our students and our families and our teachers and our staff have shown incredible grace to us as a board in a district throughout this time and i want to honor and reciprocate that by hearing about and learning about what are their needs at this time so before reopening every school district locally that i've looked at has put out surveys about the return um to school for their students and some like natomas have also surveyed their staff for their needs and preferences so i'm just i'm curious about that i'm curious about uh why we haven't yet launched a survey most of these surveys run for two weeks they're heavily publicized and promoted by their districts um i'm just curious about why we haven't surveyed our family since september october and we're expecting that they're going to go back through their emails and update their preferences on that old survey and i also think we need to survey our teaching and classified staffs and i'm curious to know what our human resources reports for our staff who are at higher risk for severe illness or who have documented health concerns what options are we providing to them are we surveying them are we seeing what their needs are i think it's critical that we identify and support the staff who might be at higher risk for covet exposure that we provide them with options and if we haven't done this survey of families to see what their preferences are for returning this spring um and to see what are their learning loss needs uh then how are we acting in an informed way in a database way in in this effort so so and i think i'll cover three of those uh dr lee the first one is uh the survey you're correct our our educational model that we would come back and plan too we have continually put that out to people i agree with you we we i've almost sent that playbook in every email i've sent probably in lesson now am i thinking everyone's opening up and reading it maybe not if the board chooses to do this what our determination was we would do a blitz campaign with people to say here is the plan here's what plan 2 looks like please and i've actually asked and reached out to a lot of districts too most are sticking with the the plans the educational plans that they had created and then they're asking us families please go in some can use their student information systems we absolutely will do that we're not going to say oh you picked this find your old survey update it we will reach out to our community and say tell us what you want in fact um and you and i might have talked about this last week uh we i had put out in a message you guys you'll have an opportunity to select we had multiple school sites say hey scott people have made their call to school and and started to switch so we are 100 behind informing people once we get the dates we will continue to blitz that for them um to do that other than the program i haven't we haven't heard feedback to it to adjust that in any way so to the the months that we put into that would certainly delay any any opening now if we get back into it and we need to make adaptions again the benefits of a small district we can make adaptions pretty darn quick um surveying of the the teachers miss mason is on i know that she did survey the staff about coming back um and i'll probably misspeak but i believe about 17 of the um those surveyed and there's 220 teachers 17 said they they couldn't live with this plan i don't believe they gave reasons why it was kind of a yes or no um but also csea we haven't surveyed because most of those people most of our our cse workers are already back there we have about two-thirds that are currently working and the final point you brought up is actually 100 another concern of ours which we've addressed in any agreement with our teachers is most of the medical accommodations we've already we had as we prepared before to come back mr grimes met one-on-one and consulted with them through any medical accommodations absolutely we would ask that people refresh a lot of our medical exemptions came from a place of no vaccine being provided we've already had multiple people who had accommodation plans have said we can go ahead and pull that um mr grimes because i i've now received the vaccine and will receive the vaccine that's another key component of this plan is a bulk of our teachers were vaccinated last week they will before they come back in this model would have the second dose if they so choose and also a week or two of time after that second dose so they would be i mean knock on wood as protected as they could be but an ability we are and will be reaching out to our employees to say what accommodation today we had a person reach out wanting some more plexiglass mr diesen is already like yep i'm on it so i think you have three points i want to make sure i covered those at least for you before i move along yes and um on this slide um i do have um uh feedback about this um particular the the dates that are here yes um as i look at the metrics coming out of sacramento county we are still in purple tier um with 12 cases per day right now we have positivity rate of 4.7 and a 6.6 health equity measure metric rate the testing and surveillance measures for our communities of color in low income communities remain lagging and questionable so the actual county metrics may even be higher i really think that we don't have a crystal ball that tells us that the metrics will be good to go by march 22nd or april 6.
next slide okay so this slide shows actual average daily attendance versus funded average daily attendance typically school districts are funded on the greater of current year ada or prior year ada and if you guys will recall due to covid right now there's a hold harmless provision where we are going to be funded on our 1920 average daily attendance for and 21 22. so on this graph the bar is actual average daily attendance and the line is funded so you can see 1920 21 2021 and 21 22 will be funded in that straight line but then when we get to 22 23 we'll be funded on again the basic greater of current year or prior year so we're projecting kind of a funding class at that next slide okay so our major assumptions on this budget like we said local control funding formula which is our main unrestricted revenue source it's based on the state adopted budget which is the same base funding as 1920 the cola was zero as we talked about the funded ada will be based on the prior year the unduplicated students identified in targeted subgroups which are free reduced meals foster homeless and english learners that percentage is 50.70 and salaries and benefits reflect physician control as of february 15th so the latest and greatest information we did have additional certificated full-time equivalents added those were charged to cares act because they were added due to coven and those were primarily online teachers for oak bridge academy and some teachers taking additional sections and secondary because of the scheduling changes okay so here are the numbers a few things to look at here it's another slide with a lot of numbers on the unrestricted side the very first line is local control funding formula like i said that's the vast amount of unrestricted revenue that we receive another thing on the unrestricted side the first line of expenditures you can see that most of our money is spent on people that's very typical and if you go down to the bottom line we are basically break even for our unrestricted budget on the restricted side we're showing a change in fund balance of almost 3 million just a note about the restricted side though it's a little different it tends to go negative just because of the timing of grants it doesn't mean that we overspent on that side it just means that we had carryover in prior year that was spent this year so i will turn it over to jacqueline thanks murray all right so in front of you is i think a great little pie chart to look at our budget in totality so as marie pointed out in the previous slide it's a lot of numbers sometimes can be challenging to go through so in front of you is a pie chart that shows our entire budget so restricted and unrestricted and restricted expenditures and basically what it's showing is 84 of our entire budget essentially goes towards people right it's the salary and benefits associated with that um and then the remaining percentage goes for books and supplies furniture services pg e that kind of thing but then what we want to do is break it down to look at the unrestricted side as well as the special ed contribution because a large percentage of special ed program is funded from unrestricted dollars so when you break it down differently and look at it from this angle our salaries and benefits actually take up 89 of the budget and i will comment on this that that's actually slightly lower than what we've brought to you in prior years and that is a result of just reduced expenditures on the unrestricted side because when we started the year there were some positions that were not filled or there were parent aids that weren't filled because they didn't need extra assistance for yard duty at the elementary school so normally it's in the low 90 range so we're maybe off one or two percent but i just want to bring that to your attention so the other components of the budget um include transfers in from other funds so we do have a on our books a fund 41 which is a redevelopment agency pass-through fund which we do have three million dollars there that is transferred yes jaclyn back to the pie chart yes [Music] special education contribution is that what's funded over what we receive it is basically the local dollars that are added to the special ed funding from the state and federal government to make the program whole okay that was my question so three million dollars comes from that redevelopment agency pass-through fund as well as we are able to take three percent of our developer fee collection revenue and move that to our general fund to cover some of the administrative processes of collecting those fees so it's just over three million dollars that's coming in from other funds that will go into our general fund we do have a transfer out which essentially is a contribution to our nutrition services program of 468 000 and then i lean to your point on contributions to restricted programs so we do have a 15.7 million dollar contribution to our special ed program this year in totality our special ed program is about 27 million to give you a frame of reference we do we are required to contribute three percent of our total expenditures to our routine restricted maintenance account that's 4.5 million luckily three million of that is listed at the very top that we do get from for fund 41.
so if we can have the slides be brought up on screen thank you very much the presentation is in three parts the first part will be an overview of the work the department has been engaged around commercial enterprises second part will be an update on where we currently are and the third part will be the next steps to further the work on commercial enterprises next slide please this is an overview of the work department has been engaged in the form of a timeline and some of this has been already covered in the previous presentation so i just like to highlight some of the updates in this timeline one of them is out of the work group that was mentioned earlier two legislative legislative bills were created sb2263 and sb eight seven 2487 were introduced in the 2020 legislative session sb2263 would have amended hrs 302 8-420 and added commercial enterprise to that statute and for sb2487 it would have amended the 3028-448 to make commercial enterprise activities exempt from chapter 76 78 89 103 and 103d which has to do with civil service employment contracts and the procurement code and also out of that work group was the implementation of a pilot project with a high school and that pre-work was done in january and in march covet came into play which interrupted the work but the department still was able to complete a draft guidance for the commercial enterprises that was done in july can we go to the next slide please so it's the status of where we are now and so we have the draft guidance it still needs to be finalized but we anticipate it will be ready for implementation and next school year we also identified an account where commercial enterprise revenue could be held and the department is just beginning work on looking at an electronic transaction system which would be able to support commercial enterprises in the future and so as a summary of where we are now next slide please however we know there's still more work to do and for the immediate next steps in fourth quarter next quarter we plan to identify a high school to implement a pilot project for commercial enterprises we also again with the guidance finalize the guidance distribute it next school year hold informational sessions and we anticipate possible several commercial enterprise projects by the end of next year and what we realize from the work group conversations is that commercial enterprises will vary in degree some very complex and so we know there will be challenges but we are committed to look at the resources put in the structures necessary so that schools can implement commercial enterprises as they envision and then complete some presentation on updates thank you is that the end of the presentation dan yes that is okay uh members are there any questions then uh on your slide that says where where we are now the account that's been identified to use for revenue generate generated from the commercial enterprises says the department is seeking approval for electronic customer transactions can you explain that who are we um waiting approval from and how long have we been waiting yeah so i can defer to brian howard respond to that oh okay brian hi good afternoon senator um brian hello cfo the the account that's being referred to would be the school level agriculture and industrial pursuits account that was uh renamed a couple years ago it was previously referred to as lahainaluda boarding facilities fund so that's that's our account s 301 authorized in statute by 302 a 420 um so which allows all net profits arising from industrial pursuits to to be deposited into this account so that's that's where the money can flow through now in regards to the online processing component of it we only very recently it's just been a few weeks now i've been working with a vendor who is standing up credit card processing for one of our schools waipahu community school for adults um it's been incredibly productive quick work um we we were amazed at how quickly it's it's coming together um we we approached that not not quite as a pilot project but but as sort of a test project and and we're looking to to work with wyatt i um and i was just i just mentioned that to diesel just yesterday that that would be they would be our next um his project to work on what's very promising about this uh vendor is that that paypal processing is is part of the the array of servicing that they can support now i sorry but we are in the midst of a major replacement of our financial management systems so for the time being uh it wouldn't be electronic deposit into our accounts we we're not gonna we're still in the process of building that system it'll be handled manually by check and as we once we get pasco live uh in july with our new system we will then be looking for to make the connections um so that it would be uh more seamless or integrated so that's that's just a quick update on where we are with with electronic processing credit card processing uh payments um as far as the approval comment um the the vendor that we're using it's is has a long standing pre-existing contract with the state and it involves an approval process that goes through a committee that's associated with ets so i think that's that's why we've been able to move so quickly because it's an existing solution so brian while you are doing the pilot project at with waianae high school and it will not be an electronic process as you explained and uh so where will the checks be deposited so so we will the payment would be online and that would be electronic it would be able to accept credit cards and we've been informed that paypal is an option that can be used and we would like to engage um in the in the coming weeks with the waianae folks and get moving on that the statement of work and whatnot it's the the monthly deposits of the proceeds would be coming in in the form of a check from the credit card processor and be deposited into our accounts in the future you know we can we can set it up with uh through through the automated clearing house and and electronic processing straight into our financial management system and when is that pilot program starting well like i'm sorry i use the wrong term it's not really a pilot it's just a further expansion or a roll out of of online processing and as soon as we get set with waipahu community school for adults which should be within within days so we think within a couple of weeks we should be starting conversations or being able to start conversations with with the folks out in waianae and seeing how we can connect that vendor with with their needs so the um you know the process of how the school receives the funding and how often they have to turn it into the department of education that's all been set up already and actually waipahu high school is a a great model because they have their own credit union on on campus so anyway we're looking at monthly monthly deposits um and and you know what's exciting is is there's possibility there's there's kind of two components to this there's the storefront component and and i don't know what exactly and how i would or why and i would want to set up a storefront online if that's what they want or they just want the ability to do credit card processing or paypal payments but it's it's we would want to look at those two possible options and with that vendor those are both within the wheelhouse of that vendor so has there been a curriculum put forward or written for for this process um you know to um so that the other uh schools that are interested in in doing this can jump on board or who who does who's going to do the training and who's going to uh you know put up the guidelines is that with the doe or is it with candy and ann and the group that has started this edu prize information well since my mic is is live i jump in and say i'm looking at the office of fiscal services role is to provide the infrastructure in order for these processes to happen i would like to look to cte um to set up the curriculum associated with that yes it would be the expansion of the guidance document draft that we already have and it would be somewhat of a living document continuing to be expanded as these new structures get into place and providing information for schools to access that dan do you have a copy of that uh curriculum or draft or what whatever you're calling it yes we can yeah that we could have i'd appreciate that thank you um so the implementation program that you say is for fall and winter of 2021 is prob it looks like it's starting sooner than that is that am i correct are you guys ready to go brian dan yes uh so our fourth quarter we would like to identify his high school to get started with as a pilot uh basically to kick off where we left off in january january of 2020 2021 yes earlier in uh so in 2020 we had started a pilot and then we were going to pick that up pick up where we left off again starting fourth quarter next quarter so um in in the rollout you know um principal hayashi rattled off i don't know i couldn't keep up with him but i want to say 15 20 of schools that are already participating so um have they been given any update or information to get them ready to um you know be ready to get on board once you guys are ready to receive uh everything that they want to be doing no not at this time we did not provide all of the academy schools the same information we're anticipating next school year the guidance would be finalized and at that time would make that available to all the high schools members does anyone have questions i know that when we heard the original bill that senator kim had some concerns um senator kim do you still have questions related to i i think it was the payment or or somebody other than students receiving pay for this i know it's been uh like three years or so but that was uh one of the things and you're muted donna sorry chair you have a pretty good memory but i'd like to do whatever must have been that vaccination i had did the opposite to me it got my money um i think the presentation was was pretty good very informative um how are you folks um overseeing to make sure and to make checks to see that you know the payments and everything is going where it's supposed to do you do like random checks or um i mean you know just on a day-to-day basis i know you're not going to be overlooking everything but at some point you have to make some kind of checks right i know that was one of the conversations that really was drawn out in the work group and post work group conversation is the balance of monitoring and security accountability versus flexibility and freedom and expediting the financial process and that was some of what took a while until we came to the determination of this one account that we could use but i think brian helen can expand on that more yeah i i just lead in by saying this is something the department has wanted to support it it's aligned with the promise plan um it's the conversation we started a couple years ago and as diesa had mentioned earlier about two types of methods there's the state system our financial management system which would rely on on the account that i use that profit i'm sorry the the agriculture and industrial pursuits if using that account which would run through our financial management systems all the checks and balances associated with that system would be in play the alternative was mentioned is our student activity funds which are funds held outside the state treasury which are slightly more flexible or there is more flexibility and those are like i said held outside of the state treasury that's the alternative but i don't think that the current statute that authorizes that student activity fund is is broad enough to to fully capture i think the eventual build out of these commercial enterprises as the statute currently exists being that that statute which is 302 a 1130 speaks about those funds are to be used for department may assess and collect special fees and charges from students for co-curricular activities i think what we're talking about is is becoming a co-curricular activity these commercial enterprises it's aligned or supporting curricular curriculum um but that's a little narrow because we're only talking about money collected or charged against students and i think what these programs are looking to do is broader than that and seeking to be able to to collect funds from from outside just students so that may be an area that that could use some some adjustment as we go down this path broadening of that authorization to use the local school accounts which which are more flexible than having to run funding through our financial management system as far as when you disperse the funds out of the account how many people have access to do that through financial management system it should be one log on per school there might be two or three front office staff in schools that may be sharing accounts or access but it's it's there should be one access one log on okay what have you guys done to uh to eliminate the possibility or the temptation for funds being embezzled i mean we've had that situation happen in past where certain people that were in charge were siphoning out some monies and not being not finding out these kinds of things until down the road i mean have those safeguards been put into place i think those those safeguards and procedures were already in place whether they were followed or not there's been an issue an internal audit has been very active within in going through and reviewing the schools you're talking about dual controls and and signing and reviewing um the records before signing off on payments as lisa was mentioning about the principal having to sign off on the purchase orders and that's a big part of our dual control okay and that's why the original question was there are like checks every now and then just to because like you said you know the rules and and procedures are there for whether people are following it so is there some kind of ways that there's some random random checks that they are in fact following what they're supposed to be doing and that's real life that's real life as well right i mean that happens in any business that to you know try to eliminate any kind of temptation for people that's handling the monies that they're not going to be able to siphon it off in any way kind of you know um point fingers at anybody obviously but i think those are real life lessons that students need to learn right and and i think that that online electronic payments will actually help make reduce risk i think when we're taking and handling cash that that is a huge worry right so so we're moving in in the right direction but i would i would point out we do have supports not only between the the sauces at the schools and the principals but also our complex area business managers our casuals and as i mentioned earlier internal audit functions to collide and correct and review and audit these local school balances and school activities okay thank you thank you for that brian and i'm i will await you know the draft from dan because i think in following up on senator kemp's concern you know now with what financial institutions are able to do uh you know electronically is that you know some of you may get notices every time some you know um a check or you know a payment something is removed from your from your account and i think um something should be in place whereas the people who are actually um authorized to to to do the transaction should be separate from the person that actually gets the the accounting or the notification that a transaction has occurred so there are at least two people in the know all the time that something is going out of the account so that's just a recommendation but i look forward to see uh dan's draft um i wanted to ask um either ann or candy if you're still on are have you guys reviewed the draft or have you guys made recommendations or any um amendments to the draft you're um i would like to see a copy of the is that the the guidance document yes i would like to also um we could if i could see a copy um and work with you dan on that i i'm not familiar with that i did not know what existed okay well you know um dan and and brian the draft was done in july 2020 and that was eight months ago so i think um i'd appreciate it if they were more um i guess energy involved in trying to keep everybody on board and keep this rolling because uh you know the original bill has been i guess four years in the making and this is a real um very impressive uh curriculum for for our young people and um you know just going through this uh the slides etc i'm uh actually um very impressed with you know the how far this has come since i i first heard about it and since we introduced the bill but you know i know i know we've you know been through the pandemic and we're still in it but but still that's a long time if there is a working group out there that's trying to help move this along uh they should be included um and and receiving the information that you guys have already prepared then so i would appreciate it if you get copies out to whoever the working group is and i don't know who who they all are so that we can continue to move forward on this um and yes and i guess at that point we'll be able to know whether or not uh you're you're working uh uh your guidance draft includes um the recommendations that were made um you know by the working group back you know i don't know how long ago it was you know and we had a um the recommendations from the senate bills 2263 and 2487 that were introduced to address the working groups considerations and um i'm not sure if those were in there because i haven't seen it either and and i wouldn't know any way without uh you know having uh candy and anne you know look at it and address it too so the sooner the better dan thank you thank you we will follow up on that immediately i appreciate that so um so with with all of the um the information and the the number of schools involved in this where where are we going next i mean i guess the draft is an important the guidance draft is an important document for us to be reviewing and moving forward because if you want to i think your timeline your timeline ends at october 2020 on this uh review that you did dance so i'm not sure if anything's happened after that but if we are going to make uh this ready for uh the next school year that's just a few months away so i wanted to know what what are the plans and is there um a timeline on that as as to when this is given to the schools to help them roll out the curriculum yes we can create a new timeline um including the pilot for next quarter and then all of the follow-up actions that's going to be attached to that including the distribution of the guidance document in its finalized form and we can share that with you definitely so this question is probably uh for for brian as well as is dan and uh ann and candy you can jump in if you have any comments but um knowing that you have this many schools involved and it seems it's rolling along and just waiting for written guidance which was done eight months ago but they haven't seen yet is it possible to allow schools that are ready to implement a pilot to to do so and use what they find as startup to influence the the review whether it's over the summer or you know getting ready for that that rollout because i'm sure you're still going to have to tweak it but i'm sitting i'm thinking the schools are all there waiting to do something but not knowing uh you know if they have the approval so if you know you may have guidance but you know without the does stamp it's hard for them to move forward but are you okay with the school the these uh edu prizes moving forward in a way that they can they can start learning rather than put a halt to everything and not knowing if they can start or not yeah so one of the i know the basic requirements for all of the various models was the financial component of where these revenues could be stored and since we identified that uh but again as um as highlight has mentioned that's within the doe financial system however schools with activities that are ready to engage in the commercial enterprise aspect of it and if that account is meets their needs to get started with where they are then that could be implemented fairly quickly comments brian um if if setting up through our existing financial management systems it they could they could set that up today that's not a problem um if looking to use the local school account um you folks might want to be looking at house bill 1298 when it comes over the the non-general fund and possibly amending or expanding the use of the local school account language that that's that section 302 a one one three zero um that that would be pro i think that'd be a good vehicle to to make that kind of amendment in uh and and we could work with with um and or anyone uh to craft some language that would work okay members any further questions any uh closing comments from candy and and miss mahi please okay you know again thank you oh she's frozen sir and and you're frozen um okay i'll jump in and i think she's i think she's still talking we'll let her get through no you go ahead no i just wanted to thank thank everybody i think this is the first time we've been able to get our legislators and cte as well as the principals to rock star principles that i think the schools are going to lead i think it's really important right now i can't emphasize enough how critical we're when a small window of opportunity to make this happen quickly with already what's been started what's in place and as we open schools because we're going to open schools and we all know it's going to be very different so this is the opportunity to get really creative out of the box and move our kids into the 21st century they're going to be learning differently and especially with these budget cuts if this is the opportunity to get our kids to create their own income to bring it right back into their program we can't miss the vote on this so you know thank you for everybody who's been working really hard on this i know it's not easy um dan your position up there with cte is i i'm sure has been a lot and through the pandemic but thank you for what you and um brian is at i don't yeah brian has have been doing and um you know i'm here to help if you need any assistance um i'm retired but i am working probably harder than i have while i was working so please contact me but thank you senator kidani especially senator morkano kim for leading this charge we really appreciate this we got to get this done let's do this thank you thank you i you know i'm um very very enthused about this program and um i think not too long ago we talked about financial literacy and all of that and i think this would really help to bring that to all of the students in the schools even if they're not in any one of these um school hawaii academy pilots that that you're doing with these uh edu prize programs but just the fact that this will help them to become literate you know financially literate you know this gives them their resources to help their their classmates and it gives the school a resource already because you will have something to work with so i do appreciate the the diligence you candy and anne and all the rest of you principal hayashi disa i think this is something that is really really needed for our students and i really appreciate the hard work that you guys have done brian and dan and superintendent who i know is not there now but thank you very much uh for continuing your work and i look forward to getting the documents and having the working group with candian and review it and get back to you as soon as possible so that we can move forward and be ready to go with it in the the first quarter of the next school year thank you members no further uh questions this hearing is adjourned mahalo you
so welcome to our students and staff i'll turn it over to you at this time i can go first uh thank you and dr robertosi commissioners and clinton residents um thank you for having me here tonight um like dr robert as you mentioned i'm a fourth grade teacher at school 13 in clifton i'm also a clifton resident i've moved here over 14 years ago and two of my children also attend clifton public schools one of them is actually going to be going to woodrow wilson next year so he's really looking forward to that and my second one is going to become a second grader at school 13.
this caucus is responsible for the attempt to add portuguese language programs to the advanced placement curriculum the portuguese all flow influence and the one that is focused today is the political impact on the south coast area with high numbers of portuguese population the portuguese would be considered a powerful contributor to the community's politics but observers say the portuguese population could do so much better at their political engagement where 50 percent of portuguese americans become u.s citizen of that 50 percent there are 50 newly citizens that are registered to vote and of the 50 percent of the red server voting they participate in voting the lack of portuguese participation can be seen at local levels as in new bedford where there are only a few portuguese american mayors one of them is george rogers he was the grandson of a portuguese immigrant in 1970. to help civic participation of the portuguese descent a non-partisan group called the portuguese american citizens project was put together the project ran from 1999 to 2016 and involving itself with 52 religious groups and social welfare organizations a woman who lives in fall river stated voting in my church went up 40 percent to 72 percent thanks to the campaign even though this campaign helped the civic participation in 2016 the portuguese american citizen project was terminated by the board of directors this project took resources away that needed to be redistributed but even though the portuguese american citizens project is no longer in fact today it is still important to be promoting civic participation as we live in the portuguese influence community where portuguese americans want their voice to be heard you can vote for a politician that will understand and see the importance of portuguese culture we see the influence portuguese culture has on our community encouraging a strong civic participation not only benefits portuguese americans but the whole community and then to ensure a better future and that is how we are moving forward one step at a time [Applause] thank you emma that was wonderful so glad that we're talking about portuguese culture okay our next presenter is sean allen sean is a sophomore here at dartmouth high school originally from colorado and georgia sean brought his love of music international politics and science here to dartmouth he plays both the guitar and the viola sean has a passion for space and he hopes to one day make that a part of his career when he becomes an aerospace engineer please welcome sean allen as he presents heartless headlines [Music] in the 21st century there's never been a more important time to stay informed now one of the biggest issues recently is the fact that there's so many different viewpoints to take into account therefore it's hard to determine which sides are biased and which sides are more reasonable to look at informative so today i want to address some of these concerns and hopefully help everybody become a better reader so here i have three examples of some news articles and opinion pieces and i want everybody to kind of look at them and review them and try to pick out which one of these has bias here we have a article from the washington post regarding amazon's work ethics we have a article from fox news talking about trump's response to the january capital riots as well as a article talking about the benefits of going vegan from the vegan society now bias is any personal affiliation with one side of an argument that is not associated with the evidence and reasoning that is being presented so whether it be at a grocery store just talking to somebody or at a heated debate on your political or your on your dinner table vices all around us and it's very important that we recognize this so we can help combat it to become a more fair argument and make the world a better place in general now almost as important as bias itself is identifying how we can find it in things so there's multiple forms and types of bias so i think that going over them will help all of us identify these so one common type of bias is funding bias any modern media or even small time forms of communication require some outside investment in order to stay afloat these things require money and in most cases the money for these companies is going to come from large corporations whether it be entertainment companies like disney or at t that own all kinds of different entertainment companies or outside investors like the shell oil company and amazon the problem with this is that because there's so many places that money comes from these people who fund them uh have some influence over what data is going to come out of these and this can generate a problem as the news source while playing to stay informative is also playing to the roles of their owners oh sorry i flipped twice the next type of bias that i want to address is viewer bias so every form of information and media has always had an intended audience now this goes back to the 10th century you look at magna carta talking about how kings should respond to their own laws and even nowadays when you have things like fox news who appeals to a more conservative audience cnn appealing to more liberal having bias towards your audience is beneficial which is why it's so common when you address a certain audience over another one you have a more consistent viewer base however one problem with this is that if you address only a certain media base then you're going to uh intentionally exclude different sources of information to more put forth something that's more appealing to somebody people want to relate to one idea and when that happens companies are going to do that to get more views but then you lose truth personal bias now personal bias is a much more common type that we see outside of big media personal bias can be i mean i have personal advice over all kinds of ideas personal bias is not as threatening due to the fact that you can personal biases change and people who have personal bias always pretty much always express it as an opinion you know when you're talking about an idea or an issue and you have personal bias you're not going to tout that as fact however the problem is when you have people who are using personal bias while doing research these ideas can bleed into it and people are going to take an already determined point of view regardless of evidence now these types of bias are all important but it's also very important to see how these types of bias are put in how they employ these ideas with different tools so connotation and tone is super common to see now connotation is addressing any word with a positive or negative feeling in order to portray an opinion now connotation you'll see all times in books and stories but you'll see a lot in the news applying connotation gives informational pieces opinions but the problem is that when they have opinions they generally start to sway from truth and when you're trying to portray truth uh error we're trying to portray an opinion as truth it's not reliable and it's misinforming another type of tools that people use for bias is blatant lies now blatant lies are not as dangerous as certain other types do the fact that blatant lies are easily uh deniable when somebody's blatantly lying it's easy to determine that as it's not supported by evidence you know maintaining a reliability with your audience is very important and blatantly lying about this would damage that now an issue with blatant lying sort of comes up when it's not so blatant when you inlay lies within positive and true evidence it gives it a feeling of reliability which it wouldn't otherwise have and you see this all the time in news adding small lies to big true pieces creates a another point to bounce off of to push forth an opinion that seems like fact but it isn't and finally we have removal of context now arrow of context is so common to see because it's so useful removal of context is removing any type of background or outside information that would be relevant to putting a point forward now this can include cutting up quotes and pulling out certain words to change how somebody said something or change what they said even as well as just making somebody seem vilified based off something that they partially said but they weren't actually expressing themselves removal of context becomes so dangerous due to the fact that unlike the other two it's not opinionated and it isn't generally deniable removal of context when they have cut up pieces it's still true and the issue with that is that when it's true you can't tell sony that they're wrong for saying something just because they don't include background however if they remove context it gives it a bad tone and you can add reasoning to true evidence now i have some some more examples right here so i think we can help pick these apart and uh kind of see how this is used in common media here i have a article excerpt from a cnn health talking about the kova 19 vaccine um it's a good example of how they use connotation inside of article titles johnson johnson's covid19 vaccine gets the nod from the cdc uh getting the nod could be just portrayed as receives approval or pushed forth however adding the positive connotation of getting the nod appeals to the generally liberal and um uh industrial and um like political accepting groups uh that cnn applies to if you trust the institution then seeing positive connotation is going to be appealing to you because you can relate to that um now here i have aps from fox news um talking about also the covet vaccine however here you can see that they have used a quote from a non-factual piece catholic bishops are a piece of evidence however they are strictly opinionated as it's not it's not defensible uh like uh factually you know if you are catholic then you can look to quetzal catholic pastors and catholic bishops for guidance and for opinions that apply to you however this is not scientifically proven and because of that using it in a scientific context is dangerous it adds reliability to it to a subject that is not otherwise scientifically defensible now i want to come back to these first three articles we looked at earlier and point out some of the types that are being used here now right here we have the washington post talking about amazon both the washington post and amazon are owned by jeff bezos and you might notice that a lot of the articles about amazon are from the washington post now this is of course no accept or no unbelievability because of the fact that you know he owns both of them why wouldn't he talk about himself but the problem is a lot of these are mildly negative now this is what i like to call controllable criticism by applying a bad uh tone towards something that that you control you're already putting in your viewpoint people are going to take you as reliable because they can see facts for themselves you know it's undeniable that amazon has had a rough history with ethics and employee treatment but putting it in a negative tone gives reliability to something but you can still control how it's being said you can reduce the severity and redirect viewers eyes from other viewpoints as other news stations are not going to pitch in an idea that is already being thoroughly reviewed and here we have another article or the first article from fox news talking about trump's response to the capital this is what this is a good example of removal of context they are not incorrect in the fact that trump did say that he hated to see what unfold on january 6th however removing this from the context of other trump trump's quotes uh regarding the event might sway people's opinion uh over the actual history as he has sort of gone back and forth originally toting that he believed in their ideas but not their actions and finally we have the vegan society's article on veganism now they have personal bias as i think it's fair to assume that everybody who works for the vegan society is vegan uh they have a personal interest in getting people to come to their news source for search and veganism so they're not going to purposefully portray veganism in a negative light especially when they're touted as being reliable on the source um veganism is a group and people have an incentive to bring themselves in so is this true and are these real points yes however this is not the full argument um pieces like this should be taken as purely opinionated and not informative as all the points that are seen here are purely positive which doesn't mean that there isn't negative points on another side of the argument now i think it's important now that we recognize where bias is seen in media how we can combat this now the biggest thing that we can do is recognize the fact that everybody has bias no matter what form people are going to have their own opinions and that's going to influence how they take in data searching for different sources for one event can be extremely helpful in getting a more thorough and true recount of what happens to base your own opinion off of now we need to remember that new sources goals are not strictly to inform people they're to make money and because of that they're not going to put out ideas that are negatively impacting their station or their audience by by touting ideas that their directed audience or the people who review their articles and who fund their company don't like they're going to lose money they're going to lose viewers and that goes directly against their main incentive so by purposefully excluding opinion and biased recognizing where it is and removing it from information being able to pick apart reasoning and facts is super important to building your own case and each day if we choose to go to multiple sources we can become a better society and move forward in order to become more informed and fight misinformation that is how we move forward one step at a time thank you sean that was very informative and our last presenter for the cohort a day of our tedx dhs event are actually our first presenters back again so again we have grace george and sarah hartman grace is a senior here at dartmouth high school she was the co-founder of the science club and wants to study biology in college grace also enjoys reading a good romance novel and has a bit of an obsession with the bachelor franchise series sarah is a senior also here at dartmouth high school and is very involved in a variety of extracurricular activities she's a the other co-founder of the science club president of the key club president of the student council and captain of the math team additionally sarah is true president for her girl scouts troop and plays violin she loves to bake and play with her dog sarah and grace have chosen their topic because both believe that learning is more important than grades and that everything that they have learned can't be measured by a grade they want people to know that learning itself is fun so please welcome once again grace george and sarah hartman as they present what lies within the letter [Music] think for a moment what did you learn in the first five years of your life i know you're thinking probably not a lot all i did was sleep play and eat but actually a lot of those things you did during your play were learning one of my favorite memories of childhood was building sand capsules with my siblings and i didn't realize at the time but actually building those sand castles taught me a lot about basics of engineering and construction i remember in kindergarten when the firefighters came to visit and told us about fire safety those things they told us are so important to our life now i know to stop drop and roll and to use a pillowcase so i need a firefighter to reach me which could save my life if i ever get in that situation personally one of my favorite toys as a child was the little medical case that you can get and i remember that little plastic stethoscope i used to pretend to use it on my family although i couldn't hear the heartbeat i did learn about a heartbeat were you graded on these skills that you learned when you were a toddler no you were entirely self-motivated but did you learn certainly so now if we were able to learn without grades when we were a kid why do we have grades now well three of the main purposes of grades are evaluation communication and motivation so teachers use grades to see how their students are doing and they can have a lot of students to not do not too good on a particular question they can they know to reinforce it again and colleges use grades to see if you are a good fit academically for that school and grace also extrinsically motivates you which means you're motivated to get the good grades illegal study and do your work now while grades have some benefits such as a helping motivate and they help teachers and colleges see where you are they do have many cons graves enforce that learn test forget repeat method so basically you learn a unit you tested it and you forget about it and they know with all the pressure we have to get to learn it's really hard to remember what we learned before because we need to get that grade and grades can also be very impersonal alfred co alfie colin sorry who is a author and lecturer who writes about education interviewed some students teachers and students and he found out that a student named claire quoted that she felt that the first time she was giving a rubric she felt that her education was more for her grade and less for her grace also encouraged the fear of challenge and that same article by alfie cohn a teacher named mr robin said that when he noticed his students that when we delivered a project picked the easier project instead of taking the harder one even though challenge might teach them more they came about the grade and grades are also very inconsistent here is a picture comparing the seven point scale to the ten point scale so two students might get the same number grade but their letter grade would be different their port cards because of their school system and also teachers even in the same school teachers grow differently so students might have the same level of mastery in the same topic but they might get different grades because teachers grew differently and also methods like curving where a certain amount of students have to get at a certain amount of students have to get a b and so on what's that you're great it's not fair someone you know but what you know compared to others and as we all know grades have a bad take it bad to warn our physical and mental health child success which is a non-profit that works with schools did a study in five california high schools and they find out that 79 high schoolers said that grades are a main cause of stress 83 of high schoolers said that they have stress related health problems and one big problem that comes from the stress about grades is sleep deprivation i know there's times where i put my grades on my sleep and i'm going to read you a quote about a 9th grader in that article from channel success and when asked what they what they want their parents to know it's i'm not staying up late because i want to i know the consequences but my grades are more important than my health i'm not trying to make you upset all i want to do is sleep so we students know that sleep and are mentally important but sometimes with the pressure of grades get the best of us grades don't always measure learning the way that everyone learns best according to the american test anxiety association over a third of students experience moderate to high levels of test anxiety so that means that a student can understand the material perfectly well but due to test anxiety their grade doesn't reflect that everyone learns differently and our grades are all the same in addition grades don't even measure the qualities that you need for success according to a 2018 survey by ibm the main qualities that employers look for are the ability to be flexible the ability to manage your time collaborate with others and communicate effectively these types of skills aren't necessarily measured by grades your grades don't define who you are so grades don't only impact you they impact our entire country they impact your teachers your parents our mcat scores impact our school and our state and our grades reflect our entire country so if we have a society that is based off of grades what can we do right now as students we can focus on learning first so by that i mean forget about the grace for a second not forever just put them away for a second now next time you get a project try to take the more challenging topic because although it might be harder you might learn more from it and also our school justin stated this new universal retake policy for the whole school which you're privileged to have so take advantage of that and when you get your test back for the first time try to analyze it and see if you understand it even before the teacher gives a test back see if you understand it without that you're telling what to do and then if you feel you can truly do better and you learn more go ahead and do the retake i mean obviously do whatever you want but that's my advice not focusing on grades may actually leave lead to better grades um in an experiment that was done in the journal of personality and social psychology fifth grade students who are told that they weren't going to be graded on an article they read were able to learn more from that information they could retain the information longer and they had a greater conceptual understanding of the material in addition they had a greater interest and they felt less pressure than the students who were told that they were going to be graded so why focusing on grades when if you don't focus on grades you will learn more and you'll be happier so i know you might be thinking if i'm not focused on grades and i'm focused on learning what if i will never use a class in the future well the truth is you probably will use that class um think back to that survey the main quality that employers looked for in a person was adaptability every new class you take will give you a new perspective and you will learn to adapt to new material in addition other skills time management critical thinking communication these are all things that you can focus on and develop in any class you take if you focus on learning also things change college students 30 of college students change their major at least once and the average person works about 12 jobs in their career so even if you don't think you need to know about the structuring function of the mitochondria right now you might need to use that in one of your different 12 jobs so yeah so what we want to leave you with is judge write a learn outside of the classroom where you're not graded just like you did when you were little here the many ways to do this you can apply for internships whether it's at a lab or a store or basically any business you like try to reach out and apply you can also join clubs here at dartmouth high school we have the science club i know shameless self promo and in the science club or you can do your own independent projects or you can do that outside of a science club test talk to a teacher maybe do after school during a pace also read a book there are many books about many different topics i know most of you don't read but i guarantee you if you talk to a librarian or even just google something you can find a book you like and finally well we're all here for do a ted talk this has been a very enriching experiment experience i loved working with my best friend sarah and miss true and medusa and all of my other presenters to learn about and talk about topics that i care about and topics i didn't even know about and i hope you all do it next year according to educator edgar dale these types of learning experiences where we get to design our own experiments or do our own presentation will not only lead us to learn more but we can use what we learn in more impactful ways and by focusing on learning first because as ms true says learning is more important than life within the letter we as students can help the world move forward one step at a time thank you for listening to us again thank you [Applause] thank you grace okay so this actually is the conclusion of our cohort a presentation for today however before we um leave you obviously as you can tell this is a huge undertaking that involves a substantial amount of people and we'd like to spend a few minutes just saying thank you to all the people first to each of our presenters we are so proud of you so to grace george sarah hartman lavender bork jaffa hiroduno ryan aruda jaclyn midland emma fernandez fayza anchalova and sean allen thank you for reaching out to us and for working with us and for showing us how amazing you are thank you to mr peratti and peter chase obviously we couldn't have done this live streaming event without you sound was wonderful mr peratti is in the back helping us out as well thank you so much to our dhs tv media crew kaden lisa and jp kearney who have been behind the scenes working on all the stuff that i don't understand but they do thank goodness and to emma derek who is our unsung hero behind the scenes as well as our tech crew here helping us out and so certainly you know we obviously this is a huge huge group effort and we appreciate everything that you have all done thank you so much tomorrow we will be bringing you cohort b presentations with new topics and new students please use the cohort b live stream link to access each of these presentations tomorrow thank you for your support of tedxdhs we hope that you are inspired and enlightened in a new area of interest and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow on our second day of tedx dhs 2021 thank you [Music] you
all right so um really this just came out of i think what just ended up being an oversight i think president's day is really late next year and it was um sort of assumed that it would be 14th or i believe it was 15th actually but um but we were wrong so um any other sort of issues with uh the calendar no that was it thanks rosa i mean really that was a miscount on my end so thanks for sharing responsibility for that but that was really me bringing that to board to the board back in i think october um with the miscount on the mondays uh the way the weekends fell so um that's the adjustment um and that's really it that was the only thing okay so all in favor of this change thanks that's unanimous again minus jen i don't think she's back yet all right uh our next item is the 2122 budget this is just um an action item so um the the update for the public and for board members the board of selectmen voted two to one to reduce our budget by 140 000 at the moment i think we're going to dig into this and and try to figure out some options or or things that we're considering at the at the finance committee meeting i'm sure bob can sort of chime in on some of that um but that's that's the biggest update for the budget right now and just as a reminder we do have um a special meeting with the board of finance next tuesday um where we'll discuss this again and then on wednesday is the regular board of finance meeting where we won't be discussing next year's budget but certainly if they have any questions just related to process-wise we can do that there any questions on this all right so we can move on to the candlewood lake elementary school building project and there's actually a lot of really exciting updates the nbc met last night as you guys know that the project is in the bid phase and construction is about ready to start so all of the critical trade projects like site work structural steel things like that um have been awarded and ong is getting those contractors started um due to some really favorable bid conditions and some really aggressive bidding by these contractors the project i want to say is uh well within the established budget i want to put an emphasis on that without giving sort of a number that people are going to get stuck on because it's important to understand there's there's still placeholders in this budget it's still really early and there's other big packages that still have to go out like flooring plumbing drywall communications security hvac um so it's still too it's still really early but we um as a project are in a really really good spot so if you remember we the project grew in scope after referendum so um we had put some things as sort of alternates as sort of options to kind of see what would fit in the budget and what wouldn't and some of those things were really important like additional classrooms um you know our school population grew um well within this project sort of had as this project had moved along um but there's no need to go back to the voters for more money which is excellent or to reduce the scope of the project which is great too and in fact the contingency for this project has grown at this point by almost two million dollars but again just remember it's it's still pretty early but the really exciting news is that all of those alternates that we had talked about including the extra classrooms those aren't going to be a problem but the mbc also forwarded some other alternates to the first selectmen for approval so this is um we're able to upgrade the roofing material from a 20 to a 30 year warranty which is great considering the length of use we'll get out of it upgrading the faucets and toilets in the building to electrical or touchless and if you remember we had built into the design um an elevator with two like two elevator shafts but we were only able to put one at the moment one elevator car we're actually able to get in the two elevators so that's going to be great considering how many students we're going to have on that second level and it also includes the allowance for baseball fields and the removal of the portables at the middle school so all in all a lot of really good important um exciting stuff going on there's still a lot of permitting that has to go through and they're doing that right now and pretty soon the furniture and fixtures will be selected and there was actually one public comment from the meeting last night that requested that teachers be involved in selecting that furniture so i'm sure that tecton is gonna probably reach out to you again dr brill and and make sure that all the the furniture has uh input from teachers and staff who's gonna use it sure and that what's great about that rose is that's been part of our process right from the start i mean we we got the ed specs by working with you know different uh teacher groups throughout the process so that that's something uh natural to our process we always include our teachers uh they're an integral part of what we do um rosa do i have a moment to share a couple of items as well so so really exciting for everybody while we we're not ready to plan a groundbreaking project yet um it appears as though uh from last night's meeting that uh fencing and some machinery will be delivered and the fencing will start to be set up at the school um as of either march 12th or 13th uh next week so it's coming quick and to that end um i mentioned i think at the last meeting mrs labrashano had penned uh a notification letter to all the families and the the surrounding community of huckleberry so everybody knows that project starts that's a letter that will be signed by not only mrs labrizano but i have to thank dr pepsosky as well for their leadership and organizing uh the site with all the work that's going to be going on there and it'll be signed by the the two building administrators as well as myself and rosa so the families know that this is a joint project and um we're excited and i believe we're going to get that letter out uh the before this weekend to give everybody a heads up so there's mrs blabbershaw right there hello melissa um so we're really excited about i mean this is just incredible news and i just want to emphasize for anybody in the public who watches this back or is watching this live when rosa talks about the the scope of the project increased it didn't increase because we wanted it to increase and we were looking for more it increased because we had a significant change in enrollment um during the process of going through obtaining the financing for the project so it all happened simultaneously and maloney mcbroom uh did an additional conducted an additional uh assessment and and our population went up so getting those additional classrooms uh is incredible and so it's two per grade level essentially so having those uh additional classrooms which should give us the space we need um and especially as we've all been monitoring and paying attention with the pandemic and as we hear about the mass exodus from new york and brookfield being so close to new york um we need to pay close attention to that so thank you everyone all right any questions on the new school yeah go ahead debbie um you mentioned that there that now maybe there'd be room for an allowance for baseball fields there is so does that mean there's space on that property or are you saying it's an allowance toward another location for fields yeah it's uh money in the budget yeah so we don't know yet where that would be now i think they're gonna see but i don't i mean it won't be on the school site okay yeah and there's still discussion about the the the nabby road as possible but the other the other piece is putting the field on the whisk and earsight once we get the portables down so a lot of stuff still up in the air being discussed and talked through via the nbc and the designers all right anything else very exciting it is it really is all right so if there's nothing else we can move on to three main points i feel like this was such a quick meeting this is like a record i know um i think we should talk about the vaccine clinic set up for the teachers and staff [Music] yep and i think we should definitely talk about the candlewood lake elementary school project um i kind of would like to highlight the um webinars that gina wygonic has on the website and you know get some create some awareness of that i think it's a great thing the only other thing would be budget but i don't really feel like we have a whole lot of information new information to report yet no we don't yeah i mean that would if if we did the budget would really only be to sort of like i don't know i guess make more people aware of where we're at in the process but the update on the student around the counter that might be important we could either put it in three main points we definitely could if the board decides to do that but for sure uh lisa and i will get a school message out about that and get it posted regardless okay so maybe skip that one if everybody's gonna get an email on that so i like your idea debbie yeah i mean the webinars are for the for the families so i'll go i'll go to the site and see which ones are there um i saw one today come across about adhd and remote learning so i'll just details what's there okay sounds good great all right upcoming events okay um at center school read across america spirit week is ongoing this week the one school one book bingo kickoff is on monday march 8th tuesday march 9th is a pto meeting at 7 pm via zoom picture day is tuesday march 9th for in-person learners and thursday march 11th for remote learners um they're celebrating pi day on march 15th there is a remote learner pickup on march 17th wednesday and march 18th and 19th is early release for spring conferences huckleberry is also doing spirit week for read across america this week and this friday there is a virtual magic show sponsored by the pto at 6 30 pm via zoom and thursday and friday march 18th and 19th they also have early release for spring conferences at whiskenier we have the online book fair which is ongoing now through march 15th tuesday march 9th is early release for spring conferences tuesday march 9th is also picture retake day during school hours for in-person learners and from 12 to 2 for remote learners and at brookfield high school on tuesday march 9th is college and career explorations webinar for sophomores and juniors during ilt on the 11th thursday spring conferences there's an early release and on the 13th is the key club zoom-a-thon which i don't know if mr belinda wants to tell what exactly that is yeah i imagine i was going to get some level of questions about what the sorry about that what the key club zoom-a-thon is um it's it's essentially similar to what you would do for like a dance-a-thon where you get pledges um and basically staying on um you know one of the unique challenges for our students sometimes can be having their cameras on and staying present um during virtual learning and in general what this is is the idea is there's a pledge for a number of minutes or how long or hours that they'll stay on and do activities and things like that so it's a ways to raise money key club is connected to the kiwanis club it's a um it's a fundraiser for key club and service organizations so it's just a different way to try to raise money through uh the best thing i can call is a fun you know a different way to extend it so that's what that is okay anything else no other upcoming events right you're good that's it oh that's it all right well then uh this is it this probably is a record but uh without objection meeting is adjourned thanks everyone bye everyone good night good night hey everybody thank you you
um it looks promising but we we just don't know and if we've learned anything through this pandemic i hope it's that we should refrain from predicting dates um in january this board came together and we agreed to use red tier as the marker for our return to face-to-face instruction we're not in the rare red tier today and so i think it's a really dangerous prospect um for us to be considering dates it looks like it might happen numbers are charting downward um but even if those healthy uh equity quartile rates remain high in sac county and this is confirmation about the students that we serve sixty percent of our students in our district are people of color uh sixty-five percent of the students in this district are low-income community members they are being disproportionately affected by this virus and that's why i'm concerned about this rush back into in-person instruction even in the red tier when the community cases remain very high and the health equity metrics remain at unacceptable levels it's concerning to me i think it's something that we need to take great caution with um our low-income students and our students of color who are the majority of students in this district who we serve are at higher risk of exposure to and death from this virus and the emergent variants and um really it's you know are we an ideal situation no but at the same time i value the lives of students and communities we serve enough not to want to rush back to in-person instruction without the facilities and supplies we need without awareness of the needs and preferences for students um teaching and classified staff and without clarity about the logistics of our hybrid 2 learning plan which has actually changed significantly since last year i've downloaded hard copies of all of the uh documents and they have changed and been updated so we're not talking about the same plan we made months ago we truly are not dr lee do you think we don't care about the students is that what you're trying to say because they're of color i think you've got a lot of things about center school district nancy i said a statement about me not about our board so please lower your we're talking about red red tear because everybody is getting the vaccine we're not rushing into excuse me okay i i understand that this is a really volatile subject and there's a lot of passion and there's a lot of concern i i would just ask that first of all we all care about the kids we all care about the the lower income the social economic the racist race races and ethnicities we care about all of that and um just as an fyi the reason that the the blueprint for the state of california is changing tomorrow is specifically to incorporate vaccine equity which we've been working on at cdph for quite a while now and it is going to affect the lowest quartiles which is like the zip codes that have the lowest socioeconomic are the ones that are hardest hit and the vaccine distribution is going to be um changed to meet those needs so that part of it is being addressed outside of our district but just just keep in mind that not only has cdph which is california department of public health county public health this the cdc all of them have said that with these mitigation standards the evidence not just their opinion not just you know they think but the evidence has shown that it is safe to return so i never thought i would be arguing on that side of the argument but here's what i'm going to ask miss kelly yes if we could just actually let me finish what i was going to say and and then i will definitely give it to you if i just if we could just allow mr lear and mr jordan and mr grimes to complete their presentation write down your questions i i do understand that that maybe sometimes the question needs to happen right then and there but if we could wait a lot of these questions we have already talked about it um and and not talked about it in detail but i've asked all right i've asked superintendent leader to please be prepared to answer all of these questions so they are prepared to present to us tonight responses or information that should answer a good portion of everyone's questions so i'm just asking if you could please just wait until they finish their presentation then all of the board members will have opportunity to ask all the questions that they need to and then we will go to public as well so we have a lot of road ahead of us here in this conversation and a lot of information that needs to be disseminated so please let's just be respectful and and let them finish their presentation and then right after uh trustee pope sorry about that del rey no that's exactly what i was going to say let's hear the presentation and then have comment thank you miss molly that's exactly what i was going to say please thank you am i good to go yes please so so to briefly address the playbook question uh the playbook that was approved in july the elementary piece of it there were modifications based on feedback from the community the biggest one being parents kept reaching out to all the schools we do not want to lose our teachers we do not want to lose our teachers and so as a district we look through with our staff to try to figure out the best way to do that so that would be the modification that happened there were some tweaks along the way so i just want to point that out that yes we've continually worked to evolve based on feedback in input the the dates that are provided here march 29th or 5th would be our spring break uh then here as it states that we would look at tk6 continuing in-person model even if in the purple tier and then all 712 uh if we are could begin if we're in the red tier and again this this state does not currently allow for us to open 712 in the purple tier so we must be in the red tier and again as i mentioned it the the timing there would be uh it would be if as soon as we turn red which usually is a tuesday then the wednesday's the first day we would start back that monday and those grade levels is what we're recommending uh mr jordan i think we go on to mr grimes now to talk about the csp okay am i unmuted you hear me you are okay very good the csp is the covet safety plan and that consists of two separate documents these documents are submitted to the county department of health services and then they provide feedback to us and then any changes they'd like to see we make and then we submit that resubmit that to them as well as sending it to the the state department of public health and scoe sacramento county office education the two the two documents are the safety checklist this is a checklist to make sure we've covered all the areas to do our very best to maintain a safe and healthy environment at school and in the workplace and it consists of several different items and then the second part of the cst csp is the covid prevention program or cpp basically the cpp is the background for what that checklist is checking off what does it mean if we're checking off that we have sufficient ppe for example what does it mean that that we're following up with cases on campus we check these things off and the cpp kind of tells us okay we have to this this and this and this to make sure that we can check that off on the checklist so you put those two together and that then becomes our kovid safety plan we we've uh talked in and presented these in parent advisory committee meetings the district advisory council and the district english learner advisory council as well as brought this forward with both cse and cuta recently and we've submitted it to the county and just as i was getting on for this meeting we finally got our our uh information back there a couple areas they'd like us to add a little more information so in in the morning i'll actually be on phone with the county public health and we'll work those um areas out and then we will resubmit and have hopefully our plan to go from there so let me go through the components of the cpp which relates to the the different areas of the checklist as well um okay mike if you go the next i think i've kind of covered the next uh slide as well mike are you there i'm still seeing the same the safety checklist covered prevention program is it not going forward it's not moving i've gone like five slides forward is it not showing try unsharing your screen and then re-sharing yeah it must have locked up give me a second and then next the next uh slide is i've talked about already that it is approved by the local health department and then we file it with the county office education and the state school safety team part of california state department of public health so that's where it is filed after it's approved by the county and then uh we'll go over the different areas covered by our csp yep am i back up can you see it you're back up on slide one keep going keep going one more all right thank you mike um okay one of the requirements for our csp is that we publicly post it on our district website before opening and so that will be done i believe we have a draft up now but we will have that done as soon as we get the finalized one from the county the second is we need um procedures and policies for the identification evaluation and correction of covid19 hazards and so included in our uh killwood prevention program are inspection forms follow-up procedures for for how we will identify and make corrections of any coven hazards and there's a lot in here so i am kind of just touching you know the the main topic so as we go through if you have any specific questions on any topic go ahead and let me know and we can spend a little more time on that then a big bulk of this program is the control of cover 19 hazards some of the areas we need to address and are addressed in our plan have to do with the entrance the ingress egress movement among students and staff to avoid contact or mixing of cohorts so that is outlined how we plan to do that um the stable group structures and this has to do with how we keep students who are in the same group together and keep from from mixing and who is in those groups so in the tk through sixth we have grade level cohorts at the secondary level uh we have actually two groups because they do mix classes between periods and they're with different students the cohort is considered the group of students on campus that day so we have two cohorts as they rotate either morning afternoon or day to day okay next mike some more of the control uh areas of covert hazards physical dense distancing practices were required to create oh if you can if you can go back one mike oh no no no we're here i'm sorry excuse me physical distancing practices um just the procedures to follow to keep the students within the physical um social distancing guidelines face coverings guidelines on the types of face coverings one thing i did receive from the county this evening was some updated guidelines so we'll incorporated those as as you know once we submit something or plan something things change and so they have some new updated guidelines so we'll put those into our plan engineering controls this has to do with the physical plant what we can do to to control any covert hazards in the classroom having to do with uh airflow in classrooms and offices the physical setup of classrooms where the desks go for example to maximize the spacing between students things like that have to do with the engineering controls another area that we have covered is the cleaning and disinfecting what is the access to supplies what are the protocols when when do we disinfect certain areas what do we need to do what does that mean to disinfect how is that accomplished information to employees of where they can access supplies and so forth for cleaning okay mike additional hazards that we have mitigated for we have information on the personal protective equipment and that it is not to be shared and we need to provide the supplies and materials for each individual in some cases that can't be done but to the extent possible it is it is done and we have really no sharing of materials and then we do have procedures in place if and when an item has to be shared we try to mitigate that to the extent possible by having everyone with their own computer and on keyboard for example but some things may be shared like doorknobs and that sort of thing so we have you know protocols for handling that hand sanitizing supplies and protocols even to the extent of how to properly wash your hands we have information on that in the cpp and then hand sanitizer use and proper use and misuse of that sort of thing as well and procedures for that and then this sufficiency of supply and proper use of ppe including that the the school in the district will provide ppe for all employees if in individual employees and students would like to bring their own they may but the district will provide that for them but if they do bring their own it needs to meet certain criteria and standards outlined uh by the state for for use of that ppe what about kids masks yes i believe so and point of order uh the president did call for us to hold our questions until the end of this presentation yay okay should i i will continue then all right uh mike next slide thank you some of the other areas um other than the other than control of covet hazards have to do with our facilities response to a covet case or exposure in the workplace so we've included in our program procedures for cleaning and disinfecting again when how what we need to do to cover that to make maintain a clean environment investigating responding to covet cases so in addition to the facility if we have someone who's been exposed or someone who tests positive or has those symptoms on our campus we have forms that we have created that will help guide us through our investigation to make sure that we do a full investigation and cover every item and every area we need to look into to to not skip over anything we also have specific guidelines for quarantine and isolation isolation being uh for those who have actually have cova quarantine for those who have been exposed to covet and there are specific guidelines we've been given for that and they're included in our cpp mike thank you system for communicating all this you know a lot of it the program is only as good as people know and are aware and can implement and um so we have information in our cpp about the procedures for reporting of hazards the hold harmless for reporting of hazards that sort of thing we have procedures for employees who would request an interactive process we've implemented that already this past fall and we'll be doing that again in the coming weeks as the vaccines have now become available interactive process for those who may not know has to do with reasonable accommodations for employees that may have a higher susceptibility to either getting covered or becoming seriously ill due to covid and so we're working with those individuals to come up with an accommodation plan that both meets their needs to the extent possible and meets the needs of the district in educating the students we provided as part of this plan and this program resources for surveillance testing and resources now we are adding for response testing we've purchased and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of response testing kits so that we can test on-site anyone who comes with symptoms that possibly could be covered we can do a rapid 10-15 minute test um that could possibly give a false positive but they say does not give a false negative so if it's negative that's a good thing if it is positive then we will follow that up with the the other testing that we get back in a 24-hour period then we have procedures in place for how to report and what needs to be reported to sacramento county public health based on when we have positive results procedures and forms for contact tracing contact tracing has to do with uh those who are exposed at our school site or on on campus at the work site through close contact with someone who has coveted and the our our extent of contact tracing is just within the work site within the school site public health department in the county helps us with others if if someone had an exposure at a party over the weekend or we're at a family gathering or something like that they will contact those close con contacts and do the contact tracing but we follow through with anyone that they would have had a close contact with um in the workplace and so we've had quite a bit of that early on not so much lately as the numbers have dropped and then we have protocols for communicating with staff and parents when we have situations at the site uh if someone in the classroom tests positive for covid if a co-worker has has uh has symptoms we have protocols for wendeson letters out timelines for those letters and templates from the county health department on those letters okay mike okay part of this has to do with our training and we have done some of this training through the fall including proper use of disinfectant and so forth as we come back on part of our purpose in having staff arrive before students is to provide time to do any additional training that needs to happen go over new procedures new policies and let staff become a little familiar with that and uh make sure we have those down before we bring students on additional trainings having to do with the proper use of disinfectants and ppe symptoms of cova 19 to look for in the proper responses and those sort of things we have a training roster as one of the um appendices to this that we have people sign in to verify the training that we've that they've received okay the part of our cpp also includes exclusion of cover 19 cases what is our procedure for if we have to exclude someone from the site due to positive for covet or exposure so we have those procedures to limit the transmission at work and at school we have procedures for communicating with those who are exposed symptomatic positive we have the contact tracing in places i've already gone over and then the communicating we we have communicated with our staff and it's part of the cpp as well options for paid and other leaves so under certain conditions there are grids that if you have this or this what do i do so they kind of have a guideline and then if i have to be off because of covid or exposure to covid what are my options for leaves and so forth as as i think has been discussed by the board uh previously um there was in the cares act there was an additional two weeks of paid leave um for of paid sickly for employees who were either exposed to and had to quarantine or had covet tested positive for covet 19.
so it's about 1.5 million of local dollars that are going towards that maintenance account um and then this year we did reserve we did receive a project serve grant um in a nominal amount about 8 400 that was to reimburse us for some extra extra hours worked by staff during the campfire so i think it's really important that when we present this budget to you for second interim that we compare it to what we presented in december for first interim so overall if you look to the very bottom line we got better by 1.7 million that bottom right corner 188 188 000 is related to revenue so our unduplicated percentage did get slightly better as we refined our data through calpads between first interim and second interim and we were notified by the state that the rate for lottery was increased as well on the expenditure side really the big piece is the classified salaries so there were positions that we had in the budget at first term because we were unsure of what the school schedule would look like second semester that we were able to either not fill or reduce or we've also had trouble filling positions too which has been a challenge in this covet era and then second to the bottom line transfers and contributions we were able to reduce our special ed program by about 500 000 from first interim and then our three because our overall budget is smaller we contribute less to our routine restricted maintenance account so that's decreased by 300 000.
so um i hope i will be able to help answer some of your questions today thanks magdalena megan and dana would you uh want to introduce yourselves sure hi i'm megan graziano um as dr robert jose said i am a freshman biology teacher over at clifton high school um again i'm here to help in any way possible answer the questions that the public may have about how these changes could help improve education for our students thanks megan dana all right well i'd like to also say thank you for having me it is a privilege and an honor to be here um i have been i'm a cliff tonight i've been born raised and i kind of say going nowhere but i'm very proud of that fact i went to school 13 and i was a graduate of woodrow wilson as well as clifton high school um i've been teaching at school 12 in clifton for 20 years and i do have two children in the district um my son is a fifth grader at school 16 um and my daughter is a freshman she is actually at depaul um but i would like to just throw out to the community and to all of our everybody listening that this project is an investment in our homes and an investment in our community and i really urge you to ask your questions and to get your information because i do think we would be doing our students and our town a disservice if we didn't take the opportunity to do these things now a lot of these things that we're hearing about are improvements that should have been done a long time ago and clifton has missed many opportunities to make these improvements so i'm happy to be a part of this and i hope i hope that you hear what we're saying and i hope that you do support this um so again anything that you have to say or any questions you have um let us let us answer them for you so thank you thank you dana miriam hi my name is madam chabrill i've been in the district for about i believe eight years i've seen the good i've seen the bad i've seen it all i've been to school 12 i'm a former student of ccms so i see the potential in these schools and it's kind of hard for residents who haven't been in the school district and the school system to see what were experiences because they're on the outside looking in but we're here to tell you how it is on the outside we're here to tell you that this is what's going on and we as a community can come together and make it better for not only me myself and my staff and and you know everybody in the school district but the future generations to come as well so just ask your gen your just general questions any specific questions and we're just here to answer them um also i just want to say thank you mr um dr artosi for having me here and thank you everybody for giving me this opportunity it is a pleasure and it's great to see miss murdock she was actually my teacher in fifth grade so i'm pretty psyched about that as well well miriam it's it's me and and the board of education who will be thanking you for um just being a bright light in our district i've said that about you since i first met you and you just bring a presence a very strong presence and we're happy to hear from you we want to hear your perspective so let me introduce max rubin and then we'll get on to the questions max good evening everyone my name is max rubin i'm the senior representative to the board of education so you guys probably have seen me at all the board of ed meetings i speak at all the board of ed meetings and let the district know what's going on from a student's perspective i'm also the president of the clifton student union where we consistently listen to student voices allow students to speak their minds and see what we can do about their various complaints or things that they see that could be better in the district and we bring that up to the administration and the board of ed and we work together to make clifton high school and the clifton district in general just a better place for everyone so i've been in the clifton school district for 13 years um i started in kindergarten at school nine and spent six years at school number nine um and then i spent three years at christopher columbus and now i'm a senior at clifton high school very proud senior of clifton high school and the biggest reason i wanted to come to this meeting tonight isn't because isn't to complain about clifton and just say oh this needs to be better this needs to be better this needs to be better it's because i've had a fantastic experience in my 13 years at in the clifton school district and if i didn't have a fantastic experience if i didn't enjoy the time i've spent in the clifton school district i wouldn't care enough to come tonight because i'm a senior i'm going to be gone in a few months i'm not going to see any of these improvements but i do care about the future generations because i know that if all these schools get the improvements that they need the amazing staff and the amazing students can continue to learn at a better pace with better qualities in each of their classrooms if i didn't have a great experience in clifton high school and in all of my clifton school experience at school 9 ccms i probably wouldn't have come tonight i would have said you know what i'm not going to be there why should i care but i do care because the staff and students are so special and they deserve the best possible facilities the best possible fields classrooms bathrooms everything just to make their lives as easy and as great as possible so yeah well said max thank you very much i'm going to turn it over to the questions now mr rose hi thank you everyone so here's a question i went to school when there was no air conditioning and that was fine why should schools be air-conditioned now okay well i'm gonna take that one as a teacher in the district because um we see it all the time in schools you know what we want the children to do when they come to school is to perform their absolute best we want them to work hard we want them to stay engaged we want them to stay focused and then in those hot months we put them in the worst possible scenario to do that so it's kind of like an oxymoron it's a double-edged sword how can we expect the best from them when we're not giving them the best environment um so that's kind of my point i'm sure everybody else can contribute to something there i can add to it um that also once the allergy season hits uh we see kids that come into school with red puffy eyes sniffles some of them have like almost barking coughs and it's just not a situation that's conducive to conductive to paying attention in class so air conditioning will definitely help solve that kind of problem i think that's an excellent perspective from our teachers uh i would just like to add that there is a security piece to the hvac system so and first it's not just i would remind the community it's not just air conditioning it's new heating ventilation and air conditioning brand new state-of-the-art efficient hvac systems but it's also a security issue driving by schools in in may and june and all the windows are open um we make our front entrances uh secure like fort knox but it's not gonna help if every classroom window is open on the first floor if somebody really wants to get in so you know new hvac systems also allow us to keep our windows closed and locked do any of the students want to uh touch on that uh um yeah i would like to add um so as a student of the high school for four years um there are certain classrooms in certain areas of the building that have very very poor air conditioning and it's really distracting to learn because we're so focused on how hot we are and how much we want to just be out of the classroom that we don't have the right mindset to learn um specifically the east wing of the high school is a big example it's the newest wing and it looks really nice but the air conditioning especially on the upper floors is very very poor and whenever i'm in a classroom there it's very hard to focus so it takes away from like uh miss murdoch said it takes away from the learning experience um also the point of well when i was in school when i was younger i didn't have air conditioning why do kids nowadays need air conditioning well i mean that argument basically you're saying we shouldn't evolve as our technology and as facilities evolve over time we should evolve with it we shouldn't just stay in the same place for decades just because it worked one time in the 1800s people traveled by horseback and that worked out fine enough back then but we have cars nowadays so we don't travel on horseback everywhere we drive places because that technology is available to us we have computers now so which are more efficient than right bringing 10 different notebooks to write in each class it's the same thing with air conditioning back then yeah we didn't have air conditioning but they made it work but now that we have the technology we would be silly not to use it especially when we have this opportunity to get so many funds to easily get this air conditioning so yeah that's my two cents thanks max do we have another question mr rose yes it's more of a s question statement but perhaps you like to address it do the sinks drain and do the toilets flush that's all we need for public school bathrooms i can comment on that really quickly um a lot of our bathroom facilities don't work on a regular basis so in the bathroom i happen to teach up on the third floor in east wing we have one bathroom per floor and oftentimes when we send a student out to the bathroom the bathroom on that particular floor may be closed that could cause a student to have to travel down to a completely different wing just to use the bathroom facilities and not only is that inconvenient and you want it to be sterile and sanitary as well but now they're missing academic time you know there's nothing worse than you know a student missing 20 minutes worth of class time because they had to wait on a line that was 15 students long just to use the bathroom you know we would love nothing more than to be able to have updated facilities just so our students could spend more time in the classroom engaged in academic work rather than trying to use the bathroom thanks mrs craziano excellent points anyone else i can actually add on to that um i've had i teach fourth grade and um in the past i had so many students that were too terrified to even go to the bathroom because they were afraid that the locks are not going to work or because they were telling each other scary stories and i mean we're talking about 10 year olds but nope it's actually happening in elementary schools they tell each other scary stories because our bathrooms are so outdated and as a homeowner you know when my bathroom becomes outdated what do i do i update it right so um many of our buildings like our architects mentioned that they're almost 100 years old so i think it's time to definitely get them upgraded for our kid's sake so that they don't have to complain you know i don't want to go to the bathroom i'm going to go to the nurse tell her that my tummy hurts and then go home because i'm too scared or too uncomfortable using them and those are actually true stories so i thank you i don't um i think miriam was gonna say something mr rose certainly i think mariam you're muted or frozen so if you had a comment did you want to unmute yourself miriam acting up can you guys hear me okay now we can yes now you're fine thank you um i'm sorry okay back on track but i can definitely relate to that because i remember being in elementary school and i was taller than the stall itself so i would feel uncomfortable going into the bathroom because i felt like i was invading other people's space and i didn't want to look at them when i was entering the stall so um i would usually hold it in until i went home and i don't know if anybody experiences that but that's pretty painful you know going probably six seven hours a day holding it in to go home and then you know release yourself but i just feel like if it flushes if the sink works we shouldn't settle for less you know settle for the basics i feel like if we have the opportunity to better our facilities we should definitely take it ma'am i heard you mentioned one time as a former student of columbus that oftentimes the bathrooms were in disrepair and you would have to travel to get to a different bathroom can you just talk about that experience a little bit just like miss graziano said um when a bathroom isn't working definitely i'd find myself walking across the school or going to different floors to try and find a bathroom that works and when i get there what do i find i found a big line so that probably takes 20 minutes of my class time where i could have spent that time learning about science or langston hughes or anything like that but i was spending that time trying to get to the bathroom and most times i'll be honest i just gave up i was like you know what it's not even worth it i'm just gonna go back to class because i realized that this was interfering with my education um and i was like you know what if i can hold it in i'll probably just try and wait till you know my student worker because we had a bathroom there um but yeah that's that's something that many students relate to and i feel like if we can make it better like max said we have to evolve with throughout time if it was good enough for you we shouldn't settle for less we should always try and aim to better our our facilities so our future generations have a better shot at um you know using these festivities well said thank you miriam thank you mary yes yes mr wild yeah i just had a small comment um you know i uh for max miriam and all the teachers and staff thank you guys very much for joining today and uh speaking i just want to you know just give out 1.2 you know for the people asking the questions when we're telling our staff and our students you know you guys should basically have the most bare minimum when it comes to these facilities we're basically telling our students no one forget about the building stuff why don't you guys give us the let's let our staff and teachers give us the bare minimum education to our students let our students get the bare minimum education basically you know what the the least and least expected is good enough for us we're not setting the expectations not only educational wise to a high part just what are we teaching this generation minimum is acceptable we're supposed to be pushing our students not only educationally but you know morally uh emotionally physically and all aspects you know set the bar high you want success it's not just hand it over to you you have to work hard for it so giving these students a facility as a former student of school 3 and ccms to be totally honest with you i'll be mortified going into these restrooms they're very like you know like one of the teachers stated they're very creepy the ventilation the lighting the plumbing was poor and i'm 26 years of age now so i haven't been in elementary school in probably 15 plus years and it was bad then what happened since then and when it comes to air conditioning when people are like back then we went to schools without air conditioning guess what as society changes climate changes you know we're going through you know record number heat uh in springtime sometimes compared to summer times later months so basically just giving our children the bare minimum we're not basically setting them up for a stronger educational overall experience and that's going to affect our future generations our future leaders and clifton you know god bless our district we have a lot of students and so it's our moral obligation to do within our powers and anything we physically can to make sure everybody can succeed and a lot of our staff that literally work around the clock we need to just give them you know as someone that goes to work many of us work in offices and doctors and engineers you know if we had a job uh that didn't have air conditioning or proper plumbing we'll be complaining to our company so why do we expect our staff to take the one you know what you guys are teachers it's always the teachers and the students that we always forget about or push them to the side and for me as you know i always have the stance dr robertosi your staff your districts our students you guys are number one priority in my point of view and i know the rest of the board will agree we're gonna do anything within our means and our powers to make sure you guys have a bright future for the generations now and to come and to our teachers thank you guys for showing up today our students keep up the good work we are here we support you guys and hopefully we can get this referendum to pass thank you thank you mr awad mr rose uh some more questions yeah i just have right is something about the bathrooms really quick okay um yeah and i just wanted to echo what um mr awad said about um yeah if we're expecting students to just have the bare minimum toilet facilities should we also have the bare minimum education and that just brought to mind how our teachers and our students are so hard working and so great that we deserve facilities that at least match the level of work they put into their job and it goes for like when there's another event at our school let's say families from outside of our school come into our school and they have to use the bathroom it would be kind of an embarrassment for an adult or even another student from another school to walk into into one of our building's bathrooms and see a mirror that is either so scratched up that you can't see yourself through the mirror you could see like a tiny little blur or a sink with no mirror at all where maybe a place where a mirror should have been and it's just like an exposed pipe or something and you go to the toilet the stalled in the stall door doesn't open all the way that's just an embarrassment our staff and students just simply deserve better there's no way around it yeah i'd also like to add on to that um when the question was brought up why should we have air conditioning we also have to include people who suffer from neurological disorders you know i myself i don't suffer from any neurological disorder and i'm fortunate and i recognize my privilege but i'm personally i get frustrated when it's hot out and i can't learn because i'm i'm too busy wait feigning myself off trying to cool off and you know as you can see with all this hair even if i chopped it off it was like this big mane on my head and you know it's it's kind of unbearable um but i can only imagine you know people who suffer from neurological disorders um a sibling of mine actually suffers from tourette syndrome which um includes ticks which is involuntary movement and that can be triggered due to extreme levels of heat so i think that as diverse as clifton is we all need to keep in mind people who suffer from neurological disorders or other disorders that may be affected by extreme heat or extreme cold weather so um that's just my two cents on that thank you thanks miriam mr rose we have a few more um minutes for questions for the students and teachers we're going to turn it over to our financial advisors and then at the end we're still going to bring our teachers and students back uh for for more questions and answers so uh whatever we don't get to now mr rose we will get to at the end okay the next question is why are we upgrading school auditoriums they don't need anything fancy um well i'll just kind of give my two cents here in regards to the auditoriums um i think that they do provide a lot we have children that excel in the arts and our schools put on fantastic shows from the high school down through the middle schools i was lucky enough that my daughter was in a few of them but sitting there in those chairs for two hours for a performance definitely is not um pleasant um you know grandparents and parents are old and elderly it's definitely not a great environment for them um and if we make these investments and we do these improvements in our facilities there's also a chance in the end that we could rent out facilities and also have it as a source of income so we open ourselves up for more opportunities if we take advantage and do these improvements now so thank you no problem i think at this point we're going to have to move on to the financial segment but i will circle back to the remainder of the questions for this segment after we reach the financial section so thank you everyone thank you mr rose the uh we're gonna wind up the night i just want to remind those watching in the community to please send your questions to one clifton at cliftonschools.net one clifton at cliftonschools.net and tonight we're going to wind up at our last segment we'll be about finances um some people may be tuning in just for this uh particular segment excuse me everyone knows the quality of our schools is is really tied to the quality of the clifton community and vice versa so this referendum asks everyone to invest a little bit each year just like numerous generations of clifton residents uh before us for over a hundred years for all the numbers uh we're going to turn to our business administrator money mike usi and two of the people who have helped develop the estimates for the bond referendum anthony inverso and andrea khan are financial advisors uh money mike you're up thank you dr artosi uh good evening everyone i'm mike you see the district's business administrator and i have with me our assistant business administrator mr thomasevich the district's financial advisor mr unverso and the district's bond council ms khan i wanted to start with a brief overview about the operating budget versus a bond proposal a school district's operating budget is for day-to-day costs which mostly means salary supplies preventative maintenance utilities etc in new jersey the law sets a two percent cap on the amount though and the amount school district budgets tax levy can raise each year districts like clifton typically use some operating funds for upgrading equipment and maintaining facilities they also use a separate capital reserve account for purchases that aren't for day-to-day operations such as boiler window and roof replacements which our board has been utilizing to improve facilities for decades with no increase to the taxpayer for more costly improvements in expansion school districts can also use bond borrowing a strong advantage is the state aid that is available when voters approve a bond proposal those projects qualify for state aid up to 34 of the costs while preventative maintenance or other facility improvement costs that are absorbed by the operating budget or the capital reserve account are a hundred percent paid for by the local taxes bond funded projects can reduce the that local impact with state aid so what is a bond referendum public schools can sell bonds to borrow money but only after a referendum vote to get permission from the public bonds are like securities and they are bought back over time with interest typically 20 or 25 years this long payoff is one reason schools use bond referendums and asked permission to borrow for large-scale improvement projects that would be nearly impossible to fit in the regular operating budget without major tax living increases the the other important reason is the state aid impact reducing the cost to local taxpayers which has been repeated throughout this forum the new state aid would equate to approximately 34 of the total 168 million dollar project which comes to approximately 55 million dollars equivalent to about 2.2 million dollars a year over 25 years the tax impact would most likely not hit until the 20-23 budget year so the vote on april 20th is for the future it will not impact taxpayers next year having said that our board has been very fiscally responsible to the clifton taxpayer last year the board put forward a zero percent tax levy increase during the heart of the pandemic and in the last several years had an under one percent tax levy increase um that's kind of my overview um if our bond council or financial advisor would like to say anything or we can just field questions um i'm andrea khan uh and i thank you for the opportunity i've been privileged to serve the district for very many years the only thing that i might add to what mike has explained is that the while companies will save money for future use when public bodies want to prepare for the future the the policy generally is for the people who are going to enjoy those benefits to be the ones to pay for them so what typically happens is operating costs which are enjoyed annually are paid for on an ongoing basis uh smaller capital items are often absorbed and paid for in the budget and through capital reserve but for larger capital projects for replacements and for work that um is going to have a useful life well into the future typically what happens is that bonds are authorized and issued with a school district a type 2 school district such as this it's necessary to have voter approval in order to authorize and issue those bonds and i want to thank everybody by the way for all of the thoughtful questions and comprehensive answers that have already been provided thank you andrea mr rose do we have some financial questions from the community we do we have quite a few the economy is struggling couldn't we pick a better time to do this i could say something mr anderson could would could you start i'm sorry we're having trouble hearing um well it seems like there's a magic issue one second um while he's trying to fix that i could try to i could answer uh yes but costs can always go up um also we have historically low interest rates right now we have no idea what the future holds um as the economy recovers um also every need that we have that we've identified has been important for years and years and this voter approval would start about a 2.5 year plan um into motion um and also like i said that the tax impact would not hit until approximately the 22-23 school year it would not impact this school this tax year and and just to add to that i don't know if anthony can hear yet raise your hand when you can anthony um but just to add to that again rates interest rates are very low levels and the state has um approved uh uh school facilities aid in the form of debt service aid um for almost all of the work that is being done so it was a very significant contribution um the other thing too is that uh when um this project has been in the planning stage for a couple of years and it will take a couple of years to completely uh complete so um you know it's always nice to put things back but the uh time would seem to be right in terms of the financial package that could be arranged in order to implement this this major capital project also we were this has been said but we were planning to do the referendum even before the pandemic and now it's just even more vital because of um [Music] ventilation and health concerns thank you i'll move to the next question why can't we just pay for these projects out of the regular budget um that would take decades to do and it would come with tax increases as i said and it would also not come with the coupon discounter everyone keeps saying with the state aid and the 34 percent and also that there are economics of of scale as was mentioned by mr de cara in getting the work done and then it would be enjoyed now when the people need it when the teachers and the public and the students uh need the facilities improved there's significant improvements it's not the kind of work that could really be undertaken all at once on a current basis so it's generally the case that for major capital projects bonds are authorized and issued by school districts to undertake those improvements if i could add when i said before where we were planning on doing this referendum even before the pandemic we got all our paperwork and got our approvals by the department of education the four of us districts that are currently trying to put in facility plans are getting huge huge delays so we are fortunate in that aspect and and one other important aspect is is that since there is a backlog when the others all hit hopefully you'll already have gone to bid and won't be competing with the same contractors so hopefully that will result in lower costs for the implementation of the projects that's a good point andrea because the law if you did this piecemeal and did it over a series of years uh you're going to see escalation and and a boiler today will cost one number but five years uh 10 years from now it'll almost cost double uh so you'll have the increased inflation on construction costs and and we're at a low point in the market so we've been in a little point in the market for the last few months so we want you know we want to take advantage of that to reduce the cost to the taxpayer if we wait and try to finance it over time the expectation is that we will have higher interest rates over the next several years so getting into the market sooner uh to take advantage of the lower interest rates that we have will be beneficial to the district and taxpayers thank you i have several more questions one that just came in do you start paying for the project during the construction or when the project is complete you um when when you bid the project and will probably be bidding this the end of the year december or january once you award the project you will be making payments to the general contractor as the work is completed through a very strict um regulations and process so by time the project is completed you will have paid basically a hundred percent of all the construction costs so you'll be paying it over that period during the construction thank you mr dekara that's a good segue to the next question how does the school decide who to hire for all of this work okay the um there's very specific uh bidding laws uh in the state of new jersey so contract while we prepare our documents we have what's called the front end and the board attorney goes through that with us on all the contractual requirements uh and all of the state requirements for bidding so the general contractor and there may be several general contractors for the various work they have to be pre-qualified by the state department of education and the state of new jersey they have to have the proper bonding capacity you don't want somebody with working out of a truck with a wheelbarrow bidding on a let's say a 40 million dollar piece of the of the project so they have to have the financial capabilities and all the requirements so hopefully we'll have a large turnout for for bidders we anticipate based on the amount of work that is out there right now you'll see a large number of general contractors bidding on this they will submit signed uh unsealed um bids on a specific date uh those bids will be open publicly at a certain time and we will then review the bids for have they submitted all of the paperwork and met all of the technical requirements uh for the bidding some bidders may get thrown out because of certain aspects near many of them but when everybody is qualified the contractor that has the best price for the district is your contractor if he's a dollar less than someone else he is your contractor so it's a very very competitive process people just don't throw numbers at it and we're seeing contractors be more and more hungry for work so we would anticipate that the bidding would be extremely competitive but that but the board is limited on who they select based on the criteria that i just established and it is the term lowest qualified bidder thank you the next question the website says a month for the average home but i don't know of any house on the market for that how much will this really cost i'll start uh with response to that question uh so the impact um is based off of your home's assessed valuation that's what's on your tax form that you receive annually uh there'll be a indication of the land assessment and the improvement assessment the total of those two is the assessed valuation of your home it's different than the market value what you could sell your home at today may be drastically different than what it's on the tax rolls as as assessed valuation so taxes all your taxes are based on the assessed value for home not the market value so we look at the total assessed valuation in the city and the number of residential units and the division of that provides the average assessed value in the city which is um what we've indicated um about 178 000 that's what what the tax impact is based on and as i mentioned all your taxes are based on the assessed value not the market value or what what you could sell your house at or what your neighbors holder has a house at it's what's on the tax rolls and the records of of the city um that's that's what your taxes are based on real quick mr universal correct me if i'm wrong so the seventeen dollars a month for 25 years that we've been quoting for the average asset house that's based on a 2.3 to a 2.5 interest rate um would you say that's a very conservative rate right now and we could expect a lower one so that that's uh yes the the average um of 17 a month is an average uh for each you know for the impact of the of the bonds for the average home that we just talked about the average assessed valuation and that's based off of a 25-year bond at an interest rate of about 2.5 um that's a little bit on the conservative side based on the market right now um but we feel confident that that you know we'll get a very good interest rate for these bonds um markets will change markets change every day um we're anticipating that a sale of these bonds will not occur until probably june so it's three months away and you know if the last uh last year is any indication uh you know the markets do fluctuate drastically over time we don't expect a major move in the marketplace over the next few months um so we think that that's a good estimate for where these bonds will sell when we'll get to the market but it could change it could be 2.6 percent could be 2.4 percent it's an estimate right now based on other similar issues we've seen in the marketplace and the actual rate will be set when there's the competitive sale of the bonds after the bonds have been authorized with a successful referendum and at that point that rate will be set and as was mentioned because rates are historically low it would be a good time to set that rate um i'd also like to add one thing because i think i read it on your website i think you have a tool on your website uh am i correct um uh that will help you determine um what your house based on the assessed value of your house is uh what you could anticipate your uh tax average tax increase would be thank you very much yes we do have a section on the website and i believe it was just highlighted on the screen the next question is for how many years does the tax increase for this project stay in effect the repayment of the bonds is for 25 years so the bonds will be paid over 25-year period um so you'll the in the tax rate won't be exactly the same every year uh it on average is the figures we've indicated um but um but yeah it's a 25-year issue so once the bonds are um issued that the next 25 years the debts that has been paid on this issue thank you very much the next question is what is the impact on our current taxes are our taxes going to increase as a result of the proposed renovations but i believe we've answered that question um but i don't know if that if they're asking something different than we've already answered but i think we've answered that question about the tax impact of the bonds so the tax impact would not be on your tax bill for the 2021 year it would be um even the following year for the 2223 the summer of 22. thank you very much we have another question if the federal stimulus bill passes which has 130 billion dollars for schools and state aid is up 30 percent why not hold off and reduce the bond amount by the aid we get this is andrea khan um i don't believe that most of that stimulus money is available for capital improvements i think that it's intended to provide help in a whole variety of ways but not necessarily available to school districts to implement capital programs um and like hypothetically if if they were to mandate we improve our hvac systems anyways and funded that if that were to happen i've never seen the state not give a payback a grant period of prior um to so for us to get refunded i should say thank you very much mr uc thank you very much miss i'd just khan to add something in the past um the state had wrought what they called rod grants it would be similar i would i would assume it would be similar to that if they passed some funding mechanism and a district recently did certain work it would be potentially be grandfathered that if you had work done that qualified for that um as in the past with the rod grants uh it was retroactive so i'm sure that they would have something like that and that could if it was available offset some of the cost and if that stimulus package passes in the near future which presumably if it's going to pass at all should would i would assume the district would be able to apply for those funds and and it would be available to offset the costs thank you very much i believe that concludes the financial section thank you to our financial team um there was so much information to cover that that two hours flew by uh pretty quick it's now 8pm we do want to return back to our students and staff to kind of end this on a personal note and get some more uh commentary from them and perhaps have them answer some questions that we didn't get a chance to answer so mr rose do we have more questions for students and staff yes we do um i will circle back to the two questions and then i have two more that came in but these are two from that were previously submitted uh we did discuss a little bit why are we upgrading the auditoriums they don't need to be fancy that's where we left off before i don't know if anyone had any other comments somebody did comment on that if not go ahead maryam so like i've mentioned before i've come into issues with being tall for my age in the past in elementary school um in middle school sitting in these chairs for probably an hour or so for plays or assemblies or important messages my legs could not fit in the space that was given and there was multiple times where i actually um fell through the chair um and i just feel like that's that's something that could have been avoided and i feel like these chairs are definitely outdated and there's just so much potential in this room and space that we're given so why not come together and make a change and actually put in the work when the opportunity is given to make this change um but that's my two cents on that i have a quick question for you now that you've seen the um the chs auditorium in comparison to the ccms auditorium this is i guess max and miriam both went to ccms what do you think about the the differences between ccms's auditorium and what you're seeing at the high school now well the first time i went there was actually for a talent show um in eighth grade um prior to this i believe it was eighth or seventh grade um and i when i first walked into the auditorium my mouth dropped i was like no way this is clifton this is us and i just had an immense amount of pride in my school and in my district i was like wow this is this is what i envisioned for ccms if not better um and when i go back to my own school and i see you know the graffiti on the chairs and and the shaky chairs and the broken chairs i think we can do so much better and and and and it's it's proven because look at the high school we can do better um and i just feel like when i when i saw it i was i was totally in awe i was like wow this is this is actually crazy um so definitely i feel like in comparison the ccms auditorium is not even in comparison you can't even compete with this um and i feel like so many individuals especially those in the band and the choir in musical or performing arts they definitely will benefit the most and um i just think that these renovations are needed thank you marion i would like to piggyback off of what miriam said on the ccms auditorium and comparing it to the high school auditorium so i also went to ccms and similar to miriam i've fallen through at least one chair in the ccms auditorium um just walking through at least one chair in each row has like a chair where there's like no seat and it's just the back and again where other schools use that auditorium for certain events or when families outside of the district come to that school it's kind of an embarrassment to see it's not kind of an embarrassment it is an embarrassment to see chairs broken there's graffiti on almost every single chair obscene drawings or images or words it's hard to find a chair that doesn't have some sort of graffiti on it and it's really embarrassing um for the high school the chairs are built in such a way um they have like a plastic back so you can't really you can't really write pencil scratches and marks on it and overall they're built where they would have much less much less obscene imagery or words or a lot less vandalism um so the high school auditorium the chairs there's barely any vandalism at all and from what i've heard the chairs at the middle school if this referendum passed the auditorium chairs in the middle school would be as good if not even better than the chairs at the high school which means no more like crazy vandalism on almost every single chair the chairs wouldn't be breaking all the time um i i know the question the way it was worded was it doesn't need to be fancy and yeah that's right it doesn't need to be fancy but there's a difference between not fancy and constantly breaking obscene words and images on all the chairs that's like that's crossing the line that's crossing 20 lines it's not even close so yeah if this referendum passes the chairs would be as good if not better than the high school chairs which are already pretty great so yeah and i'll just add just one more thing we've talked a lot about the performing arts and everybody who utilizes the auditoriums but we can't lose sight of the fact that the whole school and every grade level it's affecting everybody in the school not just the kids that are in those programs um so just to keep that in mind that it's not just geared towards one group that it really covers a broad span of people and students that are going to use those facilities yeah i'll say too just as a quick example with our heroes in cool kids group where we're bringing 70 or 80 students from the high school down to our two middle schools we use those auditoriums as a spot to kind of like stay and wait until our chance to go into the classrooms and our high schoolers struggle being in those seats you know and this is a room where we're expecting adults to come and watch their students perform and it's just night and day compared to what we have at the high school i think um what mariam said makes you make such a great point you walk in that auditorium and your mouth just drops our students take a lot of pride in our auditorium and it's not that they can't graffiti on it they don't want to because it's beautiful and they want to keep it that way um whereas when you go into both the middle school's auditoriums it doesn't have that same feeling and it would be amazing to be able to give them the same sense of pride in their auditoriums that we're able to have up at chs thank you very much i have two more questions first one is for the staff the second one will be for the students and then that will wrap everything up for the staff what happens when a student asks to leave the class to use the bathroom do they sometimes miss a lot of class time because of the bathroom lines i'll just repeat myself quickly because again teaching at the high school where we have um four wings and three floors if one of the bathrooms happens to be out of order which i to be very honest they're out of order a lot i know that um our our building um person before was mentioning that they often get back ups in the sewage lines which causes the bathrooms to be shut down um sometimes on an entire floor the students then need to go off in search of a bathroom sometimes that's a different floor sometimes it's a different wing when the bathroom is functioning on my floor a student can be out for the bathroom and back within five minutes however when the bathrooms are shut down i've had issues where you know it's been 20 minutes or so that it'll take a student to do a round trip to the bathroom thank you very much mrs graziano the last question is for the students one of the projects is an elevator at christopher columbus middle school have you ever seen a student on crutches have to get around ccms and what did they have to do without an elevator i myself actually was one of those kids um jumping up and down those stairs on crutches seventh grade um there was multiple times where i almost slipped and fell there was multiple times where um i just got tired honestly it was it was very tiring and that was my first time using crutches so having to go up and down the stairs definitely was time consuming and with an elevator i could be you know in and out of floors getting to class more efficiently and saving my energy and and putting that towards my education and and learning and focusing on my school subjects not focusing on okay i need i need to leave 10 minutes before class so i can get to lunch and then 10 minutes before the bell rings like it was it was it was an entire hassle and that was i i would say about for a month or so so for a month or so i was yeah that was something i was going through and it wasn't very pleasant at all so that elevator personally from speaking from personal experience that will benefit so many kids and not only kids on crutches um let's say kids on wheelchairs that will also benefit them or parents when they come into the building and they're handicapped that will also benefit them we also need to include other people in other groups just because we're not in it that doesn't mean that they cannot be in it thank you and one oh um could i add on to the elevator absolutely max i apologize oh it's okay um yeah i actually have a couple short stories about that um when i was in seventh grade i had a really good friend who was in eighth grade and he was a great amazing student um he was in a bunch of different ensemble musical he was in a bunch of different musical ensembles he was in a lot of different clubs and he was just a great all-around student who just looked forward to coming to school every day and somewhere around january or february he broke his foot and he i didn't see him the rest of the school year because i think um he broke his foot in a way where he he couldn't even try to walk on it and needed a wheelchair and our school you know besides the first floor even the first floor there's a few steps to get up um it's just it's really hard to get around um if you're even a little bit injured let alone you have a broken foot so he was out of commission for the rest of the year he missed out on all of the musical performances that he would have done such a great job on he missed out on all his clubs and he just had to be homeschooled for like five or six months and i'm not saying there's a chance that even with the elevator he might have had to stay home for a while but he most definitely would have had a better chance of getting back to school and being part of all those great opportunities that were available to him um another short story is actually about myself in seventh grade in gym class i got injured and i had a really bad cut on my knee and i needed to go to the nurse's office i was on the third floor in the upper gym and i needed to get to the nurse's office in the basement of so i had to go down like six flights of stairs because there's like two staircases in between each floor so i had to go down like six staircases i had a student and a teacher each carry one of my arms as i hopped on one foot down each step of the stairs that is so dangerous thinking back i can't believe i actually did that that is insane that i had to do that and i don't think any student should have to do that um in the high school we're lucky enough where you don't actually the two gyms are located where you wouldn't even have to go up or down any stairs to get to them um so it works for the high school i don't know what it's like for woodrow but in ccms that gym is way up top on the third floor so the fact that i had to have two people carry each of my arms as i like precariously hopped down each step with one foot that's not okay an elevator would mean everything to these students it would have meant everything to my friend who broke his foot it would have meant everything to me and it would would have meant everything to so many other students who are injured and have trouble getting up and down those staircases thank you both very much i'm going to end with this last question what do you think these changes would do for student morale i'll kind of touch upon that because i've been thinking about kind of one of the things i'd like to just send everybody off with today and um you know i teach the elementary level and one of the things that we always talk about are ways that we can you know improve the academics and that all goes back to the climate and the cultures of the buildings and all of these things that we have talked about tonight whether it be the hvac system whether it be the bathrooms even the sports facilities all of these things lend to that climate and culture the more people that want to move to clifton and come and be a part of our facilities the better our schools are they're going to want to come in that's going to improve increase our property values so it's a benefit in the long run for all of us and the most important thing is that our children are academically doing well striving to do better and we're providing them with that environment so i just encourage everybody to really consider the big picture here and think about all of the children in the schools that we will be affecting all of the teachers in the building that will be benefiting from these things um and it's just super important that we realize that if we don't do this now we're going to miss an opportunity and in the long run we're going to end up costing us more money anyway so i do again thank you for the time being a part of this it has been an honor it's been a privilege and i do hope that everybody really listens to these points and continues to ask questions if they weren't answered tonight um so that on april 20th you can go out to those voting booths and really hopefully support our school systems so that we can make the improvements that will benefit everybody thank you everyone i'm going to turn this back over to dr robert chozi thank you so much to all of our panelists for your information that you shared with the community tonight we covered a lot of information we went a little over two hours but the conversation will keep going through the email address that we will continue to respond to one clifton at cliftonschools.net uh through talking with your friends your neighbors through our website and many other ways we're also putting the finishing touches on a video that will cover all of the main points and that will be posted on our website and shared through social media if you have not uh checked out our website please take the take a moment to uh to log on to dot u s clifton.k12.nj.us.com vote just go to our website and there are a couple of ways you can get to that page if you or a friend missed the form tonight and weren't able to watch the entire two hours or you know somebody that missed it and wants more information i want to remind you that it has been recorded uh it will be available on the district's youtube channel uh easy links to that and more materials again will be on our website and now we want to share some voting information uh after you take the time to learn about all of the needs of our schools and our proposal to solve those needs please take the next step by voting there will be in-person voting on april 20th and there will be voting by mail please make a plan to do whatever works for you so that your voice is heard on tuesday april 20th thank you again for taking the time tonight um thank you to all of our community members who tuned in thank you again to our panelists for sharing their expertise uh please have a good rest of your week we're really looking forward to having our students back in schools on next monday march 8th mr smith that concludes the community forum mrs smith if i may take a uh board members who uh wish to speak or make a uh uh comment uh mr daley yeah yes thank you very much um a little bit to the public uh this this is a very complex project in financing and if you're not and it's it's difficult to wrap your arms around it and we're going to do our best to explain this and and so you can understand it and as the super data says we'll answer any type of questions and we welcome your questions because we can uh we can collectively answer them in a way that helps you to understand this better i just have a couple of things to point out mr decaro you talked about the elevator and when you do improvements on a public facility whether it's clifton or new jersey transit or anybody else you're held to a little bit higher standard into what you have to do so there becomes a threshold when you have to be ada compliant and i'm not going to get into the particulars about the elevator but in general when you do improvements to your public building they now have to meet the standards of the ada compliance so that's why you see some things in here that you say why do we need to do this or why need to do that on the auditoriums uh in if you go to the clifton high school auditorium which i was very involved with um it's not the taj mahal but what we did is upgrade the facilities the lighting the the speakers the seats so it it gives a fresh appearance it gives a an appearance of a place of pride and that's what we're going to do we're not getting new auditoriums and we're not getting it new anything because some people pointed out athletic fields these are not new athletic fields they're stuff that we're using today and it's the condition that they're in we're trying to improve so we're not creating new stadiums or anything like that all this stuff is improvements the reason why we're having the the biggest reason we're having a referendum is the 55 million dollars that's your coupon as miss bassford said we can do this by doing other things but you're going to pay the whole freight if you do these projects piecemeal we could do five projects in the next two years and five but each year you go forward the price of those improvements are at market at those future years and as we all know prices don't decrease so you you're locking in the prices at the current uh rate here not only in in the interest rate but we're locking in uh the the cost of improvements at the current rate if we did these projects peaceful piecemeal over 25 years when you get to the end and the 20th year you're paying the rate that's at that time 20 years from now which is much higher uh like i said these are projects that have been discussed uh for quite a while um they have to be done there's no question about that so it's a question how you pay for it so again the 55 million dollars is the reason why we go into referendum the city council and other government entities like the county can put in a bond issue that they don't have to go to the voters again we cannot get the sole reason why we're going to the voters because these improvements are necessary is so that we can get 55 million dollars of state money other way otherwise you're paying the full 168.
that ended the end of december but it did give districts the ability to extend that we have extended that on a month by month basis till we get a good handle on on the vaccinations right now we've extended that through the end of march and we've been taking it month by month so anyone who still comes down with covet or has to quarantine does still have the option of the two weeks of paid sick leave that we've extended as a district okay mike we have several requirements for reporting record keeping and so we have instructions in the cpp that outline the report requirements to the health department cal osha we also report to sia our insurance authority and any positives and any of the contact tracing that has happened we have instructions for an investigation of of any of the covid cases and instructions on who maintains these records where they're at where we can access those records uh an example is um for our inspection forms um those forms after inspection will be held at each site or workplace as well as in personnel office and that will allow us a both the person at the site the supervisor administrator follow up immediately with things that need to to happen and from personnel we will follow up weekly to make sure that those things had been done and if not to get on top of those now if they're top priority number one items then obviously would be more than weekly it would be daily until we make sure we get those done so that's just one example of the types of records we keep and and how we use those to make sure that the plan is implemented return to work criteria and this is not in the global sense of of certificated classified students this is more a return to work for individuals who have been placed on isolation or quarantine and we have policies in there having to do with the length of time that they need to be out and the conditions that need to be met under which they can come back okay next mike and that those are all the topics that uh we've we're required to cover under our csp and along with that we have some appendices that help with some of the forms from the facilitation of this this program forms to help us identify possible covet hazards on our sites the inspection form that i've talked about the case and symptoms investigation form to make sure we do a thorough investigation training rosters testing sites throughout the county for surveillance testing and now we can add like i said uh the response testing on site now um guidance and and now there are a couple specific instances that could happen they're not specifically part of the cpp but they are for for specific situations and we've included these in the appendices uh one is guidelines for infections and outbreaks this would be a small outbreak uh maybe within a classroom or a couple people in an office something like that we have some specific procedures we will follow for a small outbreak that that would go somewhat beyond the response of just an individual and then we have guidelines for major outbreaks that has even a more of a major response and we'd be working with county health department if we got to that point where there was a major outbreak on one of our campuses or in the work site and then the last appendix has to do with contact tracing form that we've been provided by sacramento county public health that we use uh when when required to do so so i think that covers that there's a lot in there thank you i believe mr jordan is next correct yes i think you're right and this is can you hear me now fantastic uh and this is just a question this is kind of a natural break point that was the the the plans um is this a pla a point where you want to have questions or do you want to finish up the entire presentation and then go with questions this will be from this point forward i mean i think that's a great idea um if anyone does have any questions for mr grimes let's let's go ahead and address those now specific to the csp right mr jordan unsharing for a moment so people can see each other because sometimes we're off to the side so that if you don't mind unsharing then we'll when it's your turn we'll come back up perfect thank you okay i do have a question on facilities okay um do we does the technology department have um the infrastructure to handle all the hybrid learning that's going on on each site so that might be uh mr jordan might cover that in the other but i can tell you that the uh most recently the uh not wi-fi i can draw on a blank on the fiber optic from between the district hub that goes out and the high school which would be our biggest user has been upgraded from a one gig fiber to a 10 gig and then i also know uh we've updated at the back bones i guess you could say at each of our school sites so yeah i think that might fall more under the next uh instructional piece this pope but um yes we do have that okay thank you and then mr grimes i know i asked you this before but just to make it public there was no conversation on preschool reopening could you just give a brief um explanation on why that was not explained that's correct the requirements of this legislation were tk through 12 and that is what this plan is addressed toward but i know mr jordan has had conversations to make plans um that would go right along with these same guidelines for preschool so mr jordan if you have any more on that yes we we actually uh finalized a plan today we'll talk about preschool and the instructional component as well thank you mister jordan i have a question as well go ahead knowing that um substitutes are going to be hard to come by for a long time to come with the covet if if we lose a teacher for a length of time say it's a first grade teacher would it be possible to move that class into like the auditorium if we can't get a substitute and have one of our own teachers pick up the second class because of the lower class numbers they would still be teaching just a regular class and there'd be enough space to spread them out the one one thing on that and it might fall in the next component as well but what we would do is our model we could do depending on how the teacher is feeling they could possibly remotely teach if they are quarantined or isolated the other piece is we've expanded any of our vaccination opportunities to all of our uh substitutes as well so those that want to take part so that will also help with that but you certainly could um look at something like that in fact if that came up but at this point really what we're seeing is you could either the viable plan might be either use a sub or do a remote teaching into the room but you would have to have some supervision in the room obviously and are we going to be able to continue all of our pull-out programs for those children who need them we are we're working through those yes thank you may i suggest since the questions are going towards instructional if i'll finish the instructional part then we can as a suggestion i i actually have several questions about facility and supply readiness as well but in regards to what were we what were we just talking about as far as teachers remote teaching ah yes who would be qualified to be in the classroom with the students would they need to be certificated or would it be just any adult supervision and then the certificate would be remote you'd be we can use classified employees for that as well for supervision purposes yeah okay um um sorry did nancy were you done with your questions yes okay so um on the checklist that goes in the cpp with the csp and i apologize for all the acronyms but the open safety plan is two parts it's the checklist and it's the cpp what does that stand for again the covid govind prevention program prevention program okay so on the checklist part of it who developed the checklist that's not something that we came up with right that is dictated down to us by was it cal osha cal osha provided a template to help guide us um and it was from legislation that the state had last fall great so we're following the guidelines that are being given to us on that okay um on the csp what areas did they ask for revisions do we know yet we have any sense of what i can tell you real quickly although i haven't gotten the details there there just a couple areas they wanted some more information in our checklist on mitigation efforts just detailing mitigation efforts they wanted a little more information in the program the the plan itself the program um what are our stable groups um how we're going to keep our cohorts together they just wanted that flesh out a little bit i think what i'll be meeting with the county tomorrow morning i'll be on the phone with them but i believe what they may want and i've already put this out to our site principals is that each site that's the one part of the plan that may vary from each site because those are specific to sites uh uh routes to take you know recess schedules that sort of thing so we'll we'll make sure that's included for each site um and then the one since mr grimes has not fully read the information that he received right before the board meeting how about if we just hold on for this information and maybe send us an email with clarification would that be okay yeah i just i just wanted to know just the general areas of what there were just two other areas they wanted a little more um information on our surveillance testing and our response testing and now we have that information we can provide for them and then um they had some new guidance on face coverings and other essential protective gear so they just sent me a link to update our guidance based on the most recent guidance so that's it all right um school nurses i know that we hired some new nursing staff fairly recently and i know that that they are required to have training in ppe have all of our nurses had all of their ppe training so to clarify we don't we have we have a to two school nurses and then we have um health techs and mr we will have one at every school site with some floaters and i know mr jordan have they also been through the pp training so we we had two new ones come on this week they had a training this morning and and went to uh so i'm getting feedback can you hear me okay yeah okay uh and they went to a training this morning with our our registered nurse uh and so they did that today we do have plenty of ppe for everyone for all our nursing staff we're keeping up here at the annex um and we have that available for them we're meeting every other week now with the the health tech staff the health staff to to answer any questions make sure they have the adequate training ppe so on and so forth we will have one at every site as mr lair said as well as i will end up with two rovers uh that i can use to fill in spots if somebody gets sick uh so on and so forth okay so that probably is answers my next question which is about the tracing protocols the training for that and the personnel resources for that are they the same people and are they getting the training that they need for pricing yeah yeah contact tracing yeah i went through a been certified through johns hopkins university and they had the training and certification on contact tracing at this point i've been able to do that because we are a smaller district i've been able to handle that from my end but i have received assistance from principals who have when they have had a positive case on campus have been able to gather a lot of the information for me up front which has made my job easier to actually do all the contacting of the individuals but one of the points kelly i just a point here real quick is that we have had positive cases and we have been doing these protocols on our school sites in addition to that is we know that none of those cases have resulted because of the protocols we're falling none have resulted with transmission on or from our school sites so i think that's important to know yeah no i get i think i was just more concerned about making sure we have the right resources to address it sounds like david's the only one who's trained so we might want to look at getting him some backup trained um but that's another topic for another day i have two more questions i apologize what about uh student positive cases those follow the same protocols for staff as far as having them have to leave and quarantine isolate all of that is the same for students yes that is correct and we have established isolation rooms in each site so if we do have students with symptoms we do have a place to isolate them until their parents able to come and pick them up and then we don't do we administer the quick the rapid response test that's what i was going to add kelly i apologize yeah so now we have when they're in the infirmary if a parent gives consent and wants us to do that we could do it but if not then they could go home um and and do their either take the quarantine or get their own assessment but we would be able to administer that uh if the parent can sense to it yes correct we don't we don't just randomly give the kids tests i knew we didn't i wanted it on the record okay and last question that i have is um you were talking about the records for cases the investigation and the tracing records and given hipaa regulations i'm sure those are kept secure and there are specific confidential staff who have access to it only correct absolutely absolutely names do go to sacramento county public health but they for right outside of that i have a file in my office behind double lock and key of any names of any of the contact tracings that i've had to do and i reserved the right to ask more questions after dr lee goes additionally can i just tack on one thing dr lee just real quick was one is we also have a dashboard ready to go when we come back that we will publicly post any cases in adults and and in students and then that so we'll keep a running thing we have a really i'll thank uh jason farrell for creating it out of google it it really shows it not just by site but by uh students so that will be rolled out as soon as we we fire fire up here just to clean it and be identified right by your hosting numbers not identities right that is correct yes sorry thank you yes yeah this isn't the 1920s or the 1910s okay dr lee i believe you are up okay questions on facility supply readiness um so my first question is about ventilation because ventilation matters multiple concerns with our school site hvac or ventilation flows have been noted on our school safety reports since 2017 i went to each site and looked and verified this page nine of our covet safety plan states that we have installed mirv11 filters which to my understanding are not sufficient to trap the particles that can carry covet 19.
so that's why when we were here in december we said negative 1.4 million and now we're basically saying it's roughly break even at positive 250 000. so the other really important part is to plan ahead right so we're looking at our multi-year projection as marie noted earlier we are estimating a decline in the two out years as we move forward and related to that would be if there's less students overall we will reduce certificated full-time equivalents or ftes so 23 in 2122 and so 15 of those would be related to the fact that this year we lost 450 kids but we didn't reduce staffing and then eight for next year and then another six in the third year related to decrease in enrollment the other thing we do take into account is we have staff who are who are moving across the salary schedule via step and column we take into account the person stirs changes and then certain any inflationary factors related to fuel pg e any utilities of that nature we also do though take into account that as employees are moving across the salary schedule some retire and so we do take in that into account as well knowing that we have staff who retire at the upper end of the salary schedule and are typically replaced with staff who have lesser experience so we do take into account 20 certificated retirements each year in the multi-year projection and then the last piece of information is as we build in revenues for future years we did use the school services of california estimates for cola versus the department of department of finance and there as you can see on the screen they are pretty different as far as forecasting the future in the two out years i don't have a question mr mr tennis yes sorry madam um president i have a question about enrollment who would be a good person to ask that too thank you kevin um i see enrollment down by about 4.5 percent over the past year and a half um and i want to get clarity on something and maybe i should have pulled this off of the consent calendar earlier but it relates to the enrollment question and we're using that to project our revenue and the out years so um there's an other category there's an elementary decrease and then there's an other decrease and so this elementary and secondary enrollment decreases then there's an other category that's actually gotten more students in it it's increased actually by 763 percent not elementary not secondary but other what are what is other other refers to schools that are neat that are both elements serve both elementary and secondary students so that would be oak bridge and loma vista okay okay we've seen a tremendous growth in oak bridge as you know this year yes all right thank you for that sorry that's okay that's a great question so in front of you is the actual multi-year projection with the values um calculated so you can see in the current year again about the fourth line down 250 000 dollar surplus going into 2122 it jumps to 5 million so what we see there is their total revenue increased is related to cola but we are still funded on our attendance from 1920 which when you compare 1920 to we're down we're estimating going into that year that we'll be down 650 students so we're being funded on a much larger amount than the actual students who are attending our school so additionally when you go out to the third year you can really see now we're down to 116 million in revenue that's that funding cliff that marie alluded to because at that year we will be funded on the prior year which is much closer to the students that we'd be serving and so as a result in the third year right now we're estimating negative change in fund balance of 2.4 million but i will say with all of this we have very healthy reserves so the very bottom line on the screen shows our reserves after our three percent requirement for the state of our reserve the additional board reserve as well as some one-time money that's been designated so we still have 15 million in the current year 22 million next year and 19 and a half in the following year and let me just stress how important the enrollment estimates are because quite frankly historically we used a historical trend to somewhat help us predict the future but first with campfire and now with covid the real the back data is not relevant quite frankly so we're projecting a decrease but quite frankly that can completely flip if our vaccinations are good students are coming back full students come back to our schools we could actually see more students but right now the prudent thing to do is based on the decline we've seen this year is to continue to look at decreases over the next two years in 21 22 and 22-23 kevin thank you okay i'll get caitlyn go ahead no i go second okay um just to speak on what you just mentioned kevin do we have um a better idea or a way to get a better idea of the of why the enrollment is declining i know that we have a snapshot of where they're going um but are there any is there any way to figure out what what the causes of that might be you know i don't know of one i certainly don't know of one that can be put into kind of a mathematical formula quite frankly so um in full transparency we really are looking at driving down some of those transitions for instance when we see a second grader matriculate to third grade historically we know that maybe that class gets a little bit larger but right now because of just the unknowns we're going into that cell and driving it down maybe 20 additional students to see this decrease in enrollment over the next couple years it's the fiscally prudent thing to do it's the conservative thing to do but to be fully transparent that could change we could actually have more students but i think it's still the right approach as we're building a budget to in essence plan for the worst and hope for the best yeah i think that this isn't necessarily the right frame to kind of put this question out but i do want to bring it up again about declining enrollment and really digging into the why and what is there that we can do about it or what is there that you know the community in general needs to do about it um and so i i do know like uh there was recently a housing element um report that was put out and that the a big portion of our lower income housing development has not happened it's only been like 1.5 and 1.3 percent 166 of our higher income housing you know the above median income housing has been built so i'm wondering if that might be part of the problem like i'm wondering if there's a way for us to to sort of dig into that a little bit better to um to be ready for for seeing those those those possible changes when we were looking through tracking where our students were going a lot of our students are leaving the state and for whatever reasons you know people are and when they came out with a state report normally we had 30 to 50 000 people leaving our state in the last three four years but this year we had 150 000 people leave our state students our ada's down statewide so it seems to be a trend people are leaving california at this point so again i don't know i know you're talking about the housing and how we can get involved but keeping people in our in our city and our state and every year we do a demographic study related to facilities and the intent there is to really take a look at all those types of factors that are behind the scenes that may drive future student enrollment so that we can make sure we have facilities to house them in so it's not a perfect science and it is different than funded student enrollment in ada but it does start to tweak kind of tweeze out some of those issues that you mentioned so we're not in the complete dark about what may be coming the problem with the covet impact is just the absolute unknown yeah i think i'm worried about the the exponential factor of of covet effects and you know job loss and those types of things trauma and then lack of available affordable housing in the community is possibly driving out our younger families that might not have a high enough income to stick around so if there's a way that we can kind of pursue that line of thinking and be part of the bigger conversation among the community to encourage you know a more family-friendly community as far as growth goes that might be beneficial to the district and for future enrollment so the information we get comes when students leave they don't necessarily tell us and in fact they often don't let us know they're leaving the only way we find out is when we get the request for records so that's how we track where they have gone but we don't really have a way to track why so on those that actually have communication with us you know we can do an exit interview and exit survey but those are that's not the majority so um i have to think about what's the best way to get the kind of information you're asking for what's your reason for leaving not just where did you go to it's not currently in our system i'll put it that way i i had um some additional um input question of you kevin we we did receive the king and associates um demographic study and recommendations for the next i think it's a five year and then a 10 year lookout if i remember correctly anyway some of the interesting stuff that they have analyzed along the lines of why why have we decreased and the covered uncertainties um they've recommended um taking a moderate approach to declining enrollment but one of the two of the things that i thought were extremely interesting was that because of covid and people being able to work from home that a lot of the pressure from the bay area where housing costs are so significant that people are coming to the chico area to relocate because they can work from home here with housing expenses that are far less than what they would find in the bay area and the birth rate decline has not happened uh the king and associates indicate that that even with covid that our butte county birth rate did not decline this last year so that all of the rationale in those first five pages of their demographic study this year provided some like you said some real interesting things to think about but there's no way of really predicting with any certainty until we have a year under our belt and we don't yet that year's coming up well i'll pick up on the presentation and just bring up the impact of the pers and stirs costs we have a little bit of a reprieve going into the 2021 year where actually the percentage increase for the stirs rate went down so that's why you see that negative 347 542 number so in the 2021 year our pers and service costs actually went down in our multi-year projection the next year they go up again um really driven by the pers increase not so much the stirs and then in 2223 one of the factors that's driving that kind of increased negative change in fund balance is the 1.5 million dollars of additional 1.4 million dollars of additional costs related to pers and stirs and just for a note uh the state sets the rate for schools as compared to the city that is really has an actuarial report or analysis done within its own pool of employees so cash is still something we need to be aware of and as a reminder we're still having cash deferred and what that means is that the state is not paying us on time so typically we were supposed to get what we call a principal apportionment in the month of of april they're going to extend and not pay us that until next fiscal year now we can handle that without having to look at having an infusion of cash through like what they call a tax revenue anticipation note because as jacqueline mentioned we have very strong reserves and those reserves are cash balances that are maintained at the county treasury but even with that strong balance you can see that our cash goes down in june and continues to go down until we really get to november and december when we see those tax receipts come into us from our local taxes and then the apportionments keep coming through the rest of the year so just as a summary our interim reports we have to self-certify of whether we are positive qualified or negative and there are some definitions there positive being that we will be able to meet all our financial obligations in the current and subsequent two years and this report shows that we're able to meet all of our obligations over the next three years i'm not even going to talk about qualified or negative because we're nowhere near those as for the um the interim reports do need to be board approved and we do pass those on or actually turn those into butte county office of education where they do an um a review and then actually issue a letter to our president stating whether those financial statements or they agree or disagree with that certification and then kind of going forward you know really the the budget has improved greatly um compared to the prior year and and some of that as jacqueline mentioned was the delay in filling some of our classified positions as we were uncertain the level of service we'd be providing um in the multi-year projections um we really have now seen cost of living adjustments provided in the governor's latest budget and i will tell you it really has been a roller coaster for the finance people because less than a year ago we were thinking the sky was falling we were preparing for very dramatic cuts and a much different conversation but the state economy has actually performed well through this and has continued to grow and actually so we're looking at cost of living and adjustments that are increasing the amount of revenue and the out years and not expecting the cuts that we were just months ago frankly um just a couple notes we don't have settlements with compensation groups in the current year 2021 and that's for all of our groups um we are going to talk about the uh s or two dollars so we would like to get those into the budget because they can be spent in the current year and then certainly next year and then we want to certainly develop those programs related to addressing that learning loss that planning needs to happen now so we can have those programs in place not only to do that immediately but also for budgeting for next year and then just a note the state budget negotiations are ongoing and although we'll talk about the deal that the legislature and the governor have reached for one-time money the overall budget for 2122 has not been resolved and those negotiations are continuing so that's the second interim report i think it represents the district is is financially very healthy i am encouraged that our unrestricted balance uh fund balance is a positive 257 thousand dollars at this point in time and we do know we get a little better because we don't spend all the dollars that have been allocated in the budget that's typically almost near a million dollars every year so this is a good report i think it sets us up well for moving forward any yes thank you any additional board questions of mr baltimore okay hurry none we do need to approve the budget certification um that's on slide 14.
so uh i can go on for forever about this stuff because i'm pretty intimately involved i'm one thousand percent behind this i'll go speak to anybody who wants to speak to it they want to talk to me in person have a cup of coffee i will be more than happy to make myself available and i'm sure that superintendent will do the same in the staff but uh i i am very very enthusiastic this is the best deal the city of clinton's ever had in doing capital improvements period okay are there any other board members who would like to make a comment mr cano genova yeah um so it's funny because because jim took some of my points there you know speaking about finances but i will say one thing i was very involved and i even got involved in the board of ed because of the issues with state funding and what nobody's saying here is we've been underfunded for about 12 13 years now we've been underfunded half a bill over half a billion dollars how do you run a large district like clifton underfunded half a billion dollars and expect everything to be pristine it's just not it's not going to happen so we're in this situation not because of board members or not because of facilities not taking care of their the products that we have it's about getting the best bang for our buck and doing what we can with what we have i would ask the question out there to anyone do you still have the boiler from 100 years ago in your basement do you still have the the seating in your house from from 40 50 years ago wooden seats that you sit on that half are falling off some some don't even have bottoms as as our students mentioned do we think that's conducive of an environment for students to learn because those are the types of questions i ask and i i work for for a college and we talk to students about going on interviews we talk about dressing for success we talk about when you dress good you feel good right things around you reflect the way you feel when you go on vacation you see palm trees you see the beach and you're just relaxed when you go to school it shouldn't be a place you go that's worse than your home we have students that come to us from different economical backgrounds i can only imagine a student who has an issue with a bathroom at home to come and have an issue with a bathroom at a school or a female who's hair's time of the month and it takes her 25 minutes just to find a bathroom to then wait on a line for for 15 people and we've heard that tonight from our students and to me that's just unbelievable honestly so getting back to what jim was talking about this is the one chance we have to now have this state finally give us some money back and fund some of this so the way i look at it is you know we're not a we're not a detention facility for students we're an education facility and we should act that way when people come to our locations they should feel pride they should say you know what wow this is clifton and when young families move in what do they look for they look for a good school system they're going to come visit our schools and they're going to either say i want to come here and move here which will then increase everyone's property values or they they won't and will decrease and our students will do poorly and then later on we'll pay the price this is something that 15 20 years down the road we're going to see our students succeed instead of fail so those are just some of my comments um one thing i would like to see more is i'm a very a very visual person and i know you you spoke to a video uh dr robert jose you were putting together i would love to see images of all these things that the students had been mentioning and uh and some of the uh the areas and facilities inside the school i think once people put an image to what we're talking about they'll really understand what we're talking about thank you okay any other board members wish to make any comments [Music] i just have a small comment mr smith oh yes to our citizens and to our community members out there uh i've i don't want to just repeat what i said earlier but i say that you know our teachers give it all our district gives it all you know dr robertosi and his staff um you know with our teachers and our students and to give them the bare minimum and expect them to excel is basically you know a little ludicrous you know as you know our students transition into college you know one of the main things you know a lot of students look into colleges how modernized how up-to-date what does the school district what does facilities offer for me and am i really getting a bang for my buck you know as everybody pays their taxes in clifton does that really reflect what our schools look like our schools are almost 100 plus years old we could do a lot better you know if a teacher gave if a teacher gave a bare minimum i feel like everybody would be you know aggressive and basically you know uh calling out you know why is this teacher why is that teacher uh given the bare minimum if a custodian gave a bare minimum if a nurse or a doctor doesn't matter what your profession is give a bare minimum nobody has an issue of calling our personnel but us as the citizen when we give our students in our district the bare minimum and not the facilities for them to excel and we expect something drama something magical to come out of that there's no one to blame but ourselves you know our buildings are in need we need to help our future generations current generations teachers and students are always a forgotten ones our teachers you know through the pandemic or not the pandemic are always giving a hundred percent hard passionate you know educators that are basically grooming the future kids into the adults of our future our you know our future community leaders our future you know doctors engineers artists singers whatever profession it is the least we can do is have the backbone to give them a platform for them to excel for them to grow and for them to better themselves and it's our moral obligations and as you know community leaders we will be out there on the front lines fighting for them because we do care you know clifton has the greatest educators probably in our state the least we can do is give them you know an environment where they can even take it to the next level clifton is going to be that city once this referendum passes where where the we set the bar high for other districts we're going to be the example people are going to come to us saying how'd you guys do it we are our schools are going to be like showrooms throughout you know other communities like look how clifton's doing it we should be like clifton clifton is the place we want to go and also it's going to start attracting people to come to our city to move and purchase homes into our city our city needs to move forward we have to stop being stuck in the past and i really hope you know uh anybody listening today that you guys take this into consideration and you know let's do this you know like dr operator says or one clifton or one family my child or not my child everybody every student and uh teacher that's in this district you guys are a family member we are one and we're in this together and hopefully you know this referendum passes it's just you know something that we could just say that you know we did it we tried and let's see what you guys can excel into these classrooms thank you any other board members vice president abu dhabi thank you president smith i hope you can hear me i was having some audio issues um so everybody said it all but the one piece that you know we need to remember in the city we complain that we are losing students to various schools and because we are not updated and this is the time to do so to folks who know and who do not know money follows the student and when students leave a district that's more money we are losing so as everybody said we are reinvesting into our school districts you know i graduated class of 2003 two years that's almost 20 years ago and a lot of facilities were which was abysmal it was ridiculous president by but superintendent of roberto if you can answer this question i know somebody asked me this question earlier but i'm going to leave it to you and nor did i answer there was an uptick of state aid it's from 2021 to 2122 i think of about 29 close 12 million and a half can that and i'm going to ask you this question i know the answer but i'd like to you know for you to take it can money be used from that 12 million yes but that would be a drop in the bucket for the projects that we have to do and more importantly we would lose out on the 55 million dollars in state aid so we'd be fully fronting the costs thank you i just wanted i just wanted people to hear from you because they're either they read it or they're going to read it and that may be a question that pops in their head and we might as well get it out there before the quite bad questions asked you know at the end of the day everybody's talking about homes everybody's talking about remodeling your house everybody's talking about you know the future the past but we need to worry about today we worry about today because students are going back to school we talk about the hvac we talk about you know i was listening to my my daughter's principal last night how the windows have to be open because of the way circulation has to work and we don't know in how long how long for we're going to be in this pandemic but whether you have a child in the district or you do not have a child in the district i'm going to say this very very frank and let's not be selfish let's not be selfish to say well my kids already went to the district why should i care you should care because on two fronts one care about thy neighbor care about the kids that are in your neighborhood care about what's going into their system while they're in class and while you say well back then we didn't have these things and i was fine well back then was back then today is today the world has changed and the world is changing the world will continue to change and we need to not live in how we were but live and how we want to where we want to go and to be and that is very important and second of all if you don't have a child in the district one day you're going to want to sell your property and as we all say and our keyboard warriors on facebook complain about that our academics and our schools are in uh the quote unquote lower rank of it well one day when you sell your home you're going to say shucks you know what i'm not gonna get the big buck that i want for my for for my property well this is the time to reinvest in our community in our district and our kids and frankly in in your own property because while it may be to some a drop in the bucket to some it may be you know what that that amount of money that that that uh that work that's going to be taxed i might on my tax roll over annually over the year it's going to be a struggle and i feel you trust me i feel you um on a personal level but at this time i'm you know my wife asked me are you really gonna vote yes for this and when i sat her down and i explained to her last week when we talked about it in our own house because we are taxpayers and we have our own property we pay that we pay for and it's not cheap that yeah i am gonna pay for it i'm gonna tighten my belt and make sure this is done on various hats at various levels so i am behind this all the way and i'm not just saying this and then going you know i've heard people say yes and then go behind the scenes and and tell others otherwise i'm full 100 behind this i'm all the way through behind this i think this is a great investment in our district in our city in our neighborhood in our kids and at to per in a personal note and speaking of my i'm on my my own behalf there's no turning back it's got to get done we can't do this bit by bit we need to do it all or nothing and i'll be out there asking urging pleading for folks to to definitely um vote for this thank you thank you any other board members wishing to speak no okay um renee would you like to uh say anything before we close renee are you still on i am mr smith thank you very much i would i have some um some more slides i could show people but i i know that we're looking at uh the time of 8 37.
we were asked as a board multiple times by the public at our meeting to look at what natomas unified has done to reopen so quickly so i went and i looked at what they've done and what i saw was a very robust covet safety plan that we're miles away from at this time natomas unified has installed hepa filters and mirv 13 air filters district wide and the reason they did this was because merv 13 filters capture airborne viruses and bacterias from coughs and sneezes while merv 11 filters do not their ventilation systems were also reviewed and certified by external agencies so i'm wondering what the status is of an external agency check on our sites to see if we're meeting american society of heating refrigeration and air conditioning engineer standards and if we haven't done any external evaluations of our sites i'd like to know if we're planning to really i have a lot of concerns about the air in our classrooms how we had external evaluations of the exhaust fans in our restrooms uh how we verify that they're working and operating at full capacity i'm just really curious on that in the external evaluation of our ventilation ventilation systems uh mr decent are you there that you could jump in and share what we've done with ventilation and you bet right here um so as far as external um um viewing of our hvac we have not done that we have we are in the process of identifying um matching the units that we have with the ability to run merv 13 versus merv 11.
i need a motion to approve budget yes mr tennis to approve the budget i have a motion for mr tenants to approve this budget certification is there a second sure i'll second that mr landau seconds thank you is there any further um board discussion okay hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you board it's unanimous oh dr kaiser are you muted um let's see if she responds it doesn't appear as though ms kaiser is um linked at the moment so we'll take a uh her position as um no vote absent okay so four to one thank you board okay our uh next time oh yes kathy we needed a vote to certify the um budget as possible yes on this the question was whether or not to certify the second interim as positive yes thank you so now we're five to one our five to nothing unanimous thank you kathy all right thanks okay our next item is um elementary and secondary schools emergency relief e-s-s-e-r sr2 one-time funded allocations mr baltimore okay so we are starting to receive a lot of one-time money um this is specifically related to the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds this is the second round so we there has been an s or one the sr1 dollars were enacted by congress through the cares act the coronavirus aid relief and economic securities act however these dollars are s or two dollars and they have been enacted by congress related to the um corona virus response and relief supplemental appropriations act which was enacted on december 27th of 21 or i'm sorry 2020.
there's nothing i can add for the people of clifton so i would just suggest that people go to the website and learn there what they need to know there's a lot of information there and look for other opportunities to stay involved and then i would turn it over to dr robert josie to close the evening yeah i have to um i'm just gonna make a a few brief comments um i'm not gonna reiterate uh everything that's been uh said um i think the key thing is mr daley alluded to mr canova these upgrades to be done now to get this 55 million dollar gift back from the state is what makes this a more emergent referendum putting things on hold putting it out further just makes the situation that much worse but because the state is giving our district 55 million dollars for this referendum i don't see how we can turn down a gift of 55 million dollars on repairs and that we so very much need and i think everyone has to keep that right up front in their minds that if we don't do this that 55 million goes away and there are many districts that are wishing that they had done what we did and submitted our paperwork because they're not going to get the 55 million they're not going to get the state aid the state gift the state coupon okay but clifton is clifton is because of our administration being on top of this and mr roosey and his team being on top of this to know that that's a big chunk of change that the state's gonna help us with and we can't turn that down people but i gotta i gotta say one important thing tonight if you want to see what clifton education is doing in our town to our students if you tuned in tonight you saw it right up front and i have to commend both of our students that spoke tonight both max and miriam if any of you ever had a doubt about the education that our kids are getting in clifton you just witnessed it tonight and i credit all of the people especially their teachers their parents along the way and maxin and miriam are just two of so many kids that are doing tremendous things in our district i am just so proud tonight to see two students come and talk from the heart not a prepared speech not something they were asked to say but things that they really felt and max said something so great he says i'm not going to even be a student to see any of these things i'll be gone maybe he'll be back as a teacher some years down and he'll be able to see those improvements but i am so proud to be a board member to see that our students are truly receiving a great education from tremendous teachers and if you had any doubt of that you should have seen that tonight and have no more doubts because they spoke from the heart and i'm so proud of them i just also just like to thank our our three teachers that came out tonight they took their time to come out tonight we're not paying them extra money to come out tonight they're not getting overtime tonight to come out and speak at this meeting they came out because it was important to them and there are many more staff members that i'm sure wanted to come out and talk tonight but i just want to thank them for taking the time and giving us a teacher's perspective on what is taking place in the buildings i really thank them and credit them for all that they did for mr rose for a great job of putting this together this was not an easy thing to do on a zoom and to get the questions and make sure that they were not so repetitive so i i credit mr rose for all her work and our uh our supervisors our principal mr healey uh our supervisors mr gengaro mr marcioni mr malayhi mr uc mr thomasevich and i don't think mr mountain gets enough credit but all of this technology stuff is led by our uh director of technology mr mountain and he's with us to make sure that all of this gets on your screen and all this gets out to you each each meeting so i thank him and his team for always doing such a great job and to our architects our bond council our financial advisors our pr team in past experienced people anything that clifton worked together with anything that we worked together with we achieved in clifton and i say that because you the voters you the taxpayers in the history that i've had with the board of education anytime we came out and asked the public for helping our schools the public has responded positively and that says a lot about you because you do your homework you know what is needed and i hope that you trust and respect that the board has worked very hard and this board has not only now this board but previous boards in in previous years to prepare for something like this this didn't come overnight and i have to tell you that if it was not for our maintenance staff our custodians that have done such a great job over the years of keeping our schools looking as good as they do we would be in a much worse situation now because take a look at some of our schools at a hundred years old our staff has done a tremendous job to make them look as good as they do but eventually time just is against us and things don't last forever but we're hoping these upgrades and these renovations will last for decades and they will address certain things how embarrassing or how upsetting is it to know that in most of our buildings that a person with a disability or a handicap will have trouble either getting into the building or having to use the bathroom facilities how upsetting is that to know that or to have a student that goes to one of our schools to hear miriam tell us that she held in going to the bathroom because of those issues max's was a little different trying to look good he didn't have his mirrors that's a little different story but holding it in until you you have to get home because of those issues that upsets me and i hope it upset you people listening so do your homework please feel free to continue to ask the questions feel free to reach out to board members we will do all that we can to help you understand the importance of this referendum that's our job this is just not a referendum because the board wants to look good to say hey let's go out and just make these improvements so we can look good here that's not it at all this board cares about kids yes we may not agree on everything but there is one thing we agree on this board cares about kids we care what happens to them we care what happens to them on a daily basis we're not there every day we rely on administrators we rely on teachers we rely on the students themselves to tell us and i hope that they told each and every resident of this town tonight that this referendum is truly needed and i truly hope that you will support this so thank you all to that put this together tonight we will continue to get information to you continue to update information we will have mailings that will go out please use social media as best you can to continue to get the knowledge that you need so that you can make an educated decision when you vote on april 20th thank you all for attending this meeting tonight and dr robitazi before i take a motion to close do you have any closing comments uh no sir i'm good i think we got a lot of information out there and i'm very thankful to all of the panelists and the board members thank you all for this uh wonderful meeting do i have a motion to adjourn uh president smith i'm sorry before we do the motion can i reiterate a quick question to dr robertson or through dr robertson to uh money mike if i may yes when will um if passed when will hit when will this hit the tax roll is it immediately or what's the span and i think that's a good note to end on if i may because and then i say that because obviously everybody's concerned with that tax roll and i think to have that information in the back of their mind after hearing all this may help a little bit i cannot give an exact date i can say it definitely will not be next year and it should be hitting not even the following budget year the budget year so yeah okay thank you okay motion to adjourn motion second ms basford second by vice president abu drabo all those in favor aye all those against meeting is adjourned thank you all good night everyone thank you good night thank you good night
so a lot of the units and i it's hard to believe that everyone's got hvac units that will actually run merv 13s because hvac units can only pull through a certain amount of air and the tighter the filter is the more airflow restriction that there is and it'll actually damage units so we're in the process of determining which ones can and which ones can't access that so i've got i've got a company that's looking at all of our model numbers and all that so for for that reason we're running marvel evans if we put merv 13s and everything then they're going to break down and then we're not going to have ventilation at all okay the other things that we put in place and i know this is in addition to your question but we have merv 11 filters we have the ability for four filter changes between now and the end of the year and then we also have been working on opening up all one of the indoor air quality needs that you have in the classroom is you need to open up your outside air you know you want to bring in as much outside air as you can to reduce the um the um density of of particles that could be damaging um so those are open at 100 percent and then also we have replaced all of our window screens to allow when weather permits to open open windows and doors to bring in more outside air which is a key feature so that's where we are with ventilation right now we do also have hepa filters our hepa air sweepers that we have are for the nurses rooms and the infirmaries and places like that thank you mr diesen craig um where are we at as far as i know that we had some conversations when i first started back about um possibly finding some funding to replace some of our older units that would bring them up to the ability to have merc 13.
so these dollars have been appropriated at this point in time we are projecting that we're going to receive over 10 million dollars these are one-time dollars as i mentioned um and they must be spent in totality by september 30th of 2023 so since this agenda was put together we've had a new piece of information and that is the action taken at the state level and i mentioned this because the state dollars are also one time in nature and we expect the governor to sign those by this friday which would allocate another 12 million dollars to the school district that would start to be appropriated in the next month so i quite frankly have never been quite in this position of having this much one-time money coming into an educational organization i do really stress that this is one time in nature and the state funds and this is important not only to the conversation we'll have tonight but we'll bring back a spending plan for the state dollars next month is that the state dollars must be spent by august 31st of 2022 so the state dollars have to be spent earlier than these federal dollars that we'll be talking about this evening a mantra that i've often lived by is that we can be anything related to the finances but we can't be everything because there's just not enough money to be everything we want to be i find myself in the very strange position of basically telling the board you pretty much can be everything you want to be in the remainder of this year and next year because you're looking at 22 more million dollars to spend exactly and it is one time in nature kevin please ms dalby sorry can uh i just make sure i wrote this down right that uh sr2 monies need to be spent by september of 22 and the state oh 23.
could you give us a little update on where we are with that um it's it's a little bit up in the air right now um until until we see that money you know we really can't start you know we can plan on you know which units need to go first and prioritize and all that which we've been doing but until we actually see the money it's um not something that we can do i know that there's a program with the california energy commission similar to what they provided for us when we changed out all of our lighting to led um but that that funding is only available if your um electric electrical provider becomes that ops into that program and smud actually is not opting in to receiving the california energy commission um grants to replace units but they are giving quite large incentives to replace electric units only not gas because smud's big push is to to be zero carbon by 2030 which means they only want to replace electric because smud's really going trying to go all electric so that's a little bit probably more information than you needed but um when funding does come we're ready we're ready to jump on it um and we're just waiting for the funding to come through okay and just just curious the funding that is being provided for um returning to school to in person that is not sufficient to do any sort of hvac or upgrades i i believe some of that can be used for replacing hvac but we're kind of waiting to see what our other needs are first because you know we need to we need to make sure we can get the the um the coveted tests and the other important things before we start you know when you're when you're dropping it on air conditioning it goes pretty quick so we want to make sure that our funding makes us gets us through okay emily no worries my next question is about um physical disks oh i see mr jordan oh i'm sorry to jump in just real quick add to that the centers for disease control did come out with their recommendations for ventilation for schools and for child care i did put a link to that on the website uh they are suggesting that you increase filtration to the point that doesn't restrict airflow and i believe that's what mr diesen was alluding to it also suggested you keep doors cracked or when windows open with a box type fan pointing out so there's two windows open in the classroom which is what we're going to recommend as well there we are meeting those guidelines and again there's a link to that on the playbook sorry to jump in there i would just say in response to that um so far you know the cdc has given really conflicting messages to the public uh they've just now come out with that ventilation guidance the world has known that ventilation matters to this issue and their guidance is very weak um and it sets a very low standard and so that's why i was just sharing uh what natomas did because members of the public several members last time said how did they do it and so that's why i went to look my next question is about physical distancing uh because this is also another important issue and i again i looked at what did they do to open so quickly and and what is in their very robust plan um i saw that nate thomas uh unified contracted with architects and architect consultancy to create layouts for each classroom and office in each of their schools and they set up each classroom to maintain physical distancing and a flow of classroom movements um these external architects completed readiness checklists for each site they were completed by external evaluators not in-house actors they've posted in each space the way that the furniture has to be maintained the protocols about how students have to rotate uh the desks they set out each day so sanitizing can be more efficiently and methodically maintained they've adjusted their lunch and school visitation protocols to maintain physical distancing they have detailed signage directional markings supplies and maps throughout the campus detailing the certified and approved setups that are required to maintain physical distancing my question is what external architecture groups have we contracted with to create these necessary layouts and protocols and maximum occupancy recommendations that are aligned with what's coming out from the health department and other agencies and how are we ensuring that stable group sizes are maintained and our transportation services and our students are loaded and dropped off safely and and i really see that natomas did that work and partnered with external evaluators to inform their proposed return to in-person instruction so i'm wondering where are we in in terms of that and actually getting some consultancy and some guidelines um and and getting these sites set up and ready for to go for this you know i'll let uh mike and craig jump in a little bit but i know we have not contracted with consultancies because as we went through the guidance and i i visually can can tell you like north countries the signage all of those things we've gone through to be very honest i would rather spend our dollars on learning loss than things that we can do we've shown our teachers have been in the rooms we've not had concerns with that we've we've seen we have markings that we have everything that you've said bus wise all that but we chose at this point not to use consultants because we did feel like we could do the work um and and i think we have some great great employees that have done some fantastic work to be innovative we've seen tape measuring uh we've done everything we can to make those things appropriate now right now the signage is ready to go they haven't put it out because they wanted to wait until such time that we are ready so it didn't sit and then a month later or two months so we have a lot of that that's ready to go whether it's floor stickers whether it's you know big folding signs out front uh those things are all there but as far as a consultancy we did not contract with the consulting agency thank you mr blair because um that really is not reflected in our plan and so that's why i'm asking these questions because this information is not reflected in the plans that we were asked to review uh before this meeting i'm sorry can we can we just let mrs anderson ask her a question and then mike you'll be next sorry i was just going to point out that i was reading online this morning that they have already got information posted from the cdc and the other proper authorities on recommended layouts for classrooms and other information that's valuable to schools it doesn't have to be redone we're smart enough to figure things out without spending thousands of dollars to have it done for us and i'd also like to point out that some of those other school districts are a whole lot bigger than we are with a whole lot more money to spend than we have yeah so that's right but i just want to make sure that our plan reflects what we're doing and and presently it doesn't uh because i did not know the information that was just shared about um you know our physical distancing uh measures it's simply not in the plan as of now in the csp but a lot of those things are within the playbook and right that that will be definitely put in there's a lot of the distancing i'm sorry it's not in the playbook either uh superintendent lair we will our classrooms are going to be social distancing it's not that we're ignoring it oh of course not we're not ignoring it we're we're all together and we're all members of this board yeah so so so we have this opportunity to update our just a minute mr jason i'll get you to update the i understand what dr lee is saying about making sure that all this information is reflected this is the whole purpose of just having this meeting tonight is to make sure that we cover all the basis of making of reassuring our our people our families our students that we are taking this seriously that we've done all the protocols so that we can get kids back so you know i i get that that that we probably should have a little bit more detail whether it's in the playbook whether it's in the csp doesn't really matter as long as we have it and it's available to families and then um i appreciate that dr lee i made it i made a note of that and we can certainly include that in i appreciate that input thank you and then was it mr jordan you had your hand up or was it mr diesen both of us i think go ahead mike mr jordan first oh thank you uh it's so just to uh talk a little bit more about what mr lawrence talked about earlier we've had administrators go through our classrooms uh put down the markings in fact we even talked with the union about this exact issue to make sure our desks are at least six feet apart in the classrooms all of our classrooms are set up we looked at our locker rooms we determined we can't we can't change in there we can't maintain that so we've made the decision that in pe classes we will not be changing um we will stay out of that locker room because we can't guarantee that the physical distancing we've set up the guidelines that uh tables if students are at tables they will not be facing each other physically that they'll following the recommendations of the the california department of public health that they will be facing forward looking at signage we've had administrators go through look at the traffic patterns uh so that we're for example only going one way up the stairs not in a normal year be going up and down so that science will be there those those traffic flows i call it the disneyland uh protocol because they're the masters at that it seems like uh so that we're not uh we're maintaining physical distancing between passing periods at the secondary level uh going out to playgrounds and so on and so forth we set up our cohorts also so that those will stay together when they go to recess when they're coming and going and transferring between we've also looked at following the guidance department of health we're going to have water bottles available for those kids that don't bring it because uh drinking fountains obviously are a place where lines can happen we don't want lineups there we also don't want them drinking out of those drinking fountains so we've done a lot of things in this area uh that aren't necessarily showing up in writing on that the uh the plan that mr uh grimes is talking about they are under what's called classroom configurations in the in the playbook uh as well as a few different areas uh but i i would agree we could do a better job of communicating that out all the things that we have been doing uh over the the number of months what about the grab-and-go lunches we'll get there i think that's being covered shortly i believe mr jordan is going to be covering that or someone else related to the drinking fountains is the water being turned off to them to ensure students aren't drinking from them they're all off okay thank you and then we have pallets cases of water so if a student forgets it we can identify an individual bottle for that student is there a way for them to refill their personal bottles or no not because the because the water fountain so what we are doing is we do have water bottles they're the smaller ones that we order through food service so if we we'll make sure every student has water if they don't have one um which my kids leave their water on the table all the time and then go to school can we write names on them we yes you will absolutely have names on them and they will yes thank you okay and there's questions on hand wait a minute i believe mr diesel was still um responding to part of it sorry yeah and dr lee i just wanted to add a couple of more things mike stole most of the thunder he got just about all of it right so um i think that's great but you know floor signs wall signs floor dots um directions on like if the if the classrooms have two doors they have one for egress and one for ingress um you know if they only have one door they have a pattern on how they go in and out i was in a lot of classrooms today all the furniture has been moved out they only have a certain amount of desks they've got dots where the desks go so if custodians have to move them to do the floor they can put them back in the same locations so those are just a few other things and then we also have a frame signs for all the sites that they will put out with more directional information on on keeping kids going different directions to stay out of each other's way and then a lot of sites on the playground they have line up locations with either stickers or stencils on the ground for the social distancing as well so you will see many many protocols in place to to keep those kids social distance outside and inside with the am pm will they be sharing a desk or will they have separate desks stepper thank you and then it's my understanding that between am pm there's also cleaning that goes on right yes okay sorry dr lee go ahead with respect to the hand washing and hand hygiene um i'm just curious about that have we installed any mobile hand washing stations um if not if we're just going with what we have in our restrooms um you know have we verified that the um faucets and so forth are working and will we actually have them stocked with soap and things of that nature that are so critical for that hand hygiene aspect of this yes so so many many classrooms have if they have a sink they have um they have um disinfecting soap okay so every there's a there's a pump um soap dispenser everywhere that there's a sink all the bathrooms have them all the water is working and all in all the restrooms we have hand sanitizer in every classroom we also have um we purchased multiple wall hand sanitizers for heavy use locations like going into the office um going you know it out of the restroom there's different places for ones that we actually have put on the walls but then we've got we've got gallons and gallons of refills and we already have disinfectant in spray bottles and hand sanitizer in every classroom and office tell us about the room sanitizer the big one you bought [Music] remember when i said the guy was saying in dry creek spent you know thousands of dollars on these room sanitizers that we do a room in 30 seconds not buying those nancy and actually now they're not recommending that we do those big fumigations anymore um so you have it more streamlined we have five gallon sprayers we can use to hand pump sprayers to one gallon sprayers that custodians can quickly come through but um i'm actually glad we didn't invest in those because that was the rave i actually talked to craig about getting them they're expensive and now they're saying they don't want you just coming in dusting because some of that could be more harmful so that that's done that even on the buses the same thing we have the ability to use the smaller sprayers to spray between where kids will also be separated transportation's done an awesome job of preparing the the buses for that by identifying the seats that kids have come on the training for the bus drivers when they receive the kids and it's been nice running some cohorts because they've had some time to practice on a small small scale and it's starting to ratchet up with those cohorts and the drivers have had lots of opportunities to practice to determine if it's a small bus they can use a hand sprayer if it's a bigger bus they can have a one gallon sprayer that's pressurized and go through they've had plenty of practice going through and seeing how long it takes so that between their routes they can they can get their buses disinfected in regards to dr lee's question about you know making sure all the soap dispensers are full and all of that have we done anything to change the custodial protocols for daytime and not only protocols but staffing for daytime custodial the schedules are determined basically on whether they're am pm or if they're doing an a day b day so the schedules are pretty much customized based on when there are long enough breaks for for custodians to do um bathroom bathroom disinfecting on a regular basis throughout the day um disinfecting of classroom based on the schedule so there is there is time set up for custodians to be anywhere that kids aren't to be disinfecting or whenever they show up in those locations and so we'll add additional staff we've got additional custodians mr diesel and i actually personally went through and timed ourselves cleaning the rooms spraying the rooms to see so we could help with the schools to provide ideas for what those would look like we we went through because we wanted to make sure we have an unrealistic expectation in between those things plus we also provide we'll provide the staff with the comfort of having their own spray once and they've gone through the training protocol for that but then they'll be reminded again when we come back that they could then spray if they wanted to have an extra layer of of comfort whether it be the door handle or whatever but we actually personally went through it to try and map that out if we identify that there's hiccups then we certainly could come back and and tap into more people to to help with that so we did dr lee try to become our own consultants along the way yeah and natomas is notorious for for hiring outside consultants for many many things um not that that's good bad or otherwise that's just that's their um standard protocols go ahead and i just i've since people are addressing me i'd like to respond um i i think that you know um i'm just sharing the information because it is not in our plan um so i had many questions uh about it um and by no means am i suggesting that we should do the same we were asked to look at what they did and so that's why i was sharing with the board uh the research that i did around what they did um it's great when we can do things internally and ensure you know a safe and reasonable return uh to schools in in in person learning thank you for saying that yeah we have great really great uh administrative staff that that know their stuff so that's yes we do all right mr jordan just to go back to the hand washing it's part of our uh we're called the hygiene practices our protocol every time a student or staff enters a classroom they're gonna uh wash their hands so beginning of the day they go to recess the secondary between classes uh passing periods at the uh secondary level we also are having it built in in part of that protocol at this elementary level because their classrooms longer to have hand washing sanitizing periods throughout that the data as well so that's going to be built into our protocol of our normal routine is constant constant hand washing and that's regardless of the guidance cdc california department of health sac department health they're all saying the same thing mask and wash your hands mask wash your hands so we're just going to keep hitting those things over and over and over again throughout the day thank you all right dr lee i think you have more questions yes i do um student support uh matters lots of questions um so really um i just looked at our data for our district and i'm really glad to hear that we are looking at nursing staff and increasing that because we've been woefully understaffed in student support services areas since 2017 pre-pandemic um and for example some of our sites have ratios of one counselor to 400 to 600 students and so as i think about you know the trauma that students and families have endured throughout this pandemic i think it's something that we really need to look at and revisit making sure that we increase our counselors our social workers uh you know given that we have 6.7 homeless students in our district um that we look at our library services um you know nursing which which has been mentioned library uh all of these things are are known to increase you know health and well-being for students and i just worry about the lift um that's going to be there and that's going to be placed on teachers and other support staff if we don't have in place or an aggressive plan in place to increase uh student support services at each side so i'm curious to learn more about that because again that that wasn't addressed um in our in our plans that we reviewed here today and i believe dr lee too we we wholeheartedly agree with you on that we know when kids come back we're going to have some some trauma uh to deal with and one of the things we have posted for uh some mental health support uh we've got the the nursing stuff as you if you pointed out we've addressed that but also we have struggled to to hire people in some of those areas so we actually put out another posting trying to hire more even if it's on a temporary basis to help us so uh we feel very uh great that the board is is nodding along with that because that is something we see that we need to do as well um and and i think mr jordan mentioned that posting should have been up if it's not already to try and hire more uh in that area so thank you we if if i could add on to that we have also out met with our educationally uh related mental health services staff we started brainstorming ideas recognizing that we think there's going to be just an onslaught of issues that we're going to deal with once we come back to campus uh met with our our social emotional learning team our sel team which is members of all of our sites last week we're going to meet again next week and the task of that next meeting is we're thinking these two weeks let's make sure we have a robust plan in place day one when kids step back on campus because we recognize there's going to be i hate to say issues but there's going to be uh there's going to be needs let's say that both from our students and from our staff and we we're recognizing that so we're putting together plans for that the the counselor position that mr laird had referred to that is the position that'll take us at least through the end of next school year and then the county uh brought this up again in a county meeting today they have a grant where they're going to be bringing a counselor onto every campus in the county an additional counselor to what we have so we're trying to get to that point where they can hire enough people to get to our campuses thank you so when you say the county do you mean county public health or county office of education county public health and scully have created a partnership that will assign mental health workers to every school site in sacramento county uh the first round went out last year uh unfortunately our district didn't get one um the good part is they're saying that it's not going to like if you get one you're not going to be able to get rid of one and then have their you're going to if you have one you keep it so it'll be an addition so uh trust me mr jordan and i every time meetings we're raising our hand we're ready we're ready so okay great great that's amazing okay dr lee [Music] did jeff i think that was my final question because we've already uh touched on um the training i i did have questions on the training section of our covet safety plan because it was blank um so i'll be really looking forward to seeing the details of what training has been provided to staff about implementing these new um protocol requirements and the documentation that's been provided to staff to train them around you know limiting shared use of items and all of those other issues related thank you okay at this point do we want to take a five minute recess i mean i'm fine to continue but can we just show of hands if you want to continue continue all right we're going to continue all right moving right along i believe i have a couple questions okay go ahead see um so in the presentation um we had the seventh and eighth grade students coming back on 325 and 326 if we're in the red tier correct how long would we have to be in the red tier for that to happen if if we move to the red tier that tuesday would would they be coming back or yeah the the the new guidance is it said it's it's saying one day i believe mr jordan after you turn red so technically that wednesday would come back um so you you could do that in fact i can double check while we're here but it's not the agreement that we have the mou though with the if the date was selected it said if we were in the red that it could start okay um would so that tuesday is the 23rd is two days notice sufficient notice for parents that they need to get the kids to school um rather than home learning i see your point and i i think we to be very i hate to even say that but i i think that your point would be is should we have some sort of cut off prior to that if that is the route the board wants to go to notify families so i i'm not sure what the answer is there but that's something that i wanted us to think about and also something that i've seen discussion about um on social media do we have a plan in place to discourage kids from socializing especially without masks in large groups after school i mean there's only so much control we have once they leave school but from what i understand in some other nearby districts this has become common practice yeah i think the main thing what we would do is continue to to emphasize those practices and remind them as they're going home walking obviously on our transportation that would be good but even waiting for the buses we could certainly communicate around that reminding them to the social distancing they're gonna get tired of us saying you know six feet six feet um the other piece too is uh i i think it really is a communication practice as kids leave you know well follow the follow the social rules will there still be campus monitors especially like around rise there's those capital campus monitors behind the school yes you'll have them yes but once they get beyond that and it's the once they get to redwater you have no control hard yeah yeah but i see your point you know as soon as they leave if they all cluster then everything we've done is kind of out the window well seriously though i mean what there's only so much you can do it you know yeah kids are walking home and they want to take their mask off or they want to go to mcdonald's and have a coke i don't know where does it where does the school just like any other problem where does the school you know the custody to the parent we have to educate we have to continue to educate we have to continue to express why it's beneficial as a from a community standpoint beyond the school walls i think that is critical in the messaging that we will we will continue and what are the rules our rules for non-compliance if they refuse to wear a mask and how many chances do they get you know we're going to have there are rules outlining the non-compliance with mass so the kids can be asked to to not attend school if they don't comply uh except for special populations now there are some new guidance that came out on that is that all in the csp or the playbook it'll be updated because it came out previously so the face mask stuff will be changed and mr jordan i know we'd updated it in our playbook as well but i i don't know if he's had a chance yet to update it yet the playbook is updated and that's the state that's the state rule they've got to wear a mask or they are to be excluded and it does there there is new guidance that just came out for uh special populations for both for medical exemptions and for uh populations that have other issues where they just can't wear a mask right i'm just talking about the kid who takes it off you know during the hallway passes or whatever and we have to do something about it we can't just let him get away with it right and it falls back to education i mean we have to educate our people as to why and i think if you look around even in in general public people are are doing it we just need to continue to educate to share why we're doing it to keep each other safe and healthy and keep the school open if you want to keep the school open we've got to follow the protocols and i think that's a critical piece so do we have um training for our campus security in how to deal with um non-compliance in that area they they do in other situations certainly with the mask protocol if you're talking that we will work with them to make sure they know we're not you know we're going to work with people we're not going to give them detention or you know for their mass we want to again get to the point so yes they they interact with students and families all the time um so we would certainly be working on if it you know the what if then situations if if a student does not have a mask on how do you approach them and work with them just as we would with any misbehavior i hate to say it okay that makes sense um one other question i had um are our facilities ready to go like if we wanted to reopen tomorrow are the facilities ready do we have the adequate supplies and ppe and everything already i'll turn that to craig because i ask him that almost every single day and i gotta show it to me and so yes and um and he can go through numbers but we also have um vendors that we're with obviously when if all california things are going to be tight but we're working with vendors to make sure we have a supply train chain also uh in addition to the thousands of uh uh mass but craig you want to share a little bit please yeah um and we we've been building relationships with vendors you know from from may of last year you know and when we've been we've been purchasing and finding the the companies that want to want to take care of us and have the best pricing and i mean i can give you i can give you list after list of things i'll just give you a little taste and if you want more you can shake your heads up and down okay i've got i've got over 10 000 um three ply masks for students and adults kid masks and adult masks so so we have enough mass to get us started and then we also have access to places where i can get mass quickly it's not like back back in december where you know the price was you know double or triple of what it is now and you couldn't get them for you know three and a half weeks so you know we've got enough on hand and we've got the ability to get more if we need it as far as mass go we've got like i said before a sanitizer in every classroom already we've got disinfectant we've got spray bottles gallon sprayers five gallon sprayers and then we have dispensers at all of our site that actually mix the stuff on the disinfectant right there so we've got we've got thousands of gallons capability of disinfectant so we're set for that um as far as for our medical staff we've got medical gowns as needed gloves as needed face shields as needed um we've got plexiglas set up in the in you know in certain locations we've got desk plexiglas at every site for you know not for everybody but for when you need to test a student at a close level um you know we've got access to all of that as well like i told you before we've got the hepa sweepers for the nurses rooms um it sounds to me like we have plenty of ppe like you've got it handled touchless thermometers um we've got 150 in the district so if we do need to take temps we can take temps um you know so i could go on and on and we we recently that's not scott said 5 000 of the of the kova test as long as mr bruno is happy with your answer i think i think we can move on i think that answer was wonderfully more than sufficient thank you okay great and then i believe we are moving on to the third section of the presentation now correct that's how we covered it all we covered it all oh wonderful i don't know i must have left we just started so let's go over the transition hybrid does the does the board have any more questions regarding what's been covered so far no no okay wonderful go ahead scott and then we will get to public comment very shortly thanks go ahead and mr jordan i know you can you see the screen says plan two elements what are you talking about okay here we go i'm gonna backtrack off this slide real quick we just finished our preschool this came up earlier i believe uh miss kelly our preschool plan is now set uh we finally is that today i i updated the uh playbook with that i did not update the slideshow because i'd already shared that slideshow out i didn't want to change it on you uh but the priests next night they are not under the same guidelines in terms of minutes and that as the tk through grade 12.
i think that i just maybe wrote that down wrong i knew it was a bigger gap i was like okay august then september but okay got it so it's august of 22 is the state and on september of 23 is the is the sr2 got it thank you got it exactly so this evening what we're really asking the board to do is allocate the s or two dollars at this point in time that 10 point over 10 million dollars um and really we're looking for some kind of a motion or move that would allocate the s or two dollars in the following manners and then we provided a few examples and recommendations of how you might use those and we're going to walk through a couple descriptions because there's a couple that we really believe if the board wants every option to have students come back in a full traditional day at the start of next school year we really would like and need your action this evening so that we can put those dollars in the budget and can start spending them the first being furniture and we have estimated the amount of need for furniture at 1.85 million a couple notes the furniture examples are here these are the same furniture examples that we've placed in the schools that we've modernized or done new construction and what we're recommending is that we complete providing furniture to all the schools related to not just the schools that we've improved in our facility master plan but all of our elementary schools it also includes for our kindergarten students who tend to be more in pods and on the floor some portable kind of hard tops with almost like a bean bag underneath it kind of surface so that's included in this as well it would provide this is one time money the use of these this furniture would give us 20 to 30 years of benefit it's already needed to provide equity and equality across all of our schools and what we found on the facility side is furniture can have one of the largest impacts on the educational delivery model so by using these dollars we think we're really positioning ourselves well in the future if we don't spend out of these dollars more than likely at some point in the future we're going to spend them out of the bond dollars and so by doing this this evening or allocating dollars for furniture this evening we would have more bond dollars to use towards facility projects in the future as well i will also talk about the staff reducing class size to mitigate the learning loss and the four-foot social distancing we are currently overstaffed um we did not project that we were going to lose 450 students in the current year and so we currently are overstaffed anywhere from 15 to um 22 20 teachers at our elementary schools and so what we would like to propose is that we use these dollars to continue to maintain lower class sizes one to address learning loss and two to really maintain that social distancing requirement as we go into the future in each classroom for one year thank you and kelly can't say it enough this is one-time money so whatever we are choosing to do with these dollars really needs to be with the idea that this is not going to go on forever question what will a cl what would the class sizes be in this scenario well what we provided here um is that our class sizes at the elementary level would be maintained pretty much what they are now which is almost 20 i would say on average ted can answer that yeah our k-3 classes are running around 20 and typically we're up in the 23 range so you know it varies of course site by site and unique situation but but in general we're about three to four students less per class average and our intermediate classes are usually around 28 29 ish and i would say we're hovering closer to 25 26 right now on average we believe secondary probably around 30.
they're going to come back tuesday through friday they're going to split their kids up into two separate groups one's going to go from 8 30 to 9 30 in the morning the other one's going to go from 12 30 to 1 30 in the afternoon the the goal of that program is going to be social interaction uh we'll do the academic stuff separate to that it's it's uh social interaction is going to be the goal of that preschool program all right moving on to elementary so the overarching goal of the tk through instructional component of this for families is to offer them three options one for those who who want to come back and feel comfortable coming back to in person we want to have that option two for those who want to remain on distance learning we wanted to make sure we had that option for all families as well and three for those that want to go to a true independent study program we have that option open as well and they can switch to that at any time we do have a number of kids three or four on the true independent study program all the way down to the kindergarten level uh in terms of elementary we have a number of kids on independent study at the junior high and also at the high school level so the first slide you're going to see here is the on campus for those that choose it an on-campus program for elementary so this would be students attend class five days a week monday through friday students in tk through grade six we place in either an am or pm uh grouping uh they'll attend school during that am or pm time whichever they are assigned to or whichever one they are are put into we're going to make every effort we can to assign family members obviously to the same am or pm whichever they have each group will be for two and a half hours our primary academic focus during that time will be english language arts and math we are also incorporating in sel activities every day uh with those groups as well okay i'm sorry mr jordan could you not use the acronym sel i'm sorry social emotional learning activities thank you for those sorry listening okay and then uh between the am and pm uh groupings uh groups we will have the facilities will be disinfected between those sessions and then in addition students will complete independent work outside of the class day so that we equal up the required minutes uh that are required for engagement purposes by the state so that is for the in person uh for the the families that choose that this next slide if they choose to stay in true distance learning um they can opt out again of the on-campus model if they so choose they will be online again monday through friday uh they'll be also in a morning or afternoon group uh they'll attend also up to two and a half hours we recognize especially with some of our younger kids two and a half hours online is is difficult so we'll make adjustments as needed on that if that becomes overwhelming for uh especially like our arcade two students um again the focus is on the english language arts and math we were going to have them with our current teacher that was very important that's very clear in our survey with parents they wanted their kids or their current teachers so we are doing that and again they will have the independent study work to equal up uh the required minutes that the state is requiring then again if they so choose they have a third option which is independent study and that is a computer-based program called edge annuity or pathways at the elementary level that is a true independent study program where it's all online they'll meet with a teacher at least once a week to go through any questions uh concerns um testing that kind of uh issues and again we even had a kid go through this uh already is on the independent study program okay this is just a visual of what i talked about for those who are need to see it in a visual format and that is included in your slides moving on to the middle school again there are the three options on campus distance learning uh or an independent study program the middle school program at wilson rowell's is a five day a week program monday through friday students will attend three 50-minute classes on an ab schedule so they have six classes total they'll attend three on the the first day three on the second day they'll also complete 90 minutes of independent work daily again that gets us up to the state minimum requirement for minutes for a middle school kid student per day if they choose to opt out uh they will do uh an afternoon session where it's the same three 50-minute classes uh on the in the afternoons uh again they're they're expected to participate in that live online as well as the independent work for a total of 240 minutes which is the minimum requirement for a middle school student from the state again if they so choose they can go to the independent study program which is through edgenuity an online program where they would do all of their lessons online and then they would do meet once a week with a teacher here is the visual uh model of what we just discussed mr jordan just curious how many more slides do you have uh maybe five more five i think yeah we're going to do center high mcclellan done okay and dr lee do you have a number of questions that you wanted to ask at this point or no i can hold my uh questions about our return about this portion until uh it's finished that way i can you know ask them i'll honor that request okay and then carol how many public comments do we have at this point um can you hear me yes i can okay okay i would say i have probably about 28.