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information and i keep saying this is going to get shorter each time and i think that's the case uh this evening you promised so many jan is listening closer closely i think as to whether this is the case or not currently we are in five days of in-person learning for students in grades k through eight as well as we are in a hybrid model for our grades nine through twelve students we do have students in grades through nine nine through 12 scheduled to return to five days of in-person instruction on monday march 22nd so right now we're not waiting on a next day or another time to try to make that decision looking at the data and so forth we're believing that things are heading in the right direction and we are able to bring our students back on the 22nd so coming back from spring break we should have all students grades k through 12 in five days of in-person learning with that said we want to remind you that we do have many students who are still choosing our e-learning option our all e-learning option and coming out of spring break at least by our current count we'll have approximately 1500 students still participating in an e-learning option during quarter four this is information that's our most recent data and this comes from today which always reflects the day before as a reminder so if we look back at yesterday february the 28th uh we're down to a 16.5 per capita number so continue to decrease and our last board meeting which would have been february the 8th we're at 31.4 so basically i've cut that in half that is continuing to decrease the percent positive test rate is down to 24.1 percent um also continuing to to decrease uh the test turnaround time at 1.7 i don't think we were able to get that information updated for today just said not come back to us uh and then covet hospitalizations for crh are down to nine which is a green number we haven't seen many green numbers um over the last few months a time or two here and there so that is the information in terms of our local data trending in the right direction from a state standpoint this was last week's information so last wednesday's county designation and you see that bartholomew county was a 1.5 remaining in the yellow we're starting to be an outlier a little bit there's i think more yellow last time than there were blue but that blue is starting to uh increase the number of counties and and looking at the data that chad gathers for us on a daily basis and having conversations around that we're expecting more counties to be in blue i don't know that we'll get there on wednesday probably still yellow but at least that is still a better place than we had been previously so just a reminder in terms of our positive cases since august the 10th our first student day we've had 568 positive test cases that 568 includes 345 students 156 support staff members and 67 teachers if we take those populations that would represent three percent of our students 13 of our support staff members and eight percent of our certified staff members and then in terms of those covet 19 related decisions i shouldn't say remaining because i'm sure there are more than this but the two that are uh probably being asked the most at this point in time there's always these series of emails topics that will start rolling in and those emails now are starting to accumulate in regards to prom and graduation and so we are weighing all options in regards to those two situations how can we have an in-person event i'm not sure if you can have a problem without doing it in person but at graduation we found a way to do it virtually last year we would like to again be in person one way or another we're looking at all the options in regards to that and we have to obviously pay attention to event restrictions if we were to try to roll something out today i think that an event in bartholomew county uh the highest number that can participate is 100 so that wouldn't allow us to do a whole lot at this point in time but hopefully over the next couple of months we'll be able to figure out a way those those restrictions will lessen and we'll have some opportunities to do prom and graduation again in one form or another but no decisions on those uh two things at this point in time continuing to to dialogue with our principles at the high school level mr jensen as the director of secondary education and working to figure that out so that is my information as of today on covet 19.
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what what is the reason that we chose to go this way back in july and august where we chose to go starting remote i think that that's really what and please correct me if i'm wrong but i feel like that's that's the basic question here why are we doing this you know we were going off the information that we had at the time based on the based on you know throughout this entire pandemic we have received different information whether it be the idph the cdc uh the illinois state board of education conflicting information information that changes on a daily basis from different organizations just as somebody just mentioned that there was cdc information that came out last weekend i spent the entire weekend working on that with our with our attorney in regards to what is this exactly saying because i had i had hundreds of people reaching out and saying you know what you have to have six foot distancing this is what this document says if you follow in this category this is what you must have and you know we've mentioned it today is it it's guidance but we've also learned a lot from this pandemic throughout throughout this uh past year and uh and this is you know this is where we're at we have we have we made the decision on january 2nd when i sent that uh information to the parents letting everyone know that we would be returning in person believe me i got a lot of emails saying how can you make that decision now the metrics are this and this this that and the other we made the decision we made the decision to phase it in to ensure that we would be successful as we as we're as we currently are and tonight we're talking about what that next phase looks like if you wanna i'm sorry i'm going to ask for you to limit the follow-up just so that we get those last two people but if you have a quick just really quick did yourself receive different information than oswego it's a different size and scope of scale i was gonna i was gonna redirect because i don't think the question has been answered okay uh completely i think the question is what decision did yorkville make that was different than ours can we answer that they decided to prioritize in person over the social distancing or perhaps i don't know their square footage um perhaps they were able to maintain social distancing with the percentage of students choosing in person i i think that if you want to know more about yorkville you should talk to all the people that work there i work in yorkville i think some of you know that and it is not the rose garden you think it is you're welcome to think that if you choose that i know from talking to people that i talk to that it is just as harried and just as difficult as it is here and i know lots of people like to portray it as that was so easy for them no it was not and it's still not easy and it's not easy on the kids and there are some kids that are having a bad problem big problems but what i think matters in any of these situations is the maturity that you show when you talk to your kids i've spent 30 years in education and i've seen parents that have situations that are hideous and somehow they guide their children through and their children do okay and it's not just coping that's not the only problem people have people have serious issues but some parents choose to have a positive attitude some parents choose to be proactive some parents choose to be helpful and and do what they can to shore up whatever they can shore up and you don't have everything in your control but you do the best you can and that's the attitude that i would highly promote as a teacher and as a board member to anyone who needs to know what to do in a time of difficulty and that's you know i i don't know that we should ask dr sparlin to answer the question how do we choose this when i was in august honestly i was choosing the safety of people because the highest priority for me was everybody's got to live that can possibly live and if you want to make that decision you run for board and then you can sit here and you can decide whether you're going to let people maybe die or maybe live and it's not in the interest in the interest of the fact that it's nine o'clock this is what i'm going to say you can laugh at that but i am very glad you're at a meeting now hold on in all fairness to second guess everything i am glad you're here to second guess i am i'm actually thankful because that means that everybody got to a safe place and now you get to be the you know money back monday morning quarterbacks so thank you for the response if we can all please retain some good role modeling all of us would be much appreciated as we move to our last two questions the woman i think it's a mottled gray and white sweatshirt next yeah that's you yay i think i called it right i i hope so how can we how can we answer a question for you hi so i'm i'm hearing tonight that you know social distancing guidelines of six feet are what's dictating some decisions here tonight a lot tonight but decisions that have been made are based off of the six feet social distancing the masking and how can we make schools safe i am looking at a picture right now on facebook of cheerleaders in the high school with their heads inches from each other not going to name names i don't know who's in this picture it's very blurry so i'm not saying who they are that doesn't matter i want to know why it's okay for our students to be head-to-head in a cheerleading practice our football players allowed to play football our stu our basketball students playing basketball so the question is the difference in school our kids cannot go to school to learn and be emotionally and physically and socially safe five days totally understand the frustration when this is happening so just to continue just to continue some progress so i totally understand your frustration i'm seeing this as an extreme frustration with the fact that we do offer sports that are occurring that social distancing does not always take place in those sports in fact ihsa considers some of these medium and high risk activities um dr sparlin or i'm not sure if we have a more athletic so my question is why is it dangerous not dangerous in that setting but it's dangerous five days a week in the school setting someone please explain to me why there's a dangerous the short answer is there's a waiver parent signed to participate i design a waiver for my kids to go to school we will are we allowed we've been doing a real good job folks trying to answer questions and facilitate some good dialogue here because this is a passionate subject not just for those of you sitting in the audience it's a passionate subject for every educator it's a passionate subject for every board member we volunteered for this guys and we didn't quit we care about this stuff so all i ask in return is to just remember that the goal is for us to be able to help [Music] bridge some understanding not to try to facilitate more disagreements so if the question is regarding the difference between why you can do this in sports and why you can't do this for school there's a person who can definitely answer it but we have to just let him give that a shot absolutely you might not like the answer i don't know that i like the answer but there is okay we follow the guidelines from ihsa in regards to sports as you as you saw there was a lot of controversy regarding that the sports are delineated by high medium and low risk sports sports are a choice as this is mrs doyle just said and people have it they have have that choice and school you is is you have to you don't have that choice you have to be here yeah so we want to be here we want to be in school but we're being told it's not safe so you're taking the guidelines from the sports association and saying it's okay for sports they're different guidelines i i understand but do you see the comparison i'm making here we have to totally make sense that there's not the same guidelines totally agree right it makes no sense that they have different guidelines they do those are voluntary for staff they're voluntary for students they're not required and staff are not required to coach them as part of their job responsibilities like i said i didn't think that there would be an answer that would make anybody feel better but that's what the answer is i mean there are just different guidelines of what you can do and in a district where we're trying to offer as many opportunities to children as it is safe to do by the standards that we are required to hold and remember the guidelines for schools way stricter than for any hospital and that's not by local control that is what we have to do to be able to get the 230 million a year that we need to be able to give kids teachers so i mean it's just safety of children while they're in school but we're not concerned about the safety of them oh no we're concerned when they're in sports trust me i'm concerned every day for the safety of children and whatever then why are they allowed and i'm not advocating for taking away sports that's not metrics that you use for school sports in school buildings taxpayer-funded businesses so we're at 9.6 and guidelines totally understand that you five days a week i totally understand that you'd like to have the same guidelines for both i think that that's what i'm hearing from you is that you'd like to have the same guidelines for sports and for school and that you feel that because sports can participate in activities that don't have as much social distancing that don't maybe have basking at some points if they're running or swimming that if you can do that then why can't you be in school five days a week the answer is because the rules and the guidelines and the mandates are just different there is a i have no idea how ihsa works i do know that they meet a lot and eventually they make a decision on things i know that they have been working with idph because for a lot of families sports are what keep their kids from dropping out and for a lot of kids the reason that they'll stay remote is so that they can not risk being quarantined for not being able to participate in sports because that can happen too okay and i also understand that idph has released guidelines but these are not mandates is that correct are you guys they said they died to follow the guidelines okay so let me let me ask you a question back and i'm going to make this the last one and if you want to just give me an answer then we're going to go to the last gentleman because we're already seven minutes beyond what we're allotted so i'm going to ask you a question back do you feel that this board is purposely trying to keep your children in a harmful position of course not there you go we have the same frustrations we have asked these same questions these are frustrations and questions that have been asked pretty much by every parent across the country for a year in fact i was just thinking before we got here i think the second to last in-person meeting we had was a public forum this time last year and the topic on the on the table was a referendum and questions about financing and money and the things we needed a year ago one-to-one technology was not on our radar we were not going to be able to do that for a real long time it wasn't even close that's how much things have changed in a year a week later we're talking about kids not being in school so what we're trying to do is the same thing you're trying to do we're trying to advocate for all the kids just like you're trying to advocate for your kids except for we've elected all of you to make what we want happen decisions for the children's education of public education in this community what you elected was one people that didn't know a pandemic was coming to board members that are explicitly not allowed to cater to one specific special interest group you're required to be a statistician can we get that last question i think that's very unfair to call me a special interest group well i i don't i don't know mr doyle can we just can we have an ask question come on it's what's the difference i mean it just depends they're they're both it's a guideline which is an unfunded mandate a guideline which is an unfunded mandate who was the last question uh the gentleman in the blue t-shirt i knew it was blue though so that's good um just real quick i have six nieces that go to the pensacola school district there are thousands more students there in our district they've been in school since august but that's not my question my question that's what that state chose that's their governor and so my question to you is is what is the end game i understand it costs money to offer remote and in person what is the end game when do we tell the people in this district when this pandemic when does it come that the pandemic is over and you will no longer have the choice to work from or go to school at home and we need to bring all the kids back to the classroom i mean have we started to think about that end game of when it's time to say the end game i think from day negative one has been how do you bring kids back to where we don't have to do remote oh i wish i had an answer for that one i think what we're talking about with regards to the requests that people that have come here tonight to speak about five full days in person is what we're looking at is the fall first day of school next year so for all intents and purposes i guess my question is at what point does it change from being able to get your students what they need to not wanting to have a remote option for other students when that's what they need and that's something that we haven't gotten to yet because we we don't know hopefully we we will soon thank you sure i would follow that up by saying that it would be advantageous to put out a statement or figure out what that statement is that says based on or until this statement is made by kendall county isbe governor pritzker whoever is going to make that statement what is that statement that says we are going in person on august 15th 16th whatever that that date is what is what does that look like because now it's like well that's our hope for the fall but what what is it that we have to hear or what is it that the state of illinois has to do that says yep five days a week all day long that's what school looks like again right but be careful that's what i would want to hear we can't make that decision we do know that last summer when june the end of june arrived we received the initial 67 pages of guidelines mandates you know that sometimes the words are a little bit interchangeable it depends if money's involved or this that the other and that's pretty much as far as i can tell what the difference really has been um however there's also workers comp involved there's liability involved there's a lot of legal issues that no one's ever had to deal with before when we received that from the state last year are we expecting to see something like that again this year that could help us and be informed a little bit more as to when we are no longer required to follow mitigating any sort of mitigating efforts do you know what that looks like have we been given any indication yet no we haven't been given any indication regarding that yet no but you could always reach out to all of your local and state representatives at any time whether you want five person five day in person or whether you want a remote option for next year i think it's a good point that not only your school districts because it's not just this school district dealing with that right it's every school district across many many states i know you have what point are you gonna say hang on one second first we've asked a whole bunch of questions we followed up with the guy in the blue shirt we can ask questions you guys for real i don't know but i think i could ask questions about this and the whys and the what-ifs probably for the next 10 hours and not have answers that satisfy me dr sparling can do that and does do that and not have answers that satisfy him there's a lot of unknown and honestly that's the biggest horror of of this besides the people that are getting hurt the incidental thing happening is that there is so much unknown nobody has that kind of certainty of what's going to happen this week they do as long as you can maintain masking and social distancing you know you can even see here that it's sometimes not possible to do that we have different reasons or glasses are fogging or the masks they slip and things like that and there's social distancing involved and there's different risks whether you're three five seven or eighteen i think that and i think that what i have heard several different times tonight is that our goal the district's goal is to return to five days of instruction in person starting in the fall as best we can plans are being made that is what we are planning on and hope to achieve however we will also be following the guidance whenever it may come from idph um isbe and and and all of this i think it would be i think that statement in and of itself at this point i don't know how we can make any other concrete statement come you know the summer or fall that's the goal that's what we're doing and working our hardest on i don't how in this ever changing in this ever changing climate how in the world can we guarantee you that where will be come the first day of school i just i just don't know how i just don't know how to do that right can we move on so i'm pretty sure that we are over time i hope that um we all can recognize that there's a lot of the same concerns we need to plan for next year i need to know if i need to start saving money now for private school for my child i totally get it we have all made these decisions too nobody can help with that right now there just isn't a way for the people sitting at this table to be able to say i think that it's time for your student to do xyz is the best if i could i would i i really wish that we could give you something more concrete i know that we work on that every day i know that all of the people that are sitting behind you work on that more hours than i think they've ever dreamed they knew how to work and and the goal is there so this is what we can offer and it's not going to be the right thing for everybody but it's the best that we can do at this point and we don't know if that will change so um moving forward item we have a few more things to cover this evening one is board member comments um shall we go around we'll start ruth do you have comments you'd like to share for the good of the order sure um i didn't have i don't have anything formally prepared or anything but i just you know we have all received a lot of emails over the past week just like we have all year that span the spectrum of opinions and i appreciate every single one of them every person who has reached out i've tried really hard to at least respond in some way i especially appreciate those that are respectful and thoughtful i appreciate less the ones that are maybe not so nice but i read them anyway um i've heard some of my fellow board members make comments and i agree with them and saying that none of none of these plans is what we want to do and none of these plans is what anybody wants to be doing but we need to do something i feel strongly that we need to continue to move forward my oldest son is a senior so talking about next year really doesn't do it many good and i'm concerned about him being ready for college but i'm not here to make choices based on what i want to do for my own kids i probably would make different choices if if that's what i felt like my responsibility was we're here to consider every student from pre-k through our life skills programs and not just the students either we have to think about our staff and the students families as well and i have really thought very hard about all of these different plans that were presented to us that a tremendous amount of work has been put into i appreciate the feedback that we've received from teachers and parents in regards to those plans and i will be making decisions tonight based on you know knowing that there are pros and cons to every plan and there's a lot of cons to every single one of them and i'm trying to some things you can't just number where do those weigh out because some cons are maybe worth more points than others i guess um but i appreciate that we've been able to have constructive dialogue and i'm glad that members of the community came out tonight and i i know that everyone's very frustrated we're frustrated too this is not what you signed up for it's not what we signed up for it's not what any of our teachers or administrators signed up for and we're all just doing the best that we can and trying to communicate as best we can because that is key i think about my own students who are you know on paper they're doing fine with remote learning um but every single one of them who has been able to go even just a couple of days in person commented to me how much better it was to be in the classroom how things just clicked for them um just because they're sitting in the room you know one of my sons like the teacher didn't even present new content but i just got it today being in the classroom and i think that that is important and impactful and this is for a kid who if you look at his grades you wouldn't think that that was a problem for him but it was important and i think a lot of that is because since kindergarten that's where they've learned that's their learning environment that they've been conditioned to know this is where i learn and i think that we should be proud of the fact that our students know that they can learn in the classroom and that that of course should be our ultimate goal is to get these kids back in the classroom that's that's all i have um well a lot of what i'll say i guess but ruth said it's like we planned it but um but we didn't um you know i'm a board member i'm a member of this community i'm a parent i have two kids in the district i have a six-year-old who is struggling majorly and it's heartbreaking it's hard to see her left behind it's it's difficult um so please know that i empathize with much of what you have said even if i didn't have a struggling student i think i could really you know i i hear the love and the care that you have and the desire that you desires that you have for your students i just i just want to say that even um you know so in my term on the board i've tried to make decisions and i've tried to vote in the best interest of all students within this community even while i know there are many people many families and many parents who you know don't agree with those decisions who don't believe um that these decisions may be coming down from the board how i vote um is the best for their for their child and you guys do know best we do know what's best for our kids and we're doing the very best that we can to vote our pensions votes vote for what's right again for all students not just our own you know i hear and understand and acknowledge and read these emails and understand the concerns are valid they're real all of these things are true for sure but again you know i'm just doing the very best that i can to the to look at the information that we're provided a lot of information a lot of research a lot of data is given to us is shared with us we have to sift through it we have to consider recommendations from you know our educational experts up here and make decisions best we can and i've tried in this time to make decisions that are based on you know health and safety guidelines and guidance of our you know of our students and i've done the best that i can i understand that that really might be unsatisfactory for for many of you i do want to just mention um we are going to be we do have some plans some things to vote on tonight and i just want to say i know many of us have said a number of times that we're a number of times up today and over the course of the year that we are not in love with the plans these are not perfect plans that's all true too i want to be really careful though about i just want to say that the amount of work that has gone into developing the develop these plans and these options have been has been incredible i truly believe that we have been given the best options at our disposal to to choose from and none of those options are perfect we all know what we all know where we should be which is in person in school safe um but so i don't want to you know we've said a lot of things about the plan and i think it's really important that we not are not disparaging the work that went into it that this is again i think a lot of good information and within um the realm of what we can do given the guidance that we have and given you know the opportunities that we have you know in our district so i did just want to say that so i appreciate the staff and administration for developing these plans i appreciate the teachers i know it's a hard job i know it's such a hard job especially with everything changing so i appreciate the teachers that are out there implementing the plan there's a lot to say there's a lot that's been said this evening there's unanswered questions that have been asked for the last several months since the fall since we tried to get back to school well you know bottom line is that we as a board have you know referred to them as guidelines mandates that we have to follow and that that's a big part of it we we could say okay we're going to throw out all the guidelines we're not going to do what what is recommended by the the boards that oversee us and if something does go wrong something does happen it's on us um so so we try to make those decisions for the good of the whole you know we'll share personal experiences i shared a negative experience with uh iep pullout time i also have the negative experience of that child being out on medical leave from last christmas who's been out almost you know over a year and a half almost so there is a need to get back in school understand that but the need to do it in a way that we are able to by following the protocols that are set forth to us it's not a situation i think many of us want to be in unfortunately we're we're a large community uh we have eighteen thousand students where we spread over wisconsin oh my gosh oswego no no you know portions of juliet i mean we have a wide variety of people and you know thanks for coming out this is a good response for for forums that we've had in the past there are forms that we've had where we've had three people come out and ask questions so thank you for coming out and asking the questions but we have received oh my gosh um tons and tons of emails and it is from every every point of view every perspective from in class five days full day to remain hybrid to almost every variation in between so i i think there may be a majority of people that say yes we would prefer to be in in school but as faith said it is in in person in school with a number of different hybrid options that people would prefer they're it's hard to follow but we are trying to do our best we want the best for for our kids you've heard that many of us have kids that need to be in school that's that's where they we know they thrive that we know that's where they're going to succeed that's what we want but we have to work through what the state of illinois is allowing us to work through at that pace unfortunately i think you guys pretty much summed it up i'm going to do what i always do i'm going to vote my heart my heart's in the classroom europe that's it yeah i mean they already said it all right yeah well you know it's my turn and not yet mr would like to go oh i thought you said i'm sorry brent i misunderstood what you said so i appreciate everybody's questions everybody's statements tonight um for those of you that have listened to all of us speak before you know that there are seven different opinions up here and that's an okay thing tonight we're we're about to vote on making schools a little bit more open a little bit more normal but it's not what we want i'll tell you you know my viewpoint is is that based on the plans we have before us tonight i'd vote on none of the above i want five days full five full days but that's that's not an option and that would not pass this board i'm telling you that's the reality of it and everybody has the reasons for voting the way they do and i don't criticize anybody for it so understand tonight that what we vote for is kind of best of the worst uh right i will ha i have a different opinion than was kind of thrown out there earlier when i thought the great question came up about what does next fall look like what is august 15th or 17th or whatever the day what does it look like and while yes it is correct we don't know what the limitations will be placed on us at that time by the state i think we can be proactive and i think we as a school district should say as of march 1st our plan is to open next school year with no remote option back to school back to 2019 and that will be the plan until we are told by a specific entity or person that we can't do that and if that happens and i i was talking with some some teachers the other night it was great to to get their feedback and their input and they kind of asked me the same question well where's the plan where's the plan for next year why why don't we have the i said we have the plan tonight we're approving a phase three plan we have a phase two plan we already went through phase one right so all we have to do is say hey we're opening next school year fully open and i hope it happens and if something can happen we've already approved what different plans look like and and i say that for a specific reason one we as a community need to know need to understand what each kind of plan and level looks like but what we can never answer is when right but i also say it for our wonderful folks in the administration that have worked so hard this year trying to develop these plans take the feedback and the criticism that the board has provided and try to curtail these plans that meet the needs that we're asking upon them and they are telling us is the best that we can do to provide education for the kids because that's what we're here to do so yeah when we're at 2.06 if i wrote that down correctly at statewide positivity rate i don't know why we're not back full time but we're not so illinois tony it is really my turn now yes it is sorry to interrupt you before brent i really thought that you were just agreeing with ali and then saying you okay um i have to say honestly if all of the people most of the people who are here tonight it showed up last february i would have been thrilled because as a classroom teacher who's taught for a long time and i'm not far from retirement i had a lot of questions about whether technology was the direction we should be going because i did believe in the social parts of teaching and in the personal parts of teaching and all of that so it's great to hear a lot of people who believe in that and i hope that when we do go to school in the fall and my hope is that we go to school in the fall and we still accommodate most of the people who go to our schools not just say this group your needs are not important or this group your needs are not important but we find a way to make it work for a variety of groups and not excessive because that's a logistical problem but [Music] i now know that my viewpoint of technology versus in person has become a lot more nuanced and that's not just because i teach remote it's because i see what's going on with the kids in all these different situations and you guys bring up very important points about mental health about how do you get kids to not feel zombie-like sitting in front of a screen all the time if we get beyond this in another year i hope we don't forget all the lessons we learned i hope we don't forget that because there was a time we were pushing up to an education where we were just doing that we were saying we'll just have the devices babysit the kids we'll have devices raise the kids we'll have the devices take over and that'll be that and that was not a good plan covet gave us a chance to look at that and say you know what it is too much it's too much time on screen so i feel very badly that some people see it as a completely negative thing i think there are a lot of lessons that have been learned i think next year if we offer a remote option it could be a very strong option and i am i am a person who's very much about logistics one of the logistical issues with this year is once we started people were placed in classes and you would have had to un do all these classrooms to go five days a week and that is really one of the logistical issues that has created what we're voting on tonight because you can't undo some of the things that you've already done for all this time unless you want to have a bunch more parents saying i'm not going to let my child lose their teacher i'm not going to have my child go to another classroom or another school or a different situation so these are not easy choices when you get down to the people and the last thing i want to say is i am thankful i am thankful for parents who disagree i am thankful for parents who are feisty because i think you should be feisty for your children and you should be outspoken and you should think of every way that you can to try to advocate for them but i'm also thankful for i want to start here secretaries at every school in this district the secretaries are the hearts and brains of this district and we all know that's true but we pretend like other people are in charge i want to thank the maintenance people and the custodians those people every day are doing things that make it better and healthier for the kids to go to school and to have a good day and do what they need to do i i just i can't tell you how much work they do the tech tech co people even though like i said tech has a cautious part of it for me um the tech people are are helping so much and there's so many questions from all the different people who are involved in using this technology but thank goodness those people help teaching assistants special ed all the teachers all the staff all the administrators are doing everything they can and as a board i just want to say this we sometimes as a board make it hard for everybody in the district don't we we make it hard for the parents because they don't get completely what they want we make it hard for administrators because they feel like they have to say what we want to hear we make it hard for teachers and other staff members who don't feel like they're hurt at all but none of those things is true all of them are partially true and it is it is a hard world right now i'm on the board for another month and a half and i hope that things can go well in the future and i hope that things go really well in the fall i know that i'll do what i can for kids always always but i just i think tonight you guys are good to come out you're good to advocate for your kids i agree with with ruth that i wish everyone were as civil as some of the people who write us but um in this particular situation with these plans i'm going to vote based on practicalities that's what i'm going to do so i think that that leads me tony thank you for that too a good point to mention which is that we are shortly going to be having a school board election there are four board members up here who have served us for a good long time that have chosen not to run for re-election mrs moyer has served us for four years mr baumann will be eight mr lightfoot will be eight and mrs morgan will be four and for the last four or eight years they have devoted the good of our district and all of the things that go along with it sometimes over the needs of their own kids because that's what we each volunteered to do and so i want to thank each board member for their service and although i understand completely why this would be a graceful time to move to the next chapter i think that the experience that you have given to us and to our community has been very valuable for the items tonight i'm gonna be very upfront about the fact that i do not at this time feel i can agree to move to a phase three and i'm gonna just briefly explain my rationale and it's not gonna be the rationale that everyone else would use but it's it's the rationale i'm using i'm speaking on behalf of the families that just barely by the grace of whatever situation they're in have been able to make the decision to put their kids back in in phase two when they couldn't in phase one the families that are in phase two now that would need to pull their kids out if the phase three went through because of family situations because of other things that's a big group of parents that we don't often talk about because it's real hard to quantify it's hard to quantify if i would go now but i wouldn't go then at what point do we do this i'm also choosing this on behalf of all of the individuals we have 2300 employees plus we're the largest employer in the county and we have employees that are so so dedicated and i am seeing that they are giving us 135 000 right now and sometimes one more change is just too many and it's not because they're not good at their job it's not because they don't want what's best for kids they do but every time we make a change to plans it doesn't just make a small change it makes an enormous one thinking of the unknowns so for those groups and i do agree we do have representation of pretty much every end of the different areas that i've seen community fall in not because i don't want kids in school but because i do believe that sometimes stability has to be allowed to be given a chance i cannot vote to move to a phase three for april 7th so i just wanted to make sure that i've shared that action items item 6.1 may i have a motion to make a motion to approve the elementary phase three plan a no changes to the current plan second second mrs croner i miss morgan aye mrs swanson no mrs doyle aye mr baumann mr lightfoot no mrs moyer aye motion passes five two again i misspoke i the no change plan i would be voting for my apologies item six point two elementary phase three plan b i make a motion to approve the elementary phase three plan b move wednesday's remote court instruction to mornings second mrs doyle no mrs swanson no mrs moyer no miss morgan no mr bauman mrs corner no mr lightfoot no motion fails 0-7 item 6.3 i make a motion to approve the elementary phase 3 plan c to move in-person instruction on wednesday mornings and live streaming for remote students second miss morgan aye mr lightfoot aye mrs corner no mr bauman mrs swanson hi mrs doyle no mrs moyer no motion fails three four item 6.4 i make a motion to approve the secondary phase 3 plan a combining a b groups for 4 days five hours in person instruction second mrs croner i'm mr lightfoot aye mrs swanson hi miss morgan aye mrs moyer hi mrs doyle no mr bauman aye motion passes six one item 6.5 i make a motion to approve the secondary phase three plan b keep a group b groups and increase to full two days of in-person instruction second mr lightfoot no miss morgan no mrs doyle no mrs swanson nope mr bauman no mrs moyer no mrs croner nope motion fails 0-7 final comments from the board you know we just had them and the orders changed a little bit so i think unless anyone has anything finally that they would like to add seeing nobody wave or anything i'm going to go ahead and say i'd like to request a motion to adjourn thank you i make a motion to adjourn second all in favor hi thank you
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i am a 308 alumni i've been through this district from k through 12. i want to talk really quick about burnout as that was mentioned as it touches on my personal life i withdrew my daughter from the district making a stressful choice to figure out how to manage running and working full-time in my business and homeschooling my daughter because e-learning did not work for us last year the hybrid schedule forces many without flexible work schedules to choose remote only purely because the schedule conflicts with their work hours we do not have the luxury to work from home many in-person working families are frustrated by this a school is meant to be open with interactions with teachers and friends it's part of the process i am burning my wick at both ends i am my daughter can i ask you to please pull up your mask if she pulls hers below her chin and y'all stop taking drinks it all makes sense as a board who is supposed to work for the parents and students first i sincerely hope you start to consider this part of the equation as it's been completely neglected up until this point taking this stance is controversial i understand i've taken quite the beating from those who choose fear over reason and my business has even been threatened many of our teachers can't speak up due to backlash i'm not asking you to do something easy i'm very aware of that for the kids who need full in person you're leaving them out hybrid's not a solution and you know the solution so i suggest whoever has a driving hand in this mess because the can keeps getting kicked back and forth start reaching out to districts who are doing it and doing it better no single parent should have to choose between physically going to work or going on unemployment because they have to stay home with their child yes that's currently going on i'm going to ask you again to re turn your mask over your nose and mouth please this is currently going on for parents who have to choose remote only due to their work schedules who have to choose something that doesn't necessarily work for their child that's also currently going on my daughter will not be returning until she can benefit from school which is five full days your enrollment is already down and if a packed plant plane full of people can eat on that plane our kids can return to school and eat lunch we can do better you are out of time and we're done hearing excuses why we can't go back thank you [Applause] again a reminder that in the school buildings we require masks to be over nose and mouth this is part of the illinois state board of education requirements for school buildings you guys are talking while she was up there you're whispering to each other i'm going to ask to call to order please the next speaker karen shoreback we are writing you today is invested sd 308 parents and members of the medical community a pediatrician and an emergency medicine physician we hope you will give careful consideration to our argument for full in-person learning especially given our expertise in understanding infection prevention evaluating science of the pandemic and our professional experiences included at the end of this email is also a link to an excellent article that more eloquently restates our argument after reviewing your priorities for learning options in the pros cons of expanding in-person instruction in april we were sadly disappointed to see that there were no points regarding the quality of education surely we can all agree that the best way to provide an excellent learning environment and quality education is to have all the students in person minimizing health risks for students and staff is already occurring as evidenced by decreasing rates of local infection and increased vaccine distribution targeting the most vulnerable population and including the district teachers and staff most importantly the rates of transmission in schools have been found to be exceedingly low see the cdc link at the end of the letter these studies were actually pre-vaccine and when less people had acquired partial immunity from natural infection the recommendation made to keep the elementary schedule the same for the rest of the year is unacceptable they are the youngest and least vulnerable with respect to covet infection while also being the least likely to transmit infection and are likely the most negatively impacted by remote learning as evidenced by numerous surveys of parents and teachers the recommendation to change the junior high high school to a seven hour day is also poor increasing their remote instruction by two hours per day on the days they stay home is not helpful for them even worse for the kids that are full remote as their screen time increases from 20 to 30 hours a week older children should be in person five days as well and if lunch is too much of a challenge at least they could have five hour days five out days a week school sports have recently restarted so if kids can play a basketball game and get very close to others during a game then children even 30 or more can sit in a classroom three to six feet apart with masks and have a full normal school day we can no longer use health and safety concerns as an excuse to refrain from full in-person learning alternatively there are numerous health and safety concerns that children are at risk for if they are further forced into unnecessary time at home these include but are not limited to obesity technology addiction poor socialization depression anxiety substance use abuse and in the worst cases child abuse and suicide we need to stop acting like the idea of a five-day school week is some radical notion when indeed it is supposed to be the norm it also seems unreasonable to decide on march 1 what the new schedule should be on april 7 given the ever-changing covid situation wouldn't it be best to plan for full in-person instruction given the likelihood that infections should be continuing to decrease and more vulnerable adults will be vaccinated then if that does not happen as expected we can remain on the current hybrid schedule here are some examples of mitigations that can and should be continued one continue to allow parents to choose all remote option if they feel that is best for their family two continuation of mask wearing three desks six feet apart when possible as noted by the cdc this is not a requirement thank you tim casper hi i'm jim casper uh thank you very much for hosting this uh you know i think it's important that you guys hear sort of the the points of view um and take into account uh the the needs and wishes of the parents i have a freshman student at oswego east he's a 504 on a 504 plan and really he is benefiting greatly from having returned to school and will benefit even more by going back full time the cdc has issued guidelines in and among the things the cdc said was that k-12 schools should be among the last settings to close as a transmission mitigation strategy and should be among the first settings to reopen um you know why why would they say that you know they're saying that because they're they're following the science and they realize that you know there's there's obviously risks with covid and and we all know what those are but there's risks to not going back to school and i i thought the the previous email perfectly stated that those those risks and those are real risks and they have a lifetime impact on kids potentially i want to read a quote from the washington post it was an editorial from from about a week ago said the disruption of virtual school is increasing the risk this generation of children will suffer from and die of heart disease and diabetes it could reduce their lifelong earning potential and their mental health forming healthy social and physical habits and promoting a love of learning are vital processes for school-aged children that are integrally associated with lower chronic disease burden higher economic earnings and increased overall life satisfaction and every day out of school is taking these things away from the children in our society you know nobody wants to hurt a child at all and and you know some of us with a longer-term view you know are seeing that the possible impacts of not being in school or creating uh just chronic problems that are going to last a lifetime that's why i'm advocating for five days a week school and you know i appreciate your consideration of that thank you [Applause] dan pop what's keeping our children out of school full-time five days a week the science money or influence from oea on sd 308.
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questions yes anyone have questions about all right you're down for the record as the shortest one so far this has dominated our conversation needs to go in that direction right yeah hopefully that is the case um next on our agenda is the opportunity for individuals to comment on issues before us or comments that they'd like to make no one has signed in so now we get to celebrate more so we've been celebrating the wonders of our teaching staff here in bcsc and now we have the opportunity to celebrate about some of our students so i will turn to dr roberts to speak about our maverick challenge winner we do have a few students tonight that we're going to recognize and we'll start with trey trey is is on the zoom call so i'm going to exit from the screen here in just a second so i can pull trey up but trey uh formed a business called the aspire group uh he is a student at columbus north high school and he won the local competition of the maverick challenge this is typically an event that the chamber of commerce celebrates and gets to bring the student on stage and celebrate with them again we've had some different situations this year so having to adjust everything as we go but trey uh in in winning the local competition then was able to participate in a regional final and finished second winning a thousand dollars and there were i believe about 300 students participating in this year's competition so quite a few people the maverick challenge is a business entrepreneurship uh competition where students take a business idea from concept to a developed plan and then pitch those plans to judges his business trey's business the aspire group is a full service real estate media company that provides professional photography video drone and 3d tours for real estate agents so congratulations trey i think today we have you on our screen i'm going to stop sharing maybe actually i'll just pull you up here hey trey can you unmute yes can you hear me okay we can yes congratulations trey yeah thank you yeah i want to thank the maverick challenge for providing me this opportunity i think it's pretty i think it's pretty rare in schools that you get to experience kind of going on on an entrepreneurial journey so this has been really good for me and being able to start my business and get a lot of connections in my community very good tell us a little about this business trey i give a quick highlight but tell us a little bit more yeah so i started this business right right about when school started i started taking the principles of business management class at columbus north high school so i decided to start this business because i have a passion for for photography and video and drones so i was thinking how can i use those skills to um you know help some people in columbus so i thought of real estate agents so um i was looking on uh zillow one day and i just thought i was looking through the pictures and i was like well hey i could probably do better than that so uh so i actually i then began reaching out to some to a couple real estate agents and i was able to do um their photos video drone a lot of that kind of stuff and i was able to get a lot of referral business and we're just keeping on growing from here tremendous trade with with that particular business seems like a great idea to me a lot of competition for you in the community uh actually no i'm the only full service real estate media company in the columbus indiana area okay outstanding doctor board members other questions other questions for trey all right congratulations good for you [Applause] trey again congratulations and thank you for your patience i know you were on at the very beginning and and hopefully you had the opportunity to see a great presentation of of a staff member in your building with mrs scott so congratulations again thanks all right all right we'll move to the next item uh we do have two wrestling state finalists from columbus east uh columbus seas continues to bring home medals and wrestling as two more were gained at this year's ihs double-a state finals sam mortal in cave law finished second third respectively in their weight classes mr hughes here this evening there he is mr hughes i'll bring you up to the podium thank you dr roberts uh board members and cabinet members uh again i'm going to try not to sta steal any of coach cooper's thunder but uh it's hard not to want to come up here and brag about these two young men and and what fine citizens they are and if if you were to ask me tonight you wanted me to bring two athletes to this board meeting that would represent the type of young men that we want to develop these would be two guys we'd bring regardless of them their medals and uh they come from great homes great families again the sacrifices that their parents make they travel literally all over the united states florida michigan pennsylvania to get to these tournaments to put themselves at the top and then coach cooper again just does an outstanding job keeping east at the top of wrestling in the states so at this time i'm going to introduce coach chris cooper so he can talk about our two young men thank you yeah like uh mr hughes said it's pretty easy to talk about these two guys uh when i think about you know the kind of uh product we want to develop at columbus east i mean these these guys rise to the top they do everything we ask uh like like mr hughes said you know we travel all over the place to prepare for uh the state tournament and these guys just did a fantastic job the term battle tested doesn't even do these guys justice i was looking at the bracket before i came and you know realized that you know each of these guys had won uh beat eight to ten guys that were in their their weight class at state so you know that was just going into the tournament um cade law's a junior second time to state this year placed third he um had four losses on the season was 36 and four and uh he lost once to the state champ twice to the runner-up and then he was two and one against the fourth place finisher so just had a fantastic season uh no doubt in my mind gonna compete for a state title next year um and uh sam morrill 38-2 on the year uh you know made it to the state championship match wrestled under the lights which is is unbelievable for any high school athlete he started wrestling in seventh grade which i mean making it to the state finals is almost absolutely unheard of when many of these kids have wrestled their entire lives sam had had one loss to the state champ and then uh avenged uh one of his previous losses in the season in the semifinals so uh just really proud of these two guys i mean they you know beyond wrestling they stand for like everything that we want our program to stand for just outstanding young men they help with our youth club that they do all the extra little things that uh you know make it easy for me as a coach sam also is a senior this year and uh going to attend university of indianapolis next year and and wrestle for them so it's uh going to be exciting to see his career continue uh there's no doubt in my mind both of these guys their their best wrestling is still ahead of them so thank you thank you mr cooper we're going to have your kids stay up here yeah we're going to get a picture chris of you and then the wrestlers in front of the bcsc piece here if we could chris congratulations to you certainly outstanding program you have going on columbus season kids congratulations you got one shot earlier nick there you go sorry congratulations again [Laughter] all right so we're just going to keep all the good news going here next on our agenda are our board commendations so i'll turn to my colleagues for accommodations they'd like to share i've got a few here dr shad that'd be great thank you mr graham i will start um just by continuing on with the uh good news about students the first one i have here is from mindy summers at central recognized several students for their writing accomplishments and i'll go through some of them by name ritvik narula won the indiana women's education foundation super power essay contest um quite a mouthful um let's see yashiki mehta and molly burbrink were top three in a playwright contest sponsored by irt had the opportunity to work with some professional playwrights and actors two students from central also won the joseph hart chapter of the dar boston massacre essay contest seventh grader ahim rahman and eighth grader sanvi anakindi and their essays will actually represent our district at the state level and then ms summers also wanted to pass on congratulations to 11 other students team adventure students whose work will be published in a oh letters about literature anthology for the indiana state library along with 800 other other entries from the state so congratulations to those young writers at central [Music] also just congratulate coach chitty the varsity basket boys basketball coach at east receiving a an exemplary behavior report from the ihsaa uh for east's february 12th game at jennings county officials have the opportunity to send in letters of exemplary behavior from players coaches across the state that they see and coach chitty received this from official just justin jackson for essentially official jackson was incredibly um appreciative of coach kitty's respectfulness throughout the entirety of the game and especially his helpfulness when an east player started getting upset and when i when i told coach chitty or asked his permission for to say a few nice words tonight he was quick to uh dismiss it and say it was actually the official that did a great job the entire night and was also very complementary of his player for for being very coachable and like he said heaven forbid get a little upset in the heat of the moment so yeah and then lastly um just to thank you to the leadership of the columbus educators association in collaboration with the bartholomew county retired teachers association who organized a third house session with representative lauer and senator walker this past saturday morning that focused solely on education issues to give people in education a chance to participate in the third house session so and um it was reported that 119 people actually viewed the virtual meeting and it will soon be made available for others to watch as well so congratulations and thank you to all those people absolutely thank you for that are there others i have two reports dr shed oh please no come sorry scratch that i'm ahead of myself all right meetings are you kidding me all right i just wanted to briefly mention and give a shout out to two of our candidates who are i'm sorry that's iu world to two of our students um who uh won a brown music competition awards so to min young kim playing the violin from a senior at columbus north high school won the award for instrumental excellence and to reagan likens a senior at columbus east high school for winning the anna newell brown awards for vocal excellence so to all of the talents of our learners i wanted to share those so now we have school board reports and i'm going to guess dr bills has something she'd like to do why would you think that no one i have two reports dr shed all right um the first one is from the trust fund so it was my first meeting and it was um quite interesting i learned a lot i'm just going to report that we're starting the strategic planning process and the this year we're focused on improving communication and being vigilant about mitigating rising health care costs because that's the never-ending story right there is rising health care costs um the second report i want to give is on the diversity council and i just want to give a shout out to kimberly easton she's tireless in her work for the diversity council it amazes me how much she puts together for all these different meetings we have the main diversity council and then we have underrepresented teacher committee and then we have diverse curriculum committee then we have a social justice committee it's it's just amazing to me the work she puts into all those committees and um and really um this time we had some some great speakers um kind of this theme on windows mirrors and sliding glass doors and blake manual did a really nice presentation on some literature and things they did at central middle school in the library that was really interesting and then kim went over some highlights oh yeah the other committee is family academic achievement network so there are several committees that she oversees and and some great teams to work with um charles edwards is awesome he's our kind of chair of the diversity council main group and then he talked about some uh some video series and some events going on in columbus on diversity and things like that so it's um they just really do a lot of work in trying to recognize implicit biases to try to work on curriculum in the school to to recognize diversity and those kind of things so i i just enjoy being on both those committees and they all do a lot of really good work on both trust fund and the trust fund is i'm going to get used to that i'm sure yeah i'll figure that out eventually so thank you for all the work you do on that too and bill thanks for your work on diversity council too i know he's back there somewhere that's what i thought can't hide thank you that's it all right thank you well the health trust has driven us many years so i'm glad you're enjoying that work um and that it it will get better um all right are there other reports i just have i'm sorry go ahead no you i've got two quick ones good um this is uh mrs bruin would like for me to report that the school foundation's trivia night on saturday february 13th was a success 23 23 teams were involved the event made over 6 dollars and she wanted me to pass on her gratefulness to the community because enough donations came in so that each school could have a table if they so chose and that she also wanted me to share about the positive impact that the partnership with donors choose has had and is having in classrooms today 72 grants have been matched by the school foundation since last september with a total of 6 600 kids being impacted by those by those grants and matching dollars and then lastly mrs wilden and i continue to participate in the new board member academy put on by isba and i i know i can't speak for her but i am anxious for tomorrow night's topic which is managing disagreement and effective communication [Laughter] you'll never have to worry about that i'll kick all over that um wonderful thank you so much for sharing that i just wanted to share that the business advisory committee met on february 19th we had a great presentation on the echo network and the c4 community partnerships and just as a summary of what i learned we have three major echo networks our manufacturing and education partnership our it network and our healthcare network and the manufacturing and education partnership does a great job and and we got to see samples of this of classroom presentations and on-site tours really helping to demystify and to change myths about manufacturing our healthcare network as you can imagine does a lot on patient care but tries very hard to emphasize that there is more to health care than just working with patients and then we had a more in-depth presentation on our it network and our partnership at csa new tech which is our partnership with ivy tech and the opportunity for those learners to eventually complete eight different ivy tech classes through the coursework being offered collaboratively at csa new tech and ivy tech and if i have this right the first cohort is sophomores in this program so we got to meet several of them and have them talk about their class but that we will see eventually how they do in the remaining three two years of the program and i appreciated the reminder that our freshmen have the opportunity for these presentations in their of course we talk in alphabet soup pcc classes they're preparing for college and career classes which is a one semester freshman class for those of us who've been around the block that is the former keystone at east and cars class at north so then i went oh i know what that is okay um so it was a wonderful presentation and it is very it's just very enriching and exciting to see how many of our community partners how many of the industries and businesses are such an integral part of the education programs that we offer in bcsc so it's a very special place to be all right cabinet reports is next on the agenda and we do have a cabinet report dr pleek good evening again i just want to say how inspiring it is tonight when we get to recognize an amazing educator such as susan scott and an amazing student and student athlete so great meeting to attend and i'll get to telling great part of you hearing about cares 2.0 um susan did mention her speech about how all the different acronyms that we do use in education and so when i put up the cares i thought i'd better put what it means and it's the coronavirus aid relief and economic security act that was passed by congress first in march and again in december and in part of that fund as part of a stimulus package a relief fund across everything to help many businesses schools people across the country there is an esser fund built in and the sr is elementary and secondary school emergency relief so we did get our first allocation in april and then in december they now have approved cares 2.0 a lot of time in our world we keep saying cares money cares dollars but the doe will be calling it s or two with the roman numeral two just so you know so either cares 2.0 or esser the roman numeral too so as we go on i wanted to give you an update this evening to share with you an update of how it's going to look in the next couple of months because i will be coming back to you again with a more detailed budget the basic information in february we received a planning allocation for our part of the cares funds and the amount of 5.9 million dollars for vcsc and in that time we expect in the next week or two to get our final allocation and it'll probably be slightly different but not not greatly and they base all of that off a proportional share of title one funding and they are telling us that the grant application is going to be released in march it is march 1.
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it's time to expect more more for our children and more for our district the district has had a year in which planning could have occurred instead they have decided to wait until the 11th hour to establish a plan let's face it most children staying remote currently will likely be remote in the fall if it is an option why can't the district select one teacher per grade level to teach the kids that are remote and have the other teachers teach in the person kids all day they can have lunch recess and specials to give teachers their much needed plan time so wednesday's plan will not be necessary kids can eat in their classrooms and district will not have to worry about 50 kids in one space problems it's time to think outside the box and be flexible and creative it is unacceptable to have as was stated in the last meeting xbox wednesdays half days are for three to five year olds not school age children all we are asking as your constituents is to stand up for what our children need thanks dan beth sarah h so my name is sarah honator but i am here tonight to read a statement authored by jaclyn fitzpatrick and although these are not my original words i agree with her 100 percent regarding while full-time in-person learning is essential remote learning hybrid and part-time schooling is inadequate and was only to be a temporary solution during covet 19.
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and i'm sure it will be released in march and it will be due in april and the time frame to spend the money is march 13th 2020 so you can go back and have to encumber all phones by september 30th of 2023 so we're really excited about this new funding opportunity because the original cares you have until september 30th 22 this gives us until september 30 of 23 so it gives us two years of full implementation to try to make the greatest impact for our students and staff at bcsc they have told us they are allowable uses a lot of words and a big list of like 15 items and that's shortening down but i the four priority areas just so you know addressing learning loss and you're probably hearing a lot of about that right now currently in the news across all news media channels newspapers about the addressing learning loss and this really is putting a focus on including special populations of students the second priority is supporting educators the third is sustainable innovation and the fourth is updating technology and other infrastructure and the one thing that this one does not include that the first one did and it's key to always know this because it tells you about the amount of work that we have but this amount of funding does not include equitable share requirement which does not which means we don't have to divvy this money up with our non-public schools in our area in our service area they will be getting their own emergency assistance for non-public schools and they have already received their planning allocation as well so in our process so far i want to make sure it was clear it doesn't mean we just heard this in february and i'm just coming to you tonight and not a lot of work has been done there have been a lot of meetings a lot of conversations a lot of emails being shared but early on in the process mr phillips had a conversation with amy london cea president saying that conversations were beginning and we would get input from cea and cea leadership surveyed their members to come up with a priority list of things they would like us to consider when using the cares dollars and within mr phillips and i did meet with amy london virtually and had the discussions she shared the list and we had a great conversation about some things we were considering as well that aligned very well with what they were considering as well so at that point then i think the following week bcsc leadership cea was part of their discussions of what was going on and as well as um first met with mr phillips and then the next thing when we were looking at operations we had to bring in dr bozeman because a lot of our money first round went to operations technology and so we brought him in and then i met with the other cabinet members and met with some of them more than once met with other program directors that were part of the allowable uses to get their input and i have had discussions with our ido specialist and the director at the state level which is new currently and also you know when you're doing your best planning you need to reach out to your peers across the state and see what other things they are considering to spend their money on which led us to all of that in the meantime this isn't separate this is in combination with the process the one thing that we kept bringing it back to is what will have the greatest impact on students for the next 360 days of instruction over the next two years because in doing that you can spend money a lot of ways and maybe not always see the greatest impact and when we're doing this we keep bringing it back to what has the greatest impact on the most students and so in that our answer always came back to teacher-serving students we do know the greatest impact on students and their achievement is the quality of a teacher we also know the greatest impact on closing the achievement gap for any students whether it's for learning loss or not is high quality teachers year after year so with this funding we are going to strive to hire as many teachers as possible currently we're looking at 34 teachers for the next two years in some high need areas and content areas k to 12 actually 1-12 that we are going to help meet the needs now someone may come and say now wait a minute that is only two years what happens after two years but in going back to this we had to take our forefront in our next two years with the students that are coming in our buildings each and every day what is it we can do to make the greatest impact on them and it is providing more teachers more high quality and then that end it allows some teachers to provide more focus on fewer students so we feel like yes this is only two years but we hope a lot of this will be addressed through natural attrition through retirements resignations because all these positions we're going for currently are some of our highest need areas anyway and we continue to hire for them year after year so it's a great way to bring in new teachers provide training provide support and help our students other priorities for the funding is preparing for a virtual pathway as you all know and i think there will be some discussion we have many students that are completely virtual and some that are virtual and in person we know that this is a way of the future that things are going to continue to look like this so we need to be prepared to be on the forefront because as vcsc we are district of choice we also look at professional development ideas to help our teachers expand skills in whether technology virtual or in classroom content areas mr williams keeps reminding me of all the technology needs that we have met with him a few times and then operation needs as well miss dr bozeman but to let you know we do expect additional funding to come in this funding is being discussed right now currently with the body administration and congress so we do expect another round to come there's some discussions for some things at state we'll see if that comes to fruition or not but right now we are planning on cares 2.0 so what i wanted to inform you is tomorrow and the rest this week depending this is a lot of tasks our hr ladies do in short amount of time we will be posting 34 teaching positions for the next school year we will be seeking approval of the sr2 detailed board report that i typically give you with all of my grants at the april 5th meeting i'll submit the final allocation for the final application to the indiana department of education and we really hope we're doing a lot of virtual affairs i know ms heine and her team are planning on virtual affairs but bcsc is also going to be hosting their own virtual affair on april 7th and so let's get the word out let's get some amazing candidates for our students any questions i think she's surprised i stopped talking go ahead okay so 34 teacher positions does that um include any assistance or aids or any or is that just teachers 34 teachers 34 teachers is what we were looking at obviously just so you know with any grant funds we always have the opportunities to amend if we ever deem necessary if there comes a difficulty of hiring 34 teachers we can look at other strategies as well but right now we're going to go with 34 teachers all right thank you i have a question what is your typical attrition in one year in your teaching staff good question dr roberts it depends certified staff we would retain 90 of our staff 10 would be 10 is approximately how many teachers 70 and then and then of the um where would you deploy the 34 teachers can you just say the top two or three areas where you think we are looking at 10 teachers primary grades at the elementary schools we are looking at 14 at the secondary schools in the subject areas testing areas of english and math and we are looking at i believe eight special education positions and two el positions and i believe that's 34.
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however school district 308 has put full-time in-person learning off long enough remote or hybrid learning plans do not help to meet or exceed the goals and objectives on strategic plans set by educational organizations the stakeholders are not receiving any benefit by the students in the community attending school at only a fraction of the time recommended by the state of illinois it is unethical for school districts to take credit for students attending what is supposed to be full school days and students receiving less than half the instructional hours and content necessary for positive student achievement this is seen by the increased number of students in the district receiving d's and f's and the greater number of elementary students not obtaining mastery like they were when they could actually attend school full-time at this point remote learning provides absolutely no intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for kids to learn and develop in a positive way if anything it moves many students further from the end goal of creating individuals who are prepared to attend college or to succeed in careers that positively contribute to their communities after high school teachers are working harder than ever they are expected to do more than they were hired to do teachers are expected to do more with less time and with lower expectations for all students this does not align with the goals on the strategic plan for the school district and isbe the first goal of isbe states every child will make significant academic gains each year what are student grades and the data collected in mastery connect telling about student performance how is this data being used to help the students perform better in the future what is school district 308 going to do to help the students who are underperforming but do not qualify for title 1 funding many families who do not financially qualify for funding cannot afford summer school or private education removing essential curriculum or making coursework easier to allow student grades to remain high will not prepare them for college and beyond thank you one more cara bates i don't have that one no i have karen oh person okay okay good evening my name is cara bales i'm here to advocate for our kids for their return to school in person full-time there are too many reasons to list of the negative impact that remote learning is having on our kids including lack of quality education lack of socialization lack of accountability rates of depression and anxiety going up rates of suicide going up among youth and the list goes on and on my oldest son for example who's in seventh grade he was an honor roll student last year last school year and since remote learning he's getting d's and f's with his lowest grade being a 23 percent in one of his classes our two elementary school age children we had to pull out completely due to how poorly remote learning was going for them but what i would like to focus my short time on is the safety issues that are being brought up as reasons for not allowing our kids back in person full time i'm a family nurse practitioner and i was working before coven 19 and have been working throughout the covet 19 pandemic and i'm here to tell you that covet is not affecting children the way influenza has affected children in the way of complications or even deaths we did not shut down schools during the h1n1 influenza pandemic and all of the science and evidence supports that kovid affects children less in terms of severity and deaths than influenza knowing this parents should be the ones making the decision whether or not to send their children to school full time not district 308 making this decision for us if the board's concerns are only about the children the science and evidence is there children are not as affected by covid and there is no need to keep them out of school for this reason if the concern is for the teachers then just as i have worked in person every day of this pandemic with my n95 mask and practicing social distancing the teacher should be able to safely do the same my recommendation would be that the teacher stands at the front of the class six feet or more away from his or her students with their mask on that should be safe enough just as just as it has been safe enough for me working with colbit positive patients every day since this pandemic started i hope the board will make the right decision and bring our kids back to school in person full-time because the science does not back up their decision to keep them out of school okay thank you really i apologize i already read that one thank you so much and there's no more public comment nope okay moving on to number item number 3.1 on the agenda procedures and guidelines for the public forum q and a session the q a session will follow the following procedures and protocol individuals wishing to make a comment or ask a question will be required to fill out a comment card with their name email and question so that the board and or administration can follow up if a question cannot be answered at the meeting to make the process as efficient as possible we have asked speakers to submit their comment card to the board secretary prior to the meeting the board secretary will call each person in the order the card was received to ensure that all topics get addressed the maximum extent possible after three questions on the same topic have been heard the board president will state that and will direct the board secretary to call the next person that has a question on a different topic after questions on all topics have been addressed if time allows more questions will be taken in the order they were received we will alternate questions submitted in person and by email at 9 pm the board president will announce the time and that the final question of the meeting has been taken or will take place when the community members approach the microphone one the person shall then state their name and the topic of their question or comment for the public record two questions and comments will be limited to two minutes or less and may be directed at the board in general or to a specific member of the board three if no board member is directly asked to address the question or comment then any board member may answer or comment an additional board members who wish who may wish to answer or comment can do so as well the board member answers will be limited to two minutes if no board member elects to respond to a question then the president will make a statement on behalf of the board questions can be on any topic except for personnel for example no questions or comments can be made about any teacher employee administrator or by referencing the district employee's title if members of the public have any of these types of questions they should be directed to the building principal or district administration thank you cindy rook hello my name is cindy rook and i have two children in district 308 i have a freshman in high school and i have a sixth grader over at trauber junior high i do have a question but before i get to that i do want to start with just providing a little bit of information if that's okay there's over 300 million people in this country in the united states of america less than 250 children have died from coronavirus i don't know if anyone knew that but those are the facts so we've mitigated this risk as a district you guys have mitigated this risk of death to children very well by providing remote so parents who are fearful of their children dying in school can send their kids to remote and i'm sure that they appreciate that i also want to add suicide is the third leading cause of death for school-aged children our country so you can compare the numbers 250 out of 300 million which yes it's very sad but it's also minuscule to the number of children that are hurting in this district and around this country from not being in school so my question is what have you done this is my first question do i get three you have two minutes okay and one question so okay well then i'm not going to ask you what you've done to mitigate this risk of harm to our children i'm not going to ask that question but i am going to ask this question why is there currently no plan in place or in the foreseeable future to return our children to five days a week back in school i'll wait that's my question let me also turn your attention to the front row of the second section where we have our senior leadership available to help answer questions as you know we were presented with a next phase plan on this i think that i can speak for each board member when we've asked a lot of the same questions in fact i don't think i've heard one yet that we haven't also at least one or two of us asked at some point in time throughout this last year um at this time dr sparlin i'll give it to you to decide um which which person would best i was just gonna say i can answer that question we've been obviously working on the phases phase one phase two and now for this evening what we're talking about phase three um tonight we have begun the conversations on re you know what does it look like five days full days uh we're talking about next year but to be perfectly honest right now we're focused on right here and now and the next year plan is going to be uh faith and i were just talking about this today the process who will be involved when it'll be presented to the board of education and our goal is to get back five days in person learning next year am i allowed to ask a follow-up question you got 10 seconds go for it okay is the plan for kids to return to school is the is there a process for kids to be back in school on the first day of the next school year five days in person [Music] i mean i think that's i i don't i guess i don't know how to answer that because i think they haven't they're working on that now as you just heard i don't know if they have more to add that is that is the goal okay thank you mark cason is by email okay i'm sorry no it's all good dr sparlin was apologizing for jumping in instead of letting me answer that was very polite the following four the remaining four questions are via email mark cason i would like to submit a question to the board what is the school plan for next year i would push to get kids back to in-person classroom learning five days a week all day with no remote option by the fall almost all if not faculty staff should be fully vaccinated in addition schools that are open now have not shown to be major contributors to community spread i think that going into the summer the plan for fall should be for in-person learning this could be adjusted to a similar program that is going on now if major changes to infection rates warrant i think the answer to that we just answered or the question what is the school plan for next year we did just answer with regards to the one comment regarding no remote option that is a requirement currently followed by every district in illinois per the isb guidelines so we don't have the say in that at this point that's not under local control so as far as we know at this moment we do retain the responsibility to hold a remote option anyone else want to jump in on that that's the answer should i just go forward okay this is melanie mcallister high school board of education can the school district somehow switch to the remote learners to a homeschooling program on the computer it certainly would be cheaper than hiring remote teachers and in-person teachers thanks melanie mcallister um i don't dr sparlin i'm gonna toss this one to you as to how to answer if it would be cheaper you know that's a question that we've asked and answered that's something that we've uh done that we talked about earlier in the year to offer the online version of ingenuity was the option and we decided that uh we as a collective you know organization here decided that that was not the way that we wanted to go this year um like i said next year our goal will be to begin the year what will will be to be five days in person uh you know full days but um that's a that's a question and that's a piece of the conversation for next year what does the remote piece look like because as mrs doyle just said that currently we are mandated to provide a high quality uh remote program and so what does that look like for next year again that is part of the conversation for upcoming does isbe mandate what type of online instruction we do provide or is that an available option for us to consider next year if isbe still has that ruling in place that would be at this current time that would be an option yes can we also pull the data from this year on the difference between online learning and the in person especially that's an interesting question because we were talking about state requirements for testing faith is that still required to be only in person yes the state assessments must be given in person this year do you have some mechanism by which we can utilize some sort of assessment to compare the two different types of learning we wouldn't be able to use state assessments we can look at grades on what that would look like and mastery connect at the elementary version we would need some more time because students have just started coming in in person and what that looks like but definitely when talking with teachers um that is part of the narrative too of how students do remotely versus in person and then when we're talking to teachers i'd also like to know how it really went where teachers are teaching both in person and online versus how do we think it would go if we had teachers just doing virtual and teachers just in the classroom okay okay dominique castillo i believe you're here did you want to ask your question in person this is from dominic castillo my question i won't have a lot of time to ask is we are being told we can't have both remote and in-person teachers yet i have heard we are laying off 27.
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it is thank you and i do want to thank everybody that has taken time to meet with me considerably so that's great i appreciate it dr dr roberts i've seen some promotional materials that we're going to be using to try and diversify our teaching workforce and is that effort coordinated with the extra 34 positions through the or two yes any hiring of staff will it will be tied into that effort it's it's across the board so replacing the 70 that we might lose through nutrition as long as as well as these 34 right yes so really when you think about certified staff there's like three buckets of hiring here to think about one is we have attrition annually right so if it's 70 again we have to fill those 70 positions just to maintain the number of teachers we have and then next we have maybe there are additions we were looking at putting in place anyway we needed extra staff for some other program besides the concentrated ones maybe the doctor please focus on and then this third bucket is the new ones based upon this funding to be provided from the federal government of additional 34 additional teachers to have specifically directed toward our most at-risk situations or most from subject area math language arts and so forth so those three areas across the board if we hire that many people whatever that number ends up being we will be dedicating the same same service do we have in regards to diversity do we have every year goals that we'd like to you know increase this kind of diversity by this number or look for folks in this category in that number yes so so hard to look at in terms of a short-term piece mr center our goal is to each year move closer to representing our student body so so our student population is 68 white and the other 32 percent is a is a mixture of races and ethnicities and we were striving to get to where that's the case we're nowhere near right at this point so um we were at 90 teresa's 94 plus certified staff would be would be white so you know comparing that to the 68 of our students so that that's our target and then uh third question the referendum allowed us to increase teacher salaries are we able to promote that is that a plus as we're recruiting across the state that our citizens have decided to do this very very much so mr stenner so you know i think the tagline for that referendum was was recruiting and retaining high quality teachers and and we're hoping that that will be the case and we'll certainly be a part of the recruitment efforts too and the the new levels of compensation that we set for teachers applied to these i'm sorry apply to these 34 folks as well they do there's there's nothing special about a different rate because of a different funding source or thank you they'll come in on our teacher contract other questions can you elaborate a little bit on the thinking about elementary 10 and we have i forget how many buildings yeah so and looking at this and having the conversations with dr hack one thing that we had to make sure is wherever we are adding buildings so there are adding teachers that we actually have space in those buildings for those teachers is one criteria and dr hack would clearly advocate that primary grades is the priority especially when we're looking at the reading foundational skills of our students and the needs and we're looking at how the pandemic has impacted them during this time and when looking at that the first consideration that we asked her to consider were the title one schools first and looking at those and seeing what we can do to try to our best no guarantee and not in every situation but try to get our average close to 20 in the primary grades across the corporation for next year and does the priority for space and being title one align having available space does that make sense yes okay yeah i mean the first thing was title one was our first thing and then when she presented me with the ten i said now do these buildings actually have space to make sure that they can um suit that and so she had to make sure in that looking at that as well and we'd still have some unknowns with all of this with our virtual students and how many are going to go virtual and and how many are not and defining our staffing for next year i know you don't have a crystal ball and i don't i don't mean to assume that but i'm sensitive to i know we will continue to have these teachers because of our national our natural attrition but i'm i'm sensitive to that we can the positions for the lower class size right so so so do we so do we have a sense of that because we're all going to get used to it and all of a sudden to say oh sorry you can't have 20 you're going to have 25 like me so i so i'm curious about that thought process dr pleek do you have a response well my immediate response after then i'll defer to dr roberts is again we're looking at something with the most impact we can have for students over two years and i know we do get used to those things but it doesn't mean it's not worth doing it anyway yeah i think that that's where we are dr shedd is that we we would anticipate after two years if we've had these lower classroom numbers of can continue to want to to maintain that uh we're committing to two and we'll see what we can accomplish after okay just want to remember you're going to ask us to approve these positions after two years so just okay any other you've seen that trend before yes i've been here um okay any other questions people have yes dr shed you've made me think of another question i mean with the next round of funding will there be opportunities to extend these extra positions beyond two years i mean are there rumors out there about what the funding will support in the next round i have not heard an amount i don't know if mr phillips has and i haven't heard um when the end date would be as far as the year would be so we were really excited when it came out 2023 for this round of funding because i was fearful it was going to be 2022.
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so if this is true how are we going to do this next year if that is the case when we're being told we currently don't have enough teachers it is my understanding this is due to low enrollment if the new board continues on this path the enrollment numbers are going to drop even lower also teacher claim union has no role in this yet i've also been told behind closed doors it is what is the actual hold up here and what's the plan as far as addressing my first question all right so the first question was we are being told we can't have both remote and in-person teachers yes i have heard we are laying off 27. so as part of the budget mitigation discussion that we had had there was we do adjust each year due to enrollment the number of teachers we need at each grade level so with the enrollment of students this year and then there is an allowance i think being made for the fact that there has been a slight uh decrease with home school that we expect to see back much like your daughter i think that what you're hearing is kind of piecemeal it's not really that they're being laid off is that those aren't needed for expected enrollment we do each year as the need arises due to enrollment registration recall teachers from that list as they're needed and those 27 that's through a contracted agreement with our teachers union on how that process works and they have a committee dedicated to making sure that that is a fair and impartial process does that answer your question not really what you're saying if you could come to the mic just so that people from home can hear as well right now they're saying we don't have enough teachers so saying that you're hearing it all over do you have teachers saying this on facebook so my question is you know if the plan is to go full-time next year which i support i can do the mask thank you i'm sorry talking so it's a little bit difficult when we have these remote teacher only and in personally which i personally think would benefit our teachers to not have them doing it simultaneously do we have enough teachers to do that so i think you could probably best answer that sure so at the last board meeting i brought out the data of if we had our first graders for instance if you went through and looked at that and you kept students within their school but separated those remote by choice and those that would be in person we would have to hire more teachers because some of the class sizes as you combined for remote by choice at some schools for example would be above the class cap if you were to start out next school year which is one of the things that we were considering and had people elect that from the beginning then you could divvy that out across the district and have for instance a teacher that could be remote by choice across a couple of schools and elevate that class size so we're not saying that there aren't enough teachers if you spread all of that out there aren't enough current teachers within each school to make sure that we keep our class sizes at what we guarantee they would be for both remote by choice and in person so this is possible okay that's what i needed to know okay so do you want to do do you have is that that's pretty much what i'm getting from the rest of your questions on that yeah i've been told it wasn't possible so i just wanted to ask you guys directly and i also recommend i heard you mention something that it it saddens me because i wish i could do more about it but i'm really each of us can only do what we can do about getting information to our community members not just you but you've mentioned several times you hear it all over teachers say it all over facebook so i cautioned that facebook is not going to be a reliable source of information for understanding but there's you know what i mean i know it's super frustrating to hear all the i just want the facts which is why i came here to ask what was that i just want the facts which is why i came to ask you to squash that yeah internet mumbo jumble absolutely yeah i can understand that it's dangerous to sit there and say something like that's not possible when we in fact just said that it is yeah that's the answer to my question i was looking for okay thank you thank you i was gonna say a good rule i always use with the internet is when i read something the first thing i say is i wonder if that's correct okay thank you okay the next is jacqueline fitzpatrick student grades and the mastery connect data indicate many students are falling behind by not allowing schools to fully open the students who want and need to be in school full time are the ones who are suffering the most why continue to limit hours of in-person instruction and cater to the needs of the students who choose remote when in the isb clearly states no amount of technology can replicate the effect of face-to-face interactions and instructions between teachers and students so the question is why are we continuing to limit the number of hours of in-person instruction and cater to the needs of students who choose remote um well i don't think that the goal is to cater to the needs of any one particular student i think faith the can you explain how we had done this we have been prioritizing the balance on the scales between safety and education and i think that one of the most disheartening things throughout this entire pandemic is watching all of our senior leadership that are in here that have spent their entire careers putting the education and the needs of our children first all of the things that we know about education and why in person instruction is so important these people have spent their lives devoted to understanding and helping that so creating a pandemic situation is pretty much the worst case scenario for any educator i have to imagine because you know that there's a difference between safety rules and reaching the most children possible so that would be my first answer um can can somebody jump in on the limiting the hours of in-person instruction sure i perceive that question to be at elementary level with the balance between remote by choice and in person i'm not sure if that was the intent from the question or not but what we are wanting to do is make sure that our students and our parents that have chosen in person as well as remote by choice have an equal number of of minutes of instruction i agree that coming in person i was a former elementary teacher having those kids in the classroom is ideal but for some of our parents and our students that is not something that they are choosing to do right now so we have to continue to keep the relationship with the teacher and the student the students and their friends that they've had throughout the year and make that time very comparable between the two groups to be able to continue with learning thank you anyone else want to jump in on that where are we on time yeah okay so one individual had asked six separate questions as time has allowed we can continue through these dear school board of education can you offer three hours of in-person learning on wednesdays to the kids that are really struggling running away from computer and crying and or grades are bad with remote learning in reading writing and math
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and um so now we're waiting for congress and for them to do their work and then once they make their announcement then we'll get to work i have to say i agree with dr sheds thought and as a person that works in business i've been fighting staffing losses for eight to nine months now so so we call play the float where i come from but anytime you get an opportunity to get a head of attrition and get people in that know the work know the school system know the students i mean that's a smart play right because you you do reap the benefits of that for for years to come so and i'm i'm all about fighting the battle that's right in front of me two years down the road there's all kinds of things that can change so i understand in two years we might feel differently but but having having teachers available that that know our students is obviously important so i understand the thought process great points thank you thanks thank you thank you mr flick is trying to sneak away is she okay to do so thank you dr fleet thank you so much dr hackey good place to a document i think in front of all board members do you want to just address that quickly so any places there is a document about bridge and and what we're looking at for fourth quarter absolutely thank you very much for letting me talk about the opportunity that we've given to our students especially at the elementary level called bridge so back in the summer we were given the challenge to think about opportunities for our youngest of students who want to stay home for family reasons maybe due to coving maybe other other concerns and so we created the bridge pathway and that bridge pathway has been very successful as you can see from the document that i have shared with you tonight that we do still have in our bridge pathway 715 students who started in august and who will continue moving into quarter four in this pathway so we have taken the needs of our families taken the needs of our students and really replicated the best we could what happens in a traditional classroom and then put that in an online setting we've had opportunities for asynchronous learning for synchronous learning and career curated learning and all those things wrapped up together have made an incredible opportunity for our students i'm very proud of the work that we have done in this pathway and i'm very proud to work with wendy foster who has tirelessly put together this pathway and the needs of our students and families first so a big shout out to wendy to make to make this happen as well as dr roberts for presenting us with this challenge and then having us rise to that challenge to make a great thing happen for our students and families so again you can see that our numbers have decreased over time and we feel that that is because families are feeling more comfortable sending their children back especially quarter four but still having 700 plus in this online pathway for quarter four is is a big accomplishment and a big task so again we've taken the challenge that was presented to us and made made that opportunity for our teachers made that opportunity for our families and made that opportunity for our students so that is where we are with bridge moving into the last quarter rounding the turn and heading there are home people have about bridge just to put that 715 number into perspective that's not too far away from being a full grade level so just the number of students we have in a grade in our system we're over 800 in every grade k through 6 but 715 is is approaching about 85 percent of what a grade level might be so a considerable amount of students have stayed in that program from day one through it will be fourth quarter and i was thinking in terms of bill this would be like our third largest building if we thought of it for 715 would be let's see south side and then schmidt south side parkside schmidt so it's around there it is right there yeah it's right there absolutely wow okay yeah if that was k-6 and spread out yeah i do have a question dr hack sure so the k through six bridge teachers k through six enrollment so as the students go back to school of course then do you switch the teachers around like to go back to the classroom that is that is correct so again that challenge that was given to us at the beginning was taking the current number of students and moving them into the online pathway we have then teachers that we also need to teach then in an online pathway bcsc teachers stepped up and we we had conversations principals had hard conversations with teachers because they saw the strength of certain teachers in the spring of last year and their ability to teach online and then as well as ms heine presented us with with teachers who could not come into the building for health reasons so we merged those things together and we really found those people who were skilled at teaching online and then they made needed to stay home for for whatever reason so again we have continued to to massage that we've continued to work with that and every quarter as students have moved back into the traditional classroom we've also lowered our number of bridge teachers and then moved those back into the classroom has that been easy it's not it's not been easy and our teachers have felt some of that but they've all been very gracious when we've had those conversations they all went into teaching because they love love students and they're willing to step up and step into whatever they need to and i think that that's been evident with our bridge teachers are there other questions you all have thank you for sharing this it's nice to have it in perspective absolutely everything that we're doing and i'm sure we'll have bridge in 2122 as well thank you dr hack so is that like the segway that we could ever imagine for the next perfect segway by the way miss heine i'll turn it to you yes it was a very good segway i'm going to kind of do this a little differently we're out of order and so i'm going to request for approval of the human resource recommendations as presented and you have an extra one at your places this evening so there's two human resource recommendations and i'll ask for approval of that and then i'll go to the second part all right you have a motion for approval of the human resource recommendations presented to us so moved thank you dr bills in a second thank you mr brian um any particular questions about these opportunities before we i've got a one question yes um the the director's position for the k-12 virtual pathway is there and i apologize if i have missed something but is there what is the rough anticipated enrollment for virtual pathways next year well we really don't know that completely yet but you saw dr hack's numbers so right there is a school and then we add the secondary numbers to it early numbers uh if we combine secondary and elementary be around 300 students we think at least with with some forecasts of students would stay in that area based on the programming we're going to be offering and so forth so okay that's uh i get a rough rough number but yeah and that will be reevaluated on a yearly basis the necessity of yes so talk to me a little bit about the director of k-12 virtual pathway um what are their resp like what are some main responsibilities of that position sure it's it's keeping track of the students and are they staying caught up with where they should be along the pathway we have teachers that will teach those courses but this is like the principle over the whole k-12 pathway so it's the monitoring it's helping with assessment we still have to give these kids the state tests so that's part of the job um just everything a principal does dr biltz for this year and with with putting this in together quickly as we all know how we had to adapt for the start of the school year we ended up with a few people dedicated to trying to make this work um wendy foster was mentioned by dr hackendywinky helped us out a ton of the high school so we had a lot of people helping out k through 12 just to get everything organized and to go so that we can get we can stabilize that move into the future knowing that we are going to from here on out have at least more than 100 students and i use that number because the state right now says if you have one more than 100 students enrolled in a an online school for more than 50 of the time that you have a new school you give it a school number and so forth i don't know if that's going to still be required but thinking of it in that way and all the reporting requirements and all the other things are now going to this new school that maybe again if we start with 300 students we felt like we needed an administrator to be able to manage the recruiting of that their curriculum the the hiring of teachers placing them in the right places because it is also our teachers that are directing those courses for for k through 12.
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so um that's a part of all the things that the individual will be doing well i and so for this year there were all those responsibilities were shared by some of the people with endless probably the principles of our yes yeah a variety of people in a variety of roles stepping in to address this for the number of kids you know you saw obviously a very significant number of people but at one time we had nearly 3 200 students online and now we're going into fourth quarter about 1500 but still significant significant number will they also be responsible for the cvp or is that something yes yes yeah whatever as we organize dr hack has mentioned bridge cvp is a columbus virtual pathway that's what we had in place before this year and stayed in place the secondary students were participating i guess we had students across the board k-6 k-12 doing both so we're looking at more the cvp piece to begin with from a management standpoint and then we'll evolve as we need to from there but yes columbus virtual pathway is probably the best way to look at it i guess thanks so just one more question and i apologize this this isn't necessarily you know in relation to the position of director but the virtual pathway from a curriculum standpoint will what role will ingenuity play in the virtual pathway yeah with that without having um i guess sign i don't know where we are exactly contract wise somebody addressed that for but but ingenuity is is a key piece of that still okay that'll be the driving force of the curriculum of that of the virtual pathway yeah yeah that please dr hacker mr jensen if there's anything to add to that but that's where we're starting for this pathway again with any evolution that's necessary uh will will continue to happen but um yeah that that's where we are and and with what we've done this year mr grimes is uh with the cvp or ingenuity piece of that it still had teachers that were monitoring groups of kids to to keep them on track with their courses so different than bridge and bridge looked a certain way and that ingenuity or cvp piece looked differently but we'll be looking at the cvp side of that as we as we go forward for a variety of reasons number of staff members and and whatnot that it takes to to keep us moving great questions thank you very much so with all the questions i've got a motion in a second all those um in favor of the human resource recommendations presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i any opposed oh thank you i was going to make sure we had kathy thanks kathy uh any opposed all right miss heine they've passed unanimously thank you then i would like to introduce you to our new director of k the k-12 virtual pathway josh gable and i'm going to invite him up here and josh comes to us from csa new tech as a pupil service teacher so for something similar uh good evening everyone i guess i want to start by thanking you all for giving me the opportunity to lead this initiative and lead this pathway as teresa said i i spent the last 11 years at csa new tech and i couldn't have imagined a better place to start my career i came down here from wisconsin after graduating with matt ed degree and looking for an adventure and i was looking for a fit for what i wanted to do in the classroom and that was to make meaningful and lasting relationships and ultimately make meaning of mathematics in the way that a lot of the teachers in my life did and so fortunately i found myself at csa new tech and i got to not only just learn from a lot of great educators but i was given an opportunity to lead early on and so in my work at csa new tech i started to become a certified new tech network trainer and that working with adult learners never kind of left me and so as i grew more experience in that i found myself in a position where i wanted to continue learning i got my master's degree in math secondary ed and business administration from ball state and i knew that i wanted to lead adult learners and so as i see this position in front of me i got really excited about the possibilities that we have to develop a pathway that's going to not only be for our students who need to be at home for various reasons but really be a pathway that can be modeled after or be an exemplar for people in the state i really see this as an opportunity to grow from an experience that maybe we weren't all expecting a year ago and use that to kind of leverage some changes that can be lasting and ultimately revolutionize the way that we look at education and so i'm really eager to start this work i know it's going to be a challenge um it's going to be a challenge to continue to build that enrollment and and make sure that it's sustainable but i'm really excited to see kind of where we can take this and work to personalize learning for all of our students in a way that so fortunately we've been able to do in bcsc for several years so thank you all for that opportunity and i'm really eager to get work on on the virtual pathway great congratulations josh josh come back up here we're going to grab a picture of you thank you so as we're getting a picture of josh uh one of the conversations we've had with him was really making sure that this was again he's the word exemplar for the state of indiana so making sure that if people are looking for a choice that we have whatever pathway they're looking for and that that if they we know that people are looking for online options and that we have a high quality one uh with with excellent teachers involved in that we're confident josh's ability to lead that pathway forward congratulations josh thank you congratulations i think he's getting a workout this evening how much will he yes that's a good question mr stenner nick did you hear that question how much would a modem or not remote motor motor motor cost and a remote all right [Laughter] next time pat all right next on our agenda um under our how is a request for approval and dr roberts we have a through i before us okay all right so i'll run through my approvals several here starting with the minutes of the regular school board meeting from february the 8th that was our last one a list of supplemental contracts that you had in your packet also we had no field trips professionally but you did have some school fundraisers in your packets too then we had claims in payroll you always receive several pages of those claims dated today march 1st uh total nearly 900 000.
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we had a pre-run from february 1st through february 28th that were over 3.6 million dollars payroll for february 12th was a little over 2.8 million dollars that payroll was for the dates of january 18th through january 29th was a regular payroll i don't think we had really too much or anything additional in there and then we are asking for a resolution to transfer operating funds to the rainy day fund that is a few years ago we moved some dollars from the rainy day fund to help pay for an initial payroll check to move the payroll up in the contract is something that needed to to be done that cost about 1.4 million dollars so we have had the opportunity now to put the 1.4 million dollars back so we're just restoring dollars that we had removed from the rating day fund a few years ago additionally this is a celebration all the celebrations we've had tonight the mark and wendy elwood foundation has donated money we had a great conversation uh with mark and wendy back in december talked about opportunities where they might be able to help us with our social emotional learning efforts and after that conversation mark reached back out and committed one hundred thousand dollars with that amount we need to have you approve that so please do but that one hundred thousand dollars would be over two years fifty thousand dollars a year for each of two years and it does again help sustain the many things we're trying to do with social emotional learning and in particular helping fund our project prevent coordinator position uh sarah fraser has currently been serving in that position has been that for a few years and gets into all first and fourth grade classrooms as well as a number of other other things so thank you to mark and wendy elwood for that commitment of dollars additionally we have a resolution to continue leave related to the family's first coronavirus response act ffcra back in january we asked for you to extend that leave the federal government had stopped we said let's extend it to at least spring break into the third quarter hoping that code was behind us and we would have to worry about it and of course that is not the case so we're simply asking you to extend that to the end of the year so basically if somebody is suffering from symptoms related to covet 19 or or quarantined because of being in close contact or actually has tested positive and has to be home isolated quarantine this act would kick in and and we would not be taking their paid time off necessarily is just continuing to pay for those days out up to 10 days now if a person has already had five let's say they'd have five left it does not extend or add days uh for a person who's maybe already had to miss school because of something related to covent 19 but it does add that situation back for people who have not had had to have those days uh taken and then additionally we have a resolution opposing uh the establishment of education scholarship accounts and the expansion of the indiana school choice scholarship program so there were two documents in your packet one was simply a letter that's already out it's not in a resolution but just put that with this resolution so you could see something that i had signed in conjunction with other superintendents in southeastern indiana including the southeastern career center which is kind of its own entity there in versailles indiana and then the resolution that we had we we tried to and thanks to mr phillips for drafting this language we tried to get to the issues in in the law not just saying we're opposed to vouchers or opposed to to to esa's but but the reasons why because saying that we're going to offer or make school choice available is one thing but then getting into a situation where a person might be able to accumulate twenty six thousand dollars toward a college uh situation that that's getting beyond uh school choice and and that with eligible students in hv 1005 which has been passed by by the house in that bill with those eligible students that is the possibility they can accumulate up to two thousand dollars per year two thousand times thirteen years is twenty six thousand dollars so we try to highlight those kinds of things is not just we're against vouchers we're against school choice but here's the reason we think these this is bad legislation so that's in the resolution that you had in front of you tonight and i think doctor said those are my items yes you've made it through i do have this bucket up here just it's kind of a leaky bucket that i think i'd share with you is from the indiana coalition of or for public education it just shows that when somebody says hey we're increasing the amount of money that we're spending on on k-12 school is true and every year that's probably going to be a true statement um the next time we have uh two years from now when legislation then the next budget is set they can probably say the same thing we're spending more on k-12 education we'll ever have and that is true but there are also a lot of places that that dollar those dollars are now going to that they weren't 10 years ago so the the amount you're spending on public education traditional public education plus all these other places charter schools virtual charter schools choice scholarships proposed education savings accounts the esas i've referenced here other scholarship granting organizations dollars are going to those too so that adds to that k-12 spend making it the most that we've ever spent on education so just a visual there for you for that consideration of that resolution thank you so first i need a motion for approval of items five a through i as has been presented to us so moved thank you mr grimes is there a second second thank you miss wilden are there questions for any item a through i yay well i'm not going to sit here forever and wait for one if there are no questions i'll all those in favor of items 5a through i is presented to us if you'd signify by saying aye [Music] why thank you kathy um any opposed they all passed unanimously thank you so much thank you um i will say thank you for the effort to put that resolution together and and i'm pleased that we were very unanimous about that and didn't have any conversation all right this is the opportunity for board input final comments about just about anything mr bryant all right dr bills i have a little comment i felt like tonight's board meeting was kind of a breath of fresh air for me i don't know about how the rest of you feel but we recognized our hall of fame winners and some students and you know learned about the elwood donation and it's nice to start getting back into those habits really to start recognizing students again and bringing them in i missed that and i missed you know recognizing teachers and and just it was just very nice this evening the board meeting and i can't wait till it's regular you know it's a regular part of our board meeting again to start seeing our students again and having them here so that's all i wanted to share with you great thank you mr stenner a couple of things just as we were beginning our meeting the u.s senate confirmed a new secretary of education who started his career as a fourth grade teacher awesome and it's it's nice to have that position filled by someone with teaching experience again um i appreciated kathy's reflections tonight thank you kathy for offering those and uh congratulations uh not just to susan finke scott for her award but for as julie said we had the opportunity to see and hear about so many educators and coaches and mentors tonight who are making a difference in the lives of our students and as dr pleek said you know it's the teachers that are closest to the students and those are the folks that i am so happy to be able to thank and support uh teachers and then as you've got focused in this picture here the coffee cup is right right in the very front [Laughter] my daughter made me give up coffee for lent so how many days left uh too many too many is all i can say is as uh as you think about joshua josh joshua yeah um in your new position i you know i um i work in an industry where they say that someday when we get back to some new normal they think about a third of us will be working fully virtually a third of us will have a hybrid and a third of us we'll be in the office every day and you think about our responsibility to prepare people for what life is going to look like it's a big job right a third of the students who who leave our high schools may be working from home at some point in their life and there are some skills to that i can tell you from i have a husband who works virtually and he he struggles right there's a knack there and it's it's a change for people so it's really important job so congratulations you have you have a big job in front of you thank you good thoughts uh two two quick thanks she's not still here but congratulations again to miss scott if i did my math correctly as a student at north i had miss scott uh 37 years ago so and i fall under the category of being one of her former students that's now grandparent as well [Laughter] and then also thanks to you dr roberts and the 22 other area superintendents that were willing to draft a letter and attach it along with the resolution in opposition to the uh the house bill and the two senate bills that that divert lots and lots of money from public funds the public bucket if you will yes so thank you thank you mr grabs thank you kathy is there anything you'd like to add i just uh again um congratulate mrs scott on education hall of fame tonight and just apologize so i couldn't be there in person i'm sure that when she mentioned about all the different letters and congratulatory you know letters and things that i'm sure she has touched so many uh live students and families and we are certainly blessed to have her in our district that's all i have thank you thank you very much so i'm glad that it felt like kind of a normal meeting and i appreciate just all the very diverse ways we are able to celebrate what we do and that we're also very innovative and proactive i do appreciate all the work that's already gone into our cares to planning so thank you very much for that my one thought and this is kind of my other hat i appreciated what susan emphasized about being a teacher and there are elements of that that i would love to be a part of recruitment as to why it is just so awesome to be a teacher how how much how rich it is and how fulfilling so that was very nice all right we have meetings well first we have spring break coming up and i'm imagining everyone's so excited about yes um and i hope it's enjoyable please please please be safe come back healthy because we are all in school on monday march 22nd i will also mention that we have a strategic planning session on our calendars for march 26th at 9 00 a.m and our next school board meeting is over a month away it will be april 5th 35 days but who's counting i can't imagine april 5th 6 30 here so with that thank everyone for a very rich meeting
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tonight's work study session brief board business meeting today is march 2nd and thank you for joining us here in the building and those on live stream for this meeting of the gilbert public schools governing board we have several topics and items on our work study agenda some of them will be consolidated at the end with one presenter but i'll defer to dr mccord for item 2 2.01 to 2.07 thank you dr santa cruz governing board members welcome this evening as dr santa cruz says we have about seven or eight items on the agenda seven items the first one is proposed school changes for 20 21 22 school year and that'll be presented by mr jason martin and he'll also move into 2.02 which is the school calendar revisions for school years 20 22 22 23 and 23 24 but we'll start off with the proposed changes for 2122.
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um good evening everyone this uh welcome to the uh board of education policy meeting for march um i'm not even sure what the date is hold on let me see march second um mrs joginski call the roll sure mr grippo here miss hallen here mr white here mr chairman you have a quorum thank you um we all rise for the pledge oh jesus oh i was hoping you had a flag fantastic 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 i was watching the smc i think it was last night and you watch him do the pledge it is a an awkward thing to watch all these headless bodies right here and you only hear like one voice because everything cuts out yeah i think we were on to the right track when we started to try and have one person yeah through the pledge yeah oh okay um so um uh dr sullin is there any public comment there is not okay so yeah go right right to it okay great um good evening everybody uh as you saw in the agenda this evening we have a number of uh policies for first reading and what you'll find is that you know over the last what three years adam catherine i mean maybe maybe feels like three could be eight i i don't know it feels like an eight could be three but we've uh comprehensively reviewed the policies with the support of cabe and we've reached a point where where um identifying things that might be considered a little bit more nitpicky and you know i think it's relevant and it's necessary to tidy up some of these things that we're going to talk about tonight so as a perfect example of that the first item up for bid here is the budget implementation and you'll see that you know in many of these policies what we'll have is outdated titles for individuals so director of management and personnel is now the chief operating officer so this policy here just you know hasn't been updated in what is that almost uh 25 years uh so you know it's just making sure i think it sends a message too and it says this hasn't been updated since 96 that at least we've looked at it as a board and made it contemporary reflect contemporary terminology so um any objections here to changing these these titles no i don't have any um chief operating officer that's vin massiana correct it is yeah okay tim um yeah just would it make more sense it's a little awkward but to avoid titles entirely just change it to the superintendents designee and then it doesn't change in the future so whoever you designate basically it doesn't have to be i mean is there a drawback to doing something like that no um i you know it it's it would um you know make it unnecessary to review it in the future uh it i think it's more of a preference amongst the board uh if you you know feel like we want to be able to just go back and check this periodically it's up to you guys i'm comfortable either way uh catherine go ahead i just think if it says the superintendent's designee or what however it is then it's adding sort of a procedural step what dr solon would have to do and um you know to me maybe it introduces a little uncertainty to the whole thing and so i i understand exactly what you're saying but i get what why you're saying that too but i i guess we're yeah i mean we're probably not going to change the title of that person well we're certainly not going to change vin's title but whether uh someone in the future has a different title that is responsible for this i you know i get that as well so i'm sorry adam go ahead oh um excuse me um i would just argue that uh i like having the officer named because it helps in the separation of duties uh especially because it's dealing with budget implementation some of the other ones are like payroll and that kind of stuff where you're where you're designating a a particular title um i think i think it just helps just in case in the future perhaps there's a superintendent that doesn't quite have the clarity that you do dr solon separation of duties where whereby it's clear and uh you know policy states it that's yeah that's kind of me all right so you know i'm i'm guessing mr grippo that that clarity wasn't a shot at my new fuzzy background i'm gonna go over that and we'll just move on to the next one i'm not that clever let's say yourself short this is a good pokemon so anyway uh the next um item is the expenditures expending authority purchasing guidelines uh very similar to the last item um we're updating you know changing the term from audited vouchers which isn't something that we use uh to now requisition for purchase orders in shifting from assistant superintendent for management services now this i think is the second title we've had now for chief operating officer that's just being switched over so it's just reflecting contemporary protocols that we use in contemporary titles this this was last reviewed in 1998.
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and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all order arms i would like to personally thank each one of you defeat adrian marvin jesse and althea for taking the time and leading us in this amazing flag salute that we do at the beginning of our open session next we have 4.2 roll call we have board member rodriguez pena president board member cruz gonzalez here board member bro here and board member career here and board member arianes i am here we're all here 4.3 approval of agenda can i please get a motion to move 4.3 the approval of the agenda for today so moved we have a first by board member bo we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez if we can go ahead and join the meeting and our laptops and vote everybody has access oh there it is 5-0 it is uh it passes moving on to 5.1 approval of resolution number 20-21 26 non-reelection and release of temporary certificated employees can i please get a motion to move 5.1 so move we have a first by board member greer we have we have a second by board member beau discussion seeing that there's none let's go ahead and vote and it passes 5-0 we move to 5.2 approval of settlement of case number 8 s one cw-011 six eight can i get a motion to please move 5.2 make a motion to approve 5.2 okay we have a first by board member pena and we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez uh we're moving to 6.0 6.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items i'm sorry i'm sorry yes we need to vote i was already moving on and it passes 5-0 now we can move to 6.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items do we have anyone raising their hand you know one thing i forgot to to mention for the viewers we have translation um i forgot to mention that just wanted to go ahead and mention that lika do we have anyone raising their hand right now we do we have a couple first up is emily ruiz emily you can remove yourself can you hear me yes we can okay good evening board mr ortego ertega um cabinet my name is emily reese i am a freshman at this is a high school a lot of you know me and know how dedicated passionate i am about everything i do especially when it comes to my school district and representing it i'm involved in many clubs and community organizations and all while taking on courses i maintain a good grade out of all those courses the one class that keeps me sane is orchestra when i am stressed out i need a mental break the first thing i do is take my child or violin out close my bedroom door and get lost in the beautiful melodies i'm grateful and appreciative that we have a music program but i think it needs a lot of improvements the music programs need to be revisited redesigned and need to be a priority when we reorganize our schools and a time when mental health and trauma are such important issues music is one of many solutions we need to work on introducing music at the earliest age possible i feel sad for my little sister charlie she used to come home all the time singing all these cool spanish songs that taught her the alphabet the days of the week the flags loot and her numbers unfortunately teachers don't incorporate much music as we get older and then when we get into the fourth grade we get to join a band orchestra mariachi choir is not even an option until we get into middle school we lose at least three years of developing our musical abilities many young students never have the opportunity to be introduced to music how can you know if you will like music if you have never been introduced to it our district has amazing music teachers they work hard and they give their all one to keep us motivated especially through this time i see miss trainer work so hard she goes above and beyond for us i am sure i'm sure she wants teachers way more than what she is paid for and she does it because she because she loves music and teaching is her passion since last march she made sure that through the lockdown our hard work was showcased she spent hours and hours editing videos and pretty and it's a pretty tedious job when you have to merge so many sounds and videos on top of that we got to play in the field of lore an awesome event sponsored by the azuza rotary she wrote letters and recommendations for all the music students that wanted to take a scholarship opportunity this will be my second semester taking free private lessons because of her efforts i appreciate everything we have in azusa i want our district to thrive and having a strong music program will help that a lot have a great evening everyone thank you miss emily reese next we have elizabeth reese can you hear me we could barely hear you oh no uh how about now yes now we could hear you okay good evening board is your ortega cabinet my name is elizabeth ruiz i am a junior at azusa high and literally also known as sister to the emily ruiz i am here tonight to speak on the same topic as my sister our music programs i have been very blessed to have been born into a family that appreciates art it also it all began with the opportunity my mother had it he joined orchestra and mariachi he understood that life became more meaningful because of the connection with our community and to the whole world he knew that she wanted her kids to feel part of something bigger and was very happy to see the music program at associate unified pro you feel that can you please excuse me i'm so sorry elizabeth can you please speak up again you kind of um your volume kind of went down again can you hear me now yes we at first we could hear you louder okay um we feel that we have hit a big bump we don't see it growing anymore it feels like it is shrinking and this began even before the pandemic began what is one of the things we miss most from normal times i miss uh concert live music at dinner going to see the apu concerts perform and the battle of the bands every year at citrus i miss the connection i made with my community when we were able to perform unfortunately if we don't rethink our music programs they will little by little shrink and disappear in the not too distant future unfortunately many students will lose opportunity to enjoy being part of such a special thing we need to expand because we have many students at different levels in the same classes why would anyone want to fit in a music classroom where programs where the progress is slow it gets boring i know i've stayed because i am patient i like to help the younger students i and i see the bigger picture but there are so many students and parents that don't feel the same way and it's totally understandable our mariachi program works great because it's composed of three instructors they each take care of different instruments and one that dedicates to voice they are able to teach different levels successfully it would be really nice to see someone work with island sometimes some someone with cellos even someone with an o student i understand that the budget is limited but if throughout well it's input from music jurors we can make it work as we come out of this pandemic and recognize the students we need to rely think about how we want to ruin the [Music] all right i'll just finish here thank you elizabeth just one second um um great um next speaker is miss myra rico miss maya rico are are you there yes can you guys hear me yes we can hear you loud and clear thank you good evening board mr ortega cabinet my name is maria rico i am the mother of elizabeth and emily reese we just spoke we spent a lot of time working together and talking about the amazing things going on in our school district in our community and always do our best to make sure everyone knows what programs and opportunities are available to our students and their families sometimes we talk about things that we see are not going very well and talk about how we can help be part of the solution we give our time lovingly knowing that it will make an impact in the lives of others i too will briefly speak on the music programs it is vital to the music program that as we reorganize our schools you take a look at how it can be offered at more schools we have a great group of very talented and gifted music teachers that i know are willing to work together to make sure our programs thrive music is very special and when kids are exposed to it at an early age they greatly benefit from it they become more focused they become problem solvers team players they become organized they become motivated confident outgoing and they become well-rounded community members i understand we have a lot going on but we also have the opportunity to think ahead and find a solution to this matter thank you very much for your time have a good evening thank you miss mayor rico next we have kathleen shaheen good evening can you hear me pretty clearly yes ma'am hello yes can you hear us yes perfect okay um good evening my name is kathy sahagian and i am a first grade teacher from ellington school i am speaking tonight because i am scared i love my students and want to get back to school but i want to be safe i was lucky enough to receive my first vaccine today my second dose will be on tuesday march 23rd in order for my vaccine to have achieved maximum immunity i should not go back to school until april 6th april 6 will be our spring break the district have uh has offered first dose vaccines to teachers on friday march 5th that group would have to wait until april 10th to achieve maximum immunity i know the state is offering money to get everyone back into the classroom but at what cost does my life matter do my students lives matter los angeles unified school district has assured their teachers that they will not return to school until they have achieved maximum immunity why can't we do their teachers matter more than i do and my fellow colleagues i hope not if forced to return i may have to take some sick time and miss the first week we return to school what if other tk2 teachers do this will there be enough subs i think we all know the answer to that question please change our tk2 return date to april 12th and if i didn't feel so concerned about this tonight i wouldn't be speaking up about this i just got the email last night that said that the start date was going to be march 29th i did not see that coming i had no idea and since teachers could not be vaccinated until march 1st i jumped on my possibility to get vaccine so i really hope you'll consider this date and making a change thank you very much for your time and consideration hi good evening can you hear me when is launches um can you hear me you hear me yes oh sorry i'm sorry okay good evening i'm teresa robles i am a first grade dual immersion teacher at victor hutch school i have been with the district since 1988 and i just want to say thank you to the board for putting students first and for thinking and for working so hard through these difficult times but i am of the same mind as kathleen is i do not really agree with going back to school i do not feel safe i feel like we are putting our students lives in jeopardy and my family comes first and then my students i also do not agree with the new schedule that has been put out mainly first of all because my students have now gotten used to a routine and they are making great strides i'm seeing so much growth and i feel like the interruption of changing the schedule to different times and then changing them back to going back to school will cause them to lose more i also feel like they will have less time to learn with me with the new schedule and i'm in the same mind of of kathy that if we do go back um i feel like i will have to call him for a sup so thank you and have a good night thank you miss robles do we have anyone else lika we have one hand that is going up and down uh steve if you would like it and mute your mic does he still have his hand raised he does and he has permission to speak but his mic oh he just unmuted hi can you guys hear me yes sir thank you very much uh my name is steve simonian and i'm the head baseball coach at azusa high school the question i had was what are we using um as far as guidelines are concerned what guidelines are we using in regards to opening up sports or uh you know having sports again and the reason why i ask is because uh i'm trying to figure out if you're using state uh state protocols cif protocols or uh l.a county protocols and the reason why i'm asking is because other surrounding schools are having uh full practices full scrimmages um you know we have football teams out there that are you know having full contact no mask um you know having regular practices but at azusa unified i'm told that you know we can only have two kids touch baseball we cannot have an on-field practice we cannot have batting practice on the field um i understand the safety aspects of it but uh every like i said every surrounding school is having full practices full scrimmages you know and and and yet we're limited only to two children uh touching one baseball so uh thank you for your time and uh i appreciate you guys thank you mr simonian next we have lisa miss lisa hello good evening yes my name is lisa and i'm a parent of one of the students and i'm just would like to just make a suggestion to the board as a parent i would like to see a little bit more um transparency as to what's going on in the classroom with the changes we hear a lot about the money and the things that are being done however i'm more of a visual person so i would suggest to the board that i think as a parent who's on the fence to having their student return or stay in virtual academy i'd like the option to see what the classroom looks like um in regards to the changes that have been made so i would suggest to the board to maybe there's other parents who feel as i do to have some kind of like do a live or some type of video the parents can see the changes that are being done in the schools so that we can make the right decision for our child thank you thank you miss lisa lika do we have anyone else do you have one more hand just raised uh salisa so lisa can you hear us yes hello can i can you hear me yes ma'am okay thank you hi my name is i have a student at hodge and longfellow i'm grateful for the surveys that you all put out and all the work you have been doing during the surveys i heard concerns or questions being asked about what my concerns were but the questions i didn't seem being asked was what are your thoughts on teachers and how they're being treated or how their needs are being met so i just really wanted to echo those teachers that have spoken for them to have full immunity to have them protected they're the ones being there on the forefront and the front lines for our students and i think having their full immunity would also have me more comfortable putting my student in the classroom i want my student to return i want him to enjoy the benefits of being in person but giving the students that time and the teachers the time the the mental capacity to get prepared and to just feel like they're being heard is equally as important so i would also like to echo the date mentioned before i don't remember specifically after spring break when teachers can get full immunity thank you thank you miss elisa lika do we have anyone else raising their hand we have no other hands raised at this time thank you now we moved to 7.1 in the agenda the comments reports and requests by the board of education we can go ahead and get started with board member rodriguez pena hi good evening everyone um first of all i just want to um say um i wish dr seuss happy birthday today is his birthday march 2nd 1904 he would have been 117 years old um i don't miss going to the school sites reading to the students but i did notice today they had a new rhyme and it's um i will wear my mask here and there i was so full distant everywhere so i thought that was appropriate for our times right now um i also went to um gladstone um early college parent night the um counselors did a fantastic job on speaking about the early college program that's offered at glaston high school and they also had students that were um past students that were in the early college program and students that are in the program at this time speaking to the parents regarding the benefits that they have gained by being in the early college program regarding their credits earned while in school uh the money savings that they have on the books and tuitions and i want to thank the counselors dr koram mr abdul miss ortiz and miss de leon for the presentation i also um went to the oratory contest the the topic was the bridge builders all six contestants did a fantastic job there was three students from azusa high and three students from gradstone high school for me it was very powerful very touching uh inspirational the things that they had to say they had great ideas huh how to become a bridge builder i want to congratulate all the participants and also um aaron cramer did a great job from the azusa management association on moderating the the whole thing the judges mr verdomo miss fonseca and miss walker and i want to congratulate the first um place winner with emily reese that spoke tonight from freshman from azusa high school and i also went to the middle school um eighth grade uh k2a and the k28 incoming sixth grader parent night all the principals did a great job in their presentation speaking about their programs the mariachi program the band's elective sports offered at their school sites so i want to thank the principal mr perdomo dr contreras um miss walker and mr cenas dr racine excuse me and the um azusa high school eighth grade expo and azusa and gladstone again they showed videos they had students speaking about the programs such as the mariachi program their jazz orchestra jrotc football chair and many other programs that they offer at both of the schools and um who's best to brag about their schools is but their students themselves speaking about their clubs and how much fun they're having um at school so they had both high schools had a very great turnout so i want to thank dr gomez and mr fernandez i also like to just um just make a recommendation i would like to see a report given to the community and the parents on how we're using our covet dollars for transparency thank you i have nothing thank you good evening everyone um i just wanted to acknowledge uh ms jamal for um her recent meeting with uh our community liaison from no kid hungry which is a national non-profit that has a mission of ending childhood hunger i know that azusa unified benefited from approximately 50 000 grant last school year to purchase items to support our nutrition program and also to help recognize our staff for their work and so i'm very excited to see how we can continue to deepen that partnership with no kid hungry to benefit the azusa students and families thank you uh no comments tonight my only comment is we are in march it it's getting close to if we've been closed march 13th it's going to hit the year that we've been closed and a lot has transcribed a lot has happened i i think we have learned we have navigated we have implemented we have um digested went back in assess and all under a new superintendent and now you know any board and as we're coming to to the anniversary i guess of us closing the schools we are um we are going to be speaking today about every opening of the schools um there's going to be a presentation there will be a town hall on march 9th at 5 o'clock for english speakers and at 6 30 there will be but espanol yes i encourage you lose please come it is very important we want to hear from you um and you know i have i have kids in this district so i i'm also a parent and i am you know i have a savior can you guys hear me now okay but let me start again i i want to welcome you guys to march we're already in march 2 uh 2021.
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jason thank you dr mccord thank you governing board and community members this uh this proposed school campus changes uh presentation tonight was similar to what we shared last week with the community meetings so some of it if you've seen it previously at those meetings will be the same but we'll also be summarizing some of the comments that we heard at the community meetings as well as the feedback that we received online and of course this involves enrollment management which is something we've been doing as a district since 2016 in its current iteration it is also an integral component of the district's strategic operating plan and enrollment management really has several different facets or features that when you look at enrollment management of a school district such as gilbert you want to look at the educational accessibility are we ensuring that the programs for all of our students and the school facilities are accessible for all of our students are they all getting the premier education that we promise our students here in gilbert public schools we also are looking at programs as well too being arizona with a school choice state programs are essential because one size fits all is not what our community wants or needs and so we look at lots of different programs over the last several years particularly at the elementary level we look at the popularity of our traditional programs which we've expanded we also have the performance academy at mesquite elementary and then of course the dual language president the board member eugetti started when she was principal at gilbert elementary and we've kind of reinvigorated that program as something to the spanish immersion program and of course the high schools and our junior highs also have programs too that fit our community and one of the new programs of course this year that we've learned about a lot is gps global academy as well too that not only is it fitting the needs of of a pandemic right now but we've also found that there are certain families in our district that find that that's a program or a school that works well for them boundaries are also an essential component and of course two years ago we embarked on that as a district and changed some school boundaries k through 12.
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um and we did retain this component here that uh i still continue to review every purchase order for in excess of five thousand dollars excellent i don't think we need to increase that at this time tim thanks jeff yeah i don't want to go uh changing anything here but i just want to get an understanding of what this means because the uh the five thousand dollars it's to me it needs to be like constrained in time uh you know is it like a 12-month period five thousand dollars to one vendor a one-month period is it five thousand over ten years just yeah it's per purchase order uh requisition so um you know i i i get i totally get that but i mean if somebody wants to sort of game the system then you do 4 000 you do 12 4 000 requisitions in one in one year and it's really in a sense it's 48 000 so i'm just wondering like what your thought is on it is it it would well there's a tiered approval process already so if the when the requisition is made ever vin already has to approve every purchase order so it goes from building level leadership or departmental level leadership approval then ben has to approve it and you know obviously where we could really get hurt is i mean i could make an argument that 5000 is kind of low and a lot of the purchases that we have to make and i'm thinking things like i apologize for the noise but it's the heating system kicking out almost but it's things like eversource um some special education placements larger orders in terms of uh you know resources like books uh uh or contracts that we we engage well this is outside of that the contracts is not a purchase order it's a contract and that's also reviewed but um you know there is a review process already in place we could certainly have been talk about that if we want at some point but um and this is an individual purchase order um and jeff aren't these records audited annually they are okay so i i mean a lot of times it could be several years before something is audited but if you guys are audited every year where i'm assuming they're at least doing uh source document spot checks all the time yeah so you know we have obviously that internal check system but then that's a good point adam there is that external check system that is in in place as well that you know make sure that there's not something funky going on right um i i'm i don't know i'm comfortable at the that firstly switching at this chief operating officer and leaving it at 5 um unless you know it was you know an audit finding or something where uh they thought it was too high or too low or too high too high yeah you know something like that if it hasn't been a problem then i think we're okay not since 1998 right like you've been auditing since 1998 one of those i guess tim is the the official cpa so yeah i mean i have no i have no real authority here except a vote but no i come from a different perspective to simplify your life if you know if you've wanted to bump that up from five to ten i mean especially for things like electric bills whatever it might be i have no problem with that i'm i am and i don't have like a big concern with this but just generally speaking i mean that that is one way that somebody could you know sort of game a system which is we're just going to do you know every week we'll do something at 4 500 i don't expect that that's happening by any means and i'm not looking i would not even necessarily want to codify that here but that's just generally what i'm wondering about in terms of the controls because we're talking about it right and i mean here i'm still here at some point but but from my perspective if it makes your life easier i mean uh whether vin has a five thousand or ten thousand dollar authority level that that doesn't make much of a difference to me yeah i think you know and first of all i appreciate that consideration second of all uh you know having done this for five years now the time spent on that isn't really inordinate that it would you know jam me up uh at 5 000 and it's all i'd be much less uh problematic at 10.
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it's been almost a year march 13th would be the day that we last year that we closed schools we're coming up on that one year march now we're talking about reopening schools there is going to be a town hall meeting for all parents on march 9th at 5 00 in english i encourage you guys all to to to come and partake of that town hall if there's questions if there's comments please come and share your thoughts um and i think that's all i have for today and we'll go ahead and move to 8.1 we have comments reports by superintendent cabinet student board members we will start with student board members jacob vasquez good evening everyone my name is jacob vasquez with azusa high school um first off congrats to aztec freshman emily ruiz for winning the district's auditory contest she will complete in the acsa contest on march 10th with a chance to win seven hundred dollars good luck emily our aztec students and teachers are now connected with the paper tutoring program which provides students with unlimited access to 24 chat based academic tutoring for all subjects in all grades delivered by a live chat educator with paper online platforms our students have shared positive feedback about this program march madness rivalry battle on tuesday march 9th azusa high school will battle gladstone high school and a drive-thru at chick-fil-a please come support our schools with this important fundraiser the school that raises more money will have bragging rights and take possession of the drive-through trophy this event runs from 6 30 a.m to 10 p.m our counselors continue to virtually visit 8th graders to discuss our school's programs classes and preparing them for the next level of school alpac testing is going to begin very soon we are working on making sure all our students have the district issued chromebook to take the test spring sports conditioning has started baseball softball tennis track and fields soccer golf are now beginning their workouts students are very excited to be on campus that's it for tonight thank you thank you jacob next we have destiny contreras good evening our football and cheer team last week were able to step on our new field for the first time they are very proud of the new field and looking forward to competing on this field we thank the voters who supported measure k to make this happen ghs is proud of benson manzano cathy cortez jeanette flores for the work in the ama oratory contest three gladiators were will participate in a western justice pyramid mediation invitational on march 5th pamela johnston yet city ochoa and mario valenzuela will be reflecting on their experiences so far this year we are looking forward to the peer mediation program growing next year at gladstone ghs held its first virtual 8th grade expo for incoming students on february 25th ghs did a great job representing the major programs and clubs with parents we are eager to welcome the class of 2025 to gladstone 28 students in our medical academy participated in online hosa exams last week we look forward to hearing about their successes as as they continue competing in this new competition environment mario valenzuela won a gold medal uh isaiah paseno won silver and matthew tellez won bronze in regional skills usa graphic arts competitions and will be competing at the state level in april we'll be having a fundraiser against azusa high next tuesday march 9th at chick-fil-a don't forget to mention you're with gladstone great thank you next we have mr alex arkenberg good evening board members cabinet and superintendent ortega thank you to everyone who supported sierra high school by attending our fundraiser at chick-fil-a on friday the money raised will be used to help support student engagement activities this year on march 1st we begin our third trimester the second trimester virtually virtual awards celebration will be held on march 19th at 2 o'clock that concludes my summary thank you so much we'll go ahead and move on to superintendent thank you um i want to join the chorus of congratulating uh emily reese for winning the ama oratory contest on february 18th uh and thank you to ama that's the azusa management association for hosting events like this for our students i also want to thank the superintendent parent roundtable parents and our members of our cobin 19 team last week they were able to see a draft of our school reopening guidebook that we will be sharing with our community and staff the parents from the round table and the members of the cobin 19 team provided detailed feedback suggestions and ideas and we were able to implement uh some of that feedback and some of those ideas and as a result our guidebook is now clearer and stronger thanks to their input so just a big thank you to everybody who serves on those two on those two teams on monday yesterday the azusa chamber hosted vision 2021 where the city apu our district and the chamber were able to highlight their respective organizations i want to say thank you to the chamber for organizing this informational night for our community here in azusa our vid our video is available uh to watch via all of our social media platforms and our website thank you good evening um wanted to let everyone know that azusa pacific university's community counseling center is going to host an informational seminar for parents and for caregivers that is all about supporting distance learning uh the seminar is going to offer validation and support for parents and have specific strategies for success for families topics will include supporting students mental health needs using structure time management and successful learning and also finding ways to resolve conflict the seminar is going to be march 16th at 6 30.
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the thing with school boundaries is we've learned that according to our demographer and i think we're learning that quite quickly minus a pandemic that it takes four to five years to really see if those boundary changes really do change the enrollment patterns at the schools as we had proposed so boundaries is something like all of these things that i think are part of enrollment management which is an ongoing process here in gps it's not a one and done thing it may be that we do something one year but the following year there will be something that we add on to space utilization is also an important component of that looking at our facilities and are we maximizing those facilities to that potential that goes back to the educational accessibility and is where where can we put some of our programs and other offerings in the district too and then of course it all goes back to being fiscally responsible we know that budgets are always tight here in arizona in a school district and with taxpayer money we want to be fiscally responsible and utilizing that money as wisely as possible so backing up a little bit we wanted to give you a kind of a a backdrop of all the community communication that's gone on over the last month in regards to these proposed school changes so here by february 12th 72 000 notification postcards were sent to all the households within our district boundaries that is something with the ars statutes that we have to inform not just our current gps families but people that live within the gilbert schools boundaries so we've done that we've also done an advertisement in the gilbert sun news and the east valley tribune newspapers on february 7 too to try to reach out to our community and then it was shared also in two editions of our own gps connect create care family newsletter in february as well the notification was also posted on all of our gps campuses and district office including houston burke and neely campuses which are the ones that are affected with these proposed changes and then we've also sent out to all of our gps staff parents and families communication regarding the proposed changes as well as where they can find additional information on our district website when we're looking at staff communications as well too so the week of february 1st through the 5th dr mccord mr mcintosh and myself we went out to houston burke and neely and spoke to the staff about the proposed changes before those communications went out publicly to the rest of the community since they would be affected and we also as you can imagine the houston one was probably the most important one because they're the ones most affected by these proposed changes and so we did let the houston staff know that is both certified and support staff that they would have a position in gps as well as mr valles the current principal of houston elementary then on february 5th the email that i talked about in the previous slide was sent out to all gps staff with the proposed changes and then on february 17th actually too the burke principal mr pays and a couple of teachers attended the houston staff meeting so that the houston staff could meet him as well as find out some information about burke elementary not just uh for basically twofold one in case they are interested as a houston staff member and possibly moving to burke elementary but also too to help enlighten them and educate them as their houston families if these proposed changes are voted on so they know they have some talking points about burke elementary and then similarly a week later on the 25th jennifer greene the principal at neely traditional academy and a few teachers also attended the houston staff meeting to tulsa talk about what does the traditional uh curriculum aspects look like not only in case maybe they houst or if neely happens to have open positions maybe some houston teachers might be interested in that but also too especially to educate the houston staff as they start to get questions from their houston families about would they their child be maybe a good fit for the nearly traditional program and then this week coming up actually later this week otm is going to be visiting with each houston staff member to get their preferred locations and positions for the 21-22 school year to help prepare for the pending march 30th board vote as we've talked about in enrollment management the western region of our district has seen the largest decline over the years over the last 15 to 20 years and enrollment and several as you can imagine elementary schools are located with one mile of each other in a few minutes here there will be a map and you can see just how many schools we have in this area of the district of course these tend to be our older schools which also mean their aging facilities and needing upgrades just like all buildings in order to keep them up to the standards that we want here in gilbert public schools we have to continually put money into the renovations and upgrades of school facilities and then looking at the enrollment trends at the three particular schools that we are looking at making some proposed changes you can see that the enrollment at burke and houston has declined now this year obviously is a bit different with the pandemic just about all of our gps schools have declined because of the pandemic and of course many of those students have chosen to attend global academy or they are no longer enrolled in gps right now nearly traditional academy use you can see stayed pretty steady and this year too as well we have a fair number of nearly traditional families at global academy choosing to be online this year as well a little bit of information about houston elementary currently it is the smallest school the past several years in our district and when we look at space utilization perhaps the easiest way to look at that is to take the current enrollment at each school and simply divide it by the number of classroom spaces that we have and so when we do that over the last three years you can see that if you take all the students at houston and divide them out equally over those rooms it's 6.6 to 8.4 students per classroom the lowest in the district houston elementary happens to be the largest building though in the western portion of the district approximately 45 classrooms as most of our other elementary campuses nearby have 37 to 40 classrooms and currently houston elementary has one to two classes per grade level in k-6 and one of the things that we see at houston and many of our small schools burke included is that when you get this small you start to you start to affect the educational accessibility of students when you start looking at a master schedule and other components for those services that students need because you start getting part-time special area teachers and specialists at those schools and not only does it make it hard to do a master schedule to service the students and cluster students for the differing needs within a grade level but it also is harder if you don't have site-based special area teachers and specialists to help with some of those extracurricular clubs programs and additional services that schools where they have full-time teachers might be able to provide burke elementary currently has the capacity to add several hundred students it is also one of our smaller schools it has approximately 37 classrooms currently the last three years it's having a little bit higher average on space utilization of 7.1 to 10.9 students per classroom with two to three classes per grade level and like we said at the elementary level when we talk about what is the best size of an elementary school we can really say that three to five class sections per grade level works the best for a myriad of reasons and so uh if this proposal goes through we most likely will get burke back up to three classes per grade level maybe even four depending upon the number of houston students that choose to attend and we find that that really will help the educational accessibility for all the students at burke whether they're currently there or the students that are now being serviced at houston elementary and then another aspect of it is is the burke and houston communities are really connected by burke street guadalupe road is the thoroughfare that basically separates those two schools from burke and houston but many of our schools as you well know in the community do not have mile street thoroughfares the some of our newer schools out east and down south you can be a half mile away from another school but you're not going to get directly from point a to point b you're going to go around about in the neighborhood where this with the the straight lines of the streets it makes it easy to connect these two communities location wise when we look at neely traditional academy of course it's been a very popular non-boundary school with a traditional emphasis since 1999 often nearly experienced as a waiting list at certain grade levels due to a lack of space when we look at the current nearly traditional building there's approximately 38 classrooms but you have to also look at that includes four portables or eight classrooms so really in the main building minus the portables you have 30 classrooms at that facility with the number of students there there is a lack of bathrooms for a campus that size and we do not have a space to offer a pre-k program which currently has been something we wanted to do and we know that this community would like to have at their school when we're looking at the upgrades and renovations that we need at all our buildings mr dutch over our director of operations has identified at least three million dollars that need to be spent on the neely building within the next five years and that doesn't even add any permanent classrooms to the building one of the things that we get asked in this first of all too is when we do all of these changes are we doing these changes because we want to move neely to houston and we can emphatically say no we're looking at enrollment management from various perspectives and looking at how we can utilize our buildings well so we we want to let our houston community know that it wasn't that we thought neely needed a newer bigger building and so we simply shoved them out of the way with these proposed changes it was looking at for a myriad of factors and one of the questions we get from the community right now is well what are you going to do with the neely building if if we move the school to houston and right now we can simply say that we're studying different options for that that site use and when we look at to the size of neely really houston is currently the only site in the western portion of the district large enough to accommodate neely's needs so right here on this map you can currently see just how many schools we have in the area but you can see the current houston and burke boundaries houston is just over a square mile the western border uh boundary is gilbert road the northern boundary is baseline road and we use the consolidated canal as the eastern boundary and then guadalupe road is to the south and once again that butts up to the burke elementary which then is one square mile just to the south of that between lindsay elliott gilbert and guadalupe with those proposed changes of school boundaries then houston boundaries right there that are shaded would be included in the burke boundaries so burke's boundaries would become just over two square miles for the upcoming school year and then nearly traditional which is nearby would move to the houston site and one of the things we wanted to make sure if we're going to move the neely site is we didn't want to move it too far away from its current location as well one of the questions of course and it's a valid is what about transportation and all of those things so for our houston families that would move to burke we would uh provide busing available to current houston families that live over a mile away from burke elementary currently houston just has a small the small sliver of families that live between lindsay and the consolidated canal provide busing otherwise it's a walking school burke elementary is currently a walking school we would have a crossing guard stationed before and after school at the traffic light at the intersection of burke street in guadalupe guadalupe road to assist students walking or riding their bikes to and from school and so that would help our houston and burke families and we have some proposed draft maps that i'll share here in a minute when we look at the nearly traditional at houston site of course nearly traditional being a non-boundary school there are extra there is a large amount of parent traffic yes we would continue to have the regional bus stops that we offer occur across certain portions of the district but we do know that we have a large amount of traffic and we're trying to be proactive as possible in meeting those needs and so some of those things that we would have is a crossing guard stationed at the intersection of burke and houston avenue and that would allow students that live nearby or parents that might want to possibly pick up at the gca campus which is just about one and a half to two blocks south parents could wait there and the students could walk to that some of the other things that we're looking at is adding a drop-off pickup lane edition in front of the houston campus as you're well aware over the past several years we've added additional pickup drop-off lanes with valvista lakes last summer getting a new bus pickup lane to separate the buses and the parent pickup drop-off area the other thing we know too is houston doesn't have an abundance of parking spaces on its current site and so if we were to move nearly over we would look at adding additional parking more towards the north side of the campus along housto along burke street and we've done that also at several campuses as well for example highland park and greenfield elementary over the last few years have had additional parking spaces to meet the needs of those communities and then the other thing we're doing is we're meeting with the town of gilbert for input from their traffic engineer regarding our proposed patterns of entering and exiting for the neely community and we regularly do that at other schools as needed when we warrant some changes to traffic patterns as well so right here too this does show the current transportation zone so those green lines denote the neighborhood areas that would be within the one mile walking area of burke elementary you can see burke's pretty much in the square mile of the yellow current boundaries and then the blue boundaries are the current boundaries of houston so you can kind of see a triangle shape of families that live in the houston area that if we move the their school to burke elementary would be within that one mile walking distance and then to the north area in this blue area which is basically houston elementary to the north and a little bit to the east and west of houston elementary would be what would be considered the the bussing zone in our draft here and this just is an example of a proposed route that could work for the busing of students from that northern area of currently houston elementary to their new school at burke elementary when we're talking about one mile from the school is that when milo's the crow flies are we taking into account that students would have to you know have a pathway through right and it might take you know it's not just a mile as the crow flies good question it is the the pattern that they would have to walk so that's one mile of of walking is what we look at not the way the crow flies because we know some students might live only a half mile away but yet it would be a whole mile in terms of walking so that's why we've looked at that all right thank you so to review the timeline too that we're really right in the midst of it last week we had three community meetings one at each school of houston elementary burke elementary and neily traditional academy tonight we're here before you going over the proposed changes and i'll be summarizing the feedback from those community meetings as well as the online and then as we've shared with the community on the postcards and throughout all the emails and communication that the governing board is scheduled to vote on these proposed changes at the regularly scheduled board meeting on march 30th and the community can continue to leave us feedback via the district website that whole area with all of this information there is on our website it's a campus changes is in the upper right-hand corner of our main district page and that has lots of information including information about the traditional academy frequently asked questions this this presentation from the community meetings as well and then one of the things too is we will review the district website oh i've already shared that information about the different things that are offered on that website and of course this is just as important too so if the proposed changes are made on march 30th there's a lot of different steps then that go into the the next steps if these proposed changes one of the main things is we will of course make sure there's ongoing communication to the affected families in these three school communities via the district level and as as well as the school level and then in april um we would have to have the houston families make a choice of whether or not they're going to attend burke or nearly traditional academy and of course one of the things we want to do is give them as much information as possible to make an informed decision so we will schedule some informational sessions and tours at both burke elementary and neely to offer those houston parents some decision making process and then we'll also too like i shared give houston staff the top priority on any open positions at burke or neely and for that matter across gps we might have some houston staff that live in the far east or south areas and southern areas of the district and might choose if they could be at a school closer to their home as well too and opportunities for the new families to visit the schools and one of the things that we get asked too of course is you know houston's been in existence from 1987 to the current and so one of the things that we will ensure at the houston site in the main hallway is that there would be an area display case honoring houston elementary as it was from 1987 to 2021 and i can tell you too that the burke and neely principals and staff are truly dedicated to making the houston staff and still students feel welcome at each of their schools as well too we saw that with their visits to the houston staff but they really want to make the houston community feel like they are part of their communities so the community feedback that we've received from both online and those three evening meetings last week i have summarized here to date online there's been 28 comments or pieces of feedback given online um and they all can be summarized in these bullet points one of them is we've seen several in favor of the move from neely to the houston campus request to ensure that the houston staff and students are taken care of which we've we've talked ensured that they will they've also asked what will class sizes look like at burke and neely with this change and we've shared that we would still utilize the same staffing ratios that we do at the elementary level from kindergarten through sixth grade to ensure that and the one unique thing about neely is we have a little bit more control there because it is a non-boundary school and so currently we've wait listed all of any families that are new to neil that are new to neely for the upcoming school year to make sure that we have more than enough room for any houston families that would want to join us and then we would fill in those additional families if we have room um concerns over traffic management if neely moves to houston and we've talked a little bit about that neely is a large school it's a large school at its current location as well too and so any of our large schools we're always managing traffic and we feel like we have a pretty good plan in place and we will meet with the town of gilbert here in the coming weeks to see if they have any additional feedback or ideas the one thing you can say though is that current site of houston it's one of our best schools in terms of access because it sits where you can literally exit it in all four directions you can go to the north to baseline the south to guadalupe the east to lindsay and the west to gilbert road and we don't have any other elementary with quite that easy level of access as it does with the half-mile streets running through what areas of houston boundaries will have busing to burke and so we've responded to those families with our proposed bus routes and maps knowing those are our drafts it'll take into account to where the bus stops are of where the kids are clustered at as well for burke elementary and of course the safety of the students walking along burke street that's walking north and south along burke street as well as crossing the intersection at burke street and guadalupe road and we'll have a crossing guard there it's not the only one by all means that we have a crossing guard at an intersection we have several other schools greenfield elementary is one example where we have several hundred students that the canal just behind greenfield elementary that use the traffic light with the assistance of crossing guards jason we we put a um the 15 mile an hour um signs there on guadalupe before and after school in addition to the crossing guard yeah uh it won't be necessarily 15 miles per hour because the requirement usually is not at an intersection but the good thing is they're already 35 mile per hour lights there yeah so those will be in place people don't pay attention to it that you know right years ago when they they used to have two crossing guards on the big major streets has that been a thought yes and we do have that on i can tell you at greenfield elementary and highland park elementary that cross elliot and record road we do have two crossing guards to get each lane of traffic as well too one other question um you know uh how does the traffic to gilbert classical academy impact this and what are the time differences between robert classical academy and an elementary school where houston is so gilbert classical academy like our high school starts at 7 30 a.m and nearly traditional or at the houston site would begin at 8 10 a.m so that that negates that and then in the afternoon gca is out at 2 20 and the elementary schools are out at 2 55.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i think 5000 is fine and i you know i think i i have understanding my fiduciary responsibility i want to know what's going on so our internal protocol is even checks i i think i made a comment to carol today i reviewed a 11 check and on mileage so it's part of a slew of check when we cut all the checks every couple of weeks uh the finance office gets it to bin vin reviews it signs it that is sent to me too and i didn't want just the report i get the detail level report so i know who the checks cut to and what purpose the check you know was cut so um i think we have pretty tight controls here in internally uh and as adam said it's audited externally as well so i'm really comfortable with this if it's just a matter of changing titles in language so all right so the next item is uh paying for goods and services again this there's a theme this evening that we're updating things uh so this is again a a change in title so these are you know the invoice approvals i just have a quick question the second to sign the supervisor of fiscal transportation services is that who is is that then or also now um the assistant superintendent uh that's coming through all right let me just review this again i'm sorry that's right receiving sure i want to get back down in this budget it's correct gibbons is the supervisor of fiscal transportation okay so there is somebody that holds that position yeah so in in absence you know if neither vinder i were available to make payments um this is like tim's succession chart we have uh marlene would be the first assigned person to sign off and then greg givens would be the second got it okay thank you yep just to put names to titles here any other questions on this one i'm uh fine on this one nope if there's another policy right below that one too all right all right thank you for pointing that out um so we don't have a payroll clerk anymore that position is called the payroll supervisor now or it has been actually for a long time certainly well after 1996 you know around this 96 last time this was audited so so we're just changing again the titles there okay all right sounds good um paying for goods and services again invoice is approved by vin and again this is what i was talking about kind of that tiered approval process so the department responsible for the purchase first sets the approval forward uh so an individual within the department makes a request the department supervisor uh approves it and then it goes to to vin if it's more than five thousand dollars it comes to me so this is kind of that that tiered process do you still use uh inc signatures or do you approve within an accounting system we use the munis accounting system so it's a digital sign off everybody has a unique user id and password it's very secure and uh so been once been like for example approves it in his queue i get an email automatically generated that i have to approve it um so i would log in and do that so again you know just changing from clerk to supervisor and from management personnel to chief operating officer carol do you remember when vin's title changed that was probably like eight years ago i think about that time yeah seven or eight years ago it was after i started on the board so right and i'm in my eighth year so it was like right around yeah let's say it was probably about seven eight years ago yeah now this is a regulation so it doesn't require a vote just something to make a note of when we go through the nomination process at the end of the night at the end of this section i guess but the um so we've added different components to this accident which will be immediately reported to the building principal or department manager so oftentimes um [Music] you know like the director of special ed or transportation coordinator will be notified of of uh school accidents off of premises and then we're just adding that component those individuals also have to you know execute the the plan as we typically would and ultimately you know the copies of accident reports are forwarded to now the chief operating officer and reports um you know in coordination with workers comp need to be provided to the chief operating officer rather than the director of management so again this is approved in 96 just updating it now jeff um when it when it says chief operating officer so that means that everything literally goes to vin it's not like vin's designee or something it's it's literally vin yeah it gets all this and then he you know assigned it to however it gets filed or tracked or whatever yes okay yeah so i mean uh ben has a tremendous amount of responsibility i mean i know we've had conversations as a full board before about that there's not um we don't have a cadre of people in central office um like some districts do we we really invest at the classroom level to the greatest extent possible but it means vin puts eyes on a lot of things um that then you know like you said get disseminated out or delegated out okay so again that's just a regulation this is the last policy for review uh in terms of moving forward for a change uh this is the student transportation insurance each year [Music] we require and right now we have dat cow that the company is required to file with the board certificates insurance attesting to coverage so each year dacco files that within to provide you know proof of insurance for our buses which makes sense so we're just updating that from the original 96 was a good year for policy apparently yeah yeah tim yeah one quick question on the um with regard to vin stepping back for a second with regards to vin getting accident reports um just so i would think that in some situations he would probably notify an attorney is that attorney would that attorney basically always be floyd and then floyd represents his firm yeah cause i'm thinking he's a labor attorney not right yeah good question i mean basically um i can jump out of presentation mode here for a second but we deal with different firms um floyd oversees really most of our labor stuff uh his colleague in that firm bertram and moses they uh that person um they have a couple of different specialists that we deal with it's one of the benefits of dealing with a firm of that size that there's a diversity of talent that we can call on somebody for special education related stuff which is this is why it's significantly uh advantageous to go with a firm rather than to hire our one attorney for the district um because we just don't have the diversity of knowledge with one individual that we get using the firm so there's that component when we have accidents where insurance comes into play or if somebody were to file civil suit against the district for some any reason then where our insurance carrier is notified and the carrier assigns a firm to represent them and us and so you know sometimes that's um floyd's office it could be in an employee matter um but it's it's rare uh usually they assign another firm okay so outside of accidents most of the work goes to burch and moses correct okay okay yeah we we generally don't hire i mean i can in my five years i think we've um used in another firm once for a second opinion on a matter but we generally go through birch and moses but we also will consult depending on the issue i don't want to leave cave out of this they have a legal representation that supports boards with policy uh creation and revision so you know sometimes we'll control them as well thank you that's just part of our enrollment fee in cave they don't bill us hourly or anything for that work all right sure so that's um our review of first policy readings and we have a few items for discussion this evening uh i'll share the screen again now so everybody can see what we're working on the first is um something that i know you know tim had asked to discuss um and adam i think you have an update kind of where we are in this and how it fits into the state and everything do you want to share that um sure um uh tony and i had been in discussions or had been uh discussing with our local legislators um uh and letting them know that um or asking them to advocate for us uh a change to the foia law so that we could continue to have these uh google meetings um especially for subcommittee meetings um where uh in the past it's just been basically uh minutes where now you can you know a citizen can view the entire meeting um and it's in its tape without um a huge bur a huge administrative burden uh to anyone well except for mike of course uh who sets everything up for us but um that's still it seems at least to me and i i've never set one up myself it seems a lot easier to be able to do this and have to physically meet in a room set up all the mics and cameras and everything to be able to sort of do the same thing which we would do in the uh council chambers uh for our business meetings um so we we asked to advocate uh a change for that and uh they said that the legislature is looking at that during this session um so there there could be changes um going forward um so as far as this uh bylaw change goes um i i just wanted to i just wanted to put it up there so that we could so i could at least publicly discuss that we're in the works of having the actual hopefully having the actual law changed uh so that we could can do this going forward yeah i know that's something that you know tim has advocated for and i think we've all seen the benefits of you know being able to participate remotely in terms of not just our own convenience but as adam said uh community access and community participation um so that we this is this uh item here was kind of a cousin to that overall process which is allowing an individual board member to uh petition to participate remotely and i think as we discussed that last time you know it it wasn't something that the group just really wanted to engage in at that time so we kind of tabled it and in light of the fact that you know as adam just mentioned there could be a legislative change yeah i think it probably makes sense to continue to just table it and see what happens uh in hartford plus there seems to be a question of for this particular bylaw allowing a um a an individual member to participate that if the um governor's executive orders were to expire i think we would be in violation of foia by having a member participate remotely correct well we only if we had everybody doing it if we have an individual doing it they by law right now an individual could participate by phone but there are very um rigid uh guidelines for how that individual must participate uh and i think when we looked at it last time it was a little bit of pandora's box so let's just see what happens with uh the legislative session and then you know if we feel like there's a real desire to come back to allowing an individual an individual periodically if you recall we were talking about well what if i travel like once every three months that's different than if i want to participate remotely every week it just we started to go down this rabbit's hole and decided to table it and just see what what shook out i mean that was what i want to say like three months ago we were talking about that four months yeah a while back but yeah so for me i'm just you know i just wanted to at least say that on the record that we're working to have the law changed um but until then i think i i mean for me anyway i'm okay at least i guess tabling it although we had tabled it already but to remain it keep it tabled keep it table yeah yeah untable it that's right it's in the ether and it's out there and we can revisit it yeah yeah definitely it's too complicated at this moment because just by i read it again today there's probably like five or six things i'd want to change to it if we were to make it actual practice right for me anyway and you know yeah no exactly yeah tim go ahead thanks adam uh yeah i'm totally comfortable you know waiting on this with the executive order current you know still in place and hopefully knock on wood something that'll be able to end in the not so distant future um i i am a believer you know for the public who does watch it i am a believer that uh in-person meetings are the best option um but i also think it would be uh you know that in the past year things have changed dramatically and i do think there's an expectation on the part of the public that they that there is some sort of uh online participation is perfectly uh appropriate so what i'm what i what i'm thinking i i'm okay i understand the administrative burden at least to some extent that there is an administrative burden uh having the in-person meetings i would like to have the option for members to participate remotely even if the executive order ends and one other thing i think that's really important just for people who you know it's difficult for them to make meetings um say they have a nighttime job as an example or something like that uh this could uh help them participate uh the other thing that crossed my mind just in the past week as i was thinking about this is members of the public participating you know i think the reality is that committee meetings generally don't get a lot of attendees but i do think that people would be interested in watching online and one thing that i was thinking about is you know let's say there's only going to be one two three people who want to participate would it be possible for us to let them participate remotely and not have to leave their house and you know drive to hummuston as an example uh i think if it was more than say three people that want to participate then we're probably talking about a meeting an unusual committee meeting where we're going to get a bunch of people there and then that it would just be administratively difficult to do anything like that but i would like it if we could add if we could allow um members of the public to participate at least in committee meetings i don't know how it would work out for a board meeting where you could end up having a lot of people or any of our meetings of the whole whenever you have a seven person like a budget meeting might be a finance committee meeting officially but we know we're gonna get a lot of people there even though it's officially a finance committee meeting i just think it'd be i think it would be nice if we could allow people to participate remotely in our committee meetings that generally have low attendance anyway so with that i'm done and i'm happy to wait and see what happens with the executive order and with the legislature although i guess i do have one question adam did you get any sense we are the land of steady habits uh did you get any sense that there actually could be movement on on this because frankly i mean call me call me a cynic but i just i just don't see something happening yeah well you know it depends i mean we uh spoke to them a few weeks ago so i don't know what their legislative schedule is i don't know you know how that works uh we can follow up though and see if it's if it's still alive or not and then i guess my question is does ritter want it to happen or not right because we're not the only school board that was you know you know in line here to advocate there's there's you know more than just us you know so i want to just be clear on this i don't think it's just school boards i think it's regular people you know just you know out of the three million people in connecticut a lot of them are just saying this is something that can be done so that's it i mean it's certainly uh you know if uh in 2019 this it may have been like a wow how much equipment we're gonna have to buy to do all this which we actually had that conversation and now it's like well just open your laptop and here you are and yeah and now everyone can watch whatever they want whenever they want since it can because i don't even think we knew it could be on youtube before 2019 maybe we did but i mean now we all know it's on youtube you know you could post meetings like that yeah we just you know created our youtube channel this past year and we did a quite a bit leading up to the pandemic to make ourselves more accessible online but all right so moving on to school attendance areas i'll present screen [Music] again uh basically uh we just wanted to take a quick look at this for a couple of reasons in terms of you know where are people uh where do people live as we start to talk about uh in the school modernization committee meetings uh redistricting and the possibility of that that may you know come along and how is that policy uh how does it influence where students attend school right now so basically you know when we look at um educational programming and we're trying to you know optimize the use of our facilities we consider obviously the safety of students first and foremost and student educational lead what programs are housed there i know you're aware of some of the specialized programs we have it you know elementary schools in particular where you might only have access to a program within a specific building uh optimal use of the facilities residential patterns if they built a new um a new you know massive complex on one part of town that really impacted our our enrollment then you know would be incumbent upon me to initiate with you uh uh restructuring of our our enrollment balance our redistricting i guess so i wanted to highlight this here where we have attendance areas for the district but people can file an attendance area waiver so they will usually contact carol after you know speaking to their principal and saying you know i would like to attend doolittle even though i live in norton or vice versa and we do permit that um after reviewing these items here to make sure that you know first is this safe whatever you know are there is this meeting the students educational needs etc and then the family must provide transportation for their child because we don't have buses that jump between residential areas and this this is really an issue for k through six you know seven eight everybody in the town goes to the one school nine through 12 the same so this is really an issue that we see at the elementary level i'll tell you the most frequent frequent request i receive is that i have a child who receives services at darcy school or at highland school let's say and can the sibling attend that school and so you know we we typically approve those requests but i just wanted to review this with you particularly in light of the conversations we're having about redistricting and i think that these things here are uh powerful considerations as we look at redistricting and i know that you know that's what slr which was formerly myeloma thinks about as well when when we're talking about redistricting so um are there any questions around this whole you know um policy and how it's enforced um for me um my first question was uh in real i guess relation to special programs i guess specifically special education programs um just thinking like um in the uh under the umbrella of redistricting like we know that there are um at least so it seemed to me like there's uh like a more specialized program at doolittle and at highland um and if uh redistricting were to occur how this policy doesn't specifically address that um and so is that does that fall under like when you're because i know like what from what we've heard from presentations that consistency is very important um is i guess is that following their educational need like if you know there's a movement of student population how does that work is that under your discretion or or like it's your soul discretion or is there a committee or you know what i mean i don't know yeah no it's not a nice whole discretion and basically what we do is identify if there is a specialized program that a child attends now are the specialized programs are uh identified through a ppt process a planning and placement team process so an individualized education plan is written for a child that indicates that this child needs this sort of supports and services they you know kind of do not pass go they don't go through this sort of superintendent review process they immediately um are able to attend that building where the the program is offered regardless of where they live that doesn't even come through my office this is um like almost like i was saying before the sibling of that child now the family is like well it'd be nice if both kids went to the same school um so i can provide transportation for my other child to go there is that okay is the request and then we review it and we say well right now there are 32 kids in the in the fifth grade class i'm sorry i can't accommodate that or yes that's okay um and you know i will say typically uh we do approve that we do approve those requests the challenge is becoming as our enrollment at the elementary schools in particular increases um then you know we we are gonna have more difficulty with that um so the for example i got a request about can my kindergartner uh out of district attend darcy school well this year because of enrollment that they live in let's say highland right but that they have a sibling that that's going to darcy can that my kindergarten child go there too and the question you know typically would be yeah we can make that happen but this year if you recall we're moving a number of uh sections from darcy to doolittle because we just don't have the space to accommodate it at darcy anymore so these are considerations that we make uh in terms of approving them and the one other area that i neglected to mention that's pretty typical is an in-town move so my fourth grader at uh norton has been there forever you know but we just moved to chapman is it okay if they stay in fifth and sixth grade at it doodle i think i used doolittle or was it norton i don't know at the school that they were in and i say sure if you're going to provide transportation because adam i think you mentioned before we want to have that continuity for a child um and so if it's a year or two at that old school if the parents willing to provide transportation we permitted um okay so i i guess it's like a pandora's box but so let's say there's redistricting theoretically yeah and then all of a sudden uh you get a hundred requests for a parent you know from parents not wanting to have their kids go into the new redistricted area sure what happens then because this policy doesn't really say anything about that well it says that you know the superintendent has discretion so i'm afraid that in that scenario we're not going to be able to accommodate 100 people you know quests that says i'm sorry but that's not gonna work right okay unfortunately with that number i mean one of the scenarios for a new elementary school had 40 percent redistricting um i you know you think about the number of with 2500 uh k-6 students 40 is about a little more than a thousand so there's no way we can accommodate that right because i'm sure it would happen yeah um and then lastly um there seem to be a lot about um the the not the denial process as far as from if you're out of district let's say you know the the move you left town but you know you know you'd want your channel yeah that's more than the next policy oh okay all right i'm sorry it's actually great you know it's a great segue uh to non-resident attendance and so i'll present screen on that um and there are several elements in this that i just kind of wanted to hit upon and um the first element is i remember maybe my first year as superintendent having a council member expressed concern about you know this person from out of town drops their child off at a bus stop every day and if the if an individual is not living in town um then you know we pursue that and carol will send them a letter indicating here are the things you need to provide to prove that you're living here and if they don't then we can charge tuition um and we're you know sometimes we've even gone as far as hiring a security officer a private investigator to confirm residency because it is a big deal and you know the members of our community pay taxes to educate their children and not people from out of town unless there are special circumstances and so this policy here outlines what some of those special circumstances may be so for example uh non-resident attendance without tuition and this also you know gives the superintendent discretion to identify you know to really read into the situation and determine what's going on i mean we've had things where families were victims of crime and had to relocate and um you know the student had been through incredible trauma and all right so it was more than a marking period but you know if you're going to provide transportation will allow your child to attend until things stabilize or whatever so life has so many different variables that we you know have to have some flexibility and so you know if a family moves from the district after the year begins a parent can request that the child complete the marking period which happens periodically and you know i i'm generally pretty flexible with that um but it goes back to the last policy you know what what is this is there any sort of safety issue security issue is there anything else going on is there the space available you know is the you know is the the transportation there in those cases yeah so it's that's kind of the checks that we go through to determine what's appropriate here um if the family has firm plans to move into the district before the school year uh maybe your your house is being constructed and i'm supposed to close on october 3rd it can i start the year at the school if i provide transportation i live in in wallingford or someplace else is that okay then yes we we permit that sort of thing and these are examples these are not requirements um but they're examples so a 12th grade student wishes to complete his or her education in the district then generally we permit that sort of stuff but you cannot you know just um drop your child off at cheshire high every day if you live in another town and expect that you know it's okay for them to go to school there every night um now some of the uh unique uh wrinkles in this uh for example exchange students we work with uh you know non enduring non-pandemics uh agencies that support a child being uh enough from another country resident and a guest of a family in cheshire and having been high school principal that's a great experience for everybody involved so those students are permitted by the superintendent and we monitor how many students it would be and things like that and of course you know vaccinations and all that are are required um so then there's that component there's a non-resident attendance with tuition component which allows if class sizes permit the superintendent to allow a student to attend cheshire public schools with tuition this is different than open choice open choice is a state facilitated program to increase diversity equity and inclusion and you know that we annually discuss open choice and we certainly welcome students and the state pays us a lump sum with bonuses if we exceed x number of students in a school and so and it's really beneficial for all of our students this is different than that so this is i live in southington but i'd really like to attend norton if the superintendent reviews the that criteria in the last uh policy and determines that there's adequate seating this policy permits the superintendent to say okay base you have to pay what the board tuition is and yes your child can attend norton school this year so that's that's really what this addresses now historically that has been kind of a nightmare uh dating back to before my time as a superintendent and that you know times have changed significantly um over the last you know 10 years and so we haven't permitted people to attend with tuition the biggest problem was the they would just stop paying and now you're in a position where you know you're evicting a child from a class it's it's obviously not great for kids it becomes uh it can become a significant burden for us as a school system as well chasing down people for money we're not a collection agency we're not equipped to do that so that's that's the primary reason we hadn't done it historically however like i said times have changed and i've consulted with other districts who do um permit tuition just today i was talking to craig cook the superintendent madison and they have been able to accept some tuition students now i'm you know i'm not recommending a change in the in the policy however i want to let you know that i'm considering um kind of changing how we address this at least for the 21-22 school year for a couple of different reasons i as you may know sacred heart in waterbury closed recently so there are tuition students out there looking for high school i wouldn't recommend um really pursuing this at the elementary as you know where we're facing growing enrollments there at the high school however i think i may want to consider opening up a lottery for like 10 seats and i've sought legal counsel on how to draft that contract and it's other districts have done it and one of the the you know concerns i had was the cost you know so we set a tuition at x dollars and if the individual student uh required services for you know academic enrichment or other services that exceeded that dollar amount um what how do school districts handle that and there are you know contracts and it's permissible to build that into the contract that if a child receives services or avails themselves to services beyond the cost of the tuition so for example sparky wants to play a sport all right well i paid my tuition however this is a cost beyond tuition therefore you have to pay the participation fee sparky wants to park on campus that's fine but you pay that in addition to the tuition so just some examples of where costs would exceed you know typical tuition and you know if if we set the tuition at our per-pupil expenditure which is roughly seventeen thousand dollars and we open it up to 10 seats on the lottery system this isn't we can't uh screen students so it's still the public school criteria so we can't say yeah you know we're just not a fan of you not that we would but you know you would have to open it up to x number seats and if we have 10 people that's a hundred and seventy thousand dollar budget offset and so i i think it's worth consideration given the fact that um financially i i think it you know tuition at this point would help offset a 5.2 budget year i think that there's a demand that is unique to the period in time uh and would be relatively short-lived for existing students from sacred heart waterbury or others that may have that interest and that may include our employees if you look at the next component down that we can't offer this to employees of the district or people that want to attend um cheshire high school but i i wouldn't i would probably set a number of seats at each grade level and i i would be very meticulous about that process this is an initial conversation that i could elaborate more at our next business meeting um but it's just something i'm considering and i i wanted to make sure that not that again it's no change in policy um but it is a change in how i enact the policy uh potentially and like i said i haven't finalized that yet but um you know this is something that i'm strongly considering and i you know i certainly respect your feedback catherine looks like you want to jump in yeah did it look like that um so with respect to like a lottery situation or really any i mean if a student comes into the district that has um special needs for example and we are charging them the you know regular per uh student cost the 17 000.
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