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i already everything okay thank you all right rolling through here i'm on number four um oh that's you again oh yeah the district prepared to welcome all students in the building at this time or has the district had to bar students coming back in person if they were originally registered to be solely virtual because the district has to limit the number of students coming back into the schools to ensure so yeah i forgot about that one yeah yeah at this time we are a hybrid or staying hybrid at this time number five jackie beers a kindergarten teacher at the annex i would like the board to consider having the parents of in-person students complete the club for their child every day and not just on sundays teacher and staff are required to complete it every day and for the health and health and safety of all i feel that students should have the form completed every day as well symptoms and conditions can change on a day-to-day basis and they should be documented on a daily basis so we are doing that yes we are doing that that that went out this morning number six katie lira um 623 mountain avenue hello my name is katie lira and i'm a librarian at lamont annex in lafayette elementary schools i've been in the district for six years and i also live in balboa i'm concerned about the rising cases of kovic within our community in town and even more concerned with the number of students who are going home daily from our schools because they display signs of illness i truly believe we're all trying to do our best as a district with the temperature checks hand washing masks and so much more but we are still having students go home sick every day as a specialist teacher i see every single class in both the lamont annex and lafayette every time i receive an email letting me know a student is going to be virtual because they're sick i do some mental math did i see that student this week did i go to their classroom did i see their sibling teaching in person has been stressful as a specialist teacher i am alone in the classroom with up to 13 students plus students online and i'm trying my best to engage with students and create a dynamic create dynamic lessons while adhering to safety procedures it is complicated and stressful and i do it four to five times a day back to back five days a week building a building i worry about being exposed to covet as well as exposing others potentially as i go to each classroom i see students being escorted to the nurse science going up on classrooms doors that a room is being sanitized and my stress increases the vaccine is here teachers and staff will hopefully get it soon i along with most staff would feel better about teaching if we waited until we were vaccinated please consider going virtual until staff and teachers are vaccinated the next one is from kristin martinez from the child study team we are writing on behalf of our child study team we are a multi-disciplinary team consisting of individuals with different responsibilities or backgrounds but one common goal we work not only for our students with special needs but other general education students within the district who need specialized support as well it is imperative that we make ourselves clear we want our students in person however we want this done safely and unfortunately we do not find this to be the case at this time we would like you to listen and understand our roles and backgrounds on the cst we consist of learning consultants social workers school psychologists occupational therapists speech and language therapists and behaviorists we have numerous responsibilities that we would like to share with you we travel between multiple buildings in a day or within a week our related service providers ot speech therapists as well as behaviorists work with students one one or a small group up to five students from multiple classrooms and buildings our case managers psychologists learning consultants social workers hold iep meetings meetings with building representatives or administration supervisors supervisor meetings i'm sorry or administration supervisors meetings with teachers and are working with in a variety of classrooms working with the staff on behavior programs completing observations and providing individual small group counseling our case managers and related service providers conduct one-to-one evaluations with students and young children not yet enrolled in the school as well as new students who transfer we do not have classrooms but caseloads our caseloads are ever changing as students are referred to the cst and evaluations are conducted we work hard to see every student individually and collaborative and collaborate to identify the least restrictive and most appropriate classroom setting for our students we support our students teachers and community with this understanding in mind we would like to outline some of the issues we face so that hopefully we can find a solution our goal is to continue to provide services with the knowledge that we are accounted for when making decisions in regards to our staff safety currently many cfst members are sharing rooms many related service providers pull groups to the same room this makes con contact tracing very difficult at the annex up to four related service providers are expected to pull groups to the same room at the same time that means up to four groups of students with each group pulling from multiple classrooms with that being said if there is an instance where a classroom is being sanitized does that mean the therapy room should be sanitized as well that has not been the case all cst staff work in multiple buildings we are not necessarily identified as being exposed to coded when a positive case has been reported we have found that we tend to find this out directly from our families after the quarantine time has passed some buildings have tried to assist in keeping track of where we are with a signing book however this is not in every building with this new policy of removing classrooms for fogging many buildings no longer have space for evaluations to be completed in general there is a lack of space in some of our buildings staff is being told not to congregate in the lunchroom there are lots of teachers and classrooms that need to pull out for example dra testing blanket testing cst evaluations related service therapy sessions which leads to more people being in the hallways or stairwells stairwells on the floor we have spoken up and have implemented certain procedures within individual buildings however because we travel that only goes so far we write to you today because we need district-wide procedures for contact chasing to protect those professionals who work district-wide number eight uh this is from diane pavlichko 120 west franklin street at the last meeting the question was asked if anyone knew why the two teachers listed on the agenda were leaving their position dr gallagher answered that it was for better paying more money i can assure you that at least one of the cases money had nothing to do with her reasons for wanting to leave three years ago i stood in front of the board for the same reasons i'm writing this today another good teacher that made a big impact on my kids is once again leaving bamboo both have felt the administration creates a toxic environment they don't feel appreciated or that their voices are heard it's a bit like deja vu for me for the teacher in 2017 and the current teacher neither had anyone from the district reach out after they submitted their resignation why is that does no one care the teacher i speak about today didn't get any type of response to her resignation nothing not anything from her direct report or hire no one asking why she's leaving no what can we do to keep you here no counter offer to keep her here not even a good luck best wishes nothing what a terrible way to treat someone who has worked here for six years in 2017 i spoke up about the need for exit interviews i learned recently that these are being done by the superintendent or assistant superintendent with no one else from the district or boe present is that true if a good number of teachers leave due to conflicts with upper administration why would we continue to have upper administration conducting exit interviews without anyone else present of the five teachers that my eight-year-old son had here in balmer three have left the district and only two remain that's really sad we have amazing teachers here in fabric it hurts me to see so many of them leave especially when i know how wonderful they are it's a shame the way they are treated year after year we need this to change i challenge the board to ask themselves going forward how can you help change the toxic environment going out in our schools what's going on number nine this is from c del ponte a teacher in the high school we are the members of the english department at the bambook high school there is no denying that the school year has been difficult for everyone and we would like to offer our take on our experiences we know that being in the classroom is the best possible place we want to return to normalcy but teaching in a building where students and the majority of staff remain unvaccinated in the midst of a pandemic is not safe and has the potential for tragedy as the number of those infected with kovid continued to rise and the number of students returning to the classroom continues to drop it is increasingly obvious obvious that the live classroom is not a healthy environment for teachers students and staff we are concerned for our entire community thank you for listening and acknowledging our concerns number 10 christina pemberton seven jill court middlesex members of the board as a teacher one of my top priorities is safety i strive to create a safe classroom every year for my students this year i knew my priority would be the hardest thing to achieve given the circumstances coming back to in person learning in january has proven in just five short school days that this is not safe i do not feel safe every single day i see other classrooms being evacuated for covent symptoms i see students being shuffled around with their materials to find a safer space than their own classroom parents are continually sending students to school sick and they are endangering other students as well as our staff and their families i am scared every morning that this will be the day that my class needs to be evacuated and i will be putting my family at risk i want to protect my students and family i do not want to be the reason anyone gets sick or loses a family member i am taking every precaution to protect those around me i wear two masks every day i wash my hands frequently i practice social distancing as much as possible which is a struggle being a teacher of the youngest learners i do not make unnecessary trips or put myself in high-risk situations the safest place for me during the day is sitting in my car to eat lunch being a teacher of our youngest learners puts our teachers at the greater risk and being here for the last five school days has proven that teachers are already quarantined and students are being sent home with symptoms every day i would like the board to consider going back to virtual learning until the staff members can be vaccinated and the transmission numbers go down this is the only way to protect our school community thank you for your time number 11 catherine ryan 163 cheerio she's a teacher in the district dear board members i'm writing to you i am worried about my safety and the safety of my students and colleagues the numbers for coded are at an all-time high and us teachers aren't vaccinated yet there are more students than ever in our rooms given that more than half of the cases of covet are asymptomatic and easily spread we have to assume we have double the cases we already see the information about the new more dangerous strands suggests that children are much more likely now than ever to contract clovis and get sick or pass on it and pass it on our students are doing traveling sports eating out seeing extended family and friends because of these reasons i feel unsafe in school please consider either going back to remote learning or substantially increasing the safety measures for us in the classroom most businesses even grocery stores have bought plastic partitions to protect their employees when they can't distance we need those we also have enough students that when we walk through the classroom we cannot remain six feet away from the students special teachers special teachers still travel from room to room possibly spreading the virus to many classes in a day we don't have ventilation in our building where we are asked to be around others for more than six hours at a time there's nowhere to eat lunch and i've simply stopped eating lunch there are multiple exposures and cases already since returning and there's no evidence that we won't have more cases the longer we're open i miss normal school and i understand the difficulty we are all in with facing the challenges of this year ultimately the most important thing should be the safety of our students our staff and their children and families please consider sending us back to remote instruction until teachers can be vaccinated or until the school can be outfitted with more safety measures like plastic barriers and better ventilation at least let us go home to teach when the students aren't there or consider limiting in-person instruction to those students most in need such as special education students or english language learners i appreciate your time and thank you for your consideration and protecting us all number 12 joe goldan a teacher at somali school um your board of education members i am writing today because i feel there is a need for better communication about the district's protocols regarding over 19.

i don't know what what everyone else thinks but well i agree with terry um i kind of i'd like to see maybe a a meeting convened around maybe nine nine and a half percent i think with this new variant um it could kind of come on us real suddenly and i wouldn't want to wait to 10 and i can't even imagine going to 10.1 or 10.2 yeah yeah i think i agree with terry and joanne we have set that far so we can as we approach it let's have a conversation yeah so it sounds like people would like to it we'll call a meaning if we get to 9.5 yeah that's fine five point seven five yeah and then the next question is when will that meeting occur uh i think thank you that suggested monday nights well that was when we had the metrics coming on monday but they're coming on friday now so um i mean it could be anything saturday morning you could do a saturday morning again if that works for everybody well we just don't need an hour presentation on the numbers we can just debate and discuss yeah if you're making decisions on friday does it make sense to have the meeting thursday thursday night you know for reaching nine and a half and you have to make a decision at three on friday we should probably meet the day before you have to make that decision sounds good yeah yeah that's that's reasonable yeah that's reasonable nancy if we're projecting that way early in the week you and i can touch base and then call a special meeting okay my only limitation is i uh work in the evenings so i might i will try to be there i beg borrow and steal to make the regular schedule meetings but just so you know i'm not i'm not blowing you off if i don't show up okay and maybe we could consider unless it's too late because maybe staff and uh dr thiele you guys can get a chance to go home and take it from there and that's in the office provided that it happens i'm okay with having a 7 30 meeting as long as we're not going to go through all the metrics you know and we could commit to getting done within an hour i think it's possible then potentially let's look at you know later time i'm open to that that would be very helpful because at this point it would be a zoom meeting anyway right it would be if the numbers are that high it'd be a zoom so it doesn't really matter 7 30 6 30 whatever yeah yes giving people opportunities um nancy mentioned that she works later i would prefer that because i can i'm i'm working later to it so let's give everybody if it's a if it's an extra meeting and everybody's okay with it we can push it back a little bit commit getting down within a period of time and call it a day yeah i agree yeah if if we start to get back up into that range i'll make sure that nancy and i connect and call special meeting for a thursday evening yeah get home so the only thing is we're going to have to have we have to have somebody even if we're in here too we have to have somebody there because it's a public meeting either oh that yeah yeah but yeah i get because i know you've got you've got your business you know everybody's working so it fortunately everybody's working so yeah i know it's a problem okay what's that because back earlier i mean i'm okay with that i was trying to be oh but by the regulation the superintendent has to be present on site so that's fine i don't mind being here for that that's that's what i'm here for so well hank we think you should be with your family too just like we do i thought it was going to be helpful to everybody but if it's not i'm okay i don't mind at all i don't mind at all all right uh i think that's all that i had for return oh dan has so in fact a different topic before we move on um on the the presentation i know illinois announced today region eight's moving to tier one does that change anything with the sports or with our i just want to know the implications of tier one uh no there's really no difference between for us tier one or tier two it's when we exit the tier mitigations that's the the really only difference between tier one and uh phase four is that all the all the sports are able to be played which really puts basketball back into the mix once we move to phase four that's really the key difference right now is basketball and once we move out of the tier mitigations then basketball can return and i also know isn't tier one groups of 25 or under can meet does that mean that we would be back in person as a as a board if when moving to tier one tomorrow yes yeah if we moved to tier one then we could come back and hold a board meeting because the whole board could fit and we could still host uh some visitors uh so yes that does change for us as well as a board all right sorry to backtrack you i just wanted to check questions thank you anything else anything else i can answer move to saliva testing and i'm going to turn this over to scott and gina gina i think you're talking and you're on mute okay sorry having trouble there um so tonight we're going to talk about saliva screening or saliva testing um and how we would like to move forward with saliva screening in district 99.

a second round of cares funding which is spread amongst fiscal year 22 in fiscal year 23. so these numbers in fiscal year 21 i've updated those uh to represent the savings that we've experienced while students and staff are in our remote learning phase so savings in the in fiscal year 21 are coming in the areas of substitute costs ppe supplies some classroom supplies contracted transportation and food service as well as transportation salaries and there's also some adjustments to revenue in lunch sales and athletic activity club fees but as you can see with those adjustments are that has reduced our expected deficit from the adopted budget which was 5.9 million and with these um updates we are expecting our deficit for fiscal year 21 to end around 1.5 million dollars so this does help our fund balance moving forward so as dr sparlin said we are going we're expected to end this fiscal year the current fiscal year with just about 19.1 million dollars and taking those uh assumptions and projections forward we are expecting to end fiscal year 26 at 39.8 million dollars thank you christine all right moving on uh earlier this year the board directed the administration to present a plan that would cut five million dollars from next year's budget in doing so we identified three priorities those were one maintain a quality climate for learning for students which goes uh which goes with our goal over the past four years of trying our best to balance the budget with minimum minimal effect of the education of our students two find efficiencies with our current practices and three to find reductions that are sustainable so tonight we're going to present budget reductions and cost savings in six key areas those areas are district administrative budgets district administrative positions staff reductions due to declining enrollment secondary reductions lessons learned from remote learning and other so starting in the area of district administrative budgets uh this is an item we've we've talked about already uh briefly but lease drivers education vehicles currently vehicles are rented on a daily rate of 22.50 or approximately 675 dollars per month per vehicle switching to a lease for the six vehicles used for driver's education would have cost approximately 266 dollars per month it would result in about twenty nine thousand four hundred dollars savings the next item is reduced maintenance budgets here here we are proposing weekend building checks be reduced to one day per weekend except during the cold months and this is an item that will need to be collectively bargained as it is in the ocma contract but if it is an estimated at a thirty two thousand dollar savings the next item is restructure benefits uh one of the more innovative ways to reduce our expenditures is through entering into a direct contract in relationship with a major medical provider in our area this innovative approach to negotiating rates directly with the major medical providers as opposed to relying upon blue cross and blue shield to negotiate on our behalf will allow everyone to benefit our employees will receive an unprecedented enhancement to their medical insurance the major medical provider will see an increase in their share of business and the district will save approximately 285 000 next year from a reduced cost for the services provided this is a major project that has been in the works for some time does not require any mousse and is in the final stages of preparation for a launch this spring which will also generate additional savings this year as well the total savings for that is approximately 285 000 a year the next item is renegotiate property and liability insurance we worked with brokers to negotiate savings with carriers to reduce the annual premium and we were able to save one hundred thousand dollars yeah the next item reduce technology professional development we have been doing more training in-house and plan to continue this practice for the future and the last item in this area is eliminate dream box is it up there now yeah i'm sorry one second from the original list yes reduce uh technology uh lemonade dreambox yes and the final item in that category is to uh to do that this is a supplementary supplemental elementary math software program that has not had widespread use it's title one schools could still use their money to continue it the use if needed or wanted and that would be 54 000 and that comes the total district administrative budget budget reductions uh totals 526 thousand two hundred dollars all right slide nine is reduction to administrative positions the second area of cuts in re in regards to reduction in uh as district administrative positions uh we've identified eight positions that would be eliminated which will provide 661 500 in savings annually those positions have been shared with the board and are not listed this evening because this is an informational presentation and those discussions have not been had with those employees at this time what is important is that we feel that we can save six hundred sixty one thousand five hundred dollars by making those changes so i tend the next area we looked at are staff reductions due to a declining enrollment it is important to note that we have had a declining enrollment in elementary first in time and for the past few years we have reduced fte in the area of elementary's teaching staff to coincide with that declining enrollment it's also important to note due to our declining enrollment we would be making this recommendation even if we weren't talking about budget reductions the board has set class size divisors and we follow those class divide those class divisors when creating sections during staffing the reality is when you have fewer students you have fewer staff this reduction equates to a 2.1 million dollar savings the next item is in regards to re reductions to the secondary level that are not due to a declining enrollment in this category we feel we can find the amount listed by looking at efficiencies looking at some of our schedules and making some adjustments where kids are not affected reductions in this area equate to 914 thousand dollars okay now we're going to transition to lessons learned from remote learning uh the first item is stop printing student planners because we will be one-to-one at the secondary level we want to train students to use a digital calendar instead of a printed calendar we estimate those savings to be approximately nine forty-five thousand dollars the next item is reduce subs reduce the need for subs and associated costs during a regular school year much money is spent on paying to do internal coverage when subs are unavailable this is very very costly and during remote learning we utilize google classroom for teachers to post assignments and learning activities the same practice could be done when we are back in person and then since the instruction was provided by a certified teacher student supervision could be provided by a teaching assistant or dean assistant at a much lower cost even with hiring an additional teaching assistant at each school to cover classes and reduce costs the estimated savings is approximately three hundred thousand dollars a year all right next i idea is to move to four days of in person and one day of online instruction and the 21 22 school year a couple of years ago when we were looking at a cost savings we looked at the concept of a four-day school week many schools in the western united states have done this for that very reason for cost savings tonight we are not proposing that rather propose the idea of four days a week in person with one day fully remote during remote learning we utilize new technology and instructional practice to instruct students now that we will be one to one for junior high and high school students we could have four days a week of in person with one day of digital learning scheduled for these levels students would continue to gain experience with digital and independent learning and the savings will be through reduced transportation and energy costs of approximately 491 thousand dollars a year and the last item here is the idea of moving gold to a hybrid model of instruction with in-person and remote options so the gold program services around 50 to 60 students the acronym goal stands for granting opportunities through alternative learning what we are proposing here is to provide even more opportunity or what could be thought of as an alternate plan of learning for students in this program students at goal complete their work online in a self-paced fashion the need for many of those students to be physically present doesn't hold true anymore with today's technology the suggestion here is to modify the current program and to assess and place students in hybrid or in-person learning based on the student individual learning needs those students who demonstrate they don't need to physically attend school to be successful would be offered the ability to complete their work remotely as long as they are meeting expectations and being successful we we we believe we can save around 280 by making those modifications and the totals the total from lessons learned from remote learning is 1.1 million dollars all right slide 13 highlight savings and what we've we titled other areas the first is reduce high school operating budget by 10 percent that would be athletics and academics we've talked with high school administrators and they concur with that recommendation that would be a 86 000 savings uh the next item is offer retirement center for eligible employees uh one of the ideas to reduce our expenditures is to look at ways to better incentivize teachers who may like to retire but can't for insurance reasons when this issue was last studied during the 1819 school year it was discovered that each of our teachers who could retire but had not yet declared their intent to do so had district medical insurance with dependents covered under the plan so they are currently up there are currently approximately 40 teachers who are eligible to retire but have not decided to do so of these teachers all but three have dependents covered under the medical insurance with a well thought out incentive to address this need and with participation similar to what we had during the 1819 school year it's estimated that savings could be 50 000 dollars for this one fy 21 budget it's important to note that this is a conservative figure and that the savings could exceed the 50 000 mark but it is believed that the savings would not be less than fifty thousand dollars and the last item in this category titled other areas is utilize staff retirement savings and this is simply the difference between retiring staff and refilling those positions at 374 thousand dollars slide 14 the slide shows the totals from each of the six categories that we've identified totaling five million seven hundred and one thousand dollars seven hundred one thousand seven hundred dollars at this time i'd like to open the forward to discussion and eventually direction from the board on your thoughts as our intention is to bring the list of cuts to mitigate the deficit to the board at the february 8th board of education meeting for approval let's start with tony do you have any thoughts that you are questions yeah i took some notes while dr smiling was going through it and i just want to say first of all thank you to dr sparlin and all the other people who i know had to help find these savings um because it is a huge relief when we were confronting another six million dollars worth of cuts to to have such good suggestions come up and such a very detailed lengthy list of good suggestions um and that i think you incorporated dr sparlin a lot of the things that we were hearing from the community the last time we tried to cut and things that we've seen in letters from the community so i want people to know that information gets through people are using that information to to look for ways to save money and then just to say to the public you know as we go through this and we have the discussion about how this is going to come out that when you look at all these cuts it's really the best we can do but still less special education assistance i know some of those folks and it's very hard for them to do their job right now and i think it's going to be harder once we make these cuts less subs that's been an issue for a long time in schools not being able to get the sub coverage and what happens is sometimes people are pulled that are reading specialists or they have some other job to do and then the kids don't get that service for the day and then the four days a week for school i'm not happy about it but i see why that saves money and i see why that's a way in a school district like ours where we really need some money to to find a way to get to get through this this situation so i think it's it's a pretty solid package and then there's some things that i was just like yay no more paper planners so thank you dr sparlin and all the other people that are involved in that well thank you tony it was a team effort so appreciate it brent uh i don't want to totally echo that but appreciate all the work that's been put in to this it's never fun but i i have to say again while none of this is fun or easy i think this is one of the more straightforward and reasonable plans that we as a board has have looked at when we started talking specific to budget reductions um i i think i'm good with with everything on here and i just have an ancillary comment regarding um what was the math program and it doesn't matter what it's called i guess my my only comment there is if we've identified systems that are not used in every building meaning that they're not preferred or most effective are those should those programs continue right and i understand if we get title one funds to pay for programs that's great but then what we end up is with is we end up with 20 to 50 programs and if we were to ever lose that funding then we have to make a determination on what to move forward on and it just seems un unmanageable and so it's just an overarching comment that i think we should make sure that we're only implementing the most proven programs in the district and if they work in one building they should work in another and i think it would make things simpler for teachers as they move between buildings and simpler for administration when we're trying to determine which programs are implemented for which students of need allie i got a couple questions so i'm looking at the least driver's ed vehicles so my concern there would be i guess five periods a day of driver's ed i know most leases have mileage restrictions so we worked with our current department chairs on what that mileage should be and they recommend it excuse me 12 000 miles and what they what we would do just like we do with the buses is swap them out swap the the cars are being used a lot to more local drives then so we would just monitor that we stay within those parameters over the three years and then um the restructuring of benefits always freaks me out the reason and again i'm sure you guys have been done a ton of work but i worry about limiting choice for some families but i'm sure you guys will address that and then underneath the number three the decreasing elementary teachers i notice that it says without changing class size caps right but i would maybe caution the board that when you start implementing a lot of these changes in class size like it also is class minimums especially at the high school level like that could affect some classes even running so i guess i guess i would i would want to know maybe from the high schools what classes this could potentially affect right like i wouldn't want to drop an ap course that was low this is just elementary well i mean but it's gonna if we're making these cuts across the board it's gonna affect everybody because these ones these ones your ellie at the 20 the elementary that's due to the declining enrollment in elementary so what that meant with chant without changing size caps that actually just means maintain the current divisors that we use for k2 and 3.5 and by utilizing the same numbers that we've utilized over the last couple years um it results in reductions well because what concerned me about that was then when we got to the high school it said they were going to reduce by 10 percent so that'd be a quick way to reduce at a high school too oh that was the uh that was their operating budget okay yeah that's where it's eighty-six thousand academics uh well but that affects kids right so when we start cutting ten percent of the high school that affects kids um i mean all of these things obviously affect kids in some way shape or form but that one just a little bit more directly for me like i guess my question would be how much did we save on paper at the junior high and high school levels alone this year i guess it'll depend if they have devices and time and our chromebooks get delivered and i'm gonna i'm a hard no on that four days a week once we get back to regular school thank you but i appreciate all the work you guys did thank you yeah just a couple of items um the timing impeccable timing with declining enrollment that helped out immensely without having to make a vote on a reduction to that magnitude i would want to make sure that um the recommendation for goal um is something that is really a strong recommendation from everybody involved in moving gold students to a hybrid at home digital curriculum um that program runs for a reason and i i guess i want to understand the the methods and the reasoning behind or thinking that that's a good idea to move to a hybrid scenario if not out of necessity for for the gold program um and lastly uh christy i believe i heard you state that on that one of the early slides you started to include evidence-based funding back into the projections yes that's correct would it be too much work if we as a board could just see what that looked like flat without annual increases so flat fiscal year 22 23 and then come back in 24.

in our best case scenario we would be returning secondary students to five days of in-person instruction sooner rather than later our first determination of trying to do that was last thursday or i guess two thursdays ago january 14th after that last board meeting so that time has passed we were not able to bring students back or at least made the choice not to and they have remained in hybrid so our next opportunity to review is this thursday january 28th so we'll have additional conversations we we continue regularly to have conversations with dr nibalski and the bartholomew county health department as well as the officials at crh columbus regional health we'll continue to look at the data that we have available to us and on thursday we'll communicate with the public as to where we stand for next week so if we would make the decision to change on thursday and bring secondary students back into the building for five days every day of the week in person instruction that would start on monday february the first so that is our situation now we'll communicate to the public where we are next thursday this slide is always on there in terms of what our responsibilities are based upon spread within the community this map is of the state of indiana and is the most recent one comes from last week we were at a 2.5 those who follow this map pretty closely will note that it is much less red than it has been in the past so that's a good thing perhaps the state is going in the right direction with with numbers of cases as we look at our numbers for this week per capita rates continue to go down the positive test rate has continued to go down the hospitalizations at crh have continued to go down so everything trending in the right direction and we think that we'll be at a 2.0 most likely when the numbers are crunched for wednesday so just a a forecast for us in terms of at least the numbers that we look at that match up with the state we'll see if that is the case this we put in front of you all the time as well this was the second grouping of recommendations in terms of instructional model options and extracurriculars based upon color designations of the counties and then this last slide for covet 19 is just where we stand today with number of cases so since monday august the 10th 469 positive test cases now you can see that is 279 students 141 support staff members and 49 teachers or 2 percent 12 and 6 percent of the groups that they make up so that's not a total it would be 49 teachers mean 6 percent of our certified staff members have tested positive i always put this in here in terms of just that that quick change that happened uh october 2nd was the friday leading into fall break we had 29 positive test cases by the end of that month we had 82 and since that time we've had 387.

congratulations to both of you and thank you very much i assume brother and sister yeah so who's smarter in latin it's the competition thing but you admitted it and she was three inches no right as long normally we would ask mr walker to you know give us a few words when he comes but you you guys have a lot of different awards that were listed there is there one that you might want to like point out as being that you were more proud to achieve than the others i mean i was particularly proud of the publications contest award because i made that publication of awareness at scantia which is our state's publication i served as ijcl editor last year now and as our current high detail editor i moved up to ijcl first vice president so that's been exciting i was really proud of that awards that's a lot of work in that publication and it felt good to be recognized for that and are you both are you seniors this year yes we are got it do we have school plans already uh i just put my deposit down for butler university congratulations yourself oh well congratulations to both of you outstanding thank you there you go man miss green we're gonna hold on to the other uh they want to get a picture of you guys patrick push this way right there thank you for coming out this evening have a good night thank you all right item three we have patrons registered for comment uh miss green nobody commented this evening okay thank you and we can move to item for the consent agenda of dr todd terrell thank you for your consideration this evening we have 4.01 which is the regular business meeting public hearing of the board of school trustees held january 13th the minutes for those meetings we asked for your approval 4.02 the crown point high school band quit equipment purchase and then 4.03 the personnel agenda and 4.04 the voucher registered checks as listed in board docs for your consideration thank you dr terrell you put a recommendation to approve the consent agenda as presented to a motion to approve so removed uh moved by mr smith and second by mr did we have a segment mr baby uh questions or comments from dr terrell all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries 4-0 and we have a couple special well we have a special hire in the personnel agenda and uh um coach bazia and his wife barbara joined us tonight uh to be our new football coach starting as june 30th correct so mr drill do you want to introduce uh coach to us and then we'll ask coach if he'd come up and say a few things and introduce his wife to us as well sure to crown point high introduce coach pizza comes to us with a wealth of coaching experience both in indiana and illinois taking his porridge team to the state finals his team that would crossword the state finals and several playoff experiences so it was we're really excited to have him on board and i'd like to introduce thank you bill uh just to say a few words first of all we are thrilled to be here tonight we're extremely excited uh to be part of the crown point community it's one of the few jobs that really piqued my interest you know as a further on my career and this is just a tremendous opportunity for myself and my family i bring today my top assistant coach my wife bart who you all see throughout the years and she does a terrific job of doing a lot of things off the field that really help our program and uh i'm humbled i'm excited and uh i couldn't be anymore after i guess i'd be remiss to uh uh if i didn't point out the professionalism of the committee and all the things that went along with that they were just outstanding very professional and uh made it very easy to go through the process but uh we're excited i'm excited to meet our student athletes and uh uh excited to make you all very proud to be a part of our crown point community as we uh unleash the bulldogs for the 2021 season thank you thank you thank you coach i'd also like to uh uh say to thank you we had heard the the process and thank everybody putting the time to the hiring pro you know the hiring process through the interviews and um i know you guys spent hours on the first round and hours with the second round and um you know as a board member appreciate the work and effort that went into firing hiring the the right coach for crown point so thank you um does anybody else have any comments before we uh move forward to action items this evening well me let me hesitate real quick to say generally coach and um barbara if if you guys like to you know take an opportunity to to leave that'd be fine with that you don't have to tell bill twice those reporters got to stay where those two guys go [Music] thank you thank you all for coming you lost half the room that's all right okay action items 5.01 approval to apply for and receive the walmart community grant science stem education of colonel john wheeler middle school or at i'm sorry at colonel john wheeler middle school mr hartman um middle school this is uh purchasing a 3d printer in supplies between teacher at uh thank you mr hardman you've heard the recommendation to to prove to apply for and receive funding an amount of 1500 from walmart community grant program for science stem education at colonel john wheeler middle school we have a motion to approve so moved moved by mr angel second by mr babjack any questions or comments from mr hartman i'd like to thank everybody involved including including mr lewandowski obviously all right all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries four zero thank you miss rob at 5.02 is approval of construction management and design services the 2021 projects miss dowling thank you mr president before you today these are the construction management services agreement with the skillman corporation as well as the design and architectural services agreement with gibraltar design mr conservas and mr thompson are here today obviously we all know dion and jim yes they're fondly known to us from skillman as well as gibraltar these agreements cover the construction project that you all approve the petition referendum process on for total construction in the amount of 214.5 million and these are the agreements that fall in line with that for all of the design construction management etc so the percentage fee of essentially i took the overall cost that was listed and divided into a percentage based on the construction so that's where the number came from just for your own information as you can see there's skillman corporation gibraltar we've worked with for a period of time they've continued to work with us when we were doing small scale two and three million dollar projects worked with us through our entire district assessment so we knew the things that we needed the most and so we would like to continue to work with them through the new this you know big changing moment for the corporation as well so the administration would recommend approval of the construction management services agreement with the skillman corporation and the amount of 5.45 of total construction costs and design and architectural services agreement with gibraltar design in the amount of 5.85 of total construction costs mr president i don't know if mr source or mr thompson have any anything to add i'd just be happy to answer any questions okay let's move forward we'll get to it and see if anybody has any questions at that point okay for the recommendation then for ms dowling to approve the construction management service agreement with the skillman corporation amount of 5.45 percent of total construction costs and design an architectural service agreement with gibraltar design and amount of 5.85 percent of total concussion construction costs do we have motion to approve so moved second moved by mr babjack and second by mr angel and now do we have any uh questions or comments or uh my comment would be to both these gentlemens and their firms obviously we had great working relationship with them we were talking these kinds of dollars on a project not just the dollar amount itself but it's the confidence that when glitches occur or issues arise that they're hands on and they're there to answer our questions and take care of those in a timely fashion and as part of the overall project so that goes into this agreeing to work with these two firms and these individuals so on behalf of a board member of 16 years i greatly appreciate that relationship i look forward to obviously working with you on this large substantial project that the school corporation is moving forward with yeah mr angel i'd like to echo that with the fact that we've had some smaller projects along the way with the you know not necessarily a small project but things like the learning center that it just always seemed to go very smooth and the product at the end is exactly if not better than what we expected so and if people didn't realize that was a time crunch sensitive project and i'm telling you there was thoughts two months prior or month out that and things were never going to be ready but somehow they delivered so once again that goes to having that relationship to where we know things are going to be done the right way and in a timely fashion so thank you looking forward to seeing this one get started a lot of stuff that's been a long time coming so and i also appreciate that you guys are here for this is our fourth or fifth meeting that we've had and you guys are always here make yourself available for questions so appreciate that too and the direct questions may come about as these projects get started but so don't think you guys are quite off the hook as long as it's involved in these done at a minimum we also have a graduate um that's looking to building conflict and we've not developed but he's a former graduate of the front points of possibly five so um that's exciting as well we need taxpayers that are involved personally as a parent i'm obviously excited there are three businesses registered various schools so very exciting and we're greatly appreciative of the opportunity awesome brian would you like to add anything uh brian smith from oh just excited about the project thank you guys for for all your work always done a great job so i'm just excited to okay let's move the vote then all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed emotion carries 4-0 and as mr baptist said thank you guys for joining us this evening the 5.03 the vm project funding acceptance ms dowling thank you mr president the school corporation specifically karen told our director of transportation partnered with south shore clean cities to apply for a grant for an electric bus the grant is for a 75 reimbursement so we have to put out the full cost before we can be reimbursed so the cost of an electrical bus is estimated to be four hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty three dollars we make that full purchase out of the operations fund and then file for a reimbursement we'll receive 75 percent of the cost which is estimated to be approximately three hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and forty seven dollars in return i would also add that part as part of this we are getting a full assessment done of our fleet to see where we can identify other areas where electric buses or alternative fuel are feasible and we'll continue to work with south shore clean cities but we actually will be to my knowledge the second electric bus in the state the first in northwest indiana um so with that the administration would recommend acceptance of the volkswagen diesel emissions environmental mitigation trust award in the form of a reimbursement grant for 75 percent of the purchase price of an electric bus thank you miss don you've heard the recommendation that's presented by ms dallin we have a motion to approve so moved by mr smith and second by mr babjack questions or comments from be the mr the use of this particular plus the next uh action item i think there's specific use would this just be a difficult toolbox used for transporting children yes it will be i would say it's probably more likely to be in the more local routes so it's not going to be used for extensive travel because of the recharge needs but it is going to be used on the regular daily bus routes fantastic any other questions or comments from mr now let's take a vote all those in favor signify saying hi hi hi opposed the world carries 4-0 and then 5.04 is the award of the transportation district vehicles ms dowling thank you mr president we had two vehicles within the transportation department one predominantly used for transporting additional materials that come with some of our extracurricular activities such as robotics and drama athletics band orchestra where it's not feasible due to the size of the equipment to put it on a school bus it's more appropriate to use this large van to be able to transport things in mass second piece of this is a van that transportation's been using to essentially jump start vehicles things to do with buses and essentially should probably be a truck but we repurposed a van and so the area that houses fuel is actually on the interior and over time as you might imagine that has the use i think the fuel has made its way that the vehicle no longer works as efficiently as it once did both of these vehicles are over 20 years old and just simply aren't uh are no longer usable for the purposes they were intended so miss toth went out and did obtain quotes for the vehicles that's contained within the recommendation these are normally on a you know we don't normally replace these in a 10 to 12 year schedule like we would do with regular maintenance vehicles or with school buses you can see we get a lot more life out of them than just your standard usage so the three quotes of there's three quotes from the providers one quote for each vehicle so there's a 2021 f-4250 as well as a 2021 ford transit van the low quote on that was from sutton ford in the amount of 72 000 307 20 and the administration would recommend awarding the vehicles quoted to sutton ford at that amount of 72 000 307 20.

ulta matrix oh yes um this is for technology this was a payment for our new wireless system that's going to be integrated um and mr gibney i believe that's in all buildings is that correct wireless access points yeah this is the wireless access point project and this would be for all buildings anyone else okay we can go ahead and move on to prepays for december we have prepays for the month of december dated um 12 1 through 12 31 2020 i'd like to point out a couple that were unusual on here you'll see on voucher number it's about halfway down eight zero seven seven seven the total is 360 472 dollars and 28 cents if you'll remember back in april we took out a tax anticipation warrant it was right at the very beginning of cobit and there was all kinds of buzz that we may not receive our entire distribution for the spring and possibly the fall so i tried to be proactive we went ahead and we did a tax anticipation warrant for the operations fund we did not have to use that money we were very fortunate and we did receive our full distribution for spring and for fall this year so this was just basically the repayment on that so of course the total prepays for the month of december are going to be considerably higher and then of course as usual the biggest payment is for to the insurance trust so total prepays for the month of december 2020 700 479 and 28 cents did anyone have questions about the prepaids okay are we ready to move on to the spray glory claims okay all right we've got regular claims dated today january 25th 2021 i will first ask anyone if they have any questions before i pointed anything out we've had we've had some renewals on here so there's going to be some things on here that you do not see on a regular basis so if anyone has any questions i'd be happy to answer those no okay so total claims dated today january 25th 2021 total is 199 972.25 and are we ready to move on to the fun report okay all right so in your package next in your package should be the fund report ending balance december 31st 2020 in education 841 826.10 ending balance and operations one million four hundred forty four thousand sixty six dollars and ninety five cents total for all funds at the end of twenty twenty seven million four hundred seventy six thousand six eighty four sixty three and then last in your financial packet you should have the depository statement of bank balances again the balances for the banks there at the top minus any outstanding checks the total for fund balance for all all banks is seven million four hundred and seventy six thousand six eighty four sixty three if you compare that with your funds fund balances they balance to the penny i'd like to submit for approval thank you very much next item on the agenda are the personnel reports which are posted online and the door of central office so that is the end of the consent agenda if there are no questions or comments can we get a motion to approve the consent agenda it's like give a motion in a second all in favor all post motion facets next item on the agenda is reports and our first is dr french hey good evening so i'm going to be brief tonight just wanted to mention a few things so um first of all we have nwea testing happening and just to kind of give you an explanation of that so next to istep and i learned that nwea testing is our important testing as a district and the difference between istep and ilearn where they focus on achievement in wea focus on growth so you could have a second grader that it will show that they're reading at a 10th grade level vice versa if you have a sophomore that's performing at um elementary math level it will show that too and it won't track that which is why we take it three times a year and so that helps teachers more than any other you know major assessment to help them instructionally to know how to teach kids and so we're in the middle of our winter testing we're wrapping that up this week it's taking a little bit longer because we're working with hybrid schedules and virtual students who are trying to get their come in to do their testing so that's just a teaser for next month when we have the results so and then the other thing i wanted to mention was this winter we worked with the building principles to identify a teacher innovator leader in each building and basically this is a teacher who's you know already going above and beyond to try innovative things with technology in their classroom um and so it's basically giving them a platform to kind of showcase the things that they're already doing in their classroom and meanwhile support other teachers in their buildings and act as a resource so we're excited about this and they're going to continue to do that throughout the semester so kind of a two-fold goal there but that's all i wanted to mention and i'll have more data for you next month okay i think it will be cool thank you next is the superintendent's report yeah so uh in your pack this month i had just a general some general updates pertaining to the 2020 financial year end as well as the 2021 budget or if you could pull up that slideshow so these documents are actually in your in your packet i think they're the last last page like that but i just wanted to kind of just provide a kind of a 10 000 foot view of our 100 000 foot view of our financial finances here um so the first thing um that i do throughout the year is i track the revenue that we receive for all of our funds and track this against the amount that we expect that is expected or that is budgeted for when we're doing the budget each year so i wasn't a part of doing the 2020 budget but i pulled [Applause] the expected revenue amounts off of our 1782 budget order or 2020 and so if you if you start with the education fund i track the state distribution each month so that's the tuition support payment that we receive from the doe and then miscellaneous revenue could be any of those miscellaneous revenue things that we would receive for education fund typically like student fees reimbursements from the state for like summer school things of that nature and you can see the totals at the bottom in the red you know we were projecting um you know 12 million 858 and you can see that we ended with 12 million 488 so obviously we took in less obviously we we made some adjustments even throughout the year to account for that in our budget with our budgeting freeze reducing staff through attrition over the over the summer and so even moving forwards into 2021 we are going we we were much more conservative with our revenue estimates because we don't want to end up in a situation um to where we have a large shortfall so that's something that we we monitor and kelly and i talk about frequently on the right hand side you can see pension debt we don't receive any property tax funds for that all of that is through the local income tax you can see what what was projected the top 195 just over 195 000 you can see that in total we actually received 248 000 so um we actually uh collected a little bit more than we anticipated there so that's a a real positive and that's a good thing uh moving on to debt service for the next slide please moving on to debt service um obviously that's one of the funds um to where the dlgf is going to make sure you collect what you need to in order to make your debt service payments and so you can see these are all funded through property taxes through excise tax commercial vehicle excise tax financial institution tax and local income tax and you can see that throughout the year we receive typically it's these funds and two draws so the june draw and also the december draw and you can see that property and excise tax we've collected more than what we anticipated and then you can see for a couple of those smaller other sources we've received less than what we expected but overall we ended to the good up 116 just over 116 000 in that fund moving down below that the operations fund again kind of the same thing um mrs romer had mentioned the payback of the tax anticipation warrants so one of the concerns um obviously in 2020 with the pandemic is that there was going to be a huge shortfall in property tax funds and some of those other revenue sources that we rely on to fund our operations within the school district so greencastle issued some tax anticipation warrants to potentially make up for that shortfall well in reality we we see that while we didn't collect as much as we had hoped to the ending the amounts that we collected in total weren't nearly weren't nearly as bad they were almost what we what we expected although there was a slight shortfall in just under 500 000 in total some of the revenue transferred or excuse me revenue for the operations fund because there are are expenses for instance such as my office and my salary that can't be paid out of the education fund and so those those uh salaries and benefits of that nature transferred to operation so we make a transfer um in 2020 we made a quarterly transfer to help with those costs um so you'll see that revenue there as well but you can see that we actually shorted it because based on the revenue that we received in education fund we collected less so therefore the 15 rule in order to stay below that amount we we made an adjustment in december so corey if you could move on to the next slide so just kind of some talking talking points in in total i'm just kind of looking at at the trend and kind of how we how we end the year we've seen we've seen a steady decline in revenue the last three years and until 20 we've seen 2020 we've seen expenditures go up so one of the things i do is compare total collected revenues total expenditures in order to look at expenses versus excuse me to look at revenue versus expenditures and uh 2017 2018 and 2019 year end we overspent in our education fund most recently in 2019 by over 400 000 but if you notice in 2020 um we actually um ended roughly my numbers aren't it's hard to read here on this page roughly 59 000 to the good so we didn't dig into the deficit any deeper so anytime we were looking at not replacing staff members putting in the spending freeze in october and just making those adjustments that's helped us avoid an even larger shortfall than what we than what we typically would um because if you notice um 2019 total expenditures versus 2020.

to make that happen our first pickup of our earliest bus is 6 37 in the morning and we have seven buses at the region whose first pickup is before seven in the morning our elementary buses ballpark about 8 30.

so moved second motion by mr nunes is second by mrs way on the motion any further discussion she are hearing none all in favor aye opposed extensions motion passes unanimously thank you everyone uh i'm not sure if uh do you think we can sneak in the spotlight on dartmouth high school before the uh the 6 45 public hearing or would you like to what's your pleasure mr tebow um we can i don't want to put you under the gun if you want to if we can we can certainly take up some other mat some other matters could you just because that way i don't rush i don't want to miss anyone absolutely oh it's fine many members okay thank you so um under old business we'll continue on with a covet 19 update i asked dr gifford if she could just brief the committee on just the the district's progress and um just how how the district is proceeding and how we're handling um you know the cases and the proven 19 as well as uh where we're at with our plans our hybrid plan i mean and remote plan so i'll turn it over to dr gibbs sure thank you so we don't have a lot of new things to talk about tonight but we will mention a few i mean nothing major and earth shattering has happened to shift our plans right now so we do continue obviously to meet with mr misha we have our standing monday meeting i think last week we had three or four meetings plus as we say our phone calls but this morning we talked about how some of the kind of a little decline in the numbers and nobody knows why that's happening i mean we're hopeful but we seem to have made a very good decision with the after holidays i think we did holding back a little bit and maybe we've gotten over that holiday spike if you will a little bit so as we as you know we continue to keep our dashboard updated every friday the nurses maintain an ongoing list we can look at every day as they add folks in we did have a number of cases over the weekend as as i've let you know and but things are in order and people have been notified and the quarantining is continuing i'll reiterate once again that we do follow procedures and protocols the nurses use their judgment according to the cdc guidelines of what symptoms how they could result in either the child goes home etc and but everyone has been absolutely wonderful and taking great precautions our plan right now of course is to return our high school after this week on february 1 back to hybrid method i think the kids are probably ready to come back and see their their um peers sports have been going well again um i did check with mr chris of fully today as you saw as you came in the basketball team was playing so fingers crossed that we can keep that going we have spoken with mr mishu as well i think i notified you before and we will be supporting the town for vaccine clinics here at the high school and he will be sending the information out about that we have one starting thursday night and it's obviously a very controlled phase one and those folks that should come will be notified and they register etc but we're offering a lot of support we've also reached out to our secretarial support and asked if folks want to help blogging people in etc so custodians i believe as well so we're offering a lot of help there and also i just wanted you to know that a lot of folks have been including mass including area we were just speaking about this round tables superintendent roundtables have been petitioning the governor to include educators in phase one of this rollout we still have a couple more months i guess phase two by the time we got to the teachers or so because the first group in phase two is over 75 then over 65 como bil bill i always say i say co-mobility all the time morbidity um so we did i as the president of our roundtable colony i reached out to my folks and wrote a letter on behalf of our group and we sent that off today just petitioning to see um what might happen so that's kind of um the covid world do you have anything other than that that's pretty much it the covered world but we're we're hoping as we said plans are for the high school to come back next week okay so to piggyback off of dr gifford's uh comment on her advocacy with her superintendents group with um really pushing the kobe vaccine i would i would just like to say you know i i've been doing as i'm sure all the three of you have been doing kind of keeping up with where we're at with the uh the phases with the covert vaccine vaccine phases and i i just got to say that i am truly baffled and bewildered that are that teachers are not included right now in in phase one i it just it boggles my mind i i was able to have a good conversation with glenn kutcher the president of mass association of school committees this afternoon and i wanted to get his perspective on it and he he said that their executive board has also voted to push it up to to request that the governor push it up do what they can to push it up to phase one um i i think as a as a school committee member and as a as a um an educator myself that it is really despicable that we are still we're pushing teachers and school department staff off to phase two and i think the state and and i think this um the office of the government of the governor um we can do better we can do better we owe it to our teachers we owe it to our staff um you know we there's a lot of there's a lot of staff members that i'm sure that some of you you know and this isn't unique to dartmouth this is across the state that the staff are just like parents and just like students there's a lot of nervous staff and like mr coochie was saying from masc is that if we if we want to truly get students back into the buildings full time in some type of normalcy in schools we have got to get our educators and we've got to get our our student in well on our staff at the very least vaccinated and included in the first phase i think that should happen sooner rather than later um so that's just my two cents um i have a couple of other things uh my thoughts with covid19 update but anyone else want to share anything uh mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman uh a couple of questions uh in a comment um dr gifford with uh mr kylie with i'm assuming that we're going to be using the colin lynch activity center for that now we're going to have once it's complete we're going to have to go in and deep clean that and disinfect it there's going to be cleaning necessary yes so that'll we'll take care of that when that's done okay yeah it will uh just so you know from a financial perspective so we've we're working as dr gifford said with um with the department of the town department of health um to provide support both administratively secretarial staff and custodians those uh monies that they earn will be supported through the town's covitt grant so we won't be born by our budget it'll be our staff helping out and we're happy that our staff are you know seem to be very willing to you know to assist in this and and you know dr gifford and i have been trying everything we can to try you know to help uh in that process um as has the high school so um so but just so you know we won't i wasn't on the hook for the money i wasn't worried so much about the the the financial part of it it was you know the deep clean after and sanitizing and it's definitely an additional burden our staff are already especially our cleaning you know cleaning staff are already doing extra duty so now it's extra extra duty yeah so uh what just you know what time is that scheduled to run approximate that's the clinic the clinic yeah four to eight and then a set in the future they'll be doing more and more so they would be in the evening of four to eight and then they're planning on some saturdays as well and um he'll be push putting out that schedule once he's sure of that so what's what does that do to uh you know the schedule for the gym with athletics and music and besides throw a monkey wrench into everything yeah well we've had mr chris fully in on all the meetings and we've had to keep him calm a little bit but he's been really cooperative and working to use the middle school gym or whatever else that needs to be done we just felt you know it's it's something that we need to have happen the community needs and whatever we can do we will do so you know the band folks they kind of use up any other room anyway but um andy is is working really hard to reschedule whatever needs to be done okay yep and i would just add mr flint uh and i exchanged emails today um and his line was that they would be able to figure it out in terms of the music part of it so thank you and my last uh thing mr chairman at the moment is you were talking about you know the conversation about getting teachers and talking with masc and such and i'm just wondering if a letter was sent to you know the governor and you know to the governor and to the state department uh the commonwealth's department of public health from us just saying you know we you know to you know force not force bad choice of work urge urge the inoculation of teachers in phase one i mean sure there's an issue out there right wrong or indifferent you know who knows how much vaccine you know we're getting we're supposed to be getting we don't get you know that that type of deal but all of that aside i totally agree with you that you know the teachers and faculty staff custodians i mean just about everybody that works in a school should be on that first uh first round of vaccines so i mean if there was a letter from this committee sent to the governor and to the state you know massachusetts department of public health sure on behalf i think that would be wonderful that's a great idea you know so i i you want to almost do it like a resolution you know you know you know i'll make a motion that we send a letter to uh to the honor to the honorable governor charles baker and to the massachusetts state department of public health to urge that teachers and school employees be included in phase one i second that the vaccine okay thank you mr nunes i have a motion by mr nunes a second second by mrs amaral um to draft up a letter to to send to uh honorable child speaker as well as department of health um and um no i think it's important i think we owe it we owe it to do what we can to support to support our educators mrs waite no i was just saying if we can also you know send a copy that letter to chris markey as well i think it would be you know as our rep and you know certainly his you know spouse as a teacher in the schools and i'm sure he has you know just the same level of interest and you know kids in the schools but um you know he's our advocate so i'd like to see that letter going to be uh yeah yeah no i'm good all right thank you very much so on the motion any further discussion hearing none all in favor hi hi opposed motion carriage unanimously thank you everyone for that uh so let's uh circle back now the time is the official time is i have uh 6 48 so at this time i'd like to open up the the public hearing on school choice for the 21 22 school year i don't know if i need to gavel that mr nunes is that necessary no sir thank you um so during the uh the public hearing this is just to be typically um though if we had an audience or if we had anyone for public comment um they could they could have certainly sent this in was it posted um posted properly and and putting the paper etcetera it wasn't there everything was given proper notice and all that dr giffords yes i did see it in the standard times last monday yeah you still get the paper edition okay um and just uh just beautiful [Laughter] and just to confirm with our uh with kate gunther uh the recording secretary have you received anything in regards to the public hearing on school choice any input on that i have not received any public comment on that matter okay thank you very much so with that if uh i don't know if i should keep it open for a few more a few more minutes or is it even necessary we can we can if there's if there's comments that come in we can pick the comments up at the end you know that that type of deal i mean i'll make a motion we close the public hearing for uh school choice for school year uh 21 21-22 thank you so i have a motion by mr nunes uh to close the public hearing on school choice for the 21-22 school year and i have a second by uh mrs amaral on the motion any other discussion chia hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions motion carries unanimously so uh thank you everyone for that and now uh is the time where i will um i guess i'll turn it over to dr gifford and she can do the introductions for our spotlight on dartmouth high school are you ready i'm ready yes so we mr tebow is here tonight to talk about the high school we did have a little conversation with some of the principals you know normally it's called spotlight on kids and we felt um a little bit like they they weren't able to really showcase a lot of what was going on given the situation so i i told the principles i said just pick pick some things that are happening in the school no matter what it is how people are supporting kids with social emotional or the staff or the lunch program anything that's happening in the school so i don't know what to expect tonight or uh in the future when the other folks come we don't have any students here but who knows so mr tebow thank you uh dr gifford yes um yeah so the segment's a little bit different than it's been in the past in the past it's been a spotlight on kids and we've been asked uh the principles have been asked to select one you know group or activity within the school and really highlight um our students and so this being a little bit different way especially at the high school where we've been remote for two long stretches of time um you know rounding up kids uh would probably be challenging so we talked about as an administrative team really taking this opportunity um uh you know spotlight on dartmouth high school is kind of being like a state of the school address if you will because one of the things that i think um you know i was here in november and mrs amaral uh expressed that i looked like i had been through the ringer and certainly i think that a lot of educators feel that way this year but i think it's important that we share that despite the feeling and despite how hard it has been our kids are still experiencing a quality education and we haven't canceled a single thing some of the activities some of the experiences our kids are having might look differently but because of the hard work of the educators in this building our kids are still getting a quality education and so i think that's really the theme i hope to kind of present here today um i i tried to organize uh the state of uh of the school address here in five big buckets one being academics certainly the social emotional and school counseling piece being a second major one student activities and athletics technology integration which um has been critical uh you know this year and then finally highlighting faculty and staff um as well and then obviously i'll be happy to answer any questions we have as we go academically and dr gifford has mentioned this many times and it's really all aspects of school this year but it's that idea about being fluid and flexible um being able to kind of you know embrace the uncertainty if you will because that's the one thing that every educator can be certain about is that there is a definite lack of difficulty as we move through the pandemic so i'll talk a little bit about that we also again despite the pandemic we've launched new high quality academic programs this school year uh including project lead the way for computer science um we've also added to our ap uh programming with ap research um you know so so there's been a number of you know i guess my point here is we're not just treading water we are continuing to progress and again it would not be possible without the quality of educators that we have here at dartmouth high school and then finally in terms of under the academics umbrella uh record ap enrollment um which i know i presented on a few months back um but i'll touch on that as well so at the high school as you know we've had um you know fluid and flexible has been the name of the game we have our hybrid model um and the educators at dartmouth high school have been extremely flexible and open-minded you know you'll recall that when we started with hybrid we had a plan where it was going to be in person uh and then asynchronous and what we found very quickly and adjusted and pivoted was that you know with quarantining and with contact tracing and all of these different things um we we needed we felt we needed the ability to make sure that our students got live instruction every day and so um we're very grateful to the educators at dartmouth high school who have been able to do that balancing act and it is a balancing act to have you know 10 to 15 you know kids in front of you physically and another 10 to 12 remotely through google meet what we found as the numbers started to increase was that we had more on google me and less in front of us at times and i'm hopeful that as you know dr gifford alluded to earlier the director of health uh mr micho has said as the numbers you know the numbers are starting to come back down it seems like hopefully that trend continues because we want our students who are in that hybrid model to be in person when they're supposed to be in person we very much believe that that's you know having students in front of us is the easiest most effective way to teach our educators have been extremely flexible and compassionate uh towards students um understanding that it's been difficult you know and and with the numbers the need to to remain remote has occurred at times remote instruction which is what we're in right now um has most definitely been the most efficient uh and easiest way to um provide instruction this school year i've spoken to teachers i've spoken to students and it's just that ability to focus your attention on who you know um with all your students in one place is definitely easier and more efficient is my microphone off oh too close oh i'm sorry sorry mr galesha and then finally we we had to create a third model of instruction um which is our virtual learning academy and i just want to um when we were doing the planning in the summertime it was 40 students who initially identified we're up to 156 students who are fully virtual through ingenuity we have 156 students which is about 15 percent of our total student population and we've really been able to do it um we take pride in this high school that we're very efficient with how we've been able to service these students edgenuity i think provides a very cost effective option for us assistant principal mr gill all of our school counselors all of our lead teachers our librarian emily goodwin pam king as well as most just recently we added um support from a substitute mrs lenz who had been subbing in our building who's going to provide some you know uh outreach and coaching of kids through edgenuity but that's been it and all of those people are doing this work with their other full-time job still going on i think that that sometimes i hope that that doesn't get lost on members of the community i know it's not lost on anyone here on the school committee or at central office but those folks all continue to do a full-time job in addition to this third model of instruction that we call the virtual learning academy we do have a handful and only a handful of that 156 students who want to come back to hybrid so we'll be probably transitioning in the next week or so you know with the start of term three uh semester two term three will transition probably six to ten students it's looking like back to hybrid learning but that still leaves 150 um students in in the program and again we're very grateful to all the folks that i mentioned um for their work in supporting our students who are in the virtual learning academy as well this is really exciting and uh um again i think it speaks to the to the good work that goes on here at dartmouth high school on a daily basis we have 38 um students um that number actually is a typo i believe it's 58 students who are in the ap research class with mr higgins a couple of different sections there but ap research is one of the ap capstone courses what it does is students who complete ap research as well as ap seminar and at least four additional ap courses over the course of their four years at dartmouth high school that allows them to earn a ap capstone diploma which is just one more credential that our students have it's one more way for our students to strengthen their transcripts as they apply to colleges and universities across the country but more than that the quality of the authentic research that they're doing i have here just some of the some of the research questions that they're going to be conducting original research around to what extent is there a relationship between socioeconomic status academic success and the working habits of teenagers that's that's one example um to what extent are microaggressions prominent in dartmouth high school um to what extent does cellular devices affect a student's academic standing and what demographics specifically and every single one of these research proposals that our students have done are high quality questions that are of personal interest to them that they are passionate about and again that's very much in alignment with the district's uh push around personal uh personal pro uh blended funded personalized and project-based learning sorry i i usually have that in order there um but the research that they'll be doing is right in alignment with the push the district has had for the last several years around that so we're i'm excited uh to see the the 20 minute presentations that the students will have to give once they've conducted their research so that's exciting in addition to that project lead the way is another example of a high quality program that we've launched this school year i want to give a shout out to our first year computer science teacher mr bosworth who we stole from a neighboring district as well as a third year computer science teacher mr brian giat both of those two gentlemen attended virtual training through project lead the way this summer in order for us to be able to offer it and again the the benefit they have from being able to network with other teachers across the commonwealth really across the country uh is second to none beyond that there's a tremendous benefit to our students our students who complete project lead the way courses uh get the benefit of a strengthened transcript because project lead the way like ap is nationally recognized and you can be awarded college credits for completing project lead the way courses colleges also also offer uh preferred admission to students who have completed project lead the way um and you know so these are just some of the benefits that our students will be getting from from our launch of project lead the way um i want to thank director of teaching learning tracy oliveira because she did a lot of the heavy lifting with preparing the grant last year for for project lead the way and also obviously she's done a lot of the heavy lifting um pretty much all of the heavy lifting this year because we did um put in for uh projectly the way grant to expand to our engineering pathway as well so these are again just an example of a couple of the exceptional high quality programs we've launched this school year in the pandemic um again i i think context matters here record ap enrollment i'm not going to talk too much about this because i presented on this exclusively a few months back but again i wanted to remind folks that our continued push to students to stretch themselves to challenge themselves has shown up in the numbers and i did want to just mention that it's not just the same students taking more ap courses the number of students the number of unique students taking an ap course is increased over the last several years as well the other piece of data that i would share kind of to spotlight here is that one of our big concerns is always around making sure ap enrollment mirrors student enrollment so that you don't have certain populations of students who are left behind it's an equity issue and so i'm happy to report that in the stem related ap courses we offer our black our hispanic and our asian student populations are all at or above the actual um their actual enrollment in the whole student population so uh again that that's promising um and it really shows that commitment that we've uh embraced over the last few years to really push all students who are passionate and want to um take on the challenges and support them to make sure that our ap enrollment mirrors our student enrollment our the second big umbrella here that i want to talk about was our school counseling and support services um certainly one of the hidden uh challenges of dependent you know we talk about covid19 and we talk about physical illness but the mental toll that the pandemic has taken on students um goes unnoticed sometimes um you know and i know it's something that the school committee has talked about um the last few times and it's something we're certainly mindful here at dartmouth high school and again i just want to give a huge shout out to our school counseling staff our school counselors as well as our school social workers and school psychologists they are very much aware of the impact that the pandemic is having on our students and they've really taken some steps um enhanced community outreach um and also i'll talk in a second just about you know kind of a creative and unique way to address social emotional um wellness here at dartmouth high school which is going to be to introduce a therapy dog um over the next several months so just in terms of the enhanced community outreach mr mcgrath and mr wright have taken um you know the school counseling site under their kind of wing and have looked to enhance it this year kind of streamline it clean it up so if anyone out there would just go to our school website under the school counseling tab at the top you'll notice it's kind of a one-stop shop there's um online appointment slots you can use students can use while they're remote to sign up to meet with their school counselor right from the school website there's also you know the program of studies there's a host of different resources that are up on the school counseling website which mr wright and mr mcgrath as i had mentioned had been working collaboratively to kind of revamp but also um the school counseling department provides an update as part of the dartmouth high school community update every week so weekly they're sharing out information breaking it down by class um you know and i know sometimes communication is difficult and challenging but hopefully members of the community are aware that that that um update i send it out every friday between 3 and 4 30 and every friday there is information from the uh school counseling department it includes um a a padlet which is just a digital you know curation board if you will it it has resources that you go to that our school social worker workers and psychologists kind of put these different resources that can parents can use students can use to help support social emotional wellness they're right there and readily available again we're in the midst of a pandemic and i think sometimes when we start to say okay just one day at a time we can lose focus of kind of the big picture our students are continuing even though they're going through a challenge there's no doubt about that and even though it is a struggle for many of them they are still very much thriving and excelling um our students are being accepted to some of the best colleges and universities across the the country here and this is by no means i couldn't fit 50 different college um logos up on the screen unfortunately so i just put a few up there to kind of give a sampling or an idea but we have you know university of oregon on the west coast you know brown university right in providence and and in between everywhere in between uh the nation um we also have students in our senior class who are planning to join the um services so go into the world of service one student in particular that i'm thinking about is tracking towards the coast guard and potentially the coast guard academy um you know so our students continue our senior class continues to to be very much uh very busy planning post-secondary their post-secondary lives which is a good that's normal right that's what we would expect seniors to be doing at this this time of year so we're very proud of our senior class we know that this has been a year unlike any other for them um but where we know that they are rising to the occasion persevering and that they will be successful so this is augie um and um auggie is a therapy dog he um was adopted by mr gill uh assistant principal gill and uh last spring so actually right around when the pandemic started was when mr gill adopted the dog and the um auggie underwent training um private training lessons um he has earned uh or passed his um good canine citizen course and then there's a number of visits that the american kennel club requires in order to become your the you know earn your therapy kind of like student teaching if you will um so auggie has has visited school on several occasions already but with faculty um you know and again that's the other piece our faculty have have worked extremely hard this year but the pandemic's been a grind on them as well um and so they you know we've had auggie visit a few afternoons um particularly particularly on fridays and also on our half uh early release pd days and our faculty have absolutely fallen in love with him i joke that i want to come back in another lifetime as a therapy dog because everyone clearly loves loves them so um we're excited for augie to be taking the next step soon though which will be to work alongside kathy thomas on select days it won't be every day but on select days and um you know kathy has really stepped up and and is excited to be working with augie and to really start to use augie as a therapeutic support for students with anxiety with stress with all of these different issues that we know through a lot of different research studies that that dogs have profound calming effects on people that you know just the act of petting a dog lowers your your blood pressure and it and reduces anxiety so we're excited um there are a handful of schools in the state that you you know high schools that have therapy dogs already in play and we are excited at dartmouth high school to be able to start using augie as well student activities and athletics uh again these look different than what they did in the past but not only are our student not only are athletics ongoing music theater company um the fine and performing arts they're all they're very much thriving um you know as we continue sure adjustments have had to be made particularly with athletics and music but our students are are continuing to rise to the occasion and have experiences that are similar if not the same as um they were pre-pandemic terms of our performing arts um you know our band didn't miss a beat um in the fall it was virtual they didn't have the same experiences unfortunately of being able to travel down to metlife stadium obviously that's an experience that can't be replicated other than to go there but nonetheless they earned a national championship through u.s uh bans the same the way they would have um you know had it not been a pandemic year um our theater company stepped up and did a performance of a wonderful life a virtual radio show so again the easiest thing in the world to do would be to sit there get stuck pout and say this is lousy but that's not the kind of kids we have it's not the kind of educators we have at dartmouth high school and they've continued to innovate um and to inspire quite frankly as they figure out new ways um to get things done our indoor percussion season is well underway i know mr angst is uh working with with uh our student musicians and preparing for that um and we're excited we're excited for those opportunities as well as uh you know as we move forward here our clubs and activities um which uh fall under the direction of our associate principal miss javier chavier uh i'm excited to share that you know this fall we actually introduced five new clubs so again we're in a pandemic but our students continue to be engaged and continue to look ways to connect to dartmouth high school beyond just the traditional school day some of the clubs uh include things like the diversity equity and inclusion club the stock market club we have a political science club that formed what else am i missing here uh oh esports how can i forget esports so esports is uh huge across the the state um it's probably unfortunately going to be more work for mr galashar as we continue to to go down because it's more technology uh you know it's specific to gaming but again the passion that our students have for it as well as mr bosworth um mr ghiat and mr peratti who have come together and kind of collaborated and have this grand vision for our esports offerings down the road is tremendous so again i highlight that beyond that we've continued to do things like spirit weeks it just means double the fun so if you've never worked in a high school you can't truly appreciate what it's like to wear your pajamas to school particularly when dr gifford shows up at 6 45 in the morning and it's the one day you've actually jumped in and said you know what i'll wear pajamas today and then you shake your head and say oh no so i had to explain to dr gifford that morning why i was in you know plaid pajama pants um but the students appreciate when the faculty and staff participate you can see some of the pictures up there of of uh students and staff participating and it just means hybrid model just means it's double the fun because we get to do it for each cohort of students so beyond that um we some of our popular traditions uh are coming up you know the senior superlative it's not gonna be a dance um for obvious reasons but the senior superlatives are gonna be showcased and highlighted it's gonna be um virtual it will be through collaboration with mr pirati and the dhs tv media production program um it will be kind of like an emmy's show style um that they're producing and will be premiered i believe the date is february 26th um that the the premiere of that showing will be but i know that our senior class officers along with mr peratti our senior class advisors um are working extremely hard to to get that up and and going so shout out to mrs bringham and to mrs taylor for their work in making sure that that that gets done athletics again i have to give not that he needs any more credit i think uh he gets a lot of it um but my good friend mr chris foley our athletic director of the year here um he gets he deserves a lot of credit because in the summer time when things weren't opened up yet and the state was releasing guidance you know it seemed like every day and there was different guidance every day he really put together a plan dartmouth was one of the first if not the first one of the first high schools in the area to offer strength and conditioning for our students and that got you know people forget had been really shut down and our students were able to get outside get moving and get active see people all while having a lot of um enhanced safety protocols in place so we appreciate that very much and then that kind of led into a very successful fall campaign our we had seven competitive teams that were offered in the fall along with three organized team activities including um you know we provided um one of the organized team activities was unified basketball it was important to mr christophole and i um that you know if we're setting up athletics um for our students that are we not forget our unified um athletes because that's just a very tremendous part of our school community and so that was one of um the organized team activities that was offered in the fall we had two very successful teams in the fall as well our girls volleyball team um finished the season perfect was an sec champ conference champion uh and our girls soccer team was also the sec champion this year as well so the fall was very smooth with a very few covid related issues and winter athletics is underway we did have to pause that's more because of the surge in the community and and not to do uh with you know in team transmission or in school transmission but again we've resumed winter athletics it's underway going smoothly at this point with plans for fall 2 and spring athletics in the very near future so tech integration at dartmouth high school as you can imagine [Music] we wouldn't education wouldn't be ongoing right now if not for technology that's one of the silver linings that i think will come out of the pandemic is that all of our teachers uh have improved their ability to integrate technology into their instruction tremendously um you know we we probably made a 10-year leap in 10 months time and that's not an exaggeration um there were a number of teachers in march who weren't using google classroom i can tell you now we have a hundred percent you know and that was very quick um but beyond that they've also integrated other tools like flip grid and kahoot and quizzes and neopod and play posit you know there's there's too many to list but there's a tremendous amount of digital tools and resources that our teachers are using um thanks in large part to our our its jen thomas who's been phenomenal in supporting and coaching um our teachers up but again the credit belongs to our teachers for taking the risk and not being afraid to say to our students let me figure that out i am not sure what's going on you know and and i think that that's important for students to see as well that we are lifelong learners and that it's okay when we make mistakes or when things don't quite go as planned and we have to figure those out that's part of of being a learner uh one other just to back up one other second i do want to also thank mr galashar and all of the tech support folks because we continue to upgrade the technology infrastructure at the high school as well as the you know hardware that they use um this past this current year rather where you're able to get smart tvs like the one we're using for this um meeting here and i think that there's enough of the public who hears tv and they think movie and that's not you know the tv is really a way to to chromecast to project instruction there's a lot of different uh ways that the tv can be used it's really an instructional tool at this point and in many cases it's cheaper than if we were installing a projector um you know by the time you mount it and all of that you know um replace bulbs and whatnot so we have um outfitted the entire english department um with with smart tvs like the ones you see here where they can project you know students co-constructing paragraphs and writing peer editing and things like that so thank you to mr galashar on the tech department because i know um every additional tech comes with additional work you know so it's not lost on us i wanted to really thank the faculty and staff they are our number one resource by far our most precious resource our teachers um the pandemic has been challenging for them in addition to the anxiety that um they have about the virus being present they also are learning new technologies they're not sure what uh model they're gonna be in in a week you know so their world has been turned upside down and i don't think we can thank them enough um you know and i i also want to acknowledge no one pushes them harder than me um and so i recognize the fact that um as i'm thanking them you know tomorrow i could be asking them to you know look for a way to improve on something or a way we can support students more that's not lost on me um though the tremendous job that they are doing uh and the commitment and effort that they've put in i want to particularly recognize our our support staff they've been our unsung heroes and by support staff i'm talking nurses secretaries our counselors and our school social workers um our security monitors and our custodians our custodians have been phenomenal working additional hours um you know the question can devote well we have to deep clean our custodians deep clean every day pretty much they use the the uh electromagnetic sprayers every single surface that gets touched in our building gets washed pretty much daily um you know so when when there's nothing more satisfying than when you hear mr misho talk about there's no evidence of transmission in the schools because that's what i view as our number one job is to keep our students and our faculty safe and the fact that we can say that is in large part because of our custodians keeping the buildings clean but also our nurses and secretaries and all of the support staff really working together um you know throughout this pandemic so we appreciate that and then finally i i just think you know again our our staff is not living they are living day to day get through it one day at a time but they're continuing to progress as well our its gen thomas was just certified by google um as a as a google certified coach she's already a good google certified educator um you know uh we have teachers like melissa pavlik who this summer understanding we were going to be in a remote learning model went out and got credentials as a ck through 12 certified educator again just a couple of examples rachelle lemieux and marcia vieira our ap stats teachers putting in extra hours virtually through our partnership with mass insight so it's them and the author of the ap stats books because the rest of the teachers in massachusetts are tired and tapped out but our teachers are going to those workshops and have you know tremendous access so um again a huge shout out and very appreciative of all of the effort that the educators here at dartmouth high school are putting in and if you were to ask me you know i would say that the state of dartmouth high school has never been stronger and i am very proud of the work that goes on here on a daily basis even in spite of the pandemic and so with that i'll answer any questions no thank you very much mr tebow for your presentation that was uh very very thorough and uh very very informative informative um thought with you mrs waite any thoughts yeah um you know first excellent you know it's so great i have two students a freshman and a junior here so you know another one will be up in two years and um you know i'm thrilled you know i i can't you know say enough by you know the attention the um just you know the compassion you know my else freshman struggled a bit you know and and i feel like the patience and you know just the hands-on approach the diversity of the lessons it's just it's it's been great so i i'm really you know i'm you know i'm really grateful to your staff and to you so so i'll start with that and then also say you know you're bringing in the juniors tomorrow for the psats and i you know i know that was you know not part of the presentation but you know one part was talking about the seniors who you know and all their accomplishments i think in the context you know i'm starting the college search with my daughter and i just you know i know what you know these seniors have gone through you know they haven't been able to see their schools in many cases um you know they're applying and and the teachers also have been writing recommendations you know i'm sure many of these teachers are writing you know 30 40 i know i was in that position you know recommendations helping these kids um you know so it was a to get these seniors through these accomplishments was not you know was not an easy task for the for the seniors themselves or for your your staff so that's you know they have to be really you know really applauded i think you know more so than most classes that go through because it was it was a tough game and then you know for the psets tomorrow i'm so grateful so you know thank you you know my daughter will be taking those um you know a lot of these kids it's been hard they haven't had a you know a psat or a test since you know sophomore year some of the seniors couldn't get sats you know i've heard tales of kids flying you know the different cities so um yeah it was great that they you know the whole school is making that you know that everybody's coming together for that because it's these kids are nervous they haven't sat for a test and you know it's uh it's something so so thank you um and then um i think i'll say the research you know again i'll get back to that one of the things i love that mr higgins is doing is not just about those students it's really including all the students in the school i know that my my freshman son got a flurry of emails that he can kind of participated and think about these questions and i think so it's not even just for the research students themselves but to be you know a part of that and thinking through you know what about my cell phone use and you know wait my opinion matters which freshman loves their opinion mattering so again like so many things you know considering continuing to see that the training that's going on with all the other burdens that you know the staff have had and that they continue to be excited about you know their profession is you know it's it's it's really means a lot you know and the kids they feed on that and you know i can see you know again everything from you know different things are happening it feels like a very given the circumstance an active campus i mean the dogs coming into the school i mean that's you know i think my dog was like you're so cute like i mean my daughter was so so it's just you know so many um it feels very alive um and active and you know it's it you've done a great job here and your staff so um thank you and i guess the only questions i would have would be you know looking at the head and i know it's hard to say because we don't know what the landscape is you know with covet in the next months but um as you think about those culminating senior activities in the junior banquet the prom what is the planning i guess you know around that and what are the thoughts right now are we thinking that there will be because i imagine that there are members of the class who are starting to think about those things and parents and they usually have their planning for the all-night party and so i'm kind of curious about concern so we've we've met um ms chave myself the senior class advisors and the senior class officers have met a couple of times um for different things uh but we scheduled for the first week of february a a meeting to exclusively discuss end-of-year activities um you know i said this to the senior class last year and i said it to the i will say to the officers this year as well these activities are about them they're not about me um they're not about you know any of the adults really here it's really about them i mean and and obviously their families who have supported them through 13 years of education so we try and do everything we can to to tailor to to what they want within the guidelines obviously you know if there are limits of 50 people on social gatherings it's not going to be a dance i mean that's just not it's not going to happen um and our seniors know that our senior officers know that um you know so so that's not a surprise to them so they've been thinking what might things look like i will say this that um the parade was a huge hit last year um i think regardless of whether in a pandemic or not it's a nice event for the community i got several emails not just from senior class parents last year but from you know um i don't want to use the word old timer because i don't want to offend anyone but it was class of 1958 i want to say or it was it was a it was a while ago it was well before i was born let's put it that way um but he had watched the parade from his front porch and he emailed me to tell me you know what pride he took in seeing the current seniors um doing that so i think there are a tremendous opportunities if we use a little imagination to still honor our our kids and still honor their accomplishments knowing that you know um and if we can have a full in-person graduation that's the preference because trust me you know when you're as large as i am and out of shape as i am you don't want to be standing in the same spot at the podium for 12 hours for three days in a row which is what it took to make the graduation ceremony so personalized last year so if there's an easier way to do that i'm all for it that's great well thank you i appreciate it you're welcome thank you mrs wade mr nunes that it was a friday the first day we filmed last year was a friday because the saturday i mean you don't think of it when you're standing straight up and down on the same spot sure yeah 12 hours yeah your knees too it's a lot thank you mr news thank you mr chairman i don't think you left any stone unturned you know very very very well done thank you very much for doing that a couple of questions i have uh i kind of miss and i don't know if we still get them or they but you used to have i like on the bulletin board out front like the students college acceptance letters and i always used to enjoy reading those to you know see where they where where our student not so much who the student was but the different colleges that they had applied to and have been accepted at so we don't do the college letters anymore we've switched it a little bit we do a pennant with the college logo on it um and we do we also include students who are going off to the armed services their branch of the armed service and put that up there as well as any student who might be going directly into the workforce who you know um wants to be recognized um and we do do that in the spring um last year was up when the pandemic started and so i know actually mrs flor was working today she's got the artistic flair there she's the one who creates the um the the penance and so she was working on them today so that those boards will be getting updated in the very near future um with with that okay i just yeah again i just love to see you know they're not only going to colleges around here you get the university of houston's the you know ucla you know argon state oregon university type of deal notre dame so i always enjoy watching those uh i'm glad to see the use of the smart tvs and no we're not watching movies so that is good question i have uh the students that are totally remote via ingenuity type of deal and and this is not a knock or anything of that nature but how are they doing academically i'm glad you asked that question so the students who are putting in the hours are doing fine they're doing it they're doing very well the students who are struggling if there's a direct correlation between they're not putting in enough hours and what their grade is that's why i had mentioned we added um you know a qualified you know someone who we have full confidence in um mrs uh lens who had been subbing for us she's working with mr gill and we've shifted to a um a daily report so we get daily you know mr nunes did not log in yesterday mrs lens calls that house the very next day and says what happened um we had been doing it weekly week you know um but a week is a little bit too much time um but we've you know when we're doing the outreach we do find things had a fully remote student who had covid that went through the house so he didn't log in at all that week that makes sense to me um you know so so we have um outreach in place now to make sure that we're monitoring them um because we still have plenty of time you know that's that's the thing is we have plenty of time for for the students who are not where they should be to still catch up um you know but we're finding that students are putting in who are putting in 25 to 30 hours which is what you know they'd be putting in here yeah those students are doing remarkably well um it's the students who are putting in less than 20 hours a week who aren't making enough progress it's almost you know you you know you put in the time you're doing fine if you're not you know that type of deal okay thank you very much sir you're welcome thank you mr chairman thank you mr news ms emerald yeah um you know i i certainly could sit here and and like have a laundry list of wonderful things that you're doing i i i'm quite impressed a fan of of your leadership of of your administrative team of the sort of equitable compassionate approach that you have with each student i have um all the faith in the world that when it comes time uh you'll you'll let those voices of of all of your students kind of speak to what can be done for those special you know ceremonies um i love the fact that auggie the therapy dog is here and mr gill is again i said the the your your whole administrative team but he's he's he's wonderful um we do have to work with him mrs amaral so and i know he's home watching right now so he's funny he's and i wouldn't say through the ringer i think more that emotional kind of drain that i was feeling it was like that mirror i was sort of seeing myself in you so but um but yeah no i um just thank you for your leadership and uh we're lucky in dartmouth to have you at the helm here at dartmouth high school and so i really don't have anything else to say i certainly could go through i did make some bullet points but it's just wonderful great job and and thank you for all that you do and thank you to your staff and thank you for thanking your staff and pushing them as well you know it's it's they they are certainly more than deserving we're in it together this is you know we're we're here for you and them and um yeah it's just our community is in this together so thank you that's it well said welcome thank you mrs amaral there's not much more that i can add that my fellow member committee members have uh already said just a couple of notes uh here that i have yeah i'm really thrilled to see first of all really nice over really nice big high level overview of everything that's going on at dartmouth high some of the things i'm really happy to see you know the fact that the clubs are still going we had introduced you introduced five new clubs um you know i'm thrilled that um we're at the place that we are with technology in the diamond public schools especially at the high school i have no doubt that was a big undertaking with mr galesha and his crew as well as you know just uh working in conjunction with you and your staff and to make things uh as successful as possible especially with um i believe i i believe there's you have an integration specialist here at the at the high school level so i'm sure they're playing a huge role in trying to work with work with your staff and i just i really i'm thrilled to see with the with my background and technology the investment not only with the monetary investment that is being made but also the investment with the professional development with the working you know working amongst uh colleagues and bound i know there's a lot of collaboration going on so i'm really thrilled and i'm happy to to see that that's taken place because i honestly don't think that um a lot of what we're doing right now in some way shape or form i think is going to be around in the long for the long term i don't see us going back rolling back too much uh with that so so you know i'm really thrilled uh to hear that once again uh the the fact i love the idea of a therapy dog you know i think we this i don't know if you were on the committee at the time yeah um that when we approved the policy we uh this is the campus yes so it was uh that we recreated a policy right therapy for therapy dogs and i'm thrilled that we're able to do that and we're continuing that and i think it's just as important you know as it is for the for the students but um yeah you know i i i'm really concerned um for the most part i know can you speaking for my daughters as well as um you know just a lot of my um my daughter's friends in generals and just speaking from as an educator that kids are for the most part they're resilient students um and a lot of students are resilient um but i do have concerns about the long-term impact that this pandemic is is taking on on you know the adults um and you know not just not just teachers and faculty and staff in the schools but just parents every everyone so i think anything that we can do to support and i want i'll echo um mrs amaral's comments data you know i thought it was very i thought it was really nice and um a nice gesture of you to to recognize all your staff because this truly is a team effort um just a couple of questions here first question would be i know last year during when you presented i don't know if it was your school improvement plan or something else in general but there was a program in place that you had i don't know if it was the flip program um so you know i talked one of the things they just wrote here what types of safety and i know you talked you spoke a little bit about that tonight mr tebow but what types of safety nets are in place for those students are that are really struggling um and you know and what will happen and you know what are we doing to support them so yeah so that's a good question so we still have the flip program in place we usually start it up right around this time because it's it's the end of first semester which is when we start to be able to forecast you know uh someone's not looking like they're going to pass for the year in a year-long course so i i've already met mr mcgrath is uh the gentleman who oversees the flip program for us along with uh special education teacher um mrs catherine moniz they're both um interested in doing it again and they've they've met a few times already to make tweaks to the program but that uses ingenuity um and one of and i think this speaks to mr newton's question but edgenuity is a fantastic uh curriculum but students require um pushing a little bit because it's really you it's the motivation piece if you're motivated and put the time in you're successful i the the program itself has a lot of built-in accommodations you know for students who might have learning difficulties but it's the motivation piece and what i've found in multiple school districts is that when students know there's an adult who cares about them who's monitoring them they are more successful and so that's the the role that mr mrs moniz and mr mcgrath playing the flip program is that they get the kids set up they build out their individual pathways and then they monitor them as they progress and follow up and sometimes it's you know what kind of like pulling an elephant across a stage with dental floss but you know you do whatever you're gonna do to get that particular individual across um we've had kids who we've extended into the summer time to do that uh and certainly again we appreciate uh mr mcgrath and mrs moniz you know because that that means they're also extended out you know into this into the summertime as well so that's that's one of the safety nets in place we also um obviously this school year as well allow for retakes and revisions and and um you know that that's not uh you know that that's a pretty significant change um and it's one that we put in place because it's again a matter of equity you can't have one you know u.s history teacher allowing for retakes and another u.s history teacher not allowing for it then it's a matter of luck of the draw who do you have so that's the reason why we really pushed for the school-wide policy but again that's a safety net for for kids you you didn't do as well as you had hoped that first time you have a second time you have to self-advocate you know and many of our students do and are and have taken advantage of that as well excellent well thank you for that one last question is i know back when we were in august september when we were talking about our different plans and all that that we were going to look to allow and i know we've been kind of very fluid with this and maybe i'm not sure if this is a question for you mr tebow or dr gifford um and you know specifically i guess we can just ask the high school right now um the intercession is coming up semester two is going to be starting soon have we been flying no we've to some extent we've been flexible with allowing students to come in and out of or not come in and out but transfer from say ingenuity at the high school at techer from at the middle school level um and coming to a hybrid situation is that still the case so we have not denied anyone coming going into the vla okay coming out of we haven't had like i said we've only we have six to ten students and we held to semester um two which starts february first um as the starting date it just makes more sense grading and everything so okay um you know that's that's kind of the the plan and um like i said we've had more want to go in for a variety of you know reasons and we've been able to accommodate all of them i i think that's wonderful and you know i think that's a great thing that we're we're willing to be that flexible so uh i thank you on behalf of um everyone here on the committee thank you for your presentation and um great job well done thank you thank you thank you next up i'll turn it over once again to dr gifford for an introduction i'm excited to um to hear about this of our new town youth advocate um so uh doctor giffords oh she's there yeah let's see i've been eating popcorn i know oh yeah there she is hello hi everybody can you hear us i can hear you doctor okay all right i will introduce you so i'm really delighted to introduce our youth advocate dolores joseph uh we did hold two meetings so far with her zoo meetings one with our secondary leadership team and one with our elementary leadership team just to break the ice get to know each other and hear from dolores about her ideas of how she can help our schools and also be able to now set up some she will continue to move forward and and schedule meetings with counselors etc so she was a delight to meet and um we heard about our 15 year old son in the background doing his work so with that dolores i will turn it over to you all right well good afternoon everyone good evening it's not afternoon anymore it's just been a long day thank you so much for inviting me um my name is dolores josephs and i am the new youth advocate so i've been in this position maybe a month and a week and a half or something like that so um getting used to it but enjoying it so far so a little bit of history about me and my background i've been doing social service work for over 25 years so i am kind of dating myself but i do love it i have worked in the new bedford area for several years at child and family services i was the adoptions director at one time i also worked for the csa program which is the community service program that does wrap around work um for youth under the age of 21 in the area i also did a little stamp with dcf so i was an area program manager with the local dcf office here in new bedford um stepped away just a bit from this work and decided to just do some substitute teaching because i was still debating whether i wanted to go and get my certifications to be a school adjustment counselor while debating that and still wanting to work with children and families this opportunity was presented to me um i applied for it and i am so very happy that i did i love advocacy work i love working with youth and families connecting them to resources in the communities providing supports to them even trying to do some groups i know in the wake of cove but things look a little different and we have to think outside of the box as far as how we want to present services um or programs to youth and families so um working with the school department and other community partners i'm hoping to within the next month or so to get some of these things off of the ground to start offering groups or support groups programming to youth and families and dartmouth so the position says youth advocate and i think we had a discussion about this on friday that the title is a little deceiving even though the title is youth advocate my role and responsibility is to provide supports advocacy guidance and services to not only the youth in dartmouth but also their families so it doesn't necessarily mean they have to be attending a dartmouth school because we have several youth who attend schools that aren't located in dartmouth so i wanted to be extremely clear in getting my message out to as many people as possible to let them know that i'm here to be a support to residents of the town of dartmouth so that's my lunch bill on that i'm actually going to be meeting with the school department with the outreach staff on friday very excited about that to hear about some of their ideas working with the previous youth advocate and what they would like to see moving forward in this position i love collaborating with different community partners and because i've worked in this area before i've gathered a lot of resources i want to be clear i am not the person to actually do most of the work my job is to connect to services but i am able to do some bridge work for youth and families while we are looking to connect them to services so case management connecting them to mental health i'm doing check-ins with families talking them about the crisis center maybe going to the crisis center with them following up with them after they've had visits to the crisis center and seeing what their needs are and what the next steps are i also want to showcase and to let people know that there are other resources that are outside of dartmouth that families can take advantage of too that's for free my goal is to try to keep the youth advocate website updated on the town of dartmouth i know it's slow moving i'm doing a lot right now but i have posted some things on the sites that i feel could be beneficial to our youth and families in dartmouth and the school department has graciously offered their web space to promote some of these articles trainings or um food pantries for our youth and for our families so i'm looking so forward to this collaboration i have great ideas for the future i a lot of lofty ideas and i know things take time but i just wanted to get myself out there because this position has been open for almost two years so you know out of sight out of mind so it's getting people to know that there is a person located at town hall if they have a question um need support not know where to go they can always reach out and call me i may not have the answer right then but i promise to find out for you in return calls or try to figure out solutions for youth and families i think that's my little spiel for now so any questions well first of all thank you very much dolores this is chris oliver the chair of the committee so i want to thank you and for taking this opportunity and this time to introduce yourself i know um i think what this is just a wonderful support service that is offered for the for the town of dartmouth and i'm thrilled it sounds like you are a very collaborative person and i can only imagine that um you know the the school department as well as the town the town in general i i hope that we can use you as in as another support to to continue to you know support the families and support support the youth of dartmouth so i hope this is the beginning of a long relationship uh with you and i'd just like to welcome you to the uh the town of dartmouth and thank you for taking this opportunity uh to me to speak to the committee as well as reaching out and setting up meetings with the um with uh dr gifford and her team so i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues now for any questions or comments this is amarillo yeah hi dolores so thank you time to i've had the fortune to work with dolores in other capacities and you know your warmth and your knowledge are are an asset to this position and anyway uh when i heard that you were you know you you took the position i was thrilled and i just think it's just any way that we can out of the gate sort of build bridges build partnerships and help our community is is um is a good thing and i'm just you know glad that it's you and and look forward to the partnership as well so thank you thank you mr nunes thank you thank you hey dolores i'm john nunes and uh welcome to the town and uh wish you good luck and one question i have uh put you on the spot a little bit but what do you see as the biggest challenge right now facing guy youth one of the biggest challenges faced right now um with this pandemic um the fear of you know the unknown what the future is gonna look like this vaccine that is getting ready to roll out and people um having maybe some reservations about whether they should or shouldn't and also for our young people i was talking to my 15 year old and they got a different couple the other day he goes to vote um asking him about what are some of your fears what are some of your concerns you know being a young person and this is so unprecedented and his response to me was that he wasn't really concerned about himself but he was really worried about his peers and if they were to contract um covert 19 what would be the outcome so i think that is one of the biggest fears but also something that we don't really talk about a lot there's a lot of food insecurities that are going on right now people may not be talking about it but that is a huge issue especially for our young people if they're doing hybrid or remote models some of the food that they would get during the day has been eliminated because they're not at school but i'm so happy to know that dartmouth and some of the other schools too are providing programs that children are able to get meals but food insecurity not knowing what's going to happen with this virus and with the vaccine i think are some of the big issues in trying to provide information to the public about the vaccine what it is what it doesn't do who should get it who shouldn't get it which i don't want to say who should who shouldn't that is a personal choice but i think being very transparent with people and letting them know um the ins and outs of it i think that is one of the big issues once we can get past that and get back to some sense of normalcy which i'm gonna be honest i think that the way that we are doing things now is going to be incorporated in the future and that we've learned a lot now that we've had to use a lot of technology to get information out to people and to educate our our youth so i feel that's one of the positives that has come out of this if they're we can say a positive is that we've learned to think outside of the box as far as how we present services to people how we get people more engaged so i can see some of these things being carried over oh excuse me my allergies have runny nose being carried over um into the future so food insecurities and the fear the pandemic and the virus i think are some of the big things right now thank you good luck thank you thank you i'm sorry thank you i apologize hi dolores my name is mary waite first of all i just want to say i'm so grateful that you're here and i'm so thrilled i know that we had some conversations i'm a member of town meeting um you know there was a real commitment you know by a number of members to make sure that we still kept this position and i'm so glad that you're here you know you couldn't come at a more important time you know for the kids in this town i mean we know the you know the the stress that this pandemic has had on so many of our families and so many of our kids um you know and you pointed out you know just you know so many of the factors food insecurity you know and things that we don't they don't talk about among themselves in simply you know coming back and trying to socialize and finding spaces and not and feeling you know can i even socialize with someone when i you know i have a math and my safe and so there's there's so much anxiety there and you know to have someone you know you know as um kathleen mentioned to be a bridge you know you know to create that connect that connection to um and for families who don't always feel comfortable necessarily going to the you know school counselor to have someone else to theirs of support you know who you know maybe they feel you know is more neutral that can kind of you know report you know send them the resources and make those connections for them i just i think it's great and you have you come with such a strong reputation and clearly such a strong set of skills that yay thank you thank you thank you so thank you very much to all the uh my fellow colleagues do you have any questions for us or you have anything else you want to share we thank you once again for giving us this opportunity uh to listen to you no i think that is all and i'm so grateful that you've allowed me this opportunity to speak before the school committee i am like i said looking forward to our continued collaborations i know this is only the beginning so i'm very excited about this role and also what i didn't mention but dr griffin and i we had a conversation um with some of the other leadership is that during the day i know the schools do a lot my husband works for the school system free time league field so i do understand about the responsibilities and everything that you have to do during the day and now with cove extra things you need to do so i'm here as a support so when school gets out i'm still here so know that you can refer families to me if something happens at four o'clock five o'clock because the counselor or a school member is not in the building people can always come to me at town hall also what i want to stress to you and which um everyone here probably knows as far as confidentiality i don't want people to be afraid if they come to me that i'm going to just tell everybody about john doe came to the office today things that happen stay there unless it's a matter of safety and i need to report that but i'm very clear up front when i speak to people that what we do here is confidential unless it involves safety then i have to report or say something to somebody so i want people to feel comfortable coming to me not to think that i am going to let their neighbor know or one of the teachers at the school no unless there's some type of communication between us and they've said it's okay for us to collaboratively work to try to provide them with resources thank you all right well thank you thank you once again nice very nice meeting you dolores we wish you the best thank you thanks delores thank you thank you everyone have a lovely evening thank you guys bye take care bye-bye seems like a wonderful uh yeah she does wonderful asset to the community so looking for breath of fresh air yes yes well uh well very much needed yes very very much so so that's exciting so thank you for making that happen dr gifford next up under new business we have uh our school choice uh vote to participate the 21 22 school year um before we get started with that i'll just ask um ms gunter have we had any uh emails come in regard from the public hearing side none have been received on the topic thank you very much so before we get started in any kind of discussion i'd like to turn this over to dr gifford or mr kylie and whoever wants to share some of the numbers and uh what we're doing here and what your thoughts are and recommendations i'll talk about the numbers that we have and then i'll let mr kylie talk about the the money and the financial of what's been going on so currently i believe you did receive this but just in summary currently we have 110 students enrolled in our school choice program and i'm looking and seeing that it seems 25 of those are in senior class so when we do take the vote i know we've never set a number and etc but um with seeing that 25 would be going out i would like to then be able to um we usually take 30 or 40 a year but i would like to build that number up to make sure that we still have around 125 students or so so just to look at that that there'll be some going out and then hopefully we get the applications and and folks come in so that's all i really say about that and kylie can talk about the finances sure uh so i provided you with a little detail that talks about what we've spent through the years through this program i i think probably the most important thing though on that list is that i can't imagine where we would be in this pandemic if we had not had this program and been able to invest in one-to-one computing now the town as i've told you has been very helpful through the pandemic in terms of uh you know providing some of their grant funding to support uh technology purchases and other purchases that we've had to make but we weren't starting from scratch you know and and mr gallashaw through the last you know few years has has put together we started in a pretty good place during this pandemic technology-wise now they've definitely come through and supported us and put us over the top so that we can continue to offer high-quality education um despite the challenges but um i i just don't i don't know if we would be able to do that without having done this um so i just think that that's you know illustrates how important it is thank you mr kylie so as from looking through uh the uh the finance sheet here since it's in inception um i think it's actually really very impressive um the amount of money we were able to take in and some of the some of the items line items that we were able to um to spend it on and i i would wholeheartedly agree with you as far as the one-to-one computing that i don't know you know where we would be without it um and i don't know if that's something that we could even remotely afford right now um i without school choice funding so with that i will turn it over any discussion any comments questions uh that anyone may have um before i give my final thoughts yeah i just actually had more of a you know a question because i agree with my my colleague mr oliver you know i i think the resources are needed you know this is just a reality you know and i guess but a question i had as i think about the students that we're bringing into the school you know looking you know through the four years how many students do we send evoke um staying in other schools from eighth grade because again like i think that's you know another consideration is that you know we're also paying out you know so so how i mean staying we're not you know that's that's a different story but you know bristol aggie you know so how many students do we have you send elsewhere that we're also you know subsidizing i don't have the number in front of me do you i don't either no we could certainly provide you with the bulk and aggie and role yeah i know so there's also school choice yeah i was just i was just doing other districts because it's not just that some students let's go there yeah right so we do have a sheet we usually keep on all of that and and the trend each year and how many have gone out from eighth grade so we'll get that to you and i think just as part of the conversation you know if you know we also have to you know say hey you know we're we you know we high school is a different entity than middle school right the way it's set up and we you know we're running a lot of very diverse classes and you know in order to run those we do need to have the population in the seats and you know we're in a you know a dip a little bit you know population-wise so at least in the high school right now so again you know just uh you're thinking through this i mean i you know my daughter being you know in dartmouth has liked meeting some new kids and you know especially actually she has met um some of the students that are in her class she had you know met before through theater programs and you know and that's so she knew them coming in you know from westport and new bedford so again she's actually liked having some you know some of those students in in her classes adding some ideas so just you know another you know a little bit of a silver lining there too i think so anyway but um no i i you know i i support this so thank you thank you mrs white mr nunes anything dad no not really mr chairman i think everybody kind of knows where i stand on this anyway so which is just me personally i mean don't get me wrong i absolutely thank you for this mr kylie the uh the revenue and i think you to to go back and look at this is you know it's all student-based yeah this is everything going to students you know school setups ice stems innovation you know the innovation lab i mean i remember when we got right that grant from the state we were one of two or three high schools that got that that's right public schools yep you know type of deal public schools again the rest were you know private vocational and colleges type of deal and we needed you know the rest of the money to to get it up and going and that's been a godsend and that's fantastic and and such so it is great to have this me personally again it's philosophical and my vote is no but that's me fully fully respected mr nunes thank you this is amarillo you know that um i i do you know the value in the um what we have here in this this you know very um i had the word just escaped me but this you know all the projects that we've been able to to fund as you mentioned uh most notably most costly the one-to-one computing um and yeah i just that you just can't underscore that enough that this money is needed and we wouldn't have it otherwise so yeah i don't really have anything to add i have uh i know initially in in my pre-pre-uh on the school committee tenure it was quite controversial and yeah and and all of that and and some folks felt a certain way about students coming in and occupying spots on teams and i think if uh i don't know that there's been much of that in the last years and and these students are they're good kids and um they just want a good education and um agreed i've i've uh i've i've not witnessed anything negative and and i think they're well received and well recep you know like you said it's the one they're just one community and i think it's wonderful that we can we can give that to them um so that's all i have to say okay thank you very much yeah but you know separate from the financial standpoint and the the fact that this is a great opportunity um to bring in some more revenues to help directly support our students it goes right back to the students i think it's also a nice opportunity to um for more diversity and more inclusivity at dartmouth high school so that that's really all i have i am i am in support of this again uh with school choice so uh the chair will entertain a motion uh to approve school choice for the 21 21 21 22 school year second i'll make a boy so you got to make the motion of it make a motion i'll make it much more confusion i s i'll second the motion i have a motion by and a second by mrs amaral to approve school choice for the dartmouth public schools for the fy uh 21 no i'm sorry fy22 school year which would be next school year beginning in september any other questions yeah quick question mr chairman do we need to put a a number of students with this week you don't usually we don't usually okay i i i'll be losing 25 i have 110 so i usually want to bring it to 120 125 somewhere in there that's fine so i'll just that's fine and i think you know i think it goes without saying with the simple fact that you would have let us know that um mr tebow and his team is comfortable with continuing with these types of things you know once those kids start coming in and they do a nice job to spread them out throughout the classes so as you've seen in the past the classes haven't become overly large sure through any of this so yeah okay we need the kids now very much on the motion any other discussion it's your hearing none all in favor aye aye uh opposed me abstentions none so motion passes three to one good thank you we've already had people call okay uh next up uh dr gifford i'll turn it over to you for the 2020 annual report yes i i hope you've all read it um you need to yes but once again i just want to thank the entire team for their contributions for the annual report and i think it showcases the district's work very well um similar to what mr tebow did tonight i didn't say anything to him but it was a fabulous report so you would have to vote on accepting the annual report and um that will go to the town perfect any questions for dr gifford in the annual thought chair well entertain a motion to approve the uh annual report so moved second motion by mr newton seconded by mrs wait on the motion any further discussion it's a nice job yeah yeah honestly yeah detailed and i'm pretty detailed good uh i agree good point i know that takes a lot of time enough for it miss ganther pushes the group so yeah it's a lot that's a lot of questions it's a lot of collaboration all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right motion passes unanimously thank you for doing that that was thorough thank you next up on the agenda in a new business is just a quick little discussion on mcas i'm i asked archer gifford to add this to today's agenda i know that we kind of spoke about this a little bit in the past but once again uh in speaking with mafc um you can see that uh i sent you i asked dr gifford and ms genther to include the resolution language i'll just start off by saying when i first found out that the department of education was looking to even have mcas in some way shape or form in the springtime i was just appalled our teachers and our educators and our administrators have more than enough to do during this pandemic between the safety between the anxiety uh between all the stress and emotion that's going in right now it just i i am bewildered at the fact that we're still that this the department of education in in the um legislature still would like to move forward in in in this as well as commissioner reilly and the department of education so i asked um reached out to masc once again and i asked what their thoughts were and at their um the annual um the annual meeting uh they they took a vote um to uh pass this resolution and you can see that the um with the delegates in attendance at their annual meeting um where they stand and i would just like to just get this committee's thoughts on this and whether or not you this is something that you would like to support once again this would be something a resolution that we would vote on that would go to um our congress our our congressmen as well as our senators and um as well as governor baker and commissioner riley um so uh just uh i am i'm absolutely opposed i know they're looking at correct me if i'm wrong dr gifford a um a cut back version or a different little bit you know um not as in depth and but i'm honestly not sure how much um data they're going to get out of this um and and i think it's just an unnecessary burden um on our teachers on our students um in as you can see with some of the language here that you know i think at least once again for this year and really moving forward there's a lot of controversy around this type of mcas and high stakes testing i know that um from what i'm hearing and dr giffy can chime in is that their concern is that and i think this has actually been made public in the in the um in the media is that if we were to do away with it for another year is that they're afraid that it wouldn't come back yeah so i i i think i think there is a lot of politics at play with this um those that's just my thought um but i'll be happy to hear from my from my committee members and um your thoughts uh i don't know if you want to sat down on this end yeah sure yeah no i'm i am in support of of a root of us sending a resolution like this just to send the message like you said how much data is really going to be obtained i know their plan is like you said to stream you know changing it up a little bit but still going forward with it uh but i would love to see them uh students in the graduating class who missed the the 10th grade to do similar to what was done last year you know it's not just giving people a free pass it's sort of like looking at those students and seeing what the trajectory was what their grades were teachers know administration knows their their their transcript knows how they've done or their potential and then making that competit you know modifying that their um whether they're graduating or not based on like a different set of like determinate factors not solely on the mcas like having a son you know with with uh significant disabilities anyway a separate conversation it's always just been so foolish to me to to his worth in you know taking and you know anything other than auditing classes in a higher ed you know situation because he can't necessarily obtain a diploma you know is just ridiculous and it's it's uh anyway um so yeah i'm in support of of of this it's mr nunes thank you mr chairman i'm one who from the get-go has not been in favor of the mcas testing not everyone tests well okay uh and to hold uh students accountable at any time uh you know for testing you know do you pass do you not pass you know are you gonna graduate you're not going to graduate what's your diploma going to look like et cetera is wrong more so than ever at this point in time with what's going on i mean you know we've been talking about mr tebow was talking about and you know mrs thomas mrs joseph i'm sorry was talking about you know the social emotional issues that the students have because of the pandemic and such you know and not knowing what's going on you know in 10 minutes never mind come march when i've got to take you know in this the mcas test and how are you going to administer that test because you have a hybrid situation what do you do with the students that are fully remote how do you handle those students type of deal there's too many balls in the air as to the logistics and that and along with that i mean i think we have to look at not only the mcas but i'm not sure what we're doing but i think we have to look at all the different testing that we're doing with our students right now again you know you know most of them are in a hybrid situation some of them are fully remote and i'm talking middle and elementary levels type of deal i mean do they you know is their education complete that you can give them any type of a test that is going to completely identify how well they're doing this year i don't think so i mean you know it's been almost the year that this has been ongoing you know i mean they lost three months of school last year you know and then this year you know they were late getting in just because of trying to get everything going and then come back you know and they're in every other day which is fine and then we've had situations where classrooms and we've shut down for two weeks because of the spread of the virus you know these students unfortunately i do not think no disrespect i know our teachers are working diligently but i don't think it's fair to anyone whether it's mcas the star or whatever it is abcs to be giving our students any type of testing that says you're either going to graduate or you're not going to graduate you're going to promote you're not going to promote in this type of a situation so yes thank you mr news sorry guys this is wait stole my son so no i mean i you know i i wholeheartedly agree and i think you know when i look back and uh you know dessi's argument was again diagnostic that they thought this was gonna be diagnostic and all i'll step back and think you know the culture that's been you know created in every school around mcas is that we have a big you know in you know we take the teachers are talking about it for like months ahead of time you know we're sitting kids down you know we're having rallies and do your best you know here's gum this you know you know all of that you know so if we tell the kids this year i mean beyond the class time that this is a waste of class i mean every moment that our kids can be in the classroom and their teachers i think this year is precious you know so i don't want to see it sacrificed to this but also if it's just diagnostic so then what are we telling how are we going to frame that to the kids so you don't take it seriously this year or we stress you out by saying you take it seriously i mean it just doesn't you know and then and if we say it's diagnostic it's not serious spending they're not going to take it seriously so it's not diagnostic anyway because they won't take it i mean the whole thing just seems an exercise in futility really like and it's a it's an unfair burden you know that i can't imagine many staff are saying please let me test my students and go over how to interpret you know it's just not you know i haven't been a high school teacher i can see there was a time you know if you have 10th grader you want to make sure i understand the philosophy behind it you want to make sure that they you know pass a certain yardstick it's not just reliant on what you know there's a big argument that you want uniformity and all that and and i get that but we are seeing a trend away i mean right now sats have dropped the essay questions i mean that just happened i know my daughter was like that well i see the essay question the subject test as well um and there's some move question about you know whether or not sats are you know in the college board we talk about you know what is behind the college board is panicking you know i mean there's there's that but um a lot of schools right now are turning to be test optional and you know may continue so i know tufts and many other you know institutions so again like i think you know we're entering a new phase maybe that and at the very least i think this year we've gotta honor the reality that's in front of us so that's that's awesome excellent way to yeah to read it with that um be it resolve that masc rejects the call for the students of 2022 who missed their 10th grade mcas testing to be required to make it up in the 2021 school year or ever we demand those students be held harmless for not taking the mcas and that their graduation requirements shall be determined by locally controlled voices of the school committee in school administration within the remaining graduation requirements of the commonwealth of massachusetts additionally additionally we reiterate our call for moratorium and all high stakes testing for the 2021 school year so all students can benefit from their time being focused on direct instruction and we urge the legislature to enact a moratorium on high takes high stakes testing of three years chair will entertain a motion to approve that resolution so moved second motioned by mr nunes a second by mrs wait on the motion any further discussion j herring none all in favor hi hi hi opposed motion carries unanimously we could just ask um your office dr gifford if you could just drop like we did in the past draft up if we could have um miss guenther draft up some letters and we'll get those um signed and off to our all the appropriate parties okay thank you thank you uh you're going to sign them or not you're going to sign them i'm certainly signing them the letters that we've talked about tonight yes second to uh on our behalf for both just to confirm uh for both the mcas as well as the um the vaccine for moving up teachers bringing up the teachers yeah vaccines yeah i'll be happy to do that so much about mr news the second that motion taken by mrs amaral on the motion any other discussion all in favor aye aye thank you thank you thank you mr nunes for bringing that up no problem uh next up uh superintendent's update dr gifford a couple of things in addition to everything we've been talking about tonight but the district received well if you recall we do a tier focus monitoring the old cpr audit etc we have to civil rights special education etc and we've been on our last pieces of civil rights and one of the things that we had to do was show that we are providing professional development along the lines of racial equity discriminat inclusion nondiscrimination etc so what we did was we and then we'll have to do more i have a feeling this will become part of the mandated training before too long with everything that's going on everywhere but for now it's up to the districts but deci required us to do something so what we did was we sent an article out to the staff we provided staff time either through a staff meeting or a cpt meeting etc read the article about implicit bias and then take it's from harvard the impact association test just to self-reflect and i mean we don't collect the data or anything like that obviously it's just the results you know go to desi and they saw i i don't know if they'll compile the whole thing across the state or whatever but anyway we've done that this this week or so and and the schools are providing time for folks to do that pre-k and case screening we've been organizing that i think i updated you on the other day and um the k th the cuneigon portal will be opening for registration in early february so folks can be looking for that and we look at our numbers of the number of students that what we think the trend has been of um over the last three years or so of the decrease in the number of k students so we're going to have to see what happens whether folks will opt to put their student in k when they should have been in k this year or if they're age appropriate go to first grade we hopefully recommend that they do go to k because there's so much learning that goes on and with this year of craziness that we don't want them to miss but anyway we'll be looking to that and see what people are going to be doing as far as registering for the kindergarten and i just wanted to mention one more thing and then i'm going to turn it over to mr kiley if he has a few updates as well but you'll hear more about it on the february 8th meeting we invite the student that was chosen for the francis galicia memorial scholarship in honor of mr galtrow's dad over at the south coast collaborative and unfortunately we couldn't have a luncheon you know we did a nice celebration last year the superintendents go the principals and talk about the student that they chose um the students get a one thousand dollar scholarship so we've invited i'm i'm waiting to hear from mr tebow if the student and their her parents can attend our some way the february 8th meeting to be recognized and it's it's a nice award so we did a virtual ceremony and it's what we did like everybody else but it is what it is so that's all i have for tonight thank you dr gifford so just speaking quickly to um food insecurity jean sheridan and the cafeteria staff have been doing a great job i just wanted to update everyone that they're continuing to do food boxes weekly so it's on thursdays now while school is in session so any students who are learning remotely or are quarantined for some reason or you know unable to be in school can uh collect a seven-day food box at the middle school we've added evening hours so we have a daytime hours and evening hours for our families so make it more accessible and they're continuing that program so you know we're trying to address that as much as possible and we're continuing now as we you know we've come back into the hybrid mode to send students home with food for the day when they're out of school so that option is still available so i just wanted to make sure the community understands that that's still you know still out there and we're trying to address that food insecurity as best we can do you find our students at the middle school level are they taking the you know i think that was a little bit of an issue before where they weren't necessarily all taking the food you know do you find that most kids are taking the food it's a mix it is a mix you know i mean students have particular tastes and you know it's sometimes they don't eat all day even yeah right right but there are a lot of students who are taking it yes yeah and is it every week that boxes go out yes every week seven day meal box that has uh fruit vegetables juice um breakfast lunches lots of different types of things some hot options cold options you know pizzas pancakes french toast uh hamburgers cheeseburgers stuff like that really just just a lot of food i know because it is yeah it's wonderful and just out of curiosity uh about yeah a ballpark of what do we give you yes so right now now that we're coming back into hybrid uh we're you know estimating less than 100 each each day um each week sure um when we were just fully remote uh we were give we gave out 400 and something boxes um so that was significant for sure but we're still we're giving out more food now than we were when we were fully remote obviously because now we're giving it out in school to kids so um yeah it's it's been successful and it wouldn't be without um you know the effort of gene and and rick ferreira and his team assisting with the logistics and of this whole thing it's it's been good effort there's a i just you know i i see it um i see there's a lot of great collaboration going on so it really is you know that's an all hands on deck situation and everybody gets it so yeah yeah no it's good that's excellent i just had one other yeah sure brief item um just wanted to thank lauren pusey in my office she was been working with the um with the town's energy consultant kathy stanley and we just received the check for eighteen thousand dollars for uh air purifier rebates so yeah so they so we just got that and uh so i was pleased with that a little little discount on those air purifiers that are all over the place we'll take what we can yeah wow that's great is that ours or does that go back to the toilet i have i have a exploratory email that uh hasn't been uh responded to yet i'll let you know [Laughter] fair enough mr kylie thank you uh under report of the chair i really don't have anything um to add um i know it's gone a little bit longer than uh on the agenda so uh no i i that's all i really um i really don't have anything tonight anyone else i just have um that you know we just got an email from um miss kane that deca results are in so they're they haven't announced yet but i guess they're going to announce on wednesday um you know who's i guess the top seven finishers go to state so i have two kids who are very excited so let's see but um yeah so something to look forward to on wednesday she will announce that she said um at 2 15.

now those numbers have been fluctuating daily uh up and down uh for it's we not every student jumping out to dl there's a lot of students that are feel good and are coming back in and want to be part of hybrid because the dl part's not working um working for them hello mr uh is not working for them so they had to go about and do that but you'll see that they are pretty even as we go through first thing we did was we made a video that mr larose had put together uh with a cameo from myself and dr martins in the beginning uh we're going to play this now we're going to be showing this with kids and as we go through in our mentor flex for the first week and we'll explain what that is in a little bit uh hopefully this works and uh the technology will show it but it's just a quick little video welcoming our students back and showing highlighting some of the changes we've done to the we just want to building back our patterns that are coming back into hybrid starting on february 1st which will be the start of the second semester when you come in the building you're going to notice that there's a couple of things that are different including some stairwells that are one way a whole lot of hand sanitizer stations so remember practice your social distancing and always wear your mask let's go take a look inside [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] my [Music] i hope to see you soon remember keep your maps on use the hand sanitizers and practice your social distance have a great day thanks again to uh mr rosa for working on that and making me do my cameo in one take appreciate the efforts there um we're gonna go over a couple things just to talk about the different levels of the building uh one of the things i forgot to mention with the cohorts is probably the average um class size coming in in a cohort is about seven uh there are some that are like two and there are some i think our largest one is around 15 kids uh in one class just because of the way it's split up on that one class on that one given day um so you know the average is about seven uh for for kids per class so we um this is kind of the stuff we're going to show the students when we hit mentor flex uh there's some part important parts to it that we want to show we'll go through it kind of quickly um level one whether it's g level one or or d level one we talked a lot as an administrative team for trying to come out we did this early in the summer with one-way hallways as well as certain one-way stairwells uh down and up stairwells um we couldn't we could figure it out but it was uh really daunting for a student if they had to go from one place to another and when you have connections like this it was difficult to to have them one way our hallways are far enough or wide enough that students can pass comfortably as long as they're not gathering the other thing you have to notice is um grab-and-go meals that we'll talk about in a little bit but coming in right from outside the gyms where the parent drop off and pick up will be over here there's going to be a grab-and-go station both for breakfast and for lunch any dhs student can grab a breakfast on the way in go to their room put up their shield and eat their breakfast if they would like and on the way out they can any student can grab a lunch coming right through this gym and out to their car to drive home or getting picked up by their parents so we encourage all the students to grab one on the way out even if you're not going to eat all of it that day you know it may have some nutritious snacks in there for you to have so grab something on the way in and grab something on the way out that's level one oh nice shot john it's animated uh the gym entrance where they can be dropped off grab-and-go meals level two uh we have grab-and-go meals at the black box for any student who's driving and is parked on the black box side along with our mini buses who'll be dropping off there uh they can come in and grab a meal uh on their way in and on their way out at the black box entrance the cafeteria with the big x on it is closed uh the vending machines are not operational so there's no reason for students to go in there there's a couple of things going on in there one it's where we stored all of our extra chairs and desks that we pulled and file cabinets that were pulled out of teachers rooms to make room to separate the desks are down there it looks like a huge garage sale and the cafeteria staff basically for the district is preparing lunches they have a whole assembly line that they do the lunches for the district right now and put them on many and send them out to families that need them so the cafeteria is closed before during and after school level three uh it's the same way that we talked about as i mentioned earlier these hallways being one way but there was no way to get people out of here and coming around quick enough without having them walk nine miles a day so we decided with the hallways being far enough that they could go traffic could move smoothly both ways again this is how our students will be entering through the front where the buses are going to be dropping off and picking up so grab-and-go meals will be available right here on the way in or the way out there's also another entrance over here with no grab-and-go meals but right here there will be cafeteria staff handing out meals on the way in you want to grab a breakfast go to your for the first week your mentor flex for the rest of it your block one class sit down before 7 put your desk shield up and eat that is fine and at the end of the day at dismissal walk right out this door grab your stuff find your bus which we'll talk about in a little bit uh and don't eat on the bus but find your stuff on the find your bus go home and eat when you get home we don't want to make messes on the buses and you have to keep your mask on level four there's only two of them uh for d and c uh what's going to be interesting is i think a lot of kids don't even know that this uh students may have never been in this stairwell before but this is going to be the up stairwell coming through here and a down stairwell going through here on the front so if you're going to go to c you're going to go through this stairwell in the back you made it one directional and then you can come back if you are looking for uh d5 c5 is the same thing you can go through the up stairwell and then down here freshman on your way in i will tell you this there is no d5 and there is no pool okay so don't go looking for they tell you to go to d5 or try to find the pool there is no pool at danbury high school do not buy a pass for the pool do not get a discounted pass for the pool there is no pool okay that's just a little tip from mr donovan here our water fountains are currently shut off but the bottle filling stations are open uh so if you have dr martin's hold up your water bottle i just saw you take a nice if you oh it's a bubbly i didn't see that it's a if you have a water bottle that you would like to bring in these are there it is filtered um water stations that you can fill up your uh their sensor you don't have to push anything you can fill up your water bottles here i recommend that everyone bring in a water bottle uh and use those filling stations they're located all through g uh they're down uh some places around the building they're not everywhere though but g is the one that has them the most okay stairwells as we mentioned in that you saw in the video are one way this is the main one that comes in right off the bridge and it's that the down stairwell we're doing this because we felt that it was important for um the traffic to go one way in the stairwells uh you know when we have everyone in those stairwells get crowded especially this one because everyone uses this stairwell so if we have just a down sterol and i think it'll take everybody including our seniors who have been here the longest to try to figure out ah this is only a down stairwell uh oh i'm gonna just go up one flight now we're gonna try to make it so that they it's one way so you're not passing other people uh on the stairwell going the opposite direction we're gonna see how this works for a while and we're going to go with that there's the one-way traffic signs the down only on the floor it tells you which way you're supposed to be going in or out you'll also notice that they're the blue arrows throughout the school uh tell you to keep right during while you're in the hallway flow with traffic uh try to stay as far off to the sides as you possibly can look out for the hand sanitizers and i will give you a heads up about this one the pumping station on the hand sanitizer is like that long and if you put that all the way down into your hand you will have enough hand sanitizer to last you for a week so you only need to do a little bit of a squirt and rub it in because if you push it all the way down it's going to go all over you so be mindful of that if you're using one of those our mask policy dps the board has a mask policy that you can go look at i didn't want to print it all up here it just basically says that all students and staff must wear face masks at all times while it really doesn't indicate what they are if you want to wear a face shield you have to wear a face shield and a masks the mask is the big part you just can't wear a face shield if you want to wear both you most certainly can't but you have to have masks on at all times the only ones that are not allowed are masks with valves on them they are not allowed to be worn into the school so masks on at all time from the moments you get on the bus until you come in to the moment you get off you know there's a lot of discussion about mass brakes and depending on the word you're going to hear the most is density and depending on the density of the classroom a mass break can actually take place in the classroom especially with the shields and if people are working quietly but mass brakes will be given throughout the day if a teacher feels it's going to be there up to them if they think hey we need a mass break we've set up tables outside in the courtyard i know it's cold but if everybody wants to go out and get some fresh air they can take a little walk out there again remember we're dealing with numbers in a classroom of like seven so uh a lot of these can take place in there when you have your shields and your your um at three feet apart our with the shields and all of that we were rated at about your average classroom i think it was 24 kids could fit into it because all the stuff we pulled out so now we're talking seven so i think they're gonna have assigned seats they're gonna you can use their shields and they're gonna be spread out through the classroom so if you're working there a teacher can say put your mask down uh take a couple of breaths because sometimes they do get a little uh you know they do start to irritate a little bit but that will be up to the teacher it was kind of impossible for us to come up with a schedule of who needs a mass break and when because of the fact that i don't know when the class needs a mass break the teachers know better if they've been doing a lot of talk and they may need one if they're just sitting there they can pull their mask down so one of the things we're going to be talking to the kids about how to wear your mask it's not just good enough to have a mask masks must be worn properly it sounds kind of ridiculous that we have to go over this but this is how a mask should be worn uh not like this and not definitely as under the chin this is for not only your safety but everyone else's in that's coming in the building so wear your masks and wear them properly please whoops the self-assessment part this is uh where we need help from the students and and parents you know we are not going to be uh temperature checking people on the way in there's been a lot of back and forth about that but uh our medical staff does not believe that that's going to be helpful to us so we are not going to be temperature checking so you we're asking that parents and students do a self-assessment oh where'd the self-assessment go oh john my self-assessment disappeared well the self-assessment anyway talks about everything that you've heard before it's not anything new you know if you feel that you have a fever chills cough shortness of breath fatigue anything like that it um you know stay home and it doesn't mean that you have covet it doesn't mean you have to to to run to the doctor immediately but you have to stay like that uh at home for at least 24 hours after the symptoms have stopped if you call your doctor and say any of those symptoms they're probably going to send you to get tested at this point but you know it's up to you as parents and students to say yeah i'm not feeling good i think we're going to stay home today which leads us to an attendance question that people have if my son or daughter was scheduled to come in for a hybrid wasn't feeling you know we did the right thing here and we said hey we're going to stay home because they're feeling a little bit and they go to school remotely does that count as an absence no it does not the teacher will just tag them remotely what we do need is we need the parent to notify the school we need to notify that the the student who's supposed to be in hybrid is not going to be in today you know you know and may be working remotely the teacher will code that correctly but we want as the school to know because if you happen to be at work and they stay home you may not have known they stayed home and you're not going to get the the robo call that you would normally get for an absent because we are treating the remote present as present in school so if they're not feeling good it's no penalty for it just stay home uh give us a call and just say hey you know we did the right thing we're keeping them home for uh you know today tomorrow whenever uh but they're gonna be on classes and uh we'll be grateful if you could do that because that would be a big help to all of us if that could happen uh classrooms some of the stuff we've done there's our our favorite senior mr larosa who did graduate from here but many years ago uh we got these deck sheet desk shields uh there's enough for each student that will be in the class so if the largest number in that classroom is say 16 students at one time the the classroom has 16 deck shields you know we felt this was better than giving each one each student their own and have them walk around with it bring it home and bring it back it's only made of corrugated cardboard and a little plastic shield we figured that they would break up pretty pretty much um pretty easily so what we're trying to do is just preserve them as long as we can so they're going to stay on the desks and when kids come in and out they can do that cleaning supplies as you saw in the the video each room has a tub of wipes right now paper towels and a spray the spray is a spray that can be used in school without gloves it requires one minute of contact so if you spray a desk down um you can wait one minute and wipe it up you're good to go we can ask any student that wants to do that if they want to come in and spray their desks down teachers to spray their desk downs and then have students wipe them down in between classes it's just one way to make you know take another precaution there so we're going to be doing that it's students safe we don't have to worry about using those chemicals in school the bathrooms we have extra custodians on during the day that will be cleaning them regularly we have a sheet that they uh check out that they've cleaned that bathroom so we can monitor if they've been cleaned you know we are gonna monitor the bathrooms for density it's a word i said uh again so we're not hanging out in the bathrooms we're going into the bathrooms we're doing we have to do we're going to wash our hands and then we're moving along so we're not going to close certain bathrooms we don't like to do that uh and you know make kids go to because then we're gonna have a more density in the bathroom but we are gonna tell students come on let's go let's move along don't hang out in the bathroom but that's so we'll try that part of it so what happens if you are ill during the day you notify your teacher uh your teacher is going to call down to the nurse's office the nurse will meet you either at the nurse's office door or direct you to what we call the coven room which is located across from the nurse's office attached to the media center they will do their assessments they will do what they have to go through and from there they'll make a determination if you're going to stay in the covered room or if you're going to go into the nurse's office the reason for that is a lot of students go in and out of the nurse's office every day for reasons that aren't coveted like medicines and things like that so we didn't want to contaminate the nurse's office so there's a separate room where kids can wait and uh within 30 minutes we're hoping a parent can come pick them up or whoever can come pick them up so um the less time in the school the better and then from there we go through contact tracing uh you know as you saw they were closing down classrooms and if you've read anything this is our first time coming in but you've seen you know new fairfield brookfield newtown going in and out of school it's going to be the same thing so you're you know you may have to check your emails and listen for those robos that come out that uh your son or daughter uh through contact tracing was in a room with someone who may have tested positive and we will look at things like that so the contact racing begins at that point that'll be done with the administrators and the nurses at danbury high school all right so the first week we're coming back we are going it's a little change of a schedule we are going into mentor flex from 7 20 to 7 55 each morning for the first week 7 20.

as a veteran teacher and association representative in my building smalley school i get questions from other teachers that i can't answer or feel uncomfortable answering because a lot of the information we get is through the grapevine is there a set of protocols that can be shared with the faculty and staff so that we are all operating on the same set of guidelines i think that some of the anxieties that we feel could be lessened if we knew what the expectations are when a student has symptoms or is sent home or if we need to quarantine i realize that this may change over time and that we are doing the best we can to adapt during these difficult and stressful times and i thank the office staff especially the nurses for all of their help and guidance i don't expect any confidential information to be shared but if we could see what the procedures are and how they are being implemented that would be helpful halfway there number 13 kristin rozziniak a teacher at um the annex school dearbound for board of education my name is christian mediniak i'm a special education teacher at lamont annex in all my years of teaching i've done my very best to educate and provide the students with a loving caring environment i took pride in knowing that i was providing these students with an environment that they felt safe in through this pandemic we as educators and as parents have had to make a lot of difficult decisions because we need to do what is best for the children unfortunately after just one week i don't feel that it is safe to go back to be back in school i as an educator fill out a covert form i fill out fill a covent form out to provide members with an accurate with accurate information about myself after this week i can't help but wonder if accurate information is being given to the boundary school district from the covent form their parents fill out once a week many children came to school with multiple symptoms of illness causing a domino effect there are many students and staff disrupted because of that how is that giving our students the best education we can give them if parents cannot be truthful as the numbers in somerset county cases are rising they are putting the faculty at risk every single day in my eyes this is not about teachers wanting to be home because it is extremely challenging to teach virtually and i absolutely prefer to be at school this is about keeping students their families and the educators of bandwidth safe as a mother i come home every day potentially exposing my family to something i could have got from work because children continually are coming to school with illness symptoms and families are not following protocol my family matters too at this point in the pandemic we need to consider not where we educate but everyone's safety and how we educate thank you for your time this is from constance charleston uh 219 west high street as of january covet questions new daily coveted screening grades k-6 due to limited or rather no parking at our k-6 building will the school doors be open earlier than 7 50 a.m to accommodate the time it will take for the daily screening process has curbside screening been considered to increase the timelines and least exposure to clover 19 during the daily screening process will there be an identified fast track line for students who have their cover 19 daily form completed prior to arriving at school with a start time for students be altered to accommodate for families who have to travel between two or three of the k-6 buildings to drop off more than one child does this change or add any type of daily screening process for students to participate in sports what considerations are if any are being given due to the fact that parents have to arrive to their own place of work on time without exception and providing the community on such short notice questions uh regarding the cover 19 vaccination is there a plan or a minimum a tentative draft plan for 100 return to school dependent upon staff receiving cover 19 vaccination with the cdc confirming there is a shortage of available vaccines has this prompted any alternate planning until after spring break thank you and have a good evening i'll respond to that okay i'll send your name all right um this is from jackie beers kindergarten teacher members of the board i am concerned about what has been occurring at the annex this past weekend today we had several instances where classrooms had to be relocated to the gym or other areas due to students or teachers being sent home with possible quoted like symptoms the rooms are then being fogged and the classes cannot return for 24 hours while i greatly appreciate the attention to the health and safety of all this does not make for a proper learning environment for those classrooms first live virtual teaching is stopped for that time period second having our youngest students pre-k and pay located to another room that does not adequately have what they need for learning is also disrupting their education third teachers and age are being pulled out of their classrooms to cover other classrooms while we are all willing to help and be accommodating this disrupts the continuity and learning of more classes and further exposes others by mixing students with other teachers how much longer can this continue i am asking the board to reconsider their position and return to all virtual learning with all virtual learning our youngest students can learn from their teachers without disruption and prevent possible exposures thank you number 16 scott kapalbel i'm a teacher at lamont annex dear members of the board of education i'm writing this letter to discuss some of the concerns that i have with the current reopening plan of the school district it does not feel safe or very well thought out and i know that i am not the only teacher who is concerned we have recently returned to in-person teaching when the cases are worse than they were in november when we went all removed i personally know more people now than i did that have been exposed to someone who's tested positive and are now quarantined we have been teaching in-person classes for less than a week and already have multiple staff and students needing to quarantine including myself now i informed by the appropriate staff about my exposure and was instructed to quarantine and stay home for seven days until i could be tested the student quarantine period for exposure is five to seven days i'm not sure why there is a discrepancy here i was also told that i need to call out and use my own sick days for this quarantine period while i understand that we do not have the covet hours anymore i do not feel that we should have to use our own sick time when we have the capability to teach from home now i still have virtual students and can easily teach them just like i did when i was home for two months in the fall i do not understand why i'm being penalized for being honest about my exposure and i also feel like there are protocols in place to address situations like mine when i was absent one day to start my quarantine my class had to be relocated to the gym for the day and my virtual students did not receive any live instruction at all i did not have an assigned sub either so they simply pulled someone from another class i just wanted to make you aware of the situation because it is happening to others too if we were still teaching from home this all could have been avoided and my virtual students would not have lost my instruction time ultimately i do not think it's fair that the staff and students suffer because we cannot provide the appropriate combinations when covered related issues arise i just wanted what is best for the health and safety of both the staff and students i ask you to please reconsider the decision on the reopening of schools during this very difficult time number 17 is mona liskowski who is also a teacher um first grade teacher dear members of the boundary board of education as everyone is well aware cover 19 cases continue to surge and now there is a strain that is more contagious and very likely more lethal furthermore there is a growing number of people who have contracted the disease and continue to suffer long-term deleterious effects this disease can cause significant damage to the heart and lungs even for those people who have recovered despite the rate of infections being worse than in the spring for some illogical reason our district has gone back to hybrid learning many people are stressed and scared about returning to in-person learning i am terrified of being infected by coping 19 and then causing the death of my poor 82 year old mother who i helped care for because she has advanced dementia i'm scared of contracting the virus and dying leaving my three sons motherless i am scared of having any of my colleagues and students die and then having to deal with the guilt and pain that this did not need to happen i am scared that i'll die only months before i can finally retire according to dr vinhda january 10th teachers and support staff in schools should be fully vaccinated before they're expected to return to in-person instruction doing otherwise is wrong and unjust to teachers nationwide january 15th as we await vaccines we must reduce transmission to save a portion of the 4 000 lives lost daily at a minimum vaccinate teachers and other staff at risk for dying before you expect them to return to in-person learning to earn a paycheck why is this even a debate january 17th i get daily messages from teachers and their unions filled with fear there is no law that demands in-person instruction at any cost we have 4 000 plus deaths daily 200 to 300 cases daily and a new strain that poses uncertainty pause in person vaccinate teachers and staff and then resume january 23rd the public officials most zoom experts not covered ones expecting anxious educated educators to go back into the classroom during a very tough part of the crisis of those memories of people in suits who've never served in uniform voting for our troops to deploy easy to say harder to do another doctor expressed a similar opinion in an article entitled most schools should close and stay closed through winter she has a link there as a physician mother daughter of a school teacher and former city health commissioner who oversaw schools i know that in person schooling is crucial for children's cognitive and emotional development but loss of learning isn't the same as loss of life and we cannot put the burden of society's failures on the people who work in schools if we truly want to prioritize children we need to drive down community infection needs and invest in safety upgrades in schools not jeopardize the lives of teachers staff and their families isn't it better to be safer be safe than sorry especially considering how many people keep getting sent home sick and how close we are to getting the vaccines thank you for your support um do you want to keep reading these we got about eight to ten more to go or do you want me to share them with you later or do you want me to keep reading are they are they all pretty much the same okay this one's from a teacher do you want to speak with any right i mean obviously we get that everybody needs i think everybody deserves to be heard all right um this one is from steven nor whitney who is a teacher at community middle school they're board members my main concern is the fact that parents are required to complete a covert form weekly during this pandemic i believe we need to be more diligent and everyone should complete the form daily having the students sit in their seats for four and a half hours is in my opinion a long time they have been good with this so far but i have been noticing masks beginning to be lowered below the nose i apologize for that this is a concern to me and is leading to me to sanitize everything before i begin my class i feel we need to take this pandemic seriously for the safety of the students their families and the families of the teachers kelly hellman who's a teacher at smalley educators by nature are nurturers we know that the best place for students to learn is in person however over the last week we have seen students coming in sick or coming in while their household is awaiting test results our teachers are coming in every day and risk bringing covenant home to our families social distancing at arrival and dismissal is near impossible at smalling especially once there is snow on the ground and some parents without mass are walking up to talk with teachers families are traveling out of state and some are being honest but not aware that they need to quarantine for 14 days and some may not be truthful i have had kids returned from their bathroom trips without a mask these are all concerns that i and many of my colleagues have as we navigate teaching in person as we navigate teaching in-person students and students online i thank you for all the precautions you have been taking and wanted to express my concerns i have this time this one is from lena um 101 west franklin street hi i heard that you may be going virtual i um this is from damaris um cologne um 324 evergreen avenue congratulations to mr apozada for being elected for bbhs way to go this is from jackie beers kindergarten teacher at the annex who will supervise the students from 7 50 until 8 10 and where will they go during that time eight and it'll be in the hallways um this is from brenda sanchez 345 grove avenue fabric it has come to my attention that during winter break mrs fisher traveled out of state florida new year's restricted travel high risk overstayed on vacation didn't quarantine upon our arrival back to new jersey and attended work multiple times uh putting multiple staff members the community and et cetera at risk how do you expect to keep down from staff members students in the community space when administrators cannot follow proper club with 19 protocols and guidelines so say that i had a rapid test [Music] this is from corinna de nuvio just wanted to take the time to thank the board for the cope informed policy change i appreciate your time and attention to the matter this is from lena um 101 west franklin street also my concern is if you do go virtual what happens to the single parents that have to work i can't stay home because i have to have rents and bills to pay if i get evicted from my apartment how will my son do his online school all right can i from that there's like a gazillion questions from me obviously we're gonna go to the daily forum um are there consequences what are consequences i know in new york um there's there's a couple things that they've implemented um the mass protocol we were told that if there's students that can't keep masks on or whatever that we were allowed to flip them to fully virtual we've done that already okay so all right so if there is so teachers would have to let administration know if there's a student that's not following [Music] you know that send a kid to school we're going with the three strike rule which i announced already okay so if they've done it three times that's it that they have to go fully emerging okay um are your ways to put partitions can i ask for clarification on free strengths is that what is that it's not submitted prior to the student entering like whether it's not submitted three times lying three times whatever it is they get three strikes and that's it they're going fully virtual because we're not compromising the health and safety of our students and staff can i suggest that once one time well i think i think not filling out one time might be a little too steep because if you don't fill it out i'm sorry your kid goes home oh no they can go home that day they're going home if they don't fill it out but i mean to flip them fully virtual there's going to be three right they don't come into school unless they have that form filled out correctly right i can tell you that i missed it one the very first day of school and i have two kids and i hit submit on both of them and one went through and one didn't go through and i promise you they were both there and i the nurse called home and i was like it's it's she's like where is it i said boom there it didn't go through like that was a tech issue my kids are now virtual because there's that's one time that's ridiculous i mean no no no so those are two those are two separate things you know it's not recognizing the same sign-on i've done it five million times with my same password i think it's a little steep um i agree that something needs to be done about sending kids sick or lying i mean there were parents that like we know after the fact as in the kid was in school yeah the kid was in school before we found out that things like that like because it's a it's a very confusing time guidance is changing it's like rigorous cough favor one or two of these did anybody follow up with the parent or guardian and was there confusion was it a blatant like right and so i think i think things like that maybe there needs to be a policy that if you send a child knowingly when you know you shouldn't have like you lied on your form that you need to then you rescind your right to send your kid to school okay again i listen to me you guys tell me what you want and i put it in place because i think it's a legal question though right how because you're saying to prove intent i mean if your child if someone is at home with covid and your child is living in the same house where someone was diagnosed with covenant and you send your kids to school there's no way that you could possibly say you didn't know the person that you're living with couldn't possibly expose them to coping true right i mean that's a that's exciting yes i would agree with that if there wasn't they if they weren't tested at the time when the kid goes to school then the next day they tested positive i guess that'd be different but what i've been told for work policy is that if you're getting tested everybody's not going to work until you get the results of sentence right and that's actually here too and it should be with anyone that's in that household as well because i know in the very beginning of september all i have to do is say to my principal hey my brother called me to say that he wasn't feeling well and that was it i taught him home for two weeks then um so that was the other thing that i wanted to bring up that um i know miss mr cacao had brought up um is there a way to know are there two teachers in every classroom yes all right so if if one of them has to quarantine obviously in the case of now are both of those teachers does he just quarantine because of exposure outside of the school he's quarantined his exposure outside of school okay so is so i kind of like agree with him is there is there no way because i know when i flipped in september i was possibly exposed and then i wasn't um i was able to then teach virtually uh to my students is there is there a way that if he's not sick and he could possibly then pick up like at least the virtual half um and work with them from home isn't that a better scenario than than you know because because i would imagine a teacher in a classroom having to teach live and virtual at the same time there's someone quarantines then you know can we put it so that they they you know that they flip to virtual then in his particular case the answer to no because the second person in the classroom is probably a teaching assistant so again when it comes to technology the kids in the building the level of technology isn't the same so therefore it could be streamed in and out at the same time but i'm not saying that they should stream to the classroom the person in his classes is teachers mrs cody tuning in virtually but i can't do it equally across the district the entire district isn't co-teaching gotcha so i can't again i have to be careful because i have to make sure i apply these rules equally across the district so i can't apply it to tv or even in the middle schools i can't apply equally across the district and at that point in time what i'm going to end up doing is i'm going to end up with a a grievance and an arbitration case right yeah i mean it does well that's a sticky wicket because i mean it would be it's really when you do where you have the ability to teach from home virtual students anyway the virtual depth of the class i i understand but if if so i'm not a teacher i don't know the internet if if you have the ability where possible isn't that better i know grievances i know that isn't it better to apply it when possible yeah but if i do that i agree i think he would agree that yeah but if we do what he says if we do that contractually we'll absolutely get a reason because said someone in high school has to quantity and they say well i can't teach virtual i'm going to have to use my sick days i'm going to have to use my time and how come mr coppola didn't have to use his time and then it's just going to open a whole a whole number of people yeah is there any talk of them [Music] those days don't come out of your sick day that's however if you're quarantined because you were exposed to someone that was sick and then you get forced to quarantine and then three weeks later you you someone was has a cold and a cough and you're pouring like then then then it turns into a an it could turn into a never-ending quarantine you know what i'm saying yes i think i think are teachers considered frontline yes we have been in school since september so so you guys are considered like front line workers well i don't know what that would constitute that but new york city teachers from kindergarten from kindergarten foreign have been full-time from eight o'clock to two o'clock every single day since september except for two weeks in november so if the teacher in new york goes out sick positive with corbin does workman's comp ticket no okay that would only get good if they're exposed if it's confirmed that's why i was asking because it has to be work related and that's why i was asking in new york if they were considered from high i don't know if who would classify you have to have to backtrace it to a transmission in school well that's the other question to let people you know know where something has traced back to transmitting within the school system meaning because someone came to work or came to school they knocked over from being here so so it's it's outside in the school where the transmission is so the people so there's things that are quarantined they quarantine before they and you know with the patchwork of comments that are there the overriding gist of everything is especially from our teachers is what it what is the presentation of the board to uh i i can't say the word guaranteed but to look at the word of safety for them to come in to uh to work every day i'm an educator myself i understand those concerns but i think we also need to balance them with the concerns of that one single parent that said if i can't work what am i going to do i mean i think that these are some real life situations and i feel that i hear both sides so i think i think you know in order to respect looking at we're looking at little symptoms we need to look at where we had in relation to our our approach to online versus in-person learning i think that's what i'm hearing from the teachers i just want to throw that out there because that that's that's where i think we need to look at our focus where are we well again i think part of this is my fault because i tried to be ultra cautious and you know any sickness that was coming in because i was worried about the flu and sniffles and everything else that i i really thought playing at safe fight by anybody who who had anything like that send them home play it safe and they'll just clean the classroom so it's my fault um you know so now now we're going to go by the cdc rules of if it's two particular um symptoms you know the room gets cleaned and the kid gets home or if it's one particular symptom depending on what that is and so on and so forth so again um i looked at it from a health and safety safety standpoint of you know again flu season cold season it's winter um really thought you know let's let's er on the side of ultra caution with this um we're opening back up let's clean let's ultra clean let's you know i mean the first the first beyonce the first person that went home in the district wasn't even a kid it was teacher so the first person that said though was a teacher because the teacher was coughing and sniffling send the teacher home right i mean so again i mean i mean i do think i said i don't want you to i thank you for that and i think i thank you for your diligence with that dr gallagher i i i guess what i'm just saying is that you know what like there was an issue of uh additional protective gear additional barriers what what exactly are every classroom every teacher has um they have a mask reusable cloth masks that face heels um they have they have uh disinfecting wipes and then obviously um every room gets sanitized every night um and they also get fogged um i believe every night which i can double check but i also know that when we do those deep cleanings they're they're getting scrubbed followed the whole nine yards so um but i know everything everyone i've seen some restaurants that use that i don't necessarily think that they really do anything i'm just gonna say for child study team because i'm a child study team member in another district and to my fellow child study team people i understand where you're coming from for doing the testing uh when they do evaluations and testing are we have we have shields for that okay we do have practices for them okay um for the child study team the question was more about classrooms but from the child study thing we do have actual barriers to them um we've used them all summer long and i know the one question is about like four different people in a room right right but again that that room is a big room and you're adhering to the six feet social distancing all of the old you know normal protocols because they're using full-size rooms everybody's vast and doing all the normal protocols so again um i can go back and look but i mean they're supposed to be signing in in every building that they're going into they're supposed to be keeping a lot of who they're meeting with they're supposed to be running the schedule who's it supposed to be so the contact tracing part of the child study team should be relatively easy right again we run into this all the time because everybody wants to know who everybody else was who everybody else was and we're not going to tell you unless it impacts you if it's not impacting you we're not telling you because you're not going to it's the same right so so again when you hear the comment well i found out from the family after they're quarantined well it was because you had no need to know all right so then we have to make sure that the child study team um that that we make sure that that protocol is in place that there's a sign if that's not being done i'm probably going to lose it because that was a that was part of the order because again forget pandemic that was part of the audit so that those steps were put in place because of the audit never mind the pandemic so if i don't have that because of the audit never mind a pandemic [Music] testing or something they told that kid and they go to an assigned room that room is assigned to them they pull the kid from their their existing places of who they serve yeah um dr gallagher when they take that child out they're going into a room that's a specific assigned cst ring right in each building yes so they have their privacy okay listen i understand why people are on edge i fully understand yeah i fully understand i just i just i i hesitate to to want to go virtual only because when when when the school itself is not the means of transmission then to d to just close up is a whole other layer of problems remediation is it happening in person or is that mostly online mostly online i believe so that was one of the if teachers were able to go home at the end and do their remediation from home and that would stop the eating in classrooms teachers eating and i don't think you know that's that is what's happening in my district that most because the fear it was like the eating and everything and the remediation i think my organs my only concern was that and and it has been brought up by the association and my answer to the association um we have some people who have really lengthy drivers well not everybody can be honest through not everybody well that's what i'm saying though is but then again who's going to police it then at that point in time like you're going to have a chart of of who lives in a certain parameter who is able to get home and get on you have to in case that you have the option to go home if you would like to my district right now we're all fully virtual and we have the option to teach from school or from home and if you go in you go in and if you don't you teach from but the problem is you can do it at the end right you're ready but if it takes two hours to drive so then they don't take the option to go home with people who can if you but the problem is what happens when they elect to take the option and they miss their remediation well what's the penalty that i'm in the position of i have to bring somebody up you know i mean i'm just gonna say i'm just gonna say as a person who works in this setting if i had a two-hour commute i wouldn't drive home i mean what teacher i think that's that's just an obvious problem for a lot of people what time from the time school ends to the time remediation happens [Music] right so so now we're in that same you know sticky wicket of well if you allow and you have to allow evenly you know what i'm saying so someone could complain that well i'm not able to go home because i live an hour and ten minutes away and you live in bound brook i'm just i mean that is what's happening in other districts like it might just it is and there are people who have to say i mean there are people who live in town and choose the state because they have small children right even for that [Music] maybe uh tomorrow or wednesday about this yeah i just think it's kind of a good intermediary that's right some of the stuff if remediation can happen online if it's mostly happening let me talk let me talk to you and see if we can come up with sort of an agreement on that okay they didn't even have to be tested they're all new [Music] what if a teacher doesn't have the sickness okay as i explained when i had my my conversation with the association that we would take that on a case-by-case basis and we got to a point that if somebody ran out of space okay and we were taking out this extreme circumstance i think we have to be pretty flexible with that kind of okay the issue was if they run out of time and i have already spoken to the leadership in my meeting with them because i had a meeting with the leadership that when we got to a point if anybody got to that point i would take that on a case-by-case basis and see what you can do right because we don't have a stick bank right you do have a segment okay you have a we have a setback and there also has a clause in the in the contract that allows me to do certain things okay so again i'll take that on these basis right to work with them i'm just [Music] to the nurse with cold symptoms all right are they kept separate from every other student that goes to the nurse is there something in place yeah each nurse has like a screened partition with at least two like i don't want to say the room but two partitioned areas that they can partition kids away from each other okay just in case like they're talking about any sort of across life someone goes down and then thinks they may be sick you don't want to expose them other students so just make sure that you know teachers know that yeah i think the the newer nurses rooms that we did actually i know the high school has a separate room um i'm not sure what lafayette does but they they definitely have a partition at lafayette um smalley has partitioned and so does small yeah because i mean you wouldn't want to cross-contaminate yeah is it one second from another place the teacher just call ahead and say hey i've got one with these symptoms you know just to make sure there's nothing to send them okay all right so i know there was talk and trying to um it done for teachers in schools or you know like is there any more talk or anything that that was shot down by new jersey um office of emergency management schools were told that we were not going to be allowed to to do vaccines so we already sent that out to our staff and asked them to sign up through the uh the state state web i signed up there's no appointments waiting lists again that's that's what we got that was a statewide thing but again when you talk to superintendents from other counties other counties are doing things so much differently i i can't speak to that like i'm just asking who you got the information from i got from the state the state yeah state state department of um office of emergency management said they will not approve any sites to give out vaccines oh we don't that's i mean you're trying to vaccinate all the teachers bring it to the teachers right well but again that was that was you know did you just move to new jersey honestly vaccinations i don't know if that applies to school but it's right miscommunication is probably as bad as all of these horrible situations we're going through and is there a way we can put something together i know it's been done but maybe just to put something together for the staff to say this is what we've done this is what has been done because i think that no matter what we say tonight there may be staff that are still going to go back to the buildings and there's going to be a lot of miscommunication of what what hasn't been done to be proactive and say this is what has been done i just throwing that out here yeah i i i send everything that comes to me that's coming from the state is is being told to be set to stay after we do i think at this point in time i think the big thing right now is when it comes to these quarantines and covid we have a we have one point of contact in the district that everybody should use and that's that's um mrs snell town she got married so mr snellman oh she's the one who's talking to the health department to talk to the doctors and again as as somebody had mentioned these things change you know and i don't want to say change but they're fluent you know it all depends on the particular situation the particular the particulars of a household or the particulars of how you may have been exposed things like that so there are multiple scenarios multiple conditions that have to be meant that that all play into how long the quarantine is what kind of uh whether it's a rapid test pcr test that you have to have i'm not necessarily talking about the quarantine or anything talking about what proactive steps because the district has done in relation to addressing their fears oh i could do that those 33 comments or 28 comments where teachers speak they're afraid so i think i think we need because i'll guarantee as i'm sitting here the next one we'll have 50 and as an educator i don't blame them we need to address their fears their concerns and i think this board has done and you've done a lot proactively so let's show what we've done okay that's just i'm suggesting no problem but i definitely think there needs to be consequences for families so i just wanna i wanna go over this really quick one more time so we're going to go because i have to again send out another blast to parents prior to wednesday number one if you send your child to school sick or rely on the form it's a one strike rule they're going to virtual right and three strikes if you missed right yes you forget to do the foreign okay you want to make sure i got it before you send it okay and now it's virtual for the observation or for the duration of the school year so don't lie because that's lying never solves anything anymore it's just like because if you listen if you so just keep your kid home for a couple of days you're right they just go virtual they just go virtual so you don't have to call the nurse it doesn't count them as if yeah they still they're just absolutely it's not an abscess they're still present they're just little birthday okay and there's not the parents that do that you have so we know that but you know because what happens if you don't show up in person we're called to find out where the kid is you know but the kids the kid logs in at home and so the teachers these you know the teaching is present all day so it's a little thing but it makes a big difference for the parents to know this as i have not called in when my child stayed home and logged in in high school all day but you're high school high school's attendance is much different than in elementary attendance section we would put online today and that's how it would because it would say in person student and then we would type in online today so school's is different because you guys take period by period of time i was going to ask this does the first person's current elementary they're not so if they take first period it says online does everybody else see that or do you all have to no no office and then the office just mass does it and it's done so again for attendance purposes once he does it first period it's going to the office and the office then marks the present for the entire day so then whatever the teachers do after that really doesn't matter because it's already done on a central location whereas in the elementary school it's not done that way it's done at the office so they have to call if it's middle or right okay so i don't have to know that so there's no ambiguity so in-person students if they're staying home from remote just in case of school the parents would call in and say remote or there's also like remote kids so like you're calling in remote you're calling it sick or if you're overloading they're calling you sick yeah but i think that needs to be perfect because we had animals somebody was supposed to be in person but wasn't there it was there was a lag but there was some confusion at home and the kids showed up and everything was fine like you know you could clarify with the parents that call them in remote sick it's just easier to tell everybody's a call you're not yeah just call you got two kids one in high school in the middle school you don't even can't remember to say everybody just call just in case it's easy all right get down all right so mr jackson all right i figured if i didn't come up here you wouldn't know i wanted to talk uh lauren paxton president association um like first i'd like to welcome mr thomas ellie and mr zepco back to the board now that you're back maybe we can restart the uh council and what you said earlier maybe that's maybe that's maybe that could be our first agenda item sure okay we'll send some emails yes the committee would be lovely right some of the things uh trying to i don't don't have a pen and paper um i don't think the rooms are getting sanitized like you think they are okay i'll just say it that way i don't think they're getting sanitized like you thought they would and like it's on paper well then somebody's got somebody all all somebody has to send me an email and i'll go physically check myself and then i'll get on somebody because that's my expectations i'm not here i'm not arguing with you i'm just i i'm not arguing with you either but what i'm trying to explain is if somebody doesn't tell me i can't go and fix it so so what i need is i need somebody to tell me and i'll go fix it okay but but i gotta know all right what can you explain like i have no idea what you're talking about like is it filthy or does it not smell like nice it's not being wiped down with lysol whites or something like that on a daily basis it's not it doesn't get fogged on a daily basis um so i think that was part of the original plan you can correct me if i'm mistaken but i think that was part of the original plan and i don't think that's happening on a daily basis um i and i i know that would be a huge undertaking especially if you only have one machine or two machines and six buildings so we have more than that so okay so i don't think that's happening um something i noticed that uh the letters were mostly from uh middle school and below in the high school we had a different situation we our situation is drastically different we have very few kids in the in the in the building and in the classrooms we're able to separate we have maybe five in a classroom for most most scenarios we have less than a third that actually show up on a daily basis so the question is why are we we're we're teaching the in-person kids in the virtual platform so there's that in the high school we have a different situation where the kids are getting off a plane at night and trying to get into school the next step they have been called at least some of them have that's a different situation i didn't hear any of the elementary teachers stating their students were in a different country the night before and they're trying to get in so that goes with i guess you could say the dishonesty of some parents trying to squeeze their kids in so there's that um dr gallagher don't kick yourself for airing on the side of caution and cleaning the classrooms so we'll never fault you for being over cautious on that so keep being over cautious those letters there was a lot of letters but it wasn't all the letters that was just a sample you said it could be worse next time they could we could release all of them and we'd be here all night reading them it would be the same thing over and over again okay but that's that doesn't need to that's not needed you now know how the teachers feel and they are scared and the reasons why they're scared is that more contagious strain that's eventual they don't have all the protections necessary are there any particular protections that you feel that that would assuage that fear well uh it was said that they're gonna line up in the hallway and the aids are going to take them in so that right there um certain classrooms are the students because of the levels they are are unable to wear a mask correctly so the teachers in those rooms have a real fear especially because we know these parents are still having sunday dinners with a large family members you know families coming from different houses we know this we know that the kids are sleeping over other houses okay we know this stuff that the kids tell us they they tell us too much to be uh quite frank so we know what they're doing and that's what scares us they're still going to restaurants still still going to diners they're they're not certain students are unable to wear a mask correctly some teachers change diapers they tie shoes they wipe noses still because certain students are unable to do it for themselves those teachers are escaped i appreciate the fact that you've listened and you're actually and you are discussing it and talking about it and trying to fix it but you appreciate that that's that's why they wanted to send these letters to you so you can hear their fear most of you are teachers so you know it you get it some of you are virtual so maybe you haven't noticed it all the way again um and it's i the main thing is there's if everyone wrote a letter you might hear more different scenarios those were just a handful that's only 20 of them all right so i do appreciate you listening and talking about it and maybe starting up the ed council so we can maybe do it on a more regular basis um but the concern is that many districts are extending virtual until spring break until first round of uh vaccines that's what they want they want you to listen and uh hopefully i don't know just we just appreciate the fact that you listened and you started talking about it okay that's that's what we need more conversations because they they genuinely are scared for themselves and their family members thank you i i just have a question so we were talking about uh teachers when they get vaccinated only 50 percent here when i get that same right so i'm just going to throw like a scenario so like if we do go virtual until the vaccinations happen right what happens when 50 percent of the teachers don't want to get vaccinated because they don't trust a vaccination but 50 percent right that's a whole lot of mass that's a whole number and again i think you know we've had open conversations about this and we've had dialogue about this and you know i don't want to you know elaborate too much on it but we've talked about this and said we're going to continue this conversation about that as we move along and you know again this is part of just continuing to have some dialogue back and forth and trying to find some common ground and making sure we do things that are in the best interest of the teachers as well as the community and i i think um michelle's question was was really important and um let's say as a board we decide our superintendent we decide you know we're gonna stick with what we're doing is there some way to meet in the middle where we can do something that's going to help you feel better that's i think we we heard a lot of letters and and again i'm a teacher so i i know i get it but a lot of them just kind of said i'm afraid i'm afraid do more but not really have all i think we heard the partitions and not much i don't know what can what can we do i think is what we're asking how can we help you you actually did a little bit by mandating the okay forms on a daily basis i heard many teachers reference them um certain rooms need the partitions more partitions better partitions um can i ask just how feasible that like if you were to say if they said here are the rooms like this you know i'm gonna guess there's a certain population of students where where you that would be more important and you said these rooms we needed i mean is that feasible is that something we could look into i could look into it okay all right so then so like if you give us a list of rules let's no no no i'm saying he gives you a list you look into it you say all right let's talk about why what we're thinking here that's all and just to listen to add to what you were just by bringing up the uh that when the students leave some teachers would take advantage of going home eating at home and going online and teaching virtual because that's what they would do here so that we were going to have a conversation with that um so that would definitely help uh some people because just getting out of the building is a benefit to some yes so it would reduce it and it brings the stress level that's right a lot yeah like if the intent was to reduce fear and uh and that that would help i mean i i think the best thing is that there has been no transmission in my in the business perfect time the breaks it could be ugly i think we got lucky and then right so no one wants to no one wants that first one with the superintendent they say the same thing because we were often after halloween because we take the whole week off in november because we vote in the school and she said we dodged a bullet because there were so many cases and everything oh yeah all right thank you all right at this time we need executive session what numbers are we're gonna do one seven and eight and we're gonna um just so everybody knows there's nothing yes there's nothing after executive session so the board is going to return from executive sessions so tom we're going to be adjourning from executive sessions so we can shut down youtube and uh principals and everybody you guys are good to go you

so scott and i will be presenting all of the information and then we'll open it up for questions so tonight we'll talk about district 99 mitigation measures and how saliva testing would complement that we'll also talk about how we have collaborated with safeguard surveillance a company that offers saliva testing and that includes in terms of process and cost the timeline supplies and how we would get this off and running and then of course we will take whatever questions the board has saliva testing will not replace any of the measures we have put into place thus far but rather complement it so we still need to have students and staff socially distant we still need to have everyone wearing personal protective equipment masks and shields and whatnot but again saliva testing would be another factor that would help us with transmission or potential transmission of covet so safeguard surveillance llc would provide the service to the district it is a process that screens for a viral load or a significant viral load as they would say and this process was adapted by a molecular virologist by the name of dr ed campbell and started using it in his school district there are a lot of districts now in our surrounding area that are using saliva testing as one of their mitigation factors and are going with safeguard surveillance as well so the purpose of the of the screening or surveillance is to do some early identification and so really it's looking at asymptomatic students not those that are coming down that are in person that are showing signs of symptoms but really looking for those asymptomatic students so that we can reduce the transmission drive down rates in the community and then it is important to note that the surveillance is nine non-diagnostic so we are not getting a positive covet or negative result from it and like gina mentioned we're getting a significant uh viral finding and then we're going to be making recommendations to the families um to you know go contact their doctors and get a you know the the pcr test and then before we go to the next slide it's important to note that um you know dr thiele mentioned in the december board meeting that we were also looking at the abbott binx now test which is the nasal swab and you get results in 15 minutes so we had to go through a process of getting the clia waiver certificate which we did get um at the end of last week so we're still moving with that as well um so i thought it was important to at least point that out that the abbot um by next now does give you a positive or negative for covit but i just wanted to share with you that we did get approved and so we're moving through those steps as well to have that as another mitigating factor and so if we do find a viral finding in our student population we will go through the process of uh you know isolation quarantine and contact tracing so we're gonna um take the findings as a as kind of a positive uh covet result and we're gonna go through those steps um because that way we'll be able to um keep you know students and staff safe um and like gina mentioned and it's i think just important to mention this uh i think throughout uh the time with whenever you're doing the surveillance with the saliva is that it does not take the place of social distancing or or wearing the right ppe so we still need to be diligent in our efforts with that so just to kind of take you through a little bit of the workflow steps one and two are really things that are kind of happening um you know would happen uh this week um and part of next week and so really what i wanted to highlight is kind of the just the the general process that would take place so if you look at step three that's where uh students would bring uh the saliva sample to school and then we would deliver it to the lab so we are not running these tests in-house this is all done out of house so we deliver the results to the lab the lab would run the test they would provide us the results back you know if there's a significant finding for students through a barcode system so they do not have any information about our students it's all anonymous to them and then they notify us we notify the individuals that have that viral finding and then we begin our contact tracing isolation quarantine things like that so our plan is to screen uh in-person students weekly and it'll be and that's something that you know we're looking as a kind of a mandatory process to be able to have a health and safety environment we are uh we'll be offering it to teachers and staff on a weekly basis as well and like i mentioned before we'll approximately get the results in about 24 hours from the from the samples uh being dropped off and then we're looking at the screening to go through the entire school year um obviously we're looking to start this in mid to late february and then we're also exploring summer options with this safeguard company so the cost of the screening is eleven dollars per sample so eleven dollars per student per week we are estimating it between 500 and 600 for starting mid middle of february basically through the end of the school year and that's really an estimate we are looking at our numbers of current in-person students but also will be factoring in students are income coming on campus for other things such as activities athletics behind the wheel instruction and require them also to submit a saliva sample we are planning to use grant funds to cover the cost we will be receiving a second allocation through the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund it's referred to as sr2 and we are planning to use those funds to pay for the screening so our timeline is tentative at this point because of course every step hinges pretty much on the previous or the previous week so obviously this week we're bringing it to the board for approval we plan to send out some information to if approved send out some information to families work on our student consent forms and then do a pilot screening with the voluntary administrators who are willing to submit a sample this week we'll send it to the lab to make sure that our process is working the barcodes work and it's reading okay assuming that that all works next week we would be packaging the screening packets which include vials and straws and envelopes lots of materials for the students to receive so next week we will be creating those screening packets the following week those packets would be distributed to students and then the week after that the week of february 15th we would begin student and staff screening so it basically will take a few weeks for us to get up and running um again it's a tentative schedule because each step sort of hinges on the previous step or the previous week okay any questions yeah gina i'm wondering uh two things one kind of help me understand what a significant finding is and how that difference differs from a positive result and then i understand that you know from the presentation here that that that significant finding is being treated as a positive result i'm wondering um how we'll report it so it's it's not a diagnostic test it's not a coded test however the company has shown very very positive results i guess you would say between students that have a significant viral finding and then have tested positive for covet but it's not a diagnostic test it will however alert the student and the family that they should quarantine and go and get tested so it's not a diagnostic test in that way so they so if you got us you know if you've got this result it means you've probably got something may not be covered necessarily but there's some virus at work there yeah that's okay well and i think if i can jump in i think you know they are looking for obviously the covid virus that's what the viral load and the the chemicals that they're using when they're uh running the test it's an rt lamp test and then it um so i mean i would say that the what they've explained to us is that they haven't had many false positives or negatives in terms of when they find a viral load and and families have gone to get tested they have found that that has been coveted positive so it it to us feels like that a good process to catch asymptomatic students because right now we have students obviously coming into school they're asymptomatic um we're getting the symptomatic ones to come down to our quarantine room but we're not catching students that may have you know and so it's kind of working on the transmission rate is really what it's doing and and when you say reporting it we're reporting it to the family right so if a student comes back with a viral finding we're contacting the family well what i was actually what i was actually thinking about is as we go forward and we develop our own metrics how this will factor into that if it's not in fact a positive result but it sounded to me like it pretty much is you know is that how does that's all i'm asking is how we're going to um factor that into our our metrics and seems like we should we should know how we're going to do that now versus later so that no one's accusing us of trying to play with numbers you know yeah i mean it it's it's the same but it's not the same it's the same concept but it's not the same testing or the same cdc approved pathway to determining positivity uh so you know it isn't it isn't the same set of tests isn't the same set of metrics so to compare it to a positivity rate out there for the official testing would not be the right the cap vocabulary or description to use but it's an equivalent line of thinking as to how that works i agree to other schools that are going this pathway and what they're looking at for their metrics most are in the process of getting it up and getting it started establishing that it works that it's reliable which schools are finding that that's the case that have gotten started on it and then after it's in place evaluating how that should factor into their metrics uh once it gets there everybody i have talked to so far is not immediately making a change in their metrics until they know it's established and reliable well i think too uh we said that if if the student has that or teacher anybody who gets this test has a has a significant result or a significant finding their next step is actually to take that pcr test right so that would then be then when that generated the result we would use that in the metric so right i just it's kind of what that's what i thought made sense and that's what i expected one we would exclude them right they'd be we'd keep them out of school for that uh that quarantine exclusionary period and during that time uh we would encourage them to go get tested with the official pcr test so i'm sorry can i just build on something on mike's point so when when we were talking last week about we may have talked about it at the meeting or i may have talked to hank about this separately i don't remember but when we talked about building an internal metric where we looked at our student population so essentially my understanding of this test is that it is a pcr test but they're not it's not it's essentially the same but it's not being used as diagnosis and it allows them to get around the whole clia question which is why it's not used for diagnoses but it's looking at the genetic material so they would confirm it with another pcr test we would not use this original test to figure out any internal metrics we would only use a second test is that what you're saying no some schools are using this as the indication of how prevalent the virus is in their schools you know so they're using this as um a similar mindset of a positivity rate although it's not you know it we need to be clear that's not the same as the cdc or the health department or any of those positivity rates but it would be the rate of students that are showing an increased viral load would be the appropriate way of saying it and then the the doctors do suggest some thresholds for that internal rate um that we could consider but i i would like to bring that back with recommendations once we get this up and running i don't want to get that out of ourselves with any of that yet i have a question okay so if i understand correctly this test will pick up anything if it's a fluid physicist okay okay just before covered yes okay because i thought we were saying because i was thinking that in that case it will it will probably have a lot of people not in school but it is simply a test for covet however we're not using that to determine that the student has coveted there is another test particularly that they have to go take to make the determination okay for the official uh the official test yeah obviously dan's question here um the actual pcr that scott mentioned when we have a waiver for now when that starts do we stop this testing so that we could use that for internal metrics no it's kind of interesting how that works that test is intended not as a screening test but when you believe somebody is ill is when you would use that binax now testing so that's what we have to figure out there's kind of these two pathways the one that we're talking about tonight the saliva based one is a surveillance like screening kind of uh proactive testing the other actual the binax now pcr testing would be what you would then use after that to verify and that would be like the official pcr test um we're we're just working down that pathway so we don't have a lot of answers on that one yet just that we have we've finally gotten our clia waiver cleared and now scott's going to start working with the department with the help sorry with our nurses and the health department to figure out what next steps might be there for an internal testing program to to support the surveillance program but is is binax pcr i thought finance was an antigen test i think no you're right the binax yeah i think it's an antigen chest but it does it's a it's a 15 minute the nasal swab and it does give you uh uh it's the rapid one so right point of care yeah so um so it will give you though so we have to report that that's where like hank mentioned like our um you know staff will that will be giving that is it can only be our nurses and they have to go through a trav training through abbott and through the illinois department of health so there's two different trainings that they have to go through and then we have to sign up with the illinois department of health because we have to report every single test whether it's negative or positive so it does give you a diagnosis that's the difference between but we don't like hank was mentioning because we don't know how many kits we'll get for testing it's not like we're going to have every student that comes down sick that would test you know with the rapid test because we might not have enough kids to do that so we're still kind of working that out but but we wanted to mention it because we are moving forward in that but i know it kind of gets a little blurry of between the you know the surveillance you know saliva test and that rapid you know binex now test my my question is off to the other side of the financial side um it's this this one is 11 the the saliva test now the other the rapid test as i'm calling it that one from what i understand is much more expensive is is that true and and the other part of the club huh god jerry finish your question and the other the other part of it is i see that we have a um um a grant thus far now and then do we have a second grant that we've applied for to carry out that 600 000 because that's a lot of money um you know and i i don't want i don't want it to end up being like special education where the government you know says they're gonna pay x amount of dollars and then we get 10 of that yeah you know we know we have uh about a million dollars coming in additional federal funding to help offset covid costs and so that's that's what we would draw from for this six hundred thousand and for any costs that we have related to vaccinations would come from that that allocation we've also we've also been led to believe that there will be another round of school funding new administration that is directly tailored to helping schools increase testing but that one is that's that's wishful thinking at this point the but we do know we have a million about a million dollars in covet relief funds coming uh uh already allocated to us but but we've we've spent a certain amount of that money already that was the first round of funding we have a second round of funding coming it's just the million dollars hey mm-hmm yes yeah yeah i have a question to add to that terry i'm gonna let me finish answering terry's yeah then the costs uh this is the the one that's being proposed tonight is eleven dollars a cost there's a similar product coming which is the one that u of i uses that's the shield testing that's we're not recommending that one tonight that one is twenty dollars a test and then the internal testing one that binax now testing that rapid test uh is is free the health department provides those through the federal government those tests but they provide us a very limited number of those tests we wouldn't have enough to test every student using those tests nor is that what that test is intended for right that one's more of a a a definite you've got coven you're you are sick yeah you're showing symptoms so we're going to use that test on you not as a screening test like the other right where where the eleven dollar one is a is a generic kind of screening for it yes and um so we're recommending that they take the test at home and bring it to us is there a viability difference between the travel from home to the school you know like some tests the validity goes way down a certain amount of time from does that make sense yeah so it does not make sense yes it does yeah so if you're asking if transporting it's an issue right does it have to be refrigerated does there have to be anything special done to it no however students cannot eat or drink before they spit their sample okay before they can give their sample so that is a requirement uh of it but it doesn't have to be refrigerated or any special you know it'll come with they'll have a vial and they'll put that vial in a little envelope and they'll bring it to school with them so no special care in terms of the sample itself okay does that answer yeah because sometimes things are time sensitive right shirelle you had a question uh yeah just a quick question we are talk the cost the 500 600 okay is that just for this school year hopefully we won't be dealing with this next school year but we we'd incur another 500 600k for if we had to continue this it's not indefinite right as far as we've paid for it we can use it the the services it's per school year okay it's actually per week there's a weekly cost based on the number of tests so that's why we have to give a range because okay we're estimating the number of tests that we'll give for the remainder of the school year all right when i was reading i couldn't totally do that i know it's i know it's a lot to drop on you guys and typically we have several board meetings to discuss things like this but as we know we're in unprecedented times so um i want to make sure that all your questions are answered uh dan dropped one in the chat if this is approved can we pre can i we qualif or clarify when we'd see a measurement plan that uses these test results as a metric for having kids in school our plan is that we would have all of that at the latest in time for our plan for the fourth quarter of the year so we'd be looking middle of march so you know they'd give us about a month of results to evaluate how everything's going and uh you know so then we're probably about three weeks in we have to be developing a recommendation to bring it to the board uh in march for approval for the fourth quarter of the year any concerns about uh supply and demand when it would go into effect is what we're thinking go ahead mike i was going to next question i have a few questions go ahead i was asking about supply just if if if we're pretty sure that you know we're not going to get into this and then find out we can't get any more of the tests and you know there's any issues any concerns you know with that do you know you can speak to that so so we were able to secure all the supplies that we need um and we have been doing a lot of research the last few days but we have the supplies we need to get this up and started in the test itself i mean the act you know the the company that we're looking to work with they actually have have the ability to to provide all these tests um the screening yes yes and they supply the vials um and they give those to us and they are committing to being able to test anywhere between 800 to 1000 samples per day so we would take in samples over the course of the week and then screen everybody over the course of that week know how many students we need to exclude because of a high viral load over the course of that week before we head into the next week so you know that's kind of the timeline of how it would work and we do it all over again the next week nancy you had some questions yeah i i have three questions in a comment and i'm gonna start with my comment because it goes along with dan's comment and that is when we look at how we're gonna use the the use of internal metrics we should not forget the fact because it may not happen but it may that our internal metrics would go up when our community metrics remain low it's possible yes so so just i'm just throwing that out there that that should be somewhere in our plan i get three questions we say if they have a positive viral load that we're going to ask students to follow up with their own providers do we have funds set aside or can we work with the department of health for students who are uninsured or can't afford a provider yes uh we have locations from the dupage county health department that we can refer people to for no cost testing and that's part of our discussion you know i don't want to guarantee it yet but the conversation you know scott and i have been having about the internal testing possibility would also be a long-range possibility of closing that gap good okay and then i've heard um from uh other people i've talked to within the community and other superintendents that some schools have actually done testing in their community now i'm not advocating that we do this i'm just asking are we are we thinking about doing this where they've actually tested family members of students who have been symptomatic yeah uh at this point i think we are taking the last slots available that the lab has for ramping up what they're they're doing with testing so it would be unlikely that we'd be able to scale beyond what we're doing here okay and then just to be clear if we have a student or a staff member who's symptomatic and they test negative we would still isolate them correct we would still exclude them from so we would still follow the exclusionary guidelines that the idph has provided and that's that whole chart that determines if it's a student our nurse's office works through that with the student and the families if it's a staff member or hr department processes thank you so you know i've talked to a lot of other school districts as well and they're noticing a couple of trends um one the the amount of responses that they are getting with viral load are very low and part of that is because people self-exclusion themselves so they're not feeling well so they choose not to come into school that week and bring in their sample because i could be sick i'm not going to come to school and then the school find out that i'm sick so it it actually schools are finding it's kind of creating a safer environment because people who feel aren't feeling well just aren't coming to school because they don't want to test positive right and when students do or staff members to come in test positive a lot of times it's asymptomatic you know they didn't didn't have any signs that they were sick and then what you're able to do is then exclude them from school for that quarantine period and now they're not coming in contact uh people and causing it to spread so that's really the two factors that they're seeing play together as they're implementing this testing great all right other other questions i know it's a big expensive item to put on here and i said it's it's rare that i would bring anything like this to the board kind of in this time frame but you know it's the world that we're aiming the speed at which we're working at so uh it is a recommendation for action later in tonight's board meeting and gina scott and i and the rest of the administration are asking the board to approve it any other questions okay uh immunizations yeah um so a couple weeks ago i informed the board that uh the dupage roe in the dupage county health department asked superint high school superintendents to work with their partner elementary districts to develop a vaccination plan for their all the staff so that would be you know kind of if we think of district 99 as a system it would be for all of our school employees and then all of our partner elementary school employees we've also been in conversations with village officials to also bring into their our public employees that are in group 1b to do kind of a school and community wide for government officials so police park district library along with school employees because they're working on a similar program in each of the municipalities so we're just we're just trying to pool our resources and work effectively as branches of of the community we've hit some some bumps along the way and how this has been uh put together and rolled out as you can imagine none of us are experts in creating an immunization plan at this in any way but especially at this scale we've learned a great deal over the last couple of weeks but we're at the point where we're chasing down several leads between health and wellness companies and pharmacies to try to put together a vaccination program we believe that within the next week we will be able to finalize with a provider to help us schedule administer follow-up do everything that we need to do in a vaccination program and be able to uh for this entire community it's a it's a between thirty three hundred and thirty five hundred vaccinations that we would like to do over a two-week period um we're getting really close on that but i don't have a third party to bring the board tonight so this is another weird one where i'm asking the board permission to part to find a third party to uh to hire to administer uh the vaccines we have about a thousand eleven hundred employees that would and that includes bus drivers and subs and everything that we would be looking to get vaccinated in district 99 we expect the range of cost for that to be between for remember it's two shots so for the series to be between 25 and 50 dollars for those shots um so we have a recommendation later on tonight for the admin for the board to approve that the administration could enter in to an agreement with a third party that agreement would be vetted by the board's attorneys and the total cost of administering that program would be less than fifty thousand dollars now depending on who we go through depends on the bucket of district finances that comes from it could come from cares money it could be funneled through insurance but we're self-insured so that's i mean it's still the same pot of money one way or another it would be 50 000 of district funds whether they came from grant money or a regular uh budget or whether it be from health insurance funds one way or another you know it would be be paid for this will allow us to be the most nimble moving forward over the next seven to ten days as we try to to get this up and running we administratively we have a plan together to make this work on our sites we just need to find the partner to come in and actually give the injections of the vaccine so uh we have a way set up where people would show they'd register online they would show up they'd you know be checked in they'd go and wait to to get their injection they would go there and get vaccinated and then there's a 15 minute observation period it's about 20 to 30 minutes that they're here at the building socially distanced through that entire period of time and then there they get their first vaccination they come back three to four weeks later go through it again and then they'd be fully vaccinated so we have a whole plan for it to work we just need a partner to work with to actually do the vaccinations so we're asking for approval tonight for once we have that partner agreed upon between us and all the elementary school districts to just enter into the agreement with them pending that the board's attorneys sign off on that agreement of course i'll be sharing it with the board then we just don't have to have a special meeting uh to sign off on it hank what's cook county doing because i mean what's dupage county doing because i'm getting my shot on friday cook county sent an email to all the teachers and with appointments and times and you signed up it's all done through cook county every county is different um so it it's very different across uh the state so what's dupage what what do they have set up at the fairgrounds or are they doing anything like that or no they've turned it over to us as superintendents to figure it out so we're figuring out but um we just need the resources to do it same resources everybody's looking for correct and we have plenty of leads and schools are figuring it out it's just um not something that that we as educators were ever trained to do but hey we've done a lot of things this year that we've never been trained to do so we're getting there but it's a little crazy right now so in dupage county then you they have not offered any plan at all to get teachers vaccinated their plan is for superintendents to figure out a plan and they're not offering up any vaccines at all well they would be the ones providing the vaccines to the third party yeah it's it's crazy because like i said i got an email on friday night to say hey sign up for what day you want to take it next week and i'm taking it this week so but that's not how it's happening everywhere rick it's different all over the place i know in some of the suburban cook county schools especially north northern and west northwestern cook are setting up large vaccination sites in those areas arlington heights yeah they're kind of doing the same kind of thing that we're looking at doing here um i know that some school districts have partnered with walgreens or jewel oscar or those kinds of things and they're either doing mass vaccination sites or they're making appointments at their local pharmacies other school districts the health department is coming on site to their schools you know in other counties around the state and are just doing it at their school it's just very different everywhere around the state um you know and i don't i want to be careful and not trash you know the dupage county health department there they're working hard and when you compare dupage county to all of the other counties in the state they by a percentage have vaccinated more of you know their citizens than than any other county it's just their approach with schools is a little different than what we've seen in other places hey we're happy to do the work so we'll get it figured out and we'll get everybody vaccinated and we'll we'll get our whole community with us any other questions okay moving on to the annual financial report and the quarterly financial report i'll turn this over to mark there we go um well for the comprehensive annual financial report um we have john appreciate a partner from the auditing firm to um comment to the board and give their you have three letters of control letters or internal control letters as well as camper i know you have access to it electronically he's aware that you don't have it in front of you unless you start to pull it up electronically but i'd like to just let john make his report hi good evening thanks for having me this evening i won't make it very long because i know it's a long night and you've got all sorts of other things going on so i'm just going to go over a few highlights overall on the letters in particular that we provide you one of them is referred to as a letter to the board and that one really goes over um sort of what our responsibilities are as far as the audit is concerned it includes a section in there about uh future accounting pronouncements the only one that's really going to be effective in the future is a new one that's going to require fiduciary activities to be reported with the educational fund and that will be effective for next year we got a year reprieve on that one that was supposed to be for this year but due to covet 19 the the standard setting board delayed the implementation of several new accounting standards for another year i can confirm that we were independent in all respects that management was very cooperative we performed the audit semi-on-site semi remote and hybrid so uh you know all in all i think things worked out really well and we issued our final report on december 14th of 2020 um there isn't really much else in there we are required to report if we have any uncorrected uh misstatements or any material corrected misstatements and i'm happy to inform that we did not have any uh during the course of our audit uh uncorrected or material corrected errors that we pushed through the next letter that we have is what's referred to as our management letter or control deficiency letter and that one really goes over any internal control matters or findings that we have as we go throughout our audit it's broken up into three main sections you could have material weaknesses which are the most severe and they could be material errors to the financial statements significant deficiencies where there may be multiple controls that are are lacking or failing that results in adjustments that could be significant to the district and just regular controlled efficiencies which are minor items if you have policies where signatures are required dual signatures are required and one may be missing or certain support isn't provided those are the the lowest levels we only had one controlled efficiency in the current year and it's very very minor the data collection form that gets submitted to the federal audit clearinghouse is due within 30 days after the report is finalized and it was uh submitted four days after that so 34 days very minor there's no real major consequence to it just uh just a matter that we're required to report we also put in other observations and recommendations that we may have and we do have one item related to data security and technology risk that we communicate to all districts there's nothing that we necessarily found as we went through our audit of the district but we're letting districts be aware and i'm sure they are that the the the schemes out there these days uh the phishing schemes and and other schemes of where people are hacking data are getting more sophisticated all the time so we're just uh sending a reminder to continually update um your technology policies uh to ensure that you um can prevent and detect any data security breaches the financial statements themselves again i'm not going to go over in extensive detail your district did receive from the international association of school business business officials the certificate of excellence and financial reporting which is uh you know a high honor that means that uh you know in their mind the financial statements are very well presented uh and uh are deserving of that certificate uh and overall we were able to provide what's referred to as an unmodified audit report and that's basically the highest level of assurance that an auditor can provide which basically says that in our opinion we didn't find any material misstatements as we went through and audited the financial statements and that they're fairly stated in all material respects i guess with that does anybody have any questions okay thank you for your time thank you thank you for your report and congratulations again to our staff for once again having an outstanding audit thank you and thank you japan for hooking up today with us there's no questions we can move to the next line item which is a quarterly financial report i think we're going to start with the revenues and this is really um a really difficult year it really it will be interesting to see where we are after the next quarter i think that's when we're gonna have a lot of things coming into play uh the first six months you know we're a fairly difficult start for the school year and a lot of changes but overall the biggest thing which is right in the middle of the revenues collected the bond proceeds that was collected in the working cash fund that really um has made a big difference in our total collections obviously it's 97 million it's 87 million dollars in total if that wasn't part of this which would pretty much match up with the actual expenditures on the right side of 86.9 million um but going through individually property taxes are nearly 100 percent there it says 100 but there's a small fraction less to still be collected so those are coming in uh other local receipts down here a lot of the local revenues are um reduce the budget there quite a bit um i'm sorry replacement taxes but i should just go right in order here replacement taxes we cut the budget quite a bit as you can see last year was over a million dollars this year it's 860 000 um and so it's 50 collected but 50 collected of a much lower budget um and that's what we we think we're going to have a much lower year for replacing the taxes this year and very likely the next year or two after this um interest income is the other really key thing here that's in strain right now i mean they're uh we're showing one percent of a budget collected we're going to fall pretty far short of this um budget amount of 315 000 just because interest rates just have not moved the fed is keeping everything tight and low um banks we try and ask them to you know give us cds that are you know play some investments and they're all saying the money's cheaper from fed right now so money that they use for mortgages and loans it gets cheaper than what they can get it from us so it's going to stay low we think for the rest of the the year food services is you can see is almost nothing three thousand dollars um but they are they're going to pay us for all the lunches we've provided to the community um we will get reimbursement for those we have not seen it yet so that'll that'll help perk that number up once that's all settled registration fees is one final area here that we have to worry about just because of the pandemic very likely a lot we have a higher unemployment uh rate we have we waited a little bit we waited until october to send out the bills and at that point i think a lot of people were laid off at that time and uh they haven't bothered to come in and give us uh take it take it uh i guess apply for a waiver um but uh when we press them a little bit more they do come in and do that but we're gonna see a drop in our registration fees this year and i think this just reflects um you know what's gonna happen out there we it looks like we have two million um but remember we lowered the budget and i don't think we're gonna get much higher than where we are right now at 1.1 million dollars so it it could be uh 500 000 short on that line item too but we're going to work on that in the next quarter trying to collect any of the fees that are out there to families that have don't have a waiver um and if they i do have a hardship or an issue like that we encourage them to to get the waiver or apply for it um or if they don't still don't apply or they don't think they'll qualify for that we we still try and take it over time is in smaller payments for them rather than all one piece that's really the biggest story going through the revenues if we get the expenditures there we go total expenditures are 44 cents spent compared to 40 percent 46 last year it's pretty close and in most areas except for a couple um you can see that our salary and benefits together compared to last year right in line um we not laid off people or anything like that during this second time we found work for them to do related to keeping our school open and doing the different things like serving the community the food and things like that so we've been able to keep everybody busy doing things that are important to the district purchase services are are bit down quite a bit down two million dollars compared to last year um those are down primarily we're not running buses we're not running cafeteria out of our big purchase services and we are running buses now but hadn't for quite some time and it was on a limited basis it wasn't five days a week um so that's some of the expenditures that are down we will see some bigger fees for transportation because when we go to the double afternoon uh hybrid we we actually are doing double runs um the morning coming and going in the afternoon coming and going and so uh we're going to be catching up some of those expenditures in the next two quarters supplies are great in line pretty much i think a bigger area is is capital outlay where we thought we'd come in a little bit lower but we did have a lot of tech equipment that was needed for us to go to the remote into the hybrid the remote methods so our tech expenditures for capital outlay are just one little bit a little bit higher than budget in atlanta but overall i think we'll still fit into the budget for the end by the end of the year but this year compared to last year's is a couple hundred thousand dollars um i really tuition is a bright thing right now i guess that's one way to say that probably the wrong way to say it uh but there's been fewer kids in tuition that they're i related to the colbit that there's fewer being placed and these are high risk many times kids um so they probably aren't you know parents are making that decision not to bring them out and put them in with other kids in some of the settings so our tuition is down just slightly this year compared to last year uh where we we anticipated it going up significantly so um right now that's from a budget perspective that's positive for us um next chart is fund balances um you can see well one thing we did this year jury and i talked a little bit about the health benefit account and how it impacts our our budget and um we're going to start including that in with the total operating fund budget rather than leaving it out and you know when we make some of our decisions it actually um is a a factor the one problem with it is that it has a seasonality to it the withholdings for all the insurance are taken over a short period of time and not over the summer so um it's it's comes in sooner and then over the summer the balances drop and so um that's that's kind of why we've been setting it aside but it's a key part of our operating fund uh overall um and that overall we're running just about uh in line where we thought we know we should be for this time compared to the prior year um i don't know if you have any questions i'd be happy to address them now i guess the the the key thing is that's carrying us through is we did issue the bonds for 10 10 million dollars in october the last quarter that's what's right now giving us some kind of um protection on the reserve level that we have a week we do expect to end up with a negative balance this year although um you did hear we did get at least an allocation of over 300 000 i think it's three hundred thirty thousand dollars that we already have or and and they've agreed well they said allocated 1.1 million to us but the state gets 10 um we're pretty sure they're going to shave off their 10 so should we should get somewhere near a million dollars if they fund it because they've discussed it um to uh illinois schools so that may help quite a bit without these big unexpected and unusual expenditures that we're talking about tonight but the saliva testing and the vaccinations um so we are and then the rest of it doesn't have to be spent all in one year can be spent over i think it's two to three years and part of it is going to be learning recovery that's the focus and it's we know that the best thing we can do is get the kids in in front of our teachers as quickly as possible and that's why we're taking these steps for the vaccines and the saliva testing just to try and get control of our part of it as much as we can thank you mark any questions for the administration thank you thank you mark thanks mark thank you hearing no questions can we move to litigation against jewel this was discussed with the board in closed session uh earlier uh rod if you go to the next slide uh the administration is recommending tonight that the board take action to join a class action lawsuit against jewel laboratories this uh seeks to reimburse us or compensate us for all of the expenses or some of the expenses that we have incurred uh we have additional staff that we have on place that have responded strongly to the vaping epidemic we were one of the first schools in the chicagoland area maybe in the country to have a comprehensive approach to responding to this and informing our parents about the dangers of it and our students about the dangers of it so we have definitely invested time and resources in responding to this this is a contingency fee case there's no upfront cost to the district the attorneys would only be paid through monetary a portion of monetary recovery for the district this is an action item later in the meeting and we recommend that the board approve to signing on to this litigation any questions hearing 1999 yeah the next couple of items are returning from the last meeting this is the last opportunity for board members to ask any questions that they have about these items and the administration is here to answer any questions you may have the first item on the agenda related coming back and then later showing up for action is the t99 build out so any questions that board members had from the last meeting to this one that we could answer hearing none summer school recommendations and then the calendar so here are the recommendations uh from last time we met any questions on these these once again show up for action later tonight the calendar summer school calendar is the same calendar similar type of calendar that we have had for the past i think four or five years [Music] so we're just recommending keeping that same calendar for this school year or this this summer questions and rick we're not losing sight of your concern master facility plan uh not a lot of changes since the last time we met i just thank you that's why i'm not going to vote no thank you rick um just a couple of uh screen grabs i grabbed for from our cameras once again a plug that you can go on our website and see 360 degree cameras of the master facility plan project this is uh upper deck of the south high auditorium you can see we're starting to put seats in uh and those are going into place uh this is going to be an incr incredible space and then i have one of the north high commons this is an angle i don't think i've shown you yet this is back kind of by the main staircase this would be the far back corner of the commons looking out towards the south lot so you can kind of see that three stories of glass that show up you can see some of that light coming in through the opening at the top of the roof but that gives you kind of we've been looking at it most of the time from the other side looking back so this gives you a different angle that commons looking the other way you can start to see the carve out there bottom left hand corner you see those little black boxes those are some of the bump outs that are going to show up around the windows that are there and over on the right side you can kind of you can see the new windows showing up there by the lifts you can see the tall kind of archway where we've replaced those old old windows with the new modern looking windows those are all being installed so plenty of progress going on at both sides of the town but really encapsulated inside of those projects inside the commons at both buildings in the auditorium at south any questions uh have we had any freedom of information requests we have and they're all posted online as well as their responses great okay we're going to move on to the consent agenda does any member of the board wish to remove any item from the consent agenda okay we need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a personnel report excuse me personnel report appointment administration appointment certified leave of absence certified leave of absence classified appointments classified b the personnel report retirement certified resignations classified see the personnel report termination classified d the financial pages e the amended 2020 2021 district calendar after 2021 summer sports camp fees and g the review of closed session minutes and verbatim recordings rick and terry rick was first cherry was second thank you rick pavinato aye terry pavich aye joanna vazquez drexler hi mike davenport aye shirelle fuller hi dan nicholas aye and nancy kupka aye the consent agenda carries next move to recommendations for reaction before we move to recommendations for action we are tonight by courtney with uh with courtney dement who you just approved as the next principal at north high uh when janice retires at the end of the year we're actually going to let her retire um and uh we're very excited to have courtney as a member of our team she is well regarded in the dupage area as a leader amongst principals and assistant principals and she is going to be a great asset to our team moving forward and i know she and janice have already started to connect by approving courtney tonight we have a very long uh transition period which should help set us up to be successful so courtney is here she could wave and say hello hi everybody thank you so much i really appreciate it um your your staff and and community has been amazing and even through formats like this on zoom i can really tell how kind and nice everyone is and throughout the whole process it's just been it's been really great and everyone is so proud of downers north and i have big shoes to fill with janice so i'm really excited and just a little high i know uh my family is watching my boys wanted to join the zoom but uh they i told them they had to put shirts on and and so they said no so but i definitely could not be here without the support of my family and i'm pretty sure my mom is watching and my parents are watching and this is uh payback for all the board meetings that i've gone to to see her be the principal and superintendent also so she got to watch me this time so thank you everybody and i really appreciate it and really really look forward to working with all of you yeah you welcome thank you we're excited to have you yeah janice is going to start setting up some times where you know we can do some virtual meets and greets and people can start to get to to know courtney we'll do an official announcement very soon jill has one uh set to go out to the district 99 community welcoming courtney so welcome thank you i also would be remiss in uh in not mentioning also that kristen bormann is joining our leadership team again uh she was uh on our team administrator for a while and then took a step back uh to be a social worker for us i don't know if that's back but a step over to to do a different job for us a while and now with vince walsh retiring at the end of the year kristen bormann is going to be the department chair for c triple s at south high so that was approved tonight as well and uh we're very excited to add kristin back to our leadership team although we'll be friendly very good very good anything else nope that was it thank you so we'll move into the recommendations for action um the first thing we need is a motion for the board of education to approve entering into a contract with safeguard surveillance llc for an amount no greater than six hundred thousand dollars to provide saliva surveillance screening through the end of the school year and that the administration be approved to sign and otherwise execute any related documents pertaining to the contract including authorizing administration to make payments in accordance with the contract don't move was that joanna yeah second okay oh go ahead dan was there dan um thank you joanna vazquez director aye dan nicholas aye terry paversich aye rick cavanado aye mike davenport aye shaw fuller the motion carries now we need a motion for the board of education to authorize administration to enter into an agreement with a third party vendor to be determined with approval of board council and provided in advance to board members to provide i'm sorry i lost my place to provide a closing 19 vaccination program to district 99 employees at a total cost of less than fifty thousand dollars some moved second kerry and joanna thank you terry pavich hi joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye cheryl fuller hi dan nicholas aye rick pavanado aye and nancy kupka aye the motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year ending june 30th 2020 as presented so moved second dean and joanna thank you dan nicholas aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye aye the motion carries next we need the motion for the board we need a motion for the board of education to approve the resolution authorizing commencement of vaping litigation and the attorney client fee contract so moved second i think that was terry and then joanna yeah could have been thank you terry paversich aye joanna vazquez drexler hi cheryl excuse me mike davenport aye shawell fuller hi dan nicholas hi rick cavanado aye and nancy kupka aye the motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the 2021 summer school recommendations as presented so moved second dan and joanne no thank you dan nicholas aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye terry pavicich aye rick cavanado aye and nancy kupka aye motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the 2021 summer school and summer calendar is presented so moved harry and joanna yeah thank you terry pavisic aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye dan nicholas aye rick pavinato aye and nancy kupka aye motion carries and finally we need a motion for the board of education to approve the administration to move forward with the preparation and release of bids for the proposed build-out of the district's t-99 facility located at 4232 venard road in downers grove terry and joanna thank you terry papasich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye dan nicholas aye rick cavanado hi and nancy kupka hi motion carries we'll move now on to the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 um dr feely is there anybody in the room with comments nobody in the room but we've received four comments online okay we are encouraging the administration and board to try to find ways to return students back to school for full days and one comment uh inquiring as to whether or not district 99 will be rebating taxes uh so that that's all of the comments that came in okay and those will all be shared with the board members correct yep they will be shared with the board members in full and uh become part of the official board minutes thank you very much okay we'll move on to communications and announcements uh do we have a report on the legislative education network of dupage dan or hank so there's been several emails that have been sent out i'm not sure if everybody is on their legislative briefs emails if you're not i encourage you to sign up i don't have a summary of all the emails so if anybody wants me to forward them to you i i can um but i don't have anything other than what's in their their publishers we did have a meeting last friday which was just introducing us to all of the legislators that are now serving uh some are returning some are new but it was really just like a virtual meet and greet of local legislators thank you um report on school association for special education in dupage county or csa joanna um basic oh oh i'm gone well what happened here we see you you see me okay um sassed staff are distributed across 14 member districts for an opportunity and location to receive the vaccine administration center staff that would be southeast school staff transition program long-term subs and contractors and they will be um participating with lyle district 202 uh and also sunrise transportation would like a one-year extension and they're seeking feedback from the member districts and that's kind of it mark provided feedback on the contract to sacid and we do have two sasid staff members that are in our accounts for our vaccinations okay let me see i can't get back on yeah terry do you have a report on the district 99 education foundation yes i do um the month of february is going to be pizza wars and um we are encouraging everyone to go to our website and um to get more info on pizza wars and that's at pizzawars.org and you can reach that through our website which is d99ef.org and what we're encouraging is that you purchase pizzas from our 2021 group of pizza vendors and um there'll be more information maybe a few coupons that sort of thing through our our website and um we wish that it was in person but because of everything we just can't do that and um we can't wait to host the uh pizza wars in 2022 in the south high learning commons so it will be a wonderful event to show off our fabulous schools and um uh it it's just the way it is right now and but we do encourage you to donate to the foundation also because this is our major fundraiser of the year so if you would like to support us you can go to the d99 ef dot org and uh donate to the foundation so here i was thinking about this uh because i know the village of donner's grove on a facebook feed uh they are asking uh residents to highlight some of the restaurants they they go to in in downers grove and you know surrounding area do we have anybody do we have a list of our of our participants in pizza wars prior to 2021 anywhere on the website i was thinking about that i i'd like to start well i would recommend going to people who have supported us all these years right yeah um most of the vendors that we've had in um 2021 are um or 2020 because we we did have it in 2020.

no no we had asked this time for it to be to have none yeah just for the pessimist in me well and and that's what we'd asked for um is to see what uh i told you we had ready to present as well okay yeah so that's the only thing i just like to see those numbers without the increase in state funding can i ask a clarifying question on goal just because matt brought it up i think goal is online currently but it's yes building no that's yeah that's that's what i said the goal program is an online self-paced program so and some kids can be successful without having to come to school doing the online self-based program at school and as we evaluated those they evaluate those students if those students you know we we know who those students are and they we allow them to do the program from an alternative location most likely home which may be much more convenient because it's self-paced and they can do this program at any time they don't have to be sitting there from eight to twelve they could be at work from eight to twelve but as long as they're getting the program and it's being monitored and they're being successful that's what uh that's what we're talking about dr sparlin we wouldn't be in charge of that the teachers who know the kids would be in charge of which students that could affect a case-by-case basis with parent input with parent input approval of course and that number could be could go could be higher could be lower it just depends on the student you know that this the students that are being served in that program even any given year heather i'm sticking just with the um some clarity around the goal um i the goal program um i'm wondering um [Music] how um how this number how you came up with this number um were was the goal administrators and teachers talked to did they give some input do we have a sense of what percentage of students we anticipate would be successful with this um you know alternative kind of model um to answer the question of which amount of kids would be successful i would hope all kids that would be successful with it because if the kids that were would be able to do participate you know do this part what i'm we're talking about here hybrid not having to come in right they've identified as probably not needing to have to come in and receive some of the additional resources and to answer the second part of the question um yes the uh the director of the principal worked with valerie patterson that that would be meredith okay and when we say hybrid in terms of the idea of goal what does that does that that does mean it seems it sounds like that could be fully remote for some of those students that would meet some of that criteria that we're talking about yeah what it would mean is that if they're on location or not they're all fully remote and they're all self-paced it's just are they sitting in the school with in front of the teachers because they need that additional help or need to have that structure in their day as compared to some that may not as we all know with online learning some kids are thriving you know it's been it's been wonderful for them and some kids you know are doing well and some kids struggle so this would fall in that same kind of category um and then finally so and i i'm probably i'm probably mistaken but um so goal is is fully um on online there's no in-person instruction outside of support support of help that may that students might need um to to manage their curriculum or i believe there may be some instruction right now with algebra 2 and then any additional supports that a student may need so there are those pieces in place as well okay and you know obviously the highlight that i think the focus and goal for me is we know that these are some of our uh most vulnerable students and so you know making sure that um the teacher you know just because staff that work with them right now that they're capable of doing right and certainly just because we can doesn't mean we should and we know that for a lot of you know a lot of reasons so um i did have just i i i did have um i do have some concerns around the idea of the four day um the four day in person you know school week um that is kind of a concern for me um i had a couple of questions um related to a few of the the dac positions that were um that we received in a in a separate document um which i can certainly just follow up on um what that could look like um with the with if if those changes were made and what they could look like so um we're we're covering how those needs are met um are there anything specific when you mention the four the idea of four days in person one day on online instruction obviously there's there's work to be done in in the background of that but what we've learned from lessons learned again you know in remote learning is that something we can do and that's something that i think is a good out-of-the-box idea to explore right and it's i guess so would that be um would that be an optional scenario or would that could that would that be across that could be that be across the board for the junior high we're talking about the our secondary levels correct we're talking secondary level 612 and our conversations as we as we explore this idea would be that no it wouldn't it wouldn't be an option it would be it would be across the board because that's where you the largest part of the savings comes from decreased transportation salaries uh fuel costs and you know heating ventilation all the hvac all that all that kind of stuff over the over the course of the year yeah you know i i just i i'm not sure um i think we did we have had a lot of lessons learned from remote learning and i think you're absolutely all right i think a lot a lot of students at the secondary level are doing very well with um you know this kind of independent learning and schedule and some of that flexibility and freedom we know some are not um doing as well so i guess i'm just it's it's a big change to what we're used to you know what we have been used to um so i i'm just not sure is it the best is it the best thing for students i yeah i don't i don't i don't know so i'm just wrapping my mind around that um yeah and then no but i do i just want to say that i do appreciate the work that has gone into this um it's a it's a clear presentation it gives us a really good sense of you know what we're looking at um and i i know that it was took a lot of time and effort so thank you i don't have a lot of additional comments i appreciate the clarification about goal because that was one of my concerns as well so thanks for asking the questions for me and thank you for clarifying i i too am not a hundred percent on the four days i do appreciate the outside of the box thinking though because that's what we need right now right um i think i just need to ruminate on that a little bit more and [Music] maybe even talk to my own kids and see what do you think about it you know and and talk to some students and teachers and i'd love to get feedback from that so i'm sure i'll get 5000 emails now but hey that's all right that's great um i would love to actually hear people's opinions on on that and i'm sure that they will be varied as everything else is do you think i think they might be i think they might be a little very evenly balanced perhaps is what i'm seeing so um yeah that's really i appreciate uh as well like tony mentioned that no more planners that i fought my children to make them use and they never did so that's excellent that we won't be spending money on that um yeah a lot of these things it's nice that like you said would have been happening anyway so it makes this a little bit easier even though it's not easy um so thank you for this presentation can i ask one more question now that you guys have all gone all the way through so i'm i'm when you guys talk about kids thriving in this environment and people thinking outside the box i guess we've talked about this a little bit in my own district where classes that are typically taught in summer school which we have now converted into all remote learning essentially with actual teachers instead of a genuity like i could teach physics online over the summer and get a whole physics class in in a summer right we do civics we do government we could do chemistry we could do there's all these classes that now exist remotely with our own teachers so there might be an opportunity there to maybe have some kids pick up classes in a different way who really this kind of environment is working for and teachers who maybe i mean who knows i don't want to say who knows how long this is going to go because it's going to go forever i just feel it but what if there are some staff members who are concerned going forwards and who you know have some i don't want to say have very specific skills but teach very specific courses which although typically would have been taught in the summer could now be taught remotely by actual staff members which would also alleviate some of the pressure in the buildings i mean just a thought thank you for thinking outside the box mrs swanson good job that didn't actually come from me that came from the neighboring district that i work at but that's okay so i'll give you credit anyways that's good so finally i just have a few questions very quickly um my only concern and i know it's forty five thousand dollars and everyone's excited about getting rid of student planners is we're talking about at the secondary level my understanding is currently we purchase them starting at second grade um and we will not be one to one from second through fifth grade so what is the the this this year is for planners for secondary for six to twelve and we would still be printing them for second yeah correct for elementary elementary yes yes second um i also i'm looking at the total at 5.7 and while the lessons learned we're looking at this four days and and i will be honest there are some benefits for all kids even ones that struggle a little bit with the opportunity to have a little bit more independence i think that if we are at 5.7 million with this though i would rather see this built into a structure that was for the benefit of the kids rather than as a budget cut and take some time on that just because there's so many questions about everything involved and i think one of the big lessons we've learned this year is if nothing else you need to take a little bit more time when you can to really look at this stuff before you just decide on it so what what i would offer is that could we take that off and we would still be over the 5 million we asked for and then perhaps move the four days and one day to an academic sort of teaching and learning style process where it would be more traditionally vetted through committees and so forth that would be what we would do with it either way if this if the if the board was is interested in us pursuing this idea i think we have to think carefully too because even if we take that off and we say we're at 5 million some of these other things are not a guarantee right right so we have to be careful that we're not saying that because then we're going to end up in a position of trying to figure out what do we cut thanks yeah the would i is a committee you know a committee of teachers and people coming together if the board is interested in this and we'd like to present that idea with the specifics of it so it's not a guaranteed budget cut it's just an initial thought about what it could look like i i think it's something that could very well happen and i think people would be very interested in it but the specifics of what i'm talking about would need to be flushed out and worked out for yeah gotcha exactly but the concern for me is is this 1.5 that's what we're still short even with all these cuts am i reading this right uh no no no that we can't cut for this year to some extent it's for next year however it looks like the deficit has been um from where it was when we'd approved it yeah as christie presented if we are if you know making the five million dollar uh five million dollars worth reductions for the following budget year uh her estimates show about a one one million dollar surplus at the end of the year if all things played out so i'd like to highlight just one more part of this there's there's one item on secondary staff that if there's an area that i would like to see adjusted it would be in that but that's for closed session so i will handle that in a different way however i do want to really highlight this restructuring of the benefits i think when we take a look at this and we start to see what's involved in this i am beyond appreciative of our community i'm beyond impressed with the abilities of our human resources staff to to make this an opportunity it's something very unique that will not hurt our staff um and and i'm i hate to say i'm excited about a budget cut but i'm kind of excited for people about that one i'm not going to lie um you know and there's more that will be involved i was going to say as as i stated earlier it's been something that we've been working on i shouldn't say we i should say ken and his team uh it's this is uh ken miller's idea something that he and i have talked about for a couple years now but it's taken that long to bring this to fruition but he's the one that drove this one home and pushed it across the goal line so it goes to him and i i can't wait till you can share more about that um that's that's pretty cool so thank you for doing that that is when we talk about outside of the box thinking this is that um other than that i i mean i really appreciate the clear way this is presented i appreciate the sensitivity to the staff and not picking and choosing and brandishing positions for everyone to vote on i think that these look well reasoned i think when we're talking about the fact that we're at a point where we need to make serious cuts this this looks like something that i could see as being the least harmful of of budget cuts and i really appreciate that so thank you you're most welcome and as i stated earlier that was the goal cool okay that's the report so are we uh we're as a board we're offering the direction that we will present this for an action item as it's been presented now for our next meeting is anyone in a majority agreement that you would like to see anything changed if not we will be presenting this for action so as a package like as a package yesterday yes we will not be doing line by line right right right mm-hmm i think i'm not sure where i am yet but it sounds like there's a couple board members that are not sure about the one day online so maybe that is an option b i know we don't want to compartmentalize this down into a bunch of different fractions but i think that's probably the most changing on a day-to-day basis for the kids so you know depending on what board members thoughts are we might consider either making that as a separate line item and i think that that can that can be resolved through conversations and i believe i remember which board members if you can please organize if you can see if that's something that your fellow board members are interested in that would be great okay action items item 8.1 can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve board policies section two school board two colon one zero five section four operational services four colon eight zero and four colon nine zero section five general personnel five colon one two zero section six instruction six colon three two three five six colon three zero zero six colon three four zero section seven students seven colon one zero zero seven colon three zero zero and seven colon three four zero i make a motion to separate item five colon 120 and vote on that separately so i don't have to vote no on everything sure would you like me to read it again ali is seconded yeah do i need to read it again uh he's a second on that request uh we he has a second so we need to vote on brent's motion first please make a motion to rem no he already made the question oh okay so mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot aye mr bowman aye mrs croner aye ms morgan aye motion passes seven zero will separate out five colon one two zero was it yes yep so this motion will be item eight point one as amended okay you want me to read that one first then i believe is that how it would work yeah okay yep i'm making motion to approve board policy fi section 5 general personnel five colon one two zero second miss morgan aye mrs doyle no mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye mr bowman aye mr lightfoot no mrs swanson aye motion passes five two i make a motion to approve board policies section two school board two colon one zero five section four operational services four colon eight zero four colon nine zero section six instructions six colon two three five six colon three zero zero six colon three four zero section seven students seven colon one zero zero seven colon three zero zero and seven colon three four zero second mrs swanson aye mrs toriel aye ms morgan aye mrs croner aye mr bauman aye mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.2 i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the issuance of tax anticipation warrants in anticipation of the collection of taxes levied for the year 2020 by the board of education of community unit school district number kendall kane and will counties illinois for educational purposes second mrs croner aye mr lightfoot aye mrs moyer aye ms morgan aye mrs swanson aye mr storyal aye mr bowman aye motion passes seven zero item eight point three i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing loans totaling 14 million 400 000 from the working cash fund to the illinois municipal retirement fund and educational fund pursuant to 105 ilcs 5-2 20-5 miss morgan aye mrs croner aye mrs toriel aye mrs swanson aye mr bowman aye mr lightfoot aye mrs moyer aye motion passes seven zero item 8.4 i make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing loans totaling five million three hundred thousand dollars from the operations and maintenance fund to the educational fund and two million one hundred thousand dollars from the transportation fund to the educational fund pursuant to 105 ilcs 5-10-22.33 second mr lightfoot aye ms morgan aye mr storiel aye mrs swanson aye mr bowman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.5 i make a motion to approve the impact bargaining as discussed in closed session second mrs doyle aye ms morgan aye mr lightfoot no mrs moyer aye mrs corner aye mrs swanson [Music] hi mr bauman aye motion passes six one item 8.6 from ursula studer i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mr lightfoot aye ms morgan aye mr bauman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle i ursula stutter can i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn second well are you sure oh lots getting going all in favor hi hi we are adjourned

um that makes an average per week of 32 and that average per week is going down it's been as high as 40 since that end of october so we are now down to 32 and hopefully that will continue to to go down and it is those kinds of things that we look at to try to make the decision as to whether or not we can bring our secondary students back get back to normal as much as we possibly can and i state that though recognizing that it has been nice to have physical distancing all the time we have appropriate physical distancing in our secondary schools with this particular model that's why we went to it but we will again look at the situations and scenarios see how comfortable we are and make a determination um by or on thursday of this week all right thank you are there questions that any of my colleagues have yeah i'd like just one and i tried to ask this a couple weeks ago and i think i worded it poorly but in terms of the hybrid at the secondary level um in terms of the number of kids being identified through contact tracing with the hybrid i would assume that's a pretty significant difference as it is before when all were present it is todd um and and i think the last time that you asked it i interpret as to to kids who have become positive because of being in contact the number of close contacts regardless of whether they are positive or not small at the secondary level before we add numbers in the 40s sometime based upon a student being in a class and four people around that student we're close contacts in the next class and the next class the next class and lunch and a school bus and maybe a team that number kelly helped me out has been maybe the highest number we've had is around 10 or with close contacts since we've been back in school with the secondary schools so cut that in um you know down to from 40 to 10 at the most in those cases that's an excellent point thank you are there other questions that you all have so what do you think accounts for the switch and the colors in the state map yeah it's always tough to guess um but i think that we are getting to the end of the time frames where we were all together so from thanksgiving break and then winter break christmas break as we come out of that and there may be we may have been together a lot based on circumstances situations and choices we all made and and over 19 may have spread some at that point in time and now we've gotten separation from that winter break is now this is week four for us to be back i believe and so i i think that's a large part of it and that's probably true throughout the state and and throughout the country that's our hope that with increased vaccinations i know we're not where we would like to be our county is working as hard as they can based on the dosages they get to get those into arms as fast as they can but the more people we get vaccinated we get closer to the end of winter and maybe can get outside a little bit more um hopefully we'll we'll see those numbers continue to go down through the next couple of months dr everett since you mentioned vaccinations what is the status of vaccinations for teachers in our great question nikki it's something we continue to ask about too but also understand and appreciate where the county is and the county is following the directives of the state of indiana with the age groupings and so right now it's it's 65 and over have we dropped to 65 yet okay still 70 plus so the the the state is trying to hit that most at-risk population first besides the first responders or people caring for for individuals from a health standpoint and there are not enough dosages right now to drop i asked that question because it was supposed to be 80s 70s and 60s we have not had enough dosages in the state to get the 60s taken care of and so they are committed i think the state department of health the governor's office to getting the older population um vaccinated before they get to us or get to our teachers our staff so we're we're still waiting uh for that to be the case i know uh and i think i mentioned this the last meeting kelly and her team are already and we're blessed to have nurses in every one of our buildings already many of them are volunteering here locally to go out and give the vaccinations to our county residents and so as soon as the dosages are made available to us we'll start administering those even in the school schools themselves so but we're still we're still days if not months away from from that kill any additional information there okay all right thank you very much for the update welcome next on our list is a presentation about sea floors virtual open house and i'll turn to dr gene hack thank you dr shedd gene uh welcome dr hack um we we wanted to extend this opportunity for dr hack to present tonight because we are all doing things differently right so c4 typically has an open house coming up uh where people come in and check some really cool things out and just not quite able to do it that this year and so dr heck take us through what a virtual open house might might be like thank you this evening uh dr shedd and board and dr roberts for this opportunity if you know me you know that i will take any opportunity uh presented to present c4 and the wonderful things that our staff and students do and uh a little bit i got a i'm supposed to have 10 minutes but i'm glad dr roberts decided to take a little bit of short time on the covet review and good news because i promise but we'll see what we can do so i have a few slides i want to run through but this is the date of our virtual open house and it will be live from 5 to 7 p.m so you'll be able to do it and we'll show you a little bit of preview of some of those activities today here in a minute as well but i want to go through and talk a little bit about the why and what we do with c4 and everything and so when we talk about it c4 originally started out with the career in technical education and some of us are a little bit older in the room might remember it as vocational ed or vote tech or whatever but and really it's a k-12 we approach it at bcsc with the k-12 mindset and thinking about that education at the end is about what we do with that education and how we get there and some of us stop at 12th and move on and get training in a non-traditional way and some of us move forward when we get an associates or bachelor's or phd et cetera but we talk about career exploration all the way through k-12 fortunately i know the director of the elementary ed and we started with that with talking about that back in the when i first started my job and she was not in that role and we started talking about how that would look and exploring with that and finding out the curriculum and the standards across there then we also try to provide opportunities for our students we want to connect all learning to real life situations and then we want to support our stakeholder needs in the community in area 41.

you for the recommendation approved award the vehicle is quoted at to sutton ford at a total cost seventy two thousand three hundred seven dollars and twenty cents we have a motion to approve so moved removed by mr angel second second uh second by mr babjack any questions or comments from miss dowling no just like with uh in our uh information it was mentioned that this isn't part of our 10 or 12 year bus replacement because these vehicles last longer than that so just wanted to make sure the public knew that that these are not including that plan for that specific reason any other comments all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries 4-0 and again to miss dowling for the 2021 liability of and worker compensation insurance renewals and changes ms dowling thank you mr president this is our 2021 commercial package liability and workers compensation insurance coverage for 2021 we did see a net overall increase in both our commercial property as well as our workers compensation we had discussed last year when we saw slight increase were we going to go out to market with pinnacle insurance serving as our agent they can access multiple markets in order to do a full rebid of our property and all the commercial coverages the challenge for us this year frankly was coveted 19 didn't make that a great environment to go out and do that so we sort of held steady and we did see an increase and it was significant it was about 15 overall but a lot of it was market driven we actually talked about this at our last iasbo school business officials meeting and everyone except for one particular very small corporation experience the similar 10 15 20 increases so it seems to be market driven that's the feedback we've received as well from pinnacle insurance so essentially on our commercial our property and we talked about this last year a little our overall property values the buildings and the content went up about 20 million dollars liberty mutual agreed to phase that in over a three year period so this is year two of the three year phase in when you look at those side by sides of the expiring premium and the renewal premium you can see there's an increase in the general liability there's a component of that that it has to do with the pandemic there's a component of that that has to do with a national increase in due process claims then the third part of that is you can see where inland marine used to be itemized separately and it's now included up in general liability so that's actually the biggest component of that when you look at the increase overall with automobiles we've added buses facilities has gotten their vehicles on a regular replacement schedule and so as we've added more and newer in line with replacement schedules and to support growth we're going to expect to have a higher premium in the auto area then we also saw an increased slight um about 4 000 in our overall umbrella in workers compensation those increases we we did make a change to our third party administrator that's not what caused the increases number one because the corporation has through the board offered pay increases to all staff last year teachers received a base of just over three thousand those all factor into our premiums so when we when we give staff increases in salary as well as adding employees which we did significant amount of certified positions going into this past fall that means we're going to pay more because it's based on wages it's based on what we pay and we did have some high claimants and workers compensation that attributed to our buffer which is our protection piece for being self-funded so um the positive side we did get a credit if there's a positive decode we got a credit for the vehicle suspension on our bus insurance from march to july but essentially for we would recommend approval of the 2021 liability insurance renewals including property general liability crime in the marine flood automobile pollution liability terrorism and general umbrella coverage is in the amount of 567 thousand two sixty nine thirty three as well as the workers compensation renewal in the amount of and forty six thousand two thirty five ten hey you've heard the recommendation as presented by ms dowling we have a motion to approve so moved moved by mr smith and second by mr angel you have any questions or comments for miss dolly if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries 4-0 and resolution 793 responsible bitter resolution ms dolly thank you mr president i think after this i should be done for the rest of 2021 for meeting agenda items right yeah full of action items at least mr smith thought i was funny i chuckled again i seen your name on the next two years so as as you all know we've been talking about this since i think the fall we are now after getting through the petition referendum period in in the heat of the planning and design stages for this large-scale renovation project and now that we've gotten through and we're moving forward as you might imagine with a project the scope of the one that this corporation is undertaking we are being contacted by a lot of different providers in the area of construction that we are not necessarily familiar with and similar to what what took place in hanover township when they approved their referendum to build some new buildings and spend a significant amount of capital capital money we essentially obtained some information about what they call a responsible bidder resolution which essentially the public works project and i list the code citation the 36-112-1 requires contracts to be bid over 150 to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and this law allows the corporation to consider the ability and capacity of the bidder to perform the work the integrity character and reputation of the bidder and the competence and experience of the bidder this resolution allows the corporation to ensure quality workmanship efficient operation safety and timely completion of projects while still complying with the statutory requirements of the competitive bid process so this isn't circumventing any of that just to be clear and this allows us as a corporation to establish more comprehensive bid submission requirements and reporting expectations for successful bidders now within there i listed and it literally the in exhibit aid identifies a bunch of items that are complicit that have to be submitted with the bid and i'm sure that you want me to read a through r but i'm not going to uh but it's essentially ensuring and i'm just to give you a few examples the business certificate of insurance existing within 60 days this protects us from a business that doesn't have experience in this area forming to come in be a low bid on a project or on a component of a project that then we have no work experience with they have no work history with we know nothing about them nor the work that they've done and as you go through these compliance with e-verify there's there's components that are pretty boilerplate but ultimately it's about protecting the corporation as we go through this bid process to ensure that the the folks that are working on these projects are skilled in those areas with which they're working and it protects us i think i've been told this is not had to be invoked very often but it's something you want in the event that you need it it's how we characterize it the other thing i would highlight for everyone here there we have this gives us the ability actually to request that they give preference where feasible based on skill sets to people who live within the crown point community school corporation boundary so people who live here pay our taxes are able to get first cut if you will from the companies they work for to work on our projects here which we think is very important as well the second piece of this is there's just a component of obtaining certified payroll and that is about as well if you give us a list of what you're working on because it requires that you give us a list of if you're subcontracting we want to know that this is verification that you're doing exactly what you said you're doing so this has been reviewed back in repeatedly with attorney zick dr terrell and myself as well so the administration would recommend approval of resolution 793 to establish submission requirements with regard to designation as responsible for public work projects and to add a certified payroll reporting thank you miss donald for the recommendation to approve resolution 793 to establish submission requirements with regard to the designations responsible for public work projects and to add a certified payroll reporting requirement we have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr babjack and second by mr angel um i'd like to just say miss downing this is one when you do a review of the packet when it comes out is something that you know reading this as a board member seemed as you said uh is something nice to have in place and uh look forward to getting a positive vote here um any other questions or comments for miss downing on resolution 793 you know what dave said that this is a this is an important thing when we're responsible for the amount of money that we're spending on this project and i appreciate miss valley to this um one question i have specifically i'm not sure we have the answer or not but i did i didn't see anything in here but is here maybe someone knows the answer to this is there a process to where somebody would come in and hit the project or if there's supplemental work that needs to be done how does that carried out after the contract regarding the tire being able to come in and be dead for the work and they're detained so to speak to that [Music] i don't know if there's changes so there's a certain amount built into every contract based on skillman's recommendation that is for adjustments contingencies i guess would be the appropriate word but state law limits us any change order that's over dan i want to say it's 15 but am i wrong is it 20 anything that would adjust the an individual awarded contract by more than 20 has to go to the board for approval so if you remember not too long ago we would have brought a contract to you for larson danielson i believe related to some of the soil borings and some of the things we found were doing the gymnasium piece of wingfield we had to bring that back for the board to approve that good i just wanted to make sure that stated and we have a grip on the change orders on a project excessive so just want to and if i may i would dion can wave out there and um i think dion would agree that this is a very helpful uh resolution that we're passing tonight or that we brought to you tonight that will help with the process of making sure the quality of work is what it needs to be absolutely and i can think of just only one occasion where we had to use the language to enforce it it was an out of state contractor just didn't need some other qualifications but at the end of the day it's going to ensure good quality contractors are working in crown point you know meeting some of the requirements that you know are they safe you know all the substance abuse policies just things like that and it just gives you that additional assurance above and beyond even some of the requirements so it's definitely a good thing it's a useful tool to enforce if any contractor does come in thank you thank you dion any other questions all those in favor signify by saying opposed mission motion carries 4-0 thank you and 5.07 is the purchase aruba clear pass appliances software this should probably bring up some questions simply because of the name aruba i thought maybe the board members have to travel to approve the contract you'd have to go with katie though is that ryan do you want to speak to this or do you want me to take it okay so essentially the clear clear pass appliances software aruba clearpass appliances software purchased from the brookfield group was obtained through the quantity quantity purchasing agreement through the state of indiana where the states actually bid out this done our work for us and so we can technically use that legally to purchase items and they've done the bid work for us hp hewlett packard actually has the contract and this is their provider in the area kind of interesting i know how that works so essentially this project the purpose is to add an additional layer of security to our network by having users log into the network instead of using a passphrase this not only allows us by us i mean the geniuses in the technology department what devices are on the network but who is on the network allows tailoring permission security based on whether the individual user is a student staff member or a member of the public mr gill do you know anything you'd like to add pretty much it will also allow us to take what device whether it's our own district chrome devices or employees or students bring in ewds you know cell phones whatever by then logging into this network it will let us determine if it's a corporation device or a personal device and segregate traffic on the network based on that same thing even when a district owns a problem the student logged in we know it's a student we're going to direct traffic but they're allowed into that right now basically we don't know who is on the network we know the devices on it but not too thank you thank you thank you miss time thank you mr gill they heard the recommendation to approve purchase of aruba clear pass appliances software from the brookfield group at a cost of 107 921 dollars and 54 cents we have a motion to approve so i moved by miss range on a second second second by mr abject any questions or comments for either ms dowling or mr gill if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries 4-0 not nearly as exciting as you thought it was going to be was disappointed and uh 5.0 is support staff computer refresh miss down thank you mr president corporation mr gill's department prepares a technology plan obviously we have a 10-year technology plan and we refresh staff computers every five years we did delay this slightly because i believe we actually originally were going to do this last year but delayed it a little because of covid and the difficulty in obtaining components in a timely manner so this new refresh cycle we are also adding which were not included previously all of our instructional support staff which would include paraprofessionals within the various departments that could be special ed support john edge support your positive behavior paraprofessionals our interventionists birth to school staff members are for you know coming soon our preschool gen ed preschool if you'd like to differentiate because obviously our preschool ecd teachers have them so this has obviously created a much larger number uh where we're not to exceed 450 originally that number was a lot less for the regular support staff that are more your clerical support your media folks things of that nature so essentially mr gill did an rfp you can see on there on one particular bid they did not quote the bit spec properly and failed to include all the equipment second provider although the battery life is a is a cost component to this so a less significant battery life than what's required in the bid spec is going to drive the cost down and so that's what we had there a difference in i think 20 some hours in what the machine had in terms of battery life which also didn't meet the standard of the rfp so what we've done here is established and not to exceed on the number of computers because we think 450 is where we'll be but that could be 434 and so we just wanted to make sure we covered ourselves so what we're asking permission for is to recommend the purchase of not to exceed 450 dull latitude 5520 laptops from electronic strategies inc at a total cost not to exceed 573 282 even i would also point out that this will be a combination of education operations and also cares act money the there's going to be a secondary distribution of cares act funds and so there's capital component here because what this will allow us to do which we could not do in march is to be able to unplug go home and be able to work remotely not everybody had that capability staff couldn't connect with kids in that way and some of these support rules and so this eliminates that and makes us fully compliant that heaven forbid we were in this situation again all of the re-imaging and the hours and days mr gill's staff had to spend getting machines ready we no longer have that deficit we'll be ready to go thank you for the recommendation to approve the purchase of 450 dell latitude 5520 laptops from esi at a cost of 573 282 dollars a motion to approve some move second moved by mr bab jack second by mr angel any questions or comments for i guess either miss dowling or mr gill if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed emotion carries four zero you miss dying for all of your presentations this evening wow and the information we have superintendent discussion groups um mr hoffman is in arizona so i'm sure he has nothing new to report from from there and enjoying the winter out there but uh how about mr smith you've heard anything from cedar lake or oh another meeting tonight mr president is nothing really nothing different but a lot of what you're doing has to do with capturing the tax dollars giving it back to the businesses but we had nothing new on that front uh just by chance uh without mr hoffman here mr in winfield i don't know if somebody saw in the newspaper they received a huge grant to improve the intersection of grand avenue and 109th which for those of you that don't live out that way that's where you take the dip in the road it's a really nasty spot for a left turn when someone's turning and people are doing 50 miles an hour in a 40 zone so that will extensively help that traffic so-called nightmare so to speak so that's on the corner of 109th and grand so they were awarded a grant to improve that whole intersection i was just stopped there the other day looking in my rear view mirror waiting for someone to come over that hill waiting for the car in front of me to turn so that's that's good to hear yeah okay anybody else on as far as that goes if not we can move to the chief academic officer mr hardman good stuff good stuff we'll come back to mr hardman with the management stuff let's let's move forward to uh mrs ramirez with the direct director of elementary education ran away yeah i might want to chug that dr pepper before that gym before we get up it i would like to thank our district cll specialist in our building intervention as ellt members and administrators we are in the process of administering the wida access assessment to our english language learners and that started earlier this month will continue for the next several weeks and so it really is a team effort to support our students as they develop their english language proficiency and from the classroom teachers being supportive and motivating our students and reassuring them that you know you're all here to see them succeed and to grow has been a great effort over the past couple of weeks i would also like to thank our blended instructional design specialist jeremy walker and susan valentine as well as our data specialist sean paul pierce this is kind of like the trifecta i feel that they are true collaborators they have been with each other working to troubleshoot problem solve and really to support our teachers and students since last march when we came into the situation of the pandemic and have not stopped and they have just been tireless and truly dedicated in everything that they've done so just genuinely appreciate all that they continue to learn and to manage as things have changed from what was normal at this time last year so thank you if there are no questions of all the good news [Laughter] all right thank you mr mearson director of secondary education mr gene fermi um learning model i'm happy to report right now we haven't experienced any major contrast raising wood at this point although we still know that there are cases of coated out there so it's good to see that we're hoping that that space is helping to keep that contact tracing down i also would encourage you as board members parents approach you and they have a student struggling with the learning of please get them to our principals mr harvard and i worked with the principals all last week middle school and high school principals just talking to them and seeing what they are doing for our students in addition in this learning model and they have come up with a lot of new creative ways um i'll just use mr martinique as an example the depths that man will go to to try to make sure a student is getting what they need is pretty amazing so if you are ever approached the biggest thing to do is get in those principles because there are a lot of great things that are happening beyond just the foundation of that learning model where they'll go above and beyond and really work with those kids to give them what they need my second piece that i want to share with you since uh school safety is still under my responsibilities last wednesday january 13th the state conducted an audit with colonel wheeler middle school and it was conducted by the director of physical safety and security stephen melco so myself mr robert and dave carlson our director of safety and security uh what other one and audience was really comprehensive it was just beyond kernel wheeler it was putting our safety planning training and equipment under a lens and uh we can pass with flying colors we met compliance or above and beyond another category dr terrell should be receiving that letter sometime this week um and i want to thank mr everest mr colson for all their work with that as well but you know all the work that we did on our safety stuff it was kind of i was kind of excited to see you know where we landed with all that work that we did last year that was great news and just appreciate that work that's done behind the scenes that a lot of the public and no one's aware of that goes through from the state auditing and different departments so thank you thank you okay well i i guess it's kind of oh we're oh yeah we're still i'm sorry he's not ready yeah come on all right director of exceptional um education ms pasquez i think this is where the good information what we is sharing out with you tonight is tomorrow preschool pre-registration goes live so brooke allen is just a complete champion and created all of this publicity for us to share with our community so the times we'll be running an article we have a website twitter facebook all of the social media will get a version of what you're seeing in front of you we also have included some of the general information about the program and faqs that were shared with the public so this is the pre-registration [Music] we've been working on this for a few months so it's exciting to see it all come to fruition very cool it's good a little bulldog buddy and a little logo here is okay pretty comforting and looks like [Music] it'll fit for the preschool program wonderful just just not enough teeth for you you want more teeth with the higher the new football coach maybe we'll change it a few who are my years psychologists and staff that help evaluate students my speech therapist and my occupational therapy team has all experienced planned and unplanned loss of staff over the past several months and i had to have people jump in and pick up extra cases and work even harder than they typically would just because on an unexpected injury and a couple of births in there so i really appreciate those folks and then to tie it all up last friday was exciting we met as a cabinet with dr cole and dr murphy from iu who were here last year to um before she sits down if i may brooke isn't here this evening but the little bulldog design that you see there so she's in the process of going through she created that that's not clip art but she is going through all of our elementaries and creating our own mascots and cards and just anything you can think of that will be related to it so that way we don't have to worry about there being any kind of copyright infringements the work she's done is just it's amazing to see what she's putting out and so this is just one example of that as we move forward with it so just doing great work one more thing we have a workshop this thursday we're providing our behavior specialist and we just broke some of the particulars and she created a flyer that was so professional and it was awesome so yes this she whips this right out and it looks fabulous regarding the follow-up with uh dr cole and dr murphy how often is that occurring and what's the not long term but the timetable to kind of say all right we've met these requirements oh can i take some of these no you're good so i will answer that question when we get to my part okay all right okay because there's uh you all are going to have a role in that as well if i don't bring up what i thought no that's a good question let me address that one just a couple of minutes okay all right good thank you thank you thank you thank you okay this is not bad this is just news all right mr hartman what do you have assuming well i wanted to bring you up to date a little bit on some of the testing scenarios that are going to be taking place in the next few months first of all think about the three through eight i learned and i read those are the two state tests i think currently they are on schedule and every indication indicates that there's not going to be a pause in testing this year one of the things that you may hear about is we have about 15 of our students at the elementary that are distance learners and then we have about 20 i believe at middle school that are business testing has to be in person but you cannot administer i learn or i read via the internet and that's for reliability validity of the test but it's accounted for accountability and those kinds of things so we're in the process now of inviting or working with our parents and business learners to set up a opportunity for them to come up in and test when that occurs and we will do what is necessary for parents we know some parents might opt out because they would not feel safe about bringing their children in but we'll do everything that we can to try to make it safe and conducive for that testing to occur in 2022 a year from a year from now let's just say that i'm not sure the exact time the high school will be administering the sat at grade 11 to all students and this is part of the accountability system in preparation for that we are going to start we're going to administer the sap or give the opportunity for all of our juniors this year to take the sat we're going to pick up the cost on that sat test and the reason we want to do that is to give us kind of a heads up on where our students are on the objectives of the sap they're working currently this will be a measure of how we're doing right now on what we're doing and also help us to plan over the summer into next year so that we give our vet our students the best opportunity to be successful on the new s.a.t as it comes in as part of the state testing so it's a great opportunity for students i mean they're going to have an sat that's going to be paid for either by us this year in the state of the in the future and that's a great opportunity as far as having a piece of information for their post-secondary development and placements so is the state saying that all students will take it or it will be available on the state's dime for all students who want to take it no it's it's part of the accountability so there will be criteria as far as participation currently the participation rates are 95 so maximum amount of points for accountability so that's what we are that would be our requirements okay jim do you know this i know with my kids being a few years old uh act does composite scores does sat work that way or not sat will have a deposit score and then they'll also break it out by achievement or subjects oh i'm sorry i phrased that wrong so in other words you have an initial baseline maybe when you take it this year and then next year can you use the higher scores like ac we're doing that this year okay first of all there's two things here you're talking about can i use sap and then maybe take the sat for next year my my uh assumption would be yes if it's the higher score you could because it's going to be the sap sat from the standpoint of what we're doing this year in preparation for next year um i think there you've got what we're trying to do to help our kids and then there's the accountability so i think people that should be thinking about by taking this year and then but for state accountability it'll only be on the one that we administer not if they take it two or three more times it's the one that we give correct okay thank you anything else mr warning no thank you thank you mr arthur that wasn't too bad mr harmon see if mr aquila could talk to him chief human resource officer mr akiwa how are you doing good evening mr president um just two things to comment on this evening first or thank you um over the last few months we've seen a a staffing challenge unlike anything we've seen before when i say staffing challenge means the students have been moving and shifting pretty much constantly this year from online in person back to online and i just want to state my appreciation for our leadership team here particularly the building level principals who have met with us regularly for when i say staffing meetings that's how big are the classes what do the classes consist of which students are in there and then drilling down even further quite frankly the teachers the amount of flexibility and professionalism that they've shown through this window of time has just been you know being short of amazing so just thanks everybody to get us through this first semester and start it off in the second semester and with that being said we are now rolling up into the fall believe it or not it's january but this week we're having meetings with our middle school principals our high school administrators and then very shortly after that our elementary school principal to roll up our numbers seeing what our staffing demands will be for 2021.

so in 2019 we spent 13.1 million dollars in the education fund and in 2020 12.4 so all of those adjustments and things that we've made have helped us improve our situation and that's something that we're going to have to continue to do moving forward um so we improved our cash balance in the education fund by that fifty nine thousand nine hundred dollars we decreased uh year-to-date expenditures by seven hundred and forty seven thousand uh five hundred and four dollars and that's also with year-to-date revenue decreasing by 280 000 so all that attention to detail really goes a long way in helping with that and certainly that's something we're going to continue to do and we're going to continue to make adjustments moving forward so that we have a we have a healthy cash balance so that during lean times we don't have to borrow to make payroll and we don't end up in a bad situation the next slide please is the operations fund again comparing those those similar things um the total revenue in the operations fund includes the transfer from the education fund end of year cash balance increased by 102 year while your today expenditures decreased by 114 thousand dollars um year-to-date revenue increased by 36 so i think one of the things is one of the items that's helped us is we've we've had some of the general obligation bond money that we've been able to year uh use for some building projects and some improvements certainly that's helped us but we're also we've also made cuts to our operations fund and that's something that we're going to continue to do moving forward because we need to we need to improve the total school district finances so like a good example of that is we had a staff member leave at the high school secretary and just based on looking at the total situation we eliminated a position at central office to help help with some of that savings so it's kind of a it's a multi multi-tiered approach with that we did transfer um 500 000 to the rainy day and um we transferred to 450 000 last year so we had mentioned that back when we were doing completing teacher negotiations and those things that we're going to have to pay for the stipends the one-time stipends that we gave to the teachers but then also in we've budgeted for five certified staff members to be paid for out of the rainy day so that those dollar amounts are excuse me those funds are allocated to help with those help with those costs shifting gears and talking about our 2021 budget order so we did receive our 1782 notice um from the county and um on the page in your your board packet or on the screen um i've put put the 2020 but then i also put the 2021 and so if you remember when we were going through the budgeting process i had mentioned that we were advertising obviously at a much larger rate um because we wanted to protect our levies and uh we were also budgeting on 85 of our assessed value well so when we got our certified budget if you're looking on the right hand side assessed valuation um grew by just over 15 million dollars and so in order with with that excuse me 15 million over last year but then in using the actual assessed value that obviously causes the rate to fall back to where it's supposed to be and so i won't read through all of the all of those items but you can see what we budgeted and what we we expect to collect in our levy so we expect to collect um some additional money over last year in our levy but then our overall rate um actually dropped by just under half a penny so a dollar 3620 um will be our overall rate in 2021 so just a little bit of information on that that was a lot of information does anybody have any questions or anything on that but i'll continue to bring that information throughout the year so that you're updated as we make changes and do other things the other thing i wanted to mention is we got a report back from the department of education and so we had our summer food service review was conducted in december and so the summer food service program was the extra feeding program that we offered during covid and i just really like to thank mrs carrico and the cafeteria staff because they uh they had an awesome review and passed a flying color so that's not easy and that's a lot of hard work and making adjustments on the fly so it was extremely extremely positive that's all i have for this month [Music] um thank you next item on the agenda is old business we have no old business which leads us to new business and the first item is an approval request for to cancel outstanding checks uh that are two years old and older and that request comes from the middle school and high school eca treasurer as well as the corporation treasurer yep so this is a this is a customary thing and all these checks fall within that timeline and so we need the board to provide approval to cancel those outstanding checks and in your board packet was a list of those items so this is a routine routine process we're surprised all in favor of closing passwords next item on this is an approval request for an updated 2021 bus purchase yeah so this isn't uh this is these buses have already um already been ordered um but in the original approval approval letter the incorrect dollar amounts um were used it wasn't um we used the dollar amounts at the top rather than the total with all the all of the features so uh the 84 passenger uh bluebird bus was a total of 137 748.68 and um the midwest international collins bus was 63 236.46 so um the 84 passenger bus i think was roughly 14 000 more expensive and then the international collins was eight eight thousand dollars more expensive but we we already had these items allocated in our 2021 budget so there's no issue with that but so we are requesting official approval based on those update figures jeff this is pretty much in line with what we normally do yes that's that's that's correct i'll make a motion we approve this request okay here we have a motion and a second to any questions or discussion hearing noon all in paper all right all opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request for the 2020 appointment greencastle human relations commission yeah so we i already have a student appointed to that commission and i apologize if i've mispronounced the name but it's jean martinez and so we're just seeking approval to reappoint him to that commission thank you mr give rogers motion in a second to reappoint to john martinez to the human relations commission all in favor aye opposed motion passes next item on the agenda is an approval request uh for the donut for the resolution to extend ffcra through the end of the 2021 school year yeah so the ffcra is the family uh family first chronovirus response act so um the federal legislation actually expired um at the end of december but then was uh extended through the end of march and so this deals with employee leave for specified reasons due to the covet 19 pandemic for instance having to quarantine we provide up to 10 days or 80 hours of coverage for a paid paid leave for staff to use for those qualifying reasons and all i'm wishing to do is continue that through the end of the 2020-21 school year we're not refilling the allotment but those staff members who have not yet used their allotted leave should they qualify based on one of those reasons i think it's reasonable for them to be allowed so we just need to pass a resolution to do it make sense okay can i get a motion to pass this resolution yeah i'll make a motion a second okay in a second further discussion okay next item on the agenda are a bunch of donations which i think we can approve all together um first from brock and mary beth kaiser to the green castle high school band in the amount of five hundred dollars from prime real estate to green castle high school baseball in the amount of one thousand dollars from the indiana department of corrections to greencastle high school athletics in the amount of one thousand dollars from the putnam county community foundation to zonicus intermediate knowing about 500 from the putnam county community foundation to dear meadow primary in the amount of 500 in green castle mcdonald's to deer meadow primary in the amount of 570 dollars and from mary allison children's trust to deer metal primary the amount of 500 and from the micro to zonicus family to food services at the zonicus intermediate in the amount of one thousand dollars i say thank you everybody okay we have a motion and a second to approve all of the donations any questions or discussion thanks hearing none all in favor all right all opposed motion passes final thing under new business is the gc sc facilities study and master or yeah master planning presentation and so we have mike and kevin montgomery from krm or if you could pull up their presentation hello all right um so thank you guys for having us back um we're at the end of this study phase again my name is kev montgomery and he's mike montgomery we're gonna spend about 15 minutes going through a condensed summary packet of slides you should also just receive the final printed version of the full study so just as a reminder this took about about the last four months and we tried to involve as many participants as possible from staff and educators the board itself as well as public next it's broken into really uh four parts uh at the beginning you'll read a little bit about the goals um and the whole overall study was supposed to address your needs for the next five to ten years i'll summarize the goals by about safety security and access holistically so not only physical access but access to the spaces and type of services that your educators need to be able to provide the next generation of education and then the kind of the next section of the book goes into really the needs which was the assessment by ourselves working with your facilities staff and then we give possible solutions at this point to some of the greater needs so that we have some understanding of what the scope of work to reach address those needs would be and then once we have an idea of the solutions we create a overall cost summary next i'm briefly just going to highlight a few things at each building as we went through the assessment the easiest way was to pull out some of the photographs there's more detailed descriptions than the book so overall what we call the campus which is your middle school and high school properties probably the most notable or largest item shown here is the track and then the field within both needing maintenance and the track really be nearing the end of its life within the next two to three years next moving to the high school your oldest largest building does have the largest amount of needs found the one i would probably highlight here is the science labs the spaces have been unrenovated since the building was built and changes but also just end-of-life items all throughout the science way next at the mac and alley center here there's obviously amazing spaces in great condition like this one that we're in as you get kind of deeper into it though highlight the like the locker rooms really minimal to no changes since the beginning except dividing them smaller and smaller as you added more sports when they were built there were no girls athletics at all so it's those type spaces throughout the building that really most attention next at the middle school this kind of falls in the middle of your buildings a decent list but not like the high school again probably most notable is the science lab right now it's configured to all three science rooms share one lab and today's education is really much more focused around lab and hands-on activities and they're kind of handcuffed in that that access next deer meadow is one of your newer buildings um relatively good condition um cosmetically there's things but they don't move near as high up the list don't match as many of the goals that were given to us but there is a security issue at the entrance there's no secure vestibule protocol in this building next grid path overall again better we would say there's definitely some immediate needs though on the exterior kind of in the upper corner here you can see some of the materials around the facade are starting to fail small replacement but mostly maintenance and repair type items around the exterior should really be addressed as soon as possible next tz um has a longer list um has a lot of things that are are nearing into life but but not there so in the next five to ten years this building will need it'll have more priorities that move up the list we think right now though the highest ones are to deal with water really the original design never addressed that appropriately so it's it's deteriorating uh soffit in the edge of the roof and the eaves without having any type of guttering or downspout and then not leading it away from the building is also creating problems below grade around the site so that would be where we would recommend the most focus of this site next just as a snapshot um we did have work with some engineers and review your utilities and energy bills and systems and buildings overall it's pretty impressive considering the age of several other buildings that you fall pretty much on average with your utility costs except for deer meadow which is the newer building so we believe it'd be worth it to look further into that which we're recommending we can help with obviously and see why that's off next and then each building includes like i said there's more details throughout but then it has this really the summary of all the issues that we found and create some hierarchy red being the most immediate blue being highly recommended and then green being ideal but mostly cosmetic focus so we just pulled one out for this these slides this is the high school in the largest building you can see in red that's the science labs that we already spoke of also you have media center media center it's outdated and it's layout and function and furniture but it's also has moisture issues it doesn't have access to daylight and programming spaces they're really a media center kind of of today would need there's certain restrooms that are haven't been updated and then moving into the blue it gets into several areas that are too small not not maybe designed properly for activities and group learning the cafeteria setting and how a gymnasium would like to be used all those fall within the blue as well as some more finished items and furniture in the classroom setting that again just haven't been updated in over 40 years next uh then the next kind of section of the study focuses on those possible solutions here we highlight kind of overall the campus just pull out a few of the bigger items we talked a lot at the beginning about the access to the baseball and softball and how really you know you have all of your buildings and a football field that limit access back to those fields so we worked a few different designs to how to add access overall your site is already really tight and you're pretty much landlocked in the future so after struggling with that issue staff came up with a suggestion or idea that you have additional property at the transportation line and so we'll show that layout here in a second but that freed up that space and really solved the access problem and potentially you know not only gives you some more space for practice today but in the future whatever those needs might be 10 20 years down the line now you're going to have some of that space and not feel so landlocked the next major piece is that that connector this came up really early on in discussions with that that safety and security kids are traveling all day back and forth between two different buildings so we have proposed a connection between those two i'll show in floor plan a little greater detail otherwise or with that i should say pose a new service drive that would come around the back so that you don't feel right now it feels like it would be impossible to block that off because it's highly used to get between the buildings as well so we can solve that beyond that there's some some maintenance items in the parking lots potential for kind of a gateway feature piece that would access kind of both fields give give a little bit of school pride at the entrance as we kind of do updates to the parking lot as well next just briefly showing that additional property that you guys own by your transportation center baseball and softball fit easily as well as tennis we've talked that tennis you know it's the courts are fine now wouldn't propose moving them nothing needs to go there at this time but when you're ready to invest in rebuilding and resurfacing them you might want to explore we would leave space at this site kind of for the same reason just more flexibility in the future you could have connection on both the north and south of your property and added parking as necessary in bulk space next okay so here's an example we'll do one of these free school but the solutions which isn't to say everything would need to be done at the same time or anything like that but this was trying to solve as many of those discovered needs as possible all within one floor plan here so i'll point out you know here to orient everyone that's that connector piece between mac and alley so we're sitting right here um not only would there be a secure connection but there's an opportunity to then fill in that space that's about the same size as an additional court which was requested on many levels from many different schools for many different reasons and we agree especially compared to peer schools the amount of gym space that they have they're not only used after hours and providing additional space which limit how late kids are on campus but also throughout the day there's a lot of activities that are used in these multi-purpose gyms it would be against your existing gym it's unable to be used because of where the walls were put in that can actually be removed they're not load-bearing so you you basically gain potentially two courts to be used highlighting renovating the science labs in place renovating the media center with the possibility of expansion and making it a more dynamic space into the courtyard making it a group learning kind of all hours of the day use space moving over to mac and alley you can see we're trying we you know the goal was to find and improve the locker situation and there's two big pieces that are they're taking up space on that lower level uh is the wrestling room the weight room which are both drastically undersized themselves so that a potential new weight room and wrestling room could be in the basement of that connector to move them out of the way create new space for them but also then rework and renovate all the locker room spaces to get equal boys and girls both home and away locker rooms next at the middle school the most critical item again would be that science renovation at least some upgrades the media center a lot of different solutions that we've discussed in scope and then also a secure entrance this is one of the two buildings one three buildings that does not right now have any secure entrance so there's a possible solution that we've worked with the staff on how to reorganize that safest and most efficient manner next dear meadow like you said not not a lot of critical priorities on this one other than that secure entrance next grid path is similar but does have a couple other requested needs they're outdated some finishes also some restrict work again reminder this is most of this project has the largest dollar needs are around that exterior and maintaining some of the failing items outside next again tz uh it's all highlighted because it there's finishes and some other small issues throughout but they are really potentially more like a 10 5 to 10 year timeline probably for end of life except for the water conditions that will continue to worsen if not addressed fairly immediately next also reaching the end this is a summary of 76 items that could be addressed we feel like we've worked with staff and leadership and the board to prioritize as best possible that process can continue with whatever design process you guys would elect we will we color-coded them in the next slide you'll see some of that but essentially read with security and broken down by athletics or academic so i'm not going to read i'm going to read this one next this is probably the best just general summary so the first graph there in the lower right is all those items all together the full budget and you know how much of the work would go towards either academic or safety and then what's probably more more realistic and discussed is the highest priority fall mostly from from 30 between 25 to 35 and up so we use items 1 through 30 to look at the potential scope of work over the next five years and you can see pretty evenly spread between academics and safety and then athletics which are title athletics but obviously it's like those gym spaces that are being used throughout the day by all different groups include including a physical education so they're not purely athletic improvements and then there were just true maintenance items that would be addressed as well that was our summary are there questions or discussion remember we had this discussion it looks like you talked to some of the teachers and figured out what kind of cars they had through the building but um at any point are we going to talk to primarily maybe in high school get a little feedback so what we would suggest if there's uh scope identified within like say science there's going to be a we're going to call it a syrian committee but a user focus committee and it would include key faculty and then nominate one to two students depending on and so like the high school would probably have like four kind of like the media center you know take a couple kids from the book club or innovation club and put them on there as well yeah we also can do input survey like feedback where you have imagery boards right so design aesthetic or furniture you know and lay those things out and they do the kind of survey with post-it notes and comments to really involve them any other questions okay well thank you again thank you so the obviously the process is very extensive there'll be a lot more input and feedback opportunities certainly we'll need to work through and look at some of the priorities and work together with the board to kind of look at the scope of what we might what we might do certainly as we do identify themes we will involve stakeholder groups during committee whatever we title that for some additional input feedback and looking at design just to be just to be clear so our debt service fund we have some debt that will be falling off and we will need to be replacing that debt with new debt that will fund these projects through the issue through through the form of a bond sale and just to be clear the debt service fund and these bond sales are specifically for capital projects renovations and improvements and they can't be used for things such as salaries and benefits so we obviously have a duty to make sure that we offer safe safe facilities certainly facilities that offer i'm a good environment for teaching and learning to take place and so i appreciate the time spent by krm and all of the different um individuals that participated in the in the input and the feedback and all the different meetings because we will need to continue to work together to move this process forward to determine at a future meeting what type of scope or how large of a project we wish to continue i think it's important to say too jack that uh that we won't enter into any plan that would require an increase in profit but that's going to be a debt service tax rate neutral yeah we just want to maintain what we have yeah no increased cost of tax barriers projects but also on that front it's not reasonable expect that we're going to be able to get all of that list accomplished at once unless unless somebody's going to donate all the money but i i think it's reasonable to expect that there's a large chunk potentially that we would be able to complete okay it's exciting yes so okay the last item on the agenda is other business does anyone have any other business okay none last item on these is adjourned to a journey second time okay motion a second to adjourn the meeting all in favor uh all opposed motion passes so that is the first meeting yeah if you need to leave that's fine we have our board of finance meeting next thank you you two never okay we will call to order the annual board of finance meeting first thing on this is do business mr gibboni yep so this is an annual meeting that we have to have and so the first thing we need to do is elect officers for the board of finance um so i don't know how the board wants to handle that or if sometimes you mirror that with the regular officers that's entirely up to you because okay we have a motion and a second to mirror the board of finance officers with the school board officers all in favor well opposed motion passes next on the is a review of the greencast community school corporation investments michigan yes so i seem to always misplace this paper so we don't have any traditional investments but i did just want to share that um basically for all of our bank accounts we earned a grand total of 19 467.45 in interest um from all of our funds for the year 2020 on our firm that money is received back into the education fund okay next item on the agenda is a review of wuab fiscal qualitative indicators yep so the do have distressed unit appeals board um these are the school the fiscal indicators this is a new requirement um that's new or excuse me this requirements new for this year is that at the annual board of finance meeting i have to obviously have to share these with the public and share these share these with the board one of the things you'll notice in looking through kind of just a general general summary of our school corporation profile is the first slide the second slide is shows the trend of our average daily membership and you can see that since all the way through to 2021 you can see that there's been a slow slow annual decline the fund balances so you'll note that this doesn't this is a year in the rear so we don't have this for 2020 um but this is years 2012 through 2019 and you can see the color code legend on the far right hand side but you can see that i want to pick out here that light green color for the year 2019 but then also the darker blue color for prior to 2019 so that would be the education fund or general fund and if you look back from 2012 to 2015 um the education fund slash general fund it grew but then in 2016 you can see that from 2016 to 2019 it decreased each year and i mentioned earlier that we're in deficit finance or deferences deficit spending with our expenditure is exceeding our revenue and you can see that that decline that's why because we are overspending so we want to reverse that trend and see it see it grows that way we do have have a cash balance to help get us through some of those uh tougher times you can see that operation fund for the most part that's remains steady the rainy day fund for the most part that's also decreased you can see it increased a little in 2019 i mean it is it did it will again in 2020 but obviously we've allocated some some expenses expenses there so just to show that show that to you and a good balance per se the term that i hear is you really want about 15 of your your budget expenditures as a cash cash reserve in each of those funds so that kind of equates to about three months worth of expenditures we're not anywhere near that if you look at the annual deficit surplus on the next slide you can see this just compares revenue versus expenditures and you can see that we we were to the uh to the black or in the end of the year in the black so this is all of our funds we ended the year in the black in 2016 but for the last three years our expenditures have exceeded our revenue so that's again that's something that we monitor on a daily basis and we will write the shift and we'll we'll fix it and head back the other way the next slide fund balances is percent of expenditures i've you know i've kind of mentioned before having having those cash reserves you can see again this this is very similar to just our fund balances as our fund balances have gone down obviously our fund balances as percent of expenditures have also come down the next slide the revenue by type so we obviously receive a lot of different revenue revenue sources you know through bonds through federal funds through state funds through state tuition support um and then obviously through property taxes and all of those other types of things so this just kind of helps illustrate the piece of the paw each of those each of those things is so it's just kind of good to look at the next slide is operating referendum revenues percent total of revenue obviously we don't generate any revenue through operating and then the last slide is just uh more information for for you or the public to uh to review some of those any of those items um for transparency or the transparency so i wanted to share those share those with you um that's something that we will do annually but obviously also i'm going to keep you updated at a higher level through throughout the year anybody have any questions on that okay next item on these videos board member superintendent comments does anyone have any comments i'm glad that we pointed out what our media has been and uh appropriately budget anticipation what it could become anyone else okay last item on the agenda is the german once again talking to motion to adjourn motion in a second um unfair all right all opposed motion passes yeah i think they heard you

uh first pickup we do have a couple buses that do pick up before eight in the morning and i am being inclusive of shoots man leverage in this conversation well i'm not the superintendent of those elementary districts i want to be clear that we looked at our we have a shared bus system so i'm looking at all the buses uh within the four towns this school year we've had this nine o'clock start time for the secondary schools because of the coveted schedule and what we've found is that it has been really positively received by students and by families i can't have a conversation without a middle with a middle school and high school student where this topic doesn't come up and it's often framed as are we really going back to 7 45 next year with some significant concerns for students not really what drove us that's what part of the reason that drove us to look at this right now is we have this um forced um experiment if you will about the impact on students with a later start time and in general we're hearing really positive feedback about this aspect of this year just a little tardiness data so for the days that we were in session 113 days last year at the high school seven percent of students were late on an average day i think the numbers also looked worse at the time we stopped so in the month of september that number is really low as we head towards the winter the number of tardies went up and looking at previous years they don't really go down in the spring so they sort of crescendo up and then you know the very end of the year go down a little bit but pretty consistent that we have a large percentage of our students of the students at our high school who are absent on a regular basis anecdotally we have a lot of stories from students and staff who discuss lower engagement in a period classes and lower engagement might mean sleepy students but it might be in less dynamic interactions and conversations and that's you know we are a discourse based school district we believe that it's not just sage on a stage teaching so we rely on students to be at their best to have that deep level of interaction for our educational programming so we essentially have two options for next year we could go back to our prior schedule which you know move back to 745 for secondary and maintain our elementary schedule or we could flip the schedules of the elementary students attending first we are working on bus routes and so it looks like school buses would arrive about at 8 10 so it's about 20-25 minutes earlier than typical or earlier than they have at the elementary to make this work and about nine or 905 at the regional level we did look at could we just push everybody back half an hour and with our partner districts in shoe spare leverage it just wasn't possible for them so that is why that is not uh under consideration at the time at this time so key phrase why now and you can see if you look at these slides uh a really good link to an article from zhao mehta and the new york times from a month or two ago and you know if if nothing else we've learned to be really flexible and that we can adjust schedules and we can make things work this year and we don't want to just make it work for this year we want to learn what's working better we don't want to just go back to the way things were we want to be better than we were because we have this forced experiment this year we've learned a lot and we want to pursue it now as opposed to flip-flopping going back perhaps and then studying it for another year we think there's an opportunity to perhaps use what we've learned and improve the outcomes of our for our students by making this change you can see some data from our partner district in northampton they voted last month to make this change they had a very similar schedule to us they have three runs elementary jfk where it says that that's the middle school in northampton and nhs is their high school so they looked at two different changes proposal a and proposal b started with elementary and ended with secondary you can see there this is their stakeholder feedback survey and um the maintaining the current schedule was uh by in the far minority and this was true across stakeholder groups it was true among families it was true among staff and it was true among students so they voted to make this change it's also worth noting about eight or nine uh districts out in the eastern part of state um also got together and made a change two years ago so we're not really trend setters we we maybe just be joining the party so to speak on this nationally there's been a big movement to this for the last 10 years and there's a lot of solid evidence as to why but here's where the rubber meets the road when we think about implications and logistics and schedules so at our elementary our start times being earlier means earlier bus runs it means working with our after school programs that's where dr gavarro who's on this call has been helpful setting up meetings and trying to talk about the additional hours and potentially additional demand for aftercare programs in the future that early dismissal is you know we're talking 240 245 so that is uh that will have an impact on families um you know for some families the morning's really tough and this would be great for their families this will create additional challenges for about 25 minute difference from our current schedules at the region we are looking to revise our schedules to reduce transition times in other words how do we keep the same number of instructional hours but reduce the number of hours students are in school so they get out a little bit earlier than they might and right now that looks in the neighborhood of a 330 dismissal one of the things to note is that we are working actively with our transportation department to look at our routes we're one of very few districts who go as close to door-to-door as we do particularly at the regional level and there's four reasons we're looking at changing that one is if we can have fewer stops our bus runs get shorter and then we can shrink the difference in times between elementary and secondary routes give us more flexibility secondly there's a huge environmental cost to making extra runs there are some stops that we've identified that are literally 100 yards away from one another with no safety concerns so we are looking to consolidate stops next year the third thing is that we know that there are when we look at our apartment complexes and then we look at our other lower density housing we have a disparity in what we're asking students to walk how far to walk from an equity perspective it's not something we can do and finally we don't want students on buses for very long rides i think if we can reduce the amount of time students run buses that's good for everybody in the organization so we are actively looking at that as part of this process in terms of athletics our high school team is working on different schedule models this year athletics do not start in historically athletics don't start until three o'clock or later we think we'll be able to come close to matching that if not exactly match that with the schedule for next year and still be able to maintain our full plethora of athletic teams and competitions uh you know northampton making the change if we are able to make this change we imagine other districts in our area have already been in touch with me about the change and our high school ended a little a little bit earlier than some of the other high schools in the area unrelated to late start so we think we'll be successful in creating a schedule with enough flexibility at the end of the day where we'll be able to make that work so this is part of our engagement process um you know for those who don't know some of the um that involves town halls like this surveys and focus groups some of the focus groups are like cpac our special ed parent advisory council bpac our bilingual parent advisory council our parent guardian organizations family center group we are meeting with leverage and shoots ferry folks as well i appreciate their partnership with this met with their superintendent and their team a couple times already and we're looking to end our engagement on february 26th with the school committee vote on march 2nd and the reason they have to vote by mark by early march is that we need to have this so that our transportation department can plan and also our staff and families can plan on a potentially different schedule if we don't end up changing it then we can plan on that there is no schedule that's going to be the same as this year that's for sure so we we do need some direction on the sooner side so i know it does feel expedited here are some dates that we already have in terms of some of the engagements that are planned one of the things you'll note is that there's a survey that will be going out wednesday to all of our stakeholder groups our secondary students our all of our families all of our staff and we're trying to get some quantitative as well as qualitative feedback from that survey tool we'll be sharing that publicly as well and our last slide and this is good about 15 minutes so i'm right on time is just a listing of professional groups endorsing the 8 30 or late starter starting time for secondary school so you can see the american medical association center for disease control american academy of pediatricians society behavioral medicine and american psychological association when those five groups all make position statement statements which they don't they don't do too quickly all advocating for the same thing i think it's incumbent on us to at least take this seriously and see if it's something our community can endorse uh and if not then then you know we'll respond to that it has to have support in the community but i think we at least have to take this um this effort very seriously as i close up the slides and people can start putting questions and comments in there i think one other thing that i didn't say and i don't think i said it this morning at the earlier town hall [Music] is that we also there our elementary principals are going to engage upper elementary students and not so much a survey but a dialogue to give them context and get feedback from them so we are looking at getting feedback from elementary students based on where they are developmentally and the fact that they haven't experienced the earlier start it's a little different than filling out a survey but we feel like that's going to be an effective way to gather feedback from elementary students so that i went pretty quick because again i'm trying to make this much more about responding to comments and feedback than than about presentation but the presentation link sasha thank you put already put there so all the hyperlinks within that are available to anyone um it's a public document at this point and at this point i will stop presenting and just open it up for any questions comments or feedback from anyone who's on the line really the point is to share this but really to hear from all of you about you know your thoughts on that and while i give you time to type in comments i'll just put my email address and actually i'll ask sasha to put my email address and the school committee email address on there because if you think of things later this isn't the only opportunity for feedback but another way is to email email me or email a school committee or email both for that information but at this point i'll just pause and see if folks have questions or comments that they'd like to share and thanks yeah i was better late than never i think there are some families who feel that way who really advocated in 2011 and 2012 and even among our administrative team we have some of us have kids in the district and they feel that feel that way as well so thank you for that um yeah thank you for that feedback sarah lee asks is there any discussion of length in the day for elementary students as part of this conversation not that i've not that has come up to me um but that's certainly something we could look at i think likely you know there are some contractual uh concerns that probably would be expressed about length in the school day and that's really working with our after-school partners about how we could provide an extended day for for working families is the way we're going but that's a good thought we haven't thought of we hadn't talked about and we got some good thoughts this morning as well from folks um that we hadn't considered and one of the things reasons we do forums like this is not just to receive uh yay or nay feedback but to come up with ideas so lee thank you for sharing that um here's another one thank you for sharing that feedback [Music] and i'm looking at the panelists i'm trying to think if there's anything i missed when i was going through my spiel because i know i did go a little quickly through it so i'm trying to look down i'm going to bring them back on if that's okay people can remember that they're here and can ask questions of them is there anything i missed um while we're waiting for comments or questions that anyone wants to jump in or any thoughts about they've been through a number of these with me so um they're they're they may be a little tired of me hearing me say this but um sam and mickey since there's not give people more time to comment do you want to talk a little bit about some of the creative thoughts about the high school schedule and and things we're exploring because i think that'd be relevant to the conversation yeah i'm happy to begin um so this year um in an effort to reduce transitions and and prepare for you know what could be you know a lot of unknowns we changed the high school schedule to a three by three with an additional block for students who needed it and so we've gotten a lot of feedback um from families and students that they really like this block schedule and so what we did in preparation for this flipped start conversation was to prepare a seven drop one which was the high school schedule that we had prior to this year as well as a four by four block which is most closely related to the three by three that we're doing now and the feedback that we're receiving is that obviously um high school students really like the later start because they're starting at nine o'clock right now for those of you who don't have students in the high school or middle school and that they really like focusing on fewer classes at a time we've gotten a lot of feedback about that four block for next year and what that would allow us to do in light of this flip start because those of you who were around in 2011 we knew that athletics certainly played a role in not moving this forward but with a four by four block we can actually get all four uh blocks in by three o'clock however we don't meet the 990 hours of instruction if we dismiss it three o'clock instead we would need to extend the school day to 3 30 and like almost all schools that have a four by four block anticipate building in a flex period and that period would allow students to do all kinds of experiential learning they could do their alps they could do internships for students who typically take a directed study they could fill that time with the directed study so we would have a group of stakeholders looking at what that is but most importantly if students had early dismissals um for athletic competitions and so forth they wouldn't actually be missing their four core classes and so we find that that's a real benefit of if we do change the start time and going to a 4x4 that that certainly would be a benefit great thanks mickey see some questions have come in um so here's one are we looking to completely new bus routes there are big discrepancy between routes regarding number of students in length so i think the short answer is yes we are looking at different bus routes you know for instance we noticed there might be some efficiencies realized if buses at the regional level went through both shoots bear and levitt in the past we've kind of used the elementary routes in those two communities and we've our folks have sort of created some different routes and realized some efficiencies there there's always going to be a bit of a disparity students who are living in higher density housing are going to have shorter bus routes in general because they can fill a bus a lot quicker when you're talking about students living in less dense uh housing the routes are going to be longer because it takes longer for the bus to go uh there so our shortest routes tend to not just be the ones closest to the school they tend to be the one with that had the fewest number of pickups that are the most they're closely connected but the short answer is yes we are looking into all those routes um oh thank you juni i'm just gonna pull up all the comments and renata if there could be some after-school clubs like chess yeah i think that'd be great and you know back renata you remember we're at crocker farm with mr shea and we put together some wednesday afternoon clubs back in the day and i think i think you're right and i think there'll be a lot of popular interest in that so thank you for that idea that's spot on question about um what would the decision-making process be with leverage and shoots berry so sam has been in some of those meetings with the principal of both principals of both schools as well as a superintendent transportation coordinator and we are actively working with them we have a shared bus system which is again brings a lot of efficiency financially for us and particularly for them being two small districts and they're really i feel like they've shaped a lot of the conversation in healthy ways we want to start from the beginning that we want to collaborate and we i learned a lot about shoots man love and i've been to those schools and we've done a lot that i didn't know and and i don't know if sam if you have anything to add but i really feel like it's been a collaborative effort and it'll be collaborative decision making i know it was a topic conversation at their shootsbury school committee the other night so our shootsbury rep went from our meeting regional meeting to shootsbury meeting back to our meeting to report out what they talked about in shoots bear on this very topic so um it's active conversation sam anything i'm yeah just they've been very clear very frank um i think they're one of the reasons we decided we can't do the sort of full push back both both schedules and so it's been really uh helpful i agree with you and just uh some thank you sarah for the lived experience which is always really helpful um and um yeah and we have a lot of community organizations we'd want to partner with on this um so i agree with you here's a question about the three by three block for the high school forgotten learning and math and language classes um mickey sam you want to jump in because i think that's something that we have heard and we'll continue to hear and talk about our options and how to mitigate some of that or ways we might yeah i mean i think those are the choices that we're going to have to make as a community there's other block schedules that also would leave at three o'clock but it would be more of what they call the a b format which is where students would have all eight of their courses and then they would alternate every other day which will offer that continuity across the year um so a lot of schools that that find that that's what they really you know they really want that continuity all year they tend to go with the a b for communities that are looking for more focus on fewer courses they tend to choose the semester so i think when we engage the community in conversations about if we again if we go to the block which block i think it's going to be really important for you to share your feedback thanks mickey um and so another question uh with the potential move of sixth grade to the middle school have an impact on this could buses accommodate in the same time um quick answer is yes uh we've looked into that we don't have routes done because we don't exactly know who our students will be we don't know who our kindergartners will be but one grade level wouldn't tip the balance too much and the reality is our secondary buses tend to be less filled than our elementary buses uh for a whole host of reasons and so we don't see that as material affecting things at the current time um either way but it's a great question um thank you all right um well we're given a chance for people to maybe think of more questions um derek do you mind just talking a little bit about from the elementary perspective um some thoughts you had sorry to put you on the spot there um i i i think i would just respond to a couple of things that were said earlier so ronaldo had mentioned the possibility of clubs and i don't see why not you know i mean obviously uh covert permitting um we get back in the building and with um a number of uh college students and university students have come to help us in the past with clubs i think last year we had perhaps in any given day close to 100 students who stayed in the after school program which is probably about you know about a third of our of our population so i could certainly see how there could be space for for that i i do think you know from an elementary perspective any changes is difficult um but someone who's a principal in elementary school but also has worked in a high school and has children who've just most recently been through the high school i can testify that you know leaving in the morning to go on a bus at 7 10 a.m to be in a class at 7 45 as challenges i think for 16 year olds it's not an easy thing to do and i've actually noticed myself my own child who's a senior in high school doesn't have to go up until 8 30 now what a difference from having up at like you know 6 45 that's me yep and um so i'm gonna take one more question i'd love for marta if you want to jump in just about that aftercare um actually why don't marta why don't you jump in and then i'll get to the question because this is on a similar theme in terms of the after care programs sure so we are uh we're very lucky that we work very closely with our after-school uh program staff they're great they obviously are part of our community and they value you know our education and our decision making process and they're part of that so we're excited they're willing to work with us um we have we've had one preliminary meeting just to you know to share uh the plan and we're meeting again this week just to check in to talk about you know ramifications and what you know the questions are there's some thoughts about providing additional slots uh perhaps by hour so the different people are having a lot of great ideas as to how to take care of you know if the need increases um and we'll be ready to do it we have a great collaborative team and they're just phenomenal thank you dr gover um here's one just about take away from bringing students back um anecdotally i don't have data to show this but um what i've heard from other superintendents as i've spoken to them and you know we're part of our national network of schools as well as in massachusetts is that frankly it's had the opposite effect that a lot of families are attracted to um school and a school system that's taking this in mind and many private schools not all but many private schools do start the day a little bit later than most public high schools and so it yeah i don't i don't have data again i haven't i can tell you what the research says that i've read and this is not what i've read research but anecdotally um i've heard some positive feedback about retaining students and actually expanding an interest to additional students um the move six weeks to middle school on the table for next year just wonder if this would all be happening once that is a school committee decision but i feel pretty confident suggesting that the move of sixth grade to the middle school is not on the table for next year um you know i've heard no no conversation about it and i think frankly it's not possible to to achieve um it's january 25th right now uh i don't see that something that could be done uh between now and start of the next school year so i think it is a conversation the community likely will have but not for the fall um right so where's good question where's the research on having an earlier start time for elementary students or research on what a longer day with extended care for elementary students would mean um so you know the evidence that i've seen is is pretty low impact on elementary students um particularly for starting after eight o'clock because of uh when they typically wake up in the morning and i want to note that there are some elementary students school students who are gonna have a hard time because they're used to sleeping late and there's some secondary students who love to wake up early and are gonna have time really in the aggregate um so the research that i've seen on elementary students is is uh relatively low impact um either way um but that's a great question and i should have addressed it earlier so thank you for the for that um people another um [Music] miniature i'm trying to think of other topics we didn't hit this evening that we hit this morning oh oh getting them back now yeah no thank you for that um you know we'll see how the parent feedback is uh and family feedback on the survey and i think that'll give us some indication um yeah oh thank you that's very kind and you know it's really about the team you know and i feel like i'm building off there was a secondary teacher who when we did the staff town hall last week was talking about all the work they'd done nine years ago on this topic and really came from you know the educators recognizing what was happening in their schools particularly in a period classes that that's why we're here um [Music] i'm trying to think of other things that we didn't hit on i think we talked about athletics we talked about some schedules some buses some aftercare um i think we hit on a lot of the big topics today so you know again comments we'll still give it a minute or two if people have more comments or questions but you know anything that comes up for you or anything that you think about later you wish you'd ask this is not the end of the road in addition to the survey you know sasha put um it's a lot of definitely a lot to juggle for everybody involved families included but please shoot me an email shoot the school committee an email shoot anyone on this call and email if you're working with them and know them well it's not the end of the engagement but you know we wanted to share this and get this feedback and we'll be back in touch throughout the process we'll be sharing all of the data that we get from the survey publicly and sharing that out in a friday newsletter after we've compiled it and we'll keep at it and thank you all for being here and spending some of your monday night with us we deeply appreciate your interest and your ideas and have a good evening thanks so much thank you everyone

right excellent anyone else yeah just real quick and talk about stealing thunder i should have figured no that's okay because i mean in all seriousness you know this past week uh i got the students i was assigned to judge virtual and everything else and it was interesting to do and it was great to see how well prepared even virtually that these students did you know with the assignment that they had and you know i was judging a marketing type of deal program and you know how well they did and you know there were a couple of dartmouth students in there too and they did they did very well but it was just overall to see you know students you know taking a unfortunate situation and just making you know doing a you know step forward in in doing it real well remotely they were all all dressed properly it was done from probably their house their some from their home some from school i would think but you know the way they did it was just really and my hat's off to all of the students that that did that so that was good and thank you mr kylie because i had written down here food service and you talked about that and i was gonna look for an update on that but you did that so thank you i'm good mr chairman thank you anything else all right uh the next regularly session a regular meeting of the school committee is scheduled for monday february 2021 to be be held right here in the library media center at dartmouth high school at 6 30.

so when you come in you're going to mentor monday monday it's a whole term your mentor flex from 705 till 7 20 but if you get here at 7 20 it's no problem but you cannot get in the building until that's when the buses are gonna let go like 703 to get in because we don't want students hanging around there's no more cafeteria we don't want uh students just gathering in the hallway so you immediately come in you grab your breakfast on the way in you go to your mentor flex room which will be open at 705 you stay there from 7 20 to 755 and then if you are on dl or the opposite cohort you go from at eight o'clock you will join your block one class and then when we go wednesday thursday i mean thursday friday the orange group's coming in and going to their mentor their mentor flex and and things like that so the first week we start on 2-1 this is the schedule we're going to be running so why are we doing this because this is the first time for many of our students they're stepping into the building we have a you know a whole freshman class that have never been in this building and our sophomores left here in march so there's a whole you know and they were in g most of the time so now they're out in a different place so the first thing we're going to do is they got to greet each other they're going to want to see each other this is their mentor flex with their mentor teacher it'll be new for our our freshmen and somewhat of our sophomores but for our seniors that which have been with their mentor flex for uh you know four years now possibly that you know they're gonna have some time to talk and greet all the people that are in there with them we're gonna hand out ids we're gonna take some tours you know we weren't able to do tours before um this time we did it in october we couldn't get it done this time so you know the the either on a one of the days that the cohort is in the teachers are going to be taking their mentor flex on a tour of the building uh to show the up down stairwells where things are and so forth we understand that there's a group that have not been in this building yet so we want to take it a little slow we got to go over our procedures and protocols a lot of the stuff i said ids again um procedures and protocols that you saw uh the sign in and out to rooms if you're in one for more than half a second you got to sign in if you're not supposed to be in that room and things like that what the mornings and hallways and then finally how to find your bus at dismissal we got to go over that on day one or we'll have a whole bunch of kids because this is new for every student all the buses are up front and they're double lined which is going to be new for every student at dhs so it's important that that's gone over in the flex mentor flex on day one after the first week we're back to our our normal schedule 705 to 720 you arrive go to your block one 720 you are uh in your block one class and if you're in the blue team on monday and tuesday you're sitting in the desk at 7 20 ready to go we're going to be pretty vigilant about students hanging out in the hallways and getting to class on time so you know by 7 20 you'll hear the sprint bell at 7 19 and you're ready to go the big thing is the change in the afternoon in the afternoon our orange team and our dl students your job is to go to flex you should be in your flex classes you had four flex classes this day you should be in four flex classes in the afternoon if you didn't have one then don't go to it but if you did you're supposed to be in these flex blocks right here to make sure that you have an understanding of what happened in class today you know from where we stand we believe our teachers are getting very proficient in the distance learning part now coming back to hybrid is throwing a whole new curveball at the teachers so there's going to be some difficulties managing the in class and the at-home students whether they're dl or a different cohort because what we don't want is we don't want it to come in and have our students just sitting on a giant zoom but they're in school we want them to interact with the teacher when they're in there we don't want it to be just a zoom so it's important that um we understand that that we want them to go but there's going to it's also important to understand that there's going to be some you know implementation type dip of the strategies that are going on and all of a sudden the echo in the room is too loud so there's a lot of things that we're going to have to work through but it's very important that the opposite cohort go in the afternoon so that teacher and those students have an understanding that okay you got it and it may not take all the 20 minutes it's there if they walk in in mr davidson's class and john shows up and he says yep i'm good i understood what you were doing okay man just checking in see you later but it's very important we do that mentor flex is always uh the same everyone should be in their mentor flexes this is very important not only for the social emotional learning part of school but this is where they get to see the other cohorts and things like that in different people so the mentor flex is important for everybody and then on thursday friday when the orange team is in the blue team uh goes to their flexes in the afternoon uh parents if they tell you uh i have nothing to do you always first word out of your mouth flex ask them where they're going what they're doing do you have a flex yeah you should be in a flex you know you have an 89 in the class well guess what you have a 90 if you possibly go to flex so let them go to flex let them get their extra help there let them do what they have to do during this flex time that's why it's there it's built in for that purpose so they can get a smaller more individualized understanding of what's going on buses mr larosa you're right you're going to talk to this one i'm tired of talking i got a drink of water what does the front look like hi everyone we changed things a little bit this year um to try to accommodate the large number of parent drop-offs that we anticipate we've moved all of our bus drop offs to the front of the school so you can see they're going to line up in two rows in that front driveway alternating so that there's space between each bus for students to safely pass between the buses to get to the outer row mr davidson made a great video that mr donovan's going to share in a moment that shows students how to read the bus list that you can see here on the right side each day that's posted out front and that helps them find their bus use it utilizing the stop signs that are kind of marked on the sheet and then also on the driveway every day the buses don't come in in the same order so learning how to read the sheet is extremely important because when you come out of the main entrance of the school and if you have to catch your bus which is in the very front that's a good 200 meters so you can't run down there and see if your bus is there and if it's not then run back to the back you need to know where you're going and mr davidson made this excellent video that hopefully will help everyone find their bus quickly mini buses will still be in the same spot they always are which is down by the black box area and parent drop off and pick up is going to be off of beckerly street at the athletics entrance so here's mr davidson's video [Music] um [Music] oh [Music] thank you mr davidson for putting that together one of the toughest things we have is that first week of school trying to find their buses so if your your child is a freshman or has never taken the bus before uh tell them that a lot of teachers are outside we're all outside we'll help them we hold the buses a little bit extra on the first week just to make sure everyone's going but that's usually when we're dismissing about 3 300 kids and this time we're only dismissing a thousand at a time so we should have no problem getting them out there so if you're going to arrive by car you are uh going to get dropped off at the gym entrance as we call it which is off of beckerly street which is down here we're trying to keep the buses and the cars separate from each other because it kind of causes some problems what we don't want is another problem is do not drop off on field road this is a sometimes we have police officers here we don't have crossing guards sometimes there's a police officer here and sometimes they're not which makes it very difficult it's a very very busy road in the morning for anybody that traveled it the front will be shut down from 6 45 until 7 15 every day if you're arriving before or hopefully not before because you'll be staying outside in the cold for 20 minutes uh but you're arriving after that then most certainly you can use the front but during our drop off and pick up times uh please parents use this area uh we do not expect our um our student parking lot to be as crowded as it normally is um if we looked at the number of parking passes that we've sold already and divided in half it's probably about 100 110 of them for 300 spots so you can pull in here and just text them and say hey i'm in the second row come in and uh come on out and i'm straight ahead after they do what grab their grab and go lunch and walk out the door so um that's where we would like parents to drop off in the morning you come in this one beckerly drop them off and come right back out don't have to worry about the buses breakfast and lunch we've talked about you know grab a fruit on the way in uh your milk and then if the first week you're going to go into your mentor flex you can eat it there after that'll be your block one until 7 20.

um those have been with us for quite a while so but there are a few that have come and gone there are several pizza parlors that are no longer even even before now so um i would just say look at those that we did in 2020 and try to support them as much as we can nancy your point is that uh you know it would be nice if those were listed out somewhere right so you know it is it's on our website oh it is very great yeah yeah i mean they've supported us all these years we should it's kind of late in the game now but i've been trying to remember who i've seen there year after year and i i'm not sure i could identify everybody right and um that's why we're doing it the whole month of february is kind of a reminder to visit those pizza parlors because they've they've given so much because they don't charge us for that pizza everything every pizza that they brought to us has been a donation so you know that adds up and especially right now we need to support them as much as we can yeah so it would be fabulous if you could you know order your pizza from them and then you can also turn around and donate to the foundation because we do a lot of wonderful things especially the teacher grants and um you know just special things that we do for our um our students it's just [Music] the foundation is still collecting money to support families in need correct yes yes we can you know there's uh certain funds that you can uh send your monies to and uh we've been we've been buying gift cards that uh both principals at north and south get gift cards to help residents students that are in need because we don't want them to go hungry thank you terry mike anything on illinois association school boards dupage division meeting march 20th which is a saturday 10 a.m so if you haven't registered do so it's the easiest one to attend that we've had probably right yeah and what is it going to be mike is it just a speaker or yeah i think they're gonna have a presenter but i i i don't recall seeing an agenda yet for it um just it was kind of a save the date sort of announcement oh okay it looks like hank maybe he's trying to trying to find it to see if they tell us or if they just gave us to save the date all i saw was a save the date i think it's probably good i think it's going to be they're looking at making a panel presentation so i don't think it's all locked in yet oh okay okay um legislative forum yeah they've invited i'm on the action on the planning committee they invited um all of uh they've invited most if not all of the local legislators so it's still coming together yeah okay okay upcoming board meetings february 1st 2021 will be a workshop meeting at 6 30 p.m and february 22nd it will be a regular business meeting also at 6 30 p.m hopefully they will be in the administrative service building we shall see now i'm going to the administration is recommending that we cancel next week's workshop we've covered all of the items that we would need to discuss in that we don't have any any agenda items for next week you know we've had three straight weeks of board meetings and we've covered a lot in those three weeks so we would recommend canceling the february 1st workshop anybody have an objection today i don't know i just i live for seeing all you guys if you could carry on i hope that wasn't a serious question hoping that we might depending on what happens with metrics need to call a special board meeting at some point in the future anyway but i think that that february first one uh we can cancel okay and we will see everybody at the february 22nd meeting yeah and if something comes up we know that you'll call us and yeah you know okay we're gonna i'm gonna ask for a motion to go to the closed session we will not be taking any action when we come out of closed session i believe we need emotion terry for the collect to go to close excuse me to go into closed session for the collective negotiating matters between the district and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedule for one or more classes of employees and we will be discussing the board's interest and parameters to be considered in extending the support staff association ssa contract for one year terry did you move to go to closed yes second is david pharrell was it shirelle did you say yes thank you terry pavisic i roll fuller hi dan nicholas aye rick levenado hi juana vazquez drexler hi mike davenport hi

what do we do well how do we do that is historical programming historically when i first started teaching we would do a road show and we would take stuff to all the area schools we would go to all the middle schools and we'd set up like a traditional job fair booths and activities and then we'd do it at night and we'd do it at east and north and that was prior to csa and since in my tenure where we're differently and we've cons we've decided that we host two course fairs one at east and one at north and we bring the middle school students to us and then they get to see the programming in place with our student ambassadors that lead that road show they set up booths and talks and demonstrations as well but then they also get to tour the activities and also get to tour the facilities and see where we're at and we've had great positive comments both from the middle school staff and our staff and students about how that goes as dr roberts alluded to we have new challenges this year so we've had to think outside the box you know originally we were thinking okay we're gonna get through this second semester we'll all be good we'll be back face to face well that's not the case so we started talking about what we needed to do and think about it be honest i started thinking about and worrying about this last march once we started this stuff i'm like oh my what's going to happen especially when we started seeing indianapolis schools change or close and then we talked about what's that future opportunities really being positive about what it's done and so we've been able to come up with a thing that we think is uh well actually we're pretty proud of what we have so far josh burnett and i were talking today and considering the time limit and the amount of work and everything that's happening pretty proud of what we come up with so how are we doing well thank goodness for partnerships we're all about connections and working through that both in the community both within schools and both within my state organizations so working with some of my state directors came up and we found a media place called ash media and they've been able to work with us and help do this and they've done the back side of a lot of the workforce so that's been good we'll show you there our past best practices we actually took what we did in person and we've tried to replicate that as much as we can in the virtual world because that's been very very successful and if you know me i'm a handshake kind of guy and this uh mask stuff and staying six foot out touching elbows and chicken wing and it just isn't quite up to par and and so we need to be able to do it so we're trying to do as best we can we came up with a plan of action the team and i and we've moved forward and we've got a positive mindset about what this is going to look like not only for today but how it changes us for in the future and what we're looking at how we can use it in the future to do that as well so we're really excited about the different opportunities so now i'd like to go and give you a quick tour of some of the activities that we have in place now everybody understand this is still in progress this is not open to the public although you're going to get a tour of it if you see something misspelled or out of place or it's one thing or another it's not we're working on through that as you can every day we find something else we need to change update or do so here we go if i can remember how to do this nick i'm supposed to get out of presentation in show and then i think it's this one so this will be the opening of where we're at we're in the process of redoing our video here i'd play it but it's got some pretty annoying music over the top right now so we're not going to do that so it will go through and they're updating that and doing that but as you come in there'll be a link and you'll come through here and you can come in and look at resources not getting anything nick all right i swear this all worked before the meeting must have time down all right so what we've done is we've secured this so that when we look at it there has to be a password so that it's not open to the public and apparently we had a timeout issue here we've not really been on it this inactive for a while so i apologize can i ask you a question while they're doing thanks dude please are you going to be able so we talk about the four counties will this actually expand your opportunity to promote this to the other three counties that are part of c4 yeah so so part of it and we'll finish up we can move forward while we're doing it part of what we're doing is a publicity issue as well so we have mailed mailers each of you have a mailer in front of you and a brochure so that postcards have went out already we'll walk you through this real quick i'm going to go back a minute to home so as you come in here students will be able to do this we've also generated an assignment or activity for our eighth grader students that will work next wednesday for their course fair and they'll have to go through here and we're working with the middle school staff and stuff and that'll be one of their assignments whether we're virtual or in my case hopefully we'll be back in person on secondary for on wednesday but as you go through if we go to resources you have an faq different things but you can also meet some different pieces so one of the things we can do we've gotten some former student testimonials hey zeus is one of our former students hello my name is jesus palmino and i came here to share about my uh experience in c4 so i started c4 actually my freshman year and i'd let that go but i'll let you there's a lot more i want to show but jesus started in engineering found out he didn't like it ended up in dental he is one of our ambassadors he's worked for dr reinhardt here in school he's finished his associate degree at ivy tech and now he's enrolled at iu med school or iupui and then he'll finish dental school so that's one of his and then we've got a couple others that we'll scroll through that you can do and so we're putting different ones unfortunately when we video sell ourselves sometimes we catch ourselves when it pauses and we don't don't present ourselves as well but that's where that comes so they'll be able to hear that we also have parent testimonials well they'll be able to parents can visit those and check with those as students as well and listen to those and see what they have to come up with and then as we go through you can also check out different courses and see what's available to you you can also visit and see what's offered if you're a freshman incoming freshman what will line up for you and what you need to do different stats how many dual credits we give how many students we serve etc but if we go back to home and i'm happy to take we go to staff we visit our bus drivers we're still waiting on j.r owens we've got a picture of him and his train conductor outfit that he does during christmas but he wanted a different one i've got a little bit of lag here today with this so i apologize you can meet our counselor there's a message from myself the assistant you can see our support staff i got to give a shout out to sarah king annie fees bag mark dalb autumn and linda they've really been carrying the load on getting this up and going and getting all the work and some support that we need sarah's been doing all the staff videos and he's been getting all the student videos that you'll see here in a minute and then autumn's been managing a lot of it as well and managing it through sandy kent's our new print shop in graphic design support and she's one that's responsible for the different graphics and stuff you're seeing in front of you and helping us out as well and now let's get to the meat of them there we go so if we come in here it seems like there's a delay i'm working but let me pull up architecture so you'll see this for each of the programs you'll see a video from the teacher you'll see a video from the student a current student hi my name is ishaan menta i go to columbus north and i'm in the c4 architecture class and i'm taking this class because i want to do architecture as a career and i might need you to escape for me dr roberts i apologize to minimize that they can come in here and see the courses that they'll hit they can see the course guide and then they'll be able during the day students will have a zoom link so our ambassadors will be doing live ambassador meetings with our 8th graders and students and then in the evening we'll have another zoom link for our parents and and staff that will meet with our teachers and our ambassadors then if we go back to home again go into our program directory i want to show let's go to radio tv because i think i'm running out of time each of those once again we have two instructors two instructor videos couple of student ambassador videos but we also have gone and we've gotten these 360 videos so we can go through and we're showing this is the studio over the east but then i can also move around in 360 through it and see and look what that looks like see the green screen etc and then move through those other programming as well so if i minimize that they can do that once again they can do learn more they can find out and go to our webpage learn out what classes and teachers who are there and then we can get back on that piece so the opportunity for the students to really find out more examples of what they're doing and what they can see and stuff is doing i feel very optimistic about what we've gotten put in place and what we uh hopefully will be able to do and then how we can use this in the future so um with that i'm able to take any questions or answers or whatever or hopefully what we need to do but we plan on using this with our sixth grade tours this year as well because we have all of those and i i mentioned that that started 10 years ago with mrs lautner from smith elementary is the student services director over there and saying we need to help get students understanding what careers are and what that is and we kind of built upon it and we started with one sixth grade group and now we have all 11 elementaries and a couple of parochial schools and then we have some other schools from the area coming during their eighth grade year doing this same kind of scenario we started with about 2 400 students 10 years ago and we have over 3 000 this year so we are the largest school inside of bcsc plus our area school so about 3 400 total happy to answer any questions or comments or entertain or sit down and as needed but i hope you'll visit us hope you'll visit us on wednesday night and uh tour you'll be able to zoom into any of the meetings if if we reach 100 you'll just need to move to the next one and come back and meet with the teacher and the students then at that time as well because they are set at 100 limit wow that's a great website very engaging like organized and i mean really really nice job with all the content um i don't know a lot about it so i'm going to ask some really basic questions if that's okay which of your programs are like the highest enrollment rate probably our highest enrollment right now would be our biomedical with we have three four teachers in there depending on how we do it but we have a little over 450 students in there i believe right now just in that one all right and then we've you know it's fun watching some of these student videos and what they do and stuff but i won't play them right now and i can share the link and the password with us the board just don't let it out yet as we move it forward the general public will be open on wednesday it's a great program mr hack i've enjoyed attending yeah we really are disappointed that we don't have you know you know me well enough to know what we do and how we do it but we're like i said we're very optimistic of how this is and we've already started thinking how we use this tool to engage and reinforce the activities that we have in place already so we'll have this for a year under our current contract and then it'll do updates for us as well and then we can renew if we need be as well so we've been very very fortunate with what we've had and where we're at and the people we're working with are excellent and josh has met with them and talked with them and you know i trust him and he's he's given an aok as well awesome yes mr stenner dr hack can you remind us how this works i you mentioned the number of outside school corporations to have students come here and attend c4 classes can you tell us how that works in terms of funding transportation logistics how do we work through all that well that's part of my job but yes but basically we have an agreement with and the state is divided into career centers or areas we're area 41 so we have um bartholomew county part of jackson county part of brown county and then part of edinburgh so there's schools that come to us from those schools and then they'll pay a tuition reimbursement typically they come to us what we would call our multi-hour programs so that they'll be here for multiple hours or multiple credits during the day of the we have about 3000 bcse students and that includes all one-hour programming as well so our what would traditionally be industrial arts it's called technology education our facts classes our business classes and there's one more i'm forgetting in the one hour program oh the project lead the way engineering classes most of those high schools have some sort of those one-hour programs so they would have those in those high schools and then they'll send their students to to the area school for machine trades nursing et cetera and then there's a tuition they provide transportation back and forth sometimes the students will drive hauser lets some of their students drive because they're within the county decatur county lets a few of their students drive depending on as you know we've been in class the whole time and we've had students that were uh allowed to drive when their buses weren't being provided um seymour had um they were on hybrid and even when they weren't on hybrids they were providing the buses up here and students were coming in and coming up on their off days for their careers career class and then a couple on your uh classes page a couple of them have that project lead the way as part of their the course name or the area of study name can you describe what what that is and how that relates to civil war yeah so project lead the way uh there's actually um we do project lead deway at the elementary now and then there's a project lead to a middle school that we're not doing and then there's project lead way at the high school level and there's biomed engineering and computer science and we do two of the three the computer science we started and we looked at it we didn't think we were getting the value of what we needed to for the tuition or the the cost of the programming and we've kind of done it on our own and and speaking of that team we we won first place in the state and cyber patriots and we're waiting on some other words and we'll spread that out but we got noticed over the weekend we got first place on that so that's the project but what that is is it's a set curriculum in the engineering and the biomed and then the students walk through that program with a with it and then it's a stem programming biomed is typically students are interested in nursing all the way up to doctors brain surgeons as well as their in the data research or even looking at the research and doing lab work thank you very very impressive well thank you for again for the opportunity like i said and at any time anybody wants to come visit us or see us please do you know our website and hopefully we'll see you on wednesday night at the career fair in the open house and all patrons and everybody is open and it'll be live wednesday and there's mailers you can visit our website or vcsc website it's in social media and all kind in newspapers et cetera awesome so will you make a point of that you're on the agenda after the third and let us know how it went will do glad to like i said i can be here every week all right thank you all right thank you robert's gonna let you exit out i will do that thank you dr heck were there any other questions people had i didn't want to cut you short all right awesome awesome awesome all right so um routinely um we are required to have some information about technology protection and our internet safety i am going to turn to mr williams to share that information and then i'll let you do that then i'll do the gavel thing and we'll have a public hearing for people who might have questions we'll answer all mr williams will answer those questions and then we'll do the gavel thing again all right as a requirement for a participant of the e-rate program e-rate is out of the which is part of the fcc but it allows schools to receive funding based on their free and reduced populations to help pay for internet connections and internal connections within the building and we actually get a 60 discount on all of that through this program so it is vital for our success with technology part of the requirements of being a e-rate participant is to follow the guidelines of sipa or the children's internet protection act have policy and filtering in place to protect our students so part of bcsc's compliance is policy and we also partner with vendors to create an internet filter that is adjusted daily essentially from our teaching staff giving us information and they work with other schools our firewall is also available to help protect students from inappropriate content as well all right thank you for that so i'm going to do the gavel out thing so we are not in a school board meeting we are in a public hearing and this is an opportunity for people to ask questions about our safety and our our safety compliance how we do that and dr roberts we can't see who's zooming if they might have questions great point thank you dr chef sure got him i don't want to leave you out miss dayhof dwyer so are there any questions individuals have of us about safety compliance anyone here i think we're good you did a thorough wonderful job mr williams thank you i would just want to commend nick and his team in our i.t department they've had a lot of extra work to do in trying to make sure that our internet the internet is as safe as possible for our kids we've been at it about a year now in terms of some kind of e-learning it seems like going on on a given day and they've done an outstanding job thanks dave thank you very much public hearing is done and we're back in our board meeting i'm next on our agenda this opportunity for individuals who might wish to make public comment we did not have anyone sign in today so with great excitement we go to what on our on our agenda and we are going to go through um the first volume the first reading volume of our policy revisions indicate this is the first reading of these policies uh by policy we go through two readings and then i ask for your approval during that second reading so the next opportunity to review these policies will be february 8th the next board meeting so there's something that pops up tonight yes go ahead can i just suggest that as we have questions about a policy would you kind of pop up because otherwise we'll forget yes yeah there are there are few i i didn't count exactly how many there are here there are a few um a reminder to all and and maybe new information for todd and nikki is is that we we have revisions to policies about every six months as we try to stay on top of the large volume of policies that help guide the operations of our school corporation we use a company a vendor called neola in eola and they track all compliance issues new case law federal and state legislation changes just to make sure our policies can keep up and tonight's recommendations are primarily each of those some compliance situation maybe a technical correction i think there's one that's just a grammatical correction that we've caught and and or we've had some legislation change whether it be in indiana or some federal changes so i'll jump in i'll be very brief with each of these but again just raise your hand and ask a question as we go through policy 1220 employment of the superintendent that was based upon a situation that occurred in southern indiana actually where some changes were made to a superintendent's contract once new board members had gotten in and before they were able to take office uh some changes were made to that superintendent's contract and legis the legislators in the state of indiana did not like that and so they have changed to that uh and and the change in this policy is simply um yeah i guess it's in your um in your packet you have the red line uh green editions and so forth but it is that if you have in our case with uh todd and nikki coming on as board members that with this new legislative change my contract could not have been revised between the november 3rd i think was the date of the election between that date and the first meeting of this board in january only after uh todd and nicky would have taken their seats could then my contract be revised again a very specific situation caused that that is oftentimes the case with legislation there's a reason that it gets changed policy 2370.02 flex program this was just a grammatical error so there was i think establish became established with an ed at the end and so that's the change and we're putting that in front of you to make sure we get that corrected and can move on policy 2623 student assessment it this is from senate enrolled act sca 346 that states a student's score on the statewide assessment may not be the primary factor or measure used to determine whether a student is eligible for a particular course or program so sometimes you might have a situation where in order for a student to get into this program or this course they have to have a certain uh situation great or whatever sometimes schools may have been using the statewide assessment as that primary driver to get into that program or course that cannot be the primary factor or measure based upon state legislation policy 2700 is an annual performance report basically this one allows us to make the amount of information that we have to publish the newspaper smaller there is a cost to us publishing in the newspaper and so this gives us that option we can continue to publish the entire annual performance report or we can do a newly described summary report so in the policy that was given to you it outlines what we might include in the summary report the various pieces that we could uh then share so again state statute says we have to publish an annual performance report each year in the newspaper as well as on our website uh they have now given us the ability to shorten that amount take up less space cost a little less money policy 3220 is about staff evaluation uh this is has been revised again based upon indiana code it removes the requirement that the student statewide assessment results are an objective measure for evaluating certificated employees so that assessment may only be used when the results would improve the employees performance rating so there were a few changes latin last year's legislative session regarding statewide assessments you've seen the one in in terms of a student being chosen for a particular class or course another one is in regards to a teacher's evaluation and that the statewide assessment can only be used if it will improve the rating could i ask about that how will this impact our teacher evaluation hard to say dr said in that our evaluations are good meaning that um the vast majority of our teachers are already scoring at a three or a four right so then becomes how many might get a four instead of a three i i don't know at this point in time without uh seeing what the the the on our rubric right now the impact of the statewide assessment is pretty small anyway uh right minor percents when when compared to the entire rubric and what what all we're looking at so i i don't i don't think it would change it very much all right legal settlement and eligibility for enrollment of students without legal settlement in the corporation over the last 12 years 13 years the state of indiana has completely changed transfers and basically no matter where you live in indiana you can go somewhere else and you don't have to pay tuition 13 years ago if you went from flat rock hall creek hauser to to columbus or vice versa you'd have to pay tuition to do that you do not now but but corporation or at least the state allows you to not have to charge that but corporations are not required to accept transfers so we as a school corporation could say that we do not want to have transfers in our school system we're just going to close the door you either make the door wide open or you close the door if you close this the door you still have to do this so the state said regardless of that let's say you're not going to take transfer students you still need to take transfer students as long as there's capacity within your school if you have an employee in your corporation that's outside your district makes at least eight thousand dollars a year and they want them there or you have a coach extra curricular position makes at least three thousand dollars a year so it's probably a head coaching position and they want their kid to be in your school system but they live out a district you have to let them again unless there's a capacity if you have too many kids classrooms are full etc so this is the one even the school corporation there aren't many left in indiana there are a few munster is one that jumps out to me that does not does not take transfers most are taking them but if your corporation does not you at least have to do this uh this is continued um let's see this is where it takes some of the the weight off of your shoulders which is tough for you to make decisions on individual students and it gives it to the superintendent who's actually here every day to be able to review and evaluate certain circumstances and situations and potentially revoke either allow or revoke a transfer situation so it's transferring the authority to make these decisions uh to the superintendent if you are willing to to do that i'll ask real quick frequency and i've been on the board a number of years i don't remember making a decision like this ever yeah it did you said policy that has allowed it i this this was a an interesting one to me because we have assumed by practice that this is already here so we are not explicitly stating that uh that that is the case because the the volume is high um we get transfer requests daily um it's one it's two it's five but we are getting transfer requests daily now we start shoving those back because once we get to we started second semester now so we won't get too many right now for next school year but as as the semester goes on those will start rolling in a very routine basis they first go to the building principal who evaluates the circumstances signs off and then passes it to my office so our practice has been modeling this policy this addition addendum to the policy policy 5130 withdrawal from school there's a grammatical error here policy 5610 suspension and expulsion of students this was just a revision based based upon hea 1066 about credit there was a time and probably when we were on school we could remember that this maybe it didn't if you didn't get suspended but if you were suspended or expelled previously you would not be able to allow or or be able to complete work or take tests and get credit for that it was it was a significant penalty that that if you were suspended from school you might miss a major test and then fail a class maybe even the entire class for that semester so revisions have been made where if this requires schools to allow suspended students to receive credit for all completed assignments or school work assigned in the same manner as a student who is not suspended additionally that's just okay that's i thought there was another continued piece all right policy 5895 on student employment and this just changes some of the inner workings of the work permit it's now called an employment certificate so if you read through that you saw a lot of strikes of work permit the new word employment certificate and also now we have to identify an issuing officer who meets the requirements of indiana law which were listed in the policy the revisions also address the age range you must secure an employment certificate as well as documentation necessary to receive the employment certificate so just got a little bit more specific in terms of what it took to get that certificate how it could be maintained and who in the buildings were issuing that and it changed even by title to a employment certificate issuing officer i have a quick question matt dr robert is is the state taking over employment certificates next year that has been my understanding and so as as this policy was revised or or we looked at sca 409 and brought this in i'm not sure how long we're going to actually have to sustain what's in here and again sometimes we're six months in in backwards in terms of getting these passed legislation comes out last year everything gets gets put in place and now we're asking you to approve the policy but yes it's supposed to be moving away from us over over time i have to say i'm still shocked that age is the minimum yeah they're supposed to be in school so you're saying that's too young yeah okay animals on school corporation property there are some animals sometimes on our school property and this is uh let's see read through this very quickly so in the policy it made sure to define for you the kinds of animals that might be allowed to be on school property so an emotional support animal or a certified therapy dog as examples and then gave reasons that those animals could be on our property as well as reasons for us to deny that and so it may be that we've allowed an emotional support animal or a certified therapy dog or even a service dog on our property but then something happens and we have to say we can't have that animal on our property anymore it goes through the the process of of both granting their requests to allow for the animal to be on property as well as uh revoking that permission that may have been given this is one that has an extra page all right i know a couple of you were asking about that prior again we we have typically certified therapy dogs in our corporation i say typically meaning we have some not a large number throughout our buildings in the corporation very few emotional support animals and or service dogs but we have had examples of those in and out of our school buildings over time based upon student needs and situations policy 8400 is on school safety um yeah this is where it just requires us to have an mou in place with a community mental health center established under state law or a provider certified or licensed by the state so um as we all try to get better at addressing the social and emotional needs of our kids this was a school safety piece added and all corporations as a part of their safety plan have to have something in place to address social and emotional wellness including an mou with a local uh provider and we have um providers already in place in our school corporation have had for a while and and and and have added more individuals um and and services over the last couple of years through our counseling accounts initiative where at this point in time we have um mental health providers in each one of our school buildings multiple let's see i said additional comment in that regard policy 8405 is environmental health and safety issues i think the only change in this again changes to indiana code was to provide guidance for the appropriate testing of drinking water in all school buildings and we actually did this recently voluntarily tested for lead in all of our buildings and and have rectified any recommendations or situations that may have been mentioned which were very few but every single one of our buildings faucets pickets et cetera have been checked in our school buildings so i think dr we were talking about this we would not have to do this again for a few years now based upon yeah so prior to january 1 2023 thank you policy 8462 child abuse or neglect being revised to reflect changes to sca 295 that a school social worker and school psychologist are appropriate individuals to provide age-appropriate and research evidence-based instruction on child abuse and child sexual abuse that must be alien provided to students in k-12 so one of those additional things when we talk about our curriculum and the things that consume a day there are a lot of things that we are asked to do and none of them inappropriate we have kids here we have social things that go on who's maybe best to do that and mr stinner was talking about the important role public education in his reflections here's another example of that that we provide child abuse and child sexual abu abuse instruction to our kids uh in kindergarten through grade 12 during the school year and it adds um individuals who would be appropriate to deliver that for us policy 8600 is transportation this was revised to provide a new option for transporting students this is one that is pretty good in terms of being able to use other vehicles or or even buses for small numbers of kids there was a time that basically if you're going to take one kid across campus you had to put them in a school bus and take them across campus this says that you can use an appropriate vehicle which that wording does refer to things like minivans and cars and trucks and whatever else might be appropriate to to transport an individual so and if seven or seven or fewer students for that appropriate vehicle as well as a special purpose bus or school bus it does not have to be painted yellow so part of the definition of appropriate removes yellow from that policy 8800 is religious slash patriotic ceremonies and observances this was those policies revised reflect hea-1066 which is about displaying the national model in god we trust so hea-1066 has specific guidelines that we would have to follow if we would choose to display the national motto it does not require it but if we choose to then we would have to display it in a very particular way and that is outlined specifically in in this policy at this point in time we do not have uh the motto in our in our buildings policy 9700 relations with special interest groups uh this was an interesting one it may even be more interesting when you hear the word patriot these days as we just have had some interesting stuff that's happened with some of the divisiveness that's occurred in our country the pursuit to sca 398 and a new chapter of indiana code patriotic youth membership organizations so when somebody sees that they might mind might start going all kinds of places the policy has been revised to reflect the requirement that we must provide a representative or the youth membership organization with the opportunity to come into our buildings and provide oral or written information to our students they do have to have the individual would have to have a criminal history check done and based upon that criminal history check we would decide if that person could be the one to come in but what there is a a list of patriotic youth membership organizations and it is uh groups like the boy scouts and the girl scouts are are the ones that are on that list so again patriotic youth membership organizations i think can take the mind in a lot of places particularly right now with maybe the way that things have have popped up but it is a list that of of groups that we have been letting into our buildings and in one way or another sharing information with with our students but again sometimes basically all the time legislation is written or rewritten based upon specific situations and there are schools that have not allowed the boy scouts for example to come into their buildings and share information and so a legislator decided that there was going to be legislation that would require certain organizations to be able to come into our buildings yeah so i guess that whatever number of policies that is dr said we have exhausted uh them but certainly we'll take additional questions at this point sure are there other questions that you all have as you went through her standard it did occur to me it would be great if the appropriate vehicles change would actually save us some money maybe cut down on our use of the giant buses and instead add to a fleet of other kinds of vehicles would that make a big change for us i'll defer to dr bozeman but one of the intents of that legislation was to make it easier for school corporations and not to have to use uh larger vehicles to transport a very small number of students and so when you think about our c4 program for example if we typically have a decent number going back and forth but if we had five kids leaving a class to go from north to east uh we would not have to go send them in a school bus we could find another appropriate vehicle to do that and and the key to that an additional cost key would be if you're driving a school bus that takes a licensed bus driver to do that not just maybe me that could transport somebody in an appropriate vehicle i don't know right now with with what we have dr bozeman if we would see a significant change as we take this policy and and actually implement it now that it becomes in place [Music] key on that is school bus has a bunch of extra safety things and if a school bus is stopping on state road 46 with its stop arm out that's a much safer situation than us transporting a student in an appropriate vehicle uh to their to the door of their house but this does allow for some back and forth within the system thank you you're welcome good question any others all right thank you very much you're welcome again that will serve as the first reading we'll bring these policies back uh on february you know now that you've had maybe some of your questions answered if you go back to that policy having another thought please let me know or if you have a suggestion for uh revision still to those policies we can rewrite change modify up until february 8th when we ask for vote again all right thank you very much so next is our opportunity for board commendations and i wondered if colleagues had any to share i did want to share just for the um that it is a part of a board meeting just to honor the two bcsc students who have been named as lilly scholars they are haley barr and jd miller both who are at columbus signature new tech and that is an awesome opportunity for both of them so we're quite proud i do want to share that we had finalists as well and and they are to be commended for being recognized in that way marin weinicky taylor holland josie burbrink gabriela herrera brock burbrink emily martin and helena ho we're also or finalists for the lilly endowment scholarship but congratulations to ms barr and miss miller any others yes to columbus east girls basketball team of finishing first in their conference and now yes sorry get undefeated you know congratulations to those young ladies yeah that's great thank you i've got one one quick one as well um the past few months i've spent a fair amount of time on the bcsc website and i would just like to compliment all the people who have anything to do with with constructing that website i mean it's incredibly thorough it's easy for even a non-techie like me to navigate and it's just got you know anything that i had tried to kind of look up i was able to get there pretty easily and it's just you know very well designed and you know compared to a lot of other corporation websites that i've seen it's it's outstanding great thank you so much thank you for that mr grimes i'll give credit to josh burnett back here in the corner who spent a lot of time working on that as well as of course our technology team and all the pieces that go into to getting that up and running and and then there's a lot that has to keep going on to keep it up to date right so yeah i appreciate that that's a good testimonial because the josh when was it change made a year ago about a year ago and the intent was just to make it a much more usable user-friendly site so thank you for that yes thank you are there others all right the opportunity for uh school board member reports are there any lucky guys i've got two i wanted to share um on the 15th so another a friday i um got to attend my first business advisory board meeting which was fascinating and great fun i want to share a thanks that was mentioned in that meeting we had several community partners offer computers for our new i.t pathway that is at columbus signature new tech in partnership with ivy tech so analytic engineering the city of columbus sci ho offered a variety of laptops and desktops for our students to tear apart and put back together so um i thought that was very nice and i wanted to share that more publicly um dr roberts you know did a great job of providing the covid update which we all knew there were great questions as well from the members and we also shared a brief summary of legislative priorities for our corporation just to let our business advisory group know what was important to us as they might be listening and talking to various legislators um and then i got to hear about the c4 presentation and that's why we all got to hear about it so that was for that meeting the other thing i wanted to share is that um as our legislative liaison i received an update this morning from isba and there are two bills that we are being asked to monitor perhaps to oppose the first one is senate bill 55 about school referenda the details of this have to do with school board authority for any compensation provision for superintendents that might be tied to passage of a referendum if a school board wanted to offer a bonus like we pulled it off it it tells us no you can't so that's senate bill 55 senate bill 124 is about the first day of school the author is senator dennis cruz of all people and this bill would prohibit public schools from beginning the school year prior to labor day beginning in 2022-2023 so our association the indiana school board association is in opposition to these two bills so if you're interested you can let your local representatives know i'm more than happy to share additional information is to whom to send that my only commentary is those who love local control seem to not like it when we have it as a school board just an observation of mine all right any other member reports here we go cabinet reports it is our opportunity for a technology department annual update from dr bozeman and miss nick williams before dr bozeman starts there just a second since we and my mistake uh dr shed but kathy did you have anything in terms of any reports or or accommodations or anything i as i'm maneuvering the screen here sometimes i'm hiding you from view and so just want to make sure you had the opportunity to comment if you had something yes i don't have any um items to report tonight okay very good thank you i just want to make sure i didn't leave you out there okay all right good evening i'm gonna i'll be brief just to introduce nick uh quickly each each quarter uh one of our operations departments likes to give an annual update to you so food service and technology um each quarter of the year so nick will nick will speak tonight and i i'll mention a couple things of nick and his apartment because he he he will pass the credit to his people quickly but um technology as you as you well know is one of those departments that is ever evolving and ever-changing um and especially with our challenges with pandemic and and me calling nick and saying hey we're going to go to e-learning in a week and he says okay and say hey we need we've got a lot of kids that don't have connectivity we need hot spots and he says okay and in managing longer term upgrades we've had with wi-fi updates in the elementary buildings during the whole time and maintaining the the high level of achievement that we have uh with with edtech instruction in the classrooms as we as we navigate through this so um i just want to acknowledge that publicly with you all appreciate the time because i know nick is very humble and he will pass his credit uh off to all of his folks which he should but it's much to his credit as well so i'll let nick give you his annual update and talk about what's going on in the technology department thank you thank you nick are you going to use the clicker you want me to i got it okay all right well um first off thank you guys for having us give this opportunity to update you annually on the technology department without dr bozeman's support cabinet support and your support we would not be in the situation that we've been fortunate enough to be in this past year fortunately for our staff students and families that we serve give a lot of credit to my team because uh they do a tremendous job they would typically be here tonight but under the circumstances i had them stay home and they're probably watching on youtube right now so um being able to do that is nice as well so we have three wings in our technology department the first one is operations and that's led by eva cagwin down in the bottom right and that is anywhere from the telephones to devices to classroom av anything that really plugs in and much more including our network so eva's team's the largest team and she takes on a lot of responsibility the next one is mr tribbett he's been with us for several years and they run essentially every system we have over 60 systems and this is from people timing in uh to get paid to the buses to food service to curriculum resources and they have to handle all the state and national reports so that is a team that has been under the gun quite a bit with schedule changes things like that and then the last one is our education wing and that is led by brenny she is in charge of the learning management system and professional development for edtech for our staff and then as well as resource adoptions which they just started so very hard working team and team is is very much of what they are part of so our infrastructure which has allowed us again to i think set us up for success before the pandemic and then also kind of through some of the work here we almost all of our decisions are tied to universal design for learning so we look at what gives students options and invest in that way and what breaks down barriers for learning so we are a one-to-one district first grade through 12th with chromebooks and laptops and we do have devices pretty much in the hands of almost everyone we as dr bozeman mentioned have been able to update with e-rate which we had the hearing for earlier in all of our educational buildings and that is to the most updated standard of wi-fi which hopefully will carry us for many years forward and we also have invested in cyber security heavily and we actually have a 7 365 monitor network with a partnered vendor who kind of helps us really deal with any negativity that could come towards that aspect and then we have one learning management system as well which is it's learning all of our staff and students log into that daily and have been heavily since march all right so each year i'm going to share a story with you about kind of how we've changed this year of course we'll be about the pandemic i i feel that we have done the best job that we've been able to do a lot of that comes from teamwork and collaboration so our department has had um you know obviously some that have been out for close contacts we have also had some retire and we have a changing schedule all the time with the district not really knowing what to expect next and all of that has been all of our staff has been extremely flexible in handling those changes or stepping up when we need them to that we've had staff stay after to get a device for a family that works all day and it'll be after our typical hours we've had staff deliver devices or hot spots to families homes who can't make it in worked with ell departments special ed department really throughout this pandemic to to kind of make the best of the situation as we can and we are included which is i'm again very thankful for in almost all bcsc decisions at some point so we know what's coming we also have vital relationships with our vendors one example is verizon with those hot spots we ordered them in march just before everyone started ordering them but our rep actually went into verizon stores that were since closed to get hot spots for us shipped to us quickly so that we could get them to our students so we had vendors going above and beyond as well to help us work through this pandemic and then because this is all new nobody really knows kind of what's coming next we work with partners around the state so all of our technology leaders are involved in some aspect with other peers that's just kind of a list of some of them that we're involved with all right so then how does it change our work in supporting in-person bridge cbp hybrid and e-learning i think we had a taste of e-learning a few years ago where we've had kind of again that structure to support we just haven't done it for nine weeks and now for another couple months all e-learning plus everything else so the call center has has really been valuable for our families at home and we continue to run that and have run that since march virtual meetings like we're running a zoom right now that was you know just kind of here and there before the pandemic now it's really an expectation to do that everywhere and with our students and helping support learning our students some students are on almost every day at google meet and staff on zoom accounts so learning those interfaces and a lot of help with josh included trying to figure out the ins and outs of that and then communication has been vital we had an issue with a local network at one school in the morning and it's it's to the point where we were e-learning at that point do we tell staff to delay everything is somewhat very urgent so we've created status pages that parents and families can check to see what systems are up or if any are having issues send text alerts and then we've had a few bugs here and there that have required fixes and we kind of communicate those through our website as well and connectivity is the biggest barrier i feel for our families at home this is not only socioeconomic but also geographic so we have early on we kind of pointed our wi-fi units to go out into parking lots so we actually had families in the spring that would get lunch and then sit in the parking lots to work on work while they were there because their internet at home was non-existent or poor and then at this point we've distributed over 400 hot spots that we have to manage so you can see the map down there of where they're distributed throughout the county so that south west corner is the the biggest need around mount healthy and we're now working with the county and state to hopefully try to see improvements throughout the county in future years and then everything is really hard to get so we still are waiting on devices from our spring orders for this year usually they come in over the summer they've been just rolling in when we've been able to get them in shipments so we are have dealt with kind of as soon as one's needs repair we get it fixed right away and we have a good team that that helps with that all right and then the last one is uh professional development i think one of the first ones that we realized was going to be virtual was the udl institute so ronda tina dr van horn and his team really kind of pushed us today let's do this so we did an all kind of virtual udl institute and since then we've been doing almost all professional development virtually it's been nice to be able to continue to offer that monthly we've expanded to more support staff and it's easy to record and just post up so that if you do miss it then you can catch it later so we've had an increase in participation in any kind of edtech professional development throughout the district all right what questions may you have wow do you have particular questions i i do lots of newbie questions again nick okay um what what does the device life cycle look like in the school system so do you have do you have a two year cycle a three year cycle is it fixes fail what is it it is a four year cycle so every first grader fifth grader and ninth grader um gets a new device and it'll follow them regardless of what school they go to until the end of those four years so we're buying for three grade levels um every spring okay okay good um and i know you know this i'm a parent of a middle schooler and i have to commend your team for she hasn't had a single problem and i'm sure you get feedback from the from the people that do but it's just been a really seamless process for for me and my family so really great job because that can't have been easy and then one more question and it's a little maybe out there but you know the pandemic has taught us all so much about technology my mom can do things today that she could not have done six months ago okay and we all have right we've all gotten more accustomed to just these things um to replace some some of the in-person stuff how does you and how do you and your team think about when we get back to not the new normal but like normal normal what are some things that you think will carry with us through kind of this last year of experiences are there any any aha moments do you guys feel like you've had that that might change normal normal going forward i think the the flexibility that this district has offered to our parents i think his has opened doors to how we look at what education may look like in terms of the virtual options for elementary and secondary students so i think those offerings for our students we anticipate to continue and then our staff again we our use of a learning management system was high before the pandemic hit and it has just taken our staff to another level in terms of what they're doing and how they're teaching online and i couldn't be more kind of proud to see it you know you have to search it a little bit in my position and we searched for stories on kind of the excellent things that teachers are doing but i think just that continued use of being able to have content anywhere anytime so if a student is out for whatever reason they will continue to have high quality instruction and that could be you know anywhere from college visits to maybe an extended outage because of a hospital need or a medical need so i i think that will continue us forward and just show that we can learn anytime anywhere thank you mr stenner in the partnership slide you mentioned the bartholomew county broadband initiative and then a couple slides later you had the map of all the wi-fi hotspots that are needed and initiative that the county is undertaking will help some of our students yes i don't think one answer is going to answer all of the issues that our families have but we do have areas of the county that it is it's just really expensive to bury fiber and get out there and and really if you're a company it's not worth it if you're just taking it to one house so the state um in the nationally are providing more funding to help families that may be in those situations get fiber built out to them and then they have more options so i i do think it will improve it but it will just take time thank you very good are there other questions you all have i was i was thinking similar to nikki i was i'm curious maybe you don't want to answer this now but i'm curious that with this experience if there are particular recommendations that you will either have for leadership or have for us to think differently about now that we know our potential or capacity or technology issues you know just i think it'll be very interesting for all of us just to rethink but we don't have to do it that way anymore i mean just even the c4 presentation i mean i i know gene loves to go me to everybody but he is going you're just going to be exposed to so many more people um with the presentation that he offered earlier so i'm just curious if you've got this like list in your head like i'm gonna be sure that we talk about doing this in the future yeah absolutely um and we've already actually started meeting about what do our virtual options look like next year but things like i mean even as as josh has set up some of the live streaming first athletic events um to you know having this accessible to everyone uh it's possible we have the infrastructure to do it um and we're seeing increased engagement in our community when we do do it so i think i think yes there's lots of possibilities there to further engage our stakeholders and let them be a part of us and let us share our story uh in a more unique way nice well that'll we can look forward to that all right other questions thank you very much thank your team as well thank you nick all right dr roberts all right hard to follow that great presentation good information thank you again mr williams but we'll jump into the business part of the meeting and i'm going to ask for approval for a few items here included in those items minutes of the regular school board meeting from january 11th our last one supplemental contracts there's a list of different things that we have paid some teachers for and also have typically there are field trips slash professionals and or school fundraisers but there are no requests this time so you did not have any of those in your packet i am asking that you approve a resolution to continue leave related to ffcra which is the family's first coronavirus response act and asking the weekend that we receive permission to receive or ask for food service bids it's that time of year where we'll solicit vendors and get bids from them so that we can look at next year's food costs uh the ffcra so real quick on that resolution before i turn it over to to you for um consideration um it the act itself expired the provisions of the act expired on december 31st were not continued by the federal government we believe it is important to continue to recognize at least a portion of that act and specifically we are looking at an individual one of our staff members any of our staff members who is is having to be home because basically we've told them they have to be home they are displaying symptoms uh related or like covet 19 or they have tested positive for covet 19 or we've identified them or maybe they've been identified somewhere else but as a close contact identified as a close contact and must stay home for a few days so with the ffcra we continue to pay those individuals for the days they are not here and they do not have to utilize their sick days personal days whatever other paid time off pto they might have and that was the way it was for the entire first part of our school year because of ffcra and we are extending that through at least the end of the third quarter so this resolution takes it through the end of the third quarter uh based upon circumstances when we get to spring break or that time frame uh we'll review this again i might bring you another resolution to extend it further based upon circumstances but we'll see what the circumstances are let's hope that things get better and more shots are in the arms and all that kind of stuff are happening but uh when i mentioned the specific part of ffcra that we were covering and listed those things there is a piece about fmla uh that's related to if i am caring for somebody and i stay home for that reason uh somebody that is having to stay home because of cover 19.