you thank you amy uh this is my sixth year i'm sorry fifth year my term is up next year and my why's always been i am passionate about public education i think that if public education were to ever go away or is not a priority in our country it would be um devastating for so many families so um i'm just passionate about education and i love being a part of this community great thank you don so i'm not my i'm don foley associate superintendent i've not been um a board member but this is my 26th year in um education for me my passion has always been teaching and learning uh that is meaningful teaching and learning impactful um whether it's in the classroom or at the district level at the university level that's that's my passion great thank you so much um tiffany i know we don't have a video but i think we have audio yes i'm hoping to change computers at some point but um i'm tiffany schultz and i have been on the board for uh about a minute i think it's been uh 16 days and my wise is my passion for public education and supporting uh students and making sure that uh like amy said public education continues i i have a strong feelings on that and my children thank you tiffany my name is shawna i am the director of special education i have been in education for 19 years that's a long time um and this is my uh 15th year with the district great thank you so much michael good morning um michael fowler and i'm uh the assistant superintendent of support services i'm actually in my ninth year here with higley which is my 23rd year in arizona and if you count my experience north of the border actually started teaching and and being administrator in canada this is actually my 33rd year it kind of sounds scary when you say it but it's my 33rd year as an educator but you must be like 43 right yeah i wish but uh no i i i really value um making a difference for students and uh through the different levels that i've been involved um you know starting at a classroom teacher um the the as i've moved up the chain in different areas um i enjoy the ability to influence more people you know when you're a principal you're you're having the ability to have an impact on an entire campus and now as a district administrator we're making decisions and able to influence the entire district it's it can be very rewarding thank you mom good morning i'm mom martins i'm the executive director of human resources for higley this is the start of my fourth school year in higley uh prior to that i came from the chicagoland area and um been in education 17 years like dawn a mix of higher education so higley is my first pre-k 12 school district and always knew i wanted to be well it took me a little bit but in college realized i wanted to be an education to help others um didn't matter what phase great thank you mom michelle hi i'm michelle anderson um this is my first year on the board but i have uh i'm on my 16th year in education i had uh 12 years in higley through various positions i've taught i've worked in human resources i was governing board secretary for a little bit in the district and i've taught in a couple of other districts as well my reason why is because education is just something i've pursued since a child it's it is it's not you hear it a lot but it is what i played i was the only child for a very long time and so it was teaching my stuffed animals and using my mom's college books you know pretending like i knew anything but i really enjoyed it um mom just says i'm bossy and that could be a lot of it but uh um being that i have such a wide range all these different um jobs that i've had in education is just my pursuit of wanting to be a part of the decision making and giving advice and helping out and contributing to making on the organization and education as a whole better i've just jumped in spaces been asked to go places sought out positions and it truly is just something that as much as i try to push back and say i don't want to do this anymore because it just it physically hurts sometimes to be an education and it hurts the heart and the soul i just keep coming back it's it's where i am and you know how i was created to be and i am overjoyed to be in this position it's it's good to be here and i'm very excited to work with um all the ladies on the team and all the gentlemen and ladies on in on this in the school district because i think we have a lot of brilliant minds and we are going to do really good things continue to do good things too thank you michelle sherry hi i'm sherry richards i'm the executive director of elementary education i'm excited to say i'm in my 10th year in higley had the opportunity to work in three schools and then at the district level this is truly an amazing place i think we can continue to be proud and brag about what we've done and what we will do and i have colleagues telling me what an amazing district we have here so i love the opportunity to make a difference for kids and that's why we went into this but now we get to support adults as well so thank you and then i believe last but not least is david good morning my name is david lotzenheiser i'm the executive director of secondary schools and athletics this is my seventh month in higley and i honestly don't remember my life prior to june 15th uh it has been a whirlwind uh to say the least this is my 23rd year in education i started out as a high school math teacher basketball coach at gilbert high then went to chandler and got into administration and now here and i tell people who call you know what what's what's going on do you like your job that's what i get a lot you like your job and i said it's the best it's best move i've ever made professionally in my career to come and be a part of this team and so as challenging as it can be um you know i thoroughly enjoy how i feel like we're coming together and working together to try to set people up for the best chance of success and so when you ask about my why i think it's evolved over the years originally it was so that i could coach basketball but now it's about how do i how do i set others up for success and and like mike said originally it was for kids and now we keep the focus on the kids and we look at adults and say how can we set our adults up to set kids up for success and so i'm really happy to be here thank you and i just on that note i love what you just said how do we it's still about the kids how do we support the adults and being more effective in supporting the kids and i think that's such a great focus because one of the things that we say in asba is the primary responsibility of boards is student achievement and we we say that broadly stu but student success you know academic social emotional our job as board members is to make sure our students are succeeding bottom line there's lots of other roles and responsibilities but at the end of the day all of that is to the ends of student achievement so i just real quickly with norms and expectations i'm not sure if you all have board norms um and expectations in terms of how how you engage but just uh to recall and because we took we had a larger team um i'm not going to take too much time usually we can brainstorm around some norms but i'll just offer that if as much as possible we can make sure that we're talking from our own perspectives so i statements um respecting each other's perspectives as their reality so you know we're going to be talking about different things um and the way that we're not going to get into things too deep or too controversial today but just re uh just always a good reminder that um as we heard today everybody's intention we assume positive intent so everyone's intent here is to do the best that they can to support higley and the students of higley and so as much as we can try to understand the perspectives of others and ask respectful questions and and with all that we'll just move on and dig right into the roles and responsibilities of the board and we're going to start with a quiz how do you like that on a saturday morning um and we're going to just do a thumbs up or i'm sorry fingers so you could use your fingers to tell me how many bosses does the superintendent have i only see a couple hands i saw a hand i see a one i see five all right the answer is one so the superintendent has one boss and that is the board collectively um and so this is an important thing to start because often times board members all approach the superintendent as if they are the boss and i'm not saying that that's what's happening in hindi i don't know but across the state you know sometimes if we're not clear on this and sometimes it's unintentional you just come and you start asking all these questions and that's perfectly okay to do but when it comes to giving directives um and when it comes to evaluating that's the board as a whole so each member is if you want to say a fifth of a boss um and then nothing can be done without the majority of the board and the will of the majority of the board so it's really important when you go to give directives to the superintendent that that's coming from one voice and not multiple voices and if there's disagreement in terms of how to proceed or what kind of direction to give the superintendent that's where the the board agenda comes in that's where you you can take action items and provide guidance in that way um it is a five-headed boss so if you can imagine your own work experience um how great would it be to have five different bosses telling you how to do your job possibly five different ways um not fun um and so it's really really important that the board remember that they have to work as a team and that directives can only come from the board as a whole next quiz question what is the authority of an individual school board member do they have uh authority on their own thumbs up thumbs down i'm so glad none so as an individual board member you have no authority um you're at least not any more than any other citizen so when you are not in a called to order noticed meeting um you have no authority and that's really surprising to some board members and some board members know this but the problem is the community doesn't always know this and so when a board member comes to a campus or when a board member's out in the community and a parent or a teacher somebody comes to them they assume you do they assume that you can go and tell the superintendent or you can go and tell their principal you can go and tell their students teacher what to do and that's really not the case so it's important that you be upfront with that and and let them know that and we're not talking about it today but there is a chain of command and a communication protocol that that is in place for this reason because there there is a role and a responsibility and and um the board is the last stop and so you want to make sure that you're not trying to exercise any type of authority or give the illusion that you have any kind of authority that you don't have the same is the case in terms of access sometimes we have board members that think that they can just show up at any campus they want anytime and that if they want a tour they can show up and ask for a tour if you would not let anybody's grandma auntie mom come in and just demand a tour of your campus or a one-on-one meeting with one of your teachers then don't expect as a board member that you have that because without again the authority of the board you are the same as anybody else so your authority really comes in that vote and that vote is equal amongst all of you so when you have a call to order meeting you have a vote and that's where your authority comes into play and that's important to remember too because we're going to talk about um respecting the will of the majority when you have a vote and it doesn't come out anonym unanimously a lot of times we can get a little upset about that um and sometimes in some districts that turns out to be come name-calling or pointing out pointing fingers and and doing all of that but what you do when you're doing that is you're not just doing that to one member you're doing that to the the portion of the community that that talks uh that supports that member or thinks like that member and so that's really also important to remember that each vote is equal in its weight um and so if it comes out 3-2 um you that's just the way that it is you can't say that my my vote should mean more than the vote of the people that that vote represents so skipping that what's the authority of the governing board as a whole a lot you all to collectively vote on the policy so you are creating the rules of the game um so you are going to decide how things should be done in terms of what the rule the general rules are and the administration is going to come up with how do they comply and so that's one of the things you also control a budget and then you know to a certain extent there's not um a whole lot of control because a lot of that stuff is already earmarked but there are times where you have to make tough decisions and make priorities you guide the priorities of the district um and so that's a lot of authority um and so in that way you make a big impact on the whole the system as a whole um and the decisions that you make impact um all the students and families in your community so where do you get your authority you get this authority from arizona revise uh statute and there's two main statutes it's 15 341 15 342 for those that really you know love policy and want to dig into it um but basically what we find in here are things that uh first of all the governing boards get their authority through the state and that's because we believe in local control in arizona which means that we believe that communities are best suited to make the decisions for their students and families um that is going to provide the best education possible for that population so that means that we're not going to sit at the capitol and decide how education should look for everybody in the state because we may not know what's going on and what the situation is everywhere in the state so that means that you really are as the board making those decisions on behalf of the state and they tell you in that statute things that you must do and things that you may do a lot of the things that they say are more things that are permissive meaning that these are things that you provide oversight over but you don't have to do and we'll get into that in just a second so um while there is an oversight function um they do not do day-to-day operations of the district their oversight is the big picture so their oversight is um do we have policies in place do we have processes in place do we have money for this this job is this aligned with the way that our mission vision values in our priorities it is not about i don't like how you're doing this teaching model or i don't like how we're not doing you know girls softball at this month instead of this month it's it's really not getting into the day-to-day operations um so the duties that are not delegable meaning that you can't give it to somebody else is a proving policy so um i'm not sure do you all use asba model policies i believe you do okay so it's not even asba right asba provides model policies these policies are compliance driven meaning that we give you policies that are going to keep you from getting sued and we put a little copyright on there and we say you know this should we we've looked through this and this should keep you in compliance these are things that you have to do according to the state however they are not your policies until you approve them so once we send them to you the board has to approve them once the board does that they are no longer asba's policies they are your policies they're higley's policies so if there's something in there that you don't like you can say well that's asba and that's not our policy if you've approved the policy you as a board are obligated to follow through with those policies as stated you are the models for the rest of the community in terms of making sure that you're you're following the policy and that's important when we get to roles and responsibilities because those are outlined uh in that policy and when you skirt away from those things or you circumvent some of those practice fair policies um you're not setting a good example um of a leader and you're basically breaking your own rules um so policy is a big one you can't just say oh well let's just give them over to dawn and let her figure them out and as long as don says they're okay they're okay and then because that's not gonna hold up in court you're not gonna be able to go to court and say well i mean they said it was okay they're gonna look to you as the people that approved it not to scare you because i don't know the last time somebody got sent to court because of a policy but that ultimately rests on you passing the budget ultimately the superintendent and the team come up with a budget because they know where the money needs to go and they know what the priorities are so they are going to present you with a budget but you have to give that budget the okay it has to make sense to you um that the money is being spent in the way that the community would want the money to be spent and then finally hiring firing and evaluating the superintendent um that is the only thing that you that that's the only staff member that you have so just like i used i asked you how many bosses does the superintendent have i will ask you this question how many employees does the board have one employee their only employee is the superintendent and that's also important to remember because even the board admin or the board secretary is not an employee of the board that is an employee of the district and their supervisor is someone else you have one employee and that's the superintendent so when you go um and it's really important because we talked about what authority you have there's a different thing called perceived authority right and so when a board member shows up at a district the principal is going to do what you say you know going to try to do what you say the teachers are don't know necessarily that you're not you don't have some kind of authority so they're going to treat you a little bit differently and the same is true with some of the associate staff the director-level staff um they're going to probably tell you maybe yes to your face or not a clear no because you hold some amount of authority um but really all those things should go through the superintendent no direct asks or requests should be made of any other staff members um directly that your one staff member is the superintendent all right so we're gonna do a little game and i'm going to give you ask you for a thumbs up or a thumbs down oversight meaning this is the role of the board or over step meaning that's not really the role of the board a board member posts a question on facebook asking for input on high school on a high school teacher's actions and behavior she continues to post that her daughter is upset with the way the teacher runs the classroom and wants to know if there's other people having similar concerns she shows all the comments to the superintendent and wants something to change in that classroom thumbs up for oversight thumbs down for i'm overstep good i'm seeing a lot of thumbs down um so yes that is an overstep um there's a whole other training about etiquette and law and that we're actually doing something at the boltz conference on social media um but the key point here is that uh as a board member um you're not just a parent first of all this is probably bad etiquette for a parent to just put that out there but as a board member you have a responsibility to first of all not overstep your role which you're you're trying to kind of guide what's going to happen for a particular teacher but also legally that would put you into some hot water because if there were cause or potential cause to dismiss a staff member or to consequence a staff member um you're already putting this information out there and they can come out and and claim bias or something else so um that's an overstep not only is it not your role but it also you never want to do anything that's going to potentially put your district into into some trouble okay so nikki can i can i step in for a sec absolutely um i think that is one of the struggles sometimes as board members so i'm glad you brought up that um this particular just just you know we hit we have teachers ourselves as moms in the community and you know there's always that we have to follow the same chain of command when it comes to any kind of teacher issue or staff member issue we still have to do the same thing that we would expect a parent to do in our community and that is sometimes hard as board members and i just acknowledge that with you know my fellow board members that sometimes that's a difficult um road to navigate and you just kind of have to do the same thing you would expect any parent to do so yeah i mean i recently had this um situation where they're you know being home i can hear everything that's going on in my studio my my kids classrooms um and i had a concern and i um i had to i went to the teacher right i didn't go to my super i'm a board member and i was also really respectful so i i did not use my district email to kind of provide any kind of context i used my personal email to reach out to her i used my first name i just you know sent her what my concern was she called me back we dealt with it um it continued to be a problem so i emailed the principal um and you know and eventually it got resolved i again didn't try i haven't even mentioned this to my district so if they're watching they're finding out now but i mean i didn't even mention it to any uh any of the directors or anything anywhere else because it had nothing to do with that it was a parent issue um and and the whole thing with going to facebook i mean facebook is a tool to connect and if you have a concern you can see if this is a concern for anybody else but in your in your roles it's just a really really bad idea i think we've been taught um at asba law conference a couple years ago there was a whole facebook and instagram or social media i can't believe i can't remember and there was a like don't if you put it on facebook it has to you can't delete comments is that correct nikki is that the rule still like you weren't allowed to delete comments of people who didn't agree with you if you had ever mentioned that you were a board member on your facebook i am not a lawyer but i'm trying to put my chris thomas hat on in that position so i would refer to your lawyer but i think the understanding here is about equal access so if you're serving as a board member and you're trying to to and you're providing a space for comment um then you are you don't want to violate people's uh free speech by um by cutting out comments that you don't like i've heard them have a conversation of that thing but i would definitely say that's what i remember as well something along those lines that you were not allowed to cut out comments so just for like the new board members who may be on um who are on sorry um that they may want to think about that like if they do decide to post anything on facebook you can't cut out comments which sucks i mean sometimes people can be really hard so okay so we're gonna move on this is a um [Music] for those that are visual learners this kind of talks about um where the delineation is and where the overlap is so for the governing board team you're really about the what what is it that we want what are what do we believe in what's our vision what are our priorities what are the policies that we need to get that to happen okay you're that 30 000 foot view your administration teachers and staff are about strategies tactics and techniques they're going to tell you how to get it done you tell them what you want they're going to come up with a plan on how to get it done you may not like the plan that they come up with to how to get it done but you have to let it play out and if you don't like the plan and you don't like how it's playing out your recourse is through direction of the superintendent and what does that take a majority of the board so if you don't you're free to give feedback to the superintendent if you you're seeing something in the house side of the house that you don't agree with or that you have questioned about but you are not to direct the how that becomes overstep that becomes micromanaging but you can surely give your opinion and your feedback on it you can only direct it through the superintendent and your other thing is the evaluation you're one of five in the evaluation if you truly feel like that the visions priorities and policies that you set forth are not being achieved are not filling with your intent on the house side that's your time to to let that be known um so that area in the middle is that strategic area of discussion and vice versa you the administration teachers and staff shouldn't be telling you what the vision priorities and policies are they can provide impact or input but ultimately you are a representative of the community that means that you your best judgment and how you feel about what's going on is what you need to go with not what people are necessarily telling you yes you might think that they're your constituents but that's an equity issue think about your spirit influence and who you talk to if you only get input from two teachers and you know a handful of your friends or people on facebook is that equitable to take those seven voices and say okay that's what the priorities of the whole entire district should be no it's not um and and oftentimes that's what it's human nature you do with what you experience and the people in your sphere of influence but as a leader you have to think for the bigger picture and that means that the the community the the voters have put you all in the position to use your best judgment and so from this point forward you have to do your best to represent them yes you listen to them but you have to also question yourself and say who am i listening to what are the voices that are getting access to me and is that equitable because sometimes what needs to happen is to create a a process at the district level to gain feedback that the board can agree on so that there is a process in place to collect that and that people don't go off on their own because a lot of times what happens is if there is no process in place to do that that's why people go off on their own nikki i really like this visual because when you talk about the what and you talk about the how sometimes that little lovely space in the middle is the why um you know and commute effective communication is really important whether it be through our status reports through our through our meetings with informational sessions you know but for us to kind of um have those conversations is really important and it's one of the things that our team is working really hard on doing is the communication aligned to the beliefs our visions our prior our our policies and our processes and explaining the why you know you know i love that and i'm gonna i'm gonna talk to julian see if we can add the why to underneath that because that's exactly right um that piece in the middle is where you have a conversation to see is what they're proposing aligning with what your intent was when you set up these things because you know you do want to make sure that that that is happening um and that's where you give that input as to why why are these your release visions and priorities because that's going to give the input on time in terms of what the administration's going to try because i guarantee they're not trying to do something that's going to make you mad or trying to do something that's going to get shot down that's a way a waste of their time so it's it's about using that opportunity to have those conversations setting up regular times to have that conversation whether it's a study session or being strategic in the way that you calendar your board meetings every morning should have relevance to progressing the goals of the district if you're spending time on a lot of fluffer or outside you know issues that are are not aligned to what you're trying to achieve as a district uh making sure that you structure that meeting in a way that always ties back to your strategic plan and your mission vision priorities is a way to cut a lot of that out also a good opportunity here now just to thank our entire cabinet and dr foley for they send out a status report every a superintendent's report every friday and it has been so comprehensive since dr foley has joined us and i can just say i have learned so much more of the why because i can see what's going on throughout the week so that when those items come to the board i already have the background and it's so in-depth so hats off to the cabinet i know you all spend a lot of time getting the information to dr foley and it's it's made a huge difference in the way that i can see things thank you okay so just in bullet form for those that like it in words when we're talking about the board your role is really to govern so yes you're going to be doing the hiring and performance management as a superintendent with the support of district staff you're going to help set the direction and the policy um you're going to approve the budget you're going to monitor project uh progress towards the set goals and you're accountable to the community so you are accountable to listening to and your community includes not just the the students not just the parents um not just the teachers it includes a variety of that um and so it is important to listen to them and that's why i say it's so important to create opportunities to have an equitable way in which to receive representative feedback because you do need to hear what they have to say but you want to make sure that you're doing that in a fair way and then the superintendent's job is to manage they oversee the day-to-day operations they implement policies and establish plans to meet the goal and ultimately they're accountable to you the board so another little quiz question thumbs up thumbs down a board member comes to meet with the superintendent the board member is adamant that the district adopted new math curriculum his brother's a math teacher in a nearby district and has told the member about a great material uh how great the materials are the member has lots of information about the textbooks and the materials and would like to share it with the whole board for approval all right thumbs down okay i'm seeing a lot of thumbs down yeah that would be an overstep and the reason for that is the adamant and the they wanting to skip right over the process and go to a board approval first of all you have a policy of which how curriculum has to to go through a process curriculum is not cheap it's a budgetary issue so again that has to that will have to ultimately go to the board um but but really what math curriculum you use is that a what right if the question that you're asking is a what and not a um i mean sorry is a how and not a what then you're probably overstepping and you're telling them how to do math you're not telling them that you want the state of you would like to have math be a priority you're not saying that you want math to be updated and fresh you're saying you have to use this curriculum and this is a how um however if you happen to have resources you send them the superintendent's way and you let them share and process that um i know that i sent him because i do a lot of social services and think and see trainings on equity and social services i'll share things with my superintendent that um they may or may not choose to share with our support services or our social workers but i like that um dr stanton make that decision i don't just go hey social workers you should all attend this training because again even though i don't have authority they're going to feel like oh my gosh the board member just told me i have to attend this training and then what they do is they go and they talk to their boss and say do i have to attend this training and then it makes the it starts to make your staff feel really uneasy when they're put in a situation of of trying to tell a board member no they don't like that it makes them very uncomfortable um and it starts to build a culture in which people start tiptoeing and i feel micromanaged from a board so another visual in the process board authority is oversight management set expectations and parameters so you set the goals you adopt policies um superintendent provides a recommendation so they develop the plans implement the plans monitor their progress and then report back out evaluate results so they report back out to the board and the board provides input again the reason why the line in the middle is um is it i don't know the right name it's not perforated what's the name of that but anyway the reason why it's not solid uh is because there is a give and take between those things um but really that is the process that is the cycle okay another quiz here we go during a board meeting several members have questions about expenditures that were in the budget they approved including the purchase of a new technology for the high school board members are curious about how the money was spent and want to make sure that teachers are receiving professional development on the new technology so they know how to utilize the materials in the classroom is that an oversight or an overstep i see some thumbs up i see some questioning they're not really sure that's a thumbs up so if you spent money on a curriculum as a board as a board if you pick this new technology you are being proper stewards of public dollars when you say hey we bought this technology i want to know if if the staff was trained on it and that it's being used correctly and that it's being useful it's perfectly okay to get a report on that what's not okay is saying oh they're only getting three hours of pd on this no i think every board member or i think every staff member needs to take a quiz and six hours of training and you know when you start getting down that path of of again the how you're gonna do that that's not okay but when you're asking the question of tell me the process that is perfectly okay so um superintendent board relationships school systems suffer when either attempts to overtake the responsibilities of the other so both ways when the board tries to get too much into the day-to-day operations and micromanage the superintendent or staff it causes resentment it causes confusion the board members that are staying in their lane start getting frustrated and will start doing in kind so they sometimes will just decide either they stay in the resentment or they say well shoot i might as well start doing this too and both of those things just lead to more problems conversely superintendents that try to limit the influence of the board try to tell them what they're supposed to do try to block access to information um all they do is increase the the distrust and increase the questions and increase the likelihood that they're going to go around you to get the information from somebody else so it's really important that you trust each other in the roles that you're doing and you share that that information involvement with administration and operational functions again it distracts from the essential function of planning planning policy and promotion so you want to make sure that you keep looking at this higher level because if you're not as a board then who is right you're too busy looking over here in these little pots that are of interest to you then there's nobody looking at the bigger picture making sure it's all working together so the the key here is to be informed versus involved you need to be informed about what's happening you don't necessarily have to be involved in what's happening and this takes relationships right so we have to foster positive relationships the first thing again is assume positive intent even if they want something different than you i'm pretty sure they don't want it because they want kids to suffer and parents to hate them right so even if it makes no sense to you as to why they want that i'm pretty sure it's not because they want to see the district burn to the ground right um so assume that they have some kind of positive intent and try to operate from that point of view and that will help you to better acknowledge their point of view even if you disagree um and you can and should disagree if that very much doesn't feel like the right way that's fine but um to to disregard it completely again you're not just disregarding that person you're disregarding any part of the community that may feel similar to that identify each other's key values and leadership styles we're going to do that today so that's going to really help you understand each other's communication and then build up relationship capital through positive interactions if you've heard some of the relationship capital it basically means that everybody is a bank we're all our own little piggy banks and we as we walk through our lives there are deposits and there are withdrawals and so if people put coins in it doesn't hurt as much when they take them out so i want you to think about for example the the person that you love most in the world um think about a significant other a best friend um a sibling a mother father whatever now if you have that person in your mind this person you just absolutely love and adore now raise your hand if you've never ever been mad at them okay i'm not seeing any hands right sometimes the people that you love the most are the ones that can really make you the most angry as well um but the reason why your relationship stays and your relationship is strong is because there's enough good in there that when things like that happen you have enough capital left to make it through and oftentimes that leads to even more gains in the long run um however if you think about something buddy that you barely know a person on the street and they said something rude and nasty to you you have no reason to like them you can write them off you cannot listen to them you can call them mean and nasty things back because there's no relationship capital there um and so and as a team you have to make sure that you're putting deposits in if the only interactions you have with your fellow team members is to tell them what to do or tell them how they're wrong then you have nothing to build common ground on and so you need to try to put those deposits in thank them for their service thank them for their uh their input the way that you treat them when you disagree all of those things add to the to the piggy bank so that when you do have to disagree or when you do have to say have a difficult conversation with them there's something there to keep the relationship solid enough for you to work forward um so that takes creating opportunities to communicate a lot of times boards only see each other on that um that board bias and that's by design i mean we do have to be careful about open meeting law but remember open meeting law talks about that you have to be talking about board agenda items or future agenda items so you can still have a coffee and talk about each other's kids you can still um have study sessions like this where you get to learn about each other's personality you can still attend events together and trainings together um so there are opportunities you have to create them though and it's it's not going to happen by just saying okay we're only going to come to the meeting and that's the only time that we talk so um we're on schedule we're um we're doing good um does anybody need a break cause i know we got on a little bit before eight we are taking a scheduled break when i get through this but i just wanted to to see not seeing anything so i can only see a few people at a time so if you want to use your little hand raising icon i get an alert or if you want to use a chat i get an alert that way so um moving forward with the eight characteristics of effective boards so there was a there have been several studies in terms of the impact of boards school boards on student achievement um you know a lot of people don't know what school boards do they don't even maybe even know if they exist um and they certainly don't know if those 5 seven three people sitting at the dice have any real impact on what's happening in the classroom um and so there's there has been an increased uh research and study into this the first was the lighthouse studies that looked at boards uh and and their impact on student achievement and then there was a study that we really like it's called uh it's by devaricus and o'brien it's called the eight characteristics of effective school boards um and what they did is they went and looked at all the various studies of boards and their impact on operations um and they they put together their findings what were the commonalities what characteristics were boards demonstrating um were the boards that were seeing a lot of achievement in their district what were they demonstrating because um they want to know what what was working and what they found is there are some things that definitely help the district and and that there's a correlation between if their boards do this they saw student achievement and growth if their boards did opposite of that they saw decline and so we're going to go through those things right now um a lot of these things align to and there's a reason for that but nsba has what they call the key key works of school board service and you see there in the middle student achievement this is from nsba student achievements in the middle and then they have these different things that kind of feed into the work of boards um asba has our own version of that it's called the pillars of service um and this is what our self-evaluation tool is is um centered around but it's structure vision conduct and ethics accountability and advocacy and that's what we say these are the things that the board um really needs to do these are the work this is the work that boards do um so as we go through this i don't have a um i don't have a whiteboard or anything to go ahead so i'm going to ask you to take your own notes um and just on the side of a notebook piece of paper put down the the characteristic like a number and then if you think that that's a strength of your district currently or an opportunity so the first one is effective school boards commit to a vision of high expectations for student achievement and quality instruction and define clear goals towards that vision so that means everybody is on the same page they believe that all students have the ability to achieve and they're going to make sure that they have some goals towards that end and that aligns to asba's pillar of vision so again you can put characteristic one and then you can say you know plus or minus strong strength or opportunity effective school boards have strong shared beliefs and values about what is possible for students and their ability to learn and of the systems and its ability to teach all students at high levels this is critical um and it ties along with equity as well you have to believe that every one of your students can succeed if you come in thinking well and you know half of these people aren't going to make it um or they're they're so doubt far down that there's nothing that our staff can do to fix them you know there's nothing we can do to help if you already don't believe that and you have that kind of belief system at leadership level it's not going to happen going down the chain and again this ties to the the um demonstrating that you really do believe that it's possible um is is a characteristic of effective boards and it's tied to the pillar of vision effective school boards are accountability driven spending less time on operational issues and more time focused on policies to improve student achievement so um part of what this says is high performing boards focus on establishing a vision setting policies and keeping their conversations focused on student achievement and remember we talked about achievement doesn't have to just be academics but achievement in terms of their social emotional their their welfare their their activities any of those things that that you would put in that box of success or achievement poor governance was characterized by factors such as micromanaging of the board so this talks about structure do you have the structures in place in order to ensure that your policies are operationalized um and that you have a structure in place to make sure that you are fo are aware of what those practices are again aware of informed not necessarily involved so when uh when we do the the self-evaluation it will ask things like we have uh we have a effective way of managing our maintenance to ensure quality products like we're not going to ask you to go out there and and make sure that all the buses and air filters are great and go there with your little check box and make sure that they are but we are going to say are you certain as a board member that you have a process in place that and that that's getting done and and that's what we're talking about structure effective school boards have a collaborative relationship with staff and the community and establish small strong communication structures to inform and engage both internal and external stakeholders in setting and achieving setting and achieving the district's goals meaning that they're part of the process not just given a marching orders high achieving districts school board members could provide specific examples about how they connected with and listened to the community and school board members received information from many different sources including superintendent curriculum director principals and teachers and this ties to our pillar of advocacy effective boards are data savvy they embrace and monitor data even when it is when the information is quote unquote negative and uses it to drive continuous improvement high achieving districts identified specific student needs through data justified decisions based on that data board members regularly sought out data and were not shy about discussing it even if it was negative and that is a part of accountability but this is also an essential component of equity in schools educational equity it's also just good practice because it really helps with uh it's hard to fight with data right so if you can make sure that your decisions are data driven um it takes a lot of the by the assumed bias out of it doesn't mean you can't still use data in a biased way i don't want to get it twisted but it definitely if you use that as a guide it makes it seem less like it's um arbitrarily decided effective school boards align and sustain resources such as professional development to meet district goals to this end successful board supported extensive professional development programs for administrators and teachers even during times of fiscal restraint meaning that you invest in training not only for yourselves as board members but throughout your system and that's part of structure number seven effective school boards lead as a united team with the superintendent each from their respective roles with strong collaboration and mutual trust boards defined an initial vision for the district and sought a superintendent who matched this vision um there has to be trust there if you have a vision and you find yourself micromanaging that says that you probably don't trust the administrator to execute on the vision and so instead of trying to force a person to be something that they're not you you have to start looking on whether or not you have the right person for the job and if you're the only person on the board that doesn't think that the administrator is doing their job then that seems like more of a communication issue between you and the superintendent and and kind of leaning on the rest of the board to go forward you should ask yourself you know why am i the the only one standing doesn't mean that you're wrong but it just means that like why do you think that that might be the case and this comes to the pillar of conduct and ethics finally effective school board members take part in team development and training sometimes with their superintendent to build shared knowledge values and commitments for their improvement and effort what you're doing today is one of the effective uh traits of a school board high achieving districts had formal deliberate training for new board members they also often gathered to discuss specific topics low achieving districts had board members who said they did not learn together except for when the superintendent or other staff made presentations of data so again if that's the only time that you're learning things together is that that dice when there's a presentation that's not necessarily checking this box and this has to do with accountability so we don't have a worksheet but i would be curious to hear um and we'll just popcorn around um with the board members um in your perspective if you can give me it um one thing that you think you're doing at least one thing that you think you're doing really well and then one thing that you'd like to see some improvement in doesn't mean that you're necessarily doing it terribly but just one thing that you think you could be doing a little bit better in um i think we do a lot of these really well um a lot of the strengths that we listed that were listed i feel like they were strengths um i think number six kova being a restraint has been hard for us um with professional development um so i think that one is we've put a lot of restrictions because of professional development um because covid so i think we could work on that and number three i jotted down as being something that we could work on that was just my thought thank you anyone else uh jill i concur those were my two where i thought we have number one we have our strategic plan we're working on equitable um late our equality above our school districts number two because our north side was a little bit unequitable is that the word unequitable inequitable we're working on that really well um i think number three is just difficult copied this year and just operational and making sure that all the safety precautions are put into place on the daily i think that's just been you know difficult for i think we are listening to our committees really getting our teachers involved in ideas um again kovid5050 the community is split so you can't make the entire community happy uh five data-driven definitely six support we're working on our professional development we've got at least dates on the calendar now for professional development that we didn't have before especially with our middle schools and high schools and then um yeah seven it's awesome strength and eight i think we do as much training as we possibly can attend as a board so and i put six in the middle amy is that where you put six i just like there's kind of there's there's like an opportunity to grow but like it's still a community i kind of put it in the middle of my little columns i had um it overall i feel like we did okay it's not that we did horrible but i know we had to restrict a lot this year for like travel for a lot of our counselors that wanted to go to some things but we were feeling like it was the time and so that's why i put sex maybe in the middle and we're working towards it we know that it's a goal it's a something that we're working towards something that we have i'd like to hear from um michelle or tiffany as you being a little bit newer on the board um because a lot of times um what i found is uh especially when i i was a newborn member not too long ago um less than three years it's um it becomes a history you learn things and then you just assume they were always there always taught so i just want to get a perspective from a new or where you thought the opportunities and the strengths were um i from like from a bird's eye view from sitting in the classroom and observing the board and as a parent observing the board so my perspective would look a little bit different but it from listening to amy and joe it was pretty much right on honestly um and i'm glad joe mentioned putting stuff in the middle because i had stuff in the middle drawn from opportunities to actually write going into strings i've seen so much growth and changes but i had one two five and eight as strings no doubt 100 strengths and i had three and four as they were opportunities at once that have now are geared into the strengths and i think six and seven more things that can definitely be worked on but they're still more in a strength than uh something that is in the true opportunity calm for me a lot of a lot of good things overall doing well but of course on any of these there's improvement but that's where i stood out on this one and then i'll just ask tiffany if you have anything to add um i i don't i mean one i put in an opportunity i know that uh one i put is an opportunity and i think there's um just from the outside looking i'd like i think there's some room for growth there um but but um as far as uh four seven and eight and uh six i put as strengths um and then uh three as opportunity great well thank you anybody else from the team have any um burning insights or anything bad no i i i had i i appreciate hearing where board members were thinking on this too because as as we were working through these there were some i had us both there were there were examples i had as true strengths and opportunities for growth and especially when we were talking about number three when we look at operational issues at a at a pandemic where there's a lot of unprecedented things we spent a lot of time having to look at um things that we've never had to talk about before that were huge decisions that needed to be made but interestingly enough those that those that created an opportunity for us in lots of different ways that i think are positive so i appreciated hearing perspective here and kind of utilizing this as a reflection tool for us as we grow and go together moving forward and i'm glad that you brought that up because covet has brought um a different you know perspective for board members and we've had board members feel like oh man i really feel like i'm micromanaging or i really feel like i'm maybe getting into things that i shouldn't and i think it's really important to just have that conversation because um a lot of the things are under the um permissive board thing like for example um staffing that's not something that you're gonna get involved in um but you have you do oversight and you approve you know people being hired um so when we're getting into a situation that's different and when we're getting into a situation that's high profile where there's a lot of attention being paid um it is not we and i think i forgot which presentation we did um i i think chris might have said it but it's not a bad idea for superintendents to maybe put bring some of those operational things to the board because it gives them a little bit of cover right you're getting they're representing the community and so if you're not quite really sure or this is something new um you may want to say hey these are this is what i'm thinking about but i want you all to to give me the guidance um and so i would say that sometimes yeah you might get into that operational thing but i think that should come from um a conversation about hey this is something the superintendent is either requesting or hey this is something that is really important in our community and you know as voices of the community i think that we need to be involved in this decision-making process nikki i totally agree because when you look at number four when we talk about a collaborative relationship with staff and communications on the structures to inform when we do informational items on what is our process or why are we doing this it's informing the why because of the how and it should be aligned to the what our goal our mission our vision so that you can kind of see some synergy between that and in it and i like how it's identified as a an effective characteristic here so i i completely agree all right so learn and grow and i think you uh i'm getting the sense that you are very much a learn and grow type of district and i love that so um this is just a quick reminder of where board policies are the law of the land so they are the rules in which uh the district operates including the governing board um b section b policies are specifically for you all so if you're newer and you have not um looks at it i would say look at the b policies because that's going to talk about b for board um my recommendation let me just really quick where does the policy come from district policy is based on various laws so whether those are federal or state laws asba policy services provide these model policies based on compliance with laws and then districts adopt them we talked about that districts can alter the language of these um policies to fit their communities though you should have changes reviewed by your legal counsel have to put that disclaimer in there um and then once the district adopts the policy it is their policy regardless of who provided the language um so that is your policy and that's what you'll be held accountable to it's important i'll just put this plug in for districts to do a policy review because we have found that some poli and people usually try to do that at least once every three years um and the reason for that is what happens is people start doing something and it's been done so long that they don't realize it's not aligned with their policy and that can get you into some trouble so you want to make sure that you're doing a policy review as a board um that could be done in a couple different ways we have people come in with uh administrative staff and a board member that will sit with our policy team and do that um our district did it with um basically doing a chunk of policies every board meeting for two years it took two years to do it but we would do like okay here we're gonna do um all of b policies or you know maybe k was really big so we're gonna do half of k this month and you know at this meeting half of the next one um and that's the opportunity to make sure that it's aligning it's also an opportunity to look at the practices that go along with that because a lot of times the practices even though they do not come from the board um they're in there aligned with the policies and so it's a good point uh time for the administration to make sure that the practice is still what the practice really is um especially when it comes to things with parents and staff and the communication the complaints process the evaluation process you really want to make sure that those things are aligned um doc nicki and dr foley this is one area where we used to have a board policy committee that was meeting on the regular basis and we probably need to start that again that was with our in-house attorney and then she retired so this is something definitely we need to start up again i don't think they got through all the policies when they were doing that and i know darlene probably knows exactly where we left off but good reminder thank you nikki yeah and i also want to help this hopefully this helps you too when you have a committee of the board so the board has established a policy committee any committee of the board has to comply with open meeting law so when that policy committee meets with the the attorney unless the attorney is specifically giving you legal advice if they're just there to help you go through the policy um it that needs to be open uh and you would do many meeting minutes and post it just like anything else so again talk to your attorney but you know most of these are are pretty commonplace and and you wouldn't need to necessarily go into an executive session to talk about altered you know and i think nikki how they would do it is they just had one board member present during the policy meeting so it wasn't an open meeting law or they didn't have to post it but then they would bring any of those um policy renewals changes to the board for a full vote and discussion does that make sense uh it does i'm just uh letting you know that regardless of whether or not a board member is present if it is a committee of the board meaning the board for it it's a board and it still is required and that's something a lot of people don't understand regardless of whether or not a board member's even there if it's a committee by the board um for the board's purposes then that's fine it's different than the board saying hey you know what i'd like to get some feedback on um what parents think about this new practice that we're doing um and the administration says okay yeah we'll put something together that's a superintendent's committee task force whatever they're doing but if it's a committee of the board and i would say policy because it's the board's thing would be one of those things you just want to make sure that uh in the future that that those are are treated as such um so in the b policies you have about your value self-evaluation it says in there that you'll do a self-evaluation annually board powers and responsibilities etc b is also the one area that you can write your own practices so generally you approve the policy and administration comes up with the practices but because b is your own governance b is the board policies you can create practices around these so for example if you want to say okay um of self-evaluation and then you want to build a practice of how you're going to do that and what that's going to look like you could do that if you wanted to do the board organizational meeting right now it's just very general you'll have one by this date but if you want to put a process in there and this is the process we're going to use we're going to have a meeting in december to discuss it um openly and then we'll do the vote in january or on january's organizational meeting we'll follow these steps like you can create a process for those things so i just wanted to put that out there this is the one area where you can dig in a little deeper and give you a come to an agreement around a practice code of ethics i don't have the handout with you but it isn't in your policy manual and it basically just says a lot of what we talked about and i put it in orange here um here's a couple of the key points i wanted from the code of ethics that i wanted to point out um because there's oh sorry the orange thing is remember always that my first and greatest concern must be the educational welfare of students attending public schools at the end of the day that's what all of that leads to um and the code of ethics is really important and i'm now sad that i don't have it to pull up for you but i hope that um i could try to pull that up during the break um but that's really an honor system there are very little there's very little recourses for board members who are quote unquote behaving badly um you know everybody we get calls all the time at asba um from the community or other board members trying to to rat out a board member or a district and they think that we have some kind of authority to go tell them what to do we don't we we educate but we have no authority over boards um and then they always want to say well how can i get rid of a board member you you really can't i mean unless that board member moves out of the district uh commits a felony and is in able to run for office um or gets recalled and recall is a timely and expensive process which may or may not result in what you want because all it does is make them go back to the ballot and if they get voted again they're right back in so um it's really about creating a process internally that is dedicated to collaboration that puts protocols in place that are fair um that builds communication between the team that's that's really all that we can do and then when things start to go awry i love it when they say okay look we've got new people we want to get everybody on the same page or hey i'm starting to see that there's some tension around these things let's come and think of something before it gets out of hand i love when that happens because sometimes we also get called in when it's imploding and nobody likes each other and things are going bad in social media um you know and and that's a tougher place to come back from okay and then just a real quick plug for uh self evaluation school boards do play a significant role in the outcomes we saw that from the effective characteristics and from the studies that have been done and we also know that they need some self-evaluation accountability is a big part of that and so self-evaluation is something that um that we encourage you to do we do have a tool it's an online tool um every board member and the superintendent takes it um and then it gives you a rating um and then that gives you a place to start and make sure that you're all on the same page in terms of where you think the priorities of the board should be it's also a tool to help you create board goals and board goals are different than district goals a lot of times say well we have board goals we have our strategic plan board goals are actually completely different they are the goals for the board themselves what are the things that the board needs to work on in order to be a better governance team um and so the evaluation uh can provide some insights into that and and it covers conduct and ethics as we talked about um vision structure do you create the conditions district-wide for student success accountability are you making sure that the district is being held accountable and meeting expectations and then advocacy are you engaging the local community to represent themselves and to and value the expectations that they hold and so that talks a little bit about that but we'll go we don't have to go over that school boards in review play a significant role in the outcomes for students they also play a significant role not just directly for students but i want to highlight here um the impact they have on staff which in turn impacts students um we know that our staff are watching and even before when there's maybe just a handful of staff in the audience um they are sharing what they are seeing with their peers and so that really goes a long way in terms of how much trust there is in the board um and how much um they're willing to participate if you are saying one thing and doing another the staff have an inclination to just wait that change out and see if it really sticks right um if you are bickering or can't get on the same page or are trying to micromanage um you might find that you lose staff or that you can't recruit staff we've been in situations where uh and some difficult soup searches at times because superintendents do their homework and they're like i don't know if i want to work with that board you know um so it's important that you realize that the way that you are coming across in your meetings is uh heidi our communications director likes to say it's a pr um it's a pr event every time you do it and it's either going to help or hurt um so you want to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward um as much as possible so that is the end of this section i'm gonna give us all a five minute break while i switch slides um if you have any questions feel free to use the chat to put those in um and we'll re we'll uh i'll i'll answer them when we come back from break ready to take it the moment he got it so um let me share my screen we're gonna give you a little bit of a history and some some uh you know context for this so let me come on go away okay so this is a booklet this does not come from asba this is from hrdq they do several different kind of uh assessments and different things for uh teams they have lots of different personality assessments for uh for different situations and things like that so we like this one because it's pretty simplistic there are four team member styles that they talk about um we also like this one because it's specifically about team and teamwork because sometimes we're a little bit different in our own bubble and our own work than we might be when working with others and we're going to talk a little bit more about how sometimes we surprise ourselves because depending on the makeup of our team we may see different kind of traits come out that we don't normally have in other situations so we'll talk a little bit about that we're going to identify our own personal team member styles and then we're going to learn about how to capitalize on your strengths and improve on your trouble spots so just like too much of a good thing can can be a bad thing sometimes um things that our strengths can also some and in the wrong situation or in with certain other people can um can leave places for opportunity um where then after we do that we're going to identify the team member styles across across the team that you all are working on so we're gonna get to know each other's styles and then we're gonna talk about how we can take full advantage of the the mix of styles because we're also gonna be talking about roles and what are some good roles that align with a style if this is a style this is a good role that you could play on your team um so we're gonna talk a little bit about that as well we already did this so um i will ask though for this question um and you could just put it in the chat and i'll read out a couple so it's it'll be anonymous um if you put it at what do you enjoy about working with your team and what do you find challenging and when we talk about team we're going to really ask you to put your focus on the on this board team and for those of you that are newer to this team you might not have as much experience working with the team but to the best of your ability try to to keep it in that lens um and where you have some trouble you can refer back to maybe other teams that you've worked on but what do you enjoy about working with this team and what do you find challenging and you can send it to me privately or to everyone whatever you feel more comfortable with um i'm seeing uh they enjoy positive focus and professionalism enjoying the people collaborative nation nature of the team um we get to work together um so it seems like people really enjoy that this is a team that that wants to work or does work well together um they enjoy getting the different points of view enjoy that everybody's working to move the district forward they enjoy gathering different perspectives um also combining the gifts and talents of people to problem solve that's good to use the different skills and skill sets of individuals any challenges i haven't really seen any challenges um some challenge that might be is just issues with your own emotions you know navigating issues uh on the team you know when our feelings are involved um dealing with no win situations such as covet where you're always going to have somebody upset um there's a challenge sometime with responding and not reacting i know that that's a challenge for me sometimes as well um to take that breath and make sure that you are being in control of your response instead of emotionally or viscerally propelled okay well that's good i think that's a good amount of things to talk about uh or things to acknowledge yeah there's there's difficult in team um i've had people say some people just aren't good at team they they really like to do work by themselves they're kind of an individual type of person so it's difficult for them to work in teams because they like you know they admittedly like to be in in control so uh it's hard to relinquish some of that so the benefits about knowing your own style is that it improves your interactions with others if you understand what makes you tick and what things set you off you can kind of be aware of those when you're interacting with others it also helps you to interpret helps others interpret your behavior when they understand your personality and they better understand your intent and so it can help them again react to you differently um and then it can influence your success if you work to your uh style and the skills that are associated with that style you're more likely to be successful um we're more challenged when we're forced into situations that's not really comfortable for us um and and so sometimes it's okay to say hey that's a shortfall for me and i'm going to lean on somebody else in my team rather than think that i have to do it all um and sometimes it means you know i'm stepping out i we had a conversation that there was a longtime board member that's never been board president and they was just like i know i don't want to do that i'm not a good facilitator i don't want to be you know making sure everybody's had a talk i'm really good at giving my opinion but i don't know if i'm really good at organizing that and that's was really great for that individual to know that that just wasn't something that they needed to do for a title because they knew ultimately with the team that just wasn't going to be how they could be most successful um and so we're hoping with this that you get to know a little bit about yourself um and the the people that you'll be working with as you move forward so without further ado we're going to get into the um let me pull out i have a copy of it here so for those at home we're doing a little workbook here it's what's my team member style i'm going to invite you to take out the response form it's a carbon copy i know it's been a minute since you've seen something like that it's a little old-school technology but we're going to do a carbon copy here and on there there's questions a series of questions and each question has two answers that are are possible so for example the first question says i am most engaged when our team is option one brainstorming creative ways to solve a problem option two analyzing facts and data to arrive at a decision what you're going to do is you're going to assign a point value to each of those between zero and five so whatever is most likely like you you'll want to give more points to if something is totally not you then you could say that is a zero and give all your points to the other um the other uh selection you cannot use fractions so for those middle of the line folks there's no 2.5 um there's no three and a quarter they have to be whole numbers um and so that's what we're gonna do take your time um you know go through the questions do not do anything else don't separate don't do any math because it can get a little confusing when we move forward so at this point what i'd like you to do is um do the the quiz give the point values and then if you can just chat me a done when you're done i can make sure that we move forward when everybody's had a chance i have about half of the team done a couple more people tiffany i don't know if you can chat or not so can you let me know if you still need time oh she just put done okay good so she can chat i think that might be it let me let me know if you're not done i just it's hard to follow the chat so i think that that might be it okay so now we're gonna go to the next step we're gonna do a little bit of math here okay so you're gonna separate your pages and then underneath you'll have a yellow one and that's important because it has some shapes associated with it so when you lift it up you'll see that the number that you wrote is now inside of a shape okay now this seems very elementary you know your shapes and you know your numbers through four i cannot tell you how many times i've done this and people cannot get the numbers to add up right and it's the eyes trick you with the whole triangle square rectangle thing and sometimes you miscalculate so i want you to very carefully chart the totals of each shape um and so this might help you a little bit first do all the diamonds so go through and write down all the diamond numbers then do all of the square numbers then do all the triangle and the oval and there's a little bit of a cheat sheet here on the screen because it'll say okay number one has at least one diamond question in it so one the total should be 90 right uh yes i believe so just making sure i can add yes then i'm going to do the same thing just when you're done chat me a done whoops okay we're about halfway there okay i think maybe just two more no way i think everyone i think we're good i apologize if we're not please do tell me oh yep oh there's one less please do tell me if we need another minute okay so yes hopefully you got a total number at 90.