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so why can't a full schedule where you shut everybody down for 22 minutes which is 12 minutes longer than the snack period they go to their spot deep and then they go to the rest of the classes the whole day like before eight classes i don't have somewhere to put them that i can have them all sit for that for twenty two twelve minutes because when you look at i need them to be in a spot that's cleaned that is six feet apart from everywhere that make sure that there's no that it's hygienic that there's no chance of food allergies coming in contact with one another that it's ready then for instructional space afterwards it's more than 22 minutes that we're looking at to turn that space over and get it up and going no just have air with the snack break the school's going to shut down for 10 minutes right it's not going to be [Music] under that scenario i'll get to snacks one second questions on lunch so in the schedule that has lunch yes we still if i remember right i i don't have it in front of me you're still only talking four blocks of classes that day yes so with lunch or without lunch it's still four classes a day correct it's the same four classes same amount of time the only missing is lunch correct because as you said lunch essentially if you're talking six feet apart is like this right in order kind of what we are here with another row six feet in front of you facing this thing all facing the same way yeah okay so the what gets inserted in to make it a full day in order to make those we could make six lunch periods if we could make six lunch periods work we could run a full day block and in there in those six months in the middle in the third period of the day so let me go back we need to go back quite a ways oh right there see the option three yeah that's what the model would be okay so it's still four blocks in the day but in that third block of the day in order to make lunches stack up and everything work you have the combined lunch and study hall in there depending on how you move periods and times around you end up with like a let's say you were doing an 80-minute day you'd have an 80-minute block in your first class 10-minute passing period good morning 80-minute passing period 10-minute block and then in that long-class lunch study classes would be breaking from one another to go have lunch at different times so you might start in class and then your whole class would go off to lunch for 20 or 30 minutes right then your whole class would have to come back and be in a study hall in their own classroom to make all the times of all the classes line up because you've got to fit all of these lunch periods inside that third block and then you would return to your actual instructional time within your class so that that middle class didn't end up with 140 minutes and every other class is only getting 80 minutes of instruction because then as a teacher that class and planning for it as a student that class and going through it are very different than all of the other classes you're in throughout the week and going back to an eight-class day with lunch wasn't wasn't one of the options but that one i'm assuming is it feasible because of space or yeah it's the the same same concept that we've gone back to the idea of the block is that we don't have as many students mixing throughout the day so there's less chance for close contacts there's less opportunities for students to have to quarantine than to track illness and to spread illness so the idea is limiting those cohorts throughout the day in the block chair um i i talked to you earlier that i like the option three but um if let's say we could do option three how many uh lunch periods would be in that third block and how many students would be in each one of those um lunch periods because you know i guess i'm just thinking what if we had a tent outside that they could go for just the lunch part and then come back in for the students to have class i mean to me that makes a lot of sense to have you know a huge tent if there's 200 students that have to have lunch at every section of that i mean i'm just thinking outside the box but sure it wouldn't be something that would be in the classroom for them to have food it would be out let's say in the parking lot you know put a big tent you know with tables i like that but i guess you know um our weather is so predictable here well that's why you have a tent besides on it uh you know and by the time spring break gets here hopefully our weather will be moving in the better direction i don't i'm just throwing that i agree with you my school is on black option three for since i've been there so probably longer than 21 years they have four lunches that they cycle through that one period right and they consider like science either gets lunch at the beginning or lunch at the end so you don't break up the class but like math english history the kids kind of like it because it breaks up 80 minutes of math or 80 minutes of english they come in to come out how many periods would you need of lunch because we've got four yeah if we did six population if we did six here you're looking at 400 to 500 students per lunch period the cafeteria only here will hold about 220.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so you need to put the rest of the students somewhere oh you can't eat in the food in the field though no no i mean even even on a good day because of the flooring situation or the gym hold the bleachers yeah right but there's students that are in the gym during that a lot maybe they could do it maybe for 28 days they could do something different for the weather they could be outside they could be in the football field for 28 days that's why we're recommending this other schedule to make it to make it work well i'm just i'm just trying to get our students back as much as possible with the least amount of hassle but you know even with this block you're you're only doing half the classes anyway in option three so that's why i was asking how many students does that mean and how many lunch periods would you have to put in there to get them a lunch that's what to fit them in the space that we currently have now you need nine to twelve lunch periods depending on how much no no i mean it looks well okay i don't know it's for me this is a period of covet we're interested in getting more instructional time um i don't know what the great benefit is to having lunch other than maybe time that parents don't have to worry where their kids are that that to me seems like it i think that we're spending too much time talking about fitting all these um lunch periods that seems like too many lunch periods to be having i just don't think it's worth all this discussion on it i frankly think that there is no great loss not to having lunch at school i guess the point of it though is if i get what you guys are saying you're talking about getting the lunch in so you can get the school day longer is that your point yeah what's that no to to make sure that you know right now we've got four four class and i'm focusing on option three you you've got four class periods on uh let's say what is it uh tuesday thursday and then four of those class periods on monday and wednesday yeah you'd be odds odds and evens you get 40 minutes more of instruction time right right because the classes are 80 minutes versus 70 minutes right so you're getting you're getting a lot of class time but you've got to feed them because you know there's no student that's going to be able to go from 8 o'clock in the morning until uh 3 30 and we feel like we need to give them a snack even to go without right without without fuel i mean you know let's face it we don't want to be without fuel so they shouldn't be without well some students have a 40-minute bus ride in and a 40-minute bus ride out on top right so that's even more time so i guess what i'm saying is is it if we had a tent in the parking lot that would fee that would fit 200 students you know they're distancing in in one way or another couldn't we rotate those enough to get the the uh half the students that one time i i don't know i'm just we don't believe so terry that the amount of space that you would need to make that happen is not realistic at this point in time okay i i'm just and the just getting everybody to that space and back in and serving them meals and then with the requirements of how the meals must be served and all of those pieces we don't believe that the logistics for the number of students that we're looking at are feasible somebody said i i miss i want to be sure i understand someone said something about it gets 40 more minutes in the day what do we what who said that and what i did because the block three the classes are 80 minutes versus 70 minutes on option two so you have more in in class instruction time that's why the day goes to 320.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you're picking up that 40 minutes in the class that gets cut in option two okay correct because it's the only okay it's the online supporting option too okay right so hank i'm not being confrontational here i'm just i'm trying to understand in my in my mind how do we get 10-minute lunches to work but our 10-minute snack break to work but a 22-minute lunch break can i get too much slide on snacks and then okay it just doesn't seem like it's that different it is it's very different before we talk stamps joanna you get a question no we're going to come back he has something to say oh i'm sorry sam oh thank you i was just going to mention that the 10 extra minutes per class period that would be happening with the third schedule i honestly think is next to worthless just in terms of extra instruction time especially if students are fully remote and also being in person too just because i think one of the principal complaints this entire year has been 80 minute periods and i just think that after about an hour 90 of students their brains are just so tired that adding in that extra 10 minutes of instruction time if that's a deciding factor for choosing block or schedule three over any other one i don't think that should be considered because that extra 10 minutes is nowhere near as efficient well sam i think i was going to bring this up with the schedule i've been teaching 21 years with the 80-minute class periods unfortunately we just switched over and we have not been able to provide teachers i don't think with a lot of support to help them adjust because my question when we got to the schedule was hank before covid what was the typical class period 45 minutes 42 minutes 47 what was it for before cove and all this 50.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um and so there's a different strategy it's in a 50-minute period in an 80-minute period that the teacher has to has to sense and and you you're right you can't watch her for straight through you you kill a kid you're born to death but kill the instructor you can do other strategies to offset that and i'm fortunate because i can do a lab i can do a pre-lab post lab and the lab in 18 minutes ap i can actually do a college level lab because i've got two 80-minute periods which is 160. the math they have to do different things history has to do different things english has to do different strategies unfortunately our staff hasn't had that professional development yet because we just switched over well we've done some you know while we're in here but we've also had to switch multiple schedules and it's also different numbers of students showing up in person and remote so there's a lot of variables it takes years it takes a couple years to get used to teaching 80 minutes to a high school student and it does 50 minutes i i'll agree with you rick there are teachers that are just amazing at an 80-minute block but it's you've done it it's not easy it's not an easy thing to pull up figure it out and what sam is reporting is what we do continue to hear from students is short in the 80 minute block it's just too long but we're asking our teachers to teach in a format that they haven't had any experience to try correct it's their first year trying to make it work and i think they're doing a great job with what they've been faced with but yeah it's tough because it's it's a completely different ballgame yeah 80 versus 50 at this level yeah college this level i can imagine and i i would think we're talking about the student being exhausted i would think it's exhausting too for an instructor to go at that pace i mean that's a long time to to be on so i would just kind of piggyback on all this i think you know the point that's just been made is reinforcing the idea that um you know trying to go through herculean efforts to try to figure out a way to get lunch to work at school has very little benefit academically or quicker um and so yeah that's i'm still at the same place i don't you know i'm not i'm not hearing a great argument for this is this is the huge benefit to having lunch and if i heard right especially hearing from sam it doesn't because we're trying to get that extra 40 minutes in based on a longer class period we're saying that that potentially is not even it's not something we want right returning a good value because at the end of the day we should be still looking at that then yeah all right yes let's let's talk about snacks yeah that's snack yeah what'd you bring us right what have i been waiting for let's try that out all right so snack breaks are a feasible option families have responded and students have responded that there's far fewer concerns about snacks the way we described snacks was five to ten minutes stepping out into a common space spreading six feet apart removing your mask and having a snack we wouldn't require anybody to have a snack and that's one of the things if you build in a lunch period the student has to go to the lunchroom because you need to take all of those kids out of a classroom and send them to eat because the teacher needs to eat at the same time in this in a snack model students could choose to hang out stay in the classroom not remove their mask not participate in the snack break should they choose not to they could just stay in their classroom and students that wish to snack could step out spread out you know whether it's in a space like this a hallway step outside if they have outdoor access those kinds of things have a quick snack and then return right back to class you know we're trying to extend extend i said beyond but we're trying to get close to five hours okay you know beyond five hours that they're with us we're trying to get close to five hours of instructional time in a year when there isn't covid going on that's the minimum threshold we're shooting for is 300 minutes of being at school uh counts for 300 minutes of instruction counts as a full school day so you know this is the key difference right is you get the choice of whether you're participating or not you just quickly step out for that five or ten minutes you know you clean your hands we have hand sanitizer in every classroom clean your hands step out have a quick snack return back into your class and it would be rolling so like the first 10 minutes of the classroom would be rooms with the end in the number one and then the next room would be you know rooms that end number two right and you just kind of roll everybody out for this quick 10 minute snack and then you're right back into your classroom and picking up where you were at so it provides you know that quick snack because it is a long period of time especially kids with long bus rides but it's not the whole idea of having to go leave your classroom walk to the other side of the building perhaps find your assigned seat six feet apart from everybody facing in a certain direction eat your meal and then we clean up that space for the next group that comes in and then do it again time and time again for however many periods it takes to move the students through that space that we have whether that's indoors outdoors whatever all of those same protocols exist it's much bigger in a lunch period than it would be in kind of this snack model so finally i made it through the snack slime but they would be able to eat their snack in their room and they'd and it would be like you said rolling so you'd have fewer people in the hallway and then would there need to be any cleaning correct because there's no cleaning because they're not eating at a certain you know the idea is that you step out and you have your stand and have your snack wherever you're at and there won't be students sitting there where they are correct right the idea is that they're not eating in the classroom they're kind of stepping out into this common more larger volume space and then coming right we need some more uh trash cans yeah we'll probably need yeah receptacles and those kinds of things will probably have to walk and sweep hallways and those kinds of things you know but you know i'm sure students are responsible you ask them to clean up after themselves they do a far better job with us than they do at home so i have no concerns about that clean up in aisle six correct okay so that's the idea of the snap break all right questions on snack all right so this is that schedule now you'll see it's odds and evens like it is now but what we do is push you see the order is different than it's been all year because we're pushing the lunch periods to the beginning or end of the day so that students when their lunch period comes up they can either choose to stay here with us or some students have chosen a release at that point so either option would be on the table depending on what families selected also in that time from 1 20 until the end of the day we'll still continue to have our connections and access program which are students that need to stay with us for the whole day we're going to have some students that are involved in activities or athletics that can't get home and come back we would allow them to stay here have lunch stay through the end of the day we'll still have a good number of students that will be with us for the full day based on their needs but that smaller number of students we would be able to accommodate a lunch setting for especially with all of the students the majority of students leaving at that point then we can spread them out we can supervise them they we can have an appropriate lunch setting and those in that for the smaller number of students that are here it's just the large right student body the full student body that making a lunch period and making it work and meeting all of those guidelines just it you know to get back like we keep saying to get back that 40 minutes which students are saying we don't want that 40 minutes you know because it hasn't been productive time because it's long for them we've heard that from them all year long it just doesn't seem like it is worth that investment for those 28 days of the school year to to pull this off this way now if we were talking this was august and we're talking about a full school year and we're talking about how this is all going to work and we have our common space here and we start putting up some outdoor eating areas and those kinds of things for the long term and and get seating and cleaning protocols and all of those kinds of things in place for the long haul absolutely i think that if we're coming back next year and it looks like that that's what we're talking about doing but our spaces will be completely different next fall than what we're looking at right now in the spring then we have that space to set up permanent spots for kids to spread out and and have a meal here and the lessons learned you know we're i mean no matter what we know we're going to be well and i'm bettering what we're doing later than where we are now and just i'm assuming the guidelines will continue to adapt and change and and those kinds of things when were you when when if if everything got going in a great way when were you going to implement your new schedule that we talked about i think a while ago oh the one that was being proposed last year that we've tabled because of all of this yeah it would have been for next school year but with everything going on and all the different schedules and not knowing what comes next that that would have been a recommendation for next school year is that still going to be tabled all through next year too that right now that's the plan yes and then what was the length of class period in that schedule that's not implemented and is being tabled there's was it 80 minutes no there's a whole range of options because we never settled on a final model so there's a whole bunch of different ones yeah there's a whole bunch of different ones that we would have surveyed everybody on and gotten feedback and so current class time right now in the model we're in today 70 minutes 860 80 80.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
oh it's 80. yeah 80 without a lot of strategy without a lot of professional right we just had to jump into it yeah yeah were you going to envision um some type of professional learning right that's why we've had to put off the new schedules that we were talking about for the future because we need time to train everybody in it to make those successful like what you've talked about so it doesn't make sense to start that next year and there's going to be a two-year window until you get the freshman coming in that this is all they've ever known correct right right where the people that have lived through half and half are you going to be against it so yeah because it's completely different now so there is a window where you're going to hear that input right where a freshman comes in okay this is what i've had for although i know i can't help but to believe that living through this will make whatever that next thing is easier you know so teachers will have learned a lot from these this year if you implement though you have to provide professional development i agree with that you're through you throw them into the fire well right because that's 80 minutes without what the years offered us yeah it that's that's brutal i feel bad that's bad i had an easy question so we're all going to offer bus transportation twice at the end of the day one's for early dismissal and then once for [Music] like a better time hard to hear you here i didn't hear you oh yeah the bus transportation after after class early dismissal because we're having to adjust the time because we have to get buses that we're also using for our elementary schools and our middle schools so we're going to have two bus rounds in the evening in the afternoon one bus run yeah 1 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
at 1 30. so if a student elects to stay later or they need to stay later they're on their own for getting home i think we're talking activity buses janice yes so for those small number of students doing a smaller bus round run but not the full comprehensive run do you run a later bus for the sport athletes like a six o'clock bus route that's that activity an activity route when's the activity route run janice so and again in theory they could then you could even have a longer commute than regular than the 40 minutes correct yeah depending on what the route is okay but that group would stick around and there would be a lunch period period because it'd be just fewer students that we could spread out um i actually have another question in the same boat as that so i'm assuming that the schedule was organized um in this different way with it going period four then two then eight and six and the other way around so that people that are taking lunch breaks during those times are maybe able to show up later to school or leave earlier um are there bus routes for people in that boat and are so they'd be allowed to stay but we wouldn't have a different run for those so it's just the normal runs in the morning and then at the 1 30 time and then just the smaller activity bus run at the end of the day okay so then they would be staying like in a cafeteria then okay yeah absolutely you know and that's part of the challenge of the lunch periods right is you know during those times you students need to be somewhere all right so here's the summary of what we've just been talking about so it'd be each day would be a four period block with that early release in the day at that one 120 end of the day on the buses by 1 30 so the buses can get back to the elementary schools by 2 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
shorter block as we've as our students have mentioned we've heard clearly from our students is a common request of students that 80 minutes and from our staff as well 80 minutes is long there's 10 minute passing periods you know it's gives teachers some time to wrap up and help the students that are there in person but with remote learners our teachers are setting up broadcast studios in every classroom so they need to be able to especially if they're moving classrooms get there get signed in get their camera set up get all of that ready to go and incl including taking care of any personal needs between that first class and the next class because they've been in a class for 70 minutes and then also i have that and then also students will allow to use the restrooms during passing periods again and with a 10-minute passing period that allows us you know to stagger you know how we can cue people up to go into restrooms so that there can be physical distancing no lockers no general lockers however students that are staying for the whole day we would open up athletic lockers for them you know because they're not going home to get their stuff and then coming back they would need somewhere to drop off their their equipment for after-school practice so they carry their coats and their backpacks with them the whole day yeah the the secret is that kids really don't wear coats oh okay well i guess i lived in there what guys what what's that what we can't hear you i'm sorry we can't hear what you're saying i said lockers have gone by the wayside right everything's in the backpack it's on them um lockers are not what we all lived in they have gone by the wayside they're a relic i'm glad we spent so much time putting new ones in virtual huh i haven't used my locker at all in high school even before coming and i think i am in the majority i would say yeah so he's nodding she's agreeing with you what do you i did hear you so you use your locker yeah i was saying i haven't used my locker like period before covet either so i think that that's not a huge issue four kids none of them use their lacquer athletic lockers all right and our current schedule is a feature of resource time in that middle of the day each day we want to put that time back in and kind of redesign it for on those last two or on the wednesday and thursday days we're going to be working with teachers over the next two weeks to design that appropriately we want some accountability for that time built in so that students are assigned there parents know that they're coming and they know if they don't come so that you know there's some accountability for the last chunk of the year here for using that time and students accessing that time but we're going to work through those procedures over the next few weeks heading back you know for when we come back with this you're going to see the monday schedule one of the things that it happens is we're extending the instructional time on monday to those 40-minute class periods which shortens the amount of time the teachers have for collaboration time and planning time and working together with their teams so that time gets shifted then to the tuesday afternoon and the friday afternoon so we're just pushing activities and time around in these schedules a little bit differently we've talked about the snack uh we've talked about launch schedule works with transportation and just so we're all counting it's 28 days how appropriate during the time of the pandemic 28 days of tuesday through friday days through the end of the school year you know that that transportation issue too just to highlight that you know that's a major that was a major consideration here and people asking why don't you do what we have to work with district 58 and 68 as well and and because we have a shared bus contract with them and so that definitely impacts you know has some bearing on what we can and can't do well in the school days of actually 58 and 68 fit together pretty nicely here would in the way that they typically would in a unit district where your big kids go to school first and then they get home first your little kids then come to school after them and get home after them this schedule is going to work just like that as if we were a unit district you know our students will get up come to school then the buses will go pick up the littles and drop them off then at 1 30 our kids will go and get dropped off and then they'll drop off the littles so it's not unlike what you would see in in any unit district okay um monday this is the monday schedule so we still have some collaboration professional learning time in the morning we did hear from students that they have appreciated and continued to appreciate that late start on monday that gives us our time to do some of our work and then start the day you know this is just a 40-minute straight period day and then some of the features of this uh is that all eight periods are meeting on that day so this is the one time each week that a teacher has an opportunity to see all of their kids that day all of our students have the opportunity to see all of their teachers that day you know in our survey that we asked of students in november 90 of our students said that they found those mondays valuable for those reasons we're increasing it to that 40-minute day that gives us 15 more minutes of instructional time per class period because they're only 25 minutes now so it makes it more like a regular class period that time helps offset those shorter class periods as we fit everything in as we've talked about on the rest of the week right now you know we're recommending for the rest of this year that that remains remote however and i'll explain kind of the back and forth we did versus remote in person on monday in a second one of the key essential things that happens on monday is all the kids get everything that's expected to happen over the course the week on that monday regardless if the next time they see is on tuesday or wednesday thursday or friday like that's the time where everybody gets the expectations for the week all at once all in the same setting to move from and when we look at the monday schedule there's only six mondays remaining after spring break so this was a a huge discussion and debate amongst the administrative team uh as to how the mondays should work out i've listed to you for you here some of the pros and cons we worked through in each model one of the models that we were considering was just the alternating odd and even block all right so you would just the first day back you'd be all odd period classes and the next day would be even and the next day on the next day even from there until the end of the school year regardless of what happened when whatever you ended on friday if you ended with odds on friday and you were coming back on monday that was evens right and you just keep going back and forth throughout the whole school year this is a model that would put students in school five days a week where the other one in person five days a week they're learning either way five days a week right the eight period remote model is what we've been doing all year we're just extending the amount of instructional time on that day in this you can see kind of the pros and cons of each you know in the remote this way teachers are seeing every week you're seeing your students and students are in person four days a week they see their teachers consistently three days a week in this model and it's consistent kids know what's going to happen on monday and then how tuesday works wednesday thursday friday every week so you can see i'm not going to read them all to you but then one of the key ones that i want to to point out is that last one is it offers a day when remote students are in the same setting as in-person students um so you know that's a a key time each week where everybody's kind of in the same place at the same time for all of their classes sam is there a reason besides just having longer class periods on monday why the the break went from two hours to nothing yeah the break in the middle of the day is is the only reason that's gone just for longer class periods yeah it was to get the longer class periods in and now that you have a 40 minute whenever your lunch period comes up you have a 40 minute break for your lunch okay makes sense so um so it looks more like a traditional monday when when you were back in in person before covet yeah so this is a little nitty-gritty but um sam and i are both students that actually don't take a lunch period so then will teachers that say have like a staggered class like me for example i take uh during a normal school year it would be half a period of choir and half a period of lunch would those teachers um be encouraged to give us at least like a 10 minute food break yeah absolutely yeah and you'd any any teacher that or any student that has eight class periods we'd encourage them to talk to their teachers and work out when you're going to get a break in there and how that's going to work and that's not the majority of our students but it absolutely is some of our students all right and then when we consider that alternating odds and evens students would be in person five days a week which is a huge thing right but the trade-off is is some weeks you would have your class you'd see your teachers three times you'd see your other half of your teachers two right and then the next week it would flip around the other way um there's really no day where you get to that check-in with all of your teachers uh and remote students are there's never a day where they're in the same setting with everybody else and this is especially concerning with the three feet of physical distance as i said earlier where we could end up because of quarantine periods with lots of students ending up in in a period of 10 to 14 days where they need to be remote and we don't we don't want to put our remote students at a disadvantage but we also don't want our in-person students that need to go remote at a disadvantage either and we feel like if there's never this check-in day it puts them at a significant disadvantage so when we factored all of those things out we ended up with this remote monday eight period day restructured to be different than it was before so can i just put you guys on the spot um so sam is all for um i know you don't speak for all students and rick you don't speak for all teachers but in your in your experience um seeing all of your teachers on one day and having a weekly check-in with all students on one particular day is that uh do you see that as valuable that alternating block schedule for a teacher's planning is a disaster you'd have your classes all over the place but checking in see my schedule monday and friday i see all my classes 50 minutes and then tuesday wednesday thursday i do the 80-minute block but i only see him twice in those three days so i only see my classes four times a week and so you can juggle it with the 50 you use the 50 minutes to is kind of like the sounding board for the week or the finishing board for the week and then in the middle is when you do your activities for me um but there is one day and i saw that in here where you don't get a plan you go eight to three non-stop because the way it works you will have one day where you don't get a planning period and i saw that in here as one of the the champions yeah if you're a teacher that teaches on all on the evens or all on the odds that we have a a group of teachers that we need it is better to see all your students especially on a monday it's working because you can kind of plan for the weekends you can move them forward there for the week at least if you plan by the week so i i prefer the remote on monday and then i would prefer full tuesday wednesday thursday friday but that's just thank you well good that's fine that's my opinion for this year eventually i think hank's going to go full yeah we'll figure out in the future we'll end up with something else yeah then yeah and if you'd like a student perspective um i i can say that i'd speak for both the advantages and disadvantages of that i think that it is valuable like rick was saying to see all of your teachers each day to see what the expectations of the week are and what you guys will be doing but then to that also like the current schedule we have right now i think that some teachers maybe don't know how to utilize the awkward amount of time that the 25 minute periods would bring which is solved in part by those longer class periods those days so i'd say good thing you get to check in with everybody odd thing is that 40 minutes to 80 minutes it's a really big difference i'd say more so for teachers and for me personally i don't always feel like i get the most out of my mondays right now with 25 minutes thank you yeah i agree basically i think that 40 minutes is probably better than 25 but the disadvantage with that is i would say just in general zoom fatigue is gonna set in after about five or six periods i think for ninety percent of kids but i think that there's merit in 40 minutes over 25 minutes i think that that's definitely a good trade-off while students are probably going to get more tired and more fatigued and more fed up with the 40-minute periods on mondays i think from an educational perspective it's it the um the goods outweigh the harms i would say personally i would feel a little bit fatigued 40-minute classes a piece five minutes in between but i'd also at least feel like i'm getting more out of my class each day than as opposed to what i'm doing now where i don't feel fulfilled in certain classes so it's the trade-off you make thank you all right thank you all right so we still have a lot of work to do over the next few weeks to prepare for coming back should this schedule be approved you know we still have the time to allow all all students to select which option they'd like to return in as i mentioned it's not a permanent choice if they start remote and would like to come back in person they could we still need to plan that wednesday and thursday afternoon support time we talked about lockers parking is a huge challenge we are you know we allowed because we could we had all the space we allowed everybody who wanted to come and drive and park to do that but now we have a lot more people used to driving and parking than what we can accommodate so the village of downers grove has been great they've been troubleshooting some options with us and we continue to work with them to try to come up with as many parking options as we can near the schools so there'll be information following on that and we'll reach out to students that we've issued parking passes to to let them know kind of how this is going to shake out and so that's very much in flux but we are working and of course the village downers grove as always has been great partners in trying to come up with solutions here contact racing we fully anticipate that this will become a tougher job uh with moving from six feet to three feet because you're naturally going to end up in more situations where you are less than six feet around people for 15 or more minutes we've got to work out the logistics like what we're talking about trash can clean up those you know scheduling of the snack break we still have some concerns with large group settings you know we talked about tents and those kinds of things our outdoor spaces we're going to need some of those spaces for our large groups to enter into because the whole band coming back you know might not fit with three feet and also like a band after a certain amount of time we need the air to exchange in that space so our outdoor spaces are already limited to some extent because of construction but now we're taking over spaces and all of these other different ways that are going on teacher schedules we still have quite a few things to work through we have several teachers with four in a day so one day is really heavy and the other day is very light our contract with the teachers stipulates that they're they can only teach four in a row if they agree to so we might have some different things that we need to work through with breaks and those kinds of things to make it work we're talking to each one of those teachers or reaching out to each of those teachers and having them respond to us as to you know how they would uh best like for us to interact with that then we'll figure it out and see how it works but just so we know what their preferences are to start with because if there are some teachers that are just like it's fine i'll have a heavy day and a light day and i'm good and then there's others you know maybe if you're diabetic you're not gonna have a hard time teaching four in a row without having an opportunity to step out and eat something or if you're a nursing mother or there's all kinds of different situations where four in a row is really not going to be feasible for one of our teachers we also have traveling teachers we we don't want to end up in any situations where because now we're flipping these periods around to move the lunch periods to the end of the day we don't want any scenario where a teacher has to go to one school go to the other one and turn around and go back uh that just not productive use of anybody's time and then part-time teachers especially with that support time you know we're putting that support time in the afternoon but if you're you've chosen to be a part-time teacher so that you could have your afternoon free it's hard for us to then put time when you need to work with students in the afternoon so you know there's some things that we need to work through employee wise with all of those things so our teachers have been great and flexible with us all year we'll continue to work with them on all of these and then the supervision of students that are going to stick around in the afternoon we've got to coordinate figure out how many students that is and then coordinate supervision for those students all right so this is the overview this is the recommendation to the board that we're asking for approval for under action tonight so it is the idea of we're returning everybody can come back after spring break monday is remote tuesday through friday is the 1 30 release four blocks with all of the aspects that we've talked about today with snot snacks and buses and everything else that we've been through all of the safety measures and then t99 because it's that on its own program different group of students different setup we would return to what their traditional schedule is coming back so that's the recommendation i'm asking the board to take action on tonight are there any revisions or changes that the board would like for us to consider as as we take action otherwise this is what i'm asking for i hear none oh go ahead though i just wanted to bring up the point um that a lot of students that i talked to did share some concerns about traveling over spring break i know that we talked about that a little bit and that as of now it wouldn't be mandatory to quarantine or provide proof of a negative test but i just wanted to mention and throw that out there that a lot of students would be concerned that their classmates you know traveled somewhere with very loose restrictions or weren't in compliance with you know regulations and good safety measures and that a lot of students would be more comfortable if there was something in place to ensure that people coming back didn't bring anything with them and maybe had to provide a negative test or quarantine for a few days zoe that's a great question we discussed it all year we have tried to stick as closely to that guidelines as possible and not add or remove additional guidelines and the guidelines as they're presented to us from the health department is exactly what i presented today it's encourage people to follow the safety guidelines as if they were at home when they travel and if they do that they're free to return and if they don't then they need to follow those additional protocols yeah sam just to be a hundred percent clear i'm sure this was implied before but in the survey that was sent out whenever it was march 8th there was a paragraph in here that said in the low to moderate level we can return full in person and that implies that we would have less than 50 per 100 000 which is nowhere near what we're at would this schedule be like is the action tonight putting it in place no matter what or putting it in place if this is that's a great question well done sam yeah this was the difference that happened between when the cdc guidelines came out and then the idph guidelines came out so this kind of got trapped in the middle with when the survey went out right between those those two sets of guidelines so this proposal would be to follow the idph guidelines and we would be back community metrics are not a concern of schools any longer those are the concerns of the health department yeah that was a great question though yeah very good question and to that question great question what i brought up earlier i think we've had a lot of changes in a year of change that nobody could ever have expected so if we're gonna go with this for the the last eight weeks of the school year i would think any change to this for any reason adaptive pause or any other reason any change to this that or any potential change to this for the rest of the year i think we need to go through i would want to go through the board i don't know as long as it's under the administrative purview i'm happy to bring any change back to the board for approval the only thing that i can't guarantee that is if the health department calls us up and says you're you're closed tomorrow that's that's totally out of my right but if anything that has any type of decision that needs to be made about changing the schedule i would want to make sure that that goes through those i totally agree to that with one caveat we are still waiting to hear from illinois about sat testing the week of april 16th so that week we may have have to have some kind of an alternative schedule in place depending on that's still changing almost by the day and that week depending on what happens we might have to adjust for sat testing but other than that this is what we're proposing from now until the school year ends yeah we'd like for everybody to just know that this is what's gonna happen and count on it and this is what we're doing for the rest of the year at least you know i know we're never gonna have a schedule that makes a hundred percent or even fifty percent of the people of people happy right now because it's just it's so difficult depending on each as we saw tonight each individual family has different needs right now and um but if we could at least offer them like you know what to expect from now until the end of the year i think that would give people some comfort well i think it's a job well done hank this is uh so many moving parts and uh to basically come up with yet a new schedule that will work and it accomplishes as much as it does i i think this is well done there's just a lot of moving parts and uh and a lot of people that provide input into this and and i really want to thank everybody too that you know took the time to respond to the surveys and and shared their opinion um it was a good it was a good amount of feedback i wish there had been even more because once again uh the majority actually the majority didn't respond so but i appreciate people that did this is just it's a herculean effort and there's there's no way to make everybody happy but i think this gets you know more in-person time we're so fortunate you you kind of went over kind of glossed over the idea and we've talked about it a few times more participation here than in our neighboring districts that's huge i think it speaks to the transparency of the process that we've had and and the understanding that the community has and what we've been doing that they that there is more people in our community there are more people in our community that feel safe about being in the school environment than most other districts around us and um i think that that's going to bode well for this going forward uh because i would love to see those numbers i'd love to see us up 90 percent you can you know the more we can get in in this in the in person the better and and this this i think is going to get it done thank you so i wanted to also say kudos to hank and the administration staff who's worked on this i know that i can personally say i cannot put the kind of time into this and i'm going to err on the side that most of our community can't either because they're committed to something else on a daily basis i'm certain so the time that you guys put into coming up with something that makes sense for as many people as possible and then being able to speak to the questions the different things you have to think of in order to put something like this together so looking at every aspect i know it's not an easy task i'm i am grateful that you're willing to do the work i spoke to other people in districts in the city and kind of talked about some of the things we're done we've done and they've even said wow at least your district is trying to get it right for most so i say thank you for that you're here well you're here here yeah all right i don't think these are things that any of us ever wanted to do or talk about or have to to work through but i think everybody's trying to do best they can for kids no matter which whether they whether somebody likes this option or hates this option i only assume that they are caring what they should caring about what they should what's best for their kids and we're trying to our challenge is we've got to put together a program for five thousand kids and sometimes it feels i know as a parent like i'm not hearing or we as a team aren't meeting their needs and i understand that um but we're trying to build the best program comprehensively for the entire district and i recognize that it's not going to check the box for everybody but you know know that we've considered it we've worked through every angle to try to find one that works within the guidelines keeps people safe and gets kids back i mean that has been my goal since august the board is aware of that that you know i didn't get into this job for kids not to be at school and so anything that we can do to get them back is what i want to see have happen and i think i would say that's probably most of the board's goal has been to get the kids back in school so i don't want anyone to ever think that that hasn't been the case no the board hasn't stood in the way the teachers haven't stood in the way the students haven't the families haven't it's just been a pandemic that has stood in the way yeah that thing all right thank you all right the next item is uh our annual staffing and curriculum overview and i believe that come on down rob is going to kick this off hey everybody so on top of figuring out school year this year we're at the point where we're starting to figure out school next year so just a quick reminder the way that we section is that students go through this process with their counselors requesting classes for next year and then we take all of that information and we start to section and then when we figure out our number of sections then we go into our staffing and we figure out our staffing so the package that we have for you tonight is all of that together the sectioning and the implications for staffing that we have one thing i'd like to say before we start this presentation is since we posted the documents on friday we had two changes so you'll notice in your packets that there's some documents that have changed those are related to two people uh the first one is mark collins mark has decided to retire so that makes a change on your documents in 7b you'll notice that mark's name is there now the other one is we did a final quality control check today and delilah lopez is a staff member who was covering for a leave of absence and so we don't have a spot for her next year so you'll notice that there's a change on 5b 7a and 8c related to that move so she comes off of the list for uh renewing for next year and she moves on to the list for uh releasing for next year uh so what i'm going to do is go through our first part here which is part one talking about this chart that's in your packet here that chart is the summary of our staffing recommendations for next year and we have two really large sections one is the top section there that we call the instructional fte that's built based on those classes that students recommend and the number of sections that we have and you can see that our staffing for next year are recommended is 323.2 fte based off the sections that broke out for student requests then the other part of our staffing is the non-instructional fte that's all the other staff that's there to support students that doesn't sway with course selections so those are all listed down below uh that gives us a request of 96.0 fte and that gives us total an increase of 1.8 requests for next year now packaged in that 1.8 is what we talked about at the last meeting a 1.0 for t99 and then a 0.6 spread between the two campuses for the special services social worker so that gives you a 1.6 so really we're at a positive point two if we add on top of those in terms of suctioning so that's where we are with our suctions uh i'm gonna hand it over to ryan doherty and georgia hesh who are our associate principals for curriculum instruction and they're going to talk through some highlights with the sectioning they really are the brains behind all of that section all that data comes in and they're the ones who crunch it together i'm just the person that they tell me who we need to have on the documents here so i'll hand it off to them and ryan is this your first time in front of the board this is um thank you uh so george and i are gonna kind of share uh we've divided by department rather than dividing by school so i'm gonna start off with cte um our enrollment is slightly up in accounting itself and our new business classes specifically incubator have been well received by students we'll be running one section of that new course at south and two sections at north we've gone uh slightly down in some of our hands-on courses and because students were choosing their making their course selections in december and january we feel like perhaps some of their selections may have been influenced by not being not being sure at what was going to happen for next school year so we are down a little bit in fact we're also down a little bit in our work cooperation and specifically at north a little bit down in our pltw class good evening so i'm going to talk a little bit about the english area for the first time ever really we are going to run a tv course at south which is super exciting um north as many of you know has had tv for a long time and they have some very specific equipment for that but technology has changed greatly and so there's a lot of things you can do in that arena where you don't necessarily need that the traditional equipment so it's of course it's been on the books forever for both schools we just haven't been able to offer it over here so we are going to offer that course and we're in the process with construction too you probably remember there's going to be part of the radio program is going to have a space in the cafeteria so we're working really hard to hopefully bring that radio enrollment up and keep increasing that we think kids will be really interested once they see that we love to highlight for you things that you have supported for us recently and just in the fall you approved a new course called black american literature and we will have two sections of that course at each building next year so that is exciting for us and then north also has an increased enrollment in the area of yearbook and in the area of ap literature which is always good and we have an increase in ap literature which wasn't surprising based on the numbers that were moving through the system [Music] so we can kind of foresee that i think i'm staying up here to talk about fine arts um so art stayed pretty steady from last year and what we've what our fine arts department chairs have heard in their meetings with other chairs in the area is that art managed to stay pretty steady we were worried about a lot of the electives with the pandemic situation music has taken a little bit bigger hit which probably is not surprising and most of the department chairs in the area have said that it has been more the pandemic situation has been more detrimental to choir than to any of the other areas so we weren't really surprised to see that happen in our numbers a little bit as well we know that some of our center schools were forced to adjust their elective offerings based on the pandemic so we're very hopeful of course that this will be a short blip in the system but we're you know we're going to be working hard as we come out of the pandemic to get the choir numbers back up and and even some of the band the band is in pretty good shape and orchestras is pretty steady but to get those back up and one other exciting thing that north will be able to offer ap art history again next year that's something that only happens seems like every two or three years and it hasn't happened in a while so that's really exciting um you'll hear kind of a running theme with the impacts of the pandemic and that is uh hasn't has hit our interventions this year so students as they've been out some students that have done fairly well in school before being on their own and having to organize themselves that we've started to see an increased need of executive functioning how much a student can advocate for themselves organize their classes study tips organizing their notes and so we have seen an increased need and we'll be adding sections of freshman sophomore and advanced seminar to support some of our upperclassmen as we start to roll into next year and find ways to support them in our feeder schools we have a sense that students may have struggled a little bit more in math we've seen a rise in our foundations math class for our incoming freshman class and you know with not having in-person access to their math teachers every single day that we sort of attribute it to that although students in some of our feeders have also accessed paper and our high school students are accessing paper and so with that online assistance we're going to hopefully see them catch up a little bit also we are still offering the virtual op option for calculus 3 with elmhurst college and our ap and honors enrollment has remained fairly consistent throughout our math sections in the area of pe driver's ed and health that one is of course required for the most part so we don't see a lot of swings there but you will remember that a couple years ago we started the sports officiating course and this year we had a section of that over here but next year we have two sections of that so that is exciting the personal training course is up and doing well our dance classes actually continue to rise in enrollment which is really exciting that the juniors and seniors are picking that as one of their electives and then north saw a bit of a rise in their stress management course which may go like ryan said along with everything else that we're kind of seeing that's just a sign of the times right now in science we have had several years now with project lead the way courses last year you guys approved human body systems and that ran this year and it's running next year as well with the higher enrollment so we're really happy about that the ap environmental science course we've been teaching that for about four or five years now just continues to grow it's up another section at south next year we'll have four sections of that ap course and we we did see a slight dip in ap physics nothing alarming but just a slight dip that we hadn't seen it's been pretty consistent for a while one area that students seem to choose more this year is social studies and if we think about the events in the world we shouldn't be that surprised that students are taking more of an interest in social studies electives government is up specifically at south and we've seen a significant increase in social studies elective at north whether it be sociology or multicultural studies and partly with the dip in cte with students not being sure about the hands-on nature of courses next year it's possible that some of the students decided to choose a social studies elective instead because they may have felt that it would have been a more consistent experience from what they could anticipate no matter which way the school year would look in terms of world language we are down one section in german at south and in french at north however the ap german is back up to 19 students so that had a little bit of a rebound and while we're consistent in spanish at north spanish is down a bit at south however they will be running two sections of heritage two for the first time we are adding english language courses for both north and south north will be running english one and bilingual support for the first time at north and south will be offering bilingual physical science and bilingual resource as well and you'll hear more about those courses from gina zaccardi thank you good evening i'll start talking about bilingual then um so we are adding to our bilingual offerings we are seeing an increase in enrollment at uh specifically at north high school in our spanish-speaking students so for the first time we will be starting a part-time bilingual program at north high school which means that we'll be adding a bilingual resource and we'll also be adding el english one so we will be able to retain our el english 1 students students will still have the option as they have for years if they wish to travel to south high school for the full-time bilingual program but we will have that offering at north so we're really excited about that we've also increasing or will be increasing i should say as i believe george and ryan alluded to our offerings at south high school we'll be offering for the first time a bilingual physical science course for the majority of those students came out of our bilingual biology course this year and we will also be starting our bilingual resource so we will have more offerings for bilingual spanish speaking students as well as our el students have we ever considered for as long as i can remember we've had spanish french and german you've ever considered expanding the languages offered in arabic or chinese or going other language offerings yes we have in fact a number of years ago i can't remember exactly when i want to say approximately eight to nine years ago we did survey students and to see what interests were and we came back to the three languages we have had requests over the years and it seems like i had more requests about seven or eight years ago and i haven't had any requests in the last in the recent five or six years but there is some new legislation that is coming forward where we where students will be required to have two years of a foreign language we have several years for that but we will definitely need to consider what courses we would like to offer and what courses our students are interested in taking since all students will be required to take over a language course yeah and i'm sure that has a lot to do with partnering with our our feeder districts because they have you know the the same offerings and language that we do right exactly the feeders aren't offering the german yeah they're off from the french and spain and only district 58 offers french although we do still have students that come from avery coonley in their french program as well but a small number obviously it would just seem to be a larger offering and more options is kind of would seem to be we're at that point where we should be thinking about expanding those offerings absolutely and we may attract more students by more offerings so today it's one year of language that's required and you said now it'll go to two did i hear that right i believe you're asking if we have a graduation requirement for world language yes we do not we do not oh many of our students do take world language but we do not have a graduation requirement students are required to take a number of electives for which world language is one of those offerings so it could be cte world language fine arts even social studies electives beyond the three years many colleges some colleges do request that's what it is i know is a requirement somewhere exactly okay so any other questions about a yell okay um so the curricular offerings georgia and ryan spoke about a lot of those you'll notice that we have a slight decrease in the number of courses that we're recommending for cancellation and an increase in the number of courses that we would like the board to approve and certainly offer with an enrollment of under 20.
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just so happens a couple of those are language courses also several of them are upper level capstone courses like in the languages as well as in some ap offerings like ap physics and our pltw courses all four of the engineering strand courses at north high school we are very excited to offer a lot of those courses that are very specialty courses with under 20 to our students many of them are programmatic in nature it allows students to go on to the next level or as i said as a capstone course thank you thank you it's fun to see them up here from behind good evening my name is scott wigazer and i'm going to talk to you a little bit about the special services i know we had a board meeting that we went over a little bit that and rob had a nice introduction for it so instructionally we have the 1.0 request for t99 as you know we're growing in size so that would increase us to six teachers at the transition program and then at north we have a 0.4 fte increase that's covering our instructional program and some co-teaching and then obviously we talked about the non-instructional social work there's a point to it south and then a point for social work at north all right thank you good evening good to see you all again jeff berkels returning for another meeting and i'm going to kind of just go through some of the highlights from the last couple of sections in the packet that you have uh particularly section four uh one of the first things you see there are a list of stu of sorry students teachers who are being honorably dismissed these are non-tenured staff who we don't have the same amount of fte for them based on all the pieces that have moved around that you heard about thus far we do have the option to bring those teachers back at a lower fte if they are willing to do so so we have that option for them there are six of those staff members that are in there as well as you'll see the resolution uh again with the exhibits that shows the names of those people who are being honorably dismissed uh the next section we start getting into uh 4b is we also have some staff that we are non-renewing this goes back to what rob alluded to earlier we have some staff who are covering leaves of absences and so we have staff returning we don't have ft for those staff so they're the ones that we then non-renew so they will won't be coming back unless something were to suddenly open up perhaps we asked them to come back um then we also have uh section five i guess we're moving on to there section five is uh the non-tenured teachers that we are bringing back and so that's the really long list and breaks it down year by year where everyone's at so you kind of get that full view you also see that as well on the traditional board report same list of names the numbers are a little bit different because one is for the current year where they're at then the other one's projecting out to next year so if you see that that doesn't align when you look at some of those that would be why so um and then the next piece that we sometimes do this time of year but it's going to wait until april for this time is getting the list of all of our staff members who will be tenured will recognize those at the april workshop meeting so that is yet to come thank you that concludes the show for this evening uh um real quick just one change that we're making this year to the process is usually this time of the year is when we bring forth the people who the state of illinois will be granting tenure to next year we've decided to separate those out so based on your actions tonight some people will be on that list and then we'll have them for you at the workshop meeting in april to recognize those who are going to be receiving tenure this year it gets a bit more complicated because it's not only traditional tenure it's accelerated tenure it's portable 10 years so that changes some of the years that they've been with us in which they uh they get to receive that so uh that's our section i believe next on the agenda is our public hearing and that's based off of uh the number of people that we have on the honorable dismissal list so we have to move into that thank you we have several teachers that are going to be fast-tracked for tenure um i'd have to look back at our list we have a few who have portable tenure so a portable tenure is when they achieved a tenure in another district and they were here uh there's a few who are accelerated that requires three years right um but yeah there's there's a few that are out there will they be delegated then or were they just going to be in the group we could break those out for you if you'd like to see that yeah in the april workshop just to say who which pathway did they use to get to tenure sure any other questions all right thank you thank you so many moving parts yeah all right mark's going to cover this one here just to have a quick resolution that we passed last year it's the same format if you recall we have a nine-year agreement with rexnard corporation which is in downers grove their an aeronautic engineering firm and as an incentive to move their headquarters here rather than closing down this uh one of their plants here and keep them in at downers grove we work with district 58 and the village to set up a rebate agreement that we when they build a new headquarters here about 200 000 square foot facility um and agreed to staff it at a certain level of two more than 200 employees um that we would abate some of the or pay them back some of their their increase in property taxes compared to the new facility the new facility compared to the prior facility and it was about 56 000 was the difference the incremental difference that we got in taxes because they came in on this new construction so we we got something right out of the gate but we agreed to take off 90 percent of that and refund that back to them and then do 10 percent more or less actually refund each year so we did 90 last year we're going to do 80 this year the reason we're asking you to pass the resolution now is because we'll we won't get their assessed valuation to do the exact calculation until the end of this month and they will want that by the first end of the first week in april so we need to make a decision ahead of time so the resolution gives me authority to make that adjustment to their taxes and to send that to the county clerk and it'll abate their taxes any questions i said had one about the 272 employees do we have any sense of of how many of those jobs are actually in in district they don't give us the addresses but it was just to have that many agreement was to staff it at that level i know that yeah i was just curious if we had any if you know and it is down from last year so it looks like they've suffered a little bit too even though it's you know there it's not there yeah aerospace engine uh industry is hurting a bit they make replacement parts for for planes and when a plane is built you have to guarantee that you'll make that part for the next 10 years and that's what they do so they have a very steady business normally but could be that there's less things going on with planes apparently because of the pandemic but i don't we don't have addresses of um where they the individuals live or where if they're in their campaign but they couldn't re they couldn't report out that you know 75 they give us a listing not part of our agreement with them and they gave us a listing of the positions and the amount paid to them so we know the that the average job is you know 78 000 or whatever it is for the whole group um but it exceeds the minimum which we agreed to and we kind of got upset by the pandemic this year with with doing more creative things but um i think the long-term plan is for us to have some of our students go there yeah and and learn some trades there and become you know a partner with them that way too they're very open to that i support this i was at the groundbreaking i think this is great for the community i just it'd be nice to know if if a lot of those jobs were actually people living here and in the district as well so that's all all right that's up for action and approval later tonight i'll bring up jim here to talk about uh the t99 build out and the bid approvals for construction related to it good evening everyone i'm ready for my snack break in a bit okay this is for t99 good news i told you a couple weeks ago that we had some good bids here they are this is for the remaining 2500 square feet of the build out that work will be done this summer 10 packages 47 bidders three bidders at least in each trade so really competitive and really good numbers so our projected budget for this project was about 985 000 so these are the construction costs you add in contingencies architect and engineering fees construction management some contingency we're still going to be well under 785 we're going to save at least 200 or more so we're really in good shape all these vendors we've worked with except for one but they scoped out and understand the work that was the number 10.
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that's it acoustical tire ceiling so is the only better that we haven't worked with so everyone's scoped out they're all good to go so tonight we'll ask that you approve all 10 for 526 thousand 355 questions general trades what does that mean jim over here general trades uh cabinetry uh carpentry all all those work that's within that were there any stipulations in the bit are they allowed to stipulate that are they allowed to stipulate in any way that their cost is dependent on current lumber prices that sort of thing or is this they're they're committed to this number they're committed to this number okay i have the contracts ready to sign tomorrow morning if you guys approve tonight but quite honestly i was expecting you know yep earlier a few months ago i was telling you it was going to be under 9.85 yeah i didn't think we'd be this good so i'm very happy with what we yeah this is good we're coming in with and we'll be able to put some of those funds back because we're using interest from mfp back to contingencies for for the mlp yeah this is good thank you i just had a question about timing do we know when the build-out will start and complete sure we're actually going to start aggressive early we're going to do some work back there while they're still in in session so we're going to get back there and start working end of april beginning of may and then by the end of summer we're done by august 10th we're finished and because it's in the back we're not going to interfere with any of the no no returning thank you james terrific thank you yeah well done the next item is master facility plan progress uh as you can see last couple of weeks the last couple of months we've been tightening down the scope a little bit and keeping this one is very small increase this month but it's a slight increase because of reduction in scope right now we're spending the next couple of weeks up until spring break related to the master facility plan of outlining priorities for the last items that are on the list within the buildings and then we'll create a long-term plan for everything that we want to do that didn't get covered in the master facility plan so that we have an idea of long range uh what our continued scope of work is uh contingency remains strong heading into the summer here and you can still see there is quite a bit especially in phase c allowances that could roll back into the contingency should we not use it so once again as we have been we're on budget we're on schedule and all of these projects are scheduled to be completed for the return next fall any questions great to see things going as planned it's one of those things i think people haven't been paying as close attention to as they might have otherwise because of covet i mean community in general this i can't wait to get everybody back to see it all no kidding i can't it's about to say i can't wait for everyone to see it all right foia requests we had them and we continue to respond to them and we continue to get them thank you they're on our website moving on to the next section of the agenda is the public hearing the next agenda item is a public hearing on the proposed reduction in force of teachers this hearing is held in line with section 24-12 of the illinois school code which provides for the hearing when the greater excuse me when the number of teachers to be reduced due to economic necessity is greater than 5 or 150 percent of the average number of teachers honorably dismissed in the preceding three years whichever is more while the reductions contemplated later in this evening's agenda are not based on economic necessity we are holding the hearing with the intent of giving both the teaching staff and the public notice of layoffs and the opportunity to express their views to be clear reductions in force contemplated later in this evening's agenda will not impact educational programming and are not based on economic necessity rather these reductions are based on courses excuse me on course selections for the upcoming school year do we have anybody who would like to speak i'm sorry no this is regarding the production force of teachers hearing none i'll have i uh will ask for a motion to close the hearing so moved terry second joanna thank you terry pavich joanna vasquez drexler aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye dan nicholas aye rick cavanado aye and nancy kupka aye the hearing is closed we're gonna move on to the uh consent agenda i have one question related to the consent agenda i apologize for not getting in earlier does any other board member have anything they want to remove before we ask the question before we call the agenda no i just have one question if i may about costa rica it's conceivable that we will have people who have already graduated going we've done this gina can probably speak to it better for me but i think we've done this with a couple of other tours where we've allowed students that graduated but had already paid into a trip to then come back and participate in it um just because of covid sure sure why don't we talk but they would have to they would have to observe all the same regulations as any student going correct they'd have to follow all the rules thank you cheryl did you have something answered i i just said i i thought you were talking about costa rica but i wasn't sure oh sorry how do you hear you yeah almost closer okay next we need emotions i didn't need you gina thank you though we need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda which includes a personnel report 2021 2022 full-time renewals 2021-2022 none 10-year part-time renewals appointment certified transfer position classified appointments classified b personnel report retirements classified resignations classified c financial pages d 2021 2022 proposed amended calendar e to waive the spectator admission fees charged by district 99 for events held on the 99 campus for the 2021 school year and f rescheduling previously scheduled tour costa rica 2020.
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so moved i'm sorry terry johanna thank you very much aye joanna vice chris rexler aye mike davenport aye shirelle fuller aye dan nicholas aye rick cavanaugh aye nandy kupka aye the consent agenda passes now we're going to move on to the recommendations for action first we need a motion for the board of education to approve the 2020-2021 school year plan revision as discussed to begin april 6 2021 and continue to operate under the kova 19 reopening plan approval resolution approved on august 3rd 2020.
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don't move joanna yeah and shirelle thank you joanna vazquez drexler hi sherelle fuller hi dan nicholas hi terry pavich aye rick cavanado nate mike davenport aye nancy kupko aye the motion carries then we need a motion for the board of education to adopt the resolution authorizing notice of honorable dismissal of non-tenured teachers other than final year probationary teachers and that the president and secretary would be authorized to sign same so moved terry i'm sorry damn dan second thank you terry aye dan nicholas aye rick cavanado aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye roy the motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to adopt the resolution authorizing notice of non-renewal to non-tenure teachers other than final year probationary teachers and that the president and secretary be authorized to sign sane so move yeah joanna and i'll second terry thank you do you want a vascular explorer aye trey paversich aye rick kavanagh aye the motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the resolution authorizing property tax abatement for the rexnord facility for the 2020 tax year so moved second mike and shiro thank you mike report aye sheryl fuller aye dan nicholas aye terry pavich aye aye motion carries and finally we need a motion for the board of education to approve bids in the aggregate amount of 526 355 for the t99 build out so moved second mike and joella thank you mike davenport aye joanna vazquez drexler aye cheryl fuller aye dan nicholas aye terry pavich aye rick cavanado aye aye aye the motion carries uh next order of business is the policy committee uh the policy committee recently met and we discussed the policies that are listed there details are available in the board packet just a reminder to the board and to the public that this is the one month review period for everyone to review those ask questions and then they are and then we would go to the policy committee with any revisions the board would be then asked to approve this with any changes at the next board meeting the majority of the changes in here are recommended by press from the illinois association of school boards an administrative review of those with some slight changes except for policies 3.56 and 7.345 those are changes based on the district's legal counsel in regards to changes that are coming in laws and changes to tech in the next actually in july other than that the majority of the changes are are small in nature but you can read through and see what they actually are um i had one more thing oh and we also reviewed the policies at the last meeting that were unique to district 99 in our two-year review of those policies and found no changes that we needed to bring forward to the board so that's where we're at uh anything else that i left out there rick or sure i think that was perfect hey what do you know thank you all right so if you have changes please email rick sherelle and i and her concerns and we're happy to address those in advance of the next board meeting so okay so in advance of the next board reading okay anything else all right now we're going to move to the second reception of visitors this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board if you individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary mrs nidak visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone state your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and they are live streaming and i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant and we appreciate you observing these protocols did you wanna so there was a lot that was stated here today so if you'll excuse me i'm just going to have to reference my notes you all said that you wanted kids back in school but they are not back in school full time you just voted that they are not going to be back in school full time again i will restate this why is it that private schools charter schools and catholic schools can be back in school full time and have been since the fall and district 99 cannot i don't understand that and i haven't heard an answer fatigue makes us all tired i'm sure each and every one of you are tired you're exhausted we're all exhausted this pandemic has wreaked havoc on everyone i empathize with your fatigue we all feel it many have tragically lost loved ones i can't imagine their pain there's a lot of information and stats that have been read here tonight however i'd like to read one a couple for the record according to a national study of insurance claims since march 2020 our kids from ages 13 to 18 here are some of the effects overdoses are up 95 percent substance abuse is up 64 to 20 percent depression is up 84 percent our children are anxious you stated that i agree with you the world is anxious the world has been anxious before this pandemic life is full of challenges and risks there is a huge element that has been missing here in all of these discussions in these charts tonight as leaders as parents as educators we have an obligation to teach our children to lead our children we have to teach them to be resilient we have to teach them to take calculated risks we need to teach them to be courageous we need to teach them to not live in fear they're being taught over and over again to be afraid to be very afraid the scientific data says that if they catch covid they will recover they will not die i wish i could find the stats but unfortunately this building cut off my phone and i can't but the stats say they will recover they will be healthy your three minutes is expired could i have someone do a motion to give me two more minutes to three minutes please to complete complete this i'm the only teacher i'm the only parent here tonight that's at your discretion nancy would anybody like to make a motion i'm asking for an additional time i hope to let you go ahead and have two more minutes okay i wish more parents were here tonight they're tired we're all tired but if you look at that slide and i wish i could reference it but there was a slide that said that the teachers are speaking to you they unanimously said they wanted their children back full time your email you said that most of the teachers have been vaccinated and that's great and i wish they were here and i hope i can communicate to more of them but seriously what i don't understand is in the stat again correct me if i'm wrong said that most teachers don't want to be back full time and i don't understand that the teachers that i talk to say they miss the children they want to be back in class but yet the data that you shared with us tonight doesn't say that and that doesn't that doesn't ring with me i don't understand that there's always going to be challenges in life we need to show these children that we can overcome them that we can move forward instead we're arguing about snacks and lunches that can be solved small business owners and restaurateurs solved it it's called tents and heaters and air conditioning and space seating we need to show them that we can live again and we can move forward and we're not doing that we're instilling them with more fear i'm sorry i hate to say it like this but your words ring hollow to me when you say you want these children back full time and you're looking out for them but yet their parents are telling you they want them back in school full time and you do not listen i don't understand that anybody else like to address the board we did receive online uh eight comments from four different people um most of them are concerned well most of them from one person are concerned in how i represented the survey results and then there's a couple other just general questions so that's what was received okay we'll respond to the general questions uh yeah people who reach out to us with general questions we respond not not to ones that come in this way so if somebody has a general question they should email the administration okay thank you these become part of the this is messages to the board and become part of the board record and the board member the board does receive those each member the board always receives these the next day and then they become part of the minutes yeah we did receive them this morning we did receive them yeah throughout the day throughout the day today yeah okay we're gonna move on to communications and announcements uh report on lend i don't have an update uh we have a meeting friday next friday i don't know at some point we we have an upcoming meeting there's a lot going on in springfield board members i sent you some of that i'll send you another update probably tomorrow when i update all of the staff with the legislative ongoings in springfield so a lot of things going on right now thank you uh joanna season um actually we don't have a lot of items that relate to districts 99 however i thought i might read this one portion uh because in late all our discussion tonight these are some real problems that our cooperative school is uh contending with uh the past week we've been spending significant time reviewing any opportunities and ways to increase in-person instruction for the remainder of the year none of the items below are excuses for why something is is or not taking place for programming i am only trying to convey the substantial complexity of the issues and the aggravating and mitigating variables that are part of problem solving and planning to provide context to the attachment regarding program and service status parents have been surveyed again as to their preference for their child to be remote or in person there are still a significant number of families who are choosing the remote option this makes it very difficult to staff increased in-person times and provide synchronous instruction remotely we are looking at student cohort changes reassignment of staff asking part-time staff to increase to full-time looking for long-term subs and subs to fill needs we have purchased additional technology ipad and tripods to stream instruction they are still short staffed for teaching assistants advertising in local papers career builder and typical sites uh we've also sent information to parents this week to let them know that there are employment opportunities it's asset so parents might even come to work for them it is a circular problem in that while individuals are home with their children they are not applying and without applicants this asset is short staffed masks and social distance we have students who are not able to maintain wearing a mask and many of those children require adult support within six feet of social distance the staff and multi-knees program have had two children pass away in the past year and lost a beloved staff member in december they're understandably heightened and they're concerned for the health and safety of students and staff as many students are medically fragile and uh we also have behavioral concerns uh as students are returning from year away from school the social emotional needs the students are significant for some students are showing significant behavioral challenges and this is relevant to the stress safety and staffing needs within these classrooms space is also a problem while staff were remote spaces have been repurposed either by staff in the districts where we are hosted or by sasa to create spaces for therapies and intensives the issue is now the unwinding of this structure we asked district administrators on friday during the weekly meeting to review ifs asset spaces are being used by their staff and to anticipate our use of those spaces we are also looking for additional spaces within buildings for example if we return in-person students to a classroom in the afternoon the students receiving therapy or intensives in that classroom are now displaced and we have to find another location schedules another problem they're having as districts and asset programs are pivoting to an increase for in-person learning the schedules for related services are changing again this impacts how we can staff a classroom to return students in person it's also just another complex set of changes those are being planned for and adjusted as we become aware of the status changes and then there is staff stress and burnout times are really tough there is a lot of compassion fatigue among the administrators staff are exhausted and stressed out many are dealing with their own personal stressors both students and staff we are offering trivia games to keep staff connected providing reminders about self-care and the eap program and writing notes of encouragement to staff this unprecedented year is taking an unprecedented toll on all of the staff so they're going to encourage us all to take a little time off on our spring break and step away from the work and refresh i just thought i'd share that with we have problems here but sasa does too and they're cooperative thank you tara all right um the foundation where we are uh working on what we're going to do for teacher appreciation week which is i believe it's the first week in may so we're going to be doing something special for our teachers and staff and the deadline for uh teacher grants is april 15th so if any of the teachers need to get some things going for the next year be sure and turn in some uh teacher grants and then um i wanted to thank everyone who participated in uh pizza wars this year uh it it um it did better than we thought i don't want to give you any numbers right now because there's still things coming in and uh and that but uh next month i will let you know what we did but it it was different i hope you all participated and and purchased some pizza from some of our vendors and there were coupons and all kinds of things and then a lot of you donated to the foundation we really appreciate that because it turns around in these teacher grants that we're going to be granting uh it it pays for those so and uh what we're going to do for the teachers and staff for appreciation week we really thank everyone thank you thank you thank you so that's all i have thanks terry mike the dupage divisions spring meetings virtual this saturday at 10 a.m i won't be able to attend though i'm going to be otherwise detained okay other than that we have two upcoming board meetings april 12th you'll have a workshop meeting at 6 30 p.m and april 19th a regular business meeting also at 6 30 pm did you have something you want to say oh i'm sorry hey with that we need to call for a motion to adjourn so moved second terry and mike all those in favor aye aye aye all those opposed we stand adjourned thank you thank you
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thanks for the word you'd like to call this meeting to order and we'll start with pledge allegiance led by dr wright i pledge allegiance thank you dr wright tonight we have this afternoon we have a new system for youtube viewers and we welcome everybody that would be viewing this on youtube and hope you give some feedback the tech people our gurus have been working hard to get this together so it'll be a lot more functional and and friendly to the viewers first item on the agenda is a recognition of our br star awards for the month of march dr wright would you do that absolutely thank you from our maintenance and custodial department we have david heathman and we'll get that award to jeff akins rachel koleski is a teacher at the elementary school and we'll get dr eyerstone her award and then kathy palinsar is also at the front desk help support is also be our star for this month and we recognize each of these and we appreciate their exemplary efforts thank you thank you dr wright um two members of the well actually just one member of the board and brenda have been excused tonight for family reasons but margaret gabby won't be with us this evening um first consent agenda item number two is there anything that the board has looked over in the consent agenda that you would like to take out and vote on independently or we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as contained in the minutes which is basically the minutes of the past meeting and the vouchers from the past month chuck you need to speak right into the microphone so there you go sorry move that we approve the consent agenda as presented have a second from jennifer all in favor all right consent agenda has been approved item three i keep trying to turn pages and i need to lick my finger and it doesn't work so well with a mask item 3.1 recommendation to review and approve teachers and counselors contracts for the upcoming 21-22 school year any questions about that from any member of the board and dr wright would you like to just comment on that or we need just to vote i just have a question do we have any positions and this is a great list by the way do we have any positions that we still need to fill for this next year we do have a we do have a number of positions that are yet to be filled a couple are in special aid we have two english positions open at the high school it's hard to determine what will be at the elementary school yet in terms of teaching positions until we figure out our student count but we anticipate one or two maybe three elementary positions and i do not think we have any at the junior high am i correct one at the junior high and social studies position that we're one of those studies thank you any other questions if not we have a motion to approve item 3.1 a motion from chuck a second from jennifer all in favor that's also passed item 3.2 recommend recommendation to review and approve the disposal of equipment i read this list of equipment it's kind of sad yes dr right you want to tell us what the equipment was for those that are watching mostly old football pads and old sports equipment that has said broken or dated and equated well it just means it's been there for a long time cost to replace that is not cheap is it it's not not cheap so we can't actually sell this stuff we have to actually dispose of it right right if we were to sell it we would have to we have an auction we have procurement policies that we follow in this case there we need the board's approval to dispose of even property that is no longer useful right well if we were to sell it to somebody i'm sure we'd have a liability there because there's no we'd have to make lamps out of it or something like that because it's not serviceable anymore right okay so can we have a motion or is there any more discussion with item 3.2 a motion from chuck for item 3.2 the disposal of the football equipment have a second second from jennifer all in favor that'd be unanimous also recommendation item 3.2 recommendation to review and approve the e-rate for the application um dr ray do you want to explain this we we've read this but would you like to explain this for who's watching we we could and we'll do a better job if we let nate it's his wheelhouse i'll let nate explain it there you go nate sure so thank you um so e-rate is a federal program through the fcc which provides funding for internet um and network contin connectivity um for lower income schools and so it is based off of free and reduced lunch rates which qualifies blue blue rich for an 80 percent reimbursement on those funds and tonight is category 2 which covers internal connections as they call it but that would be switches any cabling fiber battery backups those types of things category 2 does not cover computers software anything like that um so this is an open bid uh sealed bid process with very very strict rules and as you can see we had eight vendors that put in bids and at the end of the day only two of them actually qualified to be evaluated and of that on those bids were we are replacing 31 switches which is all the switches on the main campus minus the junior high that was just refreshed a few years ago um we'll be replacing our core router um and the battery backups across across the main campus um and then we'll be adding a fiber line into the talon classroom and into the a plus cte classroom as well any questions regarding that thank you chuck i assume that we have the money budgeted for our share of that we do this is uh we're generally on a seven-year refresh cycle and so i work closely with brenda to make sure that those funds are allocated over the years we actually they extended e-rate goes in five-year cycles and they actually last year because of the the covid extended that out to a sixth year but it wasn't enough funds for us to really do anything with um and so we're at actually at eight year eight the current the current equipment that we have across the district is eight years old it was put in in 2013.
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all right where is this thing all right call this meeting to order roll call of who's here frank waters member carolyn stewart superintendent dawn wilcox interim superintendent from the audience if you want to do loudly or if you want to come to the microphone either way there's mostly this is also for people who can't see because they're online kelly bishop all right and who who's online online we have michelle bemelman darlene rossini charity lawrence terry uh vilda sola terry mohan julie allison ronnie hart reed nelson dan stickel and i'm sorry we have an individual whose name i don't know i don't know and this i know i don't know who it is okay i'm sorry we have one person who doesn't have a name on their on their picture so we have one other person all right thank you uh let's join me in the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay uh call the public does anyone wish to make a statement we don't have any calls in public all right thank you all right uh first thing on the presentation is a renewal packet from kairos who's got that oh here's lori if you want to take over i'm happy to move i guess not okay kim has the i think the packet to share yes and i don't know if we have anybody in person from kairos if we do we'd love to hear from that person okay chris from kairos that's our unknown okay how do we get the volume up okay so can you turn your volume up a little bit chris okay for those who can't hear we have chris from kairos we're getting the volume up okay uh james how can i increase so we can hear her uh we're trying we're working on yes we're going to share on our end and i have uh turned up my audio is that okay james what's it going to add up hang on chris we're trying to get your volume turned up okay okay so we have to exit and then come back in to get good audio so bear with us please okay [Music] press one to connect your phone in a moment you can use your phone to listen and speak to the meeting press star six to unmute can you hear me now okay okay there you go all right and we are showing uh your uh your powerpoint from here oh okay well i can't see it on the screen so i'll just go ahead and follow along with the one on my screen i can't see what you're sharing okay thank you we're currently looking at slide one okay so let's go ahead and skip to slide two this is our table of contents and what we're gonna go over and then um we'll move on to slide three we're going to look at renewal rates claims performance network change data warehouse and then my contact info so if you move to slide three that shows the 20 21 22 renewal rates uh first i wanted to say that kairos has separated out the two districts of colorado river and bullhead city into two separate divisions two separate groups with two separate experiences for each group so we've gone ahead and look at the renewal rates for those two oh there it there it is oh no but that's the wrong slide slide deck probably go up one more okay are you looking at the same thing i'm looking at though oh we see slide four claims snapshot james has a different thing than i do so he's gonna have to hold on one second okay so all of you know this is the first time we've tried to stream and do google meets simultaneously so it may be just a little ragged as we do it today is there a way i can take over the screen oh that's it that's it okay great um so you know let me just start over i apologize uh again my name is chris from kairos i'm the account manager for this group i work with darlene and michelle directly as the day-to-day person and tara usually comes in and will give this presentation but um she's not available today so i'm going to go ahead and do that for her so um we are on that slide three this is your renewal rate so that's where we'll go ahead and start as i was mentioning before we have separated with kairos the two districts into their own separate uh divisions and districts so when we look at the rates we're thinking the colorado river and bullhead city separate and then i know with your trust board that now you guys are in charge of the vision and dental and not necessarily the medical but they had asked me to go over that with you so we'll go ahead and do that but these are conversations we will want to have with each district as well so looking at these rates on the left of the current rates and for both schools are the same right now and that is because the overall rate increase for the entire pool was a seven percent and after you're with kairos for more than two years your district would be rated separately so at that point they may end up with different rates uh based on their their performance but right now they're the same so for your current rates on the left for the core in copay and the 1500 they're the same for both schools and then on the right you'll see the rates with the seven percent increase for the core and copay and the 1500 plan now this doesn't include the district's contributions this is the the total cost for the rates um any questions on that i have a question uh this is greg eisness i was under the impression that our trust negotiated everything as one price now we're having sorry it's one for it's one through this first two years and then when we decide what we're doing with our insurance for the following year that was when we knew that there was going to be a chance that it could those prices could switch so just as we can at the end of the second year or sometime next year the trust can decide whether it's continuing with kairos or it can look at other options that would also be a one of the considerations that you all would have i had forgotten about this element but this this was part of what was agreed to last year no oh okay i i thought that we negotiated one price for the two schools i didn't realize we split them up yes that's what i was just answering it's all it's not split right now and it won't be split for the coming year correct chris it would be correct i'm talking your individual experience is split up we split them up but the rates right now is what i'm showing you they're actually the same and the increase is the same so it's it's the same for now and who does that answer your question but you're making it sound like you're splitting it well they are treated individually um as districts on our end so that's correct however your rates are the same right now but we are splitting them separately as far as your experience right as i recall from that conversation from the end conversation last year that because we chose because the trust chose to continue with the dental and the vision the trust is controlling that piece we're choosing you all chose to continue to consider these things as one unit but as i recall now that she mentions it that kairos told us at the time that in year three or even now that they would look in them separately but the rates would be the same for both and then we then you as a trust review that um next year for what we do the following year i had kind of forgotten that as well but once she said it i recalled it and we can go back and review the minutes too i don't recall that well it's part of the pool set up with kairos there's no way that we could have put two groups into one in the pool so we had to separate out their experience individually so it's it's probably the way that we had to set them up in the pool and i apologize because i wasn't there during your original conversations but that is how it is set up it was brought up last year that was one of my main concerns was the fact that we would be treated as two separate units and no longer as one combined unit and everyone said that they understood that that's what was going to happen and they went forward anyway but it was brought up last year on more than one occasion that we would have to be two separate units from that point forward when we switched to cairo okay chris go ahead please okay so um if there's no other questions if you could move to the next slide please so this is a claimed snapshot now the dates cover july 20th through january 21st so please keep in mind that this data is immature data you may have claims out there that are incurred and have not been received yet and that inc could increase these numbers that are here so uh just please keep that in mind also we have seasonality factors out there you need to really have at least one full year of data to consider it more mature but in this point you'd have to see it so we'll just take a look at it so the top school listed for experience is the colorado river school and you'll see that the medical is at the top there and starting in july you can see that it creeps up and up to january 21st you had some claims come in that month for are pretty large at 130 000.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good morning everyone and thank you for being here on this curriculum day uh our march curriculum day this year i'm superintendent mike morris i'm just pleased to be here and please for the program that's been designed for everyone i think it'll be enriching engaging and kind of yet another show of our commitment to the critical work we have and meeting the needs of all of our students before we get into the program just wanna i'll speak very briefly this morning just a quick thank you um tim she and doreen cunningham and their teams did a tremendous amount of work organizing the morning program for us this morning uh so i want to extend my appreciations to all the folks who worked on this i also want to thank there's a comment actually in the um in the chat i was going to mention anyway i want to thank so many of you for working collaboratively to make vaccine appointments available and accessible for members of the staff i know some people are still working on that but it's a um it's an incredible endeavor that people have taken on and just seeing you know how many people have worked within their staffs within across buildings to support each other in that way has been tremendous so i think it says a lot about you and a lot about the staff that we've seen this level of collaboration with early mornings for early birds and then the night owls staying up till midnight at 12 30 trying to help with that so um you really really appreciate all the work that you're doing um and and last before i uh more formally introduce our keynote speaker this morning you know i think this is a time of change i think we're all experiencing that um and one of the things that is consistent regardless of whether in person or remote or any of those other other aspects is that even in times of change our commitment to dei to diversity equity inclusion is consistent it doesn't depend on learning type it doesn't depend on other variables it's who we are as an organization and what we're striving to be as we look for improvement about what our environment is for our faculty and staff what our environment is for students and what are what we believe in as an organization and so with us today to help to help with that and help assist with that is kimmy carlos kimmy's the ceo and founder of kimmy carlos motivational consulting the co-founder of the sister wellness retreats healing spaces for black women and the founder of urban mental health excuse me urban mental health alliance advocating for healthy minds in urban communities um so this keynote is uh going to uh kimmy's going to start us off um there will be a time for questions later on in her after her presentation and then we'll have breakout groups uh to continue that work for the rest of the morning uh but thank you so much for being here thank you for your tremendous work for students thank you for how much of yourselves you've shown for students especially in this virtual environment it's opened a lot of doors not just for um you know seeing what's going on for families and homes and children but for ourselves as well and i appreciate your openness to that and with that i'm going to bring kimmy carlos onto the stream so kimmy thank you for joining us here in amherst i really appreciate your presence and your presentation and the wisdom you're going to share with us so thank you thank you for being here thank you so much mike good morning good morning i am absolutely delighted to be here and thank you to amherst pelham school district for having me and thank you to all of you that are joining us today i know that there are many other things that you could be doing and i'm excited that you are have me with you for your march curriculum day i am indeed kimmy carlos i'm excited to be here in front of you um i want to just share a few things before we actually jump into the presentation so we are going to have an honest authentic conversation today we're going to be talking about racism and we are living in a historic time right now because for the first time in our country we're having authentic transparent conversation around what systemic racism looks like and how that has affected our families and our communities and so i'm excited because i have had several opportunities to talk to school districts about how we can begin to dismantle some of our most oppressive uh infrastructures and systems and begin to start creating life affirming infrastructures for our youth um so with that i want to just share a couple of things i want you to be open-minded and i also want you to be comfortable being uncomfortable because we know that this is not an easy conversation it's a necessary conversation and i'm excited that we're having it but it's not an easy conversation right and so this is a safe space what that means is if there's questions that you want to ask i am absolutely open to that now is the time to be able to answer ask and get those questions answered so please feel free to do that right because it's not every day you have a safe space to talk about such a sensitive topic and i want to provide space to do that today so i am going to be in front of you for just about 50 minutes to an hour have a great presentation for you um if you haven't already go ahead and get yourself a notepad and a pen or a pencil or get your chromebook if you want to take notes if you need to get something to drink go ahead and do that because i want to make sure you get this information at the end of the presentation i'm going to come back into the virtual room i'm going to open the floor up for questions um that's going to be for about 20-25 minutes and then i'm gonna leave you with a question of my own for you to kind of think through okay so let's get started i'm excited um mike i'm gonna share my screen and if anything doesn't look right just let me know but i think i know what i'm doing application window okay and there we go all right so we are here for youth and the trauma of systemic racism and again i am kimmy carlos and my consulting firm is kimmy carlos motivational consulting and again i want to thank you for being here today but i also want to thank you for being an educator in a time that is so not normal right i can only imagine how challenging it's been for our educators in the past year who one year ago this month had to do a sudden pivot right from in classroom learning to remote learning and suddenly try and figure out how you can continue to educate and empower your students in a virtual world that none of us were prepared for so i want to thank you for all the hard work that you've done in addition to thanking you again for being here today regardless of what your role is at amherst pelham today your role is change maker and the reason you're a change maker is because you are going to get information today that's going to make you think and it's going to give you the opportunity if you feel so empowered to make change positive change in the lives of your students and their families and your overall community so i want to share a little bit about myself i am a trauma and alcoholism survivor this past november i celebrated 19 years clean and sober um i fell into alcoholism early at an age 14 because of some traumas that i had as a child the biggest trauma being uh i lost my mother to suicide and when i came into recovery after more than 20 years in active alcoholism um i became really passionate about mental and emotional wellness and learning how to manage trauma learning how to manage ptsd social anxiety disorder and chronic clinical depression all of which i was suffering from right i went on to publish a book that really shares my journey through alcoholism into recovery and all the strategies that i learned on how to manage my mental and emotional wellness because i made a commitment that i wanted to spend the rest of my life sober i wanted to be a productive role model for my children and i wanted to make sure that i honored my mother by doing the advocacy work so that no other child would ever lose a parent to suicide um so i've gone on to be a motivational speaker i do a lot of speaking around mental and emotional wellness and trauma um anti-racism and social justice equity and justice um i am a program designer so i design a lot of different programs and facilitate programs around wellness i'm a wellness and empowerment coach i'm a mental and emotional wellness advocate so i um create space wherever i am so that people feel empowered to learn about managing their mental health and wellness i'm a non-profit founder of the urban mental health alliance i am a certified anti-racism trainer with the new jersey episcopal church but i am most proud of the fact that i am daughter of 1968 olympian dr john w carlos many of you may recognize that name if you're of my generation my father is dr john cross on the right hand side many of you remember this demonstration on the podium during the 1968 olympics in mexico city during the national anthem people have often called it a protest or they've called a black power salute but in the carlos family and in the smith's family tommy smith in the center there we call this a demonstration what most people don't know is that my father john carlos and tommy smith and peter norman on the left were demonstrating regarding humanity and equality for all so they were demonstrating not just for the poor black and brown families in the united states but all around the world there was a lot of poverty in mexico city at the time during these olympics and peter norman uh who has passed now was also part of this demonstration and the only reason he didn't have his hands in the sky is because he did not have a glove but if you go and do the homework in google you'll see that there were many other symbolisms draped across all three of them to show this demonstration right so my father spoke specifically um about all of the black service workers in harlem who had no money including his parents right and knowing that he was on the world stage and being um lauded for at the time being a bronze medalist but knowing that when he came back to the united states there was going to be challenges around his employment his humanity and the safety of his wife and his young daughter at the time which was me um and so i've sat back and watched my father for more than 50 years do this work as a motivational speaker as a publisher of two books um he was a high school administrator for more than 30 years and how passionate he's been about equality and equity and justice and so if i am half of the change maker that he is i will have lived a well life so that gives you an idea of why i'm so passionate about the work that i do so today we're going to have a conversation about structural institutional systemic racism it's important for you to understand that the conversation we're getting ready to have is not about personal behavior it's about infrastructure right and i want to make sure that we understand that so let's look at some words that i think are really important what is discrimination discrimination is a prejudicial treatment of a person or person's base solely on their membership in a certain group or category discrimination is the actual behavior towards members of another group it involves excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to other groups what is prejudice prejudice is a positive or negative attitude towards individuals based upon their membership in a particular social group and what is bigotry bigotry is intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself quote the difficulties of combating prejudice and bigotry all of us have the capacity as human beings to be discriminatory prejudice and bigoted that's part of our nature right we all have those dark sides of ourselves and because of different ways that we've been socialized to view quote unquote the other right we all have the ability to be discriminatory prejudice and bigoted however that is not racism people typically confuse racism or quote unquote racist behaviors with discrimination and bigotry and prejudice but racism is indeed a system it is an infrastructure racism is reflected in societal disparities relating to wealth income criminal justice employment housing health care education and political power so to give you just a brief background race is not a biological factor it's not a thing it is a human construct and if you do your homework on where the construct of race came from it was created well before the 1600s as a strategic way to separate those who would be in power and those who would not and it just so happened that that was divided based on skin color and then of course there were an entire group of quote unquote scientists that created pseudoscience to try and prove which humans were superior and which humans were sub-human and that is how the construct of race began and it was on that construct that all of our infrastructures in the united states have been created so it literally infuses every part of our society there is no part of our united states culture that systemic racism has not been weaved into the fabric of so when you hear me talk about racism i'm talking about an infrastructure i'm talking about the distribution of wealth i'm talking about the distribution of income i'm talking about our criminal justice system i'm talking about our employment system talking about political power and what we're going to get really specific about today is how systemic racism affects the lived experience of our black and brown children and their families so because of that very very brief definition because racism is so um involved there's so many layers right that i literally could teach for three days and we will not even begin to tap into um how complex racism is but because of the construct of race and the way our country has been built on racist infrastructures and socialized to believe those racist instruction infrastructures we all have what we call implicit bias and that implicit bias is a vicious cycle because the structural racism supports implicit bias and the implicit bias supports the structural racism so i'm going to ask you to indulge me and i just want to read a little bit to you about this chart which i feel is just so powerful so dominant narratives about race family media and society coupled with racialized structural arrangements and differential outcomes by race all prime us to believe that people of color are inferior to white people create and maintain harmful associations and lead us to make harmful assumptions consciously and unconsciously about people of color race is created to justify enslaving people from africa for economic engine of our country policies and practices are consolidate and protect power bestow unearned economic social cultural and political advantage to people called white quote unquote and unearned disadvantage to people of color quote unquote national narratives ideology belief systems about people of color being less than human and less than white justifies mistreatment and inequality white supremacy inequitable outcomes and experiences resulting from policy decisions in health housing employment education and life expectancy reinforces white supremacist beliefs and ideology dominant narrative uses disparate outcomes as evidence of white superiority promotes whiteness as normal and desirable and justifies inequality so again for those who are feeling really uncomfortable right now and that should be everybody in the room remember we are talking about infrastructures so we're not talking about specific behaviors but we are talking about the way we've been socialized to believe certain things about certain populations in our country right and that's whether we are consciously or unconsciously aware of that so we have a vicious cycle which means as a country as a very young country or as our youth poet laureate says an unfinished country as all of those things we have a lot of work to do so i want to talk specifically about structural racism in education and this slide comes from erase racism and it talks about what structural racism looks like in education in very general terms i am not an educator you are the experts of your experience as educators i'm sharing information based on research and so i want to make that clear that in no way am i the expert on racism and education but i want to share with you just a general sense of the research around that so if you look at this chart on the left it shows you again the vicious cycle um that structural racism has in our communities right because schools influence employment and career prospects and employment impacts income and access to housing and then housing discrimination causes residential segregation and unequal education opportunities right and it becomes a vicious cycle and we're going to look at some of the systems that often oppress communities um and keep communities in poverty which we know affects the education of those communities right so what is it what is structural racism in education structural racism is the historical and ongoing racial discrimination and segregation of african americans blacks in particular but also latinos asians which is typically instigated or sanctioned by government structural racism creates inequality in every aspect of life so it would be easy to say well it doesn't affect education but it absolutely does and because it affects education it means that our youngest students our youngest students who are going into preschool and kindergarten at four and five are already being affected by structural racism in the very beginning of their psychological emotional foundation and development so as educators i'm sure you're aware of adverse childhood experiences um these are pretty profound um i believe it or not did not learn about aces until i want to say maybe 10 years ago and i literally stumbled upon it i was at a conference with a colleague and it was a conference on trauma and we went to a workshop and i thought adverse childhood experiences you know the title was so fascinating so i went to this workshop and i was handed a test and i was asked to answer 10 questions and i answered these 10 questions and out of those ten questions i had nine on the aces scale nine adverse childhood experiences i had had in my life as a child right and it brought back memories that i had suppressed for years and i'm grateful that at that time i had been in recovery long enough and had done the personal work long enough where i was able to embrace that and actually feel affirmed by it because for the first time in my life i realized that my alcoholism was not what was wrong with me but it was what had happened to me so understanding adverse childhood experiences is a powerful tool in learning to begin to build infrastructures that are life-affirming so just as a review traumatic events that can have negative lasting effects on health and well-being so looking at household challenges right domestic violence substance abuse mental illness parental separation divorce or an incarcerated parent abuse emotional abuse physical abuse sexual abuse emotional neglect physical neglect right people with six or more aces can die 20 years earlier than those who have none one eighth of the population have more than four aces 67 percent of the population have at least one ace four or more aces will actually cause a person to be three times the level of lung disease and adult smoking 14 times the number of suicide attempts 4.5 times the more likely to develop depression two times the level of liver disease four times as likely to have begun intercourse by age 15 and 11 times the level of intravenous drug use and if you look at the chart on the bottom right where it talks about the lifespan right so a child as young as two and three or even trauma in the womb right starting out with adverse childhood experiences finds that they have disrupted neural development social emotional and cognitive impairment adoption of health risk behaviors disease disability social problems and early death right the interesting thing and we're going to talk more about this is that often black and brown families and communities are faulted for their own depression i'm sorry their own oppression and the behaviors that come out of being oppressed and marginalized so it's easy for people to look at this chart and say well if there's challenges in the household then the household needs to do a better job right the parents just shouldn't abuse their children right or they just shouldn't neglect them well the parent just shouldn't end up in prison right it's easy to actually blame those who are oppressed for their own behaviors but this next slide i think is even more powerful and this comes from aces connection because if you look at this tree of what's going on in the household incarcerated family member diverse divorce homelessness parental mental illness physical and emotional neglect bullying domestic violence maternal depression emotional and sexual abuse alcoholism and drug abuse it's easy again to say well they need to do a better job in a household but if you look at the roots of these things historical trauma substandard schools structural racism lack of social capital mobility poor water and air quality which is environmental injustice right violence poverty which is strategic financial oppression substandard wages which is unemployment or underemployment right poor housing quality and affordability which is housing justice right lack of jobs all of these things that are in the community again born out of systemic racism clearly is going to affect not only what's going on in the household but what's going on in the community at large and then if you look at a lot of your environmental issues that often happen in our porous communities right a lot of our climate crisis a lot of our natural disasters um if you think about poor drinking water and mold and vermin infestation and asbestos and a whole host of other environmental injustices all of these affect students and their families and their communities and unfortunately because of the way black and brown populations have been socialized in this country we have a tendency to adultify and criminalize our black and brown youth and when i say black and brown i want to be specific in this country we view those who are of african descent as black that is whether you are black british black american black mexican black african black canadian black caribbean if you are of african descent you get lumped into the black category just like if you are of european descent whether you're irish or jewish or italian um or greek right you get lumped into the white category right and brown is latino or latinx asian east asian right so just to give you an idea when i say black and brown youth we have a tendency to adultify and criminalize black and brown youth and i want to give you some examples of that we have young white men who have literally committed mass murder and have safely made it to the jailhouse we have young black girls and boys who have been arrested and brutalized and processed through the justice system for behaviors that are often born out of poverty and trauma and nobody has looked at those as health conditions or health crisis right we have youth that have been slaughtered in the streets whose bodies have been shown on national television to be lying in the streets the gunshots have been heard on the nightly news and nobody is recognizing that as a crisis for our youth we have youth that are struggling with human trafficking sexual trafficking substance use disorder homelessness that are literally being arrested and imprisoned we have youth that are going to prison for decades for shoplifting we have police officers in our poorest most urbanized schools that are policing black and brown bodies and we often wonder why we have black and brown youth that are falling into gangs falling into gang warfare falling into drug warfare falling into sexual trafficking if you've been socialized to believe that you as a black and brown child and everyone who looks like you is less worthy is of less value then it's easy to get caught up in negative behavior but we don't see that as a crisis in this country we see that as adult criminal behavior it's an actual fact there's research that black students are punished more harshly and more frequently than white students for the same offenses and i think what grieves me more than anything is the number of children that end up in the justice system at such a young age i cannot fathom for any reason at all why this little boy on the left hand side who cannot be more than four or five years old would ever be in handcuffs i can't fathom it i'm pretty sure that this child in the middle here is about 15 and the child on the right might be 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So, APN, welcome everyone tonight. We are very happy and pleased to have you here. This is the Portuguese fund. It's a fund that the government has for elementary and secondary schools. It's an emergency fund. ISSFAM is emergency money, like they say, for a river [Music] over water pressure. From experience, once again, we welcome you. This forum is for you, for the parents, for those of us who have children, for the school workers, the home-based workers. This is about the funds that the schools will have, and what we want is for you to participate by telling us all how we can use the money. We can't distribute the money to all the schools here from both Gordon and White, but it's the state that gives us priority. They maintain that the district or the schools in the district have the capacity to provide an economy, equity, and access to a high- quality education for all the children in the Jackson region [Music].
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you okay okay are we ready okay all right good evening asusa family today is march 16th 2021 and i'm calling the meet the study session meeting of the isuzu unified school district to order it is 5 30 and we will begin we are going to go we are going to get started with our flag salute and today we have israel perez from lee elementary school joining us and leading us in this flag salute israel are are you there yes okay we are ready when you are now i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much israel for leading us in today's flag salute next we'll go ahead and go to our role call for today we have board member uh yolanda rodriguez pena president we have board members chandeliene cruz gonzalez here we have board member adrian greer here and board member gabriella arianis i am here today we have a board member beau absent for today and moving on we have approval of the agenda can i please get a motion to approve the the agenda for today we have a first by board member adrian greer second we have a second by sheila nink board member shinaleen cruz gonzalez discussion okay no discussion we'll go ahead and vote and okay it seems like we all voted but we don't have a board member bose but since she is absent for today let's go ahead and do a roll call we have board member pena president yes board member chris gonzalez yes board member career yes and i myself board member ariana yes it passes four zero one being absent let's go ahead now we're moving to item 3.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items miss leeka do we have anyone in the audience that would like to ha uh has raised their hand for public comment uh yes we have one uh to start is cecilia you may unmute your mic hello can you hear me yes we can yes hello good evening dr ortega dr mitchell board members colleagues families and friends my name is cecilia deletori and i'm a teacher currently at paramount and also kind of job sharing at lee if you know my situation for my 5 6 combo and i'm also a parent i'd like to take a minute just to say thank you um to ausd board members the district personnel aea especially meg zavela and her negotiating team and my people who stand and uh as sight reps uh all classified staff certificated all the principals and parents families and and if i missed anyone i just want to say thank you because everyone has been so dedicated hard-working patient the kindness that has been shared with everyone throughout this crazy year i just want to say we are all in it together no matter what azusa will get through this azusa is strong we are family we are united just like our name says as a unified school district so i just want to say thank you we're in a time where we're about to take a big leap back to school but i just want to say we gotta stay strong we are a team and we can do this so i wish you all the best everyone continue to stay safe and keep healthy and again thank you and you guys have a wonderful wonderful rest of the year thank you thank you mrs ciela de la torre thank you for your comments very much appreciated this time we'll go ahead and move uh in our agenda we're moving to 4.1 study session school reopening all right let me share my screen here see if i do this correctly awesome well good evening board president arianes board members and audience members tonight we're going to be dedicating our evening to the topic of school reopening and we want to start off with a question board president would you like to read the question out loud please absolutely with march 29 2021 around the corner how ready are we well thank you for that question tonight you're going to be hearing from cabinet level staff on details we have taken as a district to be ready and then we're also going to be hearing uh from three of our elementary school principals tonight to get a sense of what being ready means at the actual site level at this point in time i would like to turn it over to latasha jamal our assistant superintendent of business services to start us off thank you superintendent so how ready are we we are ready i'm going to start off by talking about the health health and safety measures that we put in place at all of our school sites particularly our elementary sites we're going to address the plexi glass and show images of what that looked like talk about the mask offerings that we have available our scanners thermometers as well as the disinfectant how we operate our hvac system our water and our lunch opportunities once we transition to in-person learning so here is our plexiglas this has given us three images of what we have currently installed first we're going to start with our student desk each student would have their own individual partition it is secured working in collaboration and getting ideas from think together when walking the sites and we learned that sometimes when you walk by it it may fall the little student desk ones that a little light so now we have double stick tape where they're now um permanently secured that can be removed so i should use the word firmly but they are now secured to the desk to prevent anyone bumping into it and falling next you have an image of our teacher desk which you'll see the plexiglas almost goes up to the entire height of the file cabinet right behind it i'm going forward to the front office you'll see we have now upgraded all of our front offices to have plexi at every angle of the office to ensure that those in front of the counter and behind the counter are secure and safe do we ask questions at the end or when is the proper time however you like to go okay i just had a question regarding the teacher's desk um do they have site uh panels the way the the students guests are no ma'am the student teacher's desks have it directly in front of them but every desk in front of every student desk in front of them have the full panels so the teacher protection is when they're sitting behind the desk and leading instructions so the student goes up to a teacher's desk or are they not permitted to do that that will be up to the discretion of the teacher but in that case the chief the student will come directly in front of the desk in front of the plexi okay thank you okay you're welcome here is the ppne so every site and department has been equipped with uh adequate inventory of pp e here you see we have at the bottom our touchless hand sanitizer station each site also has an inventory of face shields as well as face mask gloves gowns and disinfectant wipes any questions here oh i have a question so so this is going to be at all sites including the special education adult the adult center here by magnolia yes ma'am every side has this is the floor and they can as the inventory is going out they just put in a request and we replenish it as we go and this also includes our isolation rooms as well so our isolation room also has this in the uh stock of room and i'm going to show you a picture of that when we get to that one so at the at the end of the day do we have a trash can where do we have a special trash can or somewhere where they're going to be placing these a special trash can no there's no special trash can but in the isolation room there's a secluded trash can that's just for that room but for all these items as soon as a person disposes of it they just toss it in an open trash can great thank you so here are the masks that we have available so we have the surgical mask which is made for adults which will be provided to anyone that entered a campus without proper face covering or throughout the day if someone's face covering became soiled or dirty we will give them a disposable mask we also have disposable masks for our students and our kids are small we also have face shields and then we have the transparent face masks which are have been ordered to help with our students that may be going through receiving specialized services such as speech language um pathology um and as well as for our teachers who may be given a service where a student needs to read their mouth any question here here are scanners so we have three different ways that we could take temperatures on our site all sites are equipped with the individual handheld temperature thermometers as well as the front offices are equipped with the mini touchless scanner and then all of the school sites are what we have called the mega scanner that are housed in most of the npr rooms or in the hallways any questions here so um the scanner so so so the scanners for when students come into school in the morning or are they when do they use these so the scanners are utilized as soon as a person enters a campus so for our students uh most of the sites i'm not going to say multiple sites but primarily our sites when the students walk in they're walking through the multi-purpose room and the scanner is reading them as they're walking through they don't even have to stop they just walk through okay yeah could you mention hallway so i was wondering oh okay so they would walk through it and what is the distance they have to be um you know from the scanner that they can read them they could be a hundred yards away and the scanner will pick them up wow okay thank you yes ma'am uh latasha answered my question already oh i have a question so say that there the scanner does pick up someone who has the slight temperature what happens next so let's say um kills walking by they have a temperature the person is reading the scanner will say hey come over here and then we'll have them stand to the side for a couple of minutes because it could be that they ran and their heart is elevated and then we will use the handheld temperature to take their uh the handheld thermometer to take their temperature if they still have a temperature we will send them to the isolation room otherwise they'll be permitted to go on to class here's a list of all of our disinfectants so we have the clorox 360 that is equipped at our sites we have the glory sprayer and we also have multi-purpose wipes bins that are at our that are stored in all our high touch areas so like our copy rooms um any room that has an area where staff or students will constantly touch it we have big buckets of wipes where they can take a wipeout wipe off the air before and after use and each classroom now has individual small packs of wipes that can be used at any time of the campus or any time while they're in the classroom any questions here yes so who who is to use these the the teacher or the student or who who's um yeah it's a great question so the clock 360 and the glory square can only be used by those who've been trained which is right now is our custodial staff the wipes can be used for anyone that is just as disinfected to wipe down area that you have touched or that you're going to touch okay i have a question since i know that wednesdays are are going to be the the middle uh day that the classrooms will be sanitized between group a and group b so for group b when is the time that that classroom is going to be sanitized before group a comes back in oh great question so every night all of our campuses will be deep cleaned thoroughly so even on monday on tuesday wednesday will just be a reinforced day but again on thursday friday the entire campus will be deep clean and sanitized after every use any other questions so here's our hvac system so we have upgraded all of our air filters but in addition to that we have also invested in the ionization process so the second image with the little blue gadgets that is going to be installed into all of our hvac system including the our portables as well as our individual classrooms that have the individual units and so this together will help with the airflow and increase airflow in our classrooms so um you said it's going to be installed so when do we anticipate that they will all be installed we will our goal to be completed with the district by next friday but we're almost finished with our elementary schools we started last week you're just okay and how often will the filters be um cleaned or exchanged yes currently we um rotate our filters every three months is that feasible every three months is that uh yes that is feasible we invested to have a quant uh inventory on stocks to keep up with that trend can you share what um what level of filters we are we are currently using currently we use merv eight and um yes currently we use the merv a filter and then with the ionization that's going to also increase the level of air flow combined right now but based on the testing that we have the merv 8 plus ionization those two combined makes our filter goes up to the merv 13.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um so we're a little um recommended replace those every five years we tried to do seven years and so we're actually doing it uh on year eight i see that the total cost was 160 000 plus and the government is going to fund us through the e-rate funding class 2 or category 2 128 000 so that only leaves 32 000 for us to come up with is that is correct yes and then we'll also with some with our old equipment as well we usually get some sort of a buy back some some monies back from that older equipment as well it's not much but anything helps all right thank you any other questions mark we have a motion to approve item 3.2 a recommendation to review and approve the e-rate for 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
sorry 136 uh all those months total up for a total of 517 000 for that seven month period and again this is still immature there may still be claims out there and then for your rx the next line down uh you can see that the claims do increase for this as well which will give you a total for those months of seven hundred eighty thousand four hundred seventy dollars your subscribers and members have pretty much stayed the same from month to month and ended at 152 subscribers and 162 members we will look at why those claims are so high in the next slide but for now just keep that in mind we'll move down to bullhead city so in contrast from the colorado river you'll look at the bullhead city and notice that the claims are much lower and they actually have a few more members so again there's a reason why colorado's rivers high will look at that but your claims for the bullhead city ended up at 157 000 for those that period and the rx at 125 000 which gave a total claims paid out of 282 000 for that claims period is there questions on that before we move on and dig into that claim into those claims chris what's the difference between subscribers and members um subscribers are your um employees and then your members are your your family members the whole whole party thank you you're welcome so if you want to move on to the next slide the claims snapshot you'll see what is driving those costs now i just want to point out on the colorado river side on the left in blue that last line of 430 000 is actually the total it just didn't get bolded out but the first three are your high claims people cost drivers um somebody had claims paid of three over three hundred thousand and their pharmacy was also over a hundred seven thousand then you had another person at 122 000 and then finally the third person didn't have a lot of medical claims but they had high pharmacy costs we did dig into these claims and they expect them to also be ongoing claims so you can expect more costs coming in for colorado river in contrast bullhead city uh had no claims high cost claims and just to point out that these high cost claims are any claims over fifty thousand dollars that come through you have questions on that and again this is also still immature data so there could still be more data coming in for that if no questions please go ahead and move on to the next slide as many of you have heard kairos has switched from blue cross to united healthcare and we use umr as our claims manager so you might ask why did we change networks well as part of our good stewardship cargurus evaluated the market for year four as cyrus has been around for four years now we were really looking for a partner who would have sorry a vendor who would have a better partnership with us and work with us on some claims in cost containment strategies we were looking for minimal disruption and a vendor that is arizona statewide as well as out of out of state go to the next slide please so what does this mean for your employees well they'll still have that 24 7 access to kairos through umr so they'll be able to call it any time and get a kairos rep sorry a umr rep who is schooled in the kairos benefits so that is an upgrade for right now if you're with blue cross that line closes at i believe five o'clock but if you have someone uh an employee who has an emergency after hours they can call that line they'll get umr and they'll have someone that knows kairos umr has a strong national network so they can go anywhere in the country and look for an in-network doctor and still have coverage so i know you've got quite a few people that go up to vegas for claims they can still find an in-network doctor so that's really a great thing um they have improved clinical claims management program and we were really looking for that because we have added to kairos we'll we'll talk about that in a moment but we've added a clinical advocate uh she's a rn who is digging into the claim so we really wanted to focus on that claims management piece because overall that's how you keep those big dollars and get those prices down and then we have wanted them to increase their focus on the member health and biometrics and wellness and we wanted to focus on technology and innovation next slide please so what is changing the coverage is still going to be in state not a state so really not much the match we looked at all the doctors that everybody uses and we had a 99.7 match on doctors for what is currently happening so it's really going to be minimal disruption for people most of your doctors will be in network if michelle or darlene or eileen they run into people who go online and look and say hey my doctor's not network it's rare but it can happen we want them to reach out to us and we want to reach out to umr to try to work and get those doctors in network if we can just keep in mind some doctors won't network with blue cross either because they choose not to be in a network so that would be the exception but if they're already on blue cross and they find that they're not in network with with united healthcare then we want to work on that we're increasing our focus on our member health and engagement so that's what we're looking for they're going to get new id cards and we're also switching to teledoc so i believe michelle told me that you've used teledoc in the past so that really won't be a huge change for your employees so it's really a good thing with bluecare anywhere it's only online with teledoc it's online and on the phone so that's kind of an improvement for that there as well i'll stop for questions for a moment if anybody has questions um okay so we do have one you want to come up closer to a microphone please so yeah which one you can come up closer to the home if you want to yeah thank you so when we talked to kairos last year we asked about the preventative care services and asked about the biometric screenings which we had had previously with our as bait carrier and we were told yes that we have those and that was when they would come take our blood run all of our numbers and all that so this year when kairos came to do that all it was was a cholesterol check is that going to change with this new insurance are we going to be able to get that full health screen that we had previously or is it going to continue just to be a cholesterol check so the biometric screenings are not part of blue cross or umr it's a completely different company and the company that we used only did those cholesterol screenings i do know that we are changing to i believe it's called ehealth and they will have a different category of biometric screens i don't know off the top of my head which ones they offer but that's really not related to the uhc or blue cross um at all that's completely different if it's something that you're interested in of course reach out to your benefits person and they can reach out to us and let us know what it is exactly you're looking for i saw mr ross rose his head raised his hand okay was there another question yeah we do have one thank you have a very quick question the 99.7 provider match is that um nationwide statewide or in our unique little corner of the world because that's where we ran into a problem before with aetna and having worked having worked in healthcare before i know that united in this market if you're across the river in lofland they're very strong because of their health plan of nevada subsidiary but on this side of the river um i'm fortunate that my providers seem to be in network when i checked but there are providers who are not because they're they just don't have the presence here that some of the other carriers do so is that 99.7 percent match system-wide or does that include specifically our area so that's a great question that's kairos book of businesses so it does include your area it includes all of so all of arizona all the accounts that we have in arizona so we have looked at your area okay and i have a question you know maybe for site ambassadors are we getting um complaints about out of network uh like we used to get with aetna i remember mr ross was fielding a lot of those back in the day is that a problem now like it was i'm not sure if i totally i totally understand the question um you got complaints before um well back home as long as you back when we had as our back when etna was our servicer the board was slow to find out uh from the actual members of it that that basically like they'd go to the hospital the hospital was in network but all the treating physicians laboratory x-rays were not so i'm asking are we hearing those same kind of problems or is this better well i do know that i just had a procedure done i do know that the anesthesiologist was out of network but the insurance company has already sent me a check to pay the insurance portion of that okay it was the only the answers all this was the only one out of network from the warranty and everything that i have done so okay that's good and let me put it let me explain there's two things going on here first let me address the anesthesiologist those typically are out of network for everybody so if you remember i said if they were out of network of blue cross um they'd also probably be out with united healthcare and anesthesiologists typically do not get in network and they don't contract so that's that part the other question is the other thing i want to point out is asrs uses uhc so you'd already know if there was a lot of noise you'd probably hear people complaining so my question back to you is do you hear anyone already complaining about that so it's not really a big change for your area to use united healthcare because it's statewide um does that answer the question chris let me uh because the people in the room are saying they haven't heard lots of complaints uh let's check with uh michelle michelle have you heard complaints that's what i was raising my hand for i have not heard those kinds of complaints in fact the only person that's brought up anything who had a mammogram done outside of our clinic you know that we held had no issues with the radiologist or anything else she was pleasantly surprised okay and i see that dan thank you for that um let me ask darlene uh first darlene if we had complaints about not getting service no no okay can i also point out that it doesn't start till july 1st with united healthcare so you're not going to hear anything now anyway but um i think uh michelle didn't did you tell me you used united healthcare in the past as well well i did personally i've used united healthcare before without an issue i have not heard i've sent out several times the link so that people can check their providers and i have not had anyone report back that their providers were not on the list i've had the same i've had two people say that they already have checked to see if their provider is in network with unitedhealthcare and they are awesome thank you we have provided a pre-enrollment number to michelle and darlene to give out so that is allowing your employees to proactively go out and check for doctors so if you're already giving that out and you haven't heard anything i think you're going to be good to go so i really think i really have a lot of confidence that the match is really good and the coverage is going to be great i don't think it's something you're going to need to worry about dan stickle has his hand up and if i if some of the rest of you have your hand up and i can't get to you i'm only seeing part of you on my screen so be sure you speak up but right now dan did you have a question yes i did i my question is blue cross blue shield on the talking about the anesthesiologist that are on a network send us directly to check and let us negotiate with that out of network person my question now is will united america or united health do the same for us or not i believe they will i think it's going to be the same process okay how about once you met your deductible and your co-insurance i have noticed that i have no more co-fees or co-payments to my doctors and or payments for medication will that stay the same so that's a great question your plan designs are not changing so i was going to get to the next slide on that um sorry no that's i'm sorry i'm sorry i should have stopped after i went through those slides but um your plan design is staying the same your deductibles everything none of that is changing um it's still going to be the same plan design so if you had to pay your deductible before you're still going to have to pay it now so that's staying the same so if you want to go to the next slide i'll cover that now before the next couple questions and that might answer them so you know what's changing what's not changing so again plan designs and then if you have employees who want to make changes to change their plans they can go in and do that but if they're going to keep the same plan they don't have to touch the system and re-enroll so we've tried to make it as easy on the employees and your hr team as possible where they don't have to go in and touch everything and then we're still there the account managers are still there the dedicated number for kairos and then the 24 7 telehealth um if you want to go to the next slide i'll finish them and then we'll take the rest of questions um so one of the things i had talked about before was we wanted a good partner to help with the um the claims um and care management and what we've done is we have implemented what's called a data warehouse deer walk and we import the claims data right now from blue cross and then pretty soon from united healthcare so we can analyze it and we've also hired a clinical care provider and her name is denise and she's an rn and she's very knowledgeable about all these services that need to get done and she's pulling out information from gearwalk analyzing that data and she's looking at things like what are the cost drivers like who are the people in the hospitals more than 10 days who are the people driving these high cost claims that we looked at before what about are there any high-risk maternity cases or high-cost medications and what she's able to do is since she has her rn and are in she can say well um maybe this person's getting an infusion at the hospital maybe we can ask this person um to have that same infusion at home we send a care provider out there and do it and we might save the plan a hundred thousand dollars so she's already saved tons of money just by starting to dig into these claims um for different groups and things so we're really excited about that and that's a great way to have us save some money for you guys um sorry now i'll take questions that's basically if you want to flip to the last slide that's just my contact information but i'm sorry i'll continue taking questions now no so chris back a couple of slides when you were talking about and not that last slide but the one before that that one um so am i understanding so that ordinarily in the spring uh we do the packets and people have to sign up and do all of that kind of thing are we talking about nobody will have to do that unless they want to change their plan correct awesome i suspect that first of all i suspect that michelle and darlene are both doing a happy dance that they don't have to get all of those things ready to go and i also suspect that employees will appreciate the fact that they won't have to fill out those things again again again so unless there's some concern about that yeah kate our deductible year is january to january deductible year january january no our deductibles are a plan year so it'll all start over july 1st and then go through yeah through june okay so the question from kate if if those of you on google meets didn't hear was what is the claim year is it january to december and chris's response was no it is the school year so it's july through june correct okay any more questions comments okay thank you very much thanks chris well thank you i want to thank you guys for the time and again we're uh really excited to be working with you all and i thank you for your time and um please feel free to reach out to me with any other questions that you may have okay thank you thank you okay next on the agenda we have a presentation from vision care direct uh do we have someone from vcd uh let's see we had read i think i'm muted am i immuted now oh we can hear you yeah go there you go wonderful i don't need to be dominating your meeting i may be on there three times so i didn't bring a lot of twins with me to this meeting um my main laptop that i used to do these presentations just went down on me about five minutes before the call started the reason why i'm monitoring three times is i've got my desktop up and a backup laptop i'm gonna need some help in showing the presentation numbers um we break it out like colorado city or by colorado river and by bullhead city if you would like to see those numbers great we can project have have someone project them on the screen there i apologize for not being able to show my screen i'm on a backup laptop that's about eight years old at this point he even joins me i need to know which district he wants to start um okay which district do you want to start with well we can start with colorado that's the one you have up so if you want to put in presentation mode that's great what we do on this first page is we summarize what's been going on from the first of july 2010 until now and this just kind of gives you a momentary snapshot whoops we lost it again there we go we give you a momentary snapshot of where we are in the plan year and then later in subsequent slides we kind of show you how it compares to previous years as you can see the savings is significant at a 68.5 savings savings go to the next slide please um quick question was that meant to be an 11-year time span no it was not that might be a typhoon oh that is that's that is 11 year timestamp it is not um if you'll notice over the last several years we have been down in 2017-18 2018-19 and this year we're tracking back up again we can could explain last year with the covet pandemic this year we're back on track to at least um uh be above the 8 000 level but we're not nearly where we were 11 in 11 000 244 in 2015-16 or the 11 920.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i can't fathom why we would criminalize such small children and literally set them on a path in life that's going to lead them to failure that's going to lead them to incarceration that's going to lead them to homelessness that's going to lead them to substance use disorder but it goes back to the way we've been socialized to view black and brown humanity to believe that black children are less than to believe that brown children are not smart enough not capable enough not deserving enough and again we are not talking about individual behaviors we're talking about infrastructures that continue to perpetuate the way we think about our most marginalized most vulnerable children i also want to talk about the media and how the media portrays our children right when we hear words like thug and savage an animal and vermin and super predator right language matters and images matter especially when you're a child and if this is what you hear in the media on social media on television on the radio in newspapers in magazines then this is what you come to believe what's always remarkable to me in the media is the way our children are displayed whenever there is any type of quote-unquote criminal activity right the most um scary pictures you know that we can find of a child right is what's often shown in the media right and god forbid this child has been murdered by the police or anyone else bodies are literally shown laying in the street on social media we literally stream the sounds of gunfire on the nightly news when there's a prominent murder in our country right we trot out any and everything that this young child or young adult may have ever done wrong in their life to imply that they deserve what they got right conversely we often look at white children who have committed literally mass murder and we're told that they had a mental health challenge that they were bullied that they were unstable that they didn't get the support that they needed and the pictures that we see are their graduation pictures or their prom pictures right again it's the way we've been socialized to portray our children and the dichotomy between children of color and children who are white and all of this has a detrimental effect on the mental health of our children so if you look at poverty and mass incarceration and drug infiltration and tensions between communities and law enforcement and drug warfare and gang warfare and sexual trafficking and then you couple that with unconscious bias and adultification and criminalization all in our communities clearly that's going to affect our educational systems and it's going to weigh heavy on the mental health of our children and our black and brown children are dealing with levels of covert and overt racism and unconscious bias on levels that are so heavy and would be so crushing to adults and yet when we see behaviors that come out of these traumas we're not recognizing them as a health crisis we're punishing them for simply being children who are in pain i think this picture is so profound where it talks about worthlessness and grief and shame and depression and stress and being frustrated and feeling unloved and lonely and mad and anxiety and nervous and issues right one of the areas that i think is so important that we need to really think about with our youth is grief because grief comes in many forms it's not just the grief of of losing someone to death but the grief of losing a parent or a loved one to incarceration the grief of losing a parent or a loved one to substance use disorder or homelessness the grief of your dreams literally being dashed when you begin to realize how limited your opportunities are the grief of being treated less than human that weighs heavy on our black and brown children it would weigh heavy on any child but when you roll up systemic racism as part of the mix it becomes a burden that is almost unsustainable for our children and our children end up in prison in homelessness in substance use disorder or dead are you suicide statistics the surge is particularly strong among teen boys up 14 a year between 2015 and 2017.
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Soccer in Huacho is what helps the superintendent. He's going to speak with you now and explain what will be given here. He wants to thank you once again for your presence—to Estela, to me, and to everyone participating here, especially to you. He wants to speak to you again about the funds the government has given to the schools here.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above