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so a secondary i used a loading number of 30 to come up with a calculation that basically means that we would need to hire additional 27 full-time equivalent teachers to meet that mark now that's compared to where we would be if we were loading to contract and at 35 to 1. but quite frankly i think that is very is pretty conservative because i think with the new rules because another change that's occurred is the definition of social distancing four feet which prior to last friday we were living under the assumption it was edge of chair to edge of chair we have a better definition now from the california department of public health which states it's four feet from the middle of the back of a chair to the middle of the back of the chair which really almost gives us another row in each class um so we think we can get more students in so i think we could load our secondaries higher than the 30 but to present an allocation i'm really kind of giving you the the worst case scenario or the most it would cost to accomplish that the only other item i'll mention and i'll kind of turn this over to ed services to talk about the other items is the air conditioning and climate quality one of the provisions of sr2 this was not true of s or 1 but of sr2 is that they allowed improvements to your hvac your heating ventilation air conditioning systems to improve air quality you could use s or 2 dollars to do that so we have an allocation here of a request of two million dollars related to improving air quality in classrooms dr kaiser has her hand up thank you caitlin dr kaiser yes i want to strongly support this initial designation of expenditure for the furniture and and the other component um and i'll i'll take mcmanus as just an example um we have had a number of schools that we've had to push back in our facilities planning because we had other schools that were growing so fast we couldn't uh delay but a lot of times then that creates the sense that this is a school that is not as excuse me not as desirable often has a higher percentage of ethnic groups in that school and so mcmanus is one but rosedale is another and so the sense is that these schools then become unattractive to parents even though they live in the neighborhood and they'll go to a different school because they don't think it's getting as much attention so besides the issue of allowing us to really take care of the safety health issues around distancing this is telling all of these schools in all of our neighborhoods that they are worthy of our attention and buildings take a long time but we can do furniture right away so i think it's a really critical expenditure we want to be back full time and fall this is a big part of that thank you dr kaiser kevin you were continuing i i do have a a quick question just to make sure that i've got my notes correct we're overstaffed at the elementary level by you said 16 to 20 teachers that's what's allowed us to keep those class sizes at 20 to 23.
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how many 20 28. okay i have a question for those of you who are listening and who have submitted public comment if your questions have already been answered by the presentations that have been provided and questions and answers that have been provided could you please um and only if you're interested in withdrawing your your public comment and i'm not encouraging that one way or the other but if you feel your questions have been answered in the interest of saving some time if you would like to withdraw your comment please email or put that through the public comment portal and then um all right mr i i'm sorry i i think we're gonna have to continue and finish the presentation and the questions so mr jordan okay so for center high school uh they will maintain an ab schedule the school's going to be split into two groups the student at the school but the students will be split into two groups a we're going to call it blue and gold since that's our colors uh half will go in the blue group will be half the students gold will be the other half the students so that we are able to make sure that we have adequate social distancing on the campus so on a rotating schedule the blue group will attend in-person class so the other group is participating from home online so that would be on the a day as an example and then on the b date with switch the people who were at home will now be on campus the kids who are on campus will now be at home now in order for that to work and that we make sure that both the blue and the gold group get in front of the teacher in person equal amounts of time we do have to do a switch where we flip-flop after a certain interval a week interval and that just ensures that everybody gets online with their a day teacher and their b day teacher and mr jordan i'm sorry i'm going to interrupt you just one more time mrs hunt could you do me a favor and just um can you kind of do a tally of those pro comments and con comments that that we have for public comments just so that we can see um where the comments lie um and then after mr jordan is finished with his presentation if you could let us know what those numbers are that would be very helpful and i'm sorry i'm going to ask mr jordan if you could try and wrap this up in about five minutes i can do so thank you and i apologize for this that we have a request due to kind of a family emergency situation so i'm trying to speed things up okay so again students can choose to do the full-time distance learning if they so desire they would be online during the day and that the classes will be broadcast out so that they can see them from home they can also go to edge annuity the full-time independent study program so here is a visual of that again i'm not going to go through this but that's just for those that need a visual representation these students will be online at center high not excuse me we'll be on campus all day a normal uh schedule uh however that it is split into two lunches and because we have about half kids who are going to stay on distance learning and about half coming and to in-person instruction and then you split those into two groups at the end in person students because of the a day and b day you you less the number of kids will be at lunch again and then you split those kids into two lunches during the day so you have a very manageable size lunch and again at the high school level lunches you don't eat lunch inside you eat lunch outside across the campus and we'll have on a rainy day we'll have numerous places that they can go to in order to eat so they can maintain uh social distancing i'm sorry uh well i'm not gonna break my own rule go ahead so i'm trying to speed up if i if i need to slow down let me know okay mcclellan high school has a different uh plan because they have fewer students they can social distance so they're going to go back to their normal five day a week with all students on campus class periods will be 46 minutes a piece they will lunches will be split so half the campus goes at a time again because they have fewer students they have a little over 60 students they can do that and all go at the same time and are able to maintain uh social distancing again they can also opt for a full-time distance learning option where they would be watching the classes participating online uh during the normal day and then they can also do an edge annuity a complete 100 percent independent study program if they so desire and here is the visual of that program and that concludes the slideshow thank you okay do we have any questions i just like a little bit of clarification uh because our hybrid uh plan two has changed significantly um in in this new version that's being presented to us here today and as a parent in this district um i i'm really hoping that we will survey parents again um independent study was never presented as an option on any of the surveys to date and some after seeing these plans may want uh to pursue that my question is i noticed that page 22 of our playbook states um that live stream um is available for the distance learning students uh can you tell us a little bit more about that mr jordan does that mean our distance learning model is switching and that our distance learning students will be watching a live stream of what's taking place in in-person instruction correct so as i'll use the high school center high school as an example so the first few minutes of class the students who are in person will be working on an intro assignment uh or activity this the teacher will be checking in with those who are online uh we brought in big 30 30 inch or tv monitors so that every classroom has that so that the teacher can monitor those that are online we'll go through the normal instruction kids can ask questions along the way whether they're in person or uh they're not out of person that than some the distance learning um and then the class is a 90-minute class that lasts about 20 minutes would be reserved where the ins in in-person students will be working on their assignment whatever it is for that day the the people or who are at home the distance learners would have a chance to have some one-on-one time with the teacher so that they can ask any questions they were not able to get to uh during the class period or if they so choose if they don't have any questions they can work on whatever that assignment is as well so that that would be an example it's it's a synchronous learning so it's it's live streamed out to those students as well that's at the high school level and at the elementary school level is it the same where it says in our plan that the distance learning students will join in for a live stream is that correct my understanding of that correct correct okay so i have a comment about that and it's a really important one and i'm saying this as someone that trains teachers and districts on the use of hybrid models both before and during this pandemic um what we're suggesting here is not in fact hybrid model hybrid models involve a combination of distance and in-person learning two different modalities that the students are exposed to really this takes a lot of classroom management skills and culturally responsive classroom management skills to execute that i'm not sure that we have that we've had training on and two our high school plan is getting closer to what a hybrid model actually looks like our elementary and middle school plan uh having students sit passively on a live stream um and and participate uh through passive observation it's it's not a healthy option and i'm very concerned about that i'm very concerned about that because so many of our students they have high learning needs and they need support and they need interaction with their peers and with their teachers and right now in our distance learning model they're getting that a little bit uh there's lots of improvements that could be made but with this shift to having students sit for two and a half hours elementary school students sit for two and a half hours on a live stream um where they're not being directly engaged by that instructor uh for the for the entire time of that uh the execution of this is something that's very complex and complicated uh the infrastructure that will be required to make it active learning we don't have it it takes more than a a video screen that shows the students and the teacher needs to tend to both the students that are present in that classroom and manage that and manage all the interactions and the masks and everything while also talking to kids who were sitting on a live stream i'm very concerned with that so let me expand on on the plan just a bit at the middle school level all in person kids will be there in the a.m there won't be the live stream all distance learning kids will be in the p.m so it'll be very similar to what they're doing now just the time of day will be adjusted if that makes sense at the elementary level we're trying to keep them all with their same teacher we heard that loud and clear that was definitely a priority it's going to depend class to class how many families are choosing to come back if we can split it up where we could have uh for example all the in-person kids in the morning and then the not out person the uh distance learning people uh in the afternoon fantastic the only time we're going to run into issues if we have we have 26 kids in a class for example and they all want to come back we're gonna have to split that up and if we have you know four or five who want to be online that's where it's gonna get a little tricky we're either gonna have to switch them from the teacher which we've heard families don't want to do or we're going to have to do that synchronous uh learning so does that exactly make sense yeah when mr jordan when scott was explaining to this to me earlier this week i had the impression that there is interaction with the students who are distance learning during the synchronous i mean i realized it's probably challenging beyond anything i could ever do but it is technologically it is possible that they are interacting right so then it comes down to a training situation and a software and technological infrastructure situation um that will require um software that goes beyond zoom and beyond google meets for those students voices and interactions to be seen and heard and so forth uh we don't we don't yet have that capacity and i'm saying this as someone who knows a lot about hybrid learning um and and you know um who has a lot of experience with it it's a very difficult uh uh thing to do especially without the technological infrastructure you really cannot have a teacher with their laptop and the camera that's on that and it be sufficient for those students who are in on that distance learning situation it just simply won't be the same as what the students are having now with their distance learning but mr diesen um can you share a little bit about the uh an average setup of that we have for the students because um dr lee you're right we recognize that you can't just have your laptop just sitting there and go for it it's not gonna work so we we have invested in in a lot of different things to uh work with this and we've been working with our staff for at least before uh the winter break time that this when this all kind of came out we've been talking through this plan so um let me let me just go over uh some of the technology that we do have because i agree with you a laptop and a camera um is not going to cut it um so we we do have we do have laptops for every um every teacher that we purchased with some of the coveted money but we also have docking stations that allow us to collect connect multiple modalities for them to be able to present and interact with with students we've also purchased 32 inch monitors for monitoring the students at home and 17-inch monitors as well to help them monitor all the stuff that's going on we found that there's a really good document camera that doubles as a webcam and what it does if you set it up at your teacher workstation and they're in front of the board working with their students in front of them that it it allows kids at home to be able to see not only what what they're talking about but it allows them to see the board and actually see what's written on the board so the teacher can be working in the front of the classroom and kids at home can actually see it we've done a lot of practice with this to make sure that it's clear enough for kids at home to see we have wireless keyboards and mice which really isn't that big of a deal but it does give them that flexibility of being around in the classroom in other locations um but the other important piece is the microphone system that we have so we've got a microphone system that the the teacher actually wears around their neck and it comes out of the speakers in the classroom but it also magnifies the the um the voice for the students at home so it goes through through the system to the to the kids actually learning station at home um and magnifies in the classroom as well so that that's what we have as well as you know upgraded um wi-fi access points to keep you know to keep the movement of the teacher and the voice of the teacher from being broken up and then upgraded fiber to keep things to keep all that data moving moving back and forth so that's what we have we practiced that with some of the tech teachers at the site so that they had availability of those and they could do some training of that equipment to their teachers when they come back and they've been using this technology with their students probably since january or so so that's where we are with equipment and technology thank you mr diesen i have just one more question president kelly um i have more uh but in in the essence of time as requested i'll just ask this one it's about um the requirements for a thoughtful phased-in implementation for return to uh in-person instruction and i just want to point out as i start this that 13 of the students in our district are english language learners 0.6 percent or foster youth and 6.7 of the students are homeless and 14 are students with disabilities our uh plans so far are silent about the stable cohorts that we have uh for our english language learners our students with disabilities our homeless students and our other high risk or high needs students it's silent on it so i'd like information about it our african-american students in this district have been suffering for some time now pre-pandemic historically back to 2017 and onward this is reflected in our college and career readiness indicators our cast results our smaller balance assessment results and it's risen to the top in our 2019-2020 graduation rates this is a vulnerable group that in addition to our hispanic students have been disproportionately affected by this global pandemic the guidance from the health department states that there should be a gradually allowing for specified grades and or percentage of each grade to resume in-person learning beginning with the youngest and most disproportionately impacted students our current plan for return that we're considering tonight makes no accommodations for our most disproportionately impacted students and it's opposite from what is in the guidance and what's in practice in all other districts in our area i'm really concerned with our plan stating that we're going to be returned to in-person instruction um for uh grades four through six on march 25th all of them and all the students in grades tk through three are going to return on march 26th that's a huge concern for me it also says that on april 6 all grades tk through 6 are going to be in in-person instruction and i'm concerned that this doesn't allow align with the guidance from the health department and it's also out of step with what our other local districts are doing not one district whose plans i reviewed talks about returning elementary students in mass to campuses during this pandemic um and it really uh if we look at what's what's taking place in sac city unified other districts that are in our area teaching staff like we've already stated are returned first so that they can get um a comp um acclimated to the new realities of schools uh so i think that's a great thing about our plan um but i have a lot of concerns around the timeline and how quickly we're returning those groups back to back um instead of going week to week for example um and i'm worried about the demographics of our students that we serve the disproportionate rates um of people of color and the ways they're being impacted by this virus and i really just would like to see a more thoughtful um return plan one that spaces it out more lowers the numbers not returning groups of students in mass it's not something that any other district is doing and the pace doesn't align with what other districts are doing if you can tell me one district that's done it this way i could be in support of that i would need to double check but i know san juan for example have you reviewed san juan's return plan and i again i know they announced that recently vanessa sorry yeah uh dr lee i'd like to answer that i'm part of a local sacramento county president's cohort so there's 13 districts that are in the county um and of those 13 districts every single one of them is considering the plan to reopen schools that um it was kind of announced you know a couple of days on monday that the governor had made an agreement with the legislature well cuta was already in talks with the district to move forward with the plan to bring schools back after we heard the board concerns as well as the parent concerns last at the last board meeting knowing how desperate families wanted their students back on campus and all the presidents in the local area in that pressure and realized that students need to be back on campus now that most teachers will be fully vaccinated by the time the governor's proposal of march 30th comes around um that kind of took the pressure off of many of the district presidents or the local association presidents in order to give them a little bit of leeway to say okay it's safe to go back given the plans that the districts have put in place now twin rivers is um still in negotiations elk grove has already made a tiered plan that they will start school within a week or so natomas has already started sac city has announced dates although they haven't reached an agreement with their association folsom cordova district a very large district is also already back on campus in a phased approach san juan is in talks and i believe they just reached an agreement yesterday so it is not just center with bringing students back by the end of the month it is every district in the county i think you i think you misunderstood my question my question wasn't about whether schools were returning uh to in-person instruction there's been a financial incentive um uh offered and so everybody's jumping up to return to in-person instruction that's obvious my question was about the details of the phase in implementation of the return to students and how students are being how we're prioritizing a return to face-to-face instruction for english language learners for homeless students for students with disabilities and our other vulnerable student groups my statement and my concern that i issued was that i don't see one district in this local area anywhere that i know of really um that's doing a plan like this where on one day grades four through six all return to in-person instruction and where the next day grades k through three all returned in-person instruction i don't see that reflected in any of the plans and i've reviewed them in detail i can show you the the the uh so i'm on information i just wanted a class and i believe that thomas had a phased um a phase return to campus and then the other thing is we were in negotiations uh the week prior to the announcement by the state so we had already been in talks about returning to campus before any money was ever even brought up by the state so i don't i don't agree with the comments that i've been made on social media or the comment that you made that says that we're only agreeing because suddenly there's a pot of money i think that we were all that's not what i stated that's not what i stated that's that's the way i interpret it i apologize thank you um and in with respect to nate thomas because i did look at their plan in detail they are phasing in um they're making sure that only one third of their student population is on campus on any given day at their middle school and high schools their stable groups are nine to ten students per group i don't see our our stable groups in a detail of that our plan states that our grade level stable cohorts are a minimum of eight and a maximum of eighty no other school in this area has that kind of stable cohort definition and that's not a stable pool port that's too large so that leeway of 8 to 80 it's it's too much and returning students in mass is not something that any school that i know of is doing the way that we're proposing to do it in this proposed reopening we are too right the disabled cohort i'm sorry mr larry for the stable cohort if 50 of the students say in any second grade class choose to do distance learning that brings the class size down to 10.
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if we were staffing to the ratios that we had in in contract um those class sizes would be significantly higher correct correct thank you so there's just being a couple comments on the hvac and all and all in there is that um these are dollars that one can be used through s or dollars or s or two and we think would be prudent so one of the first items that we would spend out of that would be to upgrade our energy management system across the district to a non-proprietary system that would allow us to to actually remotely be able to see the amount of air coming into a classroom whether or not the filter's clean we get temperature dates we can actually see what's happening in each of those hvac systems that would be one of the first things we'd want to do and that's almost a million dollars in and of itself and we have the two million because then there's some old hvac systems that we would also like to replace so that's why you see that number there for air quality we also want to research options of air filter improving air filtration in the classrooms themselves mr lando thank you um i'm just looking through the line items here there's one or two that caught my eye since i know this is one time only money um but it looks like one of the suggestions was for an i.t support staff um do we see an increased need is it that then it's going to disappear are we going to creating a new position that we're going to be on the hook for recurring after that you know i'm kind of done with those three i was going to talk about i'll turn those over to ed services let them answer that component of it hey this is john vincent so i can answer that so um we're looking at bringing in a full-time position in a half-time position for 18 months to help us get us over the hump here with all these chromebooks we just have so many chromebooks right now that's going to really make a big difference for us so it's envisioned as a limited term position thank you okay okay i can go over um and again i'll go over them as quickly as you want me to and if you want to stop me and then ask me like try to break down some of those costs we clearly can do that for you the first one is the uh maintain internet connectivity for 75 thousand dollars that is to make again we have we're planning on coming back full time but we still want to make sure that we have our hot spots and our comcast available for our families which we have this year and so we want to continue to be able to do that next year for our families for their connectivities at home that cannot afford um internet at their homes so that was 75 000 um the next one uh the big one you see there is the tutoring uh for we have there for three million even if we are full-time am pm we want to continue the tutoring if we're back full time next year we would still like to do tutoring before school and after school and also offer more money on for saturdays to allow us to catch up for learning loss for these past years with the pandemics so we want to continue those if we're using the federal dollars we can continue those for two years um if we're doing state dollars which we can we're going to come back to next month we can continue to do that for all the way through next year so we're basically talking right now at the bare minimum two summers and one full school year of doing extra tutoring for our students miss dolby thank you um is the intention for having a a full tutoring program before school after school not during school time is part of the intention of that so that students who need more targeted intervention don't have to give up like an elective class yeah we have again if you you've seen this for years students would have to give up their elective in order to have an intervention class if we can offer these extended days for them then they would be able to keep their elective which is very important for our kids that want to come to school that's one of a good reason for them they love they're having their cte courses or their elective classes at the junior highs so we're looking for that go ahead mr tennis you're done answering her question um summer school is this a good time to talk about summer school sure okay um what if we just pile on summer school i mean if we boosted that i mean what are we looking at right here product wise with what we're looking at on this spreadsheet and what could it be if we were to take from other areas and and augment this can i i can tell you right now there's two different types of things we're going to offer during the summer one is a credit recovery summer school which we use right now title 1 funds and also our junior highs have other fundings that they use for for credit recovery so that's different funding than what we're talking about so we well typically we could have up to at the high school level that we run through um summer schools for the secondary for high schools we could have up to 300 kids trying to earn 10 credits and a four week span and we use title one dollars for that the junior highs also can earn up to 10 credits during their the summer um at their junior highs we're also going to be running summer academies and that's different and that's what we want to use these dollars for i think it's going to be a little less possibly than what we're showing here now because we we're going through our teacher groups and our principals we believe that three-week summer academies might be too long two three week ones because of families wanting to vacation and our teachers doing the same we at the very minimum we're going to run two two-week academies one that right after school ends we'll start up for two weeks from nine to twelve they'll get fed for two weeks and then we will run what we call early we're calling it early back we'll run a two week programs for right before school starts for to get kids a boost before they go into school mr tennis i think it's important too to note that the proposals for those kinds of things are already starting to come in we realize that we're in a time crunch and so if we are allowed to move forward with those we you know we can't wait to just suddenly uh implement that in april or may because we need to survey and find out what kids would want to do it and then staff so we're starting to solicit applications for proposals for different types of summer academies in case we're able to run it we think it's really important to get that ball rolling plus we'll be sending out surveys again mr sullivan you can correct me but i will be sending out surveys to our teachers and our families and who are wanting to be part of those academies and they could be any student that want to go to those candidates we just want to get the number of students we have and how many employees that we have that are willing to work those academies that correct absolutely we actually our elementary principal meeting on tuesday we had kind of our first planning session and we have a survey ready to go out to staff and families to kind of gauge how much interest is out there for these kind of opportunities and we were talking about offering a third session during july with it also so we just kind of need to start getting a sense of you know are there a hundred families in one of these or there are 600 families that want to do this and then start trying to make sure we can hire enough staff to operate it then also with it so yes if i may continue um can you compare who would be the best person here to compare and contrast i've experienced like early back in the past and really liked it what was that about two weeks or so there or is that was that what it was so so our summer school experience quote unquote for the grade school kids was kind of a two weeks before school could i have done more than that um then i did or or and what i want to really understand is how much more than that are we looking at with this so let's let's ted let's talk let's separate out elementary from secondary so once you talk about elementary and then i'll talk about something elementary as mr marshawn was talking about we're talking about trying to run three two week sessions three hours a day uh we want to mix in academics absolutely but we also want to mix in some opportunities for some of those things that kids have been missing out on for the last year also and could you go to all three of them if you wanted to if interested yes and the money's there for that basically with what you've got in the spreadsheet with what's allocated here we think we could operate it pretty comfortably and kind of have spaces for as many people as we'd like to be attending as long as with the math and the reading we'll be doing a social emotional um curriculum during those three hours too and again we're going to want some enrichment time for those kids that they've missed out on also but we want to break it down so we'll make sure that we're hitting all of those so for secondary we would offer from june 7th i believe through july 3rd a four-week credit recovery summer school which is really focused on core academic areas and at the same time most likely after listening to our teacher groups we have meetings with them every monday as you've heard before we have our dlc input from all of the different sub dlc groups they believe that a two to three week window right after school ends and then possibly a two to three week window right before school starts to give kids a chunk of time in the middle so that's the that's the kind of application that that have been coming in from the teachers and i want to reinforce that the summer academies they could be anything the teachers think is academically and social emotionally relevant so for example if a teacher wanted to spend a few days with students working on their their art skills and possibly take a field trip to manca to reinforce the concepts that they're learning during during that academy that's something we would consider we also anticipate that we'll get more elementary families that are going to want to take advantage of these academies versus secondary we will offer obviously for everybody but we anticipate we'll have a larger amount with elementary and and i will say to re reiterate what mr shepard was talking about secondary is a little more specific in focus with maybe at art academy elementary would be a little bit more of a i don't call it a generic in a negative way but creating an experience that lots of schools could be using kind of that template to organize things and put put structures in place to make a good experience for students also it wouldn't be quite as individualized as secondary would some of those options has um for secondary has anyone thought of partnering with chico state like to do computer programs or something like that um yes these computer labs or maybe like a wall climbing sort of thing or something like that have we ever done that and would we consider doing something like that we have we have a strong relationship with the between the cte programs and chico unified and both butte college and chico state again it would just be a matter of teachers saying hey we want to do this we want to get kids involved get their brains engaged do some things that maybe we weren't able to do in the last you know the last year and there could we i was talking with some math teachers and they're having a conversation about having a for example an integrated management one math academy just to get the kids who might need a little more reinforcement get them re-engaged as they start the school year because even in a normal year we do have summer learning loss right from june and june to august so it'd be an opportunity to do that but we'll be talking also is the fact you know we could do a code academy you know somebody wants to learn coding we can do something like that we're hearing different things from our teachers that they want to offer that would be along the lines of not just straight math in english 9 english 10 but trying to get kids back the stuff that they've lost in other areas also i have uh dr kaiser you have your hand up you need to unmute yourself right so uh my appeal for this and support is we've been dealing with my grandson being in the hospital and missing school so at this point he's missed a week and he might miss two weeks and so i think this is really really critical uh especially with the issues around uh you know the concerns we have about kids being contagious or having to be quarantined and it's not coveted it's uh it's not that related but this is really really a critical asset to offer to the families who want their kids to be back on track thank you dr kaiser caitlin uh yeah um so for secondary okay let me just make sure i'm understanding first of all for elementary um the plan is to offer three two week sessions that's kind of like summer camp with some academics am i understanding that right correct initially we talked about more of uh i don't call it a recreation enrichment kind of academic focus in june but come july august it would gear more towards kind of some academic focus and re-teaching so that they're ready to come into the school year with some academic kind of grounding back in place for them and that's and that's dependent on teacher availability to work through the summer that would be part of it and part of it starts becoming if we have a huge demand from parents we will start going out and offering positions and seeing how we can fill those positions with credential teachers okay good and this is not to like speak speak poorly on anybody wanting to participate in in this because it's a great opportunity for us to make sure that our students are are growing um it's that i know a lot of staff needs a bit of a a social and emotional break as well absolutely i think a lot of them are gassed with with the last year it's been a full yeah it's been a full year of this like high octane trying to figure stuff out problem solve you know build a build an airplane while you're learning to fly it situation for everybody so i just wanted to acknowledge that you know the teachers who are able to you know who have the capacity to do that that's like above and beyond amazing and the teachers who don't don't feel bad about it you know like everybody needs some self-care at some point um and i'd just like to address that and also to um make sure that that there will be opportunities to um have other people step in to still fulfill the need if we don't have enough uh teacher interest for very legitimate reasons you're sharing that's where we start advertising and trying to recruit in people that we're willing to work in those capacities great so our goal is to rise to the demand absolutely absolutely even if a teacher wants let's say it's a two-week academy and they get a partner they're willing to do one week and the other one to do the second week we're willing to work around those types of things with teachers and again we're we're not sure about that middle that july one because we you know that's a lot of times where our families go on their vacations in the middle but we'll again we'll see what the surveys say to us and right now we'll pull the teachers all together i know we talked about wanting them on every campus which would be our ultimate goal but we're going to first see what we have for the need from our families at the school sites and the teachers and so we then we'll start placing them and they'll be able to cross over to other school sites if their school isn't providing that i'm assuming correct and then at the secondary level if i understood correctly there's a there's two different things happening one's the credit recovery program it's a four-week credit recovery program is the is that do we know that that is going to provide for all students who need credit recovery because i know like we said you know around 300 but what if there's more that need credit recovery are we going to be able to expand to meet the need of those students who need the credit recovery absolutely we know we have the capacity for that it's just a matter as you've said of finding staff you know to be sure that we can staff it um but we are the application process internal application process has begun we wanted to get a jump on this regardless of what happens tonight with the budget because we don't want to be caught right behind so we're prepared for that and then after it flies internally there's not enough people who sign up but it goes to external um advertisement okay and another thing we're trying to do to entice our teachers is normally we would pay them a summer school rate per hourly um now we're paying them per diem so whatever they normally would make during the school year on their hourly rate um that's what we're going to pay them so that'll be on an increase from a lot of our teachers to be paid so we're trying to entice them because we're anticipating more students wanting to do these academies and then so just my second half of the secondary question um so on top of the four week credit recovery program for that six through 12 right um is also it was two or three two two week sessions this is where the the proposals come in from the teachers so for example it may only be a week right it could be five days it could be ten days it could be in june or it could be in august i would imagine as mr marchand said we won't have too many in july that's just a chunk of time you know that people need the need to break but we're going to we've been soliciting proposals and reviewing those we have a standing agenda item each week to um to just you know to get to answer questions uh but again it comes back to if the money's there we can we can approve them and one of the things we haven't talked about is is the possibility of students getting some variable credit during those summer academies and if there's a credential teacher working with those students why not so is it so is it kind of like um and sorry if i'm simplifying this a lot but almost like a card type program where you know you'll have a there's a list of things that are being offered and students can sign up for you know this one week session of i don't even know like learn yeah learning ecosystems through gardening for example um you know for a for a one week session uh or you know i guess i'm kind of trying to wrap my head around what that looks like at the secondary level yeah and that's the difficulty as mr sullivan said there's such a a range of curricular topics i think what needs to be embedded in the what not i think i know what needs to be embedded in in the proposals or the applications is is ties to the standards we need to be sure that there's some connections to that connections to learning laws that were yes that's that's the key for it to be funded mr lando thanks um so on that note i see we've allocated um an estimated 650 000 for each of those um knowing the way you do money i assume that's uh like a ceiling that you don't ever expect to surpass but how solid are we on that number is our best estimate at this point in time but i think what's nice is that we're going to bring back another plan related to the state dollars which has again 12 million so even if you were to say we want to do everything on this list and we can only allocate 10 and you carried over every item that's only 6 million and we still have 12 coming so i guess to answer your question this is our best estimate right now based on some very broad assumptions as this gets tighter we'll bring this back to you so that it's roughly 1.3 between the two the elementary and secondary academies how many students does that assume you're going to be serving during those times i think we are trying to build in where it's as many as would like to i don't think we targeted a specific number i apologize to be vague with that but when we were talking about we're just talking about if we can have this many sessions happening at a school site um don't have a specific number i apologize let me put this in context a little bit we are looking at big broad range categories and that would be the maximum um although we could always come back and say you know what we had a lot more interest than we thought and and revised that number but as mr marchand and mr sheppard and mr sullivan all alluded to at this point we don't know what the demand is because we haven't surveyed students yet we don't know what particular areas and how long those courses would be especially at the secondary i think we have a very good feel for the elementary because we've done that we've done credit recovery before but doing the academies is brand new but i could envision let's say you know chico high ffa wanted to do three weeks of um you know some kind of animal and plant academies in the summer and get their kids in and they do a lot of work in the summer anyway this is an opportunity for them to come in and do that perhaps even with some credit and then the teachers be reimbursed for the time that they're spending there into the instead of the volunteer that they do it so many times so all of these um and i think it even says there we need to refine these more they need to be broken down more there's a lot of unknown built in that's why we're bringing them forward as big general categories i completely understand that and i'm not trying to put anybody on the spot um i'm trying to figure out what the assumptions were like for 650 are we planning on buying roughly 15 sessions roughly three sessions what does that look i mean three is clearly not real but what are we looking at do we know initially tom for elementary that we were thinking if each school had a session being offered for each grade level that was kind of our building point for what we think we want to put one second dollars for for grade level per se at least as a starting point thank you from there thank you that's our ultimate goal another one they were talking about is our ap teachers came to us and normally they assign work over the summer for them to come in and they right away that they have tests and quizzes on but they're thinking of doing ap academies to start at early back also and another one that's all that's on here is our kindergarten camp also when we identify our kindergarten fam our families are coming to us and said listen my child's never been in a preschool or have never been exposed or they've had some difficulties in their in their preschools we would like to see if we get them in for a few weeks to learn how how kindergarten works and so they're not doing that the first few weeks of school the kids are ready to go is that correct mr sullivan absolutely almost like a a training session really for students to kind of see what kindergarten's all about and we also see a lot of times like mr marchand said students that haven't had a preschool experience kindergarten is kind of difficult for them sometimes so we see sometimes those students have difficult behaviors also so this is a chance to kind of walk them through what to expect with kindergarten and also hopefully kind of give them some time to get behaviors where they're ready to go for kindergarten when it's time to start can i ask about two other uh line items here just while i've got the mic um one is similar to my previous question there's an mtss coordinator on there for a hundred and forty thousand dollars is that again what we like a short term just to kind of address uh social emotional needs or what is that yeah so we're excited to start to frame everything that we're doing underneath that multi-tiered system of support framework and ed services has been trying to figure out the most efficient and visionary approach to creating the across all sites the same approach for addressing our system of support to do so we need to have a coordinator we need to have somebody who is always focused on our multi-tiered system of support so we've come up with a staffing structure and the multi the mtss coordinator would be directly in charge of three other three another level of staff who then would be reaching out to each of the sites we realize there are so many things happening on all our sites that just fantastic work happening and sometimes we don't have an idea of everything that's happening in one document so our goal is to create this multi-tiered system of support package and we tie everything to that and the mtss coordinator initially funded through these one-time dollars would get us started and then we would start to figure out ways to continue to fund that that person ongoing we believe after this two years if this got funded to here the first two years so we could we have some funds available in one of our title funds title four we believe we can be using after that again this all depends a lot of this stuff depends on how the budget looks after these two years too and what we're doing with our budget and what we can keep and what we can't keep through our lcap and grants we'll be continue to use miss metzger and the person that's going to be replacing her to make sure that we can continue these programs after the two years but yeah right now this is kind of kickstarting us uh mr lando until um we can start using our other federal dollars to continue them okay then my last question right underneath that on the list is a kind of cryptic 20 times 2 000.
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and so of those 10 5 would be in the am group or 5 could be in the pm group so the stable cohort is a fairly small number of students um on any and then if you add it as a grade level you could say okay there's four second grade classes and there's five kids in each class in the morning group that's 20 students in that cohort or in that stable group so the numbers are significantly low at the elementary level because of the schedule now high school level because students rotate from class to class to class that cohort does expand and that's why the state has not made any provisions to allow uh the high school and junior high students to return until they're in the red the other piece of doctor lee i'm not trying to to to prove you wrong by any means but i just had in my email from san juan so san juan k5 and self-contained sixth grade they have a schedule that those groups will start coming back um and i just read the email i just popped back over but again i'm not saying that's right or wrong you are definitely entitled to your your position so i i'm not trying to discredit i just want to know but if you could share the details of that plan uh i don't think that we'll see that they're doing it like like we're proposing to do it but i i'd like to see it i'd like to hear the details the email yeah and so the other piece would be is everyone's plan is much different their time with on campus is a lot less too you know so if could we we need we need to hear a public comment and make sure the board has an opportunity to to ask their questions i do have one statement um the playbook has been was issued in july a lot of these questions should have been asked prior to the month prior month of reopening schools and i have a response to that and that is that our playbook has changed significantly as well as our plan to hybrid plan and as board members we have a responsibility to the public to hold ourselves and our playbooks that which are constantly shifting accountable and so when we need to ask questions and seek occasion about those matters that's what we were elected to do and that's what i will continue to do i'm not saying you shouldn't ask questions it's a living breathing document and every time there is a change mr jordan and mr lair does inform the board especially on a friday on his emails that's awesome and i will continue to ask questions when i have questions and i appreciate that very much what my statement is is that this is a living breathing document that was created in july and those questions should have been asked and addressed prior and one more thing in regress in regards to your comment about finances i did take that statement the same as miss mason as well thank you i said districts were jumping i didn't say we were jumping so perhaps we all need to listen back to this recording and see where our biases become maybe you should become evidence a little more carefully because you've attacked everybody at every meeting but but you know what i haven't but you know what i haven't so maybe you should check the biases that you've had since i became a member of this let's cut because it's problematic let's put this to to rest okay um these are not biases this is a perception of aggression that is coming across whether it's intentional intended or not it is being perceived as very confrontational the words that are being used are very confrontational it's not just from you dr lee it's from i mean it i think we just need to everybody take a deep breath and step back we're all here for the same reasons but it doesn't need to be this confrontational this are very difficult decisions that we're making the questions are reasonable to a certain degree i understand what del rey is saying what mrs pope is saying that we've had this information but i for one believe that we should make sure that all the information is out there so that all of the families and parents know exactly what we're doing and why we're doing it and you know i don't see any reason why we shouldn't ask the questions again even if they've been asked before but i do understand that this information has been available it is a living document so yes it has changed of course it's changed the regulations i mean in my office just today at cdbh we're sending out new guidance three different sets of new guidance at the same time to all of the counties so yes things are changing at breakneck speed which is why two weeks ago we voted one way and now you know two weeks later we are potentially considering another direction because things have changed we have changed the guidance has changed the the situations have all changed so we we just need to to take a deep breath we're all allowed to make these ques ask these questions and make these decisions so point of order yes i'm calling for the vote i'm sorry all right we haven't heard funny comments we have to allow public comments i have to leave the meeting i know mrs anderson i'm sorry for that i if i had known earlier i would have tried to move things along faster i apologize i tried i know okay um so we've had all the presentations we've had the questions are there any more questions that the board needs to ask before we move to public comment i i would like to ask some questions but i would like to hear the public comments first okay wonderful that that sounds good mrs mrs hunt could you um first give us a tally if you have it and then read the public comments okay so the tally was quite difficult because a lot of it is comments you would have to read between the lines um and there's a lot of questions uh so i would say roughly about eight to ten four and two against okay yes four opening and two against so there's about eight to ten that were for opening and and now i see i have more that have come up on my screen so i'm i'm doing my best to keep up with them so the 28 comments is now down to 12.
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what on earth we are we buying 20 after 2 000 so i believe we're talking here about our equity alliance uh cohort coordinators so right now as i've i think we described a couple of board meetings ago we've been partnering with chico state and humboldt state on a problem of practice and basically trying to address inequitable practices bias and even racism within our district so we've been working now for about four months to truly identify investigate and explore what that looks like in chico unified school district and we're having courageous conversations at every level from cabinet to all the way down to the site level what we're realizing is we need to have one person on each site who's responsible for continuing that work and so the norcal elc chico unified equity alliance cohorts are each stipended two thousand dollars to participate and that stipend is comes from the norcal elc grant and it seems fair to ask at each site that someone lead those equity alliance cohorts and also be stipended so that's where that two thousand dollars per person comes from we also have three other very large chunks and agency for professional development again that's very the top of the ceiling do i see us spending that much on each one of them no but we want things that we want to repair we think we have not been back to full time since last march so we want to again be able to give our teachers some professional development time when we go back to full time that they're ready to go and what that looks like to make up the review and everything to spill what we've been doing in these academies what they can do into their classrooms so we want to make sure if our teachers need some times to meet with their math or their english or their different departments to say okay this is what we got to attack that we didn't get in so we can blend it with what we got to do now so we just want to be able to put money aside if teachers come to us to say that they hey we need to get together to look at that we also have a big push for our social emotional learning curriculum that we want coming in so we're setting money aside again to make sure that we're training our counselors our teachers our target case managers our counseling assistants we want to make sure that they're ready to go with that curriculum because there's a lot more curriculum that is now available that we want to make sure that we're pushing out and i'm trying to see what the third one was mr tennis you had a question yes i had a question for you jay about the professional development items there's three items here a half a million each so all told that's more than the summer academies for elementary as a standalone or secondary as a standalone what are those what what is that exactly paint the picture for me i want to understand what that consists of again let's say the um i had one of our map department leads from one of our high schools come and said listen we got to really break down these math standards again with our with our group to make sure we're covering what to make sure they recovered previously what we want to cover this year and try to get caught up through the learning loss that we have so are we going to be able to sit down with my math department from my school and the other high school to develop with this um the adjustments we might have to make in our curriculum that that possibly that the students have lost over this past year so those that they would be getting together for a certain amount of hours developing a product telling us what they're going to do how many hours it would take to develop that product and and then move forward with that we also have brand new science curriculum uh ka we want to make sure that we give them time to because they didn't get it really any time during this pandemic to learn what this new amplified science curriculum is going to look like when into their classroom so we want to be able to have them break down with lessons start planning units together so they're ready to go when school starts um in the fall so those are types some of the types of things we're looking at do i think that we're going to spend 1.5 million uh i don't think so but we we just want to say again inside we don't know what that ceiling is we'll come back and say listen we only spent 500 000 out of those three pockets okay so what what can we do with this other million so we'll be bringing that back caitlin uh i i'm glad that you brought the summer time up again um because i i had a question about that earlier um before we moved on to the rest of the items and that uh is just the surveying that's happening um i know that uh mr sullivan said that it's happening at the at the elementary level right now right uh staff and and families are being surveyed it hasn't started yet we'll probably go out in the next week sorry my apologies um do we have an anticipated um time when that those results will be back and analyzed it will take us a good month plus to make sure we can start organizing everything so our hope is by early april mid-april we'll start having a good sense of like we think we can offer this many sessions we think we have this much staff so i'm going to guess a good month before summer comes we'd have a much better dollar kind of number to put forward and the same thing at secondary level well secondary is a little different in that these are going to these are really going to be choice sessions um so we're going to need to solicit input but we also need to solicit um applications from teachers so it's a little different process and you know we need to see what teachers are willing to provide and again we're not talking about credit recovery we're talking about the summer academies i don't want the public to think um we're different or that we're to confuse the two we are we are certain we already have applications coming in that there are some creative ideas we just need to get those in a queue make sure we we publish the menu that is available to kids and um as kids show up we'll serve their needs i i have two thoughts and the first one is starting to leave my brain and i don't know if i'm going to grab it um but my second thought just now is uh has there been any talk of soliciting ideas from students themselves from my understanding most of the ideas that have come to us from the teachers have been [Music] in from conversations with kids and and parents right yeah i can tell you that we about we started a little over a week ago we met with the money group we went over this budget with them told them this is just a draft plea we went with our dlc groups to talk to them about this and then we met with our principals at the elementary and the secondary this past week and said this is a draft budget we're going to be showing this draft budget to our board also we know we have some specific things on there that mr baltimore talked about that we're going to need some approval for immediately but a lot of this other stuff is stuff that we want to look at one of the things now that we know that we have the state funds it's because quite frankly for counseling time that we've talked about for for adding we're looking through grants we think that we can handle adding more counseling wellness counselors at the high school than junior highs through grant money that we have um that we're working on we were trying to figure out how we could do that at the elementary but now that we have the state money in we would most likely say when we come back in april hey we like to push some of this other stuff into state that's a one-time one-year thing but if we could add elementary so we could go full time that every elementary site right now they have if we can go full time we would like to use the federal dollars which is for two years so we could have to add the counseling on the elementary for two years we already know we have the money for the secondary to grants to do that but if we could then move on here it doesn't show that we'd come back in april say look we made some adjustments we would like to put i think we thought six hundred thousand dollars it would cost us to have counselors that correct mr sullivan yeah 600 per year per year for elementary to go full-time a counselor so we could do that for two years out of the federal so i'm just saying this is again a working document through us trying to figure out now that we have 11.7 or 12 million more of the state funds and how we can use the one-year money versus the two-year money so it'll be a little bit of a shell game i'd like to go back and address the question you had though about student input this time of the year we go around and we meet with students as part of our lcap process and we meet with our targeted students our most at risk populations representatives from those at each and every school site and the kids have wonderful ideas but one of the things we heard you know definitely at the secondary level was the opportunity for tutoring either built into the school day um or before or after school so that they have a place to go to get help or there's somebody there that can help them and and that's been consistent across the board didn't hear as much about summer although we did hear from a few students that they felt they needed the opportunity to make up credits that maybe they just didn't do because they weren't engaging in the online environment so i think credit recovery is something we offer every year but probably we'll have a little increased demand this year as a result of the the different environment that this year brought so we do get that input from students so on that note um i i did i did um hear loud and clear summer suns uh talked with us earlier today so maybe there's an avenue for a student-driven uh approach um since the the lcap meetings are very you know um administrative driven even though they come to the table and it's a good um representation of like the general population of students but maybe there's you know uh some more active advocacy type students who would want to come speak speak to us or present to us some ideas that they would have or or have some kind of bigger seat at the table um just just kind of i would like to see a lot more student input in these decisions that we're making for sure dr kaiser is waiting i still had one thing though okay my one thing that came back to me and it's a question for for kevin um and sorry dr kaiser um the uh the surveying that's happening hopefully we'll be able to hear about during our general april general meeting um is there an anticipation that we might be also discussing uh spending those state dollars at that april meeting so i'm hoping that are we going to be able to like do start to wrap this you know nice next to your present up yes i certainly hope so i think one we have to have a plan related how we're going to spend the state dollars and quite frankly you can definitely see the connections between some of the ideas here on the esser dollars and the the state dollars as well so um not to get too far eggs we want to hear dr kaiser but quite frankly the really only two items that i would say the board really needs to take action tonight to make sure that all options are available to you to have school fully open a traditional model are the first two we can bring back the rest of them and quite frankly we can do that in the form of both s or two and the state dollars so you can get a little more refinement of what we're talking about but we're also going to then want to talk about some flexibility to and jay mentioned it use the federal dollars over the two years and be strategic about how we use the state dollars over the really two summers and one full year that we have so that's an option that i might present to the board that the first two items we would really want you to take some action on tonight the other ones we can come back and and present a little more refinement for you they will still be broad in nature because they would be budget allocations but i think being able to answer your question related to surveys and the type of programs we want to offer would very would be prudent that would be great if we can get secondary and primary for primary feedback and some student input kind of presented to us while we make some more decisions about spending the state dollars if if there's enough time to put it all together by then that's that's my hope dr kaiser are you still there i am okay so the context of this is how many of you started your day with your five-year-old telling you that we're all composed of dna don't raise your hands but the other side of that is the brother that seven has been in the hospital and has missed you know over a week of school already so we always walk this type line between trying to offer credit recovery or makeup and loss of learning but we also have a number of families who are very concerned about their child's ability to leap forward and so not be bored so i'm hoping in these summer workshops that we are anticipating getting teachers presenting us with initiatives we just had the college connection that we passed we have a lot of career tech uh innovations in our uh curriculum so i'm hoping that there will be potential for parents and kids who are interested in jumping forward from where they are right now but we could also offer that in the summer so the critical part to me is we move forward tonight with the absolute concrete minimum of what we need to go with in terms of opening for fall the furniture and these uh recognitions of these summer institutes which i think are critically needed and allow ed services to come back with more explicit descriptions when they have the information available to them thank you dr kaiser okay um board um i i think i'd uh break in here we have two people that have signed up for public comment um before we start to take action so i'd like to take those two folks for public comment um john you have that information were we done with the presentation weird and i mean obviously there's a few things on there about cyber safety and a couple of our other programs like educlaimer and we can clearly answer those questions what those are if you like we're open to any of that the board members have you asked your questions on this list am i ahead of where you want to be okay let's just kind of coming up with my questions as they went through each item so i didn't really have um questions prepared for for ahead of time because i wanted to hear what they had clearly can go through some of the other ones that i have not i think that just my one of my biggest ones is just a little bit more expansion on on counseling and wellness maybe um i think and you touched on it but i don't know if you got to say like the fully what what that what that was all about i'm really sorry it's just really what we want to do again we want to the wellness counselors we want there at halftime at all of our junior highs and high schools we want to increase those to full time we'll use grant money for that but um as for two dollars we would like to the 600 000 use the federal dollars or we'll put on there for the april one but we're going to want to fly these it we will we can use it under probably that five million that we have for um if we're adding more staff but we're going to need to get some type of direction if you guys want us to move forward with the counseling which we add and another half time at each elementary school which would be you know again um what ten how many more counselors would we have to hire six six for elders six more for elementary roughly and that would be for each elementary to have a full-time counselor yep and then is there a support staff like wellness support staff on top of a full-time counselor there's like counseling assistance in elementary schools tcms those are all in place currently as well and how many at each site each site has at least a half-time person like a counseling assistant at least half time some augment with their own funds for it like each site has at least a half-time tcm also um i i think we're talking about the counseling position specifically because i just from what i hear from principals there's just a huge demand for a little bit deeper kind of therapeutic kind of option for some other people it's not the wrong term but at least that kind of site-specific kind of support i think jay has a good point sorry mr marchant has a good point about about making sure that that money that's being allocated is for of a good full two years because there's a lot of there's a lot of community trauma for all of our kiddos that we're trying to to handle here and i think one one year isn't enough for sure but i i know that i know that um you know elementary staff members that i've heard from are are also very supportive of of increasing our counseling and wellness staff and i would say they probably would would ask for at least a full-time counselor and a full-time um support you know support uh tcm um if not more uh so ideally we're kind of pushing towards that direction um and to have the goal of making it a permanent fixture um into the future you know obviously for the for the one time money is that is what it is but but to kind of come up with a longer term plan to keep that in place yeah because we clearly can make them temporary because we know that we if we use the federal dollars or two years we also we we believe our students need that support as you're talking about and it also would give us a higher level of candidate if we knew that they knew that they were getting at least a two-year ability to work on things instead of like a half year or one year so what's on this list here is for increasing our elementary accounts counselors to one full time at each site yeah we're going to want to add that on there for on so we can get started hiring in the hiring process for that yes all right that hiring process i'm sorry caitlyn the hiring process the being able to fly those positions what's the what's the drop dead date on being able to do that because kevin mentioned two actions that he specifically feels we need to make tonight to guarantee we're in place for full-time opening in august but it sounds like these positions also need to be flown now because hiring later in the year just doesn't work mr hanlon would you want to speak to that huh so we yeah the next meeting is until april 21st that's much too late to start hiring if we want to get quality people we need to be at the front of the line when we're competing with other districts and counselors there's there's not the quantity out there so we want to make sure we get the quality yeah so i'm looking at um the mtss coordinator funding and the uh 20 times for the stipends that was um and then down into the wellness counselors are those the positions that we're talking about needing to include in tonight's funding approval correct but we're gonna the um we would need to add the 1.2 for the counselors for on the federal dollars in here which is not on here again i didn't add it just because we were kind of waiting to see what the state was going to do and what the priorities but we would have to add that in to something along the lines of employees on this list of 1.2 million if we're gonna well we could go 600 000 right now before the one year but we it's going to be 1.2 over two years all right do you think before we go that route we probably should hear from the public before we start if we're if we're finished yes i would like to hear from the public and then be um i had one more too just yes before we move on to the public comments i'm sorry um i just got an email um so and i i think that it's timely um and i don't know where we're at and this is probably a good question for kevin um about the um the pool at chico junior um is that something that is is reparable or are we is it like it needs to go away when it comes to facilities um if you haven't been by there in a while that pool is completely raised filled and has been paved over and is now applied yeah i didn't dig it again right i was confused i was a little bit confused but you know also if there was you know a place that this something needed to be fixed or is it maybe i'm miss speaking is there a pool that needs to be fixed chica junior did i say bidwell no you said she could drink okay oh my gosh that's okay but there is yeah there is no pool of chico junior anymore okay um so there really is an opportunity to repair it sorry yeah funding to repair or rebuild the swimming pool at chico junior high it's gone okay uh yeah and and like i said i'm definitely not in the loop in any of those activities that was not my wheelhouse there so okay if i could ask admin to identify specifically which line items while we're receiving input from those that are waiting to provide input so that we can know what it is we want to include or not on the things that need to be in place so that we can fly positions and get the hiring process going so we're ready for our parent input thank you i'll be calling jeff martinec okay um left okay okay go ahead jeff all right thank you board for the the work you do that helps our children yes it's our fun discussion was lively and i think the money will be well spent however the school closure and returning to full-time in-person learning is without doubt the most significant issue the cusd board has ever had to deal with the mental anguish the learning laws an emotional injury the kids are suffering cannot be ignored the destruction to our local community and its families cannot be understated the disproportionate effect on the poor the minority and esl community is shocking this is possibly the most racist policy the cusd has ever enforced i applaud the board for admitting that their policy to not be in person full-time learning is actually at fault for the harm our kids teachers and community are suffering trying to fix the devastation your decision is caused without returning to full-time in-person learning is irrational and a waste of precious resources teacher effort and money the ess er funds are desperately needed the tutoring and mental programs that are being developed are also needed for the sound awesome for sure it has been a rough couple of years for our kids and staff to think these programs will have a meaningful impact of alleviating the harm your policy has caused and continues to cause without reversing the underlying policy is foolish spending this money and resources without returning to full-time in-person learning is like trying to save a bleeding patient in the or with more and more blood without stopping the bleeding so stop the bleeding like you said rise to the demand the evidence is overwhelming and has been for weeks full-time in-person learning safe for our kids and teachers anything less is knowingly and actively harming our kids the only group i am aware of campaigning to continue this policy to keep the kids out of the classroom is the teachers union it's clear the union is not disturbed by the suffering the harms policy is causing the kids and teachers the teachers reputation will be scarred for life from this policy you miss dalby mr lando ms kaiser and ms robinson you four are responsible for the harm and destruction occurring in our community the mental and emotional distress your decision is causing is terrible you must change your vote the decision is yours and ms robinson you are the leader you control the agenda do your job support our kids and teachers make the board vote return to full-time in-person learning i urge the board do the right thing bring all of our children k-12 back to school for full-time in-person learning we still have 11 weeks by the way the funding cliff that is undoubtedly coming in school year 22-23 from lower 88 is unnecessary the reason why his parents are leaving the district is because it's beautiful thank you very much okay i'm calling miss hernandez hello mrs i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board okay hello can you hear me hello you hello miss hernandez this is the chico unified school board of education calling you would you like to address the school board her her internet connection cell phone connection isn't isn't working she can't hear me thank you um remind you yeah i tried twice i'll yeah no problem i'll try again yeah if she uh has been listening to the meeting just a reminder hernandez that emailing the board and providing public comment we do get to hear that and and see it even if it is after tonight's meeting sorry about the connectivity issue okay thank you and um a reminder to to both of the callers and to the public that as was mentioned many of these items um will be continuing to return to us over the next um several meetings for adjustments so it's not a everything's not set in stone this this is a a process okay now we are to the point i'm going to ask the board if there are any motions associated with this agenda item mr landau thank you yes um and i hope this stuff after i make this motion well correct me if i'm getting the numbers wrong but i would like to move the immediate allocation of 8.2 million dollars 1.85 towards furniture five towards staffing with the aim of reducing class sizes uh 150 000 towards an mtss coordinator hiring and 1.2 towards the hiring of additional counselors and counseling staff i do have a spreadsheet whoa hi kathy yes thank you we heard your second okay uh uh ms dalby i just wanted to clarify that the extra amount of funding allocation for counselors at the elementary level is has been added to that total okay just double triple checking thank you okay any further discussion thank you guys you're on the ball mr tennis sorry the acronym mtss what is that multi-tiered system of support system of support so for us in chico unified we have a three backpack we call them a multi-tiered system of support we have academic backpack that has all kinds of policy procedure program in that backpack we have in the middle social emotional and then we have behavioral so that's the structure that we're using to encapsulate all the student support um i have a comment i guess along with my my um i vote which is what i'm going to be doing um i agree with our caller mr martinek i think that we should be back in school full-time and the funding for the extra staffing to facilitate smaller class sizes you know i i approve that i think that's very reasonable the counseling funding the extra funding for counseling um his points and points that have been made uh in a lot of our written correspondence and in previous meetings that a lot of the problems we're having we would not be having if we were doing our job as a school district and that is serving our community by being full-time in person so i'm not particularly enthusiastic about the um the extra funding toward counseling other than the fact that you know counseling is valuable and as we've been educated it is one-time money so it's not a particularly enthusiastic yes vote but i will be casting an eye vote for this item in this motion thank you mr dennis any other comments ms dalby yeah i just um would like to i think um hopefully uh i don't know if the word appeases is right but um mr tennis is concerned about um spending on counseling being maybe uh not necessarily necessary if we weren't in the situation to begin with and and that's that we've needed expanded counseling for years and years so this is something that that has been on the the ticket as needed um i can't remember the date or the year that the the study came out about trauma in our region um we are like six years ago yeah so we're our region and our in our school district and it's not just chico unified we have the highest percentage of students who experience trauma especially at the younger ages and in my opinion and don't take offense to this y'all um but i think that we have missed the boat on on um expanding our counseling staff at the elementary level to get ahead of the needs at the at the secondary level um i think the studies really emphasize that early intervention at the younger ages does does pay off in dividends you know at the older ages and so i i hope that um you'll come to see the value in that maybe dive into the into the research a little bit more i would just encourage you to understand um the need that we've had for a much longer period of time and not just this year i totally understand you know not not being totally engulfed in educating the field of education for the last you know decade um an outsider wouldn't necessarily know that and so um i know that you're you're coming up to speed with some of the the inner workings of that and it is something that we've needed for a really long time so i'm glad that you support support it even if it's a little tentative i think that you'll really see the payoff um in the long run as we sit on this board for the next several years you know just by way of quick response um i know we've got more items on the agenda but um i've been impressed with the level of counseling that i've had for my family my my my three kids who are have been in the school system chico unified and one who's on the way i've spent some time out in in the religious community uh in terms of schools and um i can tell you that in this regard the counseling i was thinking just in term in terms of overall availability of services i mean we're we're um for what it's worth we're we're blowing their doors off based on my limited experience i mean if you want somebody a responsible adult to be available when your kids having a you know an attitude problem or something like that i don't know what every school is like out there it's not a non-district school but but you know the level of service that we've gotten at um at parkview has been pretty doggone excellent you know there's been a number of meetings i've had where they've pulled together basically every relevant person in my kids education experience from the teacher the principal and then like two counselors and and and then in a classroom aid and more and they'll have a after hours meeting just about you and your kid and it makes you feel very special as a parent and as a family and you feel like people are paying attention to you we were getting that you know without this extra money which is one-time money and like i said i'm on i vote but thank you i appreciate your your comments and you know we just get so little time to talk to each other because of the brown act and all that so just thought i'd take the opportunity to respond to you thank you is there any further discussion or oh just miss kaiser do you have your hand up again no i thought we had a motion we do we have a motion we have a second we've had discussion and i'm about to call for the vote great all those in let's say we we had a unanimous last time so we're fine with the voice vote all those in favor of approving the what was the bottom line number again 8.2 million dollar expenditures on the um the spreadsheet that's presented tonight signify by saying aye aye thank you board madam president yes mr tennis i'd like to move that we approve the um the summer school funding as well the summer academies for both primary and secondary um we do there are monies here because we have 10 million and we've only allocated 8.2 my only response or concern or just item to bring up is that the air quality issue can't come out of the state dollars so if we allocate the rest of those dollars right now out of these esser dollars um then we would give up that opportunity to to kind of improve the air quality so um if there's a time issue with the summer school piece then you know absolutely i i would point that we could do that but if it's not a time issue mr tennis i just i would point out if we could wait till april on those to at least give the board some options of spending these escrow dollars for equality that's just an option that sounds great and i withdraw my motion thank you okay we're looks like we are ready to move on to our next item is the board in in need of a break i i see lots of yeses so we'll take a uh a ten minute break um thank you board patrice oh miss dolby snuck back in thank you caitlyn we're ending our 10 minute break and we're on now to discussion action item excuse me charter school facility agreement uh miss kissel is oh there's miss kissel hi julie it's all yours thank you good evening school board um just to go give you a little bit of background on inspire history with the district when inspire was created i think 10 years ago there was a large effort put forth to figure out where inspire was going to live and they eventually ended up as most of you all know that they share the campus with chico high school they're in the portables that are on the campus at the rear near the sports fields and it's from the start has been an inadequate facility for inspire and a difficult situation to share a campus with a comprehensive high school so it's very exciting that this school board took action back in december of 2019 to revise the facilities master plan and designate a portion of our canyon view high school site for the future home of inspire school of arts and sciences since the board took that action we've been working very hard to come up with a good plan for that campus to be constructed and we've applied for funding and we've luck been very lucky that the state is going to provide funding for the project luckily there were other schools that couldn't take them up on the offer of funding so inspire moved up the list and we were excited to hear that we had moved into a position where we were going to get funded as part of the charter school funding through proposition 51 the school inspire will have to enter a funding agreement which they have already done to pay for 50 of the project with a loan from the state and the other 50 they will have to come up with on their own uh through fundraising and through their measure k allocation that we have provided them so this facilities agreement that is in front of you tonight is a requirement by the state for them to get that funding and you all have a copy of it i'm here to answer any questions that you might have regarding it um uh julie i i did ask um you know for a brief clarification on um how the project selection process for the contractors was going to go could you run through just briefly again for the public as well as the board on that process absolutely we call the contract method in my world a construction delivery method and we have several construction delivery methods that are available to a unified school district in the state of california some of them i'll go through the the list there's a design bid build which is traditional public contract code that most of you are familiar with a low bid situation where you put plans and specs out on the street and everyone who has the appropriate license to perform the work can put in a bid and the district is required to go with the lowest responsive bidder another method is called a lease lease back and it is allowable through education code and in that situation the district is allowed to select a contractor through a process that's mandated by law and so it's not a competitive situation on dollars but it is a competitive situation for qualifications and experience when we select that contractor they're called the lease leaseback entity and it's basically the same as the general contractor on the project and we develop a committee within the district to perform the selection process contractors are asked to provide statements of qualifications references information about projects that they have performed and how they have performed on those projects and then they are interviewed by this committee and the committee makes a decision on which entity to select for the project and then the third method is the design bid design build sorry design build process which our district has not utilized but it is a selection of a team which is made up of contractor and architect and you evaluate teams of contractor architect groups in many different ways and there's lots of different criteria and then you go with the selected contractor architect team in the case of inspire school of arts and sciences my answer to the board's question was that we would like to utilize the lease lease back process however with the requirement of a skilled and trained workforce which has been integrated into lee slee's back law now it makes it very difficult for our district to utilize that construction method delivery method it has increased cost it has a very high union involvement which you all may know or you may not know that there isn't a lot of union uh local contractors in our area that cover all trades some trades have quite a bit and some have none and it makes it really difficult and it increases costs for us to try to comply with that skilled and trained workforce so for this project we will most likely be doing the design bid build which is the regular public contract code low bid situation where we will be going with the lowest responsive bidder once we put those plans and specifications out on the street does that help explain that thank you uh ms dalby if i could ask a follow-up question since i'm really new to this process um my philosophy in spending money besides on our students firsthand um is is what's going to support our community most immediately um so i i think what where my concern needs to be would need to be appeased is that whatever contractor is the lowest bidder um isn't coming from the city where those monies are going to the city you know i'm seeing the berry or sacramento and that those monies would be staying local in this community right unfortunately ms dalby we do not have control over that in the public contract code design bid build method and and we would have more control over that if we were doing the even though it's more costly the lease method lease lease back thank you we used to have more control with that method before some changes to the law cutting back to my description of lis lee spec and after the general contractor is selected and where we're working on the project the general contractor is then required to competitively bid all of the subcontractor trades now where they didn't used to have to do that now they are required to do that and we are required to accept the lowest responsive bidder there are some ways that that can be changed and it requires prior approval by the board of education and it's very specific so in general we cannot select based on uh you know contractors being in our local community which is very frustrating because we worked very hard to foster relationships with local contractors and trying to keep our local people working on our projects however it is not all dire because we do have a lot of local contractors who enjoy working for the school district we are one of their favorite customers and they do participate in these bids and they are competitive because they're right here they don't have to pay travel and subsistence you know coming from the bay area or coming from sacramento it gives them a bit more leverage on you know being that low bidder and we have enjoyed having a huge percentage of participation on local contractors on on most of our projects but we cannot mandate that they are local in the in the bidding documents if that helps and that's just is that in any of the bidding documents or just in the design bid build in any of them at this point so the lease lease back also we wouldn't be able to ensure that that this would all be done by regional contractors instead of you know out of county or out of region that is correct we used to be able to do that we no longer can yeah i just i guess it doesn't sit well with me the the thought that the lowest bidder gets the cake but you know they might be working for scraps but that's because they can afford it you know um so i don't i don't know how i'm gonna have to sit with this for for a minute really reflect on that thank you one thing i might that might help you when you're contemplating it is that all of the work that we do is public works and it all requires prevailing wage to be paid so all of the workers are making a prevailing wage for their work so someone can't come from out of town and pay their people less and beat out a local company if that helps uh it helps a little bit except if they bring their own workers from out of town then that's just that much more prevailing wage that's going out of our area not staying here in our local economy yeah so i just i i want to know if there's a way to be mindful of that these are you know um monies that are raised a lot from you know our property taxes and et cetera et cetera and and then also grants and and such but um i i know that the i know that the our construction community would would definitely benefit in our and our local economy would benefit if we could ensure that it was a local contractor or set of local contractors that were that were you know getting these contracts with the school district absolutely one other thing that i'll add is we work really closely with the valley contractors exchange here in chico and when we have a big project that we're going to put out for bid we do some outreach to local contractors so they know what's going on in advance they know we have a project coming out and are aware so they do get you know a little information to help motivate them to bid on our projects i will say just going right along with what you're saying miss dolby is um something the board felt very strongly about when we initially uh spent the bond dollars for the high schools those were able to be targeted locally and then when we went out for the bonds that was um you know what we wanted to be able to ensure our community we would do and it was something we could do until we had some changes in laws that were you know driven largely by labor agreements so our hands are tied in that and and i cannot agree more it's very very frustrating and i know we've all looked for cracks in that um you know what are ways that we can get around it and we've been pretty handcuffed be happy to get some more um i know we've had facility attorneys come in and talk to us that at previous board meetings be happy to do that again because it is something i think it's hard to understand it's hard for me to wrap my brain around and so i'm sure it's really hard for the community as well the most basic mr tennis yes thing briefly to your comment is i think it uh helps prevent um like cronyism in awarding public contracts you know there's a long history and public contracting of um you know awarding public contracts to your friends and stuff like that and um lowest responsible bidder is a way to keep that from happening thank you do we have any requests for public comment yes i'm aware of that okay um dr kaiser um i'm going to call for a motion i understand you wish to be recognized i do and i would like to move the adoption of the charter facilities agreement and if i get a second then i'd speak to it a second we have a motion and a second dr kaiser so i have been at the state level and then at the chico unified level on facilities for over 14 years and the law that julie is addressing was really a law that was pushed by labor and ever since it was adopted i have gone to csba every year except this year of course because they didn't meet and challenge different union groups to come into our area and submit bids and they will not so i think that despite our our sincere interest in local groups being able to sort of gain an advantage they can only do it by the quality and the caliber of the bids they submit when you have to verify everybody is union and most people in our area are not it makes it very very difficult so i can attest that julian her professional group are very very conscientious about this and they will pick the best that's available to us thank you thank you dr kaiser any other input okay board i'm going to ask for a vote all those in favor signify by saying i i i it's unanimous thank you board okay our next item is a discussion action item on the citrus i e e e p preschool project bid julie kissel thank you tonight we bring forward the bid results for the project the project is to establish a a preschool building on the campus and the other grant dollars that are involved outside of construction are specifically to help support special ed and preschool correct ted yeah so that's what the project is all about and we received four bids last week the lowest responsive bidder is twin trees incorporated and i've also outlined the overall budget for the project for you you'll notice that the construction budget on the lead sheet is not the same number as the twin trees low bid because there's more construction that needs to occur outside of the contract with twin trees namely the relocation of the playground structure some data work that needs to occur and the moving of the buildings back and forth we will do that outside of that contract so the amount for the construction budget is up to 280 000.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
oh no i some of them are their comments they don't specifically say they're for or against and i think what we should do is let the board interpret because i think what carol is mentioning here is that they're they're hard to she's trying to make let the comments speak for itself i i agree i'm sorry thank you thank you i also agree thank you sorry for trying to manipulate the process that was unintentional and uh please remember that some of these started coming in last night i got them this morning some at the very beginning of the board meeting so there may be questions in here that have already been answered now in the presentation because they were asked prior to that specific part being presented okay thank you all right uh this one is from sharon hawkins hello is there an option for students that don't want to return in person to still continue online classes from melissa knight i am flabbergasted but not surprised not even two weeks ago parents including me received an email that the outcome of the board meeting we were told we would not be going back to in-person learning until after we had moved to the red tier now because of newsome passing the bill to get everyone back in the schools by april 1st the board is going back on what was originally said it's not to benefit the kids or teachers staff it's just to line your pockets with the extra money that these kids will never benefit from from lee or leia attention center unified school board i put together this email requesting you allow the students to come back my child has been in the school district from kindergarten all the way through the senior year we have always been proud to be part of the center district we gave money to support classrooms and time to support activities throughout the years the proudness has waned this year i have actually felt disgrace for the school district that hasn't put in one waiver to request opening any of their schools as others around us within a five mil five mile radius have been open since october and providing educational services in person it bewilders me that center has been so opposed as other school districts were fighting to get their kids back in school regardless of the color tier center chose to continue to vote to keep schools closed they continue to be a voice for the school union and teachers and not for the students i know the argument you will pose is that you have been educated educating our children in reality you haven't the facts can be viewed in the large offering of your recovery program to so many children as a result of a system that has disengaged students to the result of failure at the beginning of the mid year i heard so much anger in my students teachers as they rolled out new syllabus expressing the reason for the changes is because the classes had too high of a failure rate not once did i hear any of the eight teachers say sorry for their part in the failure it was all blame put forth on the students one teacher even saying i'm going to give you twice as much homework because that will fix the problem not one teacher asks what can i do to get you more engaged what more can i be doing to assist in your success not one administration within the school sent out a survey to ask what could we do better the weight of the failure was put on the student's shoulders in the real world if i had that much failure in doing my job i would be terminated not praised as the school continues to do for the teachers not all teachers can be held under the scrutiny of failure i think the physical education department should be praised as they made every effort to give the students some sense of normalcy they put aside their fears of being around germy children and allowed them the opportunity to come to the school and participate and exercise an outlet to relieve the stress and headaches from sitting in front of a screen for four hours of instruction and the added hours of being in front of the screen doing homework they offered this for all students my student took advantage of this and it made a big difference mentally they showed they cared about the students as this emergency meeting is being held i'm sure you will now provide some sort of opening since the governor has been talking with the unions and in administrations offering to toss money at you if you will finally open the truth prevails center has been bought and paid for by the union and the governor you held your feet firm standing in unity with them until you received more money now you will toss the students the tiny morsel of an education you should have been providing them for over a year it's sad that the wonderful experiences we have had over the last 11 years can now be broken down to a behind the curtain look it was really only about the money shame on center from monica i would like to hear updates on what was found out in regards to how natomas was able to return their children before we were and why the ball was dropped by our district i also am greatly disappointed with the communication by teachers and timeliness in updating aries my children are doing their due diligence but not receiving responses until i have to cc the principal in addition the teachers are not working consistent with my child's 504 nor are they holding full class periods in my opinion if center high had more f's in the first try semester than the last three years combined i would think that it would benefit the school to have full 55 minute class periods and stop releasing the kids after 20 to 30 minutes treat this like we are in person if the lecture is over have them start their asynchronous work and remain connected our children are disengaged unfocused un motivated and heartbroken that they have lost so much in-person time while the majority of their friends are getting much more normalcy just a few miles from us at this point friends of theirs in center district are moving away homeschooling etc and my kids don't even want to return here because so many friends have left center's decisions have been an embarrassment and a disaster to this community i have always praised loved and been extremely involved in this district over the 12 years we have been enrolled but we are now left scrambling to figure out our children's future tonight's decision will make or break a lot of people's movement and like the superintendent and board proved last meeting i have my finger on the pulse of this community and lots are leaving all right from a seventh grader a new seventh grader at rise i was looking forward to my electives and i am not as excited about school without them i have lots of anxiety being on the computer and i'm not doing as good in person i really wanted to play volleyball i wanted to see my friends i'm mad that other schools are back and we are not i keep asking my mom to switch schools so i can go in person from becky briggs we are completely frustrated with the school district and board for the lack of proactiveness to do the right thing and file a waiver several months ago which has prevented the opening of our schools we are tired of your constant excuses you are supposed to act in the best interest of your community you have failed these kids horribly and those of you that ran for re-election just sit at these board meetings and go along with the union it's a disgrace you are supposed to be the neutral voice for our children community please do your jobs get our schools open i strongly encourage that a date be set to reopen center high school in march not april stop assuming that we won't be in the red plan that we will we have had more than enough time to have the schools ready and all the teachers that want to be vaccinated should be completed before next week also i would like to know the total number of teachers and out of that number what is the percentage that have been vaccinated is that being managed my son has one more year with this district please don't force us to make the decision to leave uh from misty when will the kids go back full time what's the criteria from a concerned parent why are you still meeting via zoom if you are confident in the safety measures put into place in schools and expect staff and students and parents to trust in the safety measures shouldn't you be meeting in person with the same safety measures along with the public allowed in the same room that is what you are asking parents staff and students to do from james anderson i just want to thank the board for taking this issue so seriously it is clear that you've worked really hard to find a way to get students back in schools safely and he added i appreciate the passion that is expressed by dr lee i'm concerned that there is no consideration that children are a very low risk category of the population if the teachers are all vaccinated and everyone is taking precautions there appears to be little to no risk for children to return to school where is the data that shows otherwise thank you for your consideration and from erica just had questions regarding transition to hybrid model how is the class structure like for students going in person will the ones who are distance learning going to be online at the same time as the ones who are in person are all teachers vaccinated will there be teacher aids in class when students are doing in-person learning will students be able to use the restroom if so how is the district keeping up with the sanitary protocols why not stay home until everyone is vaccinated to be safe has teachers been receiving trainings regarding class structure and how to sanitize the classrooms once we open and tier for the county changes will the district have to shut down i hope the district is not being pushed to open due to governor newsome's proposal to push districts to open this is just a political bribe and erica then added this school year is almost over why not just stay home and be safe everyone will be vaccinated soon with the school reopening after school break more people might be exposed to covid since many families are eager to travel even with teachers vaccinated they won't be able to receive their second doses until probably after the school reopens also even with the vaccination teachers are still exposed to covid and will need to quarantine anyways if a student tested positive and erica also added this board meeting needs to sustain the professionalism i agree with dr lee regarding the rush and reopening this has nothing to do with people's race or people of color as reasons for opening we are all humans anyone can get the virus don't absorb yourself into social media or news outlet some reports of the data are false we can't trust the political aspect in determining when to reopen the schools and i agree with dr lee that we should not have a projected date there has been times when the school announced dates for reopening and the plans had to be squashed next is from jerome men's cole we believe the original surveys sufficed in 2020 and a plan to reopen in a hybrid status is much warranted our children on a daily see other kids going to school with mask and safety precautions and continue to inquire as to why they can't please make a decision that serve both those who want to allow their children to go back and prefer distance learning and he added the students who are currently at higher risk are also the same students who are lagging behind their peers in amplitude social emotional growth and the ability to access resources that can only be accomplished with a hybrid model parents should have a choice to allow their children to return via a hybrid model next is from lauren cook hello thank you how can we access unions mou's and other public information between the district and union to be better informed again thanks for all your effort also some of these discussion points are very late some of this would only cause delays dr lee it is unfortunate you are on the board and not prior prioritizing education equity you are not coming from an informed place i fear and negating the teachers who have vaccinated and also the admin we will be in red tear we need to lead with intention adapt to reality we are moving forward thank you and then she added capital improvement like major hvac renovation has been shown to not be as necessary as basic effective mitigation measures like physical distancing and masking again there is much data on this please review the research that has been sent to you all due respect of course but this is funding that could be better spent on other critical areas and also this data is available to you thank you next is from norma giles how will we know if the teacher got both of the shots next looks like they don't want their name read it says good evening i am writing to express my concern not for the return for in person learning i have been long anticipating this day to see my students again my concern is with the current hybrid model especially for elementary schools we are expected to teach both in-person and distance learners at the same time there is no way a teacher can manage both parts without one group of students not getting the full benefit we teach different in-person versus distance learning in addition we have been told by our administration that our in-person students can't be on computers because of this we are now having to create modify and prep assignments twice making one for in-person learners and our distance learners many of my students and others in my grade level have lost have lost their physical books we use for our wonders program if we are not able to use computers how are these students to complete these assignments and activities please trust that your teachers will make the best decision for how to have students complete assignments we understand that students need interaction and time away from a computer but sometimes projects and lessons need students to have a computer on top of that in the hybrid model teachers have lost their collaboration time with their grade level partners this time has become very important during these challenging times to help support each other and work together there are many schools and districts in the area that realize that teaching in person and distance learners at the same time is not the best option for anyone involved because of this they have either created a separate class and a specific teacher for distance learners or have it where the main teacher teaches their distance learners at a separate time i urge the district and the board to re-evaluate and make changes to the hybrid model so that teachers have time to best prepare lessons and are able to best teach and focus on each group of students and that students get the best possible education education during these times and the same person added is the district's plan for surveillance testing only to use the rapid tests when a parent consents to it one of cdc's guidelines for reopening schools was the ability for schools to be able to conduct regular testing to identify infections among asymptomatic students and staff only testing as needed or if we think a student or staff showing symptoms might have covid should not be considered consistent surveillance testing the point of randomly testing staff and students on a regular basis is to catch those who are asymptomatic and are able to spread the virus to others my other question is about the social distancing guidelines is the social distance six feet apart only pertaining to the students or staff and adults in the class as well oh sorry six feet apart only pertain to the students or staff and students in the class as well i know that my main teaching area where my computer technology is set up as well as the area in front of my whiteboard i am not able to maintain the social distancing measures in my current classroom set up for in-person learning i have students sitting at my whiteboard making it so i am unable to use it i know i will also have aids in my classroom for students what is the expectation for them in the classroom next is from ashley beardsley the fact that our neighboring districts have returned to in-person learning and we have not is absolutely ridiculous our children are suffering 15 minutes of live virtual instruction isn't good enough my children and all the parents who voted to return to in-person learning deserve to have in-person instruction she then added why are those parents who do not want to return to in-person learning getting a louder voice than those who do want to return i was told those parents sent emails after the parent survey vote and it changed the decisions of board members to not open the schools in the fall and she sent another one why are my children's teachers logged into office hours while driving in their vehicles is this the respect my children deserve next is from jamie topper regarding the csp procedures we are expecting teachers and staff to come back but teachers and staff have not received details on how these pro procedures and guidelines will be logistically met when will teachers and staff get the details and training of and for how the csp guidelines will be met rather than just that the district plans to meet them from daniel turk does losing out on the recent funding bill passed by congress if schools don't open by march 31st have anything to do with the board sudden ability to come up with a plan for in-person learning from sandy criner i am the administrator to a facebook group in antelope uh anal distance learning and hybrid parents supporting each other we have parent members from both roseville joint union high school district dry creek district which both are doing in-person classes and also parent members from center district school there is a lot of frustration in the group from your parents and students in center district in the antelope area as they see our students in our district are now in modified classes and center students have not even started hybrid i myself have three antelope high and one in elementary that has been doing in person classes for four plus months i would like to be an advocate and help with any questions you may have on safe ways to open schools for in person thank you next is from larissa snyder good evening i am currently teaching the in-person cohorts at spinelli elementary for students in my sdc ils classroom grades k-12 k-2 we started our cohort in october with a small group and have expanded to two groups doing the hybrid model in plant plan two we have only had to close our program for two days due to staffing issues students have remained healthy and parents have kept them home with any symptoms and joined online activities for days they missed in person all students have come to school had their temperature taken worn face masks washed and sanitized their hands social distance in the classroom and have been able to work with both speech therapists and occupational therapists they are able to work on their iep goals and are participating more in class it has made a huge difference in their performances and behavior next is from peter brown ryle's administration has gone through every science classroom with tape measures and each teacher to ensure proper social distancing i feel confident that we have done everything possible to ensure safety and that and he has indicated he is a science department chair and the cuta grievance chair uh from taylor d for center high school would the school library be open from lisa little vigila hello all i have a question about the flexibility of ppe requirements for special education students my son is autistic and is in a first grade general education class he does struggle to keep his mask on and will frequently chew on his mask when we are in public he is responsive when i ask him to cover his nose but this will only last for a few minutes what is the district's plan for children like my son that are needing to be in school for instruction but strong struggle with the tactile sensations of wearing masks thank you um this one's anonymous in talking to parents and students the big missing element is the social interaction lower elementary is missing that in recess and group activity time how will these look as we transition back to the classroom are we bringing them back to keep them apart if so how is it different from what we are doing from nicole this is a wonderful presentation well planned and prepared from christina turk she said uh open uh i'm writing in so you can count my vote to open um andrea shanyuk on andre shanyuk as a father of three students in this district watching you live just stop this useless talk and open the schools immediately from kenya stop playing games and open these schools from a parent has expanded transportation availability been considered to help families get children back and forth during these abnormal school days for example currently you must be over a certain distance from your school to use the bus can transportation be opened up to families that have addresses that are normally deemed too close um and now i see a whole bunch more that have come in um lindsey turner please please reopen these kids need to go back to school they need the social interaction and they need in-person learning please open um genevieve mullis thank you for your mrs lee thank you thank you for your detailed questions i appreciate your researching the other districts in such detail my nephew who recently moved in with me has only started at center school district and i'm still learning how this is going to work uh latoya jenkins thank you so much for everything you guys are doing we are all in this together thank you for working on a way to bring kids back to school safe to all the teachers who have worked very hard on teaching our kids from courtney hobart dry creek has been open since october i just wanted to state that sacramento schools in dry creek school district returned to school in the exact same hybrid model center has proposed tonight and it worked they are now moved to modified where all students are on campus not one school in dry creek was shut down from october 12th through february 16th from candice natomas has a 2021 budget for 10 000 students a day center has a budget for 4.5 000 a day if i am interpreting this correctly this does not deem to be an apple for apple comparison kids need to have the option to have a hybrid model uh from zonu the cdc guidance and dr fauci have told us for some time that children should return to school at home learning is not meeting my children's needs furthermore i am very concerned with dr lee's comments about how children of select groups should be treated differently and her confrontational manner of addressing the rest of the school board please ensure that all children are given equal opportunity and are not treated differently based on their group from [Music] it says from wilson c riles i am a middle schooler from wilson c riles thank you my board members for trying your best to get us back in school it's not your guys fault that kovid came i just wanted to say thank you from nah parents we are not placer stop comparing us to antelope high school who operates under a different county uh center high parent i have a great concern about the information shared about the subpar ventilation system earlier in this board meeting this is an airborne virus and some classrooms will not have adequate ventilation what will you do to ensure that the proper air filters and ventilation will be put into place before the staff and students return to campus from amber i requested the board vote to approve the plan to return to school as presented in the meeting tonight i believe the district has taken all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of students and staff parents have been reminded numerous times to update their choice to return to in-person or remain in distance learning i myself have received a flood of emails the last couple of weeks distance learning does not work for everyone and it's time for those students to return to in-person learning all students have been impacted by the pandemic and the effects of distance learning not just those with disabilities english language learners low income homeless and people of color my children slash students who do not fall under any of the those categories are suffering from depression anxiety and isolation issues the district has provided the playbook revisions on a consistent basis and has kept parents well informed of the plan for return please return our students to in-person learning under the plan presented tonight just a few more from melissa thank you for this special meeting the district had the opportunity to reopen last fall and chose to delay the reopening the district and the children are paying the price for the lack of action i strongly encourage the board to approve the proposed plan and reopen on march 25th and 26th thank you from taylor i am a 12th grader and i was wondering if a student tests positive will the others in the class be notified will they have to be quarantined what about if a teacher tests positive are you just hoping that we didn't have close contact or waiting for us to show symptoms i was just wondering what will happen if i have close contact with a coveted positive from armani moses allow us back in school soon allow us to play sports and and live our kid life normal let's go center usd from lindsay turner my four-year-old attends the oak hill in person preschool class and there have been no outbreaks if three and four-year-olds can follow the rules where mass have their temp taken maintain distance while in person i don't see why there should be any issues please please please open and from an anonymous special ed teacher i'm very concerned that this reopening will disrupt our students routine so much it will take weeks to get back into a new routine just for us to go on summer break why open when there is only a few weeks left just wait until fall and that is all i have at this time kelly you're muted thank you mrs hunt sorry about that uh miss bruno i understand you had some questions and i've also come up with several more questions based on that okay um first of all i want to thank all the the people who sent in public comments i love getting feedback and i i think it's wonderful that we're hearing from students as well um please keep it coming um so my first question um so the the proposal is to bring students back on the 25th and 26th i think it was um yeah the 25th what if we hit um red tier ahead of that schedule we would then follow that if we hit it tomorrow then we we could still the proposal would be we would follow that schedule uh okay so we would we gotta start at those dates at this point we don't have any plan to start even earlier and and then our agreement with uh our associations we don't have that in there these are the dates that we have for establishing a start to those okay and i'm not saying that this would be a good idea but if we voted that we want to return kids to campus tomorrow that would be logistically impossible pretty much how much time would we actually need yeah realistically we're we would we would like at least to have two weeks prior um right now though just as as we've said earlier the csp is under review by the county we just could receive word tonight that we have feedback so that process uh we would suspect will be wrapped up if not by the end of the week by by next week but if you wanted to start earlier we would need to have that document completed i mean approved not completed okay um and in regards to something that was brought up in the public comments are our mou's public information or only the finalized agreements we we could certainly share the details of the mous there's nothing that would prohibit those um that i'm aware of mr grimes i i mean many times we would explain those i think he texted me that he might have stopped oh that i'm here yeah we can share those um we just finished negotiations monday night i have signed that mlu it's in process of being signed and returned by cut when we have the full signed you know and i have the hard copy of everything signed then we can certainly put that online all of our mous as well as our contract is found on our web page so we will put that on our web page when we have it back and i've signed it and returned it it might not have reached you yet and it hasn't reached me yet so as soon as i'll probably have it tomorrow in district mail then uh it'll be on the web page wonderful thank you um one of the issues that came up at the last board meeting um that kind of prevented us from moving to reopen was that we would have to re-enter negotiations with the unions and that could actually end up taking more time what what changed there i think two things uh brought it and i i don't want to speak for miss mason but i think the the access to the vaccination was a huge game changer and when we had um we were starting out with a ability for a few people really to fight for those um access to the vaccine but by partnering uh with natomas and twin rivers they've opened up a huge swath of of allowable i think on the the first day that we had it i saw a list of over 80 employees that had signed up for that that does not include those that have signed up separately and i know more have so i think that was the big game changer i don't know miss mason if you want to add more as to what might be a game changer yeah well after hearing the comments from the public as well as the board at the last meeting as well as um the county drastically dropping week over week into closer and closer to the red tier vaccines becoming available and knowing that if we made an agreement teachers would be fully vaccinated by the time school would resume that was a big deal center having the ability to offer uh kn 95 masks rapid testing kits became available as of last week um so we began negotiations uh right after the board meeting we met for the first time officially last week and then finalized negotiations on monday so it did take a month like it was stated in the kind of um at the last board meeting but there were about 12 factors that were we were considering like why we should make an agreement to come back before actually entering the red tier and i would add that we actually had an agreement last fall and and so it's not like we're waiting until this time to do it we had an agreement to have teachers return i believe in december students in january however as we all know the conditions with covet have changed so much that that's when we started having real spikes and these triggers could only happen if we were in red that's when we went into purple that's when the numbers went up and our government regulations would not allow us to return under those conditions since then we've had some updated guidance and based on the current guidance we have from the government and the following of those uh coven numbers as well as the availability of vaccine we've been able to re-enter those negotiations to come back okay um and another thing that came up the last board meeting was that essentially the testing requirement would be cost prohibitive could you explain what changed in regards to that absolutely so then actually the night of the board meeting i was contacted by an individual who put me on to a reference uh that the the cost uh was about half the cost of what it was before for uh surveillance pcr testing which would allow all the testing has to be voluntary we cannot mandate that um in that we also part of that was also to get the rapid tests which we wanted for response testing but we can also use that for service so we had a lot more resources that came available and of course after when i met uh okay well now can we get them and so we've already processed that and and they're they say they're in stock immediately that we would be able to get access to those uh testing utilities that was a huge change and i will board be aware it is extremely expensive um the tests range from sixty dollars a piece um to upwards originally they're about 180 that they they were giving for diagnostic of um giving the results so add up the math of doing our student body and staff of those it's a hefty hefty price tag okay and then just to um address a couple of things from the public comments and that i've also seen uh similar comments online um people are saying that we're just kind of caving into the unions but i just want to point out that from what we just heard the unions have actually been very cooperative i know that in a lot of districts um the relationship between the union and the district is very combative and confrontational and one of the things that really surprised me when i became a board member is that's not the culture in this district um yes the the unions stand up for their employees as they're supposed to but there they work with the district um in the best interests of the students as well and it's actually very refreshing um i have not felt the only pressure i've ever felt from the union is when a series of teachers emailed us to express their opinion uh back in october and that wasn't the union that was a bunch of employees giving us their opinion and anytime i get feedback whether it's from an employee a student a community member i take it very seriously so i just wanted to kind of clear the air on that and as far as people saying that we're having this meeting because of the money that was promised honestly that has not factored into my uh my thoughts on this in the slightest um the reason that i voted for what i did last time was because of the uh the cost of the testing and the um the the time that it would take to renegotiate with the unions which are obstacles that the district has overcome um which is why i felt it was prudent to have a meeting and we even discussed at the last meeting that if the situation changed we might call a special meeting rather than waiting until the following month so honestly what the governor is doing has not been a factor for me in the least so that's all very well said mr bruno thank you on all aspects i'm kelly you're still muted you sorry my dog was barking um but just just to add to that um not only is that not a factor we were already making all these plans prior to the governor's release of this information in addition to that their funding is still available after that april 1st deadline it's it it just uh decreases as time goes on but it's not like oh on march 30th you're gonna get you know a thousand dollars per student and on april 1st you get nothing it's not anything at all like that none of that money even and if and just on the flip side of that coin if we were doing it to get the money the money is to help support reopening and to help get the students back in school so it's a good thing if we were making the decision based on that that's also a good thing but that really did not weigh into the decision to have this meeting like mr bruno said we talked about calling a special meeting last month situations have changed a lot of things have changed since then and the decisions to have this meeting and have this discussion were not factored by did not depend on what the governor did or didn't do that still hasn't even passed the legislature as my understanding right so so again that's not even that's still not a factor and then along those same lines to the people that think that any district is doing something just for the money i'd like to point out the amount that we get paid the amount the superintendent gets paid the amount that teachers get paid it doesn't change whether or not we get you know if we get that money it's not like we get a bonus check it doesn't come into our pockets so really it doesn't make a difference to us personally it only makes a difference as far as what we can provide to students so as as kelly said that's actually good for the students if we get that money but it didn't factor it into my decision to have this mean in the least and i want to thank president kelly for clarifying uh how the incentive scheme works um because i think that's important for the public to understand um it's not like as she mentioned as if we will not have access to those funds uh depending on you know when we reopen it's just a lessening of the amount um so i think that our board members have really made it clear you know the special meeting uh wasn't called uh in response to that and i think that's important as far as the trust in our decisions and the public and i'd like to thank those of you who've been emailing me i didn't hear you in public comments for your support and for your words of support uh for uh me and your comments that you've provided to me privately about the interactions of the board members and then i just have a couple more quick questions um and i apologize i've gotta like scan through my notes here um so we've heard arguments on both sides of this and those are only you know not to discount them but those are only some of the people in this district the people that we hear from it's great to hear from you but we do also have to consider everyone not just the students not just the families not just the teachers not just the staff everyone we have to consider the safety and what's best for the entire community and we're doing our best to do that so um i just i just wanted to state that um staff training for the csp procedures they mentioned that i'm sorry mr bruno let me just ask this one and then i'll go back to you um someone mentioned that they have not received training on the csp procedures what is the plan for that and is it in the protocols yeah so the trainings we did do trainings on the the different things early on we obviously have to do a refresher also once we're on campus some some of our folks have have not truly been back on campus since we left i mean i'm exaggerating a little bit but as far as in person a lot of the protocols we're using the people who are on campus are are doing those things daily when they're there so that's why we wanted to build in that time beforehand so we can utilize to refresh them on those uh protocols and specific things to their sites which once we we didn't want to start with all the the egress and that early by reminding because if we're out for a month or two months or something we want to try to keep it more condensed that is also will be communicated once we establish our return that will also be continually broken into chunks for all of our families as well coming on we we cannot and will not well we we might do it but we'll also break it down it needs to be in bite-sized chunks i know with my own children if you get a big 30-page document i read maybe the first and then you kind of all read this later but we want to do bite-sized chunks talking about hey when you come to school this is what we do how do you come to your classroom how do you so all of those will be we've done as well kelly okay and i think that's all the important questions i had mr bruno did you have one more question um i i just wanted to to clarify something um i'm i'm monitoring my email throughout the board meeting so i can see if you look for public comments and uh lauren cook emailed and um just reading a snippet of her email um says there may have been an error in either the reading or a typo of my public comment but to clarify i did not at all want to communicate that dr lee should not be on the board that was not correct so that comment which seemed rather hostile that was a miscommunication and i just wanted to clear the air on that so thank you mr bruno i appreciate that and that aligns with the emails and texts that i'm receiving of support and encouragement thank you thank you okay so we've heard all public comment public comment is now closed um the board has asked all the questions that they feel they should ask um i just like to make one more statement before we we move for a vote um it was pointed out that we're having this meeting via zoom and that is a concern of mine you know we're discussing sending students back in school while we're sitting here meeting via zoom um without giving too much away about my vote and everything but um frankly i i believe that it is in the best interest of students to wait until we're in the red um i i don't believe that it's a good idea to rush back and um frankly i think two weeks into the run is a little early even but at the same time i've wrestled for the past month and a half two months trying to decide am i supposed to vote based off my opinion or based off what the public is telling me and i can't ignore the fact that the vast majority of the public is telling me they want the option to be back in school so yes we are meeting via zoom and i do think that that's what's best but at the same time i have to acknowledge that my opinion is not necessarily the end-all be-all and mr bruno one of the things too on that is we we would be prepared to come back in person but i i don't know anyone's situations i would be certainly just as we would with an employee we would work with with every individual on specific accommodations um i've already talked to tech could we do uh in-person zoom i'll use a hybrid hybrid but use that type model and they would work on that solution because i i would agree when this board determines to send our our folks back i think that is a we would also need to make sure that we do that and if we have a member or the member of the public or even a member of our our cabinet team that is here if we can put that for them we would make that accommodation for them as well because we don't know what people's individual medical positions are and i think we would confidentially work with people to deal with it yeah and just to state my own opinion on whether i come back i've had my vaccine i will have my second vaccine the day after our next board meeting but i've already um let mr lehrer know that i will plan on coming back in person starting with the next board meeting but it didn't seem um possible at this point technologically speaking or time wise to to bring people back in person for this meeting and the students aren't back yet at this point we will be back in person when the students are back in person and we will still like scott like mr lear said we will still allow accommodations for people who want to remain distance in zoom in as the board members just like we're offering to the students and families they have the option to stay in distance learning and we have the option to stay in distance boarding so that's our plan anyone else with questions i just wonder if uh if there are any other uh public comments uh before we move to to a vote um and i just wanna express to you know yes it's very urgent um you know that we do uh return to in-person instruction and i think it's also very important that we do so in a manner that's reasonable um and safe and and that we have a plan uh to do that that makes sense to everyone and so i'm just looking forward to us moving forward okay so we have a uh had a motion to bring the action item to the floor for discussion do we have a motion to approve i will motion to approve the plan as presented to us tonight thank you mr bruno i i would add to that though um with the hybrid option and also the option of independent study do we need to amend the uh you guys recognition that you want sorry i think that was part of the uh the presentation so i'm i okay i would include that the reason for my stating this is dr lee made a statement that independent study was not in the playbook and i think it's important if that is an option we should include that in the motion okay i will include that then absolutely then i will second thank you okay and we will need to have a roll call vote so dr lee no mrs pope hi mr bruno hi and the chair votes aye the vote is passed um action item has been approved by a vote of three to one i have a point point of clarity for me so two things um and just to to assure dr lee that when we will res survey i'm gonna use the word survey with the idea i will make sure that that third option because you just for that gets included in that for parents so they understand that third independent study uh the other piece would be is uh the board we mr bruno you brought up a good point if we're not in red um do you wise want to give me direction for the seven and eighth uh because i think we should at least get parents at least a week prior and staff so that would put us at the 16th if we are not in red by the 16th 17th right there or do you want to go day to day i just would like clarity on that as i move forward with with messaging this tomorrow for grades 7 through 12 um if we are not in red by um by this the first which would allow us to reopen on the sixth i think we should say a one week lead time to give parents a chance to perfect we do have that i'm sorry let me clarify i was thinking more you brought up a good point that i'm gonna be real honest i did not consider when would we draw the line for the seventh and eighth grade if we're in if we're in purple um on the 25th and 26th we cannot open 712.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i will open it up to any questions that the board may have on this item board any questions uh uh so just so i'm julie i think that we're gonna be fast friends as i have questions about these things since i don't know very much about this arena um the question i have is uh that this twin trees company um they were the lowest bidder so that's the who who we will be moving forward with is that what we're we're discussing right now yes and um is this twin trees out of vina california yes they are awesome that's good to hear i think that that's regionally close enough for me to feel good about that that outcome thank you thank you any other questions board do we have any comments from okay thank you okay i'm going to um call for a motion i moved the adoption of the citrus ieeep preschool project bed thank you dr kaiser is there a second i'll second it since i've raised my hand kathy [Laughter] thank you i have emotions i can't see your hand i have a motion in a second any further discussion board okay all those in favor of approving the preschool project bid for citrus signify by saying aye aye aye thank you board real quick comment um this feels very anticlimactic but these are really exciting things like i'm really excited about these these two things we just approved for facilities so anyway i just wanted to be bubbly and express my my gratitude towards everybody's hard work on that thank you thank you i'd like to mention as well that all four of the bidders uh are local for this particular project okay next is one of our most popular items and that's a tree removal at chico high school again kev oh no kevin baltimore you get to yes it does come my way over i think julie's a little more articulate so i'm going to let her weigh in on this issue poor julie well thank you kevin okay so i unfortunately i'm sorry i didn't read the lead sheet that you were provided but i am aware of the situation with the tree at chico high school there is a tree uh it's it's behind and to the side of the varsity baseball uh black backstop and there's an issue with this tree that it is damaging its its roots are damaging the potable water that comes on the site you can see in the background there's a backflow preventer the potable water feeds the drinking fountains the restrooms and it will be damaged by this tree and we would like your permission this evening to remove this tree we will plant another tree in a in a more appropriate location to replace it and i would like to clarify to the board the lead sheet has one mistake i note that it is a raywood ash which is correct however it does not have the spiky seed pods those come from a sycamore tree so that was incorrect on my part the main focus here really is the root system in the main water line well i take all those awful things i said about the trees little balls back mr tennis i thought the spiky balls was a sweet gum tree you may be correct because i'm not an expert i was just told i got it wrong the first time and um i i move we um remove the offending tree is there a second oh second that's sure and a second any further discussion and do we have any public comment thank you okay board if we are ready all those in favor signify by saying aye aye passes five zero can i clarify one thing please miss robinson yes kevin's reference to the spiky balls is there are three sycamore trees that drop spiky balls on the south end of the track some of the board members who were here when we did the track and field work may remember that we removed other sycamore trees hoping to not cause damage to our new track and field and we will be coming back to you to ask to remove those three trees as well they didn't make it to this board agenda but just a heads up and that's where the confusion about the balls comes from because the balls land on the track they get stepped on damage the track cause discoloration and coll and make it difficult to clean keep clean and safe for our students and and kids fall and turn their ankles because of those yes little balls the trees were planted there to provide shade for the baseball spectators so we would want to replace the trees with something that will provide shade as well but those particular trees are are really detrimental to the track they've grown so large that they drop branches and those balls onto the track thank you thank you um while we're on the topic of trees um what's the procedure for um for getting trees planted on our on our different uh csd properties anyway i mean is there a need that's addressed for shade trees or any other purposes um certain species that are selected for any particular purposes uh yes there are there is a list of trees that are selected for our school sites that we can share with the board the process has been at least on in my part of the world that we plant a lot of new trees when we address a project at a school site we completely re-landscape a site and there's usually hundreds of new trees that are planted but my experience at the district has shown me that we work with other groups like the lions club and the local tree advocates and they donate trees to the district and work with our maintenance department to get those trees planted in appropriate locations so if so if like a student group wanted to plant a tree for arbor day for example that's something that can be organized either internally or with different organizations in the community city of chico non-profits etc yes that's that's true okay gotcha um how does that and does that require board approval for doing those kinds of tree plantings i don't believe we have ever had to get board approval for that but there are certain things to keep in mind the location where you're planting a tree you want it to be maintainable over time you don't want it to potentially damage drainage systems on our existing buildings you know dropping things into onto roofs that end up clogging drains that end up flooding rooftops oh sorry go ahead and then um you know having irrigation to to give the tree the water that they need has to be in a reasonable spot to get it irrigated sure i um i know that at least parkview is interested in doing a tree planting for arbor day or earth day sometime but um just to make sure that they have the the amount of time needed or maybe kevin kevin kevin wants to speak to me there's a process for putting in a project request it gets reviewed through our in this case maintenance department has a cse component to it that gets signed off on and then it gets approved and we send it back generally how long does that process take oh it's days yeah okay thank you board okay we're on to um our next item uh do we have a motion on the floor for that we i checked with eric and she said we voted we voted oh that all right okay okay sorry yeah i had the same thought so i had already checked with erica to make sure we hadn't skipped over something but very um very timely conversation thank you ms dalby okay next discussion on opportunities for teachers to return to full-time in-person instruction um mr hanlon and mr sullivan you want me to start jim so uh just leading in really the discussion about the opportunity for teachers to return to full-time instruction as we've been talking about it it really kind of came back to this is a discussion about teachers uh maybe being interested in volunteering to kind of expand their work their school day and their work day for students so we talked a lot about um just kind of how that would look and what how that may be but if you think of it we have teachers in chicago unified they've been volunteering for above and beyond experiences forever so this is really just another opportunity for them to kind of be volunteering expanding that opportunity for students i would say this one in particular if a teacher is willing to come back and kind of bring their class back in a full day experience i mean we would see some real positives to allowing that to happen we certainly know you know it's it could be enriched school experience for students certainly helps with uh looking at kind of extra time for academic support for them and also provides different social connection expanded social connection for those students so we really kind of see a lot of potential benefit in here if teachers are willing to do these kinds of things as we talked about it we weren't quite sure with how that would look within kind of the cuta contract discussion so i know jim we talked about it negotiations i think jim can kind of fill you in on the other perspective with it there as well thank you mr sullivan so as i mentioned last time i had some concerns about the possible change of working conditions and having those conversations with cota so we met last week with cota and after a lengthy conversation mutually decided that um a teacher volunteering to work beyond their the agreed contract which in this case was the am pm mou was not a change in working conditions so essentially we agreed that um a teacher could volunteer much like mr sullivan said like in the case of a of a field trip or a study group on a weekend for a test which happens in high schools or working with a group of students during lunch hour those are things that we don't negotiate and we decided mutually that we did not need to to do so under these conditions either there are some there are some issues that will need to be worked out at the site level for example supervision issues when the when the school as a whole is has set up their staff to work in an am pm schedule the teacher in this case may need to agree not to have a prep or possibly supervision duties that are unique to that schedule so but those are things that can be worked out at the site level because different resources exist at different sites so um so so so essentially it's not a negotiable item teachers could do this if they so choose and um the only the only challenge would be or or i guess obstacle is that it's not possible at the secondary level this is really an elementary issue because at the secondary level all six classes teachers would have to agree and and kids don't go from all six classes through the day so it's really in in reality it's more than six teachers so but the elementary it's fairly easy to in place to put in place if the teacher is is willing so with that we're open to any questions or and i will say as jim shared you know we kind of look at it like if a teacher is planning to take an overnight field trip as an example they're also working with their site administrator to kind of take care address kind of check off some of the logistics that go with that to make sure everything's organized prepared ready to go with it so we kind of see it in that same vein here if they're interested in doing this we want them to work with their site administrator kind of go through some of the things that jim said might be there as something to kind of resolve or work out together and make sure it's going to be something that can be taken care of and work for both parties here with as well mr sullivan did uh speak with principals and we did to just to kind of gauge if you want yeah we uh we talked to ddc we asked them to have conversations with their staff we certainly didn't want to make them feel as if they're being pressured to do this at all but if there's genuine interest out there we ask them to kind of have more informal conversations what i've heard from elementary principals there's two or three sites that have at least one and maybe even two people that are really really interested was kind of how they're describing it there's a high level of interest to do something like this and there's about four or five sites that have teachers that are medium interested curious kind of want to know more about what it may look like and how it may work for them also so there's definitely some interest out there to do something like this any discussion from the board mr dennis is this a good time to make a motion of some kind um i'm not sure we're looking for a motion all right the reality is is that we allow teachers to um volunteer to do things extra beyond the contract so in this case if um if there's no objection from the board um actually can proceed forward as it is yes we have public comment um john you want to proceed okay the first one does not have a name provided and it is listed as a parent hi james i'm going to put you on speakerphone to address the school board if you if you're a developer go ahead james hello i have a quick question for the board and if you could answer quickly because we are on strict time is what other members besides matt tennis possibly have considered or talked to another school district that has opened full time so james have any have you right they're unable to answer it yes um you know there are school districts like roseville that have opened up full time they've proven that it works they can do it you know chico unified is smaller than them so i don't see why we still continue to have this debate about you know not being able to get these kids back in school i mean i it's your duty to be working on this solution i haven't heard of one solution all i've heard is kicking the can down the road and it's heartbreaking for these students to not be in school i went to a restaurant right next to chico junior right after school you think you're protecting these kids by not having them in school right when that school got out at chico junior at the t-bar i had 20 20-plus young girls walk straight into that restaurant and congregate in that restaurant so you're not protecting them by not having them in class they're socializing they're gathering they're doing all this stuff on their own so please let's get them back into their education i beg you please take that into consideration and bring this back up this year and get these kids back in school now thank you next is amber brown go ahead amber in light of the clarification of the four-foot rule we want a vote to return our kids to full-time in-person learning tonight this is the opportunity to make rice the unfortunate february 3rd decision to keep our schools mostly close the science says it's safe the guidelines are reasonable to implement right away it's been done by other districts private and charter schools locally and nationally if the board refuses then you are refusing the facts and failing our students community and your governing responsibilities there is a youth mental health crisis it is it will be on your hands too if you are not willing to serve the students in the way they deserve return them to full-time in-person learning we have yet to see the full consequences of withholding this right from our students they are our future be adults they can be proud of be leaders do what's the right thing our children are watching and don't forget you are elected to serve the community our children deserve better than two hours of vegetation instruction a day it's safe probably safer than it's ever been no rational individual is disputing this anymore vote for open our schools full time the welcomed excuses are gone and that is right parents that can are pulling their kids from your school i've already pulled three of mine and i've got three more i'm working on getting out it's time the kids need to go back to school and you need to do what's right for this community thank you and have a great rest of your evening okay the last one here is amber cameron it's voicemail voicemail thank you okay those are our three people who had signed up um we don't uh need to take any action um the process is available for those that wish to participate as you've explained so we've had preliminary conversations with our principals and we'll follow up um with them um with teachers that are interested in moving forward thank you i'm sorry may i one question or quick clarification um if everything fell into place and principals talk to teachers and teachers want to do it what would be the earliest we would see a class or two return full time do we know i would say a week or two is not a like a unforeseeable timeline to do something like that mr lando thank you thank you okay next discussion is the resolution on the release of non-reelect i have temporary including probe zero and uh certificate probe zero certificated employees not and probationary okay so this each year i bring to you a resolution to release our temporary employees these are teachers that are hired on a one-year basis only they are aware of it when they sign their contract typically they are replacing a teacher or counselor or speech therapist or some other certificated person who is on some kind of a leave so they're aware that this is a temporary temporary placement we have an unusually large number this year primarily because we hired teachers for online learning that we don't normally have so the list is is longer than typical before we have a motion i want to remove three employees from it so i'll give the id numbers for erica to uh to strike from this it's one five four nine nine one five seven zero three one six zero nine five the first two are school nurses um who have indicated they're not returning to chica unified next year so we have two really awesome um temporary folks that we want to keep so we're gonna we we're we would like to make them probationary so we want to keep those nurses are very hard to find the last one is a counselor an elementary counselor who who is filled in in a temporary position where that person is not coming she works at two sites and both principals said please do not let her go so since it's a it's an open position we want to also make her probationary so those those three we want to take off at this point thank you mr hannan dr kaiser you have your hand up are you i'd like to move this motion thank you dr kaiser is there a second one thank you mr tennis we have a motion and a second to approve the um the list of of uh listed uh pro employees to temporary probe employees to be released any questions kaitlyn i have two things the first is it's really exciting that we have three folks that are going to stay on with us sounds like we have some solid people there so that's excellent my other point is i'm glad to see that dr kaiser is just as present with us while she's on zoom than as she is when she's here with us thank you and um you know i i know we've talked a lot tonight about the need for staffing at on different things up over the next so hopefully we'll be able to uh to utilize more than three of these people well i expect um many of these will come back because of the staffing issues that we talked about earlier for class size reduction for for another year so um and that will give us another year um to maybe accommodate some more of those folks and keep them on permanently because there are a lot of really good temps that we we have discovered this year so they'll get the opportunity thank you okay i uh we did uh did we vote erica we did not vote thank you mr landau okay if there is no further um discussion board all those in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you dr kaiser that's unanimous 5-0 okay we have reached the point for items from the floor do we have anyone waiting are we going to try summer again could we try with summer first we did hear from summer oh we got summer i'm sorry yes she did she did great she did explain her interest in student representation thank you okay i'm calling patrice jackson okay the next one is amber camburn voicemail and i'm calling gina backs hello is this gina hi dean i'm going to put you on speakerphone you'll be addressing the school board if you hear a bell it means you have about 30 seconds left okay go ahead gina oh hi how are you well thank you for having me here tonight and i just will tell you that again my name is gina back and i am a stay-home mom who has been through the whole virtual learning experience situation with my five girls ages 13 and under and i definitely have learned that teaching my own kids is incredibly challenging especially for immigrants whose first language is not english so i am here to advocate for them my hispanic community in chico has seen the devastating consequences of virtual learning hispanics working in the fields and performing household jobs do not have the opportunity of freedom to leave their jobs to pick up their kids just two hours after they have dropped them at the school this am pm schedule has left them with no other option but to leave their kids at home with someone with a good heart who can take care of their kids and guide them through the rest of their learning routine in most cases abuelitos and aguelitas are the ones who ended up carrying the responsibility of teaching our kids unfortunately the high demands of virtual learning leave both kids and caregivers frustrated and hopeless not to mention a lot of hispanic abuelitos durona speak the language making the process of learning even more challenging in my case my kids whose first language is english are losing the opportunity to improve their spanish at their spanish immersion school because two hours is not enough for them to fully get the experience and exposure they need to continue learning my native language those who are not blessed enough to have their loved ones around to help have no options but to leave their kids at the mercy of others a lot of hispanics living in low-income housing are surrounded by the secondary effects of living in a community that prioritized homeless over the safety of our own kids for a lot of these kids the school was their only safe place i'm not asking you to bring our babysitter's back but to put your personal political agendas and fears aside listen to the science and safely open our schools full time surrounding areas have managed to open their schools full time safely the clarification to the forfeit rules means we can safely feed our students in the classrooms other districts of similar size have done it we can do it too thank you thank you okay um number 10 board member request to agendize items mr tennis do you have something tom uh thank you madam president um i think that because of the clarification that we had from cdph on friday regarding the four-foot rule the diagrams that we that we saw we had extensive public comments um from people who were you know very various teachers and members of the public who were sympathetic to the concept of having to spread furniture way out and remove important furniture items from classrooms that was a big part of our conversation when we made our decision on february 3rd to continue with the am pm learning model to the end of the year also we have a continuing downward trend in the case rates it's now just one person out of 2000 in butte county who have an active case of covid we know that our kids are not highly vulnerable to covid and our teachers are largely vaccinated additionally we have had some research from staff over the past couple of days to indicate that the existing furniture that we have is adequate would be adequate in almost every single case to have full classrooms of kids right now so the combination of these factors the fact that we have the opportunity to go back um the fact that our commenters tonight are making clear that people want to go back the fact that we are in a mental health emergency right now and also in a learning loss emergency i think that we need to put together a emergency meeting to to consider opening schools full-time until the end of the 2021 school year and i would i would move that we actually establish an emergency meeting of that kind mr lando another issue oh yeah there has not been a second so emotion dies in that case uh on a completely different topic uh as uh we heard from a student earlier i would like to agendize a discussion about how we can incorporate student voices into these meetings is that a is that a action item requiring a second i'm sorry i'm not i don't think i followed completely yeah i'm sorry so if i was not glad we do it again um i move that we agendize uh a discussion at our next meeting about how to incorporate student feedback second all right now we can discuss it yes okay uh we have had this process before and um i've had discussions with the superintendent about incorporating this back into our meeting which probably doesn't take an agenda item um uh madam superintendent would you uh explain what sure we've had a standing item on our agenda that is student reports where we have students come and report at each board meeting we ceased that when we couldn't meet in person and the students weren't able to come but we have alternated that between different schools you know typically we our high schools will give a report and they can give either if it's not their turn to be here they provide a written report we highlight programs that are happening at our elementary schools we highlight science fairs we highlight art projects we get to see drumming so they're you know we do have a variety of student opportunities for input to share with us what they're doing at their school site in terms of student opportunities to share on agenda items uh specific to that that would be something that we should turn back to high schools and even junior highs for student government input on items we have elected student body governance bodies in place so if that's a desire we can certainly reach out and have input from those bodies as well that is not something that we have done in the past and you know certainly would be welcomed all that said and i appreciate it uh i think the motion stands i just would like to have a discussion as a board about what exactly that might look like there was a motion caitlyn you seconded matt's second did the motion any further discussion i'm just uh wondering because we already have a aspect where we can have comments from you know the public with two of them at least for students and then they can comment on individual items so i'm not quite sure what the difference is here we have an opportunity for student government groups to comment we have an opportunity for individual students to comment so i'm not sure what is really involved it seems a little bit vague um i'm going to jump in with my hand up the um the motion to discuss i think is very appropriate because there are so many different combinations of things we could do including you know formal involvement of the student governments at the different sites um and so i i think it's it's an appropriate um thing to discuss i mean that's what you're asking thomas to take a look at what our avenues are so i'm i'm in support any further discussion this dolby just to add to the conversation i i'm in support of the discussion too i am really interested in hearing firsthand especially from student advocates so not necessarily leadership because those are not always the same thing but maybe it's related to government and they have an advocacy committee um or club or group where you know so so it will be good to discuss what types of options would be possible um you know because this isn't just for now or just in this in this covet era but this is where we can be be hearing from directly from students um on agendized items you know where they could actually add an item to an agenda possibly on equity and inclusion and and uh other other ways the board could support students um so i'm in favor of this idea also mr landa i might speak briefly one more time on that note um after we take this vote i would really like to urge any teachers who may be still listening at this point in staff to put the word out i think seeing the number of students we get who are on this agenda item next time will give us a good temperature check of how uh how many people we have will prepare to be engaged in in that way and what kind of ideas they have so i'd really like to hear from them on this agenda item as when it comes forward next thank you okay there's no further discussion uh i'm gonna call for the vote all those in favor sigma sic signify by saying i i i those opposed dr kaiser i think she was dealing with a grandchild yeah not voting okay thank you yes 4-0 okay um i need a motion to adjourn oh do we have another board member yes ms dalby thank you i um i brought this up earlier and i'm not really sure if it's necessarily a motion i'm gonna try to make it real quick because i know we all want to go home but um the the issue of students leaving the district is is important for the future longevity of our of our district and so um i i would like us to in whatever capacity that anybody has right now with everything else going on to explore that a little bit from the report that we got a month or two ago about students leaving a large percentage of them small percentages to other butte county schools it was 20 of students leaving during the covid era have been leaving to butte county schools um that means about 80 percent are leaving the area or leaving the state in total so that's a really important point for everybody to be aware of that during the covid time the last year 20 of students have left the school but have gone to a another butte county school that could be oroville it could be a local chico charter school 80 percent and please correct me if i'm wrong but 80 percent have left the area meaning the county or the state um and so what i guess what my purpose is is to explore if there are if there is a seat at the table you know with the planning commission that we maybe um need to have a more active participation in to say um some of these decisions that our our community are making is affecting our school district operations or the future of our of our enrollment possibly or is it you know um so i'd be interested in in taking a deeper dive to that i don't know how to word my motion um but i i would move to explore the reasons um why students might be if sorry explore if um the lack of available housing or affordable housing might be driving our students to leave or our families to leave the area which is affecting our enrollment mr lando well i'm going to second that just because i wanted a chance to talk about a little more that's all so seconded thank you mr landau thanks long time no see um sorry i'm getting a little punchy as we get later one of the things that i heard in there is that we might not have a lot of data about why our students are leaving but other agencies might have information about where families and people are going in general so i think wrapped up in that motion is this idea of reaching out to our other governmental partners locally to see if they have any more data or a better picture of exactly what's happening where people are going and why is that along the gist of what you're saying all right i'm gonna chime in because i i think that through our central attendance personnel we do track where people go because we don't have contact information until their grades or their records are requested we we can't do exit interviews because we don't know how to contact them at this point i um i know that we have some information available through our own records and i'm hesitant to widen our lane of what we're involved in as a school district i do understand the you know the the need to um kind of monitor where our people are going but i think the um the underlying information we have from our realtor groups um does reflect that it it has to do with the economy and people are leaving because they can afford to be here but i don't know that if that's a an appropriate role for us that's my input i i am going to jump in here and just say at this point we really need to have some focus and um i will tell you from my perspective and what i've been working with staff on our focus has been on developing a plan to return to school in the fall and that's where our focus is i think once we get through that then but there's a lot of moving parts to that clearly that it keeps changing the funding pieces that go along with that so this might be a great topic to come up when we talk in july about board goals and board focuses at that point but i would say be hesitant to add another really big topic that is in no one area of expertise it's going to take a lot of getting up to speed unless it this is something where the board wants to ask one of our city government committees if there is room for a board appointee we have done that before we've asked if we can have board representation on different community committees if there is a committee that you would like me to reach out about i'm more than happy to do that um i let me just say this for the record and for anybody who's listening um i 100 agree that our top priority is doing everything that we can to be prepared to open fully in the fall absolutely 100 the reason i'm bringing this topic up now instead of this summer is because right now is when input on the um the housing element is is being taken um so that that is in the process right now of of those conversations are happening in the next you know six months so i would otherwise i wouldn't have even brought this up until further on down the road so that's that's the only thing is is a little bit timely i would be interested in somebody being able to sit at the table at some of these at these meetings as a representative for the district to be able to you know sleuth out some some information as to if there's a connection between families leaving the district or the area so our declining enrollment and our [Music] our communities housing plan um and how that and how development is happening and i think even just saying it here out loud is important hopefully there's some people that are listening to this because um it's it's an important point to look into um that you know 80 percent of the people that are leaving the the area are why our schools are really are really losing enrollment um yes the 20 to local schools is a part of it too and i'm i'm not discounting that at all but leaving the area is is pretty uh extreme um and and it speaks to a larger community issue i think than just the district itself yeah and again again i don't know that that is you know our area of expertise or even within our realm to be able to resolve that um but if there again if there's you know board interest in sitting on that committee there there has been reception in the past to having seats at the table so the um i believe at the the city council meeting tuesday night on the report on housing they are in the process like you say of doing the survey and i think they they kicked that can down the road another three months so staying in touch and they did list how to stay involved if you're interested you know which i think is it what i would support would would be you know any individual board member that wants to stay involved with responding to their things i did respond to their survey and keeping up on what their what their reporting does this is another one of the things that king and associates they do in fact interact with those types of planning issues before the city and with brendan vega and the other people in the department that are taking a look at where building and permits and things are being pulled for um i i just think you know that our our focus has to be on getting us open and um you know the next two years worth of getting ourselves healed sure i'm i'm definitely a fan of walking and chewing them at the same time so after two years we're looking at a sharp decrease in funding if we keep losing families to this community that's why that's why i'm saying this is so important right now in two years we might not have the ability to maintain some of the really important programs that we put in place if we lose enrollment if we continue to lose enrollment and if losing enrollment is not from any fault of our own as a district there's not that there was no control we have over it directly we should have an active seat at the table at these commissions if they will have us as district uh representatives at least somebody i i don't know if this is something that we need to like make a motion to approve on but i i it did i just need this to be a discussion to have for the longevity of our of our community and our in our school district mr landau well it sounds like uh superintendent staley was offering to reach out to perhaps the planning commission and see if we couldn't have i'm not sure that requires a motion but perhaps a perhaps we amend the original motion to ask you to uh report back on the status of those commissions and how we can be involved is that within in the spirit yeah i would accept that okay let's uh uh we have a a motion in a second and an amendment to the main motion and i'm going to call for the vote kathy do you first you have to vote on the amendment right um if it was accepted as a friendly amendment yeah we can vote it's it's part of of um yes all those in favor of the uh amendment to ask the superintendent to reach out to the city signify by saying aye aye dr kaiser are you are you available for voting or uh has your grandbabies needing to go to bed i don't think kathy's on oh kathy's not on anymore okay so we have a three to one in favor okay um so now the main motion um all those in favor of uh reaching out to the city through the superintendent to see if we can have some two-way input regarding um you know the issue of population shifts if somebody can tell me which commissions i'm asking about um i don't mean that right now yeah but deborah preston the city clerk she will be able to direct you to the correct people i'll go through mr followers yes also yeah there are several all those in favor signify by saying aye aye no okay we have a three to one in favor any other items for consideration board i'm open for a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second yes all those in favor yes yes please thank you we are adjourned you
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uh so my question to the board is do you want me to back five days up from that date and then if we are not in the red at that point then our yes that i would then notify parents that we will push it back by five days am i stating this i'm sorry i am yeah no it makes sense so the 25th and 26th are the days when we're planning on reopening if we're in red so five days prior to that would be the 20th and the 21st so if we're not in the red by the 20th and the 21st we cannot give sufficient notice to families so then we would daily push it back so that we have at least a five day leeway does that sound reasonable and that's specifically for grade seven and eight k through six even if we're in purple we are planning to reopen yes seven eight is what i'm concerned about i wanna give families enough time for and i'm only talking seven eight everything else i'm clear on but the seven eighth on the 25th and 26th how much time would you guys want me if we're in purple on if we turn red on the 23rd do you is it a go or do you want me to wait if we're if we're still if we're not in red on the 17th the 16th 17th the week prior vanessa yeah i think mr lair i think what you're trying to say is that for the like the soft opening for lack of a better word that's happening on the 24th and 25th how much lead time do those families need to have in order to have their students on the campus for that thursday and friday correct right and i think mr bruno is saying five days okay so just to make it absolutely abundantly clear so we can do a motion on this um seventh and eighth grade will return on the 25th and 26th if we reach red by the 21st right and then return on a regular schedule 7 through as of april 6th if we are in red by the first correct beyond that if we're not in red yet um we will return 7th through 12th let's say five days after we moved to red yep and that's consistent with our agreement it was just those first it was just those first two days were wonky for like a better word because i wanted to give lead notice because you're right we could turn to the red on the 23rd wednesday the 24th would be our first day officially in red that would only give parents one day to know whether we're on or off so i just wanted to make sure i had enough lead time uh which would be the week prior to tell people plan on it but if it's in the no-go i want to be able to tell them ahead of time so they can make arrangements if all their kids now are going to be at home i think that's only fair to give at least that five to seven day warning so president kelly i would like to make that an official motion of the the five days notice so i i believe that clarifying the motion is allowable but having another motion after we've already voted may not be allowable there's only one action item we've already um we've already moved on it but i don't think the verification is it's a point of clarification okay that's fine thank you mr bruno and i appreciate you bringing that up of all the details we didn't we that escaped all of us as we were doing that thank you very much good good looking out all right i would entertain emotion at this point to adjourn okay mrs pope and mr bruno thank you so much do we have general consent oh no we need a gentleman it's fine do we have to do roll call okay dr lee hi and mrs pope hi mr bruno hi and the chair votes aye good night everybody i hope with this uh so all right
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hmm hi everybody hey frank frank good morning all right good evening hello hello hi frank how's everybody doing okay how are you feeling lucy my arm is just it's nice you know what at night it just really hurts really bad i guess from just the whole day of you know just it just it hurts bad but thank you i just want to see if my microphone is working you guys hear me yes we got you okay thank you hello hey good evening good evening how are you doing well thanks how about you well very good thanks good good evening miss gutierrez how are you it's me lucy danny hello lucy how are you how are you feeling oh you know what the the night time is it um i guess it's just from the whole day and a little bit more swollen and and just um you know just tight in the cast so just it's uncomfortable really hopefully people say even when you say oh it's your left hand you know so you don't realize how much you still use your hand your left hand even to hold the jar to open it you know um just to pick up anything you know it's just it's it's unbelievable how much you use your left hand you really don't even realize so well hopefully you're on the mend i am i'm trying thank you thank you you're welcome okay uh we're still have we have a quorum one two three four [Music] five six seven oh yeah we're good we are good okay i'd like to uh call the uh regularly uh regular board board of education meeting for the clifton board of education march the 4th 2021.
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and i see susanna coming on great okay i'd like to call this meeting to order due to the covet 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held a video conference and streamed live on youtube website at www.eva in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education those of you who are viewing at home i'm just going to ask that everybody please mute that we have a slight uh echo in the background thank you very much will the secretary please call the role mr carangelo mrs chu here mr sismar here mrs guass here mr hang here this is lex here this is reese here mr winston here president becker here we have a choir and please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states [Music] new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies in which any business affecting their interests is discussed in accordance with the provisions of this act the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published at the board of education office written notice was also provided to the sentinel of the newark star ledger the home news and tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive sessions are videotaped for later broadcast individuals who speak at the board's public meetings should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening and thank you for joining us tonight we will start off with the superintendent's report dr volesky thank you president becker and good evening everyone join the hammerschool middle school drama club in their production of the wizard of oz adapted by john jory this tale takes us to a bizarre new world that shows flashes of the familiar as we follow a young girl named dorothy longing for a way back home tickets are available at hmsnj.bookticks that's b-o-o-k-t-i-x dot com for the live stream production of the wizard of oz on wednesday march 10th and thursday march 11th both at 7 pm children who will be 5 years of age on or before october 31st 2021 are eligible for the east brunswick public school full day kindergarten program for the 2021-2022 school year please visit ebnet.org register to schedule your virtual appointment all required forms and additional information can be found on the website to assist us in planning for the upcoming school year please register by april 30th 2021.
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we are live sorry about that i have four o'clock i'm going to call the meeting to order um and i will do roll call linda bove brittany buchanan here lynn davison here having camera issues michael gordon from here dean howard here tv chance hello i'm here mike manley here myself sue k conifer and um president david nico present uh thank you sue k um for starting the meeting and we can go on to item 1.02 introductory new board members and recognition of board members leaving um so as uh you'll notice we're we're back at at full strength uh so that's that's great news um we've had uh the governor's made some some new appointments um you know first we'd like to recognize uh the surface of dr mark sims uh dr sims uh was on the board for many years uh he was president for a number of those years uh he led the superintendent search where we found superintendent reichman um and uh he was a stabilizing force through a difficult time at the agency uh you know some years ago so we certainly thank uh dr sims for all of his efforts on the board uh we also thank shelly herbald for her service shelley was on the board again for a number of years she served all of last year um without kind of beyond her appointment while facing a very serious health issue uh and she was still able to perform her duties as a board member and uh you know for that um i mean that's that's incredible dedication to the agency and uh we're all very uh thankful uh for her contributions and her willingness to to serve during that difficult time uh for for herself personally so uh that's um again we're all very thankful for the service of uh dr sims uh and shelly uh we have two new board members we have and i'll let them introduce themselves we have brittany buchanan uh and uh brittany if you can come on and just tell us a little bit about yourself that would be that'd be great um my video won't let me start okay there we go sorry so i'm brittany buchanan one of the newest board members um i have a daughter she actually recently just passed away in december but she my connection to asdb is she was considered deafblind um and was diagnosed at six months of age i also have two other children um an eight-year-old liam a two-year-old lachlan i have been married to my husband for 10 years and i'm an emt so super excited to be appointed and in this position and um ready to be here uh excellent uh brittany welcome um and uh uh we're certainly happy to have you uh the other new member uh pv chance uh pb if you can turn on your camera and let us know a little bit about yourself hello sure good evening my name is pv jam i currently work at um as the acdhh board representative appointed to this board i am the chair of acdh's board and i am thrilled to be part of asdb's board to represent acdhh as well as the deaf community as well as i am a community partner helping kids work through their education as well as transitioning into successful employment later in life when they have graduated from high school thank you for having me and i'm looking forward to working with all of you excellent pv thank you for that introduction so with that welcome to the the new board members and we will move on to the next item 1.03 call to the public on agendized items in these again because we're doing this virtually instead of time we're limiting it by words and we'd ask for public comment uh be sent to the public comment email address um and be limited to the 500 words or less we've received i understand several comments which sukay is going to read for us uh one of them is a video uh and i understand that after the uh suke reads the written comments she will uh we will play the video uh as well that was emailed to us as well so suki you can begin with that okay um the first comment i have is from jimmy wilson i am james archie wilson iv a graduate of asdb arizona school for the deaf and blind in may of 2012.
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hi wildwood miss and oda here hi everybody hi wildwood friends hi wildwood miss heard here hey everyone out there in wildwood land hey wildwood hi everybody hey wildwood hey wildwood hi so what am i reading well i just finished a book called separation anxiety currently reading the messenger part of the giver series i'm reading a lot of things with theo so we've been reading hilo and the fundamentals of hockey so the book i chose is called leading from within it's a book that you can just open up to any page and come away feeling inspired currently reading the me and white supremacy book that a number of us as a group in wildwood are reading together chess openings for white this book's supposed to help me with my chess game lyndon johnson and the american dream that's something that i started reading we are reading a book together as a family we are reading stella by starlight by sharon draper it's about um a little girl who is lives in the south since like the 1930s and there's segregation going on and it's about her dad wants to vote in the election i am reading tristan strong punches a hole in the sky by kwami mabalia and it is awesome i love it so one of the books i'm reading is this book called pet it's by a quake in maisy the lord of the rings um which i've never read before some glad morning holding hope in apocalyptic times sounds very dramatic radical dharma talking race love and liberation braiding sweet grass which i've been really enjoying the souls of black folk by w.e.b dubois animal vegetable miracle by barbara kingsolver the mosquito a human history of our deadliest predator carry on by rainbow rowell and i really like this book because it is similar to harry potter simple abundance a day book of comfort and joy the boy the mole the fox and the horse and it's by charlie mcassy and i'm sharing a picture here with you of my favorite page in the book it says most of the old moles i know wish they had listened more less to their fears and more to their dreams yeah hi wildwood welcome everybody welcome miss wells for the annual wildwood reads assembly get one of our library friends in the background how inspiring to hear what wildwood staff are reading amazing some good suggestions i didn't realize it was going to go out to everybody like that thank you for that honor that's awesome and i guess a little bit later in the assembly we'll hear what students are reading lots to look forward to in this assembly so as we know we always start every assembly by welcoming everyone welcome all of you out there in wildwoodland and now miss estes and miss wells we get to welcome our new students here we go i can't wait this is leona she is good kindergarten and she likes to play with her lol dolls and friends outside and these are four students who are siblings one big big family we're welcoming so here's lyanna's big sister michaela in grade one and look at that smile she likes mermaids and gymnastics exciting and this is dustin from grade three and dustin likes to play minecraft and studying learning about dinosaurs finally the big brother joshua in grade five he likes playing fortnite taking photos pictures of mountains and hiking so welcome to all of you to your whole family and we say to you we are going to help you belong feel like this is your home here at wildwood yes rising stars into our wild wood sky so miss wells then next we take some time out just to recognize the shining stars the students whose staff members and i see your name is down for one who staff members are saying these are students that are shining and showing wildwood students how to be here at our school let's start in fifth grade speaking of welcoming john john alhassan and jihae were in a small group with joshua our new student in fifth grade after they got their work done they were all chatting and they asked josh about his interests isn't that amazing they just reached out to him and then they invited him to play after school with them later online so thank you fifth graders and another fifth grade star ava in miss being owen's room she's been so helpful with all of her family move members who've just moved into the wildwood community because these all these beautiful children they're related to ava it's gonna be so much fun and um she has had to show them how to navigate our new online school setting and ava has done a super amazing job focusing on her recent fraction subtraction work which is really complicated and this next one is from you ms wells i don't know if you remember janiece what she did all right i'll say it for you then okay here we go you do remember i know i do i do well i i was at arts lunch with denise and some friends and a friend couldn't get into their next class because they had some computer trouble and i was calling sheila enjoy i was asking for help everywhere and janiece is the person who figured it out she hung in there with us tech wizard and helped our friend get into the meet where they need to be future computer engineer amazing amazing yeah people are finding out new ways to help each other in their online classrooms [Music] yeah and their friends yes be friends yes so the next one comes from ms cara in art saying that bruce in sixth grade's a shining star in the a block he has lifted the whole group up with his enthusiasm participation and the positive feedback he gives to his classmates not only that he's a telf self-taught expert at brush ninja and generously shares his knowledge of animation with all of us me included says miss cara all right i'm looking you up i i'm imagining brushing my hair with ninja moves and we'll figure that out right okay this next one is a little different i want la familia de bella cruz rodriguez is we would like to highlight the la cruz rodriguez as a shining star estado trabajando mucho estos she has been working so hard these past couple months and has truly taken off as a learner and she has become a thoughtful mathematician who is eager to try different strategies and take on new challenges fiesta bella also just finished a fun creative story about two best friends who go to a party escritura she has been working tirelessly to improve her spelling and writing estamos de ella we are so proud of here yeah and miss miss allison you got a lot of shout outs in the chat from mario from set missing owen for your spanish translation way to go i always try i do the best i can and i want to thank ajadira torres manzano she is somebody a family member in our wildwood community and she helped me with if she did the translation and i practiced it fantastico all right so here we go you ready miss wills i'm ready i'm so glad starting this way with stars because i have some stars to recognize too welcome to our wildwood reads assembly we've been doing the wildwood reads assembly i think this is our sixth year nick is that right i believe so oh next gun okay great and this year i want to start by recognizing the wildwood who has really helped me distribute end the library program by helping us buy books for our backpacks and also distribute books and man or be at the delivery site at wildwood so there's so many people behind the scenes helping to fundraise to buy more dog man books for us because there's never enough dog man for us right and then we get all those dog man and reina telgemeier and new great books into the hands of kids so this month we distributed 330 backpacks and that was almost very close to 4 000 books so thank you so much to so many people who have helped uh it takes a village right it takes a whole community um i'm packing the bags sarah's checking the books out working tirelessly all alone at wildwood in the days she's there with mr owen it's just the two of them um of course joe and q and raw they're moving tables for us shayla and joyce are making phone calls to remind people dan is driving the van so this is taking a lot of power our family our community has come together to make this happen and this was our fifth month distributing backpacks and this number is outstanding we have circulated almost 15 000 books nick do you want to guess how many more books checked out this year that than last year at this time so so you said more so that means that even during this pandemic during this time of online teaching we've checked out more books than last year at this time wow i'm guessing maybe just a guess three thousand you read it you've got it let me tell you the answer beforehand you got it right on the nose this time last year at the wildwood reads assembly we had circulated about 12 000 books so we're just at about 3 000 more even though it's just me and sarah in the library has been tremendously helpful and we couldn't do it without her you know we could i couldn't do it without all this help so so many thanks to the great people getting books to you guys fantastic thank you miss wells for sharing that great news we are a community of readers and that's what we're celebrating today so i understand you have a few surprises for this assembly i did i know one of the things you like to do in the last five assemblies is create some uh like participation like maybe a little game show is that you bet we'll do the game show in just one minute okay all right okay first we're gonna highlight our newest readers are first graders right and first readers and kindergarteners read this book with me oona it's new it's about a little mermaid named oona and her fun little sidekick and as we read we took pictures of our reactions to the story and then the next week in first grade the students made a story to go along with the pictures and we recorded them reading it so uh here we're gonna do three classes and we're gonna start with drew's class all right here's their reading you're on the awesome crazy class read by emeline and timons we are all we are all part of this we are all part of the same group oh we are all part of the same group even though we are the same class we have our differences anyway one day we were sad and loud and lonely and lonely and our classmates this is weird together one crazy morning our club our classmate showed up again we love our awesome class we are the awesome class we are smart and we're the awesome people because we learned over three wasn't that great fantastic first graders just learning how to read fantastic helping one another so that that was really fun to do with them we'll see more classes soon and i hope uh everyone's remembering to use the comments to be really positive and and say nice things about our first readers right very encouraging because we are all readers together and we're all learning together so that brings us to the next part of our assembly um and i'm going to let your yellow first grade introduce it it's time for a game it's time to play who is who because it is women's history month i'm ready to play wild wood cause the game is on wasn't that great so thanks ariella for helping me introduced our game and we are going to play together um this was created by second grade classes third grade classes and our friends at arts lunch so these most of these questions are written by kids and how we did that was we went to encyclopedia britannica and pebble go and we looked up biographies of famous women to celebrate women's history month and um we took some pictures also from sora a book called herstory which is really awesome if you check out sora there's lots of great um biographies and non-fiction but books about women you should know so oh miss catherine if you could slide to our first slide i'm gonna talk about how this that's oh yeah go back to that because you know i am the librarian that's my citation page everything i just talked about is right there so that's where our photos come from our maps and our pictures thank you miss katherine miss katherine knows we teach that together citations and bibliographies um so our first question we're going to do together and i'm going to model it this is a who's who so we're going to guess who in the end so you can use the chat to put your answers in you can also yell at the screen if you don't have access to it it works too right okay so get gather everybody around see who can get it first it's like on your own jeopardy who's who and then miss wales miss uh allison and i can also banner someone showcase an answer is that the idea that's our job yeah yeah you showcase uh guesses of course yes yeah so with the who's who i'll give you where when and what hints and the where and when for our first one is west iron orange new jersey close to where i grew up in 2015 this was happening and it's still happening now actually and next i'm going to show you a picture hint this person began to campaign to bring diversity to children's books hashtag ten thousand black girl books who are they is it a hillary rodham clinton b simone biles or c marley diaz i'll give you a second to put your guesses in the chat that's a little jeopardy music for y'all who don't know um do you know this one miss allison i i purposely did not look because i want to be like in this with you and so laura is thinking it's marley davis let's see if that's right oh we got another we got a guest for b for b and the answer is c marley and she had this great quote in the book herstory you don't have to be very old trying to fix the problems you see in the world around you cool yes she was like 10 years old when she started doing this she still has her campaign nice really great i love big dreamers kind of like you miss wells all right we got our next question you guys ready for it this is an exciting one second grade class made this with me this is uh this person is famous for um events in kenya the person's also from kenya okay and our next one is this person helped plant 51 million trees and she was the first african woman to win the nobel peace prize who are they is it a billy holliday b or c wangari mathai [Music] oh boy i know it's not billie holiday i'm gonna say that because she's one of my favorite singers miss heard is making a guess for the letter c let's see let's see what the answer is maneksha thinks so too ah got it i can't force her uh quote is trees are symbols of peace 51 51 million that's an incredible number it's not amazing it was started in the late 70s yeah so it still continues today all right our next one is is written by michaela and i have to apologize to her she recorded it but i couldn't quite work it out for her voice to be with this so i'm going to read it for her but she made this question all by herself this person was born in new york in 1911 and this person was the first woman to star in a tv show and also be the boss of that show hint they were very funny who were they right taylor swift lucille ball or a multi-harris you know this one is that right i want to see if anyone in the chat can guess who i think it is oh betsy he's on the same page with me one of my fav quinn is on the same page with me nina's on the same page with me all right let's reveal the answer i love lucy that was the name of the show very good all right i think we only have time for one more miss catherine but i really want to get this in here because it is women's history month it is also um national reading month and there's one more thing we're celebrating this week so this person was born in decanter alabama in 1956.
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[Music] do [Music] do [Music] welcome to our sixth tedx dhs event today we'll be presenting cohort b present presenters ms true and i are thrilled to present to you this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independent organized event this year will be broadcast via live stream by dhs tv media productions this is a a change from our previous format of having a live audience a live stream event along with participants wearing masks has been updated to meet all the covid 19 guidelines our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohort a core b will be presenting various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to this group indigently prepare presentations to enlighten you on various topics you may be new to ted and you might be wondering who is this ted guy well i'm here to tell you there isn't a person instead ted is an acronym for technology entertainment design the ted organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see this the same diversity in the topics being presented to you here today the topics today will be on modern feminism the importance of linguistics and the truth behind your meal for today our first presenter is elizabeth mckinley elizabeth is a junior here at dartmouth high school elizabeth is a member of the debate club political science club in the student voice club she also loves international news in politics and enjoys traveling elizabeth chose her topic because she is very interested in feminism in the fight for equity among the genders although we have made many improvements in women's rights in the last century elizabeth would like to see more equitable change become a reality please welcome elizabeth mckinley as she presents modern feminism [Music] so i believe that before we discuss before we discuss modern feminism we need to look into definitions and we need to discuss the definitions that we need to understand to learn about this topic um sorry after we discussed the definitions we're going to talk about the history behind feminism in order to understand how we got to where we are today next we're going to go into modern women modern women's issues and discuss the reasons that we're still fighting today and finally we'll discuss solutions and how you can help specifically those who already have privilege so first off we're going to go into definitions the definition of feminism i believe is different for each person but the one i relate to the most is the one on the screen which is that feminism feminism is the belief in equality for women in all aspects of life socially economically and politically intersectionality is a newer aspect of feminism that's very recently become prevalent and the definition of intersectionality is to be a part of multiple groups such as gender race or sexuality that creates a different set of potential discriminations next up is equity versus equality so a lot of people ask for equality when we really should be asking for equity equality is when one gives everybody the same thing in order to succeed while equity is giving everybody what they need to succeed so getting different things this is an example so you can see here on the first part of the picture this is demonstrating equality everybody got the same thing but they all need different things because you can clearly see the first man can see well above the fence but the second or the third one still needs more height on the second part of the picture you can see that they have equity because the first man doesn't have a box because he doesn't need one while the shortest one needs two boxes in order to see so now this brings us to the history of feminism so the major events in recent history especially include the 1848 seneca falls convention which launched the women's suffrage movement suffrage is asking for the right to vote in 1920 the ninth or the yeah the 19th amendment was passed which gave all women over the age of 21 in the united states the right to vote during the mid-1900s women entered the workforce due to world war ii and this led to more of a equal society because before this women weren't believed to be able to actually work whereas now while the men were in war they could people could see that women were able to work and they actually contributed to society more than if they were just a housewife next up in the late 1900s was the attempt to pass the equal rights amendment this would have given women the equal equal rights by law in the constitution of the united states however this didn't pass which discouraged a lot of women so and then finally in 2021 we have our first female vice president which everybody knows about and our first female vice president in the united states i should clarify so this is significant because it shows that women now have a real say in what goes on in our country which is really important because women need to have a say because we represent half of the population next up is the waves of feminism so there have been four waves of feminism most believe so the first wave was really focused on votes for women and once this succeeded we moved on to the second wave which had the main slogan the personal is political this means that women's personal lives were coming politicized and some believe this was a good thing and some believe this was a bad thing because sometimes personal lives have to be politicized in order to actually make a change we then moved on to the third wave which has been focused on intersectionality which is which i defined earlier intersectionality is as a reminder when you're part of more than one group that creates a sense of discrimination sometimes so the third wave some believe is still going on but there's also a fourth wave that some people believe has started the fourth wave has really been the era of the metoo movement and using social media and the digital world in order to to portray feminism so the fourth wave this can bring us to modern issues so the modern fight for equality has three main things we can talk about the hashtag metoo movement intersectionality and stereotypes the metoo movement was started by tarana burke and it was beginning to raise awareness about sexual harassment so the phrase me too gives a sense of unity so for example if one woman were to say this happened to me i was sexually assaulted then and nobody responds then she feels like she shouldn't really have said anything but if someone responds with me too then there's a sense of community and there's a sense of okay i'm not crazy this happened to me too so by using this 262 powerful people were caught in the entertainment industry in the business this is of as of 2019 so and then there have been so many other people who've been caught that weren't prominent and this led to a more equitable society in hollywood in business and politics so as a reminder intersectionality is when you're part of more than one group that creates a sense of discrimination intersectional feminism is femi feminism that stands for the empowerment of all women not just white women not just straight women so the fourth wave of feminism and the third wave of feminism have been focused on fighting for all this is mainly including women of color and women in the lgbtq plus community because these were women that had been discriminated against by the women that were previously fighting for feminism this has also led to the breaking of stereotypes so i'm going to discuss stereotypes in these five sections so women in the workforce this is just an example of female ceos in the fortune 500.
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strategies and and what we did in the elementary showcase was kind of show you what we were doing at that level to support our students and i'm going to pass it off to marlene who can continue the conversation here at the middle grades thank you thank you so in a year that's been really wrought with so many challenges our middle school has remained open throughout and we've been open for learning for all all students and all year and we are doing this to meet the needs of our remote learners and our in-person learners so tonight these talented teachers in front of you are going to show you our board members a glimpse into the work that goes on behind the scenes to prepare to teach both our remote and our in-person learners and they'll also show you examples of how our students demonstrate this learning during this really precarious and and difficult time we're going to continue on with that theme that jeff mentioned we had started with at our elementary level and really highlighting some of the tech tools that we use as well to make these connections so having said that i will turn it over to kevin hanlon and our middle school administrators to get started good evening everybody we have a awesome group of middle school educators here with us this evening to share and give some insight into the everyday planning instruction and assessment that's happening this year you'll hear tonight about how collaborative planning work at the division level has yielded some really meaningful experiences for our students you'll further hear about how the design of our instruction is meant to engage both in-person and remote learners and you'll hear how some of our assessment practices have evolved this year assessing students in different ways again for both remote and in-person environments and even some new assessments that have evolved over the course of our work this year a few a tech note before we start the presentation does have a few embedded videos so you can help out with hearing the audio of that in two ways one making sure that your microphone is muted so there's not any interference there and two um when we did this a little earlier today you might need to turn your volume up just a smidge for those videos if you can't hear it it is it is audible if uh if you turn it up a little bit with that i'd like to turn it over to principal dye middle school mike woods thank you kevin very much and good evening everyone we're very honored and excited to be able to present the hard work that our teachers have been doing all year beginning last spring and into the summer um taking a page out of the learning acceleration uh practice we've had the ability to have our teachers really take a look at the planning instruction and assessment that we were currently doing in order to start taking a look at how we were going to be able to do this in a dual environment as alluded to before we have remote students and we have students who are in front of us so we needed to find a way in which we could still maintain that high level of education for students who are a lot easier to be engaged uh you know in person uh versus uh students where it's it's a little bit harder for reach to engage students who are remote as well this evening you're going to be hearing from from a sampling of our teaching staff but i think one of the things in which you will notice very quickly is that the amount of work is really a is a high level of hard work to say the least but you're going to hear definitely the passion and the commitment that our teachers have for our students in our community we've been able to utilize all of our professional development from august all the way to our november date um and the most important thing i think has been these half days that we've had on wednesdays in order uh to continue this work so without any further ado we are going to get started i'm going to begin by introducing kristen shanley and maria mullally kristen is our division leader for our english language arts and maria mulally is our maroon team leader and she's also a language arts teacher as well thanks mike so as mike said i am the language arts division leader at dodd and i am here to start us off by telling you what's involved with planning for instruction in this crazy year of remote teaching and in-person teaching so it began back in the spring actually we were told from a district initiative to prioritize our standards so the language arts department started that process in determining what were the key standards that students needed to know in order to move forward with their work in language arts and that work continued over the summer and we continued prioritizing and figuring out standards were most most important and then we were ready to kick the youth in the fall with those priority standards under our belt um it's interesting to note that back in 2017 when we presented to the cheshire curriculum council one of the recommendations that the council gave us was maybe we should focus on fewer standards rather than trying to highlight every single one of them and that is interesting now in covid times that that's kind of what's pushed us to um prior prioritize those standards so we are um meeting regularly in order to plan and communicate and best serve our students both remotely and in person and the seventh grade language arts department has done a phenomenal job in maintaining that coherence throughout the year and maria malali is going to share a bit about what that planning has looked like in a more day-to-day basis thanks so much kristen i'm maria malali i'm one of the english teachers at dodd middle school i teach grade seven on the maroon team as mike said and um our grade level meetings occur every other day opposite our team planning meetings i have to thank our administration for honoring that time and allowing for us to have that time to plan um because it's been critical to prioritize our standards and to observe that coherence as as a division our half days have been also integral into planning so we want to thank everyone's support for those half days they have been just such a life preserver in this year so that we have the time to meet and plan um to ensure that those priority standards are um are met um an example of some of that planning that we've done this year that we really want to highlight and and showcase is our book clubs we planned a common calendar so every grade 7 student was working on the same pacing chart you could see it here on the screen where everyone had that same shared expectation across all the teams um and also had similar paired text resources for each of the books that were uh presented so we had six novels and uh myself along with two other language arts teachers work to find resources to enrich that book club experience some of the outcomes of that planning uh impacted our parents teachers and our students in positive ways with our parents we planned within parent information letter to streamline our communication we had positive impact with our teachers by unifying our curriculum to allow any staff to facilitate so we were going into the year with the mindset of if a staff member became ill or needed to quarantine could anyone implement our um our curriculum and we can confidently say yes because of that careful planning for our students the planning impacted them by having them allow chunking reading to ensure their common pacing and that would ultimately lead to success in the next slide it shows some of the planned resources that we put together as a division at the top you can see the six novels that we used for book clubs and we worked summer hours but mostly during those half days and august hours to create um some homemade pear text resources we um those are homegrown right there with our department with finding articles videos poems songs that connected to the not themes of the novels and i have some samples there that you can see from three and just like in real life when you plan and you make those careful lists and check them twice planning leads to success and as you can see we have some happy students working in google meets with partners in their group working in person at a table in a hybrid way with some in person and some computers there with that planning we had such a successful experience we look forward to more thank you so much for your support everybody thank you maria very much that that was great to hear uh next we have kristin castellano who's one of our reading specialists at dodd and she's going to be talking to you about a vital piece of technology that we utilize with our students to be able to monitor our students also with the technology is of course we have kids who are at home and we're really transferring a lot more to our chromebook so she'll talk to you a little bit about our program go guardian thanks mike hi i'm kristen and i am um as mike said on the reading specialist at god and i wanted to share with you today our use of a really valuable program called goguardian because in this year where we are teaching two really separate class environments at once we needed a way to meld them both together and to be able to um to facilitate both of those environments at once so what some of our needs were we needed to manage both of those settings we needed to have access to student work in progress in order to give feedback to all of those kids whether they were in front of us on a sc in front of our our you know in person or they were learning remotely at home and then at the same time we needed to connect those remote learners to any feedback cycle the same feedback cycle that the in-person students were receiving we never wanted our remote students to be um you know to observe class like they were a fly on the wall we want it to be where we were all part of that one classroom experience and this kind of allows us to do that so goguardian is a program that allows us to manage and to monitor all of the screens that we as teachers can see all the screens of our students so if you look at this screen i know it's a little small because there are thumbnails but every thumbnail represents a student's screen who is in a class and the student's screens are side by side whether they are learning from home or they're learning in the classroom all of their screens are easily accessible at a glance in this one teacher view um and the wonderful thing about this is that i can see as a teacher at any one point in time at a glance if all of my kids are in the right place on the right page doing the right thing um without having to ask without having to walk around the room without having to um do any of those things that we used to be able to to take but we took for we took for granted back then but we're not able to really do this here so this allows us to manage and monitor what is on our students screens um if you click on one of those thumbnails it will bring up and that will be one of the student screens you'll bring up a larger view and the larger view is this one that you see in front of you and this one allows you to see student work in progress so any student you click on you can see exactly where they are on a piece of work in a lesson on an assignment at any point of time so in this particular case i could read a student's written response to a piece of reading that we had read and annotated and i can offer feedback in the moment to that student about his or her response and then the student can respond back to me and the wonderful thing about this is that not only do both sets of students get the same mode of feedback so everybody's kind of you know on an even playing field so to speak but at the same time it allows for me to see how the student has responded to that feedback um and in addition the feedback and the question if students want to ask questions they can also ask questions through this chat feature at the same time so i can get their questions privately so that they're not having to um you know raise their hand in a google meet where everyone sees that they've raised their hand and speak over the microphone over the broadcast system that comes through in the class the middle school student sometimes is a little private and shy and they don't want to share that with everyone in the class so this allows a private mode of communication which makes them feel a little safer a little more comfortable a little more secure in sharing their questions another thing we can do and this is a really cool feature of goguardian is we can filter what the kids are looking at on their screens so if you this is the same exact screen you saw before for the chat only the another tab on the right is clicked and that tab is student activity and this can show me every tab that the student has open on his or her screen the one in red at the top is the one that's active and if i see at you know when i click on this if i see that a student is doing something that he or she shouldn't be doing during that class or is just kind of lost direction or they're not in the on the right in the going in the right direction i can you know gently inspire them through the chat to you know get on the right tab or you know i can also if i choose to if that doesn't work i can simply click the red button and that will close their tab and they get a little message that says your teacher has closed your tab and um you can imagine how much they love that but it does keep the it does keep them on task and it does keep them um you know it eliminates a lot of the distractions for them which is a really a really great thing for especially at the middle level and finally we can create scenes and this is um amazing the way that this works is that ahead of time we can log into this program and before we even start class we can set up what the student will be um able to see before class starts so for example if i am giving an assessment and i want my students only to be able to open two tabs i don't want them to be able to go to google so they can look things up and i don't want them to be able to go to youtube i can block those sites ahead of time so that for that chunk of time my students cannot see those two sites i can also conversely i can make a list of sites that i do want them who i want to open when they open their chromebook and log into my classroom only for that chunk of time only those tabs will open on their chromebook so they will only have access to the ones that i've chosen so you have a lot of flexibility um with this feature and a lot of possibilities in order to set up how your classes is is run it it's particularly helpful in assessment situations so that you can ensure that kids aren't looking at other sites that they shouldn't be um while they're taking an assessment and then finally i've kind of i've talked about what it does for teachers what it allows teachers to do but it's very helpful for students so i thought you might like to see some of the student perspective here gold gardening helps me because in this castle honors room in every room that i go to there's like this like little text feature instead of interacting with the class saying asking out a question you can just type it down in that text area and you can get a response very fast and very easily go guardian helps me by finding the right document and staying on track um guardian helps me by if i get like off task or something the teacher can remind me that we should be doing our work it helps me if i'm remote learning and don't have to say i'm a google me um well it helps them because the teachers can like um they can look at your screen and they can tell you what you're doing right they're going wrong that helps me because so i don't have to i can stay off the games and if i need to ask a question it is easier for me instead of shouting to the teacher so they had some interesting perspectives so thank you for your time kristen thank you very much that was uh just as a side note goguardian was something that we had um looked at prior to the pandemic we were kind of in the in the um phase of testing it out um but it was amazing to hear you know as kristen shanley said some of the work that we were doing even before pandemic knowing about all of this that actually is is working out into our favor during the pandemic uh next up um we want to hear from our division leader and eighth grade science teacher on the blue team brian lopez who's going to talk to us about what life is like in science and science labs during the pandemic thank you very much mike i'd like to first start out by of course thanking all of you the uh the board my administration uh for for getting us through this school year it's been you know obviously we all are well it's well aware of the challenges we've faced this year and as i'm presenting to you i'm presenting to you from this you know very nice uh new chromebook here that that i received sometime in december so uh none of that would have even been possible so i i thank you for laughing one of the little things uh done so as we go back to the spring uh when all of this started uh we were doing anything we could to try to bring science into the rooms of our uh students that are were actually at home and i just wanted to uh you know recognize a seventh grade science teacher that uh is in the science department that's uh lori seymour uh who who put together created characters and and entertained the kids and and did quite a number of uh tremendous shows for the students uh back in the spring so we all took uh our her work and and said well what could we do with that you know through the summer and uh as the school year started we said let's make a two column list here you know what do we need and what would the benefits be uh from that so through video labs we said uh of course the biggest need the what we all remember from from middle school uh probably the only thing you may remember from middle school science may be actually doing those experiments and being able to work with your your peers and and and collecting data and probably you know socializing a little bit laughing so how are we going to fill that void there and so uh we we said we had no hands-on exp experiments so that we got to figure this out and and through those experiments that's where we had the students practicing a lot practice with their analyzing data making graphs with google sheets writing conclusions using data and evidence i know that um the language arts department did a nice job earlier of course uh emphasizing the need for uh showing evidence in their writing and so we we also do that in science and so we said how are we going to do that and of course the the last need was uh you know mike and john and all the administrators stress the idea of collaboration with teachers and making sure students all have common uh shared experiences uh throughout a team or throughout you know the grade level uh so then we said well what are the benefits to to doing these video labs we said well well students still need those experiences seeing an experiment being conducted and we found that we found over the years that we when we do experiments in front of students we call them a demo that students often are are really engaged and they do focus and and so those benefits are there they're still seeing science taking place uh they're able to take notes they're they're uh analyze that data afterwards and i'll show you some student work student samples that uh you know show some final products there so one other uh tools that the students make use of that normally they would just use uh you know screenshots from from other videos but they're actually we're using our videos of teachers talking and showing labs and pausing the video uh and uh using that shot of some particular part of the experiment throwing it into a document google doc uh and and reflecting on that picture or image uh so that's what we did labs are stored for future use so any student down the road or future can access that video and and watch it 10 times if they want so and collect the data and uh we of course uh would be able to practice those skills and then over the years uh before this uh pandemic hit and the videos were done our departments always tried to uh videotape ourselves as teachers to learn from each other and so we felt this was uh going to lead to a to a resource for us all in terms of professional development and that uh you know removing the need to to go to different classrooms and take time out of our own class but now we have those videos and and we can study each other teaching and and look at those for years to come uh what you'll see here is a video that i that i did in eighth grade it's a chemical reaction lab uh it's a double replacement reaction and it's i don't know about a minute or so uh showing you how we did one of those experiments all right so uh because it's distributive so you do two times na two times the cl you have two chlorines and then over here you also have two chlorines here okay so uh then we're gonna do the reaction now so i have a test tube and uh we're gonna put them in order of how they appear in the formula so we have sodium carbonate and calcium chloride okay and we're gonna put about equal amounts it's not really uh that important right now but we're going to put sodium uh uh carbonate into the test tube okay just like that and i know that the camera there is also there so let's see we'll do about half and half try to get like a one to one ratio here so here's our sodium carbonate and so i'm just happy i didn't wear the same uh sweater as i did in that video tonight here for this uh so uh the the student work as you see here with the uh chemical reaction is student work samples so these students were doing this as i presented i ended up making this screencastify and uh so i was able to put my little uh lab picture there and so students could access that and and then type and reflect you see a student's writing sample where they're using data and evidence from the experiment they're actually balancing chemical reactions which is quite complicated and then if you go on to this one there was a phase change activity where ms santos miss marin and i collaborated and we recorded a video and uh it's very exciting ice melting and swinging into steam but then they they turn into uh nice crafts there and the students were writing about that and here we have another student work example on the left from the chemical reaction experiment and on the right was a classification of matter where as just to go back to google docs that what students can really do and accomplish with google docs you see right there they're able to do math equations uh they can uh uh you know present this they can make pie charts they all these sorts of things that uh and we were able to do them under the covet times and pandemic times and you know again i go back to we you know we can't thank you all enough for for getting us through the school year and and so science was still able to be conducted as best we could and uh you know we're very happy about that so thank you brian um as you can see in our four core areas that we've been really uh utilizing you know these opportunities um but we're also doing the same in our unified arts area so next up i'd like to introduce our french teacher at dodd kristen cohanidas so she can talk to you a little bit about some of the assessment practices that she's utilizing uh in a very voice dependent uh subject area hi uh thank you all for being here my name is christine kojanovic i'm the seventh and eighth grade french teacher at dodd um and my big challenge this year was how do i assess students ability to speak in the target language when a good chunk of them are not actually in the room with me um speaking is always kind of difficult to assess in general when you've got 25 kids in a room but with a good chunk of them being learners from home i was on about a loss as to how i was gonna do that um so i started playing around with some tools um screencastify is a video and voice recorder tool it records basically a screenshot in video form uh records you as you speak and it records whatever whatever's on your screen i know a lot of teachers use this back in the spring when we had the sudden shutdown and teachers were having to deliver lessons from home somehow they were recording video explanations as to how to do things and going forward with their work i know i was um so i decided to take that and have the students use it themselves to um record their own voice and give a little speaking sample um so this was the first time that this group of students my eighth graders have ever had to record themselves speaking without having written out their sentences ahead of time um in seventh grade they do do some speaking but mostly it's very carefully prepared statements that then they kind of read to me and we practice pronunciation um authentic speaking when you're really thinking about what you want to say and saying it in the target language in the moment is a very difficult skill and we're just starting to get into that now um so i put together this chart for them there are some visuals here at the bottom and they were asked to drag and drop them into the activity squares and kind of plan out their day this unit is on telling time and describing their their daily routine kind of um so they were just to take some of the pictures and kind of plan out the things they wanted to talk about and then underneath they were to put the times that they did each activity and this was to kind of create a visual that um without writing their sentences out they could still have a way to track what they wanted to say next you know not panic in the moment about what they wanted to say as their next step um so at the bottom of that i just gave them a couple of scaffolds since this was the first time we were doing this i gave them a couple of starter sentences with some terms we hadn't learned yet and then gave them a little reminder about a couple of things they could say that they didn't know how to say that part i left in english because they should be able to figure that out in french but i just wanted to kind of um jump start their brain a little bit with some ways they could start their sentences and then at the very bottom i included some nice flowy words to help them make their sentences sound a little smoother i know that my eighth graders are writing these beautiful paragraphs and essays in english and they're used to being able to speak that eloquently so when they try to say sentences in french it frustrates them that they're these short choppy little sentences so i gave them a little bit of help with that so that they could say first i do this next i can do this and sound a little more fluent there so i have a little student example here you can listen to the final result [Music] so that was my student katarina she was very excited that you were all gonna hear that tonight so i uh when i asked her for permission to share her work she got all excited so i hope you enjoyed it thank you very much kristen that's really great um next up i'd like to introduce our two art teachers over at dodd and seeing how they're utilizing the tools in order to keep the creation alive in our art classes as well so go ahead shelly and marcia thank you mike and thank you board members and administration for this um opportunity to highlight the art program this year during the pandemic um shelly and i um feel as though we have successfully made lemonade out of lemons and i for my drawing class i had to revamp the whole curriculum for cdc guidelines and some of the following instructional strategies helped engage students in the classroom or in person and make it easy to assess their work so one of the things one of the strategies was providing a personal art kit so that there's no sharing of supplies students were required to bring in their own sketchbook for no storing of artwork um and actually that was good for them um they said that they liked being able to take their supplies and their sketchbook home and work on it on home if they wanted to catch up if they wanted to add more some of them wanted to do more assignments which is great [Music] so on the next slide is an example of sketchbook assignment labels that i gave the students it's at the bottom of the screen so it's just like the avery labels and i gave them to put them into their sketchbook and this helped keep the students organized in their drawing portfolio because you know the remote students and sometimes even the students in class they don't charge their chromebook it could be a network issue at home so they still have that information kind of the old school way to still work um but it's definitely more enhanced with the technology as you'll see there's a video on the screen this is one of the google slides they have 10 of them in there assignment portfolio and i created all of my own demos using a doc camera so the students can see the skills being provided for each assignment and on the next slide this is an example of another example of one of the assignments where there's a skill builder uh which has a video and then the students get to choose and they the students really enjoy choice they feel that there's more ownership they feel as though it's develops their own style and so i did abstract and realism for most of my assignments and as long as they're still using those skills i feel it's a success [Music] when students finish their drawing portfolios they would photograph and edit their work we would use the chromebook to photograph their work and it's it saves so much time they can use their um their chromebook is basically like a tripod and you're able to photograph right from their seats and it automatically uploads to google classroom which is wonderful and then the students have a drawing portfolio that i've created it's a template in google classroom so all the students already have this template and it's all the same for everyone and there's 10 assignments in it and the students upload the photographs into the portfolio in the portfolio um there are 10 slides again and they upload their work into the frames they write their name they come up with a title and then they um write what media they used then they answer questions that um eventually lead to a paragraph so there are three questions they have to answer about their work and um one has to do with line was to do the techniques they used because they're all different because every single piece of artwork is different and that's what i really love about the choice-based art program is that there's not 20 kids drawing a bluebird um and then lastly is what kind of mood does their artwork create they're assessed using a rubric a four-point rubric and the planning is part of it the creating the presenting and the reflecting these are some examples of students portfolios and from those exemplar portfolios so when i'm assessing their work i can look at what work i want to just copy and paste and put into the digital art show which is on the dad website which makes a um presents art to the dad community artsonia is another um technology that i'm utilizing this year for a couple of different reasons one is presenting artwork outside of the community with parent permission this is an opportunity for them to present their work and be a published artist and also connects um their family you know they may have grandparents they haven't seen and you know anytime there's that connection they you know it's really a plus um so the students upload their work and they um they send it over to the teacher and the teacher looks it over and she gives permissions then we send it to the parent and they have to give permission for it to go to the web there's another part to artsonia which is very beneficial is that the students can purchase their artwork on mugs masks on shirts and 20 of the profits come back to dodd middle school another um way of engaging students this year for remote and in person was a virtual art visit with domingo's rebus that might sound familiar he is one of our building maintainers at dad and he was very kind to create a video of his artwork and then agreed to have the students upload their photographs of their favorite pet or their favorite role model has to be their photographs we're not doing plagiarism or copyright and um he selected one out of a hat and he created the artwork the portrait and um was given to the student so that was really a highlight and lastly um i wanted to do something for the students who were at home or even in school who have hand injuries and it's always been a struggle when a kid is right-handed or left-handed and they hurt their hands you know whether it's in basketball or you know anywhere um and you know they say they can't do art so having this digital version of scholastic arts is wonderful because they can still learn their history part and learn about all the skills the artists used that we're using in class and it's also great for some special ed students that have the fine don't have the fine motor and need the hand on hand who are home and they can also use this currently i have three students using the scholastics art program and um lastly is a google form survey for student feedback where students were asked what kinds of strategies and methods helped keep them engaged and there was a list i had about 15 of them everything from i love art to you know other other thing you know there's many different um strategies and um i just pulled out a couple of the ones that i felt um related to this slideshow and the teacher created videos were definitely um popular the personal art kit was great because the students always had what they needed and remote students were able to pick them up in the office i would have a kit um in the office with the cardboard like a box you know with seventh grade and eighth grade they could just pick them up and the art labels having choice you know really kept them engaged um and then the sketchbook labels were very effective as well because you know sometimes um they do lose sight of where their work is supposed to be in their sketchbook well thank you so much for this opportunity good evening i'm shelley theriault the other art teacher at dodd i'm so glad to have a chance to share my students work with you tonight prior to returning to school in the fall i learned that my art room would look quite different tables were replaced by individual desks sharing supplies would not be an option and my traditional painting curriculum would need to be modified well i knew that i had to find a way to give the students various opportunities to make art that would excite them think about painting you couldn't even get to the sink now more than ever students would need creative ways to express themselves i knew that on the next slide you'll see the ideas behind my thinking i realized that my past experience as a graphic designer and computer illustrator would come in handy and play a part in my hand plan i researched ways to use the google workspace specifically sheets and drawings in august i enrolled in a few webinars and started to alter my painting units i also created reference slideshows and videos that students could refer to as needed which is a flipped classroom strategy on the next slide you'll see the beginning of my first unit which is called pixel art here i begin with a brief history of the genre including a little bit about an american designer named susan care she's a pixel pioneer who created the first icons for apple i use the smart board to demonstrate how to use google sheets and the concepts behind turning it into a pixel painting students then create their own pixel foods notice that i can type a private message on the right into the document to give each student a personalized critique this foundation exercise is a great way to encourage students to learn the program while they work with the subject matter that they learn know so well there's a high rate of success which gives the students confidence and i use this activity as a formative assessment on the next slide you'll see a work in progress here is a student's um pet she used this photograph from her phone and uploaded it so that she had it off to the side as a reference so while students are creating their pro paintings in class whether they're remote or in person i'm able to do individual check-ins from my computer and give feedback i can also show student works in progress on the smart board which is always exciting for the class to view the next four slides are going to be what i call the pixel masterpieces and this is a more finished painting as compared to the foods as you see the work incorporates a background and the themes may include anything from cityscapes wildlife landscapes portraits and more there's many opportunities for differentiation all the final paintings in both of my units include a self-assessment as well as an artist statement here the artist may elaborate on their artistic process or tell about the meaning behind their paintings some even write poetry second unit i designed is called vector art again i begin with a demonstration and formative assessment exercise students begin to explore all the tools in google drawings as they create a small animal painting based on reference photos the next four slides are going to be the masterpieces in the vector unit this is a great assignment for using personal photographs student choice is a big part of this just like marcia mentioned i take them through the necessary steps at a pace that makes sense to them chunking the lesson providing feedback along the way one thing that i loved was that so many students discovered little secret tricks and tips about the programs and taught me as well as their classmates so collaboration was happening all the time and students are so proud of their work as am i on this last slide you'll see um some happy bright cheerful faces looking at you these are vector self-portraits on the last day or two of the term i have a kahoot game where the students show their knowledge about the digital units that i developed and they also share their masterpieces on the smart board as well as take a little survey that i put together in closing i hope you agree that although the art room really does look different um there's still plenty of innovation of innovation and creativity going on thanks for listening thank you so much shelley we really appreciate it as you can see the the work that has been done this year uh has been a monumental task for our our teachers um being a larger school and having all of our students in has also been attached to be reckoned with to say the least one of the things in which i know we're going to be looking at in the future with the hope of getting back to a regular uh a normal school operation for next year is you know which of these tools and techniques um are worthwhile moving forward and i think as you can see even though it's a pandemic i think we're seeing a lot of great tools uh techniques methods and instructional strategies that uh really are capturing uh the essence of what we do at dot and that's really uh putting out a wonderful education for our students so at this time i'm going to have mr paraceno our assistant principal also join us but if the board has any questions for us we would like to entertain those tim i saw you go ahead thank you thank you mike yeah just a couple of questions and comments i jotted down um let me see what uh all right sorry the first point you just addressed so you will you're going to be using some of the technology to whatever extent you can next year because i agree i mean it sounds great some of the things that you've unfortunately gotten stuck with having to do but there is a benefit we're getting out of it um to brian lopez uh i appreciate the hands-on in science and i don't know if mike or adam can speak to this but i had mr nielsen um back in eighth grade at god he was crazy and he was fantastic now the the hands-on part of the hands-on part of science i mean for me in uh in dodd it it meant a lot so that's i know it's got to be difficult for kids what is the mike what is the percentage of kids that you have just generally speaking over the year that have been going remote rather than in school um it's it's fluctuated um depending upon you know kind of we we noticed some trends with the calendar year when i got closer to the holidays we're at our highest with about 60 percent of our students we're in 40 we're out um the percentage out right now is actually in the high 20s so we do have a lot more students coming back in okay thank you um with regard to um the maria malali you had made a comment about chunking the reading and keeping a common pace so i'm just wondering about that like the kids who are you know moving ahead so this probably doesn't have well it's about dot in general what happens with the kids who are the fast readers who move through i mean they have other assignments given to them or given free time i'm just curious that's a really good point the reading that was done for the book clubs was in a small group not in a whole class so within those groups there was already a lot of differentiation um just because like when you just said that higher readers probably reading a longer book so they have longer passages and and nightly assignments so that kind of naturally happened with the assigned book that they had okay okay cool thank you for that um and the last thing i'm just wondering about so we just went through we just went through february uh we had a national holiday president's day basically in honor of george washington's birthday i'm just curious is that is that touched on in like social studies for seventh or eighth grade and and really what comes to mind for me most is what happened a couple months ago uh january 6th um he had given us you know 230 years 220 years of peaceful transfers of power and it seems to me that it's important and i'm just wondering if that gets touched on or did get touched on or you know it's in the curriculum in general yeah obviously uh january 6 we don't have that embedded in the curriculum but i was able to meet with our social studies uh department who um really decided to take it on we had a couple of la teachers as well also take on the conversation um you know as a social studies teacher myself it was kind of similar to you know post 9 11 and us having good conversations with kids um in the classrooms as you know we're we're also the same citizens as they are in those moments so uh we're just trying to put some context of of what had happened and what had occurred uh but yeah we were talking about that uh after january 6.
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first uh we're gonna switch directions a little bit tonight uh the last time that we met we talked about putting together um you know some talking points around each of these hot button topics and um we were able to get some feedback from the citywide pto folks and i um had a few folks that actually emailed me independently to have conversations about this and they wanted to talk a little bit about the delivery of um the messages it's a little difficult when you're talking about these areas which we know are our drivers for the budget that's not necessarily what motivates people to get engaged in the topic and that's kind of the focus of our energy right now as a committee so um we had uh amy and i had a conversation with some of the citywide folks we sat down and spoke with courtney and with kevin um and we we talked about how we could take the presentation in a little bit of a different direction to make it more accessible to people to get them interested in it um kevin i don't know if you want to um you know talk a little bit about that or courtney if you'd like to talk about how you feel that the citywide presentation went on monday night sure i don't want to put you on the spot you don't have to but i'll let kevin go first um i'm happy to talk about it kevin do you want to go first sure um so so so one kate i i what i particularly appreciated was um one your opening and your kind of introduction to the presentation if you will um i think it allowed for i mean they're you said some things certainly as employees of the district um that's how we felt but we can't necessarily say um and so i i felt that role was that was appreciated um and in fact i think um when looking at our potential um ongoing community engagement sessions i feel like we provided a nice template uh for those remaining sessions whatever that might whenever that might be um and then of course um courtney's presentation itself um you know i felt like the graphics were somewhat attention grabbing and i thought courtney's uh powerpoint presentation as always uh was engaging and you know provided opportunities for people to kind of understand the budget but in small bites and you know opportunities to just digest the information and kind of short concrete bites versus that dense you know presentations the way typically a budget could look like um so i mean those are some of like the highlights for me um just in terms of how the community um you know appreciated it or embraced it you know i'm really not sure and i don't want to speak for them so i i think it's probably best at least for me to get feedback from you on what you heard or what you learned from our community and you know how we can improve to get better for the next engagement sessions that might be coming up thanks for that feedback kevin uh courtney did you have anything to add yeah i would just echo that i'd like to understand the feedback so we can improve and i just wanted to say i really liked the one pager um in the way that it was simple it was a nice simple like way to show the information and i like the categories so i i kept the way kevin put it forward i think made more sense from my perspective from what i kind of heard from the community to outline it in those category levels and kate's feedback to keep it really simple i really liked that and i think we can build from that um and i really really liked meg and dan's um feedback that he gave to rich with specifics around the impact that i think you know we can just incorporate um into the way we talk about the the impact of not having the budget that we need and what we do need for the to build the future so those those were the points i took away um i was excited that they were engaged um and i think we can build on that so those are the and i'd be interested in hearing what you all think as well yeah and kate if i can add one more thing um because i have to applaud joe for bringing up the idea of a one-pager in the first place um and joe i didn't like you one pager that you shared but i love the idea of the one pager um and and i and no but seriously i i felt like the community it it just allowed us like i feel like we didn't overwhelm them the way you know courtney's 72-page budget typically might overwhelm a community um you know and meanwhile we still address on the highlights as we had talked about in the other meeting um you know interesting thing is we hadn't planned for the citywide pto but we had one on the calendar and i think it worked out well it gave us something um to provide some feedback on and pivot and if we need to make any adjustments but i i felt it was a good start for us yeah a good starting point for the for the future like to engage people in the budgeting process i think you know in a way that maybe we would i haven't seen in my little tenure here but like i think i'm excited about that that's great um and hopefully we can repeat that measure again about the individual school level ptos um you know i don't know if we'll be able to hit all of them but it would be great if we could hit some of them and that's a that's a group that's already had some exposure to the information so having an additional opportunity to to get that messaging to them would be great um did you have any feedback that you wanted to share from uh tim yeah i spoke to tim you know the president of citywide the day after and um he also thought that you did a fantastic job courtney and kevin drilling it down doing it in small bites but i said to him and you know he doesn't pull any punches i just said so tim i know tim we go way back um and i said tim so what do you think the parents thought and he said i still think it was too much for the parents you know it was very condensed and that was great but he said they still just want to know about the schedule the co you know you know when are they when's the what's the cohorts going to be they were interested in that stuff and he told me that they had um i guess sent out an email to parents i don't know how long ago but you know maybe two or three weeks ago or something about getting in touch with your legislator or getting in touch with the mayor and he said we had one person send an email so it's just a little he said you know he doesn't say how you motivate people you know they just it's as if they're worried about where their kids bus stop is and they're worried about which i'm not i'm not putting that down i was a parent i would have been the same way i didn't care about the budget when my kids were growing up you know i just cared about that they were safe and that they were you know they knew what they were doing you know well so he just said i don't really know how to motivate people we can't make people be interested so it wasn't i mean you know and we were hopeful i mean we had a great conversation about well we're going to continue trying to present it as often as we can it was a very uh you know uh definitely a more palatable presentation for everybody and he like they like the one pager they like the the slides with the four you know sections of of each um category but he just he he said you know it was definitely a great try but i i don't know if it really affected parents a whole lot just being honest that's that's important to do i mean i know like look you guys put a lot of work into this everybody has and and i think you know we definitely recognize that so this is like just part of the process of getting closer to where we need to be in that messaging and that's okay that's that's the whole point of this thing is that we're just going to keep working through this and every time we have an opportunity to do a presentation it's an opportunity to be able to adjust how we're doing it because the goal is really just about reaching those people and making sure that we grab their attention um you know i think you know um one of the things that we've talked about before and rich you brought this up with in conversation with me recently was the uh the shock the shock campaign um you know there are certain components of that that courtney it might be helpful if we could get a sense from you um it doesn't have to be tonight you know it's a conversation we could have offline but just to get a sense of you know what are some of the repercussions here if we're looking at having x number of different levels of budget let's say we get two million dollars you know which is not a lot of money but it's some you know that's that's a realistic figure that we've gotten from the city in the past in past budget cycles um you know what does that look like in terms of what level of cuts we have to make and how that's going to impact things you know joe turned in some talking points on the niask accreditation and he talks specifically about you know what does it look like if we don't have the proper um you know staff in place because we have to address this excessive size and teacher student loads so we don't have enough staff members in the building you know that's not only bad for your kids education that's bad because you're the diploma that they're going to be walking out the door within a few years may not have the same value that it has today and that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that you know if you make it real for them that's what they hear and i know that this is this is the difficulty guys i understand for you you know and kevin i think you put it very succinctly that as as employees of the district you might feel a certain way but there's a certain line of you know that you have to watch and be careful about how you convey things but i also think we need to be really upfront with people and let them know what's at risk yeah yeah i have to say something too i'm sorry courtney but in my comment explaining what tim said it's not that tim wasn't thinking that you didn't do a good job first word he said to me was the parents are lackadaisical and i don't know how we don't don't how to motivate them and i think what kate's getting at is exactly if we can make it listen if we don't get if we don't you know continue to um ask the city and go to this is what it might look like for your your junior in high school or your senior school yeah and i think dan's points that he made in the email he sent me was like it's like the bubble gun that told it like we do a great job and we're and it's like on this backs and skins of bubble gum paper clips you know tape and and a lot of really really dedicated people but the damn well burst and like i think dan's points are something that we need to bring in and megan's points into how we talk about it because like we're at where we've been at the point and we're at the point i think where we can say okay basically what the city gives us is just our cost of living and less and even if and for every you know like like million dollars that they don't give us we're losing x number of teachers x number of guidance counselors x numbers so maybe there's a way that we can talk to meg and don about dan about adding like a second slide to that slide that shows the impact of what would happen if we didn't do x y and z but i just haven't been able to like like contextualize you know mr genelli did you want to talk about why you brought dan and megan into the conversation tonight because i think that's a perfect entrance to have them participate but just to digress for a moment my evaluation of the the citywide meeting was in the conclusion they there were a couple of things that that i thought i observed one there was a an excitement to support support us and the budget by the comments what can we do who do we contact in order to say that we want this budget approved the other thing was there were a lot of questions relative to the reopening of the school i tend to think first and foremost today is the concern of when are we going to get back to what you know what i would call a normal day and a reopening is on a parent's mind secondly may be the issue of the budget so you know going forward we may want to open up with some information on on that aspect which sort of preempts their questions and then lead into the budget but the reason i asked dan and megan to be here tonight was to help us continue this process of educating the public in terms of what we're doing and why we have these asks in our budget it resonates more when we hear from the people that are in the trenches as we found out in the past when the the support of the budget at the council meetings when you have teachers and counselors and other people that are in the district stating what their frustrations are what the conditions of work are a picture resonates in the individual's mind and they can relate that practical situation to the financial needs that he asks that we have in the budget with that being said since dan and megan are responsible for the largest high school in the state of connecticut they've done a tremendous amount of positive work with what's been given to them um and i qualify myself and say the budgets that we put forth are adequate for education i say adequate because if if we had more money than we're asking for it would be better so when you have ratios of one to four hundred for counselors or one to 65 for the teacher to esl and class sizes of 24 25 that to me is adequate but that is not a good education so with the positive attributes and the positive success that has been done in the high school you know i think that's a tremendous success story that we could say that we're making accomplishments in inroads then in spite of you know other obstacles we had but also we have to hear the challenges that they're faced with they're faced with in terms of dan and megan in terms of going ahead they you know my feeling is they cannot continue to operate on stuff that we give them or or you know yeah i think we i think we agree on that rich i just you know i think we need to hear from from them yeah firsthand you know what their what their success stories are and what their challenges are sure okay thank you um you know but first off thank you for having uh dr martins and myself here tonight you know we it was mentioned earlier that this is a new style of budgeting process and all that stuff and all my years as an administrator and i think i can speak for dr martin too in danbury we've never been this involved in the budgeting process of what we need and had conversations with courtney and kevin uh you know every now and then kevin you know kevin's sending out this random text hey i need to know how many teachers you need right now for this and give me your numbers for that because it shows that they're they're they're asking the right questions and it's a new process that we're all going through so you know we thank them uh and for you for having us here tonight to talk about that you know as i'm sitting here taking notes and you know dr martins and i talked about what you know some of the things that we were going to talk about but my note sheet just looks ridiculous right now because you know you've mentioned everything that we've gone through you know from being in administrators who when we took i took over as principal uh you know denver high school was in a good place dr martins and i think work very effectively together and we've made it a better place we've taken it from a you know a review school to a focus school to out of a focus school with our um you know to getting our graduation rates higher not perfect nothing we've done is perfect yet but the frustration that was mentioned earlier is something we also feel we feel frustration in that we know we can do more we've had things in place that have been taken away from us because of budgeting reasons we had to assign different things that worked well um and that's where the frustration comes in for us we know we can do better you know we're at that threshold right now of you know the as many uh they're not tricks but strategies that we know and that we've put in at some point it just comes down to boots on the ground and people doing work and when you mentioned counselors with case loads of no matter how hard a counselor works they're not going to be able to service students you know i just saw the bill that's being proposed in the assembly for you know making the ratio for counselors and psychologists and all that stuff you know one to 250 which is what we were trying to do and what niask said that we really have to get down to quickly so there's there's things like that that um you know we're working towards you know as i said again i apologize i'm kind of all over the place thinking of my thoughts now because you really got me going um you know i agree with mr ginelli that uh this budget season i don't know if it feels different or the excitement that excitement's the word used for getting parents here it's anxious for us because we're at the end of the road i don't have any more strategies i don't have any more um you know things that i can do to do this besides just starting to short the kids in danbury high school uh and i can only speak to denver high school i can't speak to the middle schools or elementary so i won't do that but you know with the two major concerns that both dr martins and i have are coming to head right now and it's the roll-up of the 25 credits that all kids in the sophomore class by the time they graduate have to have when it was 21 before and um the population growth you know just when i took this over five years ago we were at 2 900.
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call the meeting to order and checking the sound do we have any you have announcements from erin forgive from grand hills high school we do there she is good evening board members superintendent nelson and attendees the past month has been one of granite's busiest in the past year that we have been doing distance learning with increasingly better county conditions we have resumed practice for cross-country track and field tennis softball soccer baseball and football we are incredibly excited for student athletes to be back in their element and cannot wait to see what their seasons hold while conditions are becoming better we will be state testing virtually this year which means all of our teachers are hard at work to prepare us our students are showing great promise and we are sure that their results will be just as impressive as those of past years we begin testing on march 15th in order to keep spirits up and promote school pride we will also be having a spirit week starting on march 15th the days will range from wearing green for st patrick's day to dressing up like your favorite book or tv character we cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with and how high the participation will be speaking of participation though we recently hosted a fundraiser at chipotle for the class of 2022 and had a high level of attendance the money raised will help our juniors with next year's events as they were not able to do their normal fundraisers this year we are so proud of them for succeeding even when times are rough thank you all for your time this evening and until next time always remember maroon and gray lead the way thank you so much erin maroon and gray apple valley high school mazel sia good afternoon esteemed board members as we slowly transition back to in-person learning we continue to work hard and keep busy this friday at 7 pm asb is hosting its first ever virtual talent show we have nine contestants and the show is sure to bring a smile to your face asb also hosted a successful sock drive for geriatric patients yearbook collected senior superlative nominations and senior quotes yesterday we had our high school awareness night for incoming freshmen miss howell continues to hold weekly trivia that many students look forward to most of our students who competed in skillsusa are advancing the state and many placed in top three in their competition many of our hostess students have started competing in their slc events cross country had their first meet last week against serrano with one of our students placing forth many of our sports are starting back up with practices our sensations and vocal motion choirs held a virtual valentine's recital our graduation committee had a meeting and continued to brainstorm ideas to give seniors a great graduation next week our cohorts will begin to come back on campus as you can see we are hard at work to keep up our activities and are making exciting progress moving forward thank you and remember sun devil pride is contagious thank you sun devil pride is contagious of of course um union representative cali do we have any uh information from csea um we did not receive a report from csea how about avuta i did receive a report from avuta thank you good evening board members and av usd administration i'm sorry it has been so long since i have made a report unfortunately i contracted covid and it took me down for quite a while if you have been watching the news unions and districts are fighting each other throughout california about the reopening of schools i am proud to say that is not the case with a buddha and avusd we both have always had one common goal to get our kids back into the physical classroom when we were concerned about our safety abusd didn't hesitate to give the members what they needed to feel safe when the coveted numbers went up the hospital was overwhelmed awsd decided to close temporarily for all of our safety then the vaccines began being offered we know without a doubt that mrs nelson made that her own goal to get all of abusd employees the vaccine if they wanted it i recently got the vaccine experience and you could see avusd's admin he had a hand in every aspect of that effort it was such a smooth event mrs nelson and av usd admin you have our sincerest thanks for getting this done and the teachers from other districts who have been vaccinated through the saint mary's clinic now we await monday march 8th where we once again get to see our preschool through sixth grade students in person and we are excited high school will start cohorts soon and they will get to see some of their students too the high school members hope to see the numbers continue to go down and have hopes of reopening again as well thank you for all your support and we hope to see you on the campuses as we open up next week dr christy croft a buddha president thank you the clerk will read out any action taken in closed session okay so the first uh readout is on item b1 public employee discipline dismissal release and on a motion made by wilson so and seconded passing game okay the motion passed 5-0 moving on to b5 which was conference with a labor negotiator on a motion by so and a second by para it was a 5-0 approval 5.0 [Music] i like to hear my voice labor negotiator uh on a motion by okpara in a second by blasting game the motion passed uh unanimously 5-0 which was approval of united teachers associated with a memorandum of understanding so with that that's all we have to report from closed session uh manager the board may approve the agenda as is everything's streaming well i can hear the stream well um the readouts my only question is i i heard the motion i heard the second i heard the vote but did we read the record the content of each readout okay no i did not so let's let's i'll read the content let's start with uh v1 which is on a motion 5.0 it was the release classified employee number 5884 effective march 4th 2021 pursuant to the notice of intent to discipline by dismissal dated february 2nd 2021 and on b5 it was approved the apple valley unified teachers association of voodoo memorandum of understanding regarding the revision to the january 20th 21 memorandum understanding pars supplementary retirement for the 2021 school year dated february 25th 2021 and again on b5 it was approved 5-0 that the apple valley unified teachers association of buddha memorandum of understanding regarding supplemental par supplemental retirement plan for the 2020 school year dated january 20th 2021.
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okay and five four three um under god indivisible with liberty at this point with family members currently family members is thank you we do not have any public comments pertaining to closed session at this time so we're going to be concluding the closed session and the first item is uh personnel annual reviews are 3 2 2 0 21 and ar number 33 20-21 number two is public employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer title certified and classified employees number three appointment resignation retirement reduction certified in classified employees number four conference on litigation government both section 54956.9 subsection a current litigation my case is cidps2813952 cibbs 1907 172 cibb 1937 043 cibdes user 202 956. government section 549.54 subsection [Music] item number five conference with labor negotiator gay agency negotiator justin conrad the employee organizational unified teachers association number six conference with labor negotiator and agency negotiator dustin conrad the employee organization california school employees association conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator from the announcement b employee organization unrepresented and finally aid to be supervised knows
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if you all would now please rise for a pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence join with me i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america into the regional republic with liberty and justice thank you all right mr rusi roll call mr awad here miss bassford president miss beltran here mr kenova here mr daley [Music] miss danny president mr casper here mr abedrabo here mr smith here okay um if i just uh before we start um a commissioner uh danny um had an accident and had to have a surgery on her arm so she is healing at home and not very comfortable to be on camera so i just wanted to let the public know that she is here she is present you see her beautiful picture there uh but uh she will not have her live picture on uh same thing for uh vice president abhijabo he is um at a wedding um but he is going to try and to uh to come into the meeting at period of time uh to go out to his car or go into another room to uh to try and join us throughout the meeting so again you may not see his picture live tonight so i just wanted the public to be aware of that uh mr casper would you mind reading our mission statement sure the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world thank you uh the new jersey open public meetings law the jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv in the local press on the district website and mailed to presidents of parent-teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay adoption of the minutes of uh meeting uh february 18th 2021 our regular meeting so moved so moved by mr casper exactly by who is it uh mr canova discussion changes seeing none vocal mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yeah mr canova yes mr i daley him saying yes miss danny miss danny she might have stepped away mr casper yes mr abba drabo yes mr smith yes motion carries okay uh board committee reports um the public should know that the board was extremely busy uh with our committees uh working very hard so i thank all the board members uh so we have quite a few committee reports to read this evening so uh board members if you would do your best to um give a synopsis of their reports instead of uh reading every single word uh it'll help us get through these a little bit quicker um so i'm just going to start in the order that they're listed here so uh joe if you would do technology please yep and mine are only a few items here technology committee met march 2nd a board member is present uh for jim smith joe konova dana beltran and ferris awad administration president danny robert tosi janina kuchinovic mark teigen and eric mountain meeting time was five to six items of discussion first one was chromebooks mr mountain provided an update of chromebook one to one access while a small number of students are still in progress of signing out all devices kd 12 students now have access to chromebooks all power secretaries and other support staff who are need of chromebooks are also receiving theirs this week now that we are fully one to one preliminary discussions for replacement plans have begun chromebook sizes and touchscreens capabilities will be key issues in choosing models for future purchases other mobile technologies such as windows laptops and apple ipads are also discussed and will be elevated evaluated for current and future use as appropriate number two device insurance uh mr mountain provided a cost comparison between purchasing insurance for lost stolen or damaged chromebooks versus paying for repairs as needed at present the repair and replacement cost paid by the district are significantly less than the cost of insurance so it is recommended we maintain status quo and forego this option the cost will be reevaluated on an annual basis students and families will continue to be responsible for damage caused by malicious or negligent behavior as per the agreement signed in the beginning of the year item three training chromebook chromebook and google suite training will be offered to board event commissioners in the near future to refresh and expand skills and comfort levels with the google environment item four staffing short-term and long-term staffing these were discussed and will be considered as the 2122 budget is developed item fives microsoft renewal as student staff continue to shift to the google environment different options for the district's microsoft license renewal will discuss cost and usage will be analyzed in upcoming months in order to make the best decision for our annual review in july if renewed any renewal plan offers the microsoft office suite of programs for staff and or students to use on their personal devices these opportunities will be advertised as appropriate okay are there any questions for uh mr kanova on technology seeing none thank you mr canova next is policy do you miss uh bassford yes uh good evening everyone the policy committee met on february 23rd at 11 a.m attendees with uh president jim smith myself board members joe konova dana beltran from administration dr robert tussie mark teigen luis ross and also our board attorney was present the committee discussed by laura zero one five five it's up for a second a reading tonight we did agree on the um wine to put in is the board president and or majority of the board of education have the authority to discharge an ad hoc committee at any time so that it was it was put in and it's it's staying like that if everybody agrees tonight it will be adopted on final resolution um the committee also discussed policies uh relating to public comment at a board meeting um we are going to discuss this further but basically if a board meets if the board meeting is remote or partially remote then the board must provide a remote option to the public discussion was then held on what um information a speaker needs to provide to prior to the speaking at a public meeting name address name and school number name and municipality uh speaker may remain anonymous the committee did not come to a recommendation and will review at an upcoming meeting the committee also reviewed and discussed policies relating to dress code for student staff and commissioners policy 5511 dress code of student dress code was discussed and data was presented on violations and discipline policy 3216 policy dress code was discussed and similar data presented policy 9322 code of conduct of remote meeting was discussed by dealing with board member board commissioners the policy states that board members we will dress and act and and speak in a professional manner as this policy was enacted for remote meetings it was agreed to consult straus is made to inquire on non-remote meetings of dress policy for board members the meeting adjourned at 12 and mr ross submitted the minutes any questions okay thank you thank you miss bassford next um we have um uh we have a residency security committee uh the uh the public session uh uh minutes um [Music] mr uh wad would you like to read those please thank you president smith um clifton public schools residency security meeting was held on march 2nd 2021 um on march 2nd 2021 the residency and security committee meeting began with the customary greetings and introductions present at the meeting where the board of education commissioners president smith committee chair which was ive for ocelon uh commissioner commissioner casper dr robert tosie uh uh superintendent also um mark t assistant superintendent of mark gonzalez hamda clifton high school vice principal uh secretary security secretary brenda also security secretary nancy foster vincent uh i apologize if i pronounced his name wrong mckelly also uh mr uh gingaro recognized that individual hard work and efforts uh put forward by the registration department and security team to the committee mr jangiero provided the committee with a brief overview of security in the district including compliance with nj school drill law types of emergency procedures and the district's response to varying types of emergency situations second mr jingaro provided the committee with a brief overview of the district's registration and residency procedures and processes including students who reside in the state of new jersey are entitled to free public education between the ages of 5 and 20 years old and other students who are eligible for preschool under the age of 5 or special education students over the age of 20 are entitled to free public education residents more accurately called is defined at the fixed permanent address to which students return to at the end of the day in accordance with njsa18a 38-1a students who are not in clifton are not eligible to attend the clifton public school district information about how the enrollment registration process how to determine eligibility based on age residency and the criteria of the attendance and enrollment dr robert tosie further explained the process to deem students ineligible involves affording parents and guardian students the opportunity to present their cases to specific to residency at a hearing of the board of education as such a portion of the residency and security committee meeting was allocated for this process a total of 13 families were issued notice for ineligibility and were invited to attend uh the hearing at the board of education five of those families were presented at the hearing dr robertos facilitated the hearing in both in arabic and spanish-speaking translators were made available for the families at the conclusion of each hearing the residency and security committee members discussed each individual's case and came to as a recommendation that will be made an executive session on march 4th at the board of ed meeting all decisions will be communicated via email and certified mail the committee also discussed following items that will be added to the agenda for the next residency and security uh committee detailed overview of the district's security procedures determining ways to pro uh to better promote both the bounty and announce tip line the possibility of registrations for specific grades committee chair for our salon and mark gennaro work collaborative to determine that the date of the next residency and security committee the committee requested to have monthly reports submitted for the report at the board of education meeting including the results of investigations specific of the number of confirmed residents and non-residents the number of bounties awarded to citizens for providing the information that leads to discovering that families does not live reciting klept in and the number of investigations that were conducted are there any uh questions for mr awad uh just for clarification mr awad uh uh vincent constantino is our domicile investigator mr vinnie thank you that's right okay thank you very much next we have education mr casper thank you mr president i have two our first meeting from december 8th 2020 uh the education committee was held in conjunction with the technology committee the meeting began at 5 p.m attendees were myself uh as a chairperson board vice president judith basford as well as board members mr joe konova and mr tahim abu drabo administrators included dr danny robertozzi mrs janina kusalavich miss heather rotello mr eric mountain and our guest was rachel harrington okay so all of these i'm going to read were informational um we're informational provided to the committee which i will read now so our first uh item was the linkit online assessment platform mrs kusalevich gave a brief overview of the lincoln online assessment platform it is a powerful multi-functional student database that will allow school districts to measure student growth down to the individual standard and allows for cross-referencing of teaching of teacher-made local standardized and state assessments our special ed update was given by mrs heather rotolo she described many of the special education initiatives taking place ms chavez ran nurtured heart training where 120 families were registered and over 60 participated parents were engaged in strategies to successfully defuse difficult behaviors and reinforce positive behaviors bank had a meeting scheduled on 12 15 20.
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students will be invited to participate in an informal screening process in the summer just a reminder for everyone schools will be closed for spring break starting monday march 29th through friday april 2nd this is also information that's very important for our staff and our community as spring great approaches if we travel overnight to any u.s state or territory beyond the immediate region an immediate region is defined as the state of new york the state of pennsylvania the state of delaware and the state of connecticut you will be required to quarantine from school for 10 calendar days after your return evidence of a negative cova test proof of a vaccine or proof of a positive coveted test result and recovery within the last 90 days cannot be accepted as a substitute for the mandatory 10-day quarantine for our staff if you plan to travel you must contact human resources in advance of your departure with dates destination and travel documents human resources will advise those staff who have voluntarily elected to travel over spring break compliance with a 10-day calendar quarantine is mandatory to prevent the spread of covet 19 in east brunswick public schools if you travel to any state outside of new jersey and return the same day with no overnight stay you do not need to quarantine if you are symptom-free again that's if you don't travel overnight you do not need to quarantine as long as you remain symptom-free and for our students students who elect to travel under the aforementioned conditions will be required to participate virtually and cannot come into their school building before they fulfill the mandatory 10-day required quarantine thank you thank you dr valesky so first up on this evening's agenda we have several budget presentations bernie yes good evening everyone um we are continuing our budget uh presentations and the first up this evening is facilities management we have mr gerald skank the director of facilities management to review his area's budget good evening everyone tonight i'm pleased to present the facilities management department's budget for the 2021-2022 school year slide please as you know the facilities management department is comprised of three sections maintenance custodial and grounds slide please for the maintenance section the budget supports maintenance and repairs in the licensed trades such as electrical heating and air conditioning and plumbing as well as the general maintenance trades such as general construction and painting slide please the budget also supports acquiring professional environmental services to ensure the district maintains compliance with federal state and local law programs for the custodial section the budget supports daily cleaning sanitation and disinfecting operations to provide a healthy work and learning environment for district employees students and the community slide please and finally the ground section the budget supports grounds maintenance tasks and services to maintain athletic fields playgrounds natural and synthetic turf fields courtyards as well as paved and hard surfaces slide please the following pie chart provides a nice breakdown of how financial resources are dispersed in several operational categories to provide some perspective let's briefly discuss some of the tasks associated with each of these items or in each of these areas the building and system maintenance and repairs section comprises 16 of the allocated budget and enables technicians to maintain domestic hot water heater systems interior and exterior light fixtures intercom systems within our schools doors and lock mechanisms and also replace air filters in hvac systems four times a year the custodial section of the pie chart makes up 65 percent of the department's budget and most of these costs ensure each building has enough manpower to properly clean sanitize and disinfect facilities on a daily basis finally the care and upkeep of the ground section comprises 16 percent of the department's budget the largest allocations for this portion of the budget go towards maintaining exteriors of properties and to include general purpose or which include general purpose and athletic fields while the primary focus of the department is maintenance and repair the department is heavily involved in identifying and planning capital improvement projects that said the next two slides are to inform the board and the community of major infrastructure items or components that need significant funding to maintain but are not funded slide this slide highlights eight of 13 facilities that require significant investment to repair or replace replace their roofing infrastructure while the high school's roof is the largest concerns concern due to the significant amount of funding required a larger discussion to determine the future disposition of that building needs to be had slide please and the final slide highlights major repairs needed to improve payment and hard surfacing areas at each district property again at 34 percent the high school requires the most work but after the mon after making a monumental investment to replace the roof and repair pave pavement and other hard surfaces the question the board must answer is is the current infrastructure and design capable of supporting the educational needs of the 21st century student so with that that concludes the buzzing presentation for facilities management and i'll now attempt to answer any questions that you might have bernie can you put us back on gallery view please certainly thank you okay anybody have any questions for jerry lou lee woo garrett thank you very much for your good presentation you're welcome sir so uh i realized that the high school roof and the pavement cost quite good money yes do you have any idea how much uh was spent last year and uh two years ago for a comparison um would that be for roof repairs um or or in conjunction all repairs associated with the high school injunction for entire high school oh no i don't have that number present with me at this time okay but we can research that and find out for you yeah that number will help us to to decide and how much money we're pumped in every year to keep facility in your usable condition thank you mark yeah jerry again uh great presentation hammer shoulder looked like had some significant needs on the roof and the paving and curving one of our newer buildings i would say how do those two things match up um match-up is match up as far as as far as how mr winston it like i said hammershow is one of our newer buildings it looked like there was a lot of money needed for roof repairs and paving and curbing than some of the older buildings so how uh i think it was 13 years ago right that hammer shield was built is that correct correct perhaps i can jump in on this if you don't mind sure um so uh yes in terms of the roof um the roof on that building is definitely going to need to be replaced in the not too distant future that roof is a 15-year roof so um it's not a um uh a hot roof as we've done on our other buildings uh as we've been replacing them the hot roofs have 30-year warranties hammer sold is what's called an epdm roof correct correct um so uh as such they have a shorter time frame a shorter lifespan so a matter of fact it's one of the things that mr skenk and i have been talking about the need to uh plan for hammer shoulders roof replacement it's something we're definitely going to have to do and then in terms of the paving while um you know while the the facility is not that old uh when we have uh blacktop surfaces they do need to be maintained and so what has to happen is they need uh occasional resealing sometimes they need to be re-ground so that an initial surface is taken down off the top and then resurfaced so there's constant work that's necessary on all paved areas all blacktop areas they don't last in perpetuity and when they're not regularly sealed and resurfaced uh it has a drastic impact upon the their longevity so um it's just it's what i call pride of ownership when you have properties and improvements on them you have to constantly make sure that you're keeping on top of it to maintain the investment otherwise the investment that's put into it can be diminished if they're not maintained in accordance with uh what the standards are i hope that helps yeah and definitely the roof thing being a 15-year roof as opposed to i think churchill we're talking much longer so thank you very much mr giuliana just a point of clarification so the eb for the public epdm roofs are cheaper to install than the uh the other roofs correct yes they are yes they are and also have a shorter lifespan so you know it's um you get what you pay for thank you yes uh actually jerry i had a question um very very good report very well researched uh thank you so much um we talked about in other areas other budget managers about a replacement cycle that they work out for instance in the area of athletics there's a rotation cycle for equipment and especially uniforms where they're replaced for this spreadsheet rotation if you will every year there's a number of replacements on the facilities and maintenance and grounds budget in terms of vehicles or major equipments and are we do you also go by a specific rotation uh or is it more driven by need and wear and tear i would say i would say originally it's been driven by need and wear and tear however the department has been striving to identify areas you know mr juliana talks about establishing a balance not a balanced budget but a level or a flat budget one that doesn't have peaks and valleys and everything it makes it very hard to plan so we've been working with different administrators uh in in every area to try to identify things uh that need to be replaced so that we can establish some type of cycle um you know we we will research the component you know we'll um will determine the what should be the useful life of that equipment you know make sure that it has the proper maintenance and repair um on a periodic basis and then at the end of that life cycle hopefully before that budget year make a request to replace that equipment so that um so that things can be anticipated and and not just um a knee-jerk reaction to say that we you know we have to buy something right now that affects uh you know the curriculum or student development or something like that so we've been we've been trying very hard um you know to identify those every year it's it's a few few more items um and it's uh the budget right now is is pretty comprehensive as you've seen in the report and we're striving to get better i'd like to just jump in also on that because um you know when we're talking about those last two slides um where we have um roofs and uh paving uh we've been we've been ticking off the roofs one you know one at a time uh the last several years we've uh managed to uh re-roof um oh let me see we did uh warren storfer we did frost um we just um have come to completion on the entire churchill junior high school roof um am i missing any jerry on that lawrence brooke or lawrenceburg that's right we just did brook this past summer so we've been we've been tackling them about one a year or so one every two years roughly but it's a costly endeavor and we tried to do that through our revolving debt we don't have enough debt expiring to be able to undertake another roof at this time so the items that are listed under the roofing aspect will need to wait another year or so in terms of the paving aspect however we've really not been able to set aside funds to do that that will need its own um uh its own debt issuance and our debt issuances are are typically um of a short term of five years or less so we've been doing things on a rotation when one one uh debt expires we reissue and do some additional work we're in a much better place than where we used to be many years ago we did not have any kind of a plan in place and we were you know basically patching things quite a bit but we're doing a lot more capital improvement to really maintain the buildings in a much better way and the board's been really super about that in allowing us to establish this revolving debt and jerry mentioned in terms of the peaks and valleys what we've tried to do is maintain a level debt structure so that we're not having to um deal with um those those amounts undulating uh from year to year uh we can we can pretty much plan um a year two three uh in advance when it comes to that thank you bernie um yeah i i'm sorry if i didn't um articulate that clearly i my my referral to a rotation was more about um pieces of equipment vehicles the things we'll see um not necessarily something like a roof although i did appreciate your explanation and certainly it's it's all important information and jerry to your point about doing things in in somewhat of a uh proactive manner it's it's always going to be more efficient and more fiscally efficient rather than as you put it the knee jerk reaction which is great that we're looking at it that way thank you um jeff jeff and lee woo hi bernie nice to see you and uh thank you for the presentation jeff you're waking i have up questions for you all right one second can you hear me now is that better yes that's a lot better that's a lot better all right well you won't be able to see me speaking but trust me i am uh with um i have two questions for you uh the first one and a lot of a lot in what bernie was just talking about and talking about the replacement uh and specifically surrounding the paving let's just use the high school for an example and i know there are some maintenance things i have to do on my driveway and i would imagine they're not so dissimilar to what has to be done in an asphalt parking lot what has been the resealing schedule uh over the years how often has that lot been uh proactively maintained um you're smiling all right and uh i can see you uh so so you know can give me give me some insight on that and then i have a follow-up question i you know i can i can tell you i'm smiling because um you know as mr juliana said there's a lot of discussion that happens around in the background of what has not been taking place and what we've been striving to get towards uh i can tell you to be honest uh you know the the high school property as well as all of our properties have not the pavement surfaces have not been seal coated have not been crack sealed um in um on a regular basis and that's because you know there's always a balance in priorities you know do we do we spend and i'll just do we spend x number amount receiving the resealing the pavement even though that needs to be done or do we buy the curriculum department books for to you know to put this new program in place so it's always it's always a you know a battle to try to prioritize these things and that's exactly the slide that you saw the board commissioned our architects to evaluate all the properties and to uh prioritize them by repair and then and then give us a dollar amount of what that would take um but as mr juno liam had stated we just have not been able to get there to be able to uh find the resources to to start that process and that report now that slide um is probably a couple years old now um you know but we just haven't had the opportunity to pull the trigger on on on a lot of these um maintenance um type of activities all right so so if i'm hearing correctly we really haven't been maintaining it which accelerated the decay a slight different interpretation of what you said but i appreciate that jeff you're you're um yeah is this better yeah it is uh you are you are correct in that um we we have not had the resources to be able to uh maintain the um asphalt surfaces uh as they should be um that's been forever um and uh i do want to make one i do want to make one and and it doesn't make it right it absolutely is not right um yeah but we're dealing with limited resources and trying to figure out how to how to bridge that gap one thing i want to clarify though that that we we never um we don't we don't pit um the curricular area against facilities okay that example i'm sorry that doesn't happen um we we really try to deal with those areas uh individually because they're both important and they both have needs and uh we want to keep both moving forward so i think that's important to note but you know the reason it's a matter of you know um establishing an initial uh fund to be able to do that and have that dedicated uh toward uh the paving purposes and and we haven't gotten there no i appreciate that and so to date that really hasn't been established and i understand that uh the follow-up question is really resonating off of the last thing that you said jerry in your presentation and that's something will probably stay with me for the rest of the night uh you would said that our school is equipped to handle 21st century uh students and learning and that's a question i ask myself constantly in all aspects including in your area so with that said and you said that you've spoken to experts such as architects and so on um and you you and those two slides you hung up there in very bold print on top did state that these are unfunded areas of need totaling of about 18 million dollars so uh between the two slides so with that said let me ask you are facilities up to par to handling 21st century education based on what you see and and uh as a part of that where's where's our failure when where's the massive failure in in the most vulnerable area in this town that we need to be overly concerned about at this time that that that's that's a a tough one and i don't i'm not really clear about what you mean by what the massive failure unfortunately so facility a facility facility which facility which roof will fail miserably if not addressed quickly talking about facilities now you had said that you have 18 million dollars worth of need and i honed it on the roofs because i know if the roofs go that definitely does not make a 21st century learning experience and that's been evident already in some of the classrooms so that said my question is from what you've gotten back from the experts which of the buildings should we be most concerned about failure so let let me jump in on that and and jerry feel free to piggyback as well um i would say that the uh and i'm going you need to hear everything i'm going to say about this i'm going to say that the the high school roof is the one that would probably rise to the surface but it's not in such a shape that we're talking about a roof that is going to completely fail uh so i think that's important uh we um jerry's team and and his through his resources and his budget um they are constantly addressing problem areas and maintaining it so that we do have uh a watertight roof but there com there will come a point where that's not going to be sustainable we're not there at this point but we're going to be there we will be there so you know this is where important decisions have to be made in terms of what we're going to do facility wise we have been very fortunate that uh none of our roofs have ever gotten to that point where they they are in such failure that we would not be able to uh educate our kids uh and safely keep them uh in the buildings we've had certain problem areas i know i can tell you at churchill there were numerous problem areas in that facility and that was a big nut to have to undertake in terms of funding a roof replacement we got there we did it it's in great shape now we won't have to think about that roof for another 30 years will there need to be repairs and patching from time to time absolutely that happens it's the nature of the business and it goes to what i said before it's pride of ownership when you own a building you own all the issues that come with it whether you like them or not so um that's what i have to say in terms of you know the the failure we don't have a failure but we do have issues that we absolutely are going to need to address uh in the not too distant future mr juliana that the high school is probably our in terms of age it has the oldest components of all of our facilities currently right absolutely and and you know if i can i just want to expand for a moment because i you know we've we talked a lot about the roof but when we look at the high school um i think it's been a hodgepodge that building is a massive building and it has been a hodgepodge over the years from the time that um it was uh initially constructed back around 1960.
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i want to share the story of my upbringing i was born in flagstaff arizona to a hearing family we lived in page arizona for a few years before moving to tucson arizona so that i could attend arizona school for the deaf and blind while growing up my primary language for communication with my hearing family was american sign language fortunately i was given a wealth of opportunities i went to deaf camps attended youth leadership conferences played in various sports tournaments while growing academically i would like to mention that i was three years old when my parents found out i was deaf and they didn't know what to do for my future in regards to education there was a lack of resources for the families of deaf and hard of children hard of hearing children in page fortunately my grandfather was the one who knew about the deaf community and dust schools including gallaudet university he was a professor of three different universities one happened to be at asu in phoenix so he guided my parents and stressed the importance of language acquisition at an early age ultimately my parents decided on placing me an asdb in tucson along with myself they and grandpa too learned a new language asl not only did i have access to the language asl while growing up i also had access to educational and social opportunities in a language-rich environment such opportunities have shaped who i am and who i am going to become if it weren't for my grandfather i wouldn't be who or where i am now i am extremely fortunate to be where i am now even today not many families have access to such information or a grandpa like mine sb 1092 would ensure that all of families have access to resources and services and that their children don't get left behind in language and literacy acquisition i was extremely fortunate to be having these opportunities while growing up and i want the same experience for other deaf hard of hearing and deafblind children like any child in arizona they deserve it all of the deaf and hard of hearing children deserves a total enriching educational experience i have had please support hb 2863 thank you for your time and i appreciate it the second comment is from mark know that arizona schools for the deaf and blind is most eminently qualified to provide instruction in the primary language of choice for the deaf pupils they have the right staff that is properly trained in special education and uses that correct language of choice so i do not understand why the most rightful school gets this gets denied the necessary funding is this an unintentional act of asphyxiation or chasing our state's goal to eventually close the best school for this unique purpose to provide correct method of instruction and an equitable environment for the deaf students to thrive and prosper please do not fail to give the hb 2863 bill wholehearted support all the way thank you comment number three is from astrid goodstein chair nigro and the members of the board thank you for this opportunity to share my comments with you about item 7.01 discussion and possible action related to hb 2863 i ask that you take a vote in support of hb 262863 and make a public statement to that effect i am astridae goodstein a retired school teacher professor and administrator i believe i speak on the behalf of many people in the field of deaf education parents of deaf hard of hearing and deafblind children concerned individuals and alumni of asdb pdsd many of whom have become successful in their careers as teachers and professors service providers scientists lawyers business owners etc it is also true that too many students transfer from other schools to pdsd and asdb at an older age already language deprived and academically challenged teachers and service providers at asdb pdsd are certified and highly qualified to work with all students to ensure that they grow linguistically emotionally and socially and reach their potential as a total person the providers themselves should be totally involved in the whole process coursework ieps with parents grading maintaining transcripts leading to two diplomas from asdb and pdsd they definitely are to be held accountable asdb as an lea certainly should also be accountable for its curriculum program assessment of language and literacy development among other things make no mistake asdb already has been functioning as an lea for many many years they should continue to receive funds and grants from different sources i understand that the current bill includes a clause that further legislation may be needed when the asdb board completes the strategic plan this should address your concerns if any your vote of support will send a strong message to both campuses of asdb and the community at large as well as ade that you believe in the good of asdb per the asdb policy manual section b it is the right thing to do for all deaf hard of hearing and deafblind children and their families and dedicated asdb staff thank you comment number four is from mary rimron azad chair dear chair nigro and asdb board members we request that you vote to support hb 2863 during your board meeting on march 4th the arizona department of education has historically interacted with asdb tucson and pdsd as if they were a local education agency lea asdb tucson and pdsd are qualified and certified educational institutions that deserve the lea designation now is the time to put this in the state statute it has been a practice since the school was established a strong message was sent to the community at the december board meeting the motivation behind the decision not to send a bill to the legislature classifying asdb as an lea is unclear and can only lead to speculation now that hb 2863 has passed in the house and is in the senate it is it is critical that asdb take the four position this will allow dr annette reichman and maria murphy to do their jobs and advocate for asdb tucson and pdsd at the legislature the consequences of not supporting hb will impact each and every student an employee at asdb tucson and pdsd losing title 1 3 and 4 money during a pandemic is absurd teachers and staff are being pushed beyond their limits and need more support now not less please make a strong statement that the asdb board of directors supports hb 2863 this action is keeping with the mission of asdb and the powers and the responsibilities of the board members as stated in the asdb policy manual finally in order to avoid a conflict of interest we kindly request the arizona department of education representative mike manley recused himself from voting on this issue sincerely arizona association of the deaf president jason schmidt arizona association of the deaf education committee the next written comment is from linda beau hello asdb board my name is linda bove i regret i am unable to attend the meeting today however i would like to share with you that i was linda the librarian of the sesame street cast for more than 30 years i am deaf and primarily use american sign language asl to communicate in my role on the tv show i had the good fortune to expose kids both death and hearing to asl for access to communication and as a teaching tool in many situations often with the muppets that was fun to this day i still get comments from the older people who watch sesame street about how they appreciated learning a new language from linda the librarian i am proud to say i volunteer my time with passion to serve on two school boards one in new york and the other one here with asdb i am here today as a concerned member of the asdb board i believe asdb should be legally recognized as an lea asdb is what i call one-stop shopping for each child that goes to the school asdb is equipped with many different services by qualified teachers and specialists who are experts in deaf education this ensures that the child has full access to language acquisition and literacy development as well as access to her or his emotional social development each child would be surrounded with asol as well as other modes of communication all day at asdb and offered additional support services as needed at home according to the statistics ninety percent of their parents are not able to communicate with their deaf children and need to learn along with their children i wish i could show you my high school diploma to you i was proud upon receiving it at the school for the deaf in new jersey where i grew up and became a whole person in and out of class the diploma states new jersey school for the deaf this is to certify that linda both completely satisfactorily the prescribed work of the school when i opened it again before i came here it sure brought back the memory of the feeling of great pride i would want the deaf and hard of hearing children at asdb to experience this too some alumni of asdb are now successful in their fields as lawyers business owners actors educators etc i urge you to vote yes in support of hb 2863 quickly and get the asdb recognized as an lea so that the school remains be performing their responsibility as it has done in the past for 30 years does today and will do in the future to be on equitable terms with the school districts or better thank you very much linda beau and the final public comment would be the video hello my name is william bame i'm retired from teaching at the california school for the deaf at berkeley and fremont for 33 years i have also been a short-term and long-term substitute teacher here at asdb in tucson for 10 years i'm here to talk about hb 2863 i was shocked to learn that asdb here in tucson did not receive federal funding and they have historically received federal funding the arizona department of education ade did not pass on title 1 title 4 idea or medicaid funding ade decided to send asdb students data back to their home districts home districts that do not educate deaf children they would be held accountable for students learning even though asdb provides comprehensive educational services for their students asdb would no longer be able to offer diplomas to their students something that asdb has been able to do since it was founded ade decided that the school for the deaf and blind no longer qualifies as an lea a local education agency even though it has been considered one since it was founded and has received the associated federal funding without any issues for many years who has more expertise in deaf education asdb or ade come on asdb are the experts i support hb 2863 to classify asdb campuses in phoenix and in tucson as local education agencies leas to receive federal funding hb 2863 as amended was fully supported and approved by committee again why does ade which is not an expert in deaf education take away from asdb as the deaf education experts and give it to local agencies which are not educating deaf children that is truly offensive to us i hope that ade and the asdb board will decide to join us in our efforts to support hb 2863 to invest in deaf students education and job preparation for the future thank you all right um thank you thank you sue k um we can proceed to item 1.05 information item i'm sorry 1.04 information item executive team reports and this is a board members in your board docs you'll see reports from human resources i.t and operations um and uh kind of the way and again since i know there are a couple of new board members i'll try to do a little bit more explanation than i normally do um hopefully you've had an opportunity to review those reports um if you have any questions for the staff that have prepared them now be the time to ask them but i'd also have uh superintendent reichman if she had any additional comments uh beyond that no okay uh great so are there any any board members that have questions for the staff regarding their reports on operation information technology or human resources okay seeing none uh we will move on uh to item 1.05 assistant superintendent report assistant superintendent rex uh and again new board members um refer to the reports that are found in board docs um that you've been able to review prior to the meeting and superintendent rex you can begin with your report thank you good afternoon president nigro and board members you have my written report about the early learning program our campus programs the blind program deaf program are regional itinerant programs and the organizational development division but i do want to update you on the following we are still serving families in the birth to three remotely we have not been cleared to go back into the homes to do home visits our preschools are continuing their blended schedule to safely serve our students at both campuses on our campuses both of our teachers are continuing to teach in person but also using the digital learning platform there are currently 77 roughly 30 percent of the students at ptsd and 22 or 20 percent of the students from the tucson campus that are still using the digital platform the rest of the students and staff are in person and on campus the regional cooperatives are serving students both online as well as in person depending on the district's preferences our regional directors are preparing for their statewide advisory council meetings that will occur this spring tonight you have before you some agenda items that shows the work of many dedicated staff members who participated in screening interviewing and helping with the selection of region two's director as well as a selection for a new principle for phoenix day school for the deaf and that concludes my report dr rex is there an anticipated time where we're going to resume uh early intervention uh in home visits um i know that um dr kendra benedict is working with azip and they have a task force and so soon as we have more information on that i can send that to the board in an email as an update okay and they're i just want to be sure they're looking at um you know if there's some trepidation about going back to a home that they can look at alternative either alternative venues meeting outside beating you know somewhere where there's going to be good ventilation or something like that absolutely our teachers are very creative and they will find ways of working with the families in the place and the space that's most comfortable for them okay thank you other other board members that have any comments for dr rex no okay uh uh seeing none and again for the benefit of the the new board members um especially over zoom uh we try to give some long pauses make sure that everyone is able to open up their video and their mic in case they they want to speak it also gives some time for the interpreters um to do their work uh we don't want to overload them so that's why there'll be some long pauses there and i want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to speak should they want to next item is 1.06 information items superintendents report superintendent reichman you have the floor yes good afternoon president nigro and the asdb board assistant superintendent dr rex and ascb community about five minutes ago some of you may have heard a dog barking well yeah that was mine that was my dog i had forgot to turn off the audio and mute myself i apologize for that um so i just wanted to take a few minutes to say thank you to two board members shelly herbold and mark sims those two board members have were here when i started as superintendent in 2016.
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