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[Music] so [Music] so [Music] city elementary school board on thursday february 11th 2021 at 5 30 p.m roll call corey burgess here genie we'll go you second on each one tonight if you're there i was on mute genie borland's here okay amanda amen here charlene diaz here all right hey item 3.1 of the workshop policy bca bdd well it's through bca through bdd dr stewart mr president board members so bc a has to do with board member ethics i don't know if you have any questions or comments about these you'll notice it has the c at the top uh next to the letters which means it's one that has been vetted by the attorneys and and follows that legal reference are there any questions on the board member ethics no no right okay mr president bcb it has to do with board member conference a little more legalese in this one any questions on the conflict of interest okay this is the exhibit bcb-e is the exhibit that goes with the previous policy and it's the one that you all signed when you became a board member and if no it doesn't say so i think that carries over as long as you're a board member the only reason i was thinking about that is i'm on another board i'm on two other boards actually and we have to sign these annually so i didn't know if it said that but i don't see that right any questions you guys have done your homework that's awesome bda board organizational meeting and this is the meeting you all had last month that elects your officers and establishes your board meeting nights or days and and times any questions on vda and this one is the board officers and it's the duties of the president you can see this one was from 2014 and this is the one where we recognize that our board did not have a policy or any inclusion about a clerk and i'm looking at the other one to be sure okay so um i think back when we had this originally on your on your workshop agenda i won't i don't remember absolutely for sure but i think we had a sample of the the policy that establishes a clerk um so if you want we can present that uh to you all too to formalize that process and it's going to read very much like that one is just going to say what the clerk's duties are so we'll bring that to you do you want that in a workshop or you want it attached or with these when they come on the agenda next month just yeah we don't need to have separate workshops we don't need a separate okay yeah we've already discussed that one yeah uh okay all right and then the last one for tonight is bbd uh the relationship with the board any questions on bdd all right they look great i'm not sure that all the workshops on these are going to be only four minute workshops because i suspect i suspect some of them are going to have a little more discussion um with your permission for your workshop in the future if you want more policies on next month's workshop if you'll let me kind of judge if i think they're ones that are going to be lots of discussion or if they're going to be like this if they're going to be like this maybe have more of them all right yeah okay and but i was trying to keep it small because you all said keep it you know keep it small but if it's if they're kind of like these where there's probably not much you're going to talk about maybe we could have eight or ten and if it's ones you're going to talk about a lot or might talk a lot about four or five if you'll give me permission to do that okay thank you because you saw how big those books are it's going to take us a while all right uh so with that uh we need a motion to adjourn the workshop a move that we adjourn the workshop high second all in favor aye corey burgess jeannie all right let's aye amanda ayman hi denise borland sorry i keep forgetting to take it off mute guys hi charlene diaz so moved all right uh so we have a little bit of time before our scheduled meeting so we will breaks and we'll come back at six o'clock [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] i called to order this regular meeting the bullhead city elementary school board on thursday february 11th 2021 at six o'clock p.m uh roll call corey burgess here janie borland here amanda amen here charlene d is here just missing brandy dubois this evening uh citizens present if you please sign the attendance sheet in the back and if you would join me for pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you call the public this is the time that the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board and subject to reasonable time space and amount of restriction the governing board may establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically waived by the governing board at the conclusion of the call to public individual members of the board may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask that a matter be placed on a future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters that have not been noticed in advance of the agenda do we have any calls to the public today all right item 2.6 adoption of the agenda can i get a motion to adopt the agenda submitted i motion to adjust adopt the agenda estimated i'll second that motion charlene diaz all in favor aye corey burgess aye genie borland aye amanda amen hi charlene diaz so moved item 2.7 superintendent report dr stewart uh you have all the written reports uh for attendance and adm next week is the hundredth day and so of course we've been kendra and our people have been all over trying to make sure that all of our numbers are right because we'll be looking at any budget adjustments that might need to be made after that in addition to any of the other adjustments that ada fi ade finance department has told us we need to make and you've got some building report tentative plans for next year that we're working on and the consolidated financial report i don't have any particular updates for you uh last minute miscellaneous things unless you have questions do you have any questions for dr stewart at this time all right uh moving on to donations we'd like to thank all those people who donate to our schools um this month we did receive a donation to sunrise elementary school in the amount of 2500 from the fiesta bowl wishes for teachers toward pe equipment the district office received an android tablet with keyboard and memory card at an estimated amount of 145 dollars from dog from bob siebert and bullhead or desert valley schools a 48 check from the blackboard giving fund your cause and a 200 check from the river valley artist guild inc uh k for rock garden uh it's incredible how much our our community steps up and helps our schools and it is greatly greatly appreciated um item 2.9 uh board member updates anyone have any updates they want to share i do um so um yes uh we we talked in our in our last meeting in our workshop a meeting ago uh about our staff appreciation i just wanted to update the board on where we're sitting with that we've had some great ideas come in uh that that we've that we've shared i want to share some ideas that i had i'm gonna share what um i did receive from brandy and amanda you had a couple ideas that i think you if you don't mind taking a couple minutes to share those too i'll start with brandy brandi had some good ideas of sharing of some epic she called it a discount program that i will pass on to kim and make sure that we have it as far as individual recognitions that we can do which were great uh she talked about doing a uh really just a big party for our staff because this has been a a really crazy year uh we've seen some some things probably none of us ever imagined we'd ever see and our staff has overcome obstacles that that no one should ever have to face and kudos to them because we truly have a fantastic staff top to bottom uh and and when i say staff appreciation i'm not just talking our teachers uh every person in our district is phenomenal and they truly care about their job they care about our community they care about our kids and and i wanted us to put something together where we could we could give back and and brandi's ideas about you know a large staff appreciation meal getting it catered possibly some some things and i'll share that out with each of the board members so we can kind of see where that's going um i had talked to uh dr stewart about ways we can liquidate stuff that the district has had for i use stuff loosely um that the district has had for a very long time um that just sits there and collects dust uh when we disperse of district equipment district belongings we can throw it away if it's garbage we can auction it off or we can sell it for market value we have so much stuff that we have accumulated over decades and some of it has been sitting for decades i want us to auction this stuff off and we check the legalities of it what we can do with this it is it is doable there is ways we can make this happen uh there's already a line item that this goes to we can use this money for the ideas that we've been coming up with and it could be significant because uh i don't know how many of you are aware mountain view when it closed um we have all of that stuff and it's sitting there i'm kind of the mind frame if it's been sitting for five years well well what is this there's not much there i just remember there's lots of stuff yeah um stuff kind of encompasses things stuff it's stuff and i'm kind of the mind frame if something's been sitting for five years and we haven't touched it we don't need it um so dr stewart said well we don't want to get crazy with this there's stuff that we definitely want to keep because we never know and we're going to need desks we're going to need file cabinets i get all that but there's plenty uh we have containers of stuff and we we want to get rid of it and we can turn this into something and the best part about this we can take all these items from this auction we're not dipping into our budget so we're not going to be taking money from things that are already allocated to help our students where we're going to create a new fund that we can do some really good things with um so we're going to get all the details on that and hopefully i don't see why we can't have this ready to to roll out by our next meeting yeah where we say this is what we want to do this is our plans this is how it's going to happen because we've already got everything in the process and going and then i think this idea can kind of help put these other things in place amanda what did you have to um i just had some things that um uh we we've kind of done similar things before but staff and student of the month for each school and by staff again that does not just strictly limit to teachers that includes your classified as well as your certified so we really a lot of things for a staff and student raffles we could find you know do some raffles at each school if we donated to them for the pd days that um i know at mojave each month mr lawrence loves just little things to give away what is it the jump drives or the jump drives yes but uh computer fan i mean he's gotten a bunch of things that have been donated masks all different things and he raffles them off each month and it's always kind of a fun thing must [Laughter] you know i know that many many years ago we used to do on-the-spot recognitions so if we could maybe have the opportunity where staff or principals even would nominate a staff member each month and we could recognize them here at the board level just even if we say thank you and they're not in attendance but we mention the hard work that they're doing or that they've been recognized if we wanted to we could throw them all in a pot draw at a prize if not at least we're saying thank you and have an opportunity to do so um as you say a lot of the times we talk about our staff and what a wonderful job that that our whole district does um but it is nice every once in a while to get that little pat on the back that comes specific feedback instead of everyone together so it'd be kind of nice um i think what else i know that at the high school level our administration tries to thank our staff by at pd days we cook and we feed and it's usually well received and uh i usually work a grill and not opposed to working one somewhere else so i wouldn't be opposed to going and cooking for them so yeah and i think these can all be great ideas we can carry out and and my my big thing was is i didn't want to to to take away from a budget items where where we need that other places so this this is awesome things that we can do um i would love to to show our staff how much we truly do appreciate and love what they do for us um so so these are great ideas thank you very much if you don't mind sending me your file we'll get all that over to uh we can't oh you've already got it great she's already already sent it to you oh even better you guys are so efficient i love it so uh we'll keep that and and keep this going so next month we'll have the answers on that and we can present that to the board and say okay this is where we're at um and and i think we we're heading in the right direction on that and it'll be it'll be a great thing okay any other board updates okay uh item three the consent agenda if we get a motion to adopt the consent agenda as submitted a move that we accept the consent agenda as presented i will second that all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland aye amanda ayman aye charlene diaz so moved item 4.1 the revised job description dr stewart as i continued to work through job descriptions to bring to you new ones this month uh recognized first of all that a couple of folks titles were getting cumbersomely long and tried to figure out a way to make them a little more manageable and in the process also had feedback from our office people here at the district that you approved for last month and they'd had input to begin with but as they work through their job they go oh yeah i do that too and so they brought those things to me if they were significant things i felt we needed to put them in the job description because we would expect their replacement to do those things so these revised ones are the ones you saw last month with some changes you know some of those kinds of changes but then i also went in to the part that says works closely with and updated the the new um you know the changed titles for a couple of those people so uh the ones you're looking at in this group were ones you approved last month these are just some updates on those and then in the process if you would also i'm requesting that you build into this motion permission or authorization for me in the future if we find some of those other little things that need to be changed so we find a grammatical error or punctuation or some little thing or a change in title of that works with works closely with that i can just go back and change those without bringing those back to you all right any questions on those job descriptions we need a motion to approve the revised job descriptions as presented and authorized for the superintendent to make minor changes to previously approved job descriptions i will second that all in favor aye corey burgess hi junie borland aye amanda aymond aye charlene diaz so moved item 4.2 calendar reconsideration dr stewart mr president board members as you know the high school district voted on a district board voted on monday night to approve the calendar that they had looked at last month you all approved a calendar that starts a week later last month for reconsideration this month based on what what the high school did and so i know that's part of your consideration i will tell you that i presented these calendars both of them to the certified meet and confer committee and the classified meet and confer confer committee discuss the issues that you know that that they had essentially uh the biggest issue they had with the the two biggest issues they had with starting the week later was one that missing payday and the other one was some concerns of course about child care and tiny t-birds not being open not being open that kind of thing so those were really the only things the one other suggestion that the teachers had is what i gave you as a proposed one revision from the one you approved last month which was simply moving the february parent conferences a week earlier to allow to allow presidents weekend to be a four-day weekend and that would be the only other change both of those committees recognize that at some point these calendars moving back a day a day a day we're going to get to the place where we're going to be the middle of july or we're going to have to shift a week and both committees said let's do the shift now so essentially the consensus we didn't do a vote but a consensus was to approve uh to go with the calendar that you all approved last month with the one change in the parent conference days my biggest concern by not having an aligned calendar even though it is that week is the younger students siblings so we're gonna have um you know that that gap have we reached out to or do we know boys and girls club availability i haven't actually talked to autumn in fact i meant to do that today and was in meetings the entire day but the last time i talked with her she said she would adjust their schedule to match to help us with any of these kinds of issues certainly for this school year so i don't have any particular reason to think that she would not do that for us for next year any questions do we have a motion i move that we accept the or yeah accept the calendar as proposed with those changes that work so the one presented that shows the change yeah okay all right i want to make sure do we have a second i second all in favor genie you didn't oh i i i sorry thank you hi genie i'm losing my mind corey burgess hi amanda amen hi charlene diaz uh so moved sorry i apologize um item 4.3 return to school plan update consideration dr stewart mr president and members of the board first i would like to thank you all for bearing with us and my continued request to stay in phase two as long as we have but i think it's paid off for us we have had we've had only one student case this week reported so far this week and i think we only had two last week and no new adult cases in the district we have a couple of folks who are out but no new cases so i think that it has really been good that we've carried this on so the the proposed changes i sent you it was attached to the agenda and i try to color code the changes each time so you can see where we're going not many changes i am recommending that we move into phase three with the one caveat for lunchrooms if you will or for cafeterias that's going to be the one time during the day when kids have their masks off and so i'd like us to to try that do to do it we'll do as much social distancing as we can with the groups of kids going in so that that's kind of what i'm asking for is that we can at least do social distancing and let each campus each site develop their their midday routine to make this work so that they've got you know kids in there that they're not having six lunches that they you know to make it work with two or three or what they ordinarily have but it's not going to be the same at each site and let them design their own way of making this happen i also took out the original phase three piece that said that we would do some certain things for the first four weeks i just think we'd go into it and and then see where we go with it so relatively few changes in that make this as close to normal as we can for right now and still be safe with our masks and our distancing when we can questions some question under the food delivery it's it sounds kind of uh weird where we crossed off family members or so it's free delivery of food by non-employees vendors well originally originally we just you know we were really trying to not have anybody come on campus and we don't want vendors to deliver food to kids right so should it say delivery of food by vendors and not non-employee vendors or does it or i'm just saying i think it reads it just reads weird it does i we could change that i just thought it was easier to you know from the original document just to cross off the piece that's going away because we're no longer family members can bring lunch for their own children yes yes but a vendor can't just show up and deliver right some we don't want a parent to call and have a delivery right right i was going to say exactly the same thing so thank you i just it just it would just sound kind of it does it does kind of and i could have awarded it different crossed off different things i could have done that i was trying to keep uh trying to keep things you know i always want you to see when i'm when i'm recommending that we that we strike something or when we add things so that you can see what the actual change is and that and that the public can see what the actual changes are that we're that we're recommending here any other questions okay so this is going to give us back to sorry go ahead genie and in the phase three will we still be quarantining a class if one student comes in positive yes we're obligated we're obligated to do that under the executive orders and under the health department unfortunately but but the thing is that's part of what's kept this under control is you know that we've we we have uh we have at this point as of last month we had absolutely no documented cases of students getting covid at from from exposure at school we can't say that this month but um because it's it's questionable i can't say that it was but it was questionable um and i think that's part of it so yeah we unfortunately need to continue to do that and dr street for clarification the pre-coveted breakfast was in the classroom we it wasn't at middle school and junior high so saying that we're going to the pre cove it allows the the um the elementaries to continue with the breakfast in the classroom because that's what they were doing pre-coveted and there are lots of reasons to continue to go back to to keep doing that from before not the least of which is ninety percent of the kids will eat breakfast when it's in the classroom sixty 60 or less eat it when it's in the cafeteria and we all know that kids need full tummies when they're starting the day so uh it's it's in their best interest to be to be doing that um but we would you know we would go back to the cafeteria things one of the reasons and i want to be sure to say this to you one of the reasons that i ask you to wait until the 22nd which is a week from monday is we will have to change the beginning of the drop-off times and the bus routes for the middle school and the junior high because with the elementaries where they eat in the classroom they get off the bus they go to the classroom they go to eat and that won't change right now for the rest of this year but for the junior high and the middle school where they're going to go to the cafeteria we have to have that piece of time and this year we had changed their schedule so that the buses were arriving just when the kids needed to go to class now we need to put back in that time for them to go to the cafeteria so that's going to change that's going to change bus routes and we kind of need a week to not only it won't take very long to get the routes changed but we need time to give parents that notice so that they've got a little time to plan for that for for a week from monday and it will extend the work days for our bus drivers so uh we're going to have some expense with that but it's covid related expense so this is going to one of the one of the issues we're having before is is staff being booked their entire day without a break by going to this this is also going to free up that time it should free up something they're going to get yeah it should some time in there so and i will tell you all of our sites have been very creative in terms of figuring out how to give people a break the the um jen and i spent some time at sunrise last week because of the circumstances and everybody and i'm sure this happens at all the sites but we watched it happen at that site where folks you know would have uh particularly the special teachers would have a little break and they would they would go relieve somebody you know for even 15 minutes so the sites have been pretty creative in making that happen but this will help relieve some of that yes all right do we have a motion i move that we move into phase three starting february 22nd um as presented in our our guidelines i'll second that all in favor aye corey burgess hi judy borland aye amanda amen aye charlene diaz thank you another question on that quarantine though i know you said it's in the executive orders but we're the only district doing that is it recommended or is it mandatory it's recommended by the health department and i'm not aware that we're the only district doing it i know kingman does it i know i mean the schools mojave valley doesn't do it because they're doing virtual i don't know about the i know that young scholars has not had any student cases so they've not had any need to do that these are conversations where we share information at the superintendent's meeting so i'm not aware of what other district i mean i don't know other than the high school that i know doesn't so if you know some of those sites jeannie let me know but we've been working very closely with the health department i know mel is not doing it young scholars is not doing it the high school is not doing it i as i said i know young scholars hasn't had a need to do it tawny has told him it has told us that you know they've not had any student cases and they've not had any staff cases so they haven't had any need to do it mal i i was not aware one way or the other i know kingman does it um and you know we work with the health department on it so okay we hope we don't have to do it anymore any other questions okay moving on to uh 5.1 correction of governing board action from january 25th 2018 regarding the configuration of bullet city school district schools mr president and board members uh this is kind of a convoluted situation but we were not able to get our 40th day you know our october 2nd adms settled because of some issues because they would not count seventh and eighth graders who are in a classroom at the middle school and they would not count fifth and sixth graders who were in a classroom at fox creek so we brought to you the approval of making both of those schools five through eight at the time which you did and then it had to go to the sfb the school facilities board for approval before ade would accept it it turns out that that's because sfb has to certify that we have the appropriate square footage at any of our sites for the grade levels that we want at those sites they forgot to put it on an agenda so we had to wait a month it's been on the agenda it's been proved uh it's been approved but then they sent us questions about uh about what programs were at sites so we went back to the um the board meeting from january 25th of 2018 and you saw the wording in uh both in the age or the minutes because i had kim give you the minutes and then i put it in my memo of explanation in the process of that we realized that things are a little different at coyote than they were in 2018.

all right all right so we're live so today we're talking strictly about vaccinations and how that applies to us here in arps and and i think um do you mind giving like kind of a rundown as to where we are as far as the community with the uh the vaccinations so far with our clinics sure so um can everybody is it working oh good i am muted that's the good first step okay so right now in terms of the community we have started phase two and we are in the first step of phase two which is those 75 and older governor baker did announce that at mass effect the four mass vaccination sites around the state that caregivers accompanying an elder over 75 to their appointment could be vaccinated as well that was after they identified that um there was a barrier to elders feeling like like they could participate in those mass vaccination sites without someone obviously accompanying them for safety and also because it can be very disorienting to be in such a big space uh as of right now in terms of our amherst site locally we've done over on monday evening it was over 20 2500 vaccines so i think we're probably about 2 800 right now so by the end of february we will have done more than 3 500 if we're able to still get all those doses from the state we now have a full accompaniment of volunteers uh we're on boarding staff to help support this effort and um we're just really excited to get it up and running and chug chug chug along so we can get as soon as we can to the next steps of the continued phases there does continue to be a shortage of vaccine to the state of massachusetts which is uh unfortunately a barrier to us being able to move quickly to the next steps but i know we're all working our hardest to get there in terms of locally we have two sites we have our amherst regional high school site and then our smaller site here at the bang center the amherst regional site we do it in the in the mornings and are out by afternoon so that way athletics can still occur and we can get those air changes in the gym so that it's safe for our students and our coaches and other staff um after our clinics end and then here at the bing center uh unfortunately we're not able to have as robust clinics here because of obviously our size constraints but we are still having those smaller clinics too as well um a question about that do you um and you have a good handle on the number of vaccines that have been distributed do we know about what percent of the way through people estimate to be over 70 we're through yeah what i heard yesterday which this has not been seen in a data point but it's from a reliable source is that they believe about 50 of those 75 and older have been vaccinated throughout the state as a as of this time excellent and is there there's a is there a marker of percentage that we're going for before we open to the next i would imagine so but that's above my pay grade unfortunately and they're not sharing that but i think it's a question that a lot of us are thinking about okay yeah thank you yeah for sure and thank you so much for all of your hard work that has gone into arranging clinics and arranging volunteers and dealing with the uncertainty of numbers of vaccines that you're going to have from day to day and week to week and really adjusting and being able to implement new plans on the fly we are so grateful for your work in the county um in in the community that you've been able to give to us for for helping us get people vaccinated here in western mass yeah it's it's only i mean i'm a small piece of it um but really it's the entire team um not just the town of amherst but really working with the school ben i know i've worked with you and rupert and and don the amazing head custodian at the high school and the other great team players there like it's really everybody coming together and and that's what i really love about these this kind of activity is is like you said the volunteers it it's engaging our whole community in this effort and us coming together at this time to not just i i think it's that next wave of covid response um that's really touching to all of us uh to kind of really directly affect others in our community thanks emma i've got a question it was just announced this afternoon that their state is redirecting doses to some of the super vaccine centers in the eastern part of the state state redirecting from western mass and i'm just wondering if you know how many like the amount that they're redirecting and how that's going to affect us yeah we're not sure we haven't gotten confirmation of that that's certainly a question that we're all thinking about um i know that senator comerford and representative dome have been advocating for us fiercely out here and our unique needs being in western mass um that individuals going to a mass vaccination site can can mean a two-hour round-trip drive for a lot of our community members which is certainly a barrier so i don't have the answer to that um i'm as we're on this meeting i'm hearing emails ping into my email box so that could be it but as soon as we know i'm sure we'll communicate that with everybody and is the state still receiving um eighty-six thousand dollars i heard anywhere from about eighty to a hundred thousand okay um i think krista do you have anything else about number of doses um just curious about um how how it works if if the state is i need time to formulate that one before it comes out properly okay um the end of a very long day and a very long week long week um does the state still have in um the cold storage oh i don't know the answer to that but there are some that that are being that are being stored currently correct they're not that are not uh have not been distributed or have not been earmarked for distribution i i would imagine so but i don't have the answer to that i know the last time i had heard um all all of their distribution except for five percent this was two weeks ago had gone out to the end points but that certainly that number certainly could be updated by now you know i had a question about something i learned about today that i personally am excited about but um so so today i was in for well actually yesterday i was informed but i got confirmation today that that um veterans working in education will be getting kind of fast track to the ex like next week fast-tracked into the the vaccination program i was wondering if you had any information about water i i don't i think that's being coordinated on a federal level through the va program um in terms of the state involvement i'm not sure we're a conduit to that but i believe that's a va initiative yeah just in case there's any educators paras food service workers i think i took care of our department today that are veterans make sure you contact uh i guess debbie westmoreland is the one point of contact for us for now so and then the uh i guess the pressing question i have which i i'm not sure if it's an easy answer or if it's in the ballpark this is the most common question i get is is when are we anticipated to be up at bat basically yeah um they have not given us a clear picture it all depends on vaccine availability and supply coming down to us for when we're able to move on to the next step um i do know that i i heard that the town council supports teachers moving up which is terrific and i love that local advocacy for our teachers unfortunately our our site on the local level we're not going to be able to be out of step out of sync with the state distribution until we're given permission um but as soon as that happens i know we really look forward to being able to vaccinate all of our teachers and staff as soon as we can i'm gonna follow oh i'm sorry um i just wanted to make sure that the community understands that it's not a decision that you make whether or not to change um the phases and the steps it's um it's you're told by the state and is it um my understanding is that the state can um revoke your ability to distribute vaccines if you don't follow the phases correctly is that absolutely and and that has happened to other sites that have decided to go out of step um and and i really want to be able to assure our our community that we're going to be able to be a site for a long time and a continuous site right now and then the the the other question i had this that's kind of pressing we've kind of discussed this a little bit in our our private meetings at this jail embassy is the the start to finish so there's been a lot of misconceptions i think you can you can uh educate me as to whether or not they're misconceptions but start to finish from first shot to last shot about how long is that process yeah so it depends on what kind of vaccine you get so for the pfizer mrna vaccine it's 28 uh sorry it's 21 days see even i screw it up between those two vaccine dose appointments with moderna they're 28 days apart certainly if we move to the johnson and johnson or a different vaccine in the future those are just one dose to be able to get your vaccine but so far the only ones that are approved by the fda under the emergency youth authorization are the pfizer and the moderna and then what they are saying in terms of of immunity is um that it takes a minimum of around two weeks after you get that second dose what we call the boost um for you to be able to have a good antibody response to have protection and i know that the cdc i forget if it was yesterday all the days are blending together but maybe it was two days ago is co coming out and supporting new language around guidelines regarding exposure for those that have completed their two-dose regimen of the vaccine where quarantine white might not have to be indicated with that being said there are parameters to that it would have to be equal to or more than two weeks after receiving the second dose of the vaccine but still within three months of completing that vaccine so it's not a forever thing and also certainly if someone was to develop symptoms of covid they would have to be tested and go into quarantine for that that's what that time window is really interesting isn't it yeah because there's still so many unknowns i think right that's what's really interesting about right now um is that we're learning new things every day and certainly as uh covid is a rna virus they tend to uh create variants very quickly similar to the flu right and all our strains for the flu so we learn more every day with this for sure excellent um i'm going to draw you back to um a question about numbers and timelines and people and um so after this people who are 75 and older are completed the next group is 65 to 75.

you're good okay all right seeing the presence of a quorum i'll call to order this meeting of the pelham school committee at 6 32 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron menino present sarah best kenny president margaret stanton present brenda barlow present and hall present um all right next up is approving the minutes so we have everything except um january 14th that was a cielo just hasn't had a chance to get to that yet so we can take care of that next month um so we can just go in order starting with august 6th any questions comments yep margaret you're muted margaret just a typo um under preschool discussion in the second line it says continent i think it should be contingent oh yeah yes thank you and on the on the next paragraph um about midway the line starts and we could vote to have this run in no the i'm sorry the next line down could call this hiatus and not say we are terminating yes yeah i have that too okay yeah any other comments corrections um i had just one it just looks like after the vote then there's two more sentences starting with mr menino asked if this fee and it is both i i just had already voted i don't i think maybe that was pulled over from something else or ron do you remember asking i don't remember yeah i did not check the tape i i mean it seems like it should be deleted that maybe it was just something does anyone have any objection to yeah i think that just happened before we voted i think we did have that conversation about it but i think that happened previously okay okay so maybe we could just move it just squishy switch maybe anything else on august 6th okay um and we can we can do the vote on these as a as a whole package right okay all right so let's move on to august 14th any corrections comments on these last chance okay i did not have any either um okay september 22nd i thought i had one um oh i just had one small typo progress on various things had less meanings it should be meaning that was my only correction anyone else okay great um all right the 27th october 27th uh yeah margaret go ahead you're muted margaret i'm sorry that's fine you do a good job of muting yourself it's just the unmuting part well then i forget to un i forget to mute myself again um on the third page of that and that first at that first section at the top third line miss dancer said there was a study done for hold harmless and groups advocating for getting rid of this i think it was for not getting rid of this oh yes good yep and then i just had a question about some text in that next paragraph okay which which text specifically oh the last sentence i guess we have 70 students 72 students who live in pelham and 40 are school choice i think it should be and 40 who are school choice is that 100 right yeah that's better 72 from pelham and 40 who are school choice yep okay so adding the who okay okay thank you um i had so um in five a the second sentence of that first paragraph um based on that meeting i believe that sentence should read we are in a place of concern for how much for how many funds we are using so that's when we were talking about the dwindling uh school choice revolving fund so i'd like to just delete that not um [Music] and then in b in the health metrics i just wanted to clarify because we had brought that up but it says but we it says but we have been granted negotiation authority from the region for discussion i think we just we are allowed to discuss it but we have no negotiation authority so we should i just want to clarify that in a minute that was all i had on that any other comments or questions on the 27th of october okay and then the last stop is um december 3rd i had nothing on this one anyone have yep margaret i'm sorry don't apologize no no use me i'm not i'm unmuted um just three there were three typos is all um uh a number five second paragraph mr menino asked about the nine new students not yet yep and under budget update second paragraph first line our our spending today not our sending to date yeah and in the very last line um i think i just think eight is in there one time too many we get federal aid rural aid it should just be we get federal rural aid i think yes okay that's it sounds good all right anything else all right i will take a motion to approve these minutes uh actually no i'll just make the motion okay uh i move that we approve the minutes of august 6th august 14th september 22nd october 27th and december 3rd 2020 has amended is there a second second oh by the whole gang uh okay i'm gonna go with brenda on this one okay move by hall seconded by barlow and we'll do a roll call vote ron yes yay all of it okay sarah best kenny i margaret stance or i brenda barlow i and hall i okay we did it we approved the minutes good job um all right next up is public comment we did have one um mike is just going to pull it up so we can scroll through okay thank you all right that was it for public comment um next up superintendent updates i'll be very brief um the uh just want to share that i was uh really enjoyed uh kindergarten had an art show an outdoor art show uh last month i think i'm looking at miss lee but um and it was fabulous just seeing families and kids walking through how the art was displayed out on the playground just a really creative uh way to do things it was cold and there was still happy kids and happy families uh i want to thank sage um and will for putting that on because i know it was greatly appreciated by by folks in our community um but leah i know has a more extensive list of updates that she's going to give so it's okay i'll pass it on to lee all right great you're up late okay well i'll try and be brief as well um so i'll go through student staff and families with my usual frame so starting with students we've been experimenting with holding some in-person recess meetups that are totally optional during the midday break time did the first round of those in january were on the second round of them now in february and they're going great we've got anywhere from you know about a third to half of classes coming with the exception of fifth grade sarah best don't worry we're gonna try again um where we had a shockingly low turnout but we're gonna keep at it but um you know as long as the weather holds i'm happy to continue holding those it's really nice i think for the kids and for the adults to get a little bit of socially distanced time out on the playground and i'm also continuing virtual snack time with me so students have the option of you know having a little bit of social unstructured time with me there either online or on the playground let's see our february all school read is a beautiful book it's called the undefeated it's a poem by kwame alexander and it lines up with our celebrations of black history month and are learning about all different elements of black history so our staff have been continuing our focus on emotional well-being through a few different projects and initiatives this month so we started some small social emotional skills groups in early february based on some of the data that we collected earlier in the winter and we're also doing some work as a staff to look at just some school-wide trends so yesterday we had a staff meeting and we looked at some attendance data that we've collected looking at what we're noticing in the morning versus the afternoon versus specials kind of parsed out by grade level to look a little bit deeper at how our students are engaging with our current learning model and if there are any barriers that we can lower for students to be engaging more fully with each other and with their teachers so sort of connected to that work we started to do some relationship mapping using a tool from desi where we really look at every student in the building and identify the different adults that they've fostered relationships with with the goal of making sure every student has a trusted adult in the building whether it's a classroom teacher a specialist a para professional an administrator and then identifying any any opportunities where we can be building more connections with students and then we also did some celebrations of learning about uh what learning that we're doing about black history month and during black history month so as a staff we made a jam board together which we do with our students all the time but it was really fun as a staff to kind of pull some images together and to do some some collaborative sharing and i just want to do a huge thank you to all of the readers from our community who participated in the african-american read-in yesterday we had lots of folks both from amherst and pelham parents community members friends of the school drop in and read stories with kids and i think it was one of the highest turnouts that we've had in the past few years and i think being able to do it online was great and i'd love to continue having that option moving forward if folks can't come to the school in future years it would be great to have them connect virtually just to have as many readers as we can so it's a really fun event thank you to everyone who was a reader um and speaking of reading we if in case anyone needs a book for over the february break we're going to be meeting on the monday after we get back from break monday the 22nd to talk about bettina loves book we want to do more than survive it's about abolitionist teaching and celebrating black culture and black joy and it's going to be a great discussion so all are welcome and i finally want to thank the pto who are meeting right now um for supporting our black history month celebrations they were able to identify as a program that looks really amazing about storytelling and song and black culture that our students are going to be able to engage with when we get back from the break at the end of the month so we're just moving right along busy as always um but it's been a great couple weeks and i think everybody's ready for a vacation week great thank you so much lee any questions for lee all right terrific um okay so mike do you want to let folks back in and then just gonna do um and so maybe i'll queue it up for tim who will queue it up for mira um okay i'll just say briefly uh for people who weren't on the committee uh a couple years ago that um the curriculum we're talking about was approved a couple years two years ago um i think that's right um by the pelham school committee and so this is doesn't require the same kind of vote or it's not the same process when we're adopting curriculum the curriculum is this is about expanding it to third and fourth grade so you might remember very comprehensive detailed um slide decks and lots of work that happened a couple years ago and you're not going to see that tonight because there's no vote needed but we did feel like it was important for the school committee to see an update it's a really nice brief slide deck that i think captures some of the key parts of the curriculum at grade three and four and then be able to ask any questions of of tim or mira uh we thought that was important but just i wanted to just cut the distinction between a couple years ago and where we are today this is really a brief relatively brief agenda item especially in comparison to last go-round and i really want to thank mira and elin who's in the green room here for their continued work on this it's such a benefit to pelham school to have folks in our community who are working collaboratively with our staff on incredibly important topics um mira if you want me to bring up slides when when you're up i'm i'm happy for you to do it but if it's easier just to be able to speak to them i have two screens here so it doesn't doesn't affect me too much so whatever is easier for you mira is fine with me um but i'll turn it over to tim oh mirror i'm sorry i didn't hear your response that would be great mike yeah absolutely so i'll turn it over to tim though i may have stolen some of his thunder i apologize if i did that tim but uh tim is our curriculum coordinator for those in the public who don't know tim but um you can take it away tim all right thanks mike um and and thank you everyone for having us here tonight it's um it it frankly it's always a pleasure when i get to come to the telen school committee um it's it always feels like a nice conversation um which is also true whenever i get to work with pelham school um and so um mike gave you the background some of you were on the school committee when the k-2 curriculum was approved so you're very familiar with it others were involved in the the school community even if you weren't on the committee um this has been something that both the the staff and families have been very enthusiastic about at the k to two level and uh mira while and her um cohort have been able to write um lessons for grades three and four and so that's what you'll hear about tonight um you'll also hear that there's been a name change it was known as the ski curriculum it's g-e-e and i'll let mira explain the the name change in the process too uh so without further ado uh i'll i'll introduce mariwell um and she can give you her background as well thank you so much tim and thank you all for having me here tonight um my name is mira weil i am a doctoral student at umass in the health promotion and policy department and as mike was saying i have had the great pleasure to be working with you all the pelham community for coming on four years now so you may have remembered this curriculum as ski the sexuality and gender education and empowerment curriculum um but we decided that that didn't fully encompass what this curriculum was about so we decided to change the name to let's talk and let's there it's such an acronym let's stands for liberatory education tools and talk stands for teach affirm learn and know and we changed the name because we felt it uh was more representative of what this curriculum's actually about and also a bit more welcoming because some people uh feel nervous when they hear the word sexuality so it's now called let's talk and i'm going to keep this very brief i was told max 10 minutes so i'm gonna be succinct and i'm going on the assumption that all of you have had the opportunity to review the lessons for grades three and four that were shared with you last week hopefully that's true okay next slide please so i wanted to start with a little bit of the pedagogy which i think is especially relevant right now in the midst of the social climate that we're in so we bring a liberatory framework to all of our curriculum development and what that means is that we hold an anti-racist perspective the lessons are queer and trans affirming and body positive what that looks like is that the resources and activities in this curriculum reflect diverse peoples there's different skin colors and cultures and we incorporate messaging that offers a liberatory framework by introducing classroom practices and communication strategies that promote anti-racism body positivity and help to shine a light on what are often unconscious assumptions and biases so in this way the let's talk curriculum is a really great accompaniment to other lessons and classroom practices that focus on anti-racism next slide please this curriculum was developed to be transformative it was not designed to just be picked up and taught without first looking at ourselves the adults involved in either facilitating this curriculum or who have children who are going to be part of it so the content really encourages us as teachers facilitators parents and caregivers to engage deeply in our own self-reflection around sexuality and pleasure consent gender roles whiteness racism and to grow and evolve ourselves toward more justice openness equity love and kindness and to share that evolution with our children so it's about personal and social transformation next slide please the curriculum emphasizes using inclusive language which for most of us requires relearning or rewiring long-held habits for example we learn that instead of saying boys and girls we say students or everybody instead of dividing the class by sex or gender which inherently makes students who are non-binary trans or unsure and questioning invisible to use other attributes like shirt color or age or first letter of first names and this is important again because in order to have all students really feel welcome and and seen in the classroom we need to use language that includes them so that's a little bit about the pedagogy next slide please so lessons for grades three and four follow the same structure as lessons for grades k through two they all have a stated objective they start with recommended readings and videos then there's exercises and warm-ups that are either embodiment or arts based or sometimes both there's a vocabulary section there's one or two developmentally appropriate activities and there's then there's a closing reflection activity that helps integrate information that was shared during the lesson also each lesson has an associated take-home letter for families that outlines the objective discusses the activities provides the vocabulary definitions and the readings so that families can really stay connected with what their child or children are learning in this curriculum okay next slide please i'm just going to go quickly through the titles of the lessons um the new lessons are going to be in bold and again all of these lessons are updated so that the content the readings the videos the activities are developmentally appropriate so they they're not the same as the kindergarten through grade two um but there's a similar objective for the lessons that are not in bold so there's five new lessons there's an introduction to the unit learning about bodies getting to know me gender listening and intuition consent and boundaries next slide please now we get into some of the new ones self-love and appreciation what is family friendships and feelings puberty cycles and periods how babies are made next slide please sexuality me and the media and yay i'm unique so then just to summarize the five new lessons next slide please are self-love and appreciation what is family puberty cycles and periods which is for grade four although the grade three teacher can decide to offer that lesson if it feels developmentally appropriate for the students that year and me and the media and that's it all right can we take oh there we go all right thank you so much mira um all right do folks have questions for amira or tim yeah ron go ahead i assume that just like the old program there will be teacher training for these units yes and we actually already conducted um six hours of professional development for the kindergarten through fifth grade teachers a couple of weeks ago on these lessons and when is it scheduled to be put into the classroom that is a question for me i believe so all of the lessons are really slated to be taught in the spring and for the end of the year so what has worked for k through 2 is to really spend the first part of the year establishing a class community where the class can have really open honest dialogue and then dive into some of these conversations in a collaborative way starting usually in april so that way they have enough space to really take time for all of the lessons and they've established the trust in community in order to make them meaningful i would not recommend that students and teachers jump into this on september 1st so i think it's worked so far for students to do these lessons in the spring and that's what the third and fourth grade teachers are thinking as they're planning for the next few months of instruction too thank you sure um question for you mira can you i know you did some evaluation and surveys as part of the first rollout for k-2 can you just talk a little bit about what you learned as part of that i mean i'm sure it was a ton so this doesn't have to be a really long answer but just what you learned and how that informs how you're doing the three to four expansion yeah yeah that's a great question um so we learned a lot of specifics from the teachers that really guided our revisions we did a pretty extensive revision of the k-2 lessons over the past summer and the previous spring so a lot of the evaluation the classroom observation that we were able to do before you know covid stopped in person instruction and then interviews with the teachers um really guided revisions and encouraged us to keep developing the curriculum because we were hearing from um the k through two teachers how successful it was and after the second year of implementation how much they noticed the change in the students and the the increased comfort level with the content after just one year of prior instruction um and then i was able to do interviews with some of the older grade teachers who were expressing a real need and wish for um some support around the content that was that was just like naturally arising in their classrooms so i would say that and and then the interviews that i was able to do with parents and caregivers i mean they were just overwhelmingly positive i i was hearing so much appreciation for this curriculum and um some of the ways that people were noticing changes in the school sort of culture and how the parents on the playground and just in social conversations that there was a lot more ease of discussion and a lot more discussion period around things like consent and sexuality and that it was feeling really good so i know that's very brief sarah i don't know if that happens yeah no that it really does yeah i mean the only negative thing i heard was from my own third grader who missed grade three and was kind of like what's going on like what's happening here so that was the only negative feedback is like uh tick-tock we need more of these uh well and so actually the the second part of what you said i guess leads into a question that i have for you lee about this like as you know about the k through two and then it's starting in three and four is that it seems like a lot of this stuff there's a lot of room to kind of incorporate what's being learned into a lot of other areas of the curriculum are teachers talking about that and is that something that's encouraged absolutely i think the framework to really understand um or the framework that the lessons provide to really understand your identity and how that shapes how you see the world has so many applications and i really appreciate that there's you know pieces about media literacy woven into the curriculum and anti-racism and intersectionality of identity and those are conversations that we're having not just in social studies but every time you sit down to read a piece of literature and you talk about the identity of the person who wrote it and how that shapes the narratives that they write you know they're just there's so many parallels that you can make across the curriculum and i think this kind of learning at a really foundational time sets students up to be aware of potential biases or lenses that they have as they move through the world so i think generally it it's part of the foundational skill building while students are also learning the foundational literacy and math skills they're also learning foundational skills about how to build interpersonal intelligence and social awareness with the world around them too so um in that way i do think it has very broad applications great okay other questions anything else yeah brenda oh i guess two things first of all thank you mira for this it's i think it's so fantastic i have two children one in second grade who has participated in a couple of years um and then i have a fifth grader who has not and it's really interesting to navigate conversations in the household when you have one son who's very comfortable with some of these concepts have been reinforced and the other who hasn't benefited from from those education so i do hope that you know you're able to continue and i know the original plan was to continue to develop something more comprehensive um maybe to sixth grade or beyond um so just a thank you and then i just it's a question for lee i'm just curious because the the the new topic of puberty was brought up and certainly that's that's something that all kids need to learn about and i'm just curious about what is happening for fifth and sixth grade around some of those issues so that was something that came up in the training that we did in january and talking with the fifth grade teacher and really craving some materials that align with what students are learning about in kindergarten through you know second grade and then you know hopefully third and fourth grade two and really continuing those on so um i know that the the intention is to extend you know extend the curriculum um all the way up through sixth grade and so right now the resources that we have to teach about puberty um in fifth and sixth grade are the same ones that the teachers have utilized in the past and so while they align with what their count you know the teachers counterparts and amherst are using um they don't necessarily vertically align with what students are learning at pelham and so the hope is to kind of calibrate in both directions so that we can bring some vertical alignment and create a continuous set of vocabulary and language um and then hopefully do some you know partnership with with peers and amherst so that students are students are getting some of the same exposure and experiences too and i know that's part of a longer term um longer term hope for the work does that answer your question bart and tim may be able to speak to a little bit more than me too thank you yeah tim do you mind jumping in just with a brief little bit about um some some similar or related work anyway maybe it's a better way to put it talking about at the upper grades uh in one of our schools in amherst sure um it's no surprise to anyone i mean this has been a topic that has come up and the the curriculum that that lee referenced that that's the one that's been used by teachers for a number of years is is the same as what the amherst schools have um and it's i mean interestingly in in the world of curriculum it's not necessarily that old but in in the world of the way people's views and understandings of these topics um have evolved it it feels very old at this point um and and and just sort of as a side note we're also we're sort of working ahead of the curve and that the state has not updated its curriculum frameworks on health i think since 1999 um so which might as well be like a millennia ago at this point um so at one of the amherst schools at crocker farm a couple of years ago sort of as this was going on at pelham um that this concern came up around the the curriculum that fifth and sixth graders got which was puberty and sexuality and more the traditional sense that that most of you would be familiar with um and and that largely grew out of um a concern for students who are who are non-binary who are questioning their gender and and how that curriculum didn't leave room for those students um and so some of the staff at crocker farm and i joined them for some of it and some parents who had some expertise um worked on some lessons to replace what what had been in use there um and in fact we went a little further there and that we expanded down into fourth grade um and so we ended up with a nice progression um in the same in a similar vein to what pelham has done and it was it was very funny and that pelham was starting at the at the lowest end at k12 crocker farm was starting at the at the upper end um and and i tried to sort of be a conduit to share some information on in between um and so where that will put us in terms of of amherst and that adjustment it remains to be seen um i think one thing that is very appealing about the work that that has been done in palum is that it is a very clear progression um and and kids are starting out learning the vocabulary the language how to interact with each other through these lessons in a way that it isn't something brand new at fourth grade um and and so it is it's something i would like to entertain with the principals and amherst um and the amherst school committee at some point down the road right thank you tim other questions anything else for tim or mira yeah sarah best um not so much a question as much just a comment that i just want to say thank you i think it is fantastic that poem starts this so early and so young and i think it gives great power to children um that carries with them that will carry with them through the rest of their lives um and i am i was excited when it was starting in the little grades and i was really sad that both my kids were gonna miss it and i'm really happy that it is expanding and i hope it continues to expand um because having a fifth grader also um and and an older daughter i i think i really think everybody benefits here so thank you so much for creating this program and having pelham be the place where it gets to start i think it's fantastic yes absolutely all right anything else okay yeah i mean i guess i'll just close by echoing sarah bess's comments it just i've never been on a school committee anywhere else but this does feel really unique to have community members come forward with a proposal to work in collaboration with the curriculum director at the district to implement this to then work so closely with teachers on training and making changes and then the evaluation and the expansion i mean it just seems like you really started from scratch to create you know that there was i remember that was part of when we initially talked about the the first round it's like there's nothing to start from that really works um and so i guess for this for the let's talk team to put all of this effort into our tiny little school and for us you know for parents like me to see the impact that it has in their own children and how it's changing school culture i mean that just especially nowadays when there's so much bad news it feels so great to be able to get an update like this to know it's expanding it's working teachers love it kids love it and like you're helping make them into good and whole little humans and that's really great so thanks for all of the work and feels really good to hear about this so thank you thanks so much it's such a deep source of joy for me good very good all right we do need to move on to other agenda items though but thank you so much for coming mira and tim and olin in the green room thank you okay um do you want to let oh yeah you want to let doug in and okay hi doug all right next up fy 21 second quarter budget yep and so we'll turn that over to doug he's got a number of items tonight and very smooth i should say by the chair being like we have so much bad news and then that's like the segway to doug coming in talking about budget so i didn't know yeah hey no pressure doug but uh we'll start with the fy 21 and then we'll gradually transition to thinking about things uh for the next fiscal year as well but i'll turn it over to you dr slaughter okay so i'll attempt to uh pull up the correct item for you guys to view and so hopefully this will display in just a moment uh and so hopefully can you can you all see that should i zoom in a little bit or or is that visible to everyone um i can zoom in a bit it looks okay to me i don't know if others have smaller screens but i would zoom i would zoom in a bit doug i'm on the youtube yeah that's that's probably one more dose of that that's how's that that's that's good i'm looking at the youtube screen as well for the viewers um that that looks um pretty viewable on the youtube screen so okay right the people can't see you but they know you're talking so that's all right so uh i'll just take you through the quarter two uh status of the budget uh for the current fiscal year um you know in general things are progressing as as uh as expected uh you know we have uh some unknowns in our budget this year as as you uh well know and expect but but we've uh we've had a budget freeze in place for a while now and that's going to help us out as far as getting from from beginning to end and still trying to stay on budget however there's a few things to keep an eye on so start first and talk about payroll i mean uh you know at this point in the year uh the percentage of our budget we would typically use under payroll would be about 50 um and we're a little under that which is expected um you know we had a um we've been you know sort of managing our costs in that regard and so we're we're right on tr right on track with regard to our regular payroll obviously our substitutes in overtime are well down and below what we normally would would have at this point a lot less you know there's just not the opportunity for absenteeism much less the uh incidents of it so uh those savings are going to help us out uh considerably as we go through the year but but uh the short story on on our payroll lines is that they're they're tracking as we expect them to um as we look at our expense lines you'll notice that there are two areas that that were highlighted at quarter one and and are highlighted again here uh that are not necessarily in a tremendous amount of trouble at the at the moment uh but as we look at potential uh expenses as we go through the rest of the year they they could prove problematic and so we want to keep a very close eye on those uh and that's in our in our special education area uh and as well as in our our facility management and what those really reflect is the the you know operating within the pandemic there are a number of costs we've had to take on uh there is a fair amount of of federal support to help us out with that um but it may or may not materialize fully and so we're keeping a close eye on those two areas of the budget um the other areas are tracking pretty much as as would be expected uh you know they're at 50 or a little bit lower than that obviously uh you know that those areas that are tracking below are are in good shape and will be able to help us out as we as we go through the rest of the year uh in an area like uh administrative services which looks you know at 73 percent spending at the mid-year point looks a bit concerning but actually it's not that includes several things that we purchased at the beginning of the year uh and pay for the year like software licenses and the type so and types of things like that so those are those are actually uh still on budget not problematic in that regard the the uh the other thing i'll mention is that uh as i said before there's a number of things that are covered related spending that we've we've done uh the the process by which we're using federal uh monies uh a couple of them are direct grants and some of them are uh reimbursement processes and so we filed through fema through the town and and uh the cares act to get reimbursement for things and so uh it's a little bit of a slow process for one thing so our our true picture will will hopefully become more clear as we uh as we go through and and finish up the third quarter and begin the the fourth quarter um but also with reimbursement process there are things that are presumed to be eligible but once the the folks at fema take a look uh they may deem them ineligible and so as a result there are things that we will ultimately have to carry within our own operating budget uh and and so that's why again like i said we've highlighted those in red just so that we're aware that there may be uh a significant amount of of cost that we're going to have to to uh contend with by the end of the year nonetheless i think at this point you know given the information we know at this time how the reimbursements have gone today what funds are available to us uh you know i think we're still okay and we'll know a lot more when we when we take a closer look at third quarter but i don't have any uh overly i'm certainly concerned i want to keep a very close eye on it but i don't have any uh outsized worry uh relative to to our budget for the for this year so far um so i think i'll pause there and see if there are any particular questions that anyone has and i think since i can't see anyone so just speak up uh if you have a question relative to the the quarter two uh numbers and presentation okay any questions for doug thank you too no okay all right thank you so i wonder if i should just keep rolling or if the would like to to talk about or introduce the the budget conversation i believe that's next on the agenda yep yeah go ahead mike yep so um first i just want to note it's a budget hearing but we did not receive any public comments or comments for the hearing uh on the budget so just want to note that uh for people who are on the committee just as a reminder budget hearing allows for what's pretty typical for you all which is some give and take uh and and time for dr saul to present uh as well as ask questions and you know the idea is that we would take that feedback and if there's any adjustments to be made we'd have time to make them before the march meeting which is when the budget would get voted by the pelham school committee so we sort of did some introductory meetings uh set the stage for budget tonight's the hearing and march would be the vote i think it's worth mentioning in addition dr slaughter lee and myself dougly and myself had a third of our optional budget meetings with staff series we'd love not to have these meetings with staff but the situation sort of called for it so we did meet with staff on tuesday we shared orally what's in this presentation because we thought it was really important for staff to hear that before a public dialogue occurred on that and had some good dialogue and we had some private conversations with staff members who would be directly affected by some of the reductions in the budget so i think it's just important context of where we're situated and how we're communicating this information the short story and doug will do the longer one is that there's no surprises here we've been talking for the last couple months about the challenges in the pelham pelham budget um you know the the saving grace continues to be that we do have a steady stream of income coming in for the rental of the gym and we also don't have any uh charter school students that we know of right and that reported december indicated that was still zero um and we still have a pretty decent operating uh budget operating budget problem you know and having 40 choice students is just simply not sustainable and we share this with staff on tuesday it's no one's fault it's a situation that we find ourselves in uh but it's a significant situation that we're we find ourselves in and uh doug will talk about this year's budget cuts which are painful um and you know again going from more pleasant news to less pleasant news um in this agenda item but i think what i shared with staff is it something's got to give here long term that either we need to increase the number of school choice students or the school is not sustainable so you know we do have a roughly 50 000 deficit that we're looking at for next year that's a huge number for pelham public school for a very small uh and wonderful school and we were forced to make reductions we would not want to make um and but there's not i mean we many a couple of you have been on this a while if there was any fat to trim which i don't think that really ever wasn't pelham but if there was any it's long gone so we're really cutting unfortunately people who work directly with students because there's nowhere else to go on on the budget so i just want to do that framing i know dr slaughter will go through the details then we can open up for dialogue and discussion but i did want to give both the process update and then the gestalt of where we're headed um and then doug can go through again a number of the how we got here in much more detail so with that i'll turn it over to you doug if that's okay great thank you is currently my screen shared is that is that correct or is it not no i will reshare it uh yeah i i'm in control of that one two i think ah wise there we there we go okay and again i'll make this a little bit larger it's a lot of numbers uh you know and and i don't expect people to necessarily uh track them specifically and and identify exactly you know the changes and and that sort of thing what i'm showing here on page one is part of our our payroll changes from one year to the next uh and and and the sort of uh different areas of the budget in which you know we're staffing our our our school um as i move to the second page we sort of continue to finish through that and and what i really would point out on this is sort of uh this area down here at the bottom of the second page which is talking about sort of the totality of the change in our budget uh relative to staffing uh and what those costs are and and you know large share of our budget is is driven by the people that that do the work and it's a people business and and so it's not surprising to see uh the size of increase that we see there from from our staffing and this this doesn't capture all of the staffing expense it captures uh you know sort of some of some of the raw payroll uh expense but but uh there are some other aspects around benefits and and and some other uh components of staffing costs that are not here uh but will show up as we proceed through but but in general you see that uh you know year-over-year changes is going to have uh is going to be driven largely by um you know our payroll changes in our staff as we go uh as i go to the next page here and and feel free to sort of shout out and stop me if you need me to to slow down and talk about something in space you know in specifics that you you see as we get into the expenses uh you know by and large we've held everything as flat as possible uh what we're seeing here in this area right here is the fact that we had the news that that the superintendent spoke about about not having any charter students so we've taken out that expense for for fiscal uh uh 22 and we also have fewer choice students out of our district and so that's also reflected here uh so that that uh you know helped our budget by almost thirty thousand dollars just a little bit less uh the increase in information systems is a shift uh in in putting some what were formerly capital items into the budget um and i'll speak to that a little bit when we when we get to capital but but essentially that's a a cart's worth of chromebooks uh that we're needing to purchase uh i spoke with the finance um committee chair and and he's aware of that increase and planning on having that uh sort of jump in in the base level budget for the for the school uh so that would be you know in addition to sort of the the normal expected amount of increase uh in in tax revenues that would be used so he's he's prepared for that for that number to show up and be there and and uh so that won't come as a surprise um and then i'll shift here to the last page of the sort of budget uh and you see the the remainder of the uh the expenses utilities are going to go up there are some that are going up more than others um you know we have uh you know the the water and sewers is definitely going up in a more significant way than than it has in recent years our health insurance costs are are presuming to be a very modest increase we have a firmer number than when we last spoke on this uh we have an actual increase of 1.11 uh in fiscal 22 uh so that's been factored in uh so it has a very modest impact on the on the totality of of the budget as far as the the health insurance is concerned um excuse me um other retirement benefits etc that we're we're tracking we have taken into account here as well and and of course you know under that control accounts that's where we put the the things we don't know as much about at this time but we know we need to put some some placeholders in it carries some information and about uh some some contingency planning in a variety of ways and so we have some some resources applied to that um but what you see at the very bottom here is that the the net increase over the course of uh the current fiscal year next fiscal year nets out to be about about forty six thousand dollars worth of increase and in a typical year that would be uh you know a modest and an appropriate amount of of increase that could be uh handled fairly well by the by the pelham uh you know increases in property tax and that sort of thing what's not shown on here and was demonstrated when we last spoke on the topic is what's happened on the revenue side of things well chapter 70 has gone up a little bit and that helps us out uh you know the new projections have come out with the governor's budget which came out on the 27th of january uh you know our need to reduce our use of of school choice funding uh is a pretty significant uh negative impact on our ability to to move ahead and and sustain the school in exactly the same way we have it now in in and continue the level services and so as a result of those losses in in a you know ability to support the budget with with school choice revenues um also a small downturn in in medicaid we we perform services uh that are eligible for medicaid reimbursement uh those have have dropped uh by being remote over the last year or so and so that impacts our ability to to fund our school as well and and so both of those in combination have created uh essentially this this uh roughly fifty thousand dollars of of of shortfall of revenues against uh against uh expenses uh and knowing what the town you know in in saying that in is an understanding of what the the town can't afford relative to its tax base uh in in the coming year and so on this last slide uh we've articulated the sort of specifics of of what's going to need to happen relative to our our staffing uh in order to to sort of make our budget work for fiscal 22 and i think what i'll do at this point is i'll stop and and perhaps let the superintendent or or uh uh principal white and jones uh speak to these particulars a little bit more uh and and the process that we came to to identify these these areas of reduction yeah i can i can do that um so there's three cuts uh budget reductions that are listed um and they're all painful you know they're all not things we would do otherwise um so i'll start from the bottom of this list so we currently have two days a week of music which is 0.4 fte and this reduction would shift that so it'd be one day of music which would be 0.2 left and you know this is a really difficult to cut um we the we have outstanding staff at pelham school which makes it that much harder we did need to hit a cut number and because we have instrumental music as well as classroom music we do feel like um compared to some of our neighboring schools both in amherst and other small rural schools um that this was an area that we could align but this is not something we would do if if our budget got 14 000 better we'd be having a different conversation just to be put put it very bluntly similarly with the other cuts the library para educators there are two part-time para educators who work with the school in the town and um similar to the music staff we tried to see what could we maintain that we could so maintaining one of the part-time library educators allows for still access for pelham students the library but it will reduce the programming that's possible because of the reduction in staffing and finally uh it's sort of a hard one to describe regular special ed but we we looked at our student caseload and our special ed case load and this will stretch our educator and professional staff quite thin next year but we feel like we can meet the iep grid times without having an additional power educator in the building so that's how we got to 46 000 of cuts a 1.47 fte reduction at the school and um these are these are not easy they will have an impact on our students and staff and community um but we we do need to but you know we're trying to do what we need to do to meet the benchmark that the town has set and we know the town has worked with us successfully in the past in a couple very difficult situations and we we understand that right now the school is not sustainable financially and um you know we'd love to make it sustainable on the revenue side by bringing in more choice as that hasn't been possible this year for a whole host of reasons to increase our choice numbers you know this is the the other side of how to make it sustainable um so these these reductions are unfortunate and you know i think i can speak a little bit more to the choice piece a little later in the agenda where you have a different topic talking about next year and how we could maybe start that recruitment process uh for next year perhaps sooner but these are the the budget reductions that we are forced to make and this is what we're proposing to you this evening and for the regional members i want to apologize because you've had two out of the last three nights looking at pretty significant budget reductions in two of the districts you work for so i just want to make a particular note for margaret and sarah best that it's been a long week for you both looking at these types of things at the pre at the k-12 level from from pelham helm all the way up to the region um so i apologize i wish we're having different conversations but this is where we are okay thank you doug and mike um all right so i guess let's start any any questions on you know numbers any clarification needed uh yeah let's go sarah best and then ron uh i just have a quick question about the medicaid reimbursement so because we're in remote now we're obviously not providing those services that can then be reimbursed um when we do go back to in person i assume the school is still responsible for providing said resources whatever they are and then will that reimbursement money come back is that i'm i mean i'm sure it's a state like i'm sure it's delayed some very unfortunate amount of time um but so i guess that's my question right so like we go back to school and we're in person and those services resume therefore that reimbursement resumes that's correct and we we have some services we're still providing it's just not quite as many as we were oh yeah yeah i wasn't saying that they were all gone and like never to be seen again i just was asking like i i know there are some things you just can't do when you're in remote so right that's right and and i think that once uh once we return to in-person you know uh school it'll be a lot easier to you know get back to the level of uh service that we traditionally had and and there is a significant just to answer the other part of your question you know there is a pretty significant lag in you know when the services are offered when we submit the paperwork when we get paid so we try to you know sort of uh keep that in mind when when doing our budgeting as well um traditionally about ten thousand ten thousand five hundred the number um and we're estimating about fifty five hundred uh as as the expected revenue there um it's a much bigger set of numbers obviously in in the region as as you saw the other night but but just for the the other members of the committee and and i haven't had those up in front of you in a while so i just would mention that thank you oh i had a one more question if that's all right if i can keep going so i also saw on there um the transfer transportation so that hold on i i have to look at my other screen so i can see it with where did you go transportation okay so on the last page the nope never mind i think i confused things we're all good moving on thank you all right ron go ahead we're going to discuss uh school choice in greater detail later this evening oh yeah go ahead we can definitely talk and talk about it now um i i was going to mention it but this is certainly part and parcel of the situation we're in so you know you should feel in my opinion being able to talk about it i'm not sure this is correct but last year when i was talking to people in the building they seem to suggest that a great deal of the diversity in pelham school came from school choice students i don't know if that's correct but are we going to experience a decrease in diversity as we lose our school choice base i can i can respond to that so i think uh the school has more racial and ethnic diversity than the town in general um some of that is based on the age factor that's it's not an uncommon phenomenon in massachusetts where uh you know the other district i work in um also has the same phenomena where if you look at the the racial dis demographics uh of the town versus the students in the school you'll see a distinction uh but i think you're right to note that there are significant amount of school choice students who do contribute to the the greater diversity of our student body um so i think you know this is a financial picture and we're worried about school choice uh financially but i think you raise a lot of other non-financial impacts that having a reduced number of school choices students have and i think it's i appreciate you doing that ron it's a really important point to come back to disappears and people want to join the pelham school from around the region again when does that take place uh when does school choice election take place by families so school choice uh will be something this committee considers probably at their next meeting there'll be a school choice hearing uh perhaps even a vote at the next meeting and i think when we talk about the fall semester which is on the agenda tonight i think we should we should have a bit of a conversation about uh how the palm school committee feels about that and um i think that might influence what we can do in terms of advertising for choice thank you other questions um i have one i i know i feel like i always bring this up um just i'm sure because of past experience just having zero in charter tuition makes me nervous it just given what's happened in the past with the process should i just get over that no no no uh it's something we struggle with i think yeah where our budget was unless dire straits then we would have a placeholder there as a security blanket yeah for us um we don't feel like there's another twenty thousand dollars to cut this year um i think if we really were to get charter students we'd have to look look at our choice reserve account um to cover and then plan ahead for the next year after because that first year you pretty much get covered from reimbursement it's really the second year that that number hits you so we do have a little bit of a breathing room in terms of the charter reimbursement uh but you're right we i would love to what we would typically do and honestly what's the best practice to do would be to have a placeholder in there and then if it doesn't come then that rolls back into the school choice account um it's hard to figure out where those twenty thousand thousand dollars will come from in the current situation right yeah and i'm not yes no i'm not suggesting you are just explaining right now yeah yeah okay but i guess but your second part and i just want to make sure i'm fully clear so to the extent we do get unexpected charter students it's not like then in the middle of next year there would have to be further staffing cuts to respond to that that's what it could come out of the revolving fund in an emergency basically yeah i think that's what we'd have to do okay all right yeah which then contributes a larger financial picture but it would not involve like yeah right oh yeah to be clear none of it is good it's just what's less bad well put okay um all right any other questions comments okay um well thanks for this uh that's really hard i know that like the impact certainly on individual teachers but also on you know kind of the pelham family and the closeness of the school i'm sure just makes news like this really really difficult on everyone um so that really hits home um i think too you know just hearing everything that doug and mike the two of you say i mean not to minimize this at all but this and worse is really what we're in for if things continue is that a fair statement i don't see where the other funding sources not school choice comes in to help right you know i mean the student opportunity act is not going to have a significant influence on pelham you don't the district doesn't have the demographics where it would it would affect things i don't think chapter 70 even if it was increased a hundred dollars per student or something like that which is not it's not going to make a big enough difference it's really the school survives the structure of the school fiscally survives on having you know more choice students i mean you know just to put quantify so this is staff i think on tuesday if we had 10 more choice students we'd be making zero budget cuts we'd be even right so if we had 50 we'd probably to be to the good a little bit because of special ed increment and other things and that's usually where we were at until this year we were usually at around 50 until last year and this year and at that level the school's pretty sustainable it's not like you know that we have this new expenses but um at 40 student school choice students the numbers don't add up and that's what we're facing this year and that's that's really the challenge um and you know it's it's been hardly has done a great job and she's recruited a couple school choice students but for many elementary families the reality is in a remote model um we're a unique district right now that's in a remote model at the elementary school and it's very very challenging to to attract school choice families when we're in remote or there's no guarantee of being back in person that's not to criticize anyone you know the district for the moa it's not going to get into any of those things but there is a practical reality uh that it makes it very challenging uh for us right now right yeah i don't mean to be the horse and make you keep saying that because i just think it's really important that to understand that that this is i think there's just seems to always be a sense that like well the district and the town always kind of figure it out and i think we're kind of beyond that now without kind of substantial changes so okay um all right anything else on fy22 okay um all right um okay next up volunteer in-person learn oh wait sir oh no first i just wanted to say um you know these suck not for like lack of a better term these are really really crummy poem is a fabulous school and part of what makes us fabulous is our tight-knit community and the thought of losing some of those people is just really sad um and i also wanted to say thank you to lee and to doug and to mike because i know these conversations are really crummy we've had a lot of them lately and having to have those conversations on the other side where it directly affects students and their families and teachers and the people who we all work with and see all the time like that's crummy thank you for doing it i guess yes great um all right return to in-person learning update i think i think the next agenda item is fy22 preschool discussion and vote yeah you know what you don't think that you read that nice job sorry um yes okay so um yes we had talked last month about that and we were kind of putting it off i mean i wonder given other agenda items if this is something i mean certainly we can discuss but if maybe uh holding off on a vote makes sense yeah go ahead mike i actually wonder if just out of respect for dr slaughter and this is my fault in putting together the agenda so i own it if we could do capital and then he could perhaps go on his merry way i think that's a great idea is that okay with you doug all right uh okay so put a pin in preschool capital plan all right i'm gonna share my screen again i've got to find the right uh item to share here um it's all set to take a little mental break sorry i figured trying to get out earlier was preferable it absolutely is i'm just uh trying to to uh to shift gears here a little bit sorry um so uh i believe when we when we spoke in in um in december and hopefully you can you see this and this is not terribly uh an interesting slide but i put it up just for for reference in some ways for myself uh in december we spoke about capital and i said well it's likely this is going to change pretty significantly uh you know we had uh identified some network switches uh some school security upgrades some some computer replacements and uh some interior renovations and upgrades uh that we needed to do in a capital plan and it uh you know we we we have subsequently revised this i've had uh some some uh uh dialogue with the with again with the chair of the fights committee in pelham uh and partly because of changing circumstances we don't need the network switches at this point in time that was contingent upon some some work that the town of amherst is going to do that would would positively impact uh the the palm school but it that works going to be delayed a little bit so that is coming off but as a result and then the capital plan is changed a little bit i'm going to switch and show you in a even less uh clear or or less uh dramatic fashion sort of where where we've landed relative to the capital needs for the coming year so the school security grade upgrades are are still in there we have a little bit of a previous capital item that that is going to support this project as well the back door on the building needs uh needs it's hardware replaced and there's some other uh control panel upgrades to the security system the school that that are uh already to be addressed and that's a that's a pretty significant one it also uh uh that that door that is uh needing some some work also has uh handicap access and so it's a it's a critical uh entryway for for folks who are are mobility impaired to to get to the building and access that into the building and so it's an important upgrade in that regard um the interior renovations and upgrades uh again this this um this ask for four thousand dollars is an is an augmentation to some existing funding uh to to finish some projects that we have started and and uh some aspects and took a little more revenue than we thought and so uh hopefully this will get uh the gymnasium painted so that's the hope there um and then as as you all know uh you know there was a study done a couple years ago regarding ada uh needs at the school and in the most recent uh fiscal year there was a a ten thousand dollar uh capital item for ada improvements uh we're working on some of those at this point there's more things on the list and so we thought we'd ask for another uh 5 000 in in capital money to continue to address uh ada uh issues that were itemized in in that list um unfortunately i didn't get a chance to connect with the the uh the facilities director to to get a more specific list of of projects that he's thinking about and and working on um but i should be getting that uh certainly to you guys and and uh to the finance committee as well and in well in advance of of uptown meetings so that people have particular questions about how we're progressing against that reports recommendations we'll we'll be able to see that and so uh it's a fairly modest series of asks this year but i think uh some some significant things that are that are going to be addressed by virtue of uh of these capital items i think i'll stop there and see if you have questions about those okay can we just stop sharing just so we can see one another sorry there we go um yes sarah best go ahead um so i guess my only question is the network switches that would do great things to improve the internet at poem correct yeah ultimately so uh just to sort of paint the larger picture uh the town of amherst is in process of of uh installing i guess uh what's called what they used to call an inet it's a fiber optic uh high-speed internet loop within the town of amherst and they have uh assets uh you know water and water treatment facilities in in impelling so they're they're going to be running some of that high speed uh you know fiber optic network up into pelham right next to the school um but it's that section that sort of spur that that heads into pelham is is not part of the first phase of their of their project and so it's been delayed um it actually has a really strong benefit ultimately to to uh to film school because uh if the school is able to connect into it um the current uh cost that we're incurring uh year over year to to cover some of our internet access for the school would be significantly reduced and so it's it's kind of a win-win but it's going to be delayed a little bit until the town of emerson kind of gets their piece done and then we might need to invest in those switches at that point and uh and then we'll ultimately sort of realize some of the savings in the in the year-over-year operating cost of the of the high-speed internet so it's it's coming but not yet on that okay yeah i was also thinking about you know i guess teacher and student quality of life with the internet there because i know there are some days where um you know teachers have to teach from the building and it's really hard you know they end up having to keep their screens off because things are too glitchy and that is a feels like a really big ask for them to keep doing that so i just want to make sure that as soon as we can add you know advocate for them that they need quality internet if you know it would have been great if it was last year but you know these things happen so just as long as it stays on the you know yeah i think the chain on it i guess yeah the changing nature of school and and how we do uh the things we do in school whether we're in a remote circumstance or not definitely are more and more dependent upon uh high quality and high speed internet and so uh exactly hopefully what we have is is is an essential thing that's going to need to happen it's it's an infrastructure step that uh that parallels anything else we do in our infrastructure uh in in the building so it is definitely a direction we need to go ultimately okay great thank you other capital questions um i just i my recollection and i could be off on this i thought i thought part of the thing with the ada stuff is that we didn't get around to the 10 000 from the warrant last year um and so that's why it was still out i mean is the thinking that there's the capacity to then to complete fifteen thousand dollars worth of work if so a covered related thing why it couldn't get done last year so the the ten thousand dollars was was uh was voted by town meeting this last spring which or really was june so it was almost summer um and so that that's money available currently and so we are you know chipping away at some ada projects this year a little bit um we'll probably get more uh you know i don't say aggressive but but more active in those projects this year but but this will be you know uh added to that for continued work in the in the coming fiscal year so they'll work together on it but it'll be ongoing process okay great yeah and it would be helpful to have that detail of the anticipated projects whenever it's ready just because sometimes those questions do come up at town meeting right okay thanks okay doug you i think are free to go thank you good to see you all good take care um okay so going back up to preschool so we had talked about this last month having the conversation of when would we we be ready to make a decision on whether or not to open it up knowing what we knew from last year that folks would not pay for remote preschool and then making the decision we made this year um so i mean so that's why we were discussing it kind of you know sooner rather than later so that preschool families who need to make decisions know what they're in for um but you know then we also have this discussion of next year so um i guess i'll leave it to you know other folks if they feel like we would want to talk about this more and vote on something tonight or hold off for a month um with the other things we're working on yep ron go ahead i think it's been adequately discussed we know what we need to do i'd be in favor of voting tonight okay yep sarah best i am going to have to respectfully disagree i think we need to make a decision about what our k through 6 grade is going to look going to look like before we can decide whether or not there's going to be a preschool that's i like i love the preschool program i wanted to be there but if we're not having k through six in the building definitely then it's hard to have preschool in there i i think we are green i thought we're going to get rid of the preschool period yeah well so i mean that's that's the discussion and you know i think i didn't tee it up that clearly i think if we're moving if we're looking in agenda item g to make a motion about what we expect for next year if we are hoping to plan for full in-person instruction next year if we can feel confident about that sooner rather than later maybe there is a possibility for the preschool i'm not i'm not yet advocating one way or the other i just don't know if there's how many problems we can make or if i mean i don't i i think there's it's a challenging balance we are certainly not going to be we will not be able to make a decision with perfect information because we will never have perfect information i thought we discussed the revenues would be inadequate to support the expenses to be incurred in offering this pre-school program and therefore we wanted to eliminate the preschool program for one year for one year this would be the case whether or not there was in-person learning from k-6 maybe i'm wrong but i thought that's what my recollection is okay i i thought it was more about the potential for a remote preschool environment if the school was not open but and well i i yeah mike go ahead yeah i think there's a couple things here um so i think i was thinking about this this topic before the meeting quite a bit because there's the other topic that we have i don't know if it's right after it or soon after about um the school year discussion um for next year i think the challenge on timing is that um if we wait too long to make the decision the decision sort of gets made for us because peaceful families will find places for their children for next year because most i think just about all the preschools i know in the area are open some close a little bit in december but they're open so i think i don't think there needs to be a vote tonight but i do want to note that from a timeline perspective things are going to get tight so i think we probably do need to make a decision even if the decision is let's see if we get people to enroll like i don't know what that decision looks like next month but but i think that's the variable separate from the financial separate from com you know uh what's our program look like do we have an agreement to move forward all those other things um you know if we if we decide in may we'd like to open the preschool i just i fear we won't have enough students to make it worthwhile so i'm not pushing to vote tonight that's not where i was going um but i think there are a real timeline just the logistical practical concerns about that yes agreed yep ron go ahead if you want to wait a month it's fine by me but i don't think the decision is going to change any right yeah no and i mean i yes we originally i think we're going to do it in march and i was the one that was like no let's do it in february let's get it on the agenda in february um right i mean i um [Music] i guess i mean lee i'm sort of putting you on the spot here so i mean for as a practical perspective it seems like it could be challenging even if we were to be able to tell you what k through 6 would look like in march that seems like that would be hard then to kind of figure out enrollment for the preschool for the fall is that fair i think that's fair i mean the because we're talking about a few different things we're talking about um staffing so figuring out the logistics of who the adults would be who would be working with the children the programming um and what that's going to look like the um the physical safety constraints and what that's going to look like and then how we're going to be supportive of very young children um in a bill you know if we're in person in the fall in a building with much older children who may have different physical safety you know parameters i i don't know how well two and three-year-olds do with masks but you know i so they do all those little minutia of logistical things to really be um figuring out and then creating that plan collaboratively with staff which is the way i'd like to do it um all of that is going to take time and then the other piece is around you know ensuring that the program would be financially viable um you know and i'll echo what mike said that you know some families have reached out to me to to ask if the program is going to be open and pretty much everyone has said we're looking at programs in the area we're trying to make our plans for the fall i think families are are really trying to plan now so um i whatever you want me to do i will make it work if you tell me in june we're running a preschool i will we will figure out a way to do it but i think to really do it well takes a takes time and to collaborate takes time um so as much time as you can give us to to to do things well um i would be great but um that's just my two cents i don't know if i answered your question no you did and i yes no i mean i know that was a it was a hard question um but no i appreciate your honesty about that um yeah um yeah brenda go ahead okay so i guess i have a couple questions but the first one i guess is more for us just to think about if you know k through cruise 6 weren't in the building would any of us you know would we want to have consider having pre-k in the building because it seems like we'd need to make the decision to get the families like you know sooner to be financially viable um wait so sorry me just to clarify the question meaning if k through six were not in the building having a preschool that did go into the building yes i don't i think if all of k-6 were not in the building we would not be able to do that right that would mean that there was something else in place where for some reason it was not allowed and then that would also apply to preschool because of staffing and union issues or trying to figure out like you know how can we make this decision before we you know before we can actually make the decisions about fall for the regular group of kids it just seems like putting the part before the horse or yeah mike yeah so i think that it's a great point i think what we're running into is that you've got multiple sets of decisions and the one around preschool is needs to be really timely and it it's hard i think this is really i don't want to put words into lee's mouth but what i got from what lee said not her words but what i interpreted or what i learned was that there's some decisions that can't wait till other decisions happen and preschool may be one of those decisions you know so if we have everything over like we know our k-6 program in may even if we there's a conversation tonight you know knowing really what the program is that's going to be too late to make a decision on preschool um so i think that's that's where we're running into some logistical problems it's not for lack of interest or dedication but um to commit to it for families who are looking for a place for their three and four and five-year-old we need to be able to commit to it and so that's hard to fully commit to until we have lots of other things figured out and i think that's where i think we're struggling and to mr mino's point that's why i wouldn't suggest that any permanent decision happens now but i think that that's where we struggle because the reality is programming a preschool especially during covet times it's no small feat um and people are going to ask a lot of questions if i was a prospective parent uh even if lee's like yeah we'll be in person next year and they've got you know parents with guardians and caretakers would want to have a lot of questions and we may not have answers in time for them to actually feel good about registering their kid and i think that's the conflict that we're facing is uh not a dedication or lack of dedication the program but how do we make which decisions when and they're all contingent on each other and that's where uh in a in a tough fiscal time that's where we're struggling about you know what's the level of risk that we'd have if we commit to the program and can't actually fill the program like what happens with that we've already committed to that so i don't know if that made it helped at all but i think that's where we're all feeling really there's the cognitive dissonance for me and myself i would say because we not for these issues we'd be like in the middle of planning now but we we're not we can't pretend that those issues aren't there they're real and that's where we're struggling okay sarah best go ahead so um looking at this or maybe i i changed my eye sentences right i'm looking at this more as like a continuation of our hiatus from last year because we cannot necessarily offer full-time in-person high-quality preschool program like we did pre-covet times right this is just a continuation of our covid hiatus is that more like along the lines of what we're thinking about okay well then i feel like i can vote on it i could vote on it as well okay yeah all right any other [Music] questions or anything before that it's just one clarifying question so the budget that we just discussed am i correct in thinking that there was no preschool expenses in that budget right that's correct yeah and the preschool was always intended to be self-sufficient so if there was expenses there would be you know the the tuition would offset it um so if if the committee wants to make a different decision we can we can do that um the staff notification deadlines that's where it gets a little tricky for us because once we commit to staff on april 1st or april 15th they always get mixed up i apologize we we commit to them you know and and i think that's where uh that's where it gets a little tricky for us in terms of having everything sorted out by that date okay all right i will take a motion on the preschool i think nobody wants to make this motion so i will bite the bullet and say i move that we extend our preschool covid hiatus for another school year with a exceptionally very very heavy heart this is yucky more yucky copiness but i guess that is my motion extend our preschool covid hiatus all right second all right moved by kenny seconded by stancer any further discussion okay so we'll do a roll call vote uh ron medina why sarah best kenny i very sadly okay margaret stancer i and brenda barlow i and i all right thank you everyone um okay next up volunteer return to in-person learning update so we're going to speak to this a lot more on tuesday night at the joint meeting but i think the short story is we had been assured a survey to all pelham staff about their interest in returning uh around march first and um at this point we're still compiling the data and there's some conditionals you know because there's a comment section so we're sorting through uh what was intended by some of the comments to make sure we're cl we we really understand what staff intend to do and we'll have a lot more to share on tuesday night so uh i think we can keep this agenda point if it's okay with the committee pretty brief because we get a much more thorough presentation on tuesday okay um yeah and so the thinking being that does tuesday give enough time to like you will have gone through by then and we'll have numbers and okay yep um okay thank you uh okay capital plan we did um 2021 2022 school year discussion um so relevant to many other agenda items tonight and i had sent around a proposed motion that you'll note says when do you mike could you pull it up really quickly um so this motion was discussed at um the regional school committee meeting on tuesday um and so and was shared with me and it will be this item will be on the agenda um our joint meeting next tuesday so we wanted to have a chance to discuss it now so um just that to the extent that vaccines are available and public health guidelines are adhered to that and we would change this obviously to pelham public school would provide full-time in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year and that the superintendent would manage this in collaboration with um public health officials so the you know the question of kind of why talk about this now why bring up this motion now from our other and actually mike i think probably we dig it down so we can see each other um you know clearly in terms of very specific to pelham our ongoing financial viability depends on increased school choice enrollment and i think if we are going to attract school choice families um they need to know what the plan is for the next school year um [Music] we also saw from the one public comment certainly that is not a survey of all families but so anecdotal information that families are right now in the process of having to make really difficult choices and private schools or charter schools or school choice applications for other districts you know now is the time when families are considering those um and that you know i think to show that we are making some progress that we're focused on in person learning as much as possible for next calendar year um i think could be important so this so for tonight it's more just discussing this language um we're not voting on it but again it will come up at our joint meeting and will possibly be voted on then um and so and i i wasn't at or nor did i watch the joint meeting so i don't know sarah best or margaret if there's any parts of that discussion that came up that you'd want to share here that are relevant or if other folks have questions or comments i i don't think i have anything necessarily to bring forward from that i uh i i think the concern is similar at the regional level um when we think about who's who might come back or who might not come back next year um i guess that's really all i have to say about what we talked about serious uh the only other thing i have written down is that um how inefficient it is to run parallel programs to have both in person and virtual and that when we're already at a place where you know finances are crunched and um that we we just don't have the money to run both sure yeah right yep margaret so one question that has come to my mind um or maybe something mike that you could speak to a little bit since the meeting the other night is how does this tie into negotiations with the union i know that the moa ends in june so what happens with all of that for next year do you have any ideas so as you noted the memorandum of agreement ends on june 30th it's only for the current school year and i think you know even for my cover well i think it'd be i'm trying to be cautious of not negotiating in public and that's why i'm being really you know i'm being trying to think about what i want to say before i say it um i think it's the motion as written sets a clear directive to me as well as a negotiating team on perhaps what's non-negotiable in negotiations that's probably as much as i will uh can say uh it's an awkward worded sentence i know but um i think that helps me thank you okay yep wrong yep go ahead ron well i'm not on the negotiate uh i think it's important to support the men of the the motion only because the public wants to know what's going to happen in the fall passage of this motion would indicate that's what we want to happen as far as the vaccine is concerned all teachers should be vaccinated by the second week of march i'm i had my first shot i'm at 80.

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her business that we have is we need to elect a chairperson for the committee um and so uh we'll open up nominations for that i'd like to nominate you kate thank you joe um is there a second i'll second it thank you amy and uh all those in favor all right i apologize i should have asked if there were any other nominations first um okay and then for uh uh co-chair do we have any nominations for co-chair nominate amy okay and i will second that any other nominations seeing none all those in favor aye aye all right amy is the co-chair very good um so you know now i think we need to to start a conversation around the table here um you know i i have a couple thoughts about what i would like to see this committee working on um but obviously that's a group decision uh to decide you know sort of where we're what direction we're going to move in um you know my thought right now after [Music] the budget passing through the board of ed last night is that we need to you know center our efforts on outreach about what the budget contains and what the process is uh for the budget now that it's been approved by the board of ed where where it goes from here and what the process is and um what we ultimately end up with as a board from uh the the city once their decision is made um so those are that's my thought as far as you know the the kind of information we need to be imparting to the public right now um but i'm certainly open to conversation about other things that folks might want to do with our time here if it's okay kate i'd like to also suggest in addition to the budget timetable and and to answer your questions uh what i would like to do is is to understand your or the point of your agenda tonight is the community outreach is to try to work together to simplify the budget so that collectively the people on the board can go out into the community and to advocate for this budget as i've expressed in my workshops i you know work with courtney to keep it on the the simple side and we can further reduce the complexities of this to perhaps more layman terms and courtney and i and kevin had also discussed about doing a little bit more in terms of the presentation that we got the other night importantly so that was more personalized by having videos or conversations of staff members or students that that can comment on some of the proposals we have and what the effect would be if it doesn't happen um so it again i go back to the word humanize and people understand what the impact it is if we get a good feel for the numbers and are able to explain these numbers in in layman's terms so that you know we have a comfort with it then we may be able to go out into a team and with the inroads that dr mead and kevin has made in the community they may be able to set up appointments as well as you know gladys and her affiliation with the church and other organizations we may be able to go out we is the board not just only this group because it's going to be a large undertaking go out and advocate for the budget um i think we've picked up momentum in the last two years on the part of the public and particularly the strength of the teachers union starting to come forward and say support the funding to the board of ed i think we have to keep that momentum up and i try to have pointed out last night with kara you know again reiterating that although the the funding is a lot of money it's unfortunate but historically you know we've been cut and it's caught up with us and if we are going to embark on more sophisticated programs such as the pog or the the academy or anything else we want to do we can afford not to be funded if we're not funded we can't do the other stuff then there's really no sense of moving forward with the the other programs is my feeling is because it'll be done very haphazardly it wouldn't be like getting a high school as we did and we couldn't afford to open up the high school we had to do it over 30 years which was really kind of kind of stupid so yeah no to that part i think the first thing to do is to try to get the budget and i know it's boring you know the people to go through numbers but again if we can get it so that it's simplified so that we can convey the emotion that augusto conveyed in his presentation to what kevin had mentioned on the social part it gives us a feel that we know what we're talking about so we're out presenting this you know people see that it comes from the heart and we have passion for this stuff not just reading off a number from receipts and saying we need you know x number of dollars for psyop coaches etc etc um so you know i think the first thing you do is to you know come up with some sort of a program to further refine the presentation that courtney did again uh and kevin had conversations about possibility of doing that and then you know you putting together uh a proposal to the full board to round up the troops to see how we can go ahead and get some some some troops to to go out and and to canvas be the public you know we've got a presentation to the cyp pto which has a large audience but a lot of things we can do it's just a matter of having it organized and when it comes you know be prepared when these these particular meetings come up so that we're we're engaged as a team and the group be able to make the presentation and then it's not only with the buddy but from the budget ends you know there are other things and your your subject of community outreach falls into exactly what dr needing and kevin have been doing over the course of the last number of years um so that's important you know whether it's again going out and explaining the portrait of the graduate and at some later dates go out and support what the concept of the academy is because i'm a little bit confusing um so again it's most important to get out into the community and over the years that i've been on the board that has been one of the slowest inroads that we've had and a for foreign me the hispanic community basically would be lost because she took a tremendous undertaking to have them have confidence and trust in her so that that could be the relationship with the border bay so we've come a long way it's taking us a long time now we gotta capitalize on that yeah well and i think you make a good point rich you know um in particular right now i think that there are a lot of parents and families that are paying much closer attention than they normally might be to what's going on with the schools and that presents us with an opportunity to work on that relationship building that you're alluding to you know i i i think all of us have heard the frustration that um this pandemic has created for for folks and it's exacerbated a lot of situations that we've been dealing with in the schools for a while um and now i think you know with more folks watching the the uh the meetings at home because they're able to you know attend virtually um and and uh you know hear about more what what's going on you know i think to your point um you know you you mentioned that um you know that the city-wide pto has has a broad audience um and that there are certain groups that are already kind of doing this kind of work but we need to put this in language that is easily digestible and one of the things that happens at our board meetings is that works we're we're sort of speaking a language that doesn't always resonate with with everybody who's listening um because this is language that that we all hear from you know either our you know our administrators um you know who are education experts um you know or language that we've been exposed to after year you know a certain amount of time on the board so we're familiar with it when we use like the knee ask report and we talk about that uh we talk about you know the the t fall uh evaluations we talk about all these different things that for us are very you know we kind of understand them already but people who are listening to that are not going to process it the same way and and so i think in that sense you know maybe our approach with the community relations is going to be a little it's going to look and sound a little bit different than what our approach is as as board members around the table um right so i think to your point you mentioned me as and and certainly kevin and doctor may can speak to this the public may not know what nes is but the net effect is if we don't get the accreditation then there is a specific problem with the graduation of these kids right from a high school right have an accreditation their diploma is worthless i mean i think that's that's something that is a very easy sentence you know to get to resonate with people you know if you find out that your kid has worked this hard to get through high school and their diploma doesn't count for anything or doesn't hold any weight that's a very easy concept for folks to understand and i think that's the kind of you know that's exactly the kind of approach i'm talking about rich where we we bring this down to uh you know a world an understanding of what the consequences for people who are in the system so you know i firmly believe and i've always believed that everything we do in in the school district affects your child unfortunately we see that if we move the bus stop you know we pre-coded we had a board you know board room filled with hundreds of parents we talked about a hundred million dollar budget and you get a half a dozen people there yeah but you've got to be able to demonstrate what the impact what the effect is on exactly i keep using examples about guidance counselors and a good part of this is that how much of this is in the budget you know we had questions about conversations with amy today and it came up yesterday uh at the meeting as to the request that we're asking you know i i firmly believe and i firmly believe i i do believe that that our responsibility is to put forth a budget that supports the movement ahead of the kids and they'll be kids in in danbury it's up to the mayor of the city to juggle our request relative to the balance of the city and and therefore that's his job that's his problem but it's our job to advocate for for what's going to move us ahead and as terror made very important we can ill afford to take less and if we don't get it from the city then it's the state we have to make these challenges to us and our local representatives you know we can't move the momentum that we've had the last couple years yeah and i think and it can't just be our momentum rich to that and it's it's got to be momentum that comes out of the community whether we're pursuing that at the city level whether we're pursuing that at the state level whether we're pursuing it you know for you know just a community effort um the the folks who need to be vocal about this and and to participate in this more are you know the families who are going to be impacted by it and the students who are going to be impacted by it um you know the teachers um frequently show up for for the um the budget meetings um and the budget hearings and um you know they certainly have a vested interest but um this is a service we're providing to the community and i think you know we have two tasks ahead of us i i often want to appeal mostly to the the the families i think you know the students who are in our school system because i think those are folks who have a you know their own interest in it but this is this is a broader discussion too within the community about why we need to support healthy schools um because that's you know we've we've had this conversation i've had this conversation with a number of you that impacts the the housing market and and what the value of your property is going to look like and it also impacts what your leadership for your community is going to look like and those that's something that i think is you know when we're talking about the long-term um strength and health of danbury you know having having good strong public schools are a big part of that equation we're obviously in a situation right now where you know we've we've sort of been through a period of money being you know pulled away from from our work here we can't make it up in a year we can't make it up in two years we probably can't even make it up in five years i think you know to the point you're making we just need to put forth our best effort to advocate for the money we're asking for this year because we're you know courtney and and the rest of the administrative staff have put it into context for us right they've said these are the things we need this is why we need them this is how we're planning for bringing our schools to where they need to be to support the community the the community of students that we have um and so we just need to follow that lead that they're offering us with you know providing that context to you know all of the families in our community and to to all of our community members you don't need to dominate conversations i'd like to get the opinions of kevin and dr me but we also have to explain to the public the the effect of the the cares to money because the layman they hear that danbury got 10.1 million dollars and simplistically if you're asking for 14 million dollars they can say well the differential is just four million dollars that the city has to do it so we have to be able to explain the logistics as to the restrictions on what the cares money are is and if we use the 10 million dollars for the 14 million the next year we're going to be in one you know yeah that's a good point rich that's another so what i'm saying is that our troops our emissaries that go out there should be involved in this and have every bit of information to to be able to to sell you know there's like a sales person you want to go out there you want to sell this particular product you got to know how product is manufactured you got to know what it's going to do you have to have a belief in it if you want to make the sale and close the sale um so you know i think there's a lot of training or an output that we have to do to get out our group together and and then we get a marching order from kevin and dr mead and they say okay go out there you know we schedule this we schedule this um and you know they can take care of certain things that that's the way i envision it but it's a team it's a team effort you just can't leave it on to you know dr sal i have one video thing and put it on youtube well and and we're not doing our work it we're not doing our work if that's the way it ends up so um i'm curious from joe and amy um and certainly you too as well gladys um you know what your thoughts are and you know sort of where you're approaching the committee work uh i'll go um i totally agree with what you're both saying and i being a person who's not really a numbers person and yet the way the budget was presented this time and and last year it was like this too with the powerpoint presentation and then you know all the extra information we had from each person in the categories i thought it was excellent and i was able to i was able to get it and understand it and i would like nothing better i i like going out and talking to groups of people i'm um it's just one of my uh one of the things i do well but i need something to take with me and unfortunately i don't speak spanish or portuguese that's a real drawback but um had somebody with me i mean i've got the boldness but i need to have the information um written up and with just all these foot like rich said simply but the bullet points there's quite you know there's quite a few things here i mean at least five points that are really important you know the knee asks so important the implementation um i go back to augusto and and the the psyop coaches and and and the whole you know bilingual piece um i mean also of course our um i'm all for the behaviorist uh specialists who need to help us out now until you know we get our kids back to a place where they're in in a good way after what's happened in the last year and you know teachers families everybody um so there's just there's like five or six points that could be easily made and and to your point too kate i've been on one of those pto meetings at broadview where there were 27 parents on it that's i've never been never been to a pto meeting with 27 parents five but not 27.

okay i don't have access to my video but i'm here um so i can go ahead and run the meeting without the video i know are we've been waiting um do we give some time for public i know we've been we've been having technical difficulties here um i think let's see quinteros and fans in now you're able to um to log um like to show your video trustee um thank you okay and i don't know about trustee vacarano is uh maybe logging in we can wait a few minutes and maribel make sure that if there's any audience waiting they need to be let in automatically with weapon with the webinar but just the panelists i have to switch them over to i mean the uh trustees have to switch them over to panelists when they're logging in okay so let us know i guess we'll uh go ahead and um take roll call again is that or do we not have to yes sir okay not necessary but we have quorum so um we'll go ahead and go straight into reporting out on our um closed session um dr dr bauer can you report out for us yes under item 10.07 the board voted to earn a zero vote the layoff of certificate of seven certificated administrators and they are kasturi basu yeni rosales maria gutierrez tano coley gloria hayes perkins rebecca jensen and joseph manluco nothing further to report thank you dr bauer at this time i'd like to open it up for any future board agenda requests if anybody has those okay seeing none i'll go ahead and forward on to adjournment um at 9 55 uh joining the meeting and we'll see you on march 11th thank you thank you good night good night good night

board about any matter under the jurisdiction of the board and not otherwise agenda so any matter that anybody would like to address a board that is not on our agenda tonight there is one person okay if we can um go ahead and tell us the name and then put uh maribel if you can help us with the clock and we can welcome them in the first question is jorge erellana okay welcome jorge we will be showing a clog and as soon as uh you begin speaking the timer will begin welcome um hola um everyone hi everyone um can you hear me yes yes hello um hi kareena hi everyone um thank you for letting me speak today my name is jorge and i'm currently transitioning from my role as a high school principal with alpha i'm into a director of community engagement role and i'm here today to share something we're currently doing in alpha that i'm very proud of as you all know we care very much about college persistence so alpha tracks and supports students during their first two years when they're in college given we're currently in distance learning we were able to hire eight alumni currently in college for avid tutoring program and the impact of that has been very uplifting i'm having them on campus even virtually has infused their school with first-hand college knowledge from first generation college students they primarily provide academic support to our ninth and tenth graders but they serve as role models for an entire school school community i would like to introduce andrea who i think is here um she's one of our alumni and so that she can briefly um share about her experience uh at alpha and beyond thank you very much thank you jorge and then i'm assuming that andrea will be on speaking with her own time correct you see her okay welcome andrea is andrea here andrea gonzalez hello hi welcome okay can i start no yes as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you andrea my name is andrea gonzalez i'm currently majoring in computer science at santa clara university and i am one of the avid leaders at atlas indivita i am a child of immigrant parents struggling to make ends meet in this very expensive valley i started my journey with alpha as a founding student at bangalore bangka provided us with a lot of great experiences in stem and through the plt program i learned many leadership skills that i still use today in particular alpha taught me how to advocate for myself while at blanca and later at cindy i learned the importance of building relationships with my teachers i am very grateful for the opportunity to give back um to my community as an avid tutor being in classes with students allows me to model what being a scholar looks like after having to adapt to online learning i am also able to help students understand concepts of concepts that they are struggling with particularly in stem my role as an avid tutor allows me to be a leader that educates and empower students with me san jose to attend college and to be successful thank you for your time and letting me share this thank you andrea anybody else out there no one else okay see no one else uh we'll go ahead and move on to our next item 301 uh comments and communication from teamsters do we have anybody here from teamsters remember from the teamsters please raise your hand nobody okay and if they raise their hand later we can come back to them if we don't see them we'll go ahead and move on to the california school employees association representative yes we have shannon great welcome sharon as soon as oh well no we have no timer sorry about that good evening um welcome can you hear me yes oh good i got a new laptop so i'm still figuring it out nice um but good evening and um i'm gonna keep this short i don't have really items on the agenda to address but i did want to thank trustee chavez and bergeron for the budget for him the other night it was very informative and interesting and it had a lot of input and i i thank you for having that and sharing it and i did want to say happy valentine's day to everybody and have a good three day weekend stay safe and enjoy your families that's all i have tonight thank you sharon thank you um anybody else that has raised their hand avatar maybe teamsters that came back on or yes they did yes mr foo is back okay welcome mr foo yes hi hello hi there i'm sorry i'm trying to get on and this is new to me as well so you know now that uh you can hear me yes welcome great great thank you um on behalf of teamster i'd like to uh you know i like to sh do a shout out to um area teachers uh on behalf of teamster you know with tonight's board agenda uh we appreciate what you did for the whole unit you know as for yourself uh csa and teamster as well we want to thank you for for uh you know negotiated successfully with the uh district and that uh you know with your success every everyone was was uh you know uh kind of benefit from that and i appreciate that i just want to make sure that the area knows that we're we appreciate what they did for us and along with that uh i want to thank dr bauer for your great leadership i mean it's it's been a struggle prior to you coming on a board for i i say for teamster mainly uh but i can you know if the other bargaining unit can chime in on that that that is uh you are the road that we were the path that we are uh you know that we struggle and and came um came big uh came upon um and we appreciate everything that management did for uh the uh the bargaining units uh all the unions here at elem rock school district i mean it's it's just a game changer with you know with the right management team and and the the the the union we work hand in hand and we we support you in every way possible um and thank you for you know acknowledging that um you know this this um this pandemic has you know created a lot of uh um you know challenges for our members but with this uh you know when you expect when you don't expect something you get it um as as as a me too it's just amazing you know each one of us each member of the teamster appreciate your your support and your um you know your dedication to the district and the employee the student the staff um you guys are amazing i mean you know i've been here 21 years uh working for this district and this is the first time i can say you know i'm proud to be a ellen roth uh worker and members and part of the family that that take care of each other uh i want to thank everyone uh and especially teacher for making this happen for for for us as well and just one more thing to the board of trustee uh on behalf of teamster i just want to say that dr bauer you've been an inspiration to us and that if the board can she's she's the best so far in our eyes you know i mean uh prior to that we had some juggling to do and our representation wasn't all there but now uh you know you have a great superintendent and a great management team on your side and and i say on our side uh we work great together and you know with this endeavor going forward we're here to support in noaa possible and i just want to make a a shout out to that to uh to all of you that thank you so much you know our our employee appreciate everything that you know that's been given and collaborated with the district thank you mr foo we appreciate your words um and all your work as well um next we'll move on to the alum rock administrators association do we have anybody here maria martinez thank you welcome miss martinez hi good evening alan rock school board and superintendent bower last month i let you know who the nominees were for access region 8 awards from our district and i'm excited to announce that we have some of our very own alum rock colleagues who have won for the region which encompasses all of santa clara county so congratulations to anna nouwen who is honored as region 8 middle school principal of the year also congratulations to miss maria lupita gutierrez who has also been named region eight's elementary co-administrator of the year and we want to acknowledge miss anya artias who has won student services administrator of the year all three of these alum rock awardees will be honored at a reception on may 7th and will have their names move forward to the state level so congratulations to our araa colleagues we definitely have a talented team i also want to let you all know about unity week we are in the midst of unity week here in alum rock where we have encouraged our families to participate in a fun activity each day this week in order to show their unity with alum rock so i hope you all get a chance to look through some of our school's social media pages and you can always look up hashtag ar usc united or ah ue unidos to find wonderful pictures and images of all of the fun and exciting events that we've had this week thank you so much and have a good evening thank you miss martinez and congratulations to all the recipients and um thank you all for your hard work as well uh ernesto can i just ask a quick question um if if you could just kind of give a clear or clarify the region that our our wonderful staff is has seems like a clean sweep but can you just clarify what the region is that that that covers yes so um roughly it consists of santa clara county and the southern san francisco the southern end of the san francisco bay area so it's all of santa clara county and south san francisco nice congratulations everyone awesome work thank you for the clarification sure thank you thank you um and now we'll move on to uh alum rock educators association do we have jocelyn or any other member from area here avatar yes there she is welcome jocelyn thank you good evening everyone i hope that you are all doing well it's hard to believe that it's been just short of one year since we were thrown into this reality that feels very far from real much of the time in spite of all the rapidly changing challenges that we have had to deal with involving distance learning the impact of covid racial and civil injustices declining enrollment resulting in a decline of jobs and the potential closure of schools i think we're making steady progress navigating our way through together i appreciate area being included in the recommendations relating i'm sorry can you hear me yeah sorry about that uh justin somebody wasn't muted that's okay okay again i appreciate area being included in the recommendations relating to the different areas since we are all facing this together i understand that the ultimate decisions are on your shoulders as trustees and i am confident that you will make those decisions after careful considerations and much thoughtfulness of for how it relates to our students staff and community area has been putting a lot of energy in developing the work of our equity team over this past year we are grateful to all of you who voted to accept the black lives matter at school resolution that aria submitted back in july tomorrow area is holding its second black educators matter reception which is a virtual social gathering for area members uplifting black educators in alum rock and celebrating the heritage of african diaspora which is a new word for me that i'm learning what it means and how to say but um i learned something new every day and appreciate it in honor of black history month the equity team has kicked off the expressions contest for alum rock students students in grade tk through eight are encouraged to enter an original work created to celebrate and commemorate black history month while this is an event that was originated and developed by the area equity team chaired by area member lynn white from linda vista we are very thankful for the generous donations of gift cards for prizes by the alum rock administrators association in addition to their monetary contribution they have also been very helpful in getting the word out to the families with the support of the families and of course the teachers in ellen rock this is an educational opportunity for the students to gain an awareness and understanding about different elements of black history the entries are due by february 26th and the contest winners will be notified by march 5th it would be great if the top winners could be acknowledged at a school board meet at a school board meeting by this school board and by our superintendent tomorrow is the first day of bargaining for our uh area and the district for our successor collective bargaining agreement we would like to reach a settlement in a timely manner so that we may focus our attention on the other complicated matters facing the district like the safe return to in-school instruction at some point in time as well as the possible consolidation or closure of several school sites it is aria's intent to come to the table prepared and willing to reach a fair agreement thank you thank you jocelyn we appreciate everything you're all doing as well now we'll move on to the superintendent's report dr bauer yes happy african-american month to everybody and i'm going to try a new vietnamese phrase that i learned today um namoy did i say that trusty vegeta knows how to say that and that's happy new year in vietnamese and that's coming up on saturday so i hope everybody celebrates and everybody has a safe celebration in their with their families and i know miss uh trusty fam is going to correct me but hold on trustyfam you're going to have to teach us all how to say it correctly i also want to give my time for an update from the uh racial equity committee they have an update for the board and i just wanted to um send those celebratory comments to all our community uh ms nguyen and miss dalton have some words for the board an update from this committee welcome ms nguyen hi good good evening board trustees uh good evening dr bauer it is great to um see you all and thank you um dr bauer you said it really well thank you so much for wishing us the vietnamese community as well as the asian communities that celebrate lunar new year a happy new year uh miss talton and i would really like to thank you for your time with being in a position to yield some space for us to give some announcements on behalf of the racial equity committee um first of all before we go into those updates we would like to take a moment to pause and recognize that there have been a growing number of violent assaults against elderly asian americans on the eve of lunar new year this issue has been framed as black versus asian issues and we would like to take a stand against this economy that pits two groups of color against one another during a time of racial and socioeconomic unrest we acknowledge that we are 11 months into shelter in place and a little over a year into a global pandemic that has highlighted anti-asian xenophobia and police brutality against african americans in alignment with a joint statement made by asian american organizations across the bay area we would like to highlight that quote our strength is in unity not division and that our histories and our futures are intertwined end quote and dismissed palton able to be unmuted get her unmuted please please repeat the name talton excuse me unmuted good evening can everyone hear me yes good evening welcome wonderful good evening to all of you as representatives of the arusd racial equity committee we we perceive it's our position to create a plan to foster the knowledge and skills among our educator teams to work from an anti-bias perspective and to cultivate community among students of diverse backgrounds for black history month and on the eve of lunar new year ms nguyen and i would like to encourage community members to work collectively to protect the safety of our most vulnerable populations and contact local representatives to shed light on issues presented a call for action that supports our communities with healing and recovery is our desire during these difficult times and if you could see us miss nguyen and i are wearing our cultural attire in unity and in solidarity with the ar usd unity week but you can at least hear our voices so you'll just have to imagine what we're wearing ms talton can you pause real quick actually um after are we able to show their video and i was actually going to wait till the next meeting but since you mentioned that i think it's time right now we can unmute the speakers i'm sorry not unmute um if we can show their video is that possible avatar yes it is i have promoted them and they can share their vegan thank you i would love to see and i'm wearing an african dashiki beautiful thank you thank you can you go to the next slide please thank you we want to share with the community tonight four things we're going to to share the grounding where we are with the racial equity committee anna is going to provide an overview of the selection process for our racial equity committee we will identify the members of the group by name and their position or role in the community and our next steps next slide please in the grounding ourselves what we do in all of our meetings is to offer land acknowledgement so on the next slide you will see that we offer recognition and respect to the mewekma ohlone people past and present i'm not sure if it's showing on slide number four they were skilled hunters and artisans and as district leaders in racial equity we acknowledge the erasure of indigenous peoples and honor the presence of the original caretakers of this land upon which we work and live i apologize that that slide that says you're on borrowed land is not is not being revealed right now but as leaders of this committee we are committed to standing against systemic oppression and working towards reconciliation i would ask that you have paused with me to acknowledge the mewekma ohlone people thank you on the following slide you see carter g woodson who is the father of black history the area president has already given acknowledgement to black history month for the month of february and i'd like to provide a little bit of background as to why february was chosen the gentleman that you see on the screen is carter g woodson a university of chicago alumnus who had the idea for a black history month in 1915 when he traveled to washington d.c for an anniversary celebration of emancipation there they saw exhibits of black history on display and thousands of african americans participated he later formed an organization to promote the scientific study of black life and history and there's a short video that we would like to show if that this is able to be done if not i can go to the next slide this slide you have probably seen in our previous presentation uh this shows a portion of the black lives matter at school resolution which was passed on july 9th 2020 by the area equity human and civil rights committee that resolution was adopted by the board of trustees and the creation of this committee the racial equity committee is a direct result of that work the racial equity committee seeks to empower educators students and families to confront hate bigotry and racism that rises in communities in our land we will be sharing the names of people later who have been selected for this special committee i will now turn it over to anna who will give the details about this specific work thank you so much miss talton for sharing those updates um next slide please and also just to share with folks i don't have a super um formal cultural costume but i am wearing a t-shirt that represents the southeast asian diaspora which i identify with as folks who are identified as refugees of the vietnam war and this shirt which is in the model of among blankets represents the journey of many hmong mean cambodian vietnamese and lion refugees as a result of the vietnam war so um to come back to the process of selecting our racial equity committee members i just would like to share that miss talton and i were privileged and honored with this responsibility to be able to bring a bring to the table um racial equity work and begin this work as a pioneering group we acknowledge that we always have space and room to grow and we love the fact that this is a part of the board work and we look forward to working with everybody here in order to make this vision happen next slide please so we wanted to ensure that we were as thorough as possible in getting our foundational work done so in order for us to first start with the selection process we that we first began with visioning work in which we consulted with district leaders as well as dr bauer to consider how can we sustain this work in the long term and after we were in that position we then released a number of written applications in three major languages as represented within our district and invited folks from parent and community groups to apply once we were able to review all the applications we actually invited everybody who applied to join us in meet and greets because we found that the written applications were able to share a limited perspective of what we perceived were some strengths that we saw in these applications and we really wanted to get the opportunity to have folks meet each other get to know each other and know all the important work that they're doing in the community at the end miss talton and i recognize that we both as well as the you know in in thinking about um how important it is this work be able to be super thorough and elaborate we wanted to put at the forefront relationships and while we would like while we ideally would have loved to accept all 35 applicants to the committee we just wanted to make sure that we were able to foster relationships with a strong core group that can thus disseminate information that is related to the district in in larger spaces next slide please so when we when we move forward with thinking about the remaining core group um we thought about diversity of representation whether the diversity represented their connection to the community their ethnic and cultural identification and the different ways that they responded with their with their experience and mindset next slide please and we also wanted to ensure that everybody was in a position in which they could approach the work with a growth mindset and um miss talton and i and the the screening committee utilized discourse two which is um a type of framework that invites people to think about how to shift our mindset to think about multiple perspectives and to think about how we need to look into ourselves internally for changes that we want to see externally and we're also looking for committee members who were in a place to be reflective about this journey of becoming anti-racist becoming anti-racist involves reflecting on the different structures and systems that we've been a part of that may have been a detriment to a larger um i would say that may have been a detriment to the progress of communities of color and while we have been players in this system it's it's important for us to recognize how we might have played certain roles and how we want to grow from that next slide please and at the end we wanted to introduce folks to this responsibility that whoever is a part of the core group is the representative of of the group and of themselves and we wanted to introduce to the larger arusd community that what we will be responsible for as a racial equity committee is that we will engage in four meetings as a group every single school every school year until the 2023 school year and we we will aim to essentially facilitate affinity groups where we will essentially collect um feedback via town hall fashion in groups that are that are aligned in identity whether it's racial identity or ethnic identity or cultural identity and these affinity group town halls will be facilitated by our core group members as well next slide please um and and as we move forward with announcing who we are as a core group um i would like to note that um while i understand that a number of committees that are being held by our district so far are open spaces that are left for public comment um miss talton and i decided that for at least the planning year the core group will meet in essentially closed group meetings as a form of retreat so that way we can continue building relationships with each other and be able to engage in an anti-racist journey that involves us being able to feel vulnerable with each other and trust each other and as ms talton and i have reflected on our own journeys we thought about how important it is it was for us to grow ourselves in spaces where we felt safe and secure to be able to grow and to be able to engage with colleagues and peers who felt safe you know checking us and and just making sure that we were on the right pathway and uh and right mindset to engage in work that's um involving equity for all of our students and so we wanted to speak transparently that for at least this school year our planning meetings will involve the core group meeting in closed group sessions however the town hall affinity group spaces will be spaces in which we will collect feedback from the community about this work so moving forward into the core group who are we um miss talton and i will read off names um i understand that today's meeting is a little bit different from our typical sessions which is totally fine i think um i i i hope that our committee members out there are just doing a silent whoop out there once they get announced um next slide please so um i'm gonna we're just gonna take turns reading uh miss talton and i so um a part of our core group is adina goldfarb who is a community partner flor de leon jacobo who is a parent of the middle school community and a community partner we also have selena ramirez who is a community partner part of our racial equity committee is mrs catalina rodriguez a parent tk through five and community partner mr joseph manluco an alum rock employee at our tk through eight school miss vanessa kerr and alum rock employee grades six through eight we also have damani macarthur milton who is an air usd employee of the middle school grades we have kasturi basu who is an arusd employee of tk to five school we have winnie she who is a parent and community partner mr danny sanchez a community partner michael the an alum rock employee middle school grades and jason sorich who is our district liaison next slide please yes congratulations our core group for for being part of this effort we hope all of them are excited about this work and we'd like to share with you our community agreements taken from the art of conversation by margaret wheatley and this um this core group has worked with us um to do the following we acknowledge each other as equals we're curious about each other we slow down to take time to think reflect and become better listeners we know that conversation is a natural way that humans think together but ultimately we know it may get messy sometimes and we acknowledge the need to move forward and to honor each other in this work for the committee this was taken from a training that ms nguyen and i participated in in the fall from the national equity project next slide please our next steps next slide anna i'm sorry miss nguyen has already alluded to this we will host bi-monthly board meetings so this february 11th is our first we will come back again in april and june with updates from the racial equity committee and we were fortunate enough to have this approved that the members of the committee could attend a february 22nd professional development training from the panorama education department and this will be a virtual summit of course we will host our first town hall in may of this year and our goal again is to have three more meetings with the racial equity committee members who you were just introduced to before this school year concludes next slide please i think that's it so i do want to say this i'm sorry um we wanted to show our solidarity as a vietnamese and african-american with the things that have been going on currently and um the bigotry and racism the discrimination the victimization that occurs the obstacles that have been presented for people of color persist but we rise still and i want to end with a quote from one of my favorite educators and human rights advocate marian wright edelman who said if you don't like the way the world is you change it you have an obligation to change it you just do it one step at a time our racial equity committee is committed to doing that for the betterment of all thank you very much thank you so much and i just wanted to honor dr bowers time i don't know if you wanted to go back or finish okay thank you so much um thank you for that beautiful uh presentation and i'm sure we'll have time as trustees in a little bit to share our thoughts and views really appreciate your hard work uh and at this time i'll go ahead and open it up to my fellow trustees anybody would like to make any comments i see ernesto yes i mean just for an easier trend i'll go first just for an easier transition because i had a couple questions um comments about the the presentation um so first of all as always i want to thank the the team for ongoing excellence in what they do it's uh when we first approved this um i don't know that i envisioned it coming along so quickly or in such a robust manner but but i am pleasantly um not surprised but i'm happy with the progress so i want to first acknowledge that um and the second i guess is question or um yeah question that i'm just wondering if um in terms of like the terminology and the verbiage that's used particularly with respect to once we start doing the town halls and trying to get engagement from community if for the latino community if maybe there could be some further inquiry or discussion about the terminology used for that group i think the ones that are there are are certainly used um in our community but i think particularly in our community um they may not be the the words that people use to identify themselves in this community so may or may not be true i'm just i guess requesting or wondering if during some of those sessions with the new team if there might be some inquiry into you know the the names that we use to identify that group again with respect to trying to engage that community have them identify with that so that they will come and participate um but that's just a a question of mine and then the second thing that i have for that is um i i love the presentation i as i mentioned i love the the preparation and everything i'm just wondering if because we're going to be getting ongoing updates so i'm wondering or i'm assuming that in the future we'll have them agendized hopefully as as their own separate item and not um part of the superintendent's update just so that we can make sure that we dedicate and allocate time for that item and and manage it with the rest of the agenda that's just a suggestion but um but yeah so so i'd like to see it as a as an actual agenda item and and give it its own piece of our especially if it's going to be an ongoing update so the only other thing that i wanted to so thank you again to that and those are just questions suggestions but completely appreciative of all the work so far um as was mentioned trustee chavez and myself did have the budget committee recently and i just want to thank um the staff for putting together the materials mr chang and everyone else that is involved in in compiling and putting together the presentation and community members for coming to that pr to the presentation to the budget community meeting um it's important that we get accurate information to the community about our budget and what's going on and so it's important it was important to have that at this time and let's see oh a couple other things uh i am going to put let's see let's see if i can do this i'm going to put up right now you know i continue to hear throughout the country and everywhere there's just ongoing with everything else ongoing difficulty for our parents for our children um on the emotional social emotional side of of how we're all handling this pandemic hopefully there's a light at the end of the tunnel but a lot of people are hurting and suffering right now so i'm just going to briefly um put up this resource for people so um if you're a parent or or you know anybody in the community that is just kind of feeling down and and not feeling great i want people to know that there is you can call that number 1-800-273-talk and there's people there you can talk to to help you get through that and as a district we might may or may not be able to build upon that in the future but i did just want to put that out there knowing that people are hurting right now and and may need um a resource for that in addition to all the resources that we're giving as a district um and the last thing i will say is repeating what has already been said chukmung namoi and kong hey fat choi i don't know if i said either of those right but the sentiment of happy lunar new year goes out to everyone um it's already started i guess here at my house so we're we're into the celebration already um and i believe that was all that i had thank you thank you so much uh now we'll go on to trustee linda chavez and then i see mr fram's hands up so we'll go mister to mr pham after trustee travis okay i also want to thank everybody for participating on the um on the budget committee and that's the first one of the year of 2020 and i'd like to invite you all to the next one we want to host one in uh in april after we know more about the march interim budget and once it's uh revealed then we can post the dates uh i want to thank my colleague also for being on the budget committee and um i too had some concern of the presentation uh that it wasn't on the agenda and i was texting dr barra about that and she said that she gave up her time and i think since these meetings do run around that it would be more appropriate to agendize it and give them their uh ample time as well as recognition uh because if anybody does want to hear them and know that's their time slot they can tune in or not uh so i want to thank everybody for all the work that they did and uh one quick note is that they took down really quick uh on that presentation that we're on borrowed land i would like to hear more about what uh they mean by that we're occupying borrowed land and that's all my comments for now thank you trustee chavez uh mr pham oh my well uh first of all yes i do want to take the opportunity to say that you know happy happy year of the ox uh the so dr bauer and trustee bejarano you both passed the language exam but i i will say it's actually tomorrow so you know uh you know if this were vietnam i you know i am he you know we're having a board meeting on new year's eve you know so uh you know the second thing i wanted to say is uh you know since i've taken office i've had the opportunity to meet with east uh indivisible east san jose and the was it uh reinvest for racial equity coalition and alum rock and so far the uh you know we've had positive civil discussions and i'm glad that they uh extended invitations to me to speak you know and i hope that we can you know we're able to continue to have you know positive dialogue that brill builds bridges um third i also wanna you know uh you know given the mental health crisis i want to extend my admiration to you know the entirety of the alum rock staff you know with a special mention to our counseling services staff for all that they do for our kids and families uh which leads me to my you know last comment and you know i i learned this afternoon that mayor lecardo sent a co-signed a letter along with his uh colleagues in the other cities uh to go governor newsom about the reopening of the schools you know and i i do want to express at least for my self as a board member that you know i you know i i call on the mayor to you know before he puts out a statement about reopening the schools in the future please consult our superintendent and our board before making statements about opening the schools you know these are the lies of our students families teachers and staff you know and you know we should be having positive discussions as opposed to uh you know government by uh press releases and uh facebook posts so you know uh i mean you know i'm you know i know times are hard and we're all trying you know we all want to see the light at the end of the tunnel in this pandemic but it's a team effort so you know uh you know this is no joke and you know i you know i want to reiterate that you know reopening is a community effort and everyone sh you know we all of our stakeholders should be consulted before you know anyone makes a statement about reopening so on that note i uh thank the board president for letting me speak thank you mr pam um and at this time uh and this would you like to share any words before i share my comments yeah sure i'll keep it short uh check my just happening here to everybody who observes the lunar new year and uh yeah that's it thank you so much um and i would just like to i'm not going to try to say it because i have not practiced so i just want to say happy lunar new year uh the year of the fox to those that celebrate it um and also uh acknowledging that it's black history month um and thank you to the presenters i have uh presented and um the teachers i mean i'm not going to repeat what mr rokado mentioned already but um it just shows you know everything that we were doing just listening to the presentation i was getting the chills um just really really proud of our staff of our um teachers um of our administrators for all that they do um and you know dr bauer i mean you know you are their leader so you know it's a reflection of an entire team right um and i know we're all doing our best during these hard times uh but just you know hearing the amazing things that are happening and the um teachers getting awards and staff getting awards you know just shows the hard work that we're doing um so again just celebrating the the small victories along the way you know i think sometimes we get bogged down and we there's so much um out there that it's like you know we feel like we're not doing enough but you know as long as we're all doing our best um that's all we can do and so i i see that so thank you all um and then also with that you know just in the middle of the pandemic also the other hat that i wear as a public information officer with santa clara county you know we continue to be the hardest hit community um and our you know latinos and our community continue to be you know the high numbers um that have covet 19 and the lowest numbers that are vaccinated and we know that you know we gotta follow the directives given by the state as to who's getting the vaccines um but all that to say that you know i know right now we are um we've opened up to the 65 and older and we know that we have many elders in our community that still haven't been vaccinated that can be vaccinated and so with that um i just want to you know um invite each and every one of us who have the ability to use the internet um to support our elders in making appointments um i will you know mentioned the english appointment making website is scc freevax.org s-c-c-f-r-e-e-v-a-x dot o-r-g and that's for english and then the spanish is s-c-c s-s-s-c vacuna v-a-c-u-n-a dot o-r-g s-c-c bakuna punto so you know if we can help our elders make those appointments get them to the appointments uh we have a site at the mexican heritage plaza at emmanuel baptist church in the east side of the community a new site opened up at one seven seven five story road which is on the corner of story in king by the cardinal store um you're just really encouraging us and i can't wait till you know our staff and everybody else can get vaccinated um i'm with mr pham in the sense of you know in regards to opening schools it's a touchy subject some people want nothing to do with it and some people are you know demanding that school's open you know and and it's okay everybody has their reasons um but know that at alum rock we're gonna do it in a time where it's safe um and we're not rushing into anything and you know we know that it's you know part of the decision making that we get to make that won't be easy not everybody's gonna be happy but we're to take it step step at a time so i know dr bauer you might have um some something to share later about that um and i look forward to doing that again in a way that you know we have everything we need in order to open safely and stay open right there's no use in opening fast and then having to close down for any reasons so with that also um i just you know can't uh let the comment go by trustee chavez i look forward to also um helping uh shares and some light into um you know being on the ohlone land i look forward to sharing some of my um indigenous uh um my indigenous part of my um heritage uh so i know you know i love that that you asked that question because there's a lot of people that don't know um and you know as we learn um a lot of a lot i didn't know that i was on indigenous land when i was a child then later learning you know it's it's a it's a great thing it's a great thing when you're open to um the knowledge and so i look forward to sharing some of that as well yeah and with that we'll go ahead and move on to um item number 401 facilities repurposing advisory committee update um dr bauer do we have a staff that's going to update us i think and and natalie aval is available um in rene sanchez both of them i think we're ready to do that great welcome mr ball and mr sanchez yes thank you thank you guys um i will turn it over to natalie she is our co-facilitator committee chair and she's ready to share some comments and update you on our first two meetings thank you thank you so good evening everybody i'm natalia ball and i co-chair along with renee sanchez of the in the facilities repurposing advisory committee so it'll be a brief update because we've um just started meeting we've had two meetings so far um and there's a total of nine committee members and so we have started to review the demographic study and then some questions from the group that have come up to kind of help guide the work um have been there's three key questions the first one the impact on families and students that may need to move schools the second one what is the actual savings from a site that may be repurposed the third what are ways we can engage the broader community for input and then we're also considering town hall meetings and school site meetings um we still have a lot of work ahead of us but that's um our brief summary since we just started meeting thank you so much um is there any comments or questions by the board uh mr vegeta uh we can't hear you thank you mr bo first of all for the update um and mr sanchez and and the work that you started i'm just wondering um i mean i understand that you've had two meetings and you're just getting started and you have um additional questions that you're looking at but i'm wondering if a timeline or a rough timeline has been discussed at all in terms of what the group is thinking um as far as again recognizing that it's early but is there any general idea of when you know a discussion of a recommendation or a recommendation may may come our way we do have on the facilities repurposing advisory committee on the the page on the district site has um some some dates that were trying to be able to kind of um get some things out there um some of those dates might change because we're looking at um some different dates to meet for um to kind of better suit like all the committee members schedules um it doesn't include town halls but it kind of uh it gives a like a kind of like a little outline for now of um kind of what we're looking at for the meetings um so like for march we're hoping to have like some type of um uh or no april to kind of like a report to go to the board for the april meeting so okay so between i'm sorry go ahead i was saying i hope that kind of answers some questions i know it's a little vague but i i mean i get it like i said i know it's early on you weren't prepared for the question i didn't ask it ahead but so so am i kind of hearing then that there will be some work done between now and march or april and that at that time is kind of roughly when something might come to the board to consider and and potentially move forward from that point is that roughly what i hear yes so we're meeting next week and then the week after and then the week of uh march um march 5th is march 4th and then again the week of the 18th so as of now until the um is it the uh april board meeting we have um at least four four other meetings okay okay um i think that's all i have for now thank you very much thank you any others before i sorry i missed the ball were you going to say something oh no sorry it might be background noise one of my kids opened my door no worries i just want to make you okay no worries uh trusty chavez um no i was just gonna ask the same question that vegeta did but um dr bower also told me that it's on the website uh when they meet because i i did miss the first one and i said that i did want to listen in on those meetings thank you thank you uh let's see i don't see any hands up from a chicken there or mr from um i had the same question so thank you um and yes i just wanted to confirm that uh in april if they were gonna come with the recommendations um i do want to acknowledge that these are very hard you know conversations um i know it will be hard decisions when we get to that point but i'm very excited that we have great leaders and i'm confident that you are all there having the hard you know discussions i'm thinking about all those things i love all the points that you brought up that you're all considering um and i look forward to hearing back with the recommendation that you all come up with thank you so much for your hard work thank you for your time thank you um i don't know mr sanchez or uh if you have anything to add or just wanted to um remind everybody that all the information all of our meetings um if you go into our district website uh we do have a button for this committee so all of our minutes all of the documents that are utilized are available for public viewing we also have a recording of these meetings um currently we're scheduled to meet every single week up into april other than the weeks of board meetings so uh if anything changes in those schedules that will be updated in the district website so if you go on the district website and look at the repurposing committee uh it will have all that information available to the public thank you thank you um and then i just want to um mention that uh and trustee uh travis i know that um you know we asked the committee members to convene and then come to us with the recommendation um and i don't know i'm gonna talk to rogelio later about you know us attending as trustees um you know because we want them to have a conversation you know without any of our input or um if we can just show up and be silent you know in those ways um so that they can come back with a recommendation and that we just hear you know for the first time um so i look forward to having that com with that conversation with uh our attorney moving forward uh yes miss travis i did i did attend one and um it is allowed so i'm uh constantly looking up if it's i i didn't say anything throughout the whole thing but it is allowed for board members and i also ran that through the superintendent yesterday on our one-on-one okay um you know i probably will not uh show up mr ball and sanchez um just um you know i want to make sure that i uh when i hear it it's a full um recommendation thank you trustee for looking into that um you know i could see how that could also work for you um or anybody else right we all have different ways of making our decisions when we have to get to that point where it's tough decisions that we get to make moving forward okay anything else before we move on to the next item thank you so much now we'll move on to 402 approved board policy five one four five point seven sexual harassment actually hold on before we do that dr bauer uh or anybody a public comment on the on facilities yeah uh let's open it up for public comment thank you um after do we have anybody that's raised their hand to speak on this item on 401 yes madam president one okay welcome laura and as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin hello um good evening board president board trustees and superintendent bower um i am a community member and i wanted to address this board about the facilities repurposing committee i have been viewing the meetings and the associated materials and i just wanted to make it known that there are some problems with the demographic study data it is not a complete and accurate representation of all school sites facilities usage and um there are some calculations with the operational costs that have some errors specifically with fisher and matson i hope that we will be able to see a more thorough and complete conversation and review of this data in future committee meetings i know that these are very difficult decisions and i know that you all will take all of these things into consideration as you make these decisions thank you thank you so much laura for that information and for being here madam president yes go ahead um i would suggest if you can ask the member of the community that spoke if she could submit her notes in writing to the administration so that the comments can be reviewed and um the input can be taken into account to see if see if there's any issues there i would like to see yes thank you uh vice president quintero um yes elora if she's still on um if you can please uh provide that to our administration and we can forward those to uh dr bauer and to all trustees absolutely i can uh send those notes to dr bauer and the board trustees thank you very much great we appreciate it thank you very much okay any others uh avatar i'm president nobody else raised hand okay thank you so much we'll go ahead and move on to 402.

so to make sfb's part work and to and to allow because they've certified us the way i've written here they've certified diamondback desert valley and sunrises k4 they inappropriately they've certified both the middle school and fox creek as fifth through eighth and because the sfb doesn't recognize uh preschool separately they've certified coyote as k through four assuming that preschools can be at any k4 site so we're we're good there okay so uh we just need you to formally say this is how we're doing things in the district so we're not trying to change anything that's currently going on we're just trying to state it in a way that matches what's really happening and what has been approved and then just for explanation i put the part at that bullhead city school district offers life academy a temporary alternative classroom placement for k through 8th grade students located on any campus where the space is available it just happens to be a coyote right now it could be at any of our sites but they had in 2018 had it tied it to the crushed academy which at the time was on the coyote campus and of course it's no longer there so that would let us continue to operate that the students who attend our life academy are enrolled at their home schools so it's it's simply a different classroom it's kind of like we have virtual classrooms right now so we have classrooms in houses all over the community it's just a different location any other questions then i move that we approve item 5.1 as presented can i get a second i'll second the motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeanne borland aye amanda amen aye charlene diaz saw moves item 5.2 updated job descriptions dr stewart mr president board members this is the next set of job descriptions that we've been working through to update and make sure that they match what people are actually doing many of these are not some of these are not changed however the director of educational services currently known as director of curriculum and professional development a good a significant part of that position is grant writing and managing 14 or 15 grants so that would have made that title really long it struck me that just changing the name to director of educational services encompasses all of those things so that's the one title name change for a position the superintendent's job description had not been updated since 1994 and i didn't make any significant changes in it i did reorganize some things so because it read the old one read kind of like they kept thinking of things and tacking them on the bottom and so i tried to organize it so anything that had to do with curriculum instruction was together anything with facilities was together anything with budgets together otherwise it's it's it's essentially the same as what was there before and i didn't see any particular reason to change it those are all things that i try to do in my job the others you might wonder why we have four job descriptions for what mr noozle does and that's because he happens to be a jack of all trades um but these are all these are all roles that need to be in our district but none of them is a full-time position uh and it's and we're fortunate that he is a person who can manage all of those were he to leave for any reason then we would have to you know we we would have to do something else with those positions it might be that we could find somebody with all those skills it might be that we wouldn't and we'd have to sort them out so that's why they're written the way they are and i recommend all of these job descriptions any questions and then i move we approve item 5.2 is presented you have a second all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeanne borland i amanda amen hi charlene diaz so moved item 5.3 exhibit gcoec evaluation of principles dr stewart mr president and board members um i'll talk about five three five four uh and five five five six those four at the same time and then you can deal with them separately we needed to update evaluations for some of these roles first of all we want the evaluations to reflect the job description and vice versa and and so that's some of the revisions uh the folks involved have been the folks who are evaluated this way have been involved in these revisions uh the one that has to do with the paraprofessionals have been evaluated in the past with the general classified evaluation instrument which doesn't really address what we expect paraprofessionals to do and so mrs brown principal at desert valley had already been looking into doing some research on this and so the principals were involved in vetting this evaluation as well so all four of those are simply updates for your approval and they become exhibits in uh attached to the policies all right so let's just take these one at a time just to make sure we don't miss anything uh are there any questions with item 5.3 principle evaluation i have a question okay so um when looking at the numbers um because this is very similar to the teacher evaluation instrument in school and especially what we use at the high school level so um i'm familiar when we do evaluations i'm looking at the scores and i was just confused on why our scores are what they are and how we came up with the numbers to fill in the distinguished category the reason i ask is distinguished is 10 to 12 points in all 19 subcategories and then 22 to 29 points in our goals um if the bare minimum is to score an average of 22 in the goals and 19 and uh excuse me 10 in the 19 subcategories then wouldn't our distinguished category need to be 278 to 344 i didn't go back and add those up so i guess we better do that well i mean when i take 259 and i divide it by 344 i think i get like 75 or 85 and i'm just thinking that um if we're looking at our distinguished category which is supposed to be kind of top top top right um if we looked and we just did the bare minimum in each category it would be 278 to 344 and then proficient would be 193 to 277 and then developing would be 112 to 192 and then ineffective would be 19 to 111.

do we have an indication in the state based on demographics of how big that group might be compared to the 75 plus group yeah i have not heard that number but it's those 65 and over and with the two plus comorbidities that people have to attest to we don't need to see any medical records but that would be if someone identifies as having hypertension and diabetes or like pneumonia or asthma or obesity those would all be indicate the two plus comorbidities that people could attest to but in terms of population size i'm i'm not sure about those numbers but i i know that from what i've heard from the vaccine group that really has been going through these groups in terms of the phased rollout that that was considered and this goes to your question or to what you were saying earlier about quarantine if vaccinated so i understand there's an open question right now about whether or not people can transmit after vaccination it looks like this advice from the cdc to not quarantine once vaccinated for that two week to three month window it looks like they're looking toward finding an answer to that question is that is that a correct am i making that connection correctly in my brain right now that's that's how i process that as well but i know we're all still looking forward to clear language um on a state meeting that i was on this this morning while massachusetts has not officially adopted those guidelines yet um state epidemiology it's hopeful that massachusetts will adopt those on a local level so far they have not a state level they haven't found an indicator why why it would not be um but we're just waiting for that official approval okay um i guess another question about our local vaccination site so we're um happy that the high school is being used for this we're curious if you can talk a little for the public who might not know what's going on how does this work how can a person get an appointment um what kind of process or procedure is there yeah so uh our our our vaccine appointments are posted on the town of amherst website on the covid19 page under vaccines we do have rolling availability which some people have experienced some like umass for instance they have a great vaccine clinic that they're offering there at the campus center every once in a while when appointments get full they say there's currently no appointments available and that's the same with us too and the reason is because we want to post vaccine appointments only if we have we have known availability because we don't want to have people make appointments and then not be able to provide the um deliverables right we want to be able to vaccinate people and have it be a joyous day um so it's up on our website you can also find us through the mass.gov covid site on where to get a vaccine they just updated the web page today so to be more user-friendly you can search by the zip code and we pop right up there no longer just on that map right under umass almost so you're able to find it there and then that'll lead you to our registration page and people can register for an appointment it's a client based system so you put in your registration you can use email for more than one person if you had a family member that didn't have an email or a friend that you were going to help register or an elderly neighbor and then you would click your appointment time for your appointment and then you'll get a confirmation email about your appointment time and then about 24 hours ahead of time we send out a detailed message like a pre-appointment reminder with some instructions to our patients before their appointment at the amherst regional site we have some wheelchairs available we have volunteer positions where i forget the specific name nancy gilbert my board of health chair came up for the name um where i think it's a patient transporter or something like that where we help individuals get out of their cars we've even had some volunteers do some valet a little bit so people didn't have to walk too far so really assist those with mobility issues we had our first clinic last wednesday at the high school it was great i think we had some lessons learned as well we adapted our waiting line to be indoors so those wouldn't have to be waiting outside for a period of time because certainly we well we want to be able to socially distance and have those great air changes from those big hepa filters that they got for the schools we also want to be able to keep people warm and not hypothermic so we adapted and overcame that so to make sure it was a safe site for our public emma i'm i'm sure you're aware that there was a proposal from the state firefighters union teaming up with mass con that was presented to the state wednesday there hasn't been a response yet from governor baker on it and part of the proposal is to have firefighters and emts come into school districts directly to vaccinate educators with a pilot program for 20 high-need communities if this does get approved by the state how would you see that working in amherst yeah i think that's a great question i haven't seen the pilot um so or or heard of it this is the first time hearing about it gene so i think i would work with we would work alongside chief nelson in the school department to see how it could best fit our community i have no more questions about vaccines uh believe it or not um other than um just again to thank you for everything that you're doing emma i don't think people realize um the uh amount of work that you're doing not only for our community but some of the surrounding communities as well yeah that's that's great to point out because we are a hampshire county site our primary communities that we're serving jean are let me see i have to do it in alphabetical order to keep it um amherst beltertown granby hadley hatfield pelham south hadley and where are those communities that we're primarily serving um we've had a a good number from throughout those different communities and then we are starting to work with the local council on aging's and boards of health for those different communities to see how we can address those that are homebound at this time that's something that we're starting to think about and try to problem solve especially with the delicate nature of the vaccine as you can imagine but we're really trying to meet our community where we're out uh where where there are communities at do outreach and adapt you know just like christa said i things are changing all the time and um we're just really looking forward to coming together and getting through this current step that we're in and getting to all of you as soon as we can yeah i kind of wanted to echo that thing so like and especially i want to just in case anyone who may be watching doesn't understand like that the first day was what 600 people that cycled through the high school site yep i mean it was okay from the outside looking in it was absolutely seamless and i i think uh i don't know the level of professionalism and i mean the level of caring even is just unparalleled and i mean i'm more than grateful for that i i personally got to see people that i knew from the community and it was just great just the way it was all handled like i couldn't appreciate you anymore thank you so much ben so um i know i did hear uh dr fauci say that um april it would he thought it might be what he called open season i think he referred to as far as um what categories of people would be able to get the vaccine um how do you feel about that timeline here in massachusetts considering how low we are in compared to other states yeah i i'm eager for the rollout to be increased um i know that that's something with our new administration on the federal level has been a priority um to really increase the speed and supply that we have available i'm about to cough sorry so i i don't i what i want to say is i i hope that the space that we're in in terms of a rollout and timeline gene is just this moment in time where we've had a reduced availability of vaccine i am so hopeful that with this new administration that the whole philosophy and rollout will is improved so that way we can really double down our efforts and exponentially increase our phase rollout at this time who who determines how many doses a state gets yeah i know that there's a federal um committee that works on that i'm not sure exactly who does that off the top of my head i wasn't prepared to answer that question but i know that the initial orders of vaccine were much smaller with the previous administration and then following inauguration that ordering has totally been overhauled and the vaccine plan so we're learning more every day and i i'm we were told on the state level that february would be a tough month for vaccine availability but hopefully they were really hoping it would just be a short timeline all right um any parting thoughts from anybody thank you again emma yeah i love these meetings i don't know about anybody else but i have a lot of fun and i just want to say how much um i appreciate everything that everyone in this room and also our extended room um is doing for our students in our community uh we value you you're noted um in this tiring time and and take care of yourselves do that self-care uh keep on the good work we're right on the edge of this and together we're gonna make it through as a community thank you perfect but i need it it's good stuff thank you and thank you so much for all your hard work in in helping move our community toward a safe place so thank you thank you happy friday everyone enjoy the long weekend oh yes yeah all right take care

but the teachers were put below 65 year olds but those people should all be taken care of by around the first week of march so teachers and staff are in the the cohort that follow 65 year olds they should all be taken care of in terms of vaccinations by the second shot come from april so that they will be protected plus we have all those protocols in place we have all those thousands of mass that were given to us uh the uh headgear that was given to us the the hand sanitizer that we purchased the ventilation program that's been taking place i i think it it'll be a safe learning environment and i think it's important so more pelham parents don't send their kids to private school to let them know right away that the school committee supports uh full in-person learning as of september but that's just my opinion okay thanks ron brenda just to add to that you know we may only have had one public comment tonight but just anecdotally i know several other families who are really struggling and they really care about pelham and they really want to stay at pelham and i think acknowledging that that we've had a rough year acknowledging that we're committed to in-person learning and fall would go a long way for a lot of families and could really um make a huge difference yeah yeah i mean i think of oh yeah go ahead mike no you can go first so just two things one on the vaccine timeline that i don't know if you saw the government said today that they're they've good news on the vaccine is that um vaccines is that what was thought to be 300 million people in america uh would have doses by the end of august is now the end of july and another point that was supposed to be the end of june is now the end of may um so production seems like it's ramping up i mean in massachusetts i saw that you know we've about a million a little less 900 some odd thousand people have been vaccinated and a quarter million were in the last seven days so we are seeing a pretty significant uptick in that and educators were like two groups away um i was in a conference call with desi today and they talked about that timeline um so um i think you know folks should feel confident i feel confident i shouldn't say folks should i feel confident that the vaccine will be available to all educators and i think just about all adults from what we're hearing today from the biden administration well before september and i think the other thing point i just want to make is that i'm trying to be really careful my language and i'm not trying to correct anyone's language but i think people have the opportunity to be vaccinated i can't guarantee that everyone will be vaccinated um and there's a real significant distinction there um you know i know from hospitals and other settings where there was a an assumption that almost everyone would want to get vaccinated and what they found in massachusetts is that you know they're about 80 right but they're not 100 right and i know people locally who work in our local hospitals here in springfield and northampton who have indicated that so i just want to caution us that i think everyone have the opportunity to be vaccinated uh in terms of the adults um but but we can't guarantee that and um yeah i'll leave it there yep i don't have the language in front of me anymore but um i i think it says the opportunity right so it's okay great thank you the languages has been made available that's the language in there yeah i mean so and i think that it is you know signaling to the community you know the existing community but also i think giving lee the ability to as you know as she gets phone calls that she can say this is what the priority is and and by the way we have awesome ventilation have you seen our gym and we have this really great let's talk curriculum and people love it you know it's like i i don't mean to make you out to be like some super salesy like you're an educator and an administrator so but you know i think it can it can help you know i don't think people are just gonna flock to pelham only because of let's talk but i think that this could also send a message and would give uh would give you lee a little kind of armor to be able to say that these are the things we care about safety for sure but also these other things um okay well so again it will be on the agenda on tuesday to be discussed further and in the joint setting um all right anything else on that okay warrants i have two tonight um i authorized by my signature to payroll in the amount of 58 332.82 and that was dated february 10 2021 and i signed it on february 5th 2021 and i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of seven thousand thirty two dollars and forty four cents for the warrant dated february 10 2021 that included general fund expenses of 3754.48 grant fund expenses of one thousand two hundred and twenty dollars and ninety six cents and um two thousand fifty seven dollars from an fy 2021 article that's referred to as other fund um and i signed that on february 10th that's it for warrants um we do not have any oh wait do we no we um i know there is a gift um but it's not well it's not on here maybe it just hasn't gone through the treasurer's office yet is that possible it is possible and if you uh get in touch with doug he can give you and i can do it for you but he can give you a more clear answer on that okay and i can check in with him um so it'll get on for next month okay so stay tuned for a gift next month um and that is it so i will take a motion to adjourn i'll make a return i move to a journal school committee meeting second move my health second advice no brother discussion um okay ron monino i sarah best kenny i margaret stands for eye brenda and hall i we are adjourned thank you so much everybody have a good night you

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so we can't this isn't a real open an opportunity to to have more people hear us as far as the parents go and uh and i know ann and kevin do a great job with community outreach and there's just lots of places we can take this but again we we're kind of racing against the clock we kind of have to let people know i don't know when danbury day is you know everything things kind of turned upside down hopefully it's going to straighten out more this year but um because it's the city but it's a state also that has to hear our story you know from from us from from families it would mean a lot more coming from families so that's where i'm at i'm ready willing roll up my sleeves i can i can write i i like writing but we just have to simplify it and make it really understandable and in a hurry yes i respond to that real quickly because you just get me really excited about something that we used to do and um in new york city which is we called it a one-pager so you know if there's a way to be really pithy you know and very visual and translated you know that we can get those talking points down to a single page that we can just fly to the community that might be something that would be really helpful um you know in this short time frame that we have with like links to refer them for more info and how to get in touch with us and things like that because then you would have that translated doc and we could just fire it all over the place it doesn't have to be a whole power point where they sit for 40 minutes you know no i had just put in the like you like read my mind courtney about that one sheet because i had it like on my screen ready to like recommend it i saw this i found this really cool graphic which just had like yeah that's it right there and it just it pops and it just it it takes what what i was gonna say is we need to like pick five key parts of this budget that we know that the public would understand like we know what state funding is we know what city funding is you know what it increases like those types of things and just get it in a in like a one-pager like courtney was saying in front of people and and circulate that somehow i think because i i think it's a lot easier for people to understand what you won't get than what you will get and i think there's value in that and i think that's a value that is is seldom exploited because if you're kind of you're what is it it's like you're appealing to emotion almost which yeah is not always the best thing but sometimes the right thing and that's kind of that's kind of where where i'm at i talked yourself hi guys hey dr sarah of the tax the the the property tax impact which is you know thanks to al brought it to our attention you know we can talk about that and say what you're going to get for your money so you know these are all great ideas that one page you know equates to the elevator speech but you got to be able to talk around the details as well and know the the infrastructure but you don't want to bore them to you know yeah um so and it's the legislators too we should try to get you know if we can get a meeting with them make a special presentation to them and get them on board so perhaps they could do something for us in the state or at least be on our side to advocate and get some funds for us but i think so um dr sal how you doing good are you just did you want i don't know if you wanted to jump in you're you're certainly more than welcome to do so um we're just talking over you know sort of what we're going to do strategy wise with the community relations how that's going to relate to the budget yeah well i think courtney was with me today we had a little powwow with the city i mean they're the picture painted is we know you have a need but the economy is really tough in banbury things are um um are very difficult for city workers to get out and collect uh revenue and i didn't get a very good feeling you know i think there's a yeah i would say there's a willingness to work with us but you know um to what extent they don't know so you know i hear you guys talking about going talking to everything everybody i think what you need is really people at the um council meeting getting up and speaking i don't think your legislator is going to help you much the governor has put his budget out um you know the really rich the bottom line is with the city and um i think the pain the picture i got painted was we want to help but it's it's a difficult time i mean and you know i've heard it from day year in the year out so i don't you know if you want my suggestion it's i don't say we we rate city hall yeah people just get up and say without these funds this is what happens or with these funds this is what we can service right there's a willingness on the city uh everyone they're looking at your 10 million dollars i think and that's why i think there's more value in putting out what we won't get than what we will get right and that's that that's where i'm at yeah we've got so we've got to come up with a a and prior to you coming i said to the layman who thinks we get the 10 minute because the subtraction from the 14 and basically we're home free but we've got to be able to you know really really realistically say that of the 10 million you know to be creative we can do this because of this it affects maybe the one-time cost however if we apply the entire 10 million to this then we have a huge problem next year so that perhaps our ass reduces from 14 million to let's say 14 to 12 million i'm just making up numbers but the other thing is on the horizon you know we're proposing a 90 million dollar bond plus or minus if we don't get this money i say take the bond and burn it because why are you going to build a building if we can't support the building or you're going to have a structure and it's going to lie vacant for five years and all the work we're doing in the portrait of graduate that needs the infrastructure for the academic people to be trained to to help this stuff if we can't do it then we put that on hold and and so we just move ahead and we become a a school district that just operates on maintenance you just turn the lights on and it's the same old thing we don't move ahead and your academic rates go down you know i think people have to be aware of what's going to happen the fact that there's no money available somebody's going to be able to have them pony up and understand what the consequences are of not giving us this money you know i don't want to say it's scare tactics but you know i understand the problems out there you know i understand it's you know prove it is knock the hell out of things on the other hand life goes on you know so i think you know covent presents an opportunity for us rich um to talk about some of those consequences that we're already seeing um you know and and you know that that also presents an opening to have a conversation about potential consequences that we may see if we don't you know step in and do this work so i i hear the passion that you're expressing about um you know making sure people you know understand what they're what they're getting when they either you know opt for the cheap version of the product or the more expensive version of the product you know i mean that's i think everybody can you know appreciate that the contrast and the quality even if they are ultimately from their own perspective making a decision based from a purely financial position um and i think more people in our community want the quality education you know the the one that that um is going to have the supports for their kids especially now after having been through a really difficult and traumatic school year where you know the resources that they've come to rely on that the schools have provided for them have not been available that's i think that's an eye-opening experience that many people have been through and and though right now they may be directing their frustration um you know at our at our schools because they they are in an untenable position um the reality is that that that awareness is something that they have now that they don't that they didn't have before so that's something that i think we can we can have that conversation with people and and encourage them to be aware of the consequences that they they may face down the line if we don't make a a better choice for our community um i don't want to um i don't know joe you thank you for uh for posting that graphic up gladys i don't want to skip out on you if you had anything that you wanted to to um you know say about uh sort of the direction we're moving in and you know how we're gonna move forward you know i think that the community relations committee can do a lot in our community as far as right now putting the budget information out i certain environment one pager and and it's going to be very important how this group can pull this committee can pull the families together that really doesn't understand uh the type of language that's being taught or being said and importantly and you can and to say to them okay uh we are asking for um ten thousand dollars for these two positions and then you lay those two positions out so they can understand that one of those positions might affect my child okay and it could be you know our counselor you know so many things have been cut over there the years and and i understand that we need to start putting back because if we don't stop putting back we're going to keep falling deeper and deeper in the hole and the money is never going to be there uh to for them to say we're going to give you everything that you're asking for but we need to stop at some point and say okay who is that we can get to help support this budget will you come out on this particular day voice your opinion and support our budget because we can't keep managing the schools the way they are and just look at you know over the last couple of years you know uh the the the city has really uh cut us what four million dollars people need to know that they they're thinking that each year we're getting a raise and we're getting a raise but how is presented to uh the community and and the way it's presented is it looks like we they are giving us money they are but they're not giving us nothing to really jump up because we are in turn come back to the table and look at those things what we can cut and say okay they uh the high school asks for two counselors we're gonna have to give them one because we can't afford to give them two so i think when people started realizing that um you know and just put the information out there start working putting the information out there now and and start moving this committee forward and then after the budget season then there's other things that this committee can do but right now i think we should be focused on getting the community involved in the budget process and understanding though it could be six um powerpoint it could be eight powerpoint but something very simple and clear that they can understand and say okay uh you know i will support it you know kate and everyone there um some places can argue less money less teachers larger class sizes well you don't have the space and you already have large classes so when when people say well what do you what's going to happen when you don't have these things the things that will fall to the wayside is really the attention that the youngsters are going to need and when you looked at the budget you heard courtney last night talk about the support personnel you heard cara and kelly talk about that i think that's the emotional truth um because we we don't have room and your classes are big they're going to get bigger i said a few years ago my fear is that we look like the big cities you're gonna have 30 in the classroom well guys we're pretty close you know i mean we're 25 kevin keeps trying to keep him down and it's a fight they're 26 28 so i guess as i'm reflecting we talk about the loss of the support of the youngsters of social emotional you know uh in this budget there's a lot here for that i think that's an appealing part and then and that's the truth of the matter that's will go away yeah i don't know what else because you you know your glasses are big already yeah no i think that that's uh that's that's a really um a really direct point um and and i think it does have a very strong emotional appeal i mean one of the things that for me stood out with this budget was the discussion about the climate specialists which kevin i really appreciated that you know your ability to to translate that during the meeting so that people understood but you know i don't i i can recall sitting at board meetings where we had you know parents who stood up to talk about some of the conflicts that were spilling over from the community into our schools um and being very concerned about the safety of their their kids um and and very concerned about the way that the discipline piece of this was being handled um you know those climate specialists are you know our schools our administration coming up with um you know the necessary support we need in order to address something that everybody including those parents uh coming to those meetings acknowledges is uh an obstacle for for our schools and for our kids so that that to me is the kind of thing where you know you look at that and it says climate specialist well maybe we need to you know spend a panel breaking down what that is and talk about it in the context of what we've heard from the public what we've heard people come into our meetings to talk about and we're here you and we want to give you this and we're trying to put the solution in place and we need your support to make that happen you know those i think you know when you talk about and and i saw your your notes here in the in the chat thank you i do agree that we have to you know we have to we have to be prepared to address some of the things that i think are going to come up in conversation um the school buildings themselves were closed for a long time and people have you're correct they have wrongly assumed that we've been saving money because of that um the reality is that in some ways our costs actually went up um depending on you know what we were what we're trying to accomplish um you know and i and i think that you know you're talking about um you know the freshman sports and um you know that's another piece that's something that's meaningful to people that people came into our meetings to talk about that's important to them so let's meet let's meet the community where it is and let's focus on the things that are important to them even if they don't necessarily align with what we think you know need to be highlighted points because the goal is gaining you know is building a relationship with the community and gaining their support that's the goal and there are lots of different ways to do that and i think over time we're going to be given the opportunity to educate them about why the things that we think are important um you know are being discussed but in the immediate let's let's choose the things that we know are already motivating them to participate um city has a realization of that and you know from you know would would like to help and i think we just need to as you just said get those get those those those points that uh resonates with the citizens so that they can agree that this is something that's very important i mean their willingness to work with us everybody's under a strain string i get that and i think your job my job is just to present to the public what our kids need to to learn and to be safe and be supportive i mean it's not really that simple and i think your budget is it's not a an extravagant budget yeah it's one that will do some of that not to the extent that you need rich always says well is that enough no but it's a start and then you know yeah and it's hard because you don't want to be shamed to not ask for what you need you know and and and that's what tended to happen sometimes i just feel like this straight and this is what makes me feel so bad is we've been operating on a presumption that we're not going to get what we want anyway therefore let's not ask for a lot you know and that is just there's just so many things just morally wrong without feeling that way and and i just like it breaks my heart for you guys crafting the darn thing you know you know we've invited ann and kevin like them you know to chime in and give us their opinion in terms of what they've heard and how they can direct this to to facilitate you know to get this thing going well i think and i hear you i hear you um mr nelly i think i and i agree with you and i'd like to hear from them anyway but i do want to make sure so for this initial meeting um you know i think we can talk about the methods of of doing the outreach but i think our first step has to be what are what are the um what are the things that we want want to put together to do that outreach you know we need to if we're going to come up with a one-pager and we can talk about that or we're going to come both the social media campaign we talk about that we need to talk about the specific points um that i think are going to reach people in order to make a move on the the next step so that is i just don't want to lose the threat of that conversation um you know as we move forward all right fine you know it's a good point you know to to your point and if you reduce it to one page then i'd say you know my thing would would be to talk to the hot button items a number of years ago we were making a picture of legislators dr sal had selected three or five things that we put on a little little card so it was like a 30 30 second elevator speech this would be more than that so if we could agree on what the hot button items are and the pros and cons of those things right visit a budget we focus on that rather than the total 14 million dollars which becomes a little bit more complex uh again in addition to that let's take that as the first is a first start if the the general consensus is that would be a good way to go then we just figure out which of the hot button items and and start to get educated on that stuff to uh to do it and we can get that as a starting point as to say okay the first meeting we've at least you know come up with a particular action plan yeah and and and i think you know this is the hard part right is is you know in this initial brainstorming you know um trying to narrow down uh the 14 million dollars that we're looking for which is a substantial amount of money and we're asking for a substantial number of things um you know we've got to figure out what are the ones that are going to resonate the most with with the folks that we're going to be talking to you and that that may look a little bit different depending on what our audience who's in our audience um so i think that that's something that we ought to consider as well uh you know depending on how we're we're going to do you know the the different forms of outreach um and obviously you're working with um you work a lot with the hispanic and latino members in our community so what we put together you know to present to that that audience might look a little bit different than say um what we're taking to the city-wide bto or if we're trying to reach out to some of the kids who are involved with sports you know and those are they're going to be a little they're going to look a little bit different but i think it would be helpful for us to go through the budget and look at you know what each of us thinks is you know the most um the pieces that will most resonate in our community um and then you know um for for the other pieces of this you know it seems like everybody's kind of on board with the one page document um and i think that that's that's good in terms of physical distribution of a piece of paper but um if it's designed well it's also really good for a social media presence um you know and and i think that there are different ways that we can uh you know kind of push that messaging so um does that sound okay to everybody i think we need help as to what because i you know the one page and what i call the hot button items are uh you know i think that's that's important you know the entire budget's important but we're gonna have to take a lead and you know put our best foot forward to say which will have more of an impact and and uh to get across you know maybe and there may be different variations of one pages two that that we can do but if you start with that um you know that that's fine i just though and i think to that point it would be you know ann and dr sal and kevin to tell us what they feel is is the best shot you know to do for subject matter to put across to capture attention you know that's really going to be an attention grabber and once you get them there then you can go on and support the rest rich i did ask mr miller sterling to work with us and get some vignettes you know as we did last year of actually the kid or a teacher some parents making a comment when you figure those areas so it's kind of more authentic uh and that just would you know just send our message not just from you or me but from you know our um our students and parents yeah as part of the presentation so he was going to go through his um archives and see if he could find some stuff that pretty pre-made and we can kind of insert into the segments of the budget so we are you we are working on that for you and i'll check with you thank you maybe you could align it with whatever those talking points you know or didn't like the um when dr saul said vignettes but like from a marketing campaign it would be really cool if you decide those you know hot button items you're going to touch and then how that looks visually and then align like the comments with that so it's all streamlined that might be cool i'd like to hear can we hear from ann and kevin so if kevin wants to go first that would be great i'm actually taking what you're talking about i'm putting in into a grid we hurt families during covet 19 and the proposed budget addresses so i'm starting this off because this can be the the beginning of a one-page info so if kevin wants to go first that would be great i didn't want to go first but sorry thank you kevin so i i am if i'm hearing the ques if the question is you know the one page and what's the attention grabber um i i personally i need more time to think that through um just in terms of i i do feel like some of the people on this side of the call um that we need are not here right now um i you know we have students who are on the board that quite frankly i don't feel like we leverage enough and if we want to appeal to the public i feel like they should be partners in this space with us right now um they are more than capable of helping us you know make inroads into the community um you know i heard the point made earlier about translating translation and you know we could have kids speaking in kid terms or other kids but at the same time appealing to families around this community and so i i think that's very important i don't think we should be leaving that out um just in terms of audiences and kate i don't know if you're ready for this part of the conversation but you know we the teachers have they've already supported us like publicly and i think it's important to capitalize on that support and make sure we're in front of them and walking them through the rationale behind these budget ideas you know we've had an opportunity to make this presentation to admin um but you know we have an entire troop force out there who we also need to communicate with and make them aware of the supports that we're that that we know we want them to know exactly what they're fighting for um and and and help them understand why we've you know landed on these certain positions to help move their work um and you know and then of course there are other you know other groups that i feel like it's important for us to get in front of you know without going through all those details but you know there's a part of me that's smiling as we're talking tonight because i'm thinking to myself as rich opened up earlier you know we have some really really big plans ahead and if we don't get everything we need in this budget i feel like that's okay don't get me wrong i want every penny that's in this budget but we really need to plant the seeds and continue to educate the community because we have some huge ass coming like there are some huge ass coming our way and so if we have if we can continue to go out and educate this community about the budget process and to riches into richest point earlier listen we just approve the bond in this city we need to educate the community and say listen you just approved a bond and now to make that work move forward now this is the support that we need from you but a lot of folks can't even necessarily connect those dots because they don't understand the connections between those that work um and you know going to amy's point that she made earlier you know i just need some talking points to get in front of and i think you know ann and i and does an amazing job helping to land and identify the groups to talk to and i know that because i've been in front of those groups with anne but one group we haven't talked to specifically and that's the group that doesn't have kids in our school system and we also need to get in front of them right and so whether that's amy and i and you know rich janelli and courtney or you know whoever the people are the players are and probably a kid with us um but we also need to be in front of that group um and just remind them of why it's so important for their property values like this is an investment in their community and walk them through the benefits of and again we may not win right now but i do feel like it's important to educate the entire community of the direction of danbury public schools everything that's been started with the pog work everything that's been started with the danbury academy i'm sorry whatever we're going to call it um like we need to communicate and educate the community kate and you made that point early and it's like resonating with me you know and i know amy's an educator so like like we're ready like just give us our lesson plan we're ready we can go out there and do it so i just wanted to just make sure i started with those things but i really feel strongly um part of the translator people who need to be on this team we have students on the board who are so capable um i would love if they could be in this space with us and talk and strategy and talk about how to get in front of their peers but also how to get in front of the public and and also if like and just because that reminded me of something kevin because when i was in peer leadership at dhs i know we needed a ton of community service hours and if we're just looking for troops that can help us i know that's another good resource and those are equally you know capable students but totally we need the bog and everybody that's at those meetings they should be here too because it's that they're weld some knowledge for sure the plti as kevin and i have talked about is another group that is an excellent and excellent group so let's say for starters or like you know handle you want to go before 41 sure sure no what i was doing was you know using those emotions that we just spoke about so you know uh we heard our families during covid19 and robo's budget addresses and it's just a simple table that we can later put in that infograph um your concerns about your child's social emotional development and therefore placing climate schedule specialists will provide targeted support for your child um a high level of students who attend college the work that needs to be done around the ness accreditation you know and then explain what that is huge movement in town right now about strengthening the el serve esl services um and then that this budget supports additional psyop and esl teachers um you're concerned that students aren't engaged alternative programs that engage students and then we can put down exactly what those pieces are in the budget to say we've addressed your concerns and then i i totally agree with kevin is bringing in some of these kids i think you know if we can get them to do some of this marketing that we need done um and then target i i think we can't leave out our elderly population our older population in town and get on some of these shows on channel 23 that they offer um that are um need some some more education about what this budget is going to do for them and then of course the younger population as well do we want to to take sort of steps to say okay what is going to be done in a certain sequence so that at the next meeting you know we can come back for example you know as kevin said uh let's just say to develop the hot button items so as i call hot button where he needs more more time and other people to collaborate um with that being said uh there will be other aspects of of of fixing up the budget to coordinate with um to coordinate with other other individuals to to express their teachers or guidance counselors to express their their points of view people in the in the trenches to express their points of view on the budget if we can come up with a couple of three tasks you know that we can get moving and then at the next meeting and i when i say the next meeting we don't have to wait two weeks because times are the essence here so yeah you know to the group is kind of a frequency you know the frequency of which we can meet it may be other meetings maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes just to polish ups and move their heads but at least we can get something done check off you know what we've accomplished today and meet again and say okay you know we've done this we've done this um you know and give out the assignments to whoever wants to do it and then we report back in a short period of time yeah rich i think that's a very good point because i'm looking at what courtney started posting in the chat which is you know a rough sketch of what the the timeline is here you know the mayor's gonna be reviewing the budget through the fifth of march um you know so that's our you know our our when our time is already ticking down um i think you know if if we can leave this meeting with you know a couple action items um you know so that the next meeting that we have which i you know what i'm hoping is that we can kind of meet weekly uh for the time being um i don't expect that that's going to go on forever but for these first few meetings i think we need the consistency of a regular meeting and i think for you know doing it in a you know a weekly timeline is going to help us you know cross off the major tasks we need to get accomplished before we're actually starting to push this message out we need to do that quickly and come up with that plan quickly because we need to take advantage of whatever time we have left to do that education work before the budget comes down in april um that said so i think that the two things that we need to think about and and this is what i would ask of the group and and uh i certainly um welcome your feedback about you know whether or not you are in agreement i think it would be great for each one of us to come up with a list of hot button items a minimum of five points that you think are really important to make and if there are others absolutely add them to the list but i think it would be good to see what each of us important from their perspective and i think also you know something else to think about are the communities that you are currently connected to um where you might be able to do some outreach work i think would be helpful and and you know certainly for for kevin for you and for um for you anne um you know i know you guys are in touch with a lot of different communities so um you know whatever uh whatever groups you think um you know we we can maybe maybe the better way to put it is if you can come up with your full list and we can figure out you know sort of what our order of operations is going to be for approaching each of these different groups obviously kevin speaking to your point earlier you know getting our students engaged in this process early on allows us to spread that message further so you know we can prioritize having an audience with with that group you know earlier so kate we're using kevin and i actually worked on that today coming up with a group with lists of um groups that we can meet with that we already have contacts with that that's a really easy part to do um and and so you know absolutely we can get that done the um other piece is to think about um educating some of the students to be part of that presentation they think that you know who we're going to be the people that are really going to be able to carry that that message forward and those of us that are in this school can certainly um recognize some students that will be really really good at that and would you suggest based on that thought um once you select the students that maybe courtney go through and and and make the presentation for the budget to them so we get they're up to speed on everything we had and they could share the same same feelings of the opinions i'm not sure that the students would address the like the the fiscal budget side of it so much but more talk to their experiences about why something like that is important to them and to families and please and and then talk about you know and please you know vote for this budget um help us um you know move this budget through the city so that i can keep getting those services yeah like that was wonderful and what your thoughts are about courtney we're losing you i don't know if it's like a civic engagement lesson oh i'm sorry can you hear me better now yeah okay like a civic engagement project so much like those kids who got got out the vote you know i could very briefly help you to just teach them about when the budget happens great you know just that kind of like so that they know like and how you can be there and impact it with a voice so whether you know whatever interests you here's when the budget happens here's how the sausage gets made and here's how it gets presented to the public yeah you know we could develop something like that real quick for the kids to get a civic engagement lesson and learn in that way too and those kids that did that get out the vote and they got that reward yeah and into your point dan so i'm a very simple person i got to connect or illustrate my own mind the connection here but would something be where there is a a services that i'm going to put that's where i can that are inadequate in the district to to the kids i'm going to pick on something let's say guidance counselors where if that if that's an issue where the student feels they're not being serviced or something along those lines so that they can to your point they can talk about that and then we can cover that is to say okay you know the funding on this is why we need x number of dollars for this for these particular people uh okay i just wanted to figure out my own mind how how things would work out of a control freak as you can hear so i'm sorry um but i have a lot of passion for this i mean it's it it's i get excited about this you know and and uh if i were employed by the border vet i probably get fired because i shoot my mouth off too much but but there's there's a lot of passion i have and i just don't understand why it's so hard i understand the dollars and cents and i'm retired now i'm not making the big salaries i was making before but still there's there's a value in education and then when i sit back and i listen to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political campaigns you know if you know if there's no end to money and we're struggling for for this it's crazy absolutely crazy it's so frustrating you know it's like the the money is gushing out here and just being wasted in the ocean and where they can make an investment in society you got to protest it just seems to me diametrically opposition uh opposed so but uh i'm just sorry that i i get too emotional and to the older audience i could certainly i know lynn waller you know hates to see me at this time of year because i usually blow her audience when i say we need you know 10 million dollars and they all say well we're on a fixed income you know what's it do for me i don't have kids in school but you know i i think in that result is we've got to keep badgering that one as and her point she wants to sell her house and the the better the district the more people will be camping to buy our house as opposed to moving out of the district so it it's uh it's a good educational process too as you said to the different parts of the community that will benefit for this and we have to show them how well and i think you know to that point rich i think doing the outreach to different parts of the community whether or not they're going to be a receptive audience is still important um you know so that that we're not um you know we're making the effort to include people in the conversation that's that's an important step even if you know we know that there's going to be a certain number of folks who are just you know for whatever personal principles are not going to be supporting it that conversation still needs to be had and and i think it's also about working on the culture the larger cultural conversation about why education public education is important so okay i know there's a i know we're getting close to the end here but i just wanted to offer a little pushback on on how to leverage the students number one and then wanted to get some clarification on your ask also uh in preparation for the next meeting so ann and i and part of my pushback is to my colleague ann because ann and i have been in meetings when talking about partnership with community whether that's with parents whether that's with kids etc and i think i was envisioning more the kids are actually part of this process with us right we have kids on the board who are on the board of education typically you know you know and and i i feel like they should be part of this conversation and have full context and then and then they interject and understand where they could be leveraged their voice could be leveraged i i think i'm more comfortable with them telling us where they feel like this is where i feel like i can best support this or you know whatever that might be or look like um and so i i just want to offer that for the group consideration um because i i think quite frankly we would benefit from their feedback and as they get more comfortable in these discussions i think we would have a different we might just consider approaching this a little differently than we would would have otherwise i mean i feel like if we're just feeding them then we may not have their you know their perspective if their perspective that's right you have to we have to use their gray matter that's great knowledge too those those you know nice graphics they're much better we could we then bring them in for the first part of the next meeting i would love to have them here we don't know if they want to be with us just don't tell them we can extend the invitation certainly we get a mothership yeah i will send you a pizza myself that's right so so kate is it i i know you had asked about kind of giving us some homework for the next meeting but i'm wondering if maybe we can get some some points and courtney and i can get those points prior to the meeting and then maybe we can have something for this group to consider you know and maybe we can have something ready for this team to look at you know based on the feedback from this group and you know we can be a week ahead um so kevin what do you think about um you know we can't obviously we can't do this as an email thread but what if um you know each of the committee members here was able to um and i don't know who that wants to be the the point person for this or if there's somebody who's willing to be the point person for this but if if each of the the committee members here could send you know their their list of hot button items um and and the audiences that they are are in contact with already um to that point person and then that could be consolidated into a single document that you could share with the the students we all we all have the like their gmail accounts through the district right so could have google doc work yeah yeah let's make that can that work also for everyone on this call wait wait wait wait wait wait i think i just want to be careful on how we share that for for uh board action when google doc i think it's all great but i'm i'm a little worried about that um [Music] it might not be a problem it just hit me wrong um you know the caution's always been not to use kids and that's not what you're doing you're actually having the kids informers but under the word about the google doc um let's think about that the other way to do it is um you know is to send information to the chair who can get it to cara right and it goes right to kevin and then he can get it to the kids right it comes from him not from you where it's back and forth because then you're doing public business i just i digress that's all makes sense okay thanks dr sal good to know but if they get at the care of the kevin and then they could get the kids involved and and get exactly what you would like and get them to the meeting uh prepared to kind of give us some ideas he sent it to cara with cc uh king just like she's you know could be in a loop so i think that's a good idea um that'd be great so are you saying you want a point person still like one of us to collect email from everybody or we just go right to cara i think cara is going to cara is going to be the the uh person that the information gets sent to i would like to be cc'd on that um you know because i might i might just put my own document together and um you know that's gonna that'll filter through cara to kevin and then he can um you know interact with the students and for some feedback um can we can we set a day for that to happen because i um so first let's let's talk about when we want to meet next i don't know if thursday evenings generally work for this group i don't want to speak on behalf of everyone else though so joe's good who else here i'm good except for next thursday but usually thursday night for me i'm fine i'm saying this and i haven't even looked at my calendar so i probably should do that um so that's the 18th um is there a night that works better for you amy next week um you want to move it up to wednesday the wednesday would be okay for me i don't know about everybody else right we have a policy meeting we have a policy meeting at 6.

uh approved board policy 5145.7 sexual harassment students second reading motion motion to approve by uh trustee chavez i'll second it because i have a question second by trustee beferano go ahead uh mr rogerano with your question yeah i don't know if um mr ruiz is here tonight i don't see him on the thing but um i was just wondering i i know i had we had i talked to dr bauer about it but i think we just still wanted to or at least i wanted to check with mr ruiz i know there was an item last month i believe that he was gonna look into and check in on the the language and then bring something back to us i i think it might have been trustee chavez that had a a question or a modification that she had was thinking about um but i'm not sure if it was this item but i just want to make sure um that this was not the item and and that the language that we're seeing here is all um good to go and and legal for lack of a better word he reviewed it and it's okay okay that's all thank you any other uh comments or questions okay uh we'll go ahead and open up for a public comment before we vote uh avatar do we have anybody that's raised their hand for this item nobody yet madam president okay we'll go ahead and move on to voting i'll just call your name as i see you on the screen trustee chavez trustee aye trustee pham hi i'm board vice president quintero hi and myself i passes unanimously thank you uh moving on to 403 2021 ballot for csba delegate assembly um i know that we um already chose mr our very own uh board vice president quintero um and so now my understanding of is that we get to do um pick five more um members from the list that we have so a suggestion is that we just all name our five and at the end of naming all our five that the top five um are the ones that we choose how do you all feel about that unless anybody has a better way of doing this question um a lot of times i was seeing that some of these board members have been over and over again and i kind of like to see new board members uh represent and learn how to represent and be a delegate as well can we consider um this time also uh choosing new ones and not somebody who's been there 20 years 15 years you know what i mean to give persons a chance i think at this time we can choose you know um that's a very good point trust each other so that the five that you choose you know represent that i think that's great um so my idea was just to make this fair you know that we all have our own right but that at the end we all name our five um and then that the top five are the ones that we choose um because i was gonna say you could text me the names and i can tally them but uh basically at the end of it we get to choose about four five um delegates any thoughts and just to clarify there is no room in the ballot for a write-in right just to let you know trustee chavez i'm looking at the ballot and i i don't know i mean you you guys know a lot more about this just to let you know that in the ballot there is no room for write-ins yeah there is there is below the below the table i believe there is provision for writing candidates oh i'm sorry oh there you go i'm just saying the ones that are there the ones that haven't been there for 20 years if we can also consider them so that they can also take a shot at being a delegate versus the same ones over and over just to be in in fairness is what i'm saying absolutely i think that you know whoever you vote for but that we all have you know our own reasons why we would vote for somebody uh uh yes so um so kind of just to transition from that previous comment for me i'm less concerned or less interested in in selecting someone because of the amount of time that they have served or not i'm more interested in selecting individuals who can bring our voice to the table um and a voice that's maybe more reflective of our school district and our community so that's kind of what i would be basing my choice on so for me there there are three that i'm very comfortable with because i'm familiar with with you know the their work and what they do there are other ones i've read through the through their bios and and i have an idea but um i was actually hoping to hear potentially something from trustee quintero who may have had experience working with some of these individuals and and knowledge of um their ability to to represent our the needs of our district so i i would like to hear if trustee quintero um is amenable to that or or if not then i have the only i have only three that i would put forth thank you board vice president um if i could speak at the moment or madam president please yep do i have the floor yes please okay um yes so i um would counter uh the position of my colleague of our colleague linda chavez and the fact that is that these um delegate assembly positions are meet twice a year and um it's not like they're there every day um it's a unique set of skills that people build up over the course of time as they work their way through the complex organization that is csba it's a juggernaut and it's a it represents over a thousand districts in the city california and it requires you to work through this you know large organization in order to be able to get things done and so while some folks have uh been there for a couple years um they've been able to con to progressively uh move into certain positions to be able to make sure that the voice of our region is reflected uh in csba and so i'm very comfortable with folks like danielle cohen uh george sanchez and others who've served they haven't been there for 20 years they've been there for a few years and um they've been able to little by little move uh and into positions to make sure that our region has a voice in in in uh at the region at csba uh at the csba's um policymaking body um and so uh with that i would go ahead and feel very comfortable in uh putting forward my um folks that i would uh move forward and that would be danielle cohen um von lee obviously myself george sanchez and fiona walter as uh the people that i would uh move would vote for to to move forward i think that we would go ahead and achieve some you know geographic representation there that wouldn't make it to um that wouldn't make it too heavy up in the peninsula and so that's why i would go ahead and put those for those names forward thank you any other trustees or any other comments or questions i'm sorry did he say fiona yes fiona um okay those were also my recommendations nice and and those actually were mine too the um the other the two other two that he mentioned uh miss cohen and miss walter were the ones that i based on what i could read was considering but again that's why i kind of wanted to hear from trustee quintero to see if his experience with them aligned with what i was able to ascertain from their application so right so those are the five for me too plus these are these are all from this area and that would really um benefit alan rock for them being there versus somebody in in los gatos or sunnyvale so this might be even easier than we thought those were all actually mine as well all mystery trustees any thoughts on um the names that were just mentioned by mr oh do quintero have to floor board president excuse me do i have the floor please oh okay yeah so i i didn't i just wanted to you know uh you know echo the sentiment of the board vice president quintero you know in these times you know uh we need we need the combination of experience to you know navigate the troubled waters especially with you know uh state and local level leaders who are you know who are pushing for you know a reopening that's not based on you know the realities in the ground and secondly uh you know you know we do need to you know elect more east side east side san jose representatives as part of our delegate pool so that you know we do you know we do have a you know strong and experienced voice you know when a csba you know takes a position so you know on that note i i too concur with the sentiments of uh ward vice president quintero and trustees uh bejarano thank you thank you so at this point i'm going to read all the names and then we'll just vote um if we're all in agreement or not so um do we need a motion yes yeah i'll go ahead and move that we uh prove uh daniel move forward with danielle cohen von lee andres quintero george sanchez and fiona walter second great okay thank you so i'll go ahead and call your names as i see you on my screen here they kind of moved around trusty fam trustee chavez um do we need to take public comment oh yes sorry thank you uh mr avatar do we have anybody thank you okay thank you uh yes you know with these uh virtual ways it can be tough so i appreciate everybody out there um also giving you all time i know it kind of came in to raise your hands if we didn't get that to you uh thank you and for being patient with me so um after uh before i go um anybody raise your hand in that thing just just now there's one person brenda zander house okay brenda welcome as soon as you begin speaking we will begin the timer but one second i don't see the timer on my screen yet um if we can put up the timer great welcome brenda uh good evening um president uh loretta and trustees and superintendent i just had a question with the csba um with the people that you guys nominate um do i'm not sure i don't know a lot about this but do they give a report or is there a way where we can see a report of maybe meetings they've attended um and are they how do we know that they're attending these meetings representing our area like alum rock or east side san jose or um whatever area they're representing thank you any other comments uh mr afghan from the community no one else okay thank you um so we'll go ahead and go on to our now you get now the screen change so we'll start with trusty chavez your vote board vice president quintero hi rusty phem i and myself i that says unanimously thank you okay uh 404 dr bauer board update regarding school opening so i'm gonna call and since this is an information only i don't know if you want to entertain public comment before or after madam president we'll do it after the presentation thank you so i'm going to be calling carlos moran mr moran is our district covet designee he whenever there is a covet related item in our district goes to mr moran so he's going to be bringing to you we also have just to as a matter of context uh covered 19 and school reopenings committee and we meet we have been meeting for the past couple of months on uh school reopenings and this designing plans and figuring out how to be ready we meet with this um committee every friday and this is a staff committee since it is pertaining specifically about the acquisition of supplies and everything that has to do to be able to bring our schools ready for that moment we have invited our all of our units to be present and we have uh had a fantastic time in terms of getting ready so mr moran uh go ahead and and and take it from here and as he presents madame president i might uh interject a couple of thoughts in some of the slides okay just checking to make sure everybody can hear me all right and then um it looks all new to me now so i want to make sure we're able to flip through so i'm not sure if somebody's controlling it thank you um so good evening board president herrera florida trustees dr bowering community um i'm carlos moran assistant superintendent of human resources tonight uh we're going to provide some information about school reopening information and updates related to cove it this information is available on our district website in english and spanish so you can find these slides on there the vietnamese translations uh will be available real soon and those will get posted as well as many of you know schools have been closed now for almost 11 months because of this cova cam pandemic teachers classified staff site administrators site leadership district leadership continue to do our best to support our students and parents through distance learning as we do this work to keep uh and we do this work to keep every staff member and students safe uh you know unfortunately all of us may have seen uh the health concerns from kovid maybe friends family loved ones who have been hospitalized some have recovered some may still be in the hospital or in icu units and some may have passed yet as we struggle through these difficult times we continue to support each other and our students tonight i'd like to share some information regarding the lifting of the stay-at-home order i will share some data on covet cases in our zip code areas and share some challenges as we face that we face as a district related to the reopening and additional information i go to the next slide so real quick this is our uh what i'm gonna hit on this evening uh updates uh covid information some challenges in our district some current efforts by uh many many people across the district planning some next steps and some available resources that are linked to this web to these pages next page please uh that chart just there shows that we get direction from three major agencies the santa clara county public health department the state public health department the department of education and cal osha uh and calsha as many of us know as the safety provide safety protocols next you just scroll up please thank you um so so as many of us know as well the state lifted the regional stay at home order and santa clara county continues to be in the purple tier so what does that mean for us uh as you can see on the slide per uh the california department of public health the document on covid19 and the reopening framework provides guidance for us k-6 schools in the counties in purple tier with k streets greater than 25 per 100 000 may not reopen for in-person instruction part of that information uh does not allow 7th and 8th graders to participate so they may not reopen in the purple tier it does however allow care pods that are in operation at all of our schools to to be in place following uh cohorting guidance by the california department of public health there's been direction as well regarding indoor break rooms lunch rooms at all of our facilities including the district office and they are to remain closed and youth sports as well are restricted this next chart here um the code uh as many many of us may have seen this and it comes in a variety of examples uh is this chart explains that every county uh in california has assigned a covid risk level tier based on the following factors uh new cases or average number of new cases per day also positive uh tests percentage of cova tests given per day that are positive results and three health equity and these meeting specific thresholds for a less restrictive tier can allow a county to progress to a less restrictive tier as the chart shows here next slide this graph here shows uh some statewide metrics as you can see it's a fully purple and wide spread for example uh and i don't know if you can all see it there but 40 47.7 new covet cases positive cases per day per 100 000 uh ten percent uh positivity rate of those tests and approximately eleven percent of our icu units are are available as this chart shows county levels uh risk levels and how widespread covet is through through this purple level [Music] this next slide just you know when you click on different pages that you may view on the on the county public health website it'll show that santa clara county is widespread and currently in purple so i wanted to share this chart as well and again all of these charts are accessible through the santa clara county public health department this chart is uh this chart uh shows data on this dashboard to provide a look at the number of cases of probit 19 and related deaths over time a case is someone who tests positive for co moving 19 using viral testing performed in a lab the public health department uh does closely track the number of cases and deaths that are being reported each day and that information is here um um and you know what you're hearing is that is the number of positive cases here in our county uh and this is as of february 9th this data here that's on the screen is as of february 9th and it shows the community cumulative cova cases was 105 740 with the seven day rolling average of new cases of 467.

okay so yeah i understand what you're saying but but when we're using this in actual uh operation um so for instance i'm looking on um standard one okay so uh i'm i'm just going to use an example so i'm evaluating principle x and so i'm looking at these uh characteristics and i'm looking at each of them separately so under proficient where it's seven to nine points essentially each of those uh each of those bullets is a point correct okay so or in this case well yeah is a point so i might for the principal x i might highlight and this is how i do it when i evaluate them i highlight the thing that the the bullet that applies in that category say in blue and then uh in any other category the other elements so it might be that this principle in one a has two the first two in uh proficient highlighted and might have the third one highlighted in uh developing and so then adding the points across so it does work and the teacher template is the exact same yes it is yes the only thing i'm saying is if we look at the distinguished category if a principal earned 29 points on all four of the sub of the growth goals because they met their goals at 100 and got 29 points their average in their actual job like the job description the 19 subsets about vision and data and all that they'd have to average seven points and if you average seven points in the actual 19 categories you're only scoring the low end of proficient but we're not averaging them we're adding them up right so when you add them all up and divide by 19 you get an average we're not we're not doing an average we're doing the total so maybe i'm not understanding i think i'm losing you in translation right right and i go 109 and i do oh are you understanding yeah yeah what i'm seeing you're saying i may not just be getting my point across you get a point for each of the categories correct so if if you're instead of 12 let's call it 10 because my math is not as fast as yours um if it's a 10 a 7 out of 10 is a c yeah right so if a 7 out of 10 comes in all of those what she's saying is and you add those up you're still considered distinguished you're distinguished in every single one of those categories in those 19 categories get 29 29 29 and 29 in your goals and you're distinguished do we really feel the principal or anyone is distinguished if they average a 7 out of 12 and i've used the average again yeah they could score 12 but if they scored a 7 in every single one which clearly states they're proficient but because their growth goals they nailed them they're now labeled distinguished okay so so that i yeah i follow what you're saying but i'm i want you to but i also know that all of these points that we're talking about on the left side of page one only account for 66 percent correct okay and then the data and growth piece counts for the other 34 so just adjusting the category of numbers okay i'm changing any of that all she's saying is if you because those percentages are the same so even if you're at the seven percent or seven and you're you're average but you hit your growth goal all of a sudden you're distinguished so that one thing pushes you over the top even though you're only average at what you're doing in the day-to-day okay so let us look at that and because it because then we obviously because this really is parallel to the teacher one baby i'm hitting the 66 and the 34 and i'm not bringing that average in for it um and maybe just if somebody explained that portion side to me but when i look at it and you can average a 7 out of 12 on everything and be labeled as distinguished because you crushed your girl girls i feel like there's there's a lot as a evaluator if somebody sports sixes and sevens in one strong category but scored tens and twelve in another they might be on a little improvement plan for that area of course of course but if we do this and they don't score sevens they're distinguished okay and i understand what you're saying okay um so that's and then that means that we need to take a look at that relative to our teacher evaluation too because they're built the same do you agree with that as well for that because that's actually where it caught my eye doing emails gotcha so but this one just happened to come up and i was like oh let me check these numbers and like i said maybe i'm just way off but i looked at it as this and i was like that doesn't make sense so yeah we could take a look at it that would be great okay and we certainly will take a look at it i need to be using this instrument in the next couple of weeks so if you're okay with it i'm going you know if you approve it i'm going to go ahead and use it but then we can keep an eye on that kind of thing to see if those if those really are issues that happen because if they are then we need to fix it yeah so if that's the case then i'd like to motion that we approve item 5.3 evaluation for principles but with the direction to check these out and make sure that we're absolutely that this tool is doing what we want it to do absolutely i agree can i get a second i second all in favor aye corey burgess hi junie borland hi amanda amen hi charlene diaz so i moved uh so item 5.4 the evaluation of educational services director of educational services um once again this is a the tool as we were explained is used do we have any questions on this evaluation the only thought i had when i was looking at over was that in each of these evaluation instruments we kind of use a different word to we use distinguished proficient developing ineffective then we use exceeds meets needs improvement satisfactory outstanding satisfactory improve onset if we could make our language the same that way it might be easier for anybody that's looking at them that was the only kind of other suggestion i had i like that i do too okay any anything else on the uh educational service director of educational services all right then i move we approve 5.4 but also once again let's look into those changes um may i ask you before you vote can i just go ahead and make those changes without bringing this back to you then let's i will i will amend my motion to approve 5.4 with the suggested changes thank you can i get out of second second all in favor aye corey burgess hi janie borland hi amanda amen aye charlene diaz item 5.5 evaluation of instructional coaches once again same suggestions do we have any other suggestions to go along the instructional coach one is pretty simple it's pretty uh it's just one side and the other with one structure oh okay so they just have strengths and evidence on areas of growth so actually no changes all right so no no problems there we're good any questions no then i move that we approve 5.5 uh evaluation of instructional coaches can i have a second hi all in favor aye corey burgess i juni borland aye amanda aymond aye charlene diaz so moved uh now we are on to item 5.6 evaluation of paraprofessionals this one we do want to have the wording changed into any other changes that we want to see on 5.6 no just the name changes then i will move that we approve 5.6 with those changes as requested do we have a second second all in favor aye corey burgess aye genie borland aye amanda ayman aye charlene diaz so moved uh item 5.7 selection elect or selection and possible election of a board delegate to the colorado river area employee health benefit trust board dr stewart mr president and members of the board this is the consortium that we're in with the high school district for the purposes of having a pool for insurance the various insurances that we have ordinarily they meet quarterly we haven't had meetings this year for a number of reasons but we're at the point where we need to have a meeting to start talking about insurance for school year 22 this year we're carrying over in the same the same company because of the the way the contract was written but doug was the representative for this board on that um on that board and uh so you need to select somebody uh brandi indicated that if uh you know if you were willing she had substituted for doug a couple of times last year and she's willing to do it so [Laughter] so you wouldn't be nasty in appointing somebody or selecting somebody who's not here in this case yeah then i will move that we select and elect at this time brandi dubois to serve as our delegate for the color river area employee health benefit trust board i second the motion i second that jeannie borland all in favor aye corey burgess hi genie borland aye amanda aymond aye charlene diaz so moved item 5.8 authorization to expand the athletic stipends to include payment for officials for intramurals at fox creek for the fiscal year 2021.

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um you know i don't know that it i think these initial meetings are going to run a little bit longer than an hour so i'm reluctant to put on a night when we already have another meeting in effect um what about tuesday the 16th i know i can't yeah i'm ready okay yeah tuesday's bad tuesdays these days no good okay um thursday and i i mean i'll get my list in i mean maybe okay just to go ahead if you're going to keep it on thursdays okay and you know the good thing about it now is that we're uh we're posting these uh committee meetings on the youtube channel so you can always uh you know kind of catch up there if you'd like yeah um okay so next thursday at six um i think we should uh you know be prepared to continue this conversation um if everybody could get something to uh cara and cc me on that by let's say um monday is that enough time kevin for you to be able to we'll make it work we could try it sooner i mean we could try you know to if we haven't if we say monday morning we say monday morning to get his cara and that way she can hopefully turn it around to you by uh someday late sometime later that's right it's thursday night okay there is a day off but cara doesn't mind work she's off tomorrow right she won't she won't like me anymore we'll do it sunday night oh yeah this is president's day that's right yeah we'll do sunday night sure sunday night yeah i love getting the homework assignments though okay i feel like i feel like i'm in a class right now oh it's good it's good we've got to move it forward and we do we don't have a lot of time here guys i want to be sensitive about that even though the um you know the mayor's gonna be reviewing this through march the reality is like we have some education groundwork that has to take place um you know so i think you know i'm also going to be assigning myself the task of working on like sort of a draft of you know what the the budget process is you know from start to finish once it leaves board of ed hands so i'm going to bring that to start the conversation next week um about the information we need to include uh that education needs to start happening sooner much sooner rather than later though it's going to take time for us to disperse this message to the community um and you know with keeping that in mind and keeping in mind that we'd like to get folks to that you know the the public hearings that are going to be happening in april after the initial budget presentation and i i don't think that they've worked out exactly how that's going to happen yet so you know we're going to have to kind of be a little bit nimble and flexible about um you know how we are encouraging people to participate they can still send emails um you know to our mayor and our city council as well in advance of the presentation of the budget so that's i just think you know the more that we can build momentum for this the better off we're going to be um all right i think we're winding up here but i'm wondering if anybody has any additional thoughts they want to impart to us before we [Music] make a motion to close this can we just next um thursday night get some dates on the calendar when we'd like to meet with these different folks just because we have focus groups going with the pog i just want to make sure that we're not asking the same folks too many times but also you know spring if sports come back families get busy again and if we can get um some ideas of dates that we want to do this work um to meet with the constituents and our stakeholders and that's that would be wonderful okay that's a good quality together my yeah zoom happy hour [Laughter] are we all invited rich yeah next friday night you have to bring your own drinks though sorry all right um with that in mind uh i'll entertain a motion to adjourn

um as you as you might be able to see uh towards the bottom of the chart towards the left back in march which about 11 months ago there were 79 cases and then towards the middle in july on july 15 in particular there were 386 cases positive cases and then if you look on january 5th the spike which is the upper number of 2256 cases and then um as of february 9th there were 467 cases and this is the information across our our particular area um on this slide i want to share and um you know on on this slide i'm gonna i'm gonna pan down and get close to to uh the district so you'll notice that i'll be zooming in these slides are from the santa clara county public health department and it summarizes uh covid counts in our zip code uh zip codes with higher rates of cases per 100 000 residents appear as a darker shade of blue than zip codes with lower cases so i i want to point out that just on this slide the county used it used these colors so i want to be clear that the darker blue is for these charts i don't want to i don't want the community to confuse these or staff to confuse these colors with the colors from the other charts that show purple red orange and yellow this is just regarding zip codes so as i move to the following slides i'll be zooming in from kind of like a 30 000 foot level so that you can see the entire county i will drill down to our zip code and our district in the next few slides so that's a shot of our entire south county there and as you can see may hopefully on your end that uh you'll see freeways the 101 going down south to north 880 and all of that uh if you see in the dark blue towards the bottom that is gilroy to the south if you go all the way north on this chart in the dark blue that is the alviso community if you look to the west is a portion of san jose west and southwest of where maybe you know where the winchester mr mystery house location is and then the middle of the page the dark blue area is where alum rock school district area neighbors are just to the west of us i'll go ahead and zoom in on the next slide so you can see so here you'll see now kind of our area you know again zip codes with higher rates of cases per 100 000 residents appear as darker shade of blue than zip codes with lower cases as you can see on this chart here the 680 freeway alum rock is just to the right of that you can see the 101 880 so i just wanted to kind of give everyone a perspective and then if you can zoom in to the next page please as i drill down you'll see our apple logo the apple logo actually show this is the district office here at 2930 gate avenue and as you can clearly see the district is in dark blue which equals again the highest rate of covet cases per hundred thousand residents um and so so uh most of our schools are uh and i'm you know the community probably knows where their school is uh south just south of that if you see where the lighter blue is that's the border where where uh ocala street is uh where the hill view airport is just to give you a perspective from the from the south part of this diagram so i wanted to share that um information and now go into um some other uh challenges for the district uh but before i do i you know i'd also like to share how proud we are of all of our teachers our sped staff our district nurse the classified staff at the school sites and the district office are site principals in providing distance learning various supports of all of our supporting all of our students and families we also safely support students at 24 schools sites through our care pods with assistance from our agency partners our custodial staff and school staff plus our awesome cns employees our front line workers who continue to proudly serve thousands of meals each week to our families as you know alum rock still has some challenges uh as i shared the k streets in our district boundaries continue to remain unsafe and uh problematic for reopening uh the lack of vaccines provided to county to the county and hospitals in our area do not allow staff and the community and a significant number of our community to to be vaccinated at this time and on top of this we have additional challenges increased unhoused encampments adjacent to our school sites many families having mult households having multiple families in in their homes and then a high concentration of our our families happen to be essential front line workers um next side slide please as we move to the next slide these are some current arusd efforts and planning as dr bauer mentioned earlier our reopening committee meets weekly for analysis and planning we've come together to draft with the drafted reopening plan that covers safety logistics we also have ongoing communication and collaboration with the community be it town hall town halls newsletters family and teacher surveys that will be coming out shortly um and as i shared earlier we provide care pods each care pod serves 10 students some of our schools have two or three care pods um and then there's a few other efforts that are not listed here for example in in our hr department we send out monthly internal newsletters to our employees with safety reminders and coveted information from the county also not listed here is our technology support for students and staff the i the information technology support services uh department offers support to our families every day from 7 30 to 4 30 they have extended phone support uh in the evening monday through friday from 4 30 to 7 and then on saturdays they also provide support from 10 a.m to 2 p.m and um and again the support is available in english spanish and vietnamese so i wanted to share that next slide so the you know some of the next steps uh that we're going are we're gonna going to reevaluate the reopening as we're able to move from purple tier to red and so forth we're going to continue to monitor availability of vaccines for educators and our and our district employees we're going to send a survey to parents and staff and that survey window is going to be fed february 15 through the 28th and that survey will be communicated in several ways via our parent square mobile app that parents have on their phones and and staff can download on their phones as well as the district and school websites and we're going to finally bring that information that survey information to a board meeting in march um i do quickly want to just share this next chart regarding vaccinations um you know there was a there was a press release on january 8th announcing vaccinating vaccination opportunities for all health care workers and we know that this has expanded now to include six uh folks 65 and older in some sectors but i want to be caution us that this is not a timeline for reference but just potential progression of vaccine distribution uh that is found on the county website and then the next slide uh shows that this is a dashboard uh on vaccine data being kind of transparent and accessible to all citizens of california this this data is updated daily as you can see the number of doses per county across california is on there uh what's been administered what's been delivered and then they do have some noted there that the cdc does provide specific support for long-term care facilities and then the last slide i have two more slides sorry this next slide is you know in regards to our readiness as a district so i want to share here in the upper blue box some prevention steps that we're taking again physical distancing procedures in place care pods at all schools and district office personal protective equipment to each classroom and department uh handheld and backpack sanitation misters distributed to school sites and departments portable air filters as well cleaning and sanitation schedules and procedures are in place for example here at the district office we have a rotating schedule of cleaning and then the other thing is monitoring and response covert 19 we're working on cover 19 staff and student health screenings through our parent link app that you can actually do on your phone we're actually testing it out now we've done it been testing it for a few weeks with our care pods and parents have access to your self screen on their phone before they drop off their their children and so we're going to see how we can roll that out in the future for for all of us administrators trained uh and monitor and help monitor coven 19 procedures and then we provide information regarding testing availability for employees through either their healthcare provider or through the county and then the last slide again this information is on our district website uh those those links there are clickable uh it'll take you to these free resources and most of them three of the four are from the county uh public health department and one is from cdc so that's all the information i wanted to share today i appreciate you all listening for to this information thank you so much for that information um at this time we can go to um the trustees comments and questions and then open up open it up for public comment so giving the public time to raise your hand in the meantime trustees anybody have a question or comment trustee vegarano um i'm just kind of wondering maybe and madam president if you might entertain the the possibility of taking public comment i kind of would um i would kind of be interested in hearing the comments from the public before i well first of all to inform my questions but also just um yeah basically that i wanna i would like to hear from the public and potentially if some there are some themes there or something then i could bring that out in in my public comment so i mean i have some thoughts on my own but i'm wondering if we can take public comment at this time and then yeah um okay and i think we gave people enough time to kind of raise their hand in this virtual way um so um mr altar can you please tell us if we have anybody that's raised their hand yes ma'am president currently there is one person eva okay um welcome eva and as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin um um is she unmuted yes um she shows muted maybe she has to unmute herself and i don't know if she is there could be that she could have stepped away in the meantime do we have anybody else let's raise their hand no one else did you say one or no one else nobody so just now there's another person who but more people raised hand okay maybe we can move on to the others and then we'll come back to eva the second person is sandra rivera sandra welcome and as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin hello um thank you for having this information tonight one question that i know a lot of the teachers have on their minds with this is that as you guys are thinking about reopening a lot of the teachers in your district don't actually live in the county and so going forward if we could just be cognizant and maybe think about what steps we're going to take for all of the staff who doesn't live in santa clara county and are not going to be able to get vaccinated if that's one of the comebacks if we work in the county right now according to the cdc in the meeting i had yesterday we have to live in the county in order to get vaccinated not just work in the county and so it's going to be you're going to have teachers coming from tracy and you know alameda county stanislaus county santa cruz county all the different places um in order to get the schools functioning and back to where we can come back and so i just think that that needs to be kind of kept as part of this reopening um guidelines and thinking about the logistics of all of that so thank you thank you uh mr after i think you said there was a couple people so a lot of people dropped the raised hand so there's no one else okay okay go ahead and come back to the comments questions uh trusting a um i don't know yes thank you um so i do have a couple thoughts and and just comments on this and and first of all thank you mr moran and staff for bringing this to us um i know recently dr bauer and i were having a conversation about you know this topic and and you know an update came from the higher up so it was a good time anyway to um to bring it but i was kind of hoping that we could have a conversation sooner than later anyway because for me um it's it's kind of a complex multi-layered um subject in our district more so than else it's complex everywhere but for our district to me there's a few layers and a few kind of pieces to this number one and then obviously i'm certainly not a medical expert particularly not in in infectious diseases um but and and i know we tried to get a maybe a medical person to speak tonight and we couldn't maybe in the future as needed we can do that but from what i've been able to see when we first came into this last march or whatever i remember it was it was early on when i was the board president and we didn't know really anything i mean the world didn't know anything and and certainly we were kind of blindsided and we made a lot of decisions based on assumptions that we had at that time and we've kind of as everyone else has kind of rolled with it and and tried to build the airplane as we're flying it um but i think now almost a year later there are some different there potentially is different science different um information that we have that we didn't have 11 months ago and i think that at the at a minimum you know would warrant a conversation now just kind of as an update that's what we're doing now and then in the future at some point when and if we need to make a decision um because i don't want to make a decision based on old assumptions and and so for me i think that from what i'm able to tell there may be some evidence some science some some rationale to discuss the you know what what the science looks like for students for young people for teachers like what it looks like in a school setting from the cdc in a lot of different places i've seen new information that doesn't match what we had at first um and so i think that's something that i would eventually when it comes time want to have that discussion and that information from from the experts to let us know what is the you know the science on on on this at this point however the other piece to this to me that even so even if the science told us that it's all good students who come back to school it's safe teachers will be safe everyone will be safe that's kind of like a generalization and the the great report that we got is like the general numbers um but but for our community in particular even if the science says it's safe hypothetically our community looks different as we saw in the numbers we have dark blue um up and down and so as a whole even if it is safe at some point we still need to layer over that information the the particular dynamics and and realities of our community because i would not feel comfortable um even if the data told us that schools are safe to open just rushing through that knowing that our community looks different than you know what the general consensus might be so so i'm just kind of pre putting out there that if and when the time comes when we need to have a discussion certainly i want to hear the new data the new science and and base some of my thoughts on that but at the same time i want to also acknowledge and put out there that we're going to have this other layer i believe on top of the science to consider that that is reflective of the realities of our community so um i think those were primarily kind of what i'm what i'm thinking and um and you know of course we could get a mandate i'm assuming that the state or or someone could just say you have to open and at that point i mean i don't know all this stuff this is all hypothetical but at that point we would have to do it but if we have the option to kind of do it on a on a district specific kind of decision then those are the things that i would be wanting to look at the updated science but also how what's the interplay between that science and our community dynamics with regards to the um disease so those are kind of my comments for now i think thank you chelsea any other trustees have any comments or questions this time thank you for the information uh trustee chavez i see your hand up yeah i kind of wanted to address something that um i think i guess the teacher said i'm sorry i forgot her name um i heard on this afternoon at the skowi meeting that they're in alameda they're taking uh some teachers and they're giving them the vaccine and i know our counties not as quick to respond to all that but you might want to look that up and they are trying to broaden the scope of teachers and school district employees but that's something that you might try and they do ask where you live um some people said that one lady got in she got it but i don't know how she addressed the issue of where she lives but that's all thanks thank you um trusty fun oh okay well uh thank you uh well first of all thank you to mr moran for putting together that report and you know i uh there was one aspect of trustee biharano's comments you know how he said this our district has a you know there's some layers beyond the science and you know i see this having a background in education and that is uh our students can be unpredictable if we anyone's ever taught in a classroom and see how children interact sometimes you don't know what they're going to do next so you know you know as you know as we move forward you know uh you know just one thing i you know something to take into account is uh you know how how the students are going to react to some of the modified measures that will have to be in place you know if this board is uh you know and you know when this board comes to a point in time where you know it has to make a decision yeah you know i i think as i uh talked to dr bauer in my one-on-one you know we you know uh you never know when a kindergartner just comes up and hugs a teacher and you know all all the planning in the world can't stop that so you know uh you know uh as we you know so uh you know you know we we you know this is a complex thing and you know i'm you know and sometimes our you know our students may not be at that maturity level sometimes that they have to think about these things but events have forced force them to think about this so you know uh you know as we try to make everything safe you know safe as can be you know let's let's make sure that we you know move carefully and you know dot our eyes and cross our teeth thank you mr pam and uh i'll go ahead and uh make a couple comments and questions but dr bauer i don't know if you had any response or i just wanted to add for everybody's um slide number eight that in carlos presentation and we don't need to go back but for those of you who want to review that and it is available just like in march we had a significant a very flat curve and they told us go home it was no questions asked we got everybody picked up things and we went home in july in august if you see the little curve going a little bit higher they say don't come back we were ready allen wrong was ready to come back teachers were ready to come back we had a plan they told us don't you can't come back now when the the spike of the curve is significantly taller all of the sudden they say okay you guys are ready to come back and the reason i'm saying this is because in the media you see a lot of school districts children happily you know going back to school and i want you to remember also that a map of our county with the different blues and also the the map of the bay area where you also are going to see different levels of contagion let's remember that our parents and our teachers want to come back i don't want anybody to leave tonight thinking oh it's get those alum parents don't want to come back or those teachers don't want to come back absolutely not we want to come back but we want to assure safety i just want to remind everybody this is a safety issue and we want to make sure our staff is safe all of them and our kids are safe thank you madam president i just needed to remind us everybody because a lot of times we get tangled and people have the wrong impression of us and i just want to make sure that everybody in alan rock wants their kids to come back and learn but it's not safe thank you so much and i just want to add to that i received a couple of emails from parents um saying the exact same thing that they want to come back and they think you know being in classroom is best for their children however they were scared because of the numbers because of the you know they live with other families and so um i also wanted to put that um factor out there and that i did receive a couple of emails of parents that were scared you know they um they just you know heard that this item was going to be on the agenda and they thought that we were already going to make them send their kids back so um i did you know reassuring that there's nothing set you know uh thank you mr moran for your presentation some of those things that i mentioned to them um but that you know nobody was gonna make any you know child uh come in and um especially if it's unsafe and at this time it still remains unsafe as you highlighted mr moran thank you um so i just wanted to make those comments uh trustee vicharano yeah and just kind of hopefully quickly i think thank you dr bauer and also trustee um for those comments because safety obviously is what it's all going to be based upon safety for teachers safety for staff safety for kids everyone parents but i think um a valid part of the discussion if and when we have to have it is also the the social emotional safety and i think that is a real thing at this point i mean clearly life and death um health physical health risks of this is is is a very primary consideration but i do think also at this time that there is some some value in and also taking into consideration the the longer term impacts that we may be starting to see with um isolation depression the types of things that that you know kids aren't built for this this this you know modality this kind of structure and so as we come to those discussions i i'm hoping to at least bring that piece of it to the table too because there's the physical safety and then there's also this other and not to mention obviously what we're all here for the academic realities of of distance learning versus in the classroom learning and and those kinds of classroom dynamics that are important so again it's multi-layered and i mean i know several of us on the board um have been directly impacted and you know had have contracted the the you know contagion and so this is not something that that any of us i think take likely we some have have experienced it directly and so so the decision that we make is it comes from you know it's going to come from that lived experience and and hopefully bringing all these factors so that's it thank you thank you yes and i was thinking that too that um also um for some of our kids that are unsafe you know and that's the reality um in their homes that uh you know school is safe for them and so you know just some of those future conversations dr bauer that you know we get to have um and they're ongoing right we we've been having um and how to provide resources um and i know we're doing a great job um and yeah you know areas areas to continue to look at and how we can continue to improve to serve our children um in the wonderful ways that we do so thank you if i don't see any other hands up um board president real quick just a shout out to district staff for following safety protocols and i know it's different so i wanted to shout out to them and then two people teresa smith our director who has to handle a lot of paperwork uh when there is a case or a positive case and our district nurse sabina for jumping on on on all of those cases and being our public health contact without those two um it'd be very difficult for us to do our jobs here because there's a lot of components i just want to thank them and and the folks that are following what we need to follow wearing mass social distancing washing hands there's an issue let us know uh mots on top of it as soon as we find out uh we're moving so thank you thank you thank you all um now we'll move on to 501 uh approval of the contract to increase the cheap kids for the 20 21 school year how many um thumb for approval any motions to approve to approve thank you trusted questions uh board vice president quintero second um do we have a presentation dr robert or anything with that okay um any questions comments from the board just a quickie i had i did have some questions about the increase for dr bauer on this one and and i just want to thank dr bauer um it took a while for me to understand but but um from from the explanation that i received i i you know i'll be supporting this because because it i understand now why we need to do the um the increase so thank you dr barr for having patience with my question on this one thank you trust your head and i think you're not the only one i was also there asking questions and it's definitely you know important to provide our children with the resources that they need but important to understand right as we're passing uh these votes any other questions or comments before we move on to public comment okay see none um mr after can you let us know if we have any body on for public comment okay um having none we'll go ahead and take it on well let's count a little bit okay let the five seconds go any avatar no still none okay we'll go ahead and move on to uh our vote trustee travis hi trustee bergeron hi vice president quintero hi trustee fam i and myself i passes unanimously thank you 502 approved to con uh the contract increase with some belt staffing for 2021.

dr stewart mr president and board members as we reported to you last month rather than doing inter mural sports this year fox creek is doing intramural sports and and so those are being run through the 21st century program so it means the coaches and the people working with students on that campus in that after school program are being paid with 21st century funds because we're really trying to maintain safety on the campus it means then that the officials for those events are also employees of that of that campus so i'm requesting that just for the rest of this year uh the money that we're not spending paying coaches stipends that we'd be allowed to use that those funds to pay for those officials or nearly that gets paid ordinarily officials get paid out of student activity funds of course we don't have anything coming into those this year so if you would let us for this year use those athletic funds for officials instead of coaches we would appreciate that i did have one question on this um is it possible that that is could be a 21st century because it would be staff on campus working with students it is working on with students but it's not them teaching them or you know it's it doesn't fit the definition for 21st century yeah it doesn't it doesn't fit okay do we have any other questions okay then i would like to motion that we approve 5.8 i'll second the motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland i'm amanda aymond hi charlene diaz so moved item 5.9 approval of the quote for replacement replacement equipment for the sunrise elementary school intercom system and the amount of approximately five thousand two hundred thirty one dollars and nine cents dr stewart mr president and board members um since you all had wanted me to bring things to you that are over five thousand um that's why i'm bringing this the good news is that it's significantly less than if we did what we have historically done which has gone out to bid and have a company come in and put the equipment in and of course then we spend a lot of money on labor mr mcduc mr mcnutt did a bunch of research on this and learned that i'm going to oversimplify this but if you buy the equipment it's kind of plug and play now it's lots of plugging and lots of playing but our folks can do it and we have uh it's one of the reasons that uh doing this being able to do this kind of thing is one of the reasons that we added that position in the technology department so that we had you know so we had the personnel to do it so this is probably only about it's probably only about 30 percent of what we would pay under uh historical circumstances we have we know that we have a similar situation at fox creek and we're going to be getting quotes for the equipment for that as well but we weren't quite ready for that so i think this is a significant savings but i wanted since it's over five thousand your approval any questions that's wonderful that we're able to do that in-house it's wonderful it's a new one yeah it's wonderful yeah that's great news we can save some money there um so i move that we approve 5.9 i'll secure the motion all in favor aye corey burgess i jeanne borland aye amanda eamon aye charlene diaz some moves item five point ten um uh exhibit jfbea open enrollment dr stewart mr president and board members uh we decided now that we've been through one year of doing open enrollment things that we could streamline this form and get it onto one page we've streamlined the process we will be following the the current uh the current board policy and all of those things that we need to do but we need to get we need to get we've been already receiving some open enrollment forms the one significant change in this is that we are now asking that there be a form for every student because it occurred to us that a family could up apply for open enrollment for one student and answer those questions those questions about expelled or currently what those four questions about that student and then list the siblings at the bottom of the page and never have to answer these questions so we realized that and that's probably not a real good idea so kim spent some time getting this streamlined and we want to get it out to folks the deadline is for application for next year is march 1st i do want to say to you that this is kind of problematic because of that information i sent to you of the bills that have been have gone out of the senate education committee to to the senate floor so this may all be moot a month from now i don't know but right now we're operating under our current policy and this will make it much easier for us to handle the paperwork anytime you can streamline is a good thing well my only question you know in addition to that would can you create this as a google form and put it on the web page we are going we are putting it on the web page for them to pull down lots of people don't know how to use google forms so it will be a it will be a pdf that they can do but then they can also pick it up at the sites or here with the fact that we've been virtual yes right almost a full year that we've been able to access as i know within doing parent registration completely online for the most part at the high school and things like that a lot of our parents are getting really familiar with google classroom google for yes not so much at the elementary with the google forms so you know we'll we'll start teaching them i will say that i do appreciate and love i don't know who created and i'd love to speak with whoever created the google forms for the parent teacher conferences because they do have the google forms listed on the facebook you can click on the teacher if you're in you know k5 or or k4 and then 5 8 you the teacher sent it to you and you can click and sign up for your google classroom or well not google plus your google meet link for your parentage conferences for virtual and that is phenomenal that is so great and simple and it's just a click and fill it in and you get an email confirmation so you can't beat it right that is awesome we're bringing everybody into the 21st century whether they want to be here or not we'll bring that along yeah all right any other questions on this nope okay then i move we approve item 5.10 i second it's so weird to me uh amanda amen hi charlene diaz so moved uh item 6.1 future topics do we have any future topics we want placed on the agenda um i think that we need to revisit the tax credits and sharing out the information on tax credits and maybe because i've not seen that yet hit the facebook after asking last month i you it hit the csk12 i even scanned but scanned back last night and looked for like all the way back into december and i couldn't find like the information with like the form and it should have hit the next day i saw that i saw an article hit and that was great i just didn't see it on on everything maybe i'd bypassed it somehow i looked twice i looked today and last night i was scanning out of the news which is possible and if so that would have been a technical glitch and i can just reset that okay but also uh the forms were also updated and re-added to the website as well yes and i know we got some at the high school we got some updated ones and things i just you because i looked last night and this morning and i i couldn't find it today at all it may have timed out i know we had a couple of teachers that posted about it um so that was good but we added up the next day so i will i'll check and see if the time down is it accidental okay great because we are hitting taxes we have people left and right getting them done already so we could definitely use not miss that window yeah because this is the time yes it is the time um so maybe even well we're gonna be pushing tight for next one awesome okay all right any other topics okay item 6.2 upcoming board events several of us are participating in bolts tomorrow the bolts i did you haven't i haven't either okay so it starts at nine so she's got a little time to get that going yeah it's nine to four thirty and there is a whole list of aspa stuff coming up uh is this scheduled to be virtual meetings they yeah anything right now is going to be virtual and they're doing a really nice job with uh with their virtual things so okay so yeah there's all the the soon-to-be uh meetings that are coming up on that any other questions for upcoming events uh item 6.3 date time and location of our future meeting should be march 11th 11th that is in spring break but it's march 11th yeah that's that one's going to be kind of tough um second thursday right currently with our normal it would be the second thursday which would be march 11th but that falls on spring break um so that's you know that's that's a travel time all right do you want to go a week later um this time and we don't have a march 15 deadline knock on wood that's good so we don't have a deadline in march that we have to meet are we okay with pushing that to the 18th genie okay yeah all right i missed that mute button again all right no no problem so we're good with these springs are we on spring break a week earlier than usual the 8th through the 12th is spring break this year yes that's that's why i mean this is one of the calendar things because historically we've done it the second full week in march and so you can see that this year that that has moved earlier and it will be the same week next year in the calendar that you've adopted so second full week in march it's the end of the third quarter i'm good with either date and it doesn't matter all right so then let's do the 18th we'll set up the march 18th at uh 5 30 p.m um uh board policies for the workshop for the workshop yes at 5 30.