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caitlin's in do we have a clicker microphone microphone here i go okay there i am again i would like to call the april 7th meeting of the chico board of education to order and um if we could have the flag salute please flags over there 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 and i'd like to announce that member dalby has joined us by zoom caitlin is the volume good for you everything sounds good here how am i on your end great i don't know what to do thank you good evening next is announcements does anyone have an announcement this evening we do have some announcements we have a student here from pleasant valley high school who'd like to celebrate one of the accomplishments at pleasant valley and however introduce yourself just a reminder to speakers to please leave your mask on the volume is picked up pretty easily on the microphone so welcome all right hi my name is naina shaelish and i'm a junior at pleasant valley and i would just like to briefly touch on the progress that we've made in the equity alliance and also the pv saga so for the equity alliance we've kind of just started with having conversations and although we're in our first steps i think that it's going to be a great way to empower students and i'm really really happy that we've actually implemented this into the school i know that there's tons of students that are really excited to see the changes that we're going to make also as for the pv saga it's also been a really great outlet for students to voice their opinions and express how they feel and we came up with our first issue a little bit ago and we're on our second issue and it's just one of those things that's going to be really great for our students because i think that just giving students a voice in general is what's really important to make our school more inclusive and help adults and everybody around campus really recognize what everyone's going through especially during times like covet so yeah i think that there's great things that are going to come from both of these things thank you thank you and i did email the board the link to see the saga they did a fabulous job for their first edition so congratulations yes we missed it for years it was i waited for it to be placed on my desk in a afternoon presentation of the saga great um okay any other announcements i have one more announcement we're really excited that this week this friday we're going to be hosting a chico pv football series in addition to the other sports that are currently competing we know people have been waiting a long time to see our student athletes out and about and we're we're already fielding quite a few inquiries about the the safety guidelines for this friday and we just want to remind the public that we do need to abide by the california department of public health and butte county public health guidelines which include a voucher system each participant including coaches will receive four vouchers and they'll need to come in family unit household um they'll be socially distanced in the bleachers and we're really excited about the opportunity for all our student athletes not just football as of right now and this will be described as discussed later we have multiple sports competing some seasons have already completed and we just appreciate the support from the from the community and from the school board yes we are getting really good coverage in local news media on the results of our competitions i really appreciate that any further announcements okay um our next uh item is item number three the consent calendar these are items that are routine in nature and can generally be moved in one motion but if anyone would like to pull an item from the consent calendar for further discussion please indicate now that also includes a member of the public if you would like to have a a consent calendar item pulled for further discussion now would be a time to indicate that so business services consent calendar members your pleasure dr kaiser i'd like to move the approval of the consent calendar is there a second second thank you mr tennis i'd like to get a quick point of clarification um would it be appropriate for me to recuse myself due to 3.1.4 approval of the well at nord yeah okay yeah you're good mind no further comments okay remember since this is our first vote of the night we'll be doing it by individual member indicating their vote uh member dalby let's go first with you caitlin dolby i thank you dr kaiser mr tennis tennis eye lando i robinson i passes five zero thank you members okay item number four is our discussion um action calendar and i'd like to begin excuse me begin with a couple of clarifications so that we're all on the same page as to how we are proceeding and why we got here our discussion um action calendar tonight represents an item for because the center of disease controls changed social distancing guidelines back on the 19th of march prior to february 3rd when the board last acted there had been many changes throughout the months preceding that board vote on february 3rd the board voted to remain with the am pm model that it had been in since october with some modifications through the end of the year but on march 19th the cdc changed guidelines for k-12 to three feet for student desks and six feet for teachers march 22nd in consultation with the superintendent i made a decision to place the item on the april 7th board meeting agenda because without placing it on an agenda board members could not discuss amongst themselves anything related to that latest decision so in order to protect us and honor the the brown act for public discussion and action only by an elected board i decided to put the item on the april 7th meeting agenda to discuss and have a presentation and answer questions an administration was asked at that time to do both student and parent surveys and collect other information as deemed necessary by the superintendent and other administration including site principals the cota surveyed teachers and provided results and comments to board members csea surveyed classified staff and provided results and comments to the board and community tonight there is a presentation by staff responding to the many questions raised by the board and others during this time the board should fully engage with the presenters because if a vote to reconsider is not made and passed after public input there will be no further board discussion and the matter will remain settled for this school year the process for reconsideration or reconsidering a previous decision at a later date past that meeting which was february 3rd requires a unique steps or requires unique steps because this decisions once fully discussed and decided are meant to be final and we use um in our proceedings the rosenberg's rules of order only a member on the prevailing side of the february 3rd vote may make a motion to suspend the rules and consider a reconsideration motion it must receive a second and a two-thirds majority vote if the motion to suspend passes then the item is back on the floor and any member may make a motion as though it were before the body for the first time any member yes a point of clarification yes sir um so am i given that i was on the nose i think i was on the nose side of that um am i able to make a motion to reconsider the february 3rd decision uh if you made a motion to reconsider according to our guidelines you would be declared out of order if a motion to reconsider is made and on the floor you may second it but you may not make the motion to reconsider am i allowed to make comments during any point in this on this item if if there's not a motion made will i have any opportunity to speak on this matter our opportunity for comment will be during the presentation if a motion to reconsider is not successfully passed there is no discussion it's on page six of our rules that i did forward to you um but that that would be the case discussion has to be after a successful motion to put something on the floor and if that has not occurred there is no discussion but you may you may question whoops any of the things brought before us tonight during the presentation it's all open for further class clarification so that you have a full scope understanding of exactly what we're facing in uh getting us to the end of the school year that's the purpose of the presentation so ask away thank you you're welcome okay members um the um the item will now be turned over to jay marchand assistant superintendent educational services mr marchant thank you president robinson as mr robinson stated before we wanted to go over our presentation with the new facts that came forward with the new cdc cdc guidelines and the california public department of health guidelines and we will be giving that presentation tonight i just want to make sure everybody understands that we are giving basically considerations not pros or con but considerations for the board to think about tonight and if you have any questions on those considerations that we'll be moving forward please ask them and myself or one of my directors some will respond to the questions okay all right again on march 19th the cdc and then the college department of public health changed the language we changed it from four foot to three foot to make the consideration the general consideration says three foot distance distancing sorry go back one three foot distancing for students and and then staff desks at least six feet away um from the students maintaining a minimum of three feet between student chairs is strongly recommended general considerations that we're going to be going over tonight i'll be going over some of the general considerations and then mr sullivan the director of elementary will be going over the elementary considerations and mr john shepard the director of secondary will be going over the secondary considerations to think about general considerations for all settings three-foot distancing for all students six-foot distancing for all adults transportation adjusting routes in a number and a number of drivers other things to consider is nutrition services lunch delivery and supervision because right now um we do not have students out for lunch and so we would need to consider what that would look like custodial cleaning cycles revert to pre-coded one-time daily schedule right now where our custodians go and the elementary's in between the am and pm and then after school programs cards need one month to start so what cards asked us it said they would need to go out and recruit if we changed our child care supervision or after school programs to after school right now they do it during the school they would need to do recruiting they believe that they would need about a month to hire the the proper people for that other things increase of in-person instruction time we've gone that would change from am pm to full day social emotional support would be more available all day for students versus am pm scheduling of students is another consideration to think about and that'll be part of the elementary and secondary's presentation student academic supports tutorials extended day et cetera to address learning loss and credit recovery and potentially need to hire additional staff including paraprofessional staffs yes mr tennis um talk about um paraprofessional staff what is what is that that would be more on the classified side we probably most likely would have to hire more supervision campus supervisors yard duty aides to help us with supervision to make sure everybody's following the guidelines possible more aids for the classrooms right now they're being pulled for workday supervision and other type of programs and so we would need to take a look at what we would need to add to make sure that we can go back full time i see that social emotional support is one of the goals has there been discussion about hiring additional counseling staff yes on our last board meeting when we went over the escrow dollars the federal dollars of state dollars the board approved for us to add another half-time counselor on every elementary school we've also have grant money to hire another half-time wellness counselor on every high school and we have some more consideration in the budget um for you guys to look at tonight about adding more counseling supports at the secondary level so a half time would be theoretically ones one one counselor at every elementary right now they have a half time so about secondary um did you say secondary or high school um secondary right now every um junior high in high school have the regular counseling which goes to the 400 to one but we started about a year year and a half two years ago wellness counselors we added a half time for every first we started with the high schools then we now last year we added a half time for every junior high now we're going to add so everybody can have a full time on their campus so be one person it wouldn't be one person for wellness they can develop wellness centers thank you all right mr marchand i'm going to check it with board member dolby to make sure that she's able to hear the presentation and that that she has her volume on so we can hear her if she wants to jump in will that work for you member dolby yeah thank you thank you um yeah all right at this time i'm going to ask mr sullivan um to come up to the mic and go over elementary considerations good evening uh so some of the considerations are pretty elementary focused that we've been talking about if the board were to choose to come back full time this year if every student came back full time we really wouldn't have to change any classes there'd be very minimal change minimal disruption if we kind of the second bullet if we talk about having options for families to stay online or kind of go with zoom-based options or some of those kinds of things that's where some changes and student changes would have to happen to accommodate that and it it sounds simple but it's a little complex i'll give you one example of what that may look like if you think of a teacher right now that has a morning in person class an afternoon zoom class so maybe they have 15 students in the morning and 10 students on zoom with them in the afternoon if all 10 of those zoom students wanted to stay on zoom we would have to take those 15 students potentially that are with that teacher in person and find another teacher for them to match up with or vice versa we would have to take those 10 zoom based students and find another option with zoom or oak bridge for those 10 to stay in that in that um in the online situation for them also so questions yes please oh cathy you want dr kaiser you want to go ahead thank you we had a uh one estimate back in february but then i saw some figures today or yesterday so what is our estimate about the number of students at each level elementary and secondary that would have to undergo a change in class and or teacher we asked the principals to actually call and touch base either they did or staff did and kind of walk through the possibilities because it's really a hard there's a lot of what-if questions yeah so they tried to walk through kind of the what-if possibilities with families so they called almost a thousand folks between all the 12 elementary schools and there were about a hundred answers that were very definitive like we do not want to come back we've got family health reasons etc etc they were very desiring to stay online the other about another 300 and some were non-responsive or didn't kind of connect with them or indicated they would rather not not real definitively but pretty neutral or not the other ones were interested in coming back so about half were interested so to answer a question kathy at least a hundred would get changed and potentially up to a 485 which was kind of the number that we didn't hear back from or were not wanting to change and and it might even kind of um this is that what if kind of thing with it also so it might even go a little bit more than that depending on how many other students were in that class if we had to change a teacher to a zoom-based class also and that is the same logic for the secondary i thought they had i think secondary is a little different situation i think they're more kind of you know i'll let mr shepard share that though yeah thank you so secondary is a little different in that if we locked people into the schedule they're in now right or not the schedule the delivery method they're in now so if they're online they'd stay online if they're in person they would stay in person if we lock them in we have approximately sections that are 35 students or higher and that's significant in that at three foot spacing when those two when the a and the b students come together into one section that's higher than 35 there's a potential for those for there to be too many students in some of the classrooms the average classrooms that we have in the district so those students would then need to be rescheduled and there's a potential for them to be rescheduled in six periods uh thanks okay i have a couple of questions about the elementary slide in mind um so if all students return in person no class changes will be necessary correct um this entails combining the pm groups in the am groups right are we in any danger of maxing out class sizes when we do that their class sizes would be bigger certainly but we could fit within the distance and we've i've gone around to talk to all the principals we've actually taken a couple classes and measured with a three foot distancing in place and either there's a couple classes where they may have a trouble fitting and we talked about if that were to come to pass we would have to maybe add hire another teacher for that site because they have another classroom but there's like i think two classes that we've had some questions about whether they could all fit right now i'm sorry one point of privilege real fast can is anyway for the audio folks i'm getting an echo here and it's a little hard to hear what the speakers are saying sorry maybe am i too close that might actually might be a little better thank you um my concern is that um i i have heard from some uh teachers and i'm sure you have too that uh combining two these two separate groups and the pm cohorts they might have very different uh skill levels or personalities as a class is going to be a lot of it's going to be effectively a fourth first day of school in a lot of ways and then having to establish a classroom culture with uh in blending these two groups is going to take away a lot of otherwise of times that would otherwise otherwise be used for instruction have you heard these concerns and is it something that you're at all worried about i i i've heard them i think anytime you have a significant class change like what you're referencing it is a restart and it is kind of a re-um connection of the students in that class and kind of a re-establishment of all those kinds of things and so if we have 485 students who or families who have who have said they would like to stay online then it's unlikely there won't really be any be no class changes right because the only way we get the no class changes if everyone comes back correct okay so mr lando an example of would that be let's just say there's three third grade classes on one site all three of them have students in am in person let's say 15 15 and 15.
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we have lynn hammond's executive director to testify thank you senator kidani vice chair kim members of the committee it's my honor today to testify in support of david lokiwani han as a continuing member of the hawaii teacher standards board she has served as a faithful member and is currently the chair of our legislative committee and the htsb strongly supports her nomination thank you thank you for your testimony lynn um we have david on the line with us and we did send them pre all of the uh nominees send them questions to answer and i would like to um note that we have had we have received responses so david and i had um some follow-up questions that i would like to ask you to respond to um in your response to question two you noted that you provide input from the perspective of neighbor island rural charter schools and hawaiian language programs can you further elaborate on why you feel that perspective helps htsb in carrying out its statutory responsibility in promoting high teacher standards thank you senator kitani you know in the past we've we've noticed a lot of oahu centric initiatives being pushed out and um our our neighbor island teachers our communities kind of left behind i've seen it with hsta in part i've seen it with other organizations and i and i really think that hdsb being proactive to encompass all of the teachers in whatever communities they live in um really pushing to have more voice from rural communities more boys from kaiopouni schools and and now even as a charter school teacher more voice from the charter school community um i think it's important that we get these different perspectives we've done it with hsta you know and we continue to do that with each sta and and i see it being a real plus for htsp to have different perspectives because we've got all the different schools represented yeah all the teacher prep programs represented in one shape or another and and i just feel that moloka'i as being a rural community with a charter school without one language school you get all of that in just this single body so i'm hoping i'm hoping that i make a make an impact on our on our board thank you for that comment devlin i think i totally agree with you about oauth centric and how we have to make sure that our smaller communities on the neighbor islands are well represented and i wanted to note that you are a reappointment and i believe that miss hammonds feels that you have done a terrific job to represent the board and this banner my other question would be do you have any proposals that you would like to see hawaii teacher standards boards take up to help increase available avenues for teacher prep preparation and pathways i think one of the things that i brought to the board last year was growing our own trying to help trying to help moms like myself you know who might be interested in a career um go to education you know as a parent where we are our children's first teachers yeah and if we can set that passion for the parents to become teachers what better way to share your life with your child i think that was one of the best ideas best moves that i ever made um getting into education in my later life i really i really one of the initiatives that we talked about was was growing our own and i think that the way that the programs are set now with colgan 19 forcing everybody to go distance um there's more of a there's more of an opportunity for people from rural communities that don't have a college or even a university on their on their island you know molokai has our maui community college extension we don't really have a teacher program here but because of distance learning people like myself have gone through a teacher prep program and we were able to graduate and stay at home and raise our families and and become teachers so i really want to do that for other makua who have that desire to become either a teacher or you know a counselor any type of education um i i want to really push that this year i think that's a really good avenue to to follow to look at thank you devlin and we also have a number of uh written testimonies in support of this candidate um i'd also like to uh welcome senator favela who has joined us virtually members are there any questions for our nominee senator campreece aloha javelin thank you very much for continuing to serve so you've been on the board for how long now i believe it's three years three years and in that three years what what have you believe you've accomplished other than the growing your own that you talked about one of one of the things that i when i first joined it was an item on our agenda was the licensure for kaya pudi teachers in the past you had to have been either a graduate of kabul and now a program in manoa that certified you as a hawaiian language um teacher a kai kuni teacher and there were many of us who had not had that opportunity to go to school and graduate from you know either of these programs and so we felt that it was imperative that we allow um our kupuna that have language background our mana male that have language background and teachers like myself who have been working in kaya puny going on 20 years to become licensed in hawaii and so from the get-go from that first meeting that i attended um we've been pushing for that and i'm happy to say that it's come to fruition we actually have a licensure for kaya puni for kaiolo and and we continue to offer these programs to help other kumu who do not who did not graduate from you know [Music] to get licensed to get certified so we can be highly qualified in our field i think that was one of the the first things that i worked on and i think the thing that i'm most proud of is that we got to push that through so do you feel that the boy has been effective in in i know you pointed out a lot of the concerns so do you feel the board is effective in addressing these issues we have really strong discussions um in our meetings our in our community meetings you know and lynn has been really good about providing information both upfront and follow-up um i think so i think our board we work well together there's a mutual respect amongst all of our board members some people have more experience in certain areas and we kind of you know navigate to them to kind of lead us through this um nobody's perfect we all ask questions i mean i'm a big question ask her i'm always confused about stuff so i have to ask clarifying questions on a lot of the items that we have but the people that present to us and and they're all they're always willing to like you know follow up with us give us additional information and i think that's important because if you don't know how can you make a decision right you got to know what's happening you got to have as much information as possible in order to to make a decision and and we're talking about people's livelihoods here we're talking about people's jobs um i think it's important for us to be as stringent as possible but also to see there's some room for us to engage others and to strengthen the programs that we have and even like with kovit you know to find innovative ways to improve those programs very good thank you very much i think it's important i think i encourage you to continue to ask questions i certainly ask a lot of questions and yes you cannot make a decision unless you have that information but once all the questions have been answered i just hope that you know action takes place and things get done and that was you know sort of my question as to how effective the board and after having all these lively discussions if there is action that takes place so i encourage you to continue to do that and continue to work towards fulfilling some of these goals that you have so thank you again for willing to be willing to serve thank you members for their questions if not devlin i forgot to offer you to make an opening statement if you have a closing statement you'd like to make you can offer it at this time for joining us our next gm 789 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the white teachers standards board gubernatorial nominee glenn miyasato for a term to expire 6 30 2022 glenn are you with us yes senator thank you thank you would you like to make an opening statement glenn i'm just i'm grateful and also very humbled to have been nominated for this position i hope since i'm not i would be a novice if appointed to this position i hope that i will be able to contribute and collaborate with the other members for the good of our team thank you thank you um to testify then hammonds executive director teacher standards boards and then please thank you senator kidani and members of the committee again i don't know mr miyasanto personally but i've read very glowing testimony about him on your hearing site and it looks like he would be a valuable member for the standards board and sounds like he's ready to work so this htsp is in support of his nomination thank you thank you glenn thank you for your response to the questionnaire that we have sent i have some additional questions um in your response to question two you noted that providing targeted professional development is an integral part of your work as a school administrator how do you plan on addressing professional development for teachers through through htsb and what specific areas of professional development would you like to see them employ to support teachers senator thank you um i've come to learn over you know my long years of working in schools a variety of schools that my first job is to to listen to the teachers and to listen to what their needs are because i've come to see a great variety of needs amongst the different schools that i've had the privilege of working with i really did appreciate hearing the words of the the previous nominee because as you see from my thing i i did spend years teaching on molokai as a teacher as a young teacher and also as an administrator so um the those i see a great variety of needs that do come up and i think that listening to the teachers and hearing what they feel their needs are is the first step in determining how we can support them with professional development my teachers here at fern elementary school have been great i mean you know especially during this time this very unusual 13 months that have passed here they've been very clear about what they need what kind of professional development they need and especially for uh for our community here in kalihi at this current time i think listening to the needs of the community and the teachers gives us the starting point for the professional development that we might offer them supporting women thank you glenn i will tell you that i went to fern elementary school for all right two years i won't tell you when i can tell you when now i'm gonna i'm gonna mute senator kim any questions for mr miyazato i i do have one more question glenn um how how can you use your experiences um with various schools and uh to develop effective policies for the different needs for teacher preparation and pathway programs i think that um it's very important i i i'm there's a lot of things i think i'm not good at but one of the things i i feel like um i have experience with is sometimes thinking out of the box for solutions for our teachers and for our students and for the various kinds of schools and the different needs of the schools an example of that would be like for even here at fern um as well as i did previously at amu finding good substitute teachers was a big issue at both at this school and previous school and i think one of the ways that we we thought out of the box was we asked permission from the superintendent if we could perhaps train our own substitute teachers amongst the people that we have already as as part-time workers or casual hires in our school because they would already be there and and they would and they have the skills for example to either speak hawaiian and when i was at or here at kalihi they understand our children because they're residents of the community and and i really thank superintendent for allowing us that out of the box suggestions so for three years i've been doing that to training our own substitutes for our own school and the results have been amazing i mean these people are reliable they may not have the college degree or the teaching degree but they have proven to us to be very very excellent substitute teachers who care about our kids so i hope to use that kind of out of the box thinking and innovation to try to help meet the needs of our teachers as well as our schools thank you glenn that's interesting very similar to the grow our own uh thoughts that davilan had we also have a number of written testimonies in support members further questions thank you glenn our third gm790 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the hawaii teachers standards board gubernatorial nominee katina suarez for a term to expire 6 30 20 22.
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that one um is is a reaction of course to copen and that the you know the state did not feel that you can conduct a reasonable or adequate teacher evaluation for the current school year given everything that's occurred so it's a one-year reprieve from doing an evaluation because of the circumstances senate bill 1433 that is one that you probably have heard about it's to um fund that portion of the year that the district might have spent in virtual learning and count its time the same as it would be if it were in person it's it's got an emergency clause which would obviously make it effective at the end of this year so that you could take advantage of that additional five percent funding uh we'll let you know as it progresses i'm not terribly optimistic about that one because it does not have support from the governor's office and the cost is in excess of 200 billion dollars so that's just where that one is and i know you would probably be interested in that one especially the next one senate bill 1683 is in appropriations uh it enhances open enrollment it establishes a 10 million dollar fund for parents to apply for transportation assistance at the state level so it is another incentive another opportunity for parents in school choice not not surprising given the history of the legislature and then i thought we would cover the next slide which is some budget highlights the governor's budget has in it a 500 grant for free and reduced lunch to mitigate severe learning loss so you you find that not only are all of the covet funds kind of push our our ori into that direction which is free and reduced lunge but the governor is um is pushing for some of his funding uh i'm sure some of it is is grant or in origin federal in origin but it's to mitigate that severe learning law so there's lots and different funding sources out there that you will find including covet one two and three and now the governor's budget and so forth so all of that is focused on it seems primarily focused on free and reduced lunch the next one is the senate uh school facilities board receives 119 million for the year to allocate the districts and obviously we hope that we're a part of getting some of that money the reduction was restoration of capital you may remember that was previously reduced is now being restored for next year and that's the budget we presented to you was the restoration version that's 68 million dollars that the state will now bring back into the funding picture to adequately well actually to fully fund the original formula for capital outlay and there is a huge rollover 900 million dollars worth at the state level of funding back during the recession time that was not allocated to districts until the following fiscal year so that rollover is a debt that they have created by basically paying you the year following which you've earned it so they're going to restore that in pieces and the first down payment in his budget is 30 million dollars there's also a miscellaneous list 10 or so different things that he's proposing to spend money on to complete the 250 million dollar allocation and then inflation and enrollment growth and miscellaneous is 105.
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so the idea for tonight here's the welcome is to explain go to the next slide if you don't mind stalker thank you so tonight we're gonna give a quick overview of the four by four block schedule that we've chosen for the 2021 school year the 21 22 school year excuse me you'll be able to we're going to go through some frequently asked questions if you have other questions of course you can always ask those also you can see in the description box below this video there's a link to the department head videos they're going to explain some more give us more information about the classes they currently offer there's also a link to the program of studies gives you more information about all the classes that are offered to the high school they're also going to be links to this in the chat as well in the last some of the last slides this presentation are going to give you some more information about other opportunities electives and clubs and sports and things of that nature and you know you'll also see the registration timeline that's going to let you lay out what's going to be expected of you in terms of getting your classes selected for the fall all right so this is a little bit about why we've actually decided to go with the four by four block schedule so with still so much uncertainty about covid and vaccinations and what's really going to happen next year we wanted to cut down on the number of transitions in the cohort students are going to be connected with so the 4x4 block schedule made sense in that regard and also we have to start planning for next year for the 21-22 school year now so that it necessitated us deciding on what a schedule would be so with the superintendent's encouragement we decided this is what was going to be best for our students and our teachers our community so with next year next winter winter of we'll have another discussion about what the schedule will be for the following year and beyond that so maybe that will stick with the 4x4 block as it is we may make some alterations to it or we may decide to go back to the seven drop one schedule that we've had for quite a while now when we do that we'll get feedback from students families teachers and then once we get all that feedback then we'll make what we believe is a best decision based on all that information so right now i'm going to actually hand it over to i believe to this camera to talk to you about the 4x4 block schedule take care so you'll have four classes each semester so if you look at the top of the table you'll see block and then semester one semester two and you go down through a b c d and so each of those numbers represents a different class and sometimes classes will meet for two semesters but not very many so that's that's the sort of basic idea next slide so this is what the bell schedule looks like and if you all remember we are flipping schedules so you're starting a little bit later next year um then the middle school so a block will start in the morning at 905 and run to 10 25 b block will be 10 30 to 11 50 and then c block as you can see here has three pieces to it and though and that includes two lunches okay so you'll either get first second or third sorry three lunches first second or third lunch and then d block is the last class we've added something called the d plus block which is a little additional time in that last period class to check in with your teacher or your teachers find out what you'll need to bring home for the evening for work email your teachers check your grades you know write a note to your guidance counselor all of those things that you might need to do before the end of the school day so here's the a sample schedule uh for nine incoming ninth grade students semester one you might have english then science math and an elective or health and an elective health is one quarter and an elective is one quarter right so and then you might have math the semester two you might start with world language social studies and then have two electives i'm going to turn it over now to miss bermacki might come up about the 4x4 block and one of those questions for those of you who are involved in music ensembles which will include dance next year the question is you know how does that fit into the schedule so we actually have a sample schedule that we'll be showing you but basically music is going to alternate and run every other day and then it will it will alternate with one of the other courses that you've selected so it might alternate with an english class or a social studies class or in some cases an elective depending on what other students enroll in who are taking music and so miss camera alluded to this but how will electives be offered so most electives will run as quarter classes so on the schedule that you just saw you saw elective that's actually two electives because you can take an elective each quarter so this four by four block schedule if you think of it as having five core academics it actually gives you three additional blocks which could actually be six additional electives that students would take uh at the high school for many years especially if you have older brothers or sisters who attended the high school we used to have directed studies built into the day and that was primarily because students were taking all five of their core academic classes plus their electives in one day and so we used to have directed studies but in a four by four block we are actually not going to have directed studies um but as you get into the upper grades you'll have opportunities to do other kinds of of courses and independent studies um so for students that come to the high school that would typically take academic skills again that's something that's been offered for many years we are again offering academic skills but it's really important when you have your transition meeting those of you with ieps that you discuss with your team um you know what makes sense for you with regards to academic skills some students in a 4x4 block find that because they're only taking two or three core academic classes at a time that they would rather fill all of those those extra blocks with electives but you and your families and your team will make the best choice for you will some courses run year long in a four by four block yes that's actually a benefit of the four by four and that you can actually double the amount of instruction in some areas so there are going to be some courses like algebra one topics in math bc calculus that a lot of juniors and seniors take or ap physics those classes will run all year um and actually integrated one that's a course that's going to run in the fall and then and then one extra uh quarter in this in the spring and then you'll have another elective uh what about doubling up so for some students they actually want to stay connected to to say world language or some students would really want to have math all year long and want to double up in math so if that's something you would rather do than take an elective you are going to be permitted to indicate that you would like to double up on a core academic subject area and there's a space to do that when you register and we will do our best to give students those double academics if that's something that you're interested in doing principal sadiq did a nice job addressing that this schedule this 4x4 is happening next year as a result of covid and then for the following year we're going to seek community student and staff input to determine what happens in the 2223 school year and then for those of you that are interested in just learning more about the block schedule in general locally we have northampton high school is also in a 4x4 block and in massachusetts a school that actually put a lot of great information online is cambridge ridge and latin and we've included that link in this powerpoint if you just have general questions or want to learn more about the 4x4 block so i'm going to turn it over to miss camera again who's going to go through some sample 9th grade schedules with you hello again so again we're back to a few sample schedules so there's a chance you might choose to take a year-long math course and if that's the case you can take a look that the math your math class would show up in first and second semester and then first semester you would have math science social studies and then again look down below health and elective as split quarters mr mackey explained this really well second semester again you would have that math class again and then a world language english and then two electives as split quarters this yeah that's good so um this is an example of a schedule with music ensemble that shares a core academic so again musical music ensemble also could include dance as ms gramaci said so again in the first semester you would have core academ so you'd have three core academics and then at the end the fourth class of the day the deep period you'd have health and elective in split quarters and then again in second semester you would have um a core elective that alternates again every other day with whatever that music ensemble or dance is and two core electives so b and c periods and two sorry core academics and then an elective in the fourth period which be split quarters if you are someone that chooses to take academic skills you you have would have the option to take academic skills it could be one semester it could be for the whole year and so again this is how that schedule would look first semester four periods english science academic skills and math second semester world language social studies academic skills and health and elective you could choose to do academic skills for just one semester which would give you more elective opportunities so there are other opportunities at amherst regional high school so we've got something called an alternative learning program an alternative learning program has a lot of different options within it you could do community service um you could do a teaching assistant and you can do an independent study so um you'll need to speak with your guidance counselor about all of those options but for example some people will as they get a little bit older decide that they really want to study psychology and they'll do an independent study on that or they might want to help a lab teacher in chemistry be a teaching assistant set up labs or do some community service in the library so that there are lots of different opportunities there we will also have advisories and you're familiar with advisors from the middle school these are just a little bit different they don't meet quite as often and many of our advisories will be led by students and that will include different clubs right so let's say you're a part of the environmental action club and you're going to need an advisory on planting trees all around campus so that would be an example of that we have about 45 different team sports which is just excellent so you'll have a lot of choice and a lot of opportunity there and over 40 clubs um everything from dungeons and dragons and chess to the environmental action club to there's a ton and we'll have a club fair so you'll get the opportunity to hear about all of those different clubs and you can join multiple clubs so if you've got really broad interests you'll have the opportunity to join those clubs we have five different instrumental ensembles and three different choral ensembles so here's our timeline our timeline is that you'll see april 8th that's right now this is our opening curriculum night and then early next week you all are going to meet with guidance counselors from the high school they're going to speak with you in your advisory and they're going to help you sort of sort through all of this information there's a lot to digest here and we understand that which is one of the reasons we made these videos which you'll be able to watch shortly um actually i i see this april 14th to 16th we changed that my apologies those elective videos are embedded in the videos in the slideshow that you'll see tonight so that's not a separate event that's part of this um and then april 13 to the 21st you'll be having parent-teacher conferences to help figure out what the best courses to sign up for and to really think about sort of what you want your four years to look like and so you'll need to sort of project a little bit into the future and do a little bit of planning because you may decide that you want to take additional sciences or you may decide that you want to do more than one language or multiple ensembles and so it's a little bit tricky so you'll need to do some planning with your team and so those conferences will be from april 13th to may 21st um and then the the conferences themselves will end on the 21st of may and starting the 27th of may through the 31st you'll get what's called a course verification um which is an opportunity for parents to take a look at what you've signed up for and then review the course requests and then sign off on that so that's the registration timeline so we are really excited to welcome you all um it's it's gonna be a great first year and i look forward to meeting you all in person so what i'd like to do now is to put all of us back on the screen and give you an opportunity to ask us questions all right so i'm going to highlight a few great questions that i saw come in over while people were giving their presentation and we'll just try to get to them in order as much as we can so this is a question about taking required courses during the summer for example health great question so we are in the process of developing our summer school program and our hope is right after your spring break we should have a catalog available so um so just stay tuned we will have that information very soon and our hope is to offer at least pe or health if not both this summer so this next question is what is academic skills that's a great question so um that's a course that's in our special education department so if you have an iep that's a course that is uh taught by a lot of our special education teachers and we call them liaisons often and it's really it's really learning about academic skills organization time management and many of the skills that students need in high school in order to be successful all right this next question is about year-long courses if you take language or math both semesters are you credited with two years and is the instruction double paced right so if the instruction is not double paced but you would get four credits for each of the languages you took so you'll get four credits if you take spanish one in the fall you'd get four credits for that class and then you took spanish two in the spring you'd get another four credits for that class and the pace for each of the classes would be the same whether you took just one of those classes or you decided to double up because you wouldn't take them at the same time they'd be up into semesters i think the exception to that and maybe miss camera or mr mackey you think or mr sneak you can correct me would be if someone is taking a class that is designed to be a year-long course or a three-quarter course um that is intended to be paced differently then of course that's just one semester right so off the top of my head like a if you took a year-long class like algebra one if that is a year-long class you wouldn't then also be able to take algebra two the same year and if you took a three so it really only works with semester-long classes awesome okay so next question is from iris about what kinds of electives does ninth grade have so the good news is you'll get the opportunity to see videos from teachers who teach those elective courses so there are lots of different engineering courses computer science courses lots of different art courses as well as music ensemble music production there's a lot of options and so you'll have the opportunity to to be introduced to those in the videos again that are linked just below this youtube stream awesome so the next question is for students who are not currently at arms how can they meet with counselors before beginning at the high school so that's a great question and this is the time of year where students from lots of different schools begin to enroll in the high school if they live in the district so on our website is a link to our registrar's office and so the first step in that process is to actually register for the high school for ninth grade and then once you register you will get all of the info i mean now you can preview the information with the program of studies but you will actually get registration materials to select your courses in many cases you might need to take a placement test depending on the curriculum that you had this current year in a different school and those are set up with our department heads mostly in language and math and then at that time you will then be given an appointment with a guidance counselor to discuss more so i would say everything begins with registration at the um with the with our registrar and her name is michaela torre i'm also just saying that a few folks for some reason the link wasn't working earlier so they missed the beginning part of our presentation so i just want to let everyone know that this is a going to be recorded as soon as this is we're done and we're no longer live you'll be able to go back and watch everything you missed so don't panic this is not this is not a one-time shot you have an opportunity to go back and watch the beginning and right now we're just discussing what we went over in the presentation which is really just about the schedule and overview so you'll have lots of opportunities to catch up on whatever was missed um i want to get to the next one let's see here here we go is there a specific date for when you can start signing up for classes once you've had your your conferences so once the guidance counselors come down to advisories and once you've talked to adults on your team you know you can you can register then it is a digital registration so it's in powerschool so that will be open next week um and but again i would encourage you to wait until you've spoken with um teachers from your team as well as guidance counselors awesome so next question is what classes are required for ninth graders and what electives are available that's a really big question and i appreciate it i really like it we have what's known as the program of studies and the program of studies is also linked below this if you look you can click on that and go into ninth grade and you'll scroll through all of the required courses and all of the available elective courses it's a google site so you'll need to go up to the top and click on the bar on the right hand side and then you'll see that i could spout them out all right now but it would take a long time so take a look at that sometime um in the next few days all right next question i want to make sure i'm not missing any as i'm scrolling through here um our next question is about does sports do sports cover physical education as a class i'm guessing that means like maybe either what's included in physical education or if you play a sport do you also have to do pa i'm not quite sure maybe miami can fill us in and what she means by that question uh if that is the question if sports can take the place of the pe class the answer right now is no it can't sports uh pe is an elective we do a pe 10 is a requirement graduation requirement and then there are several other pe electives students can choose so if you if pe is not your you know one of your favorite classes you would only really have to take one semester or actually one quarter of it in the block system if you do go back to the seven drop one it'll be a semester-long class awesome so here's a question about honors options for all subjects uh yes they're just about all the subjects there are honors level classes excuse me in the program of studies is really explained pretty clearly there are some classes like all the english classes are mixed honors and college prep most of the world language classes are also mixed honors in college prep then there are separate classes for all the science classes are divided between college prep and honors when you get into some of the upper level social studies classes they are combined but in their first three years of social studies they are split between honors and college prep the electives there's no honors option in the electives just the core classes so here's a question about availability of courses do popular classes typically fill up fast so that that's a great question so one thing to keep in mind is that the scheduling process is not first come first serve so everyone will have until a particular date to be able to put their course requests in and then once we have all the course requests then we try to create as many sections for as many students who elected those courses what happens in some areas are in some of the elective courses for example there yes there are only so many sections so the way that's done is it starts with seniors so seniors have priority then juniors then you know 10th and 9th however for example in art um there are three at least three different art classes that are just for ninth graders so you're the only ones who can take them and they cover you know they're just fantastic classes so we work really hard to make sure that ninth graders really have access but it's very important and i'm glad charlotte asked this question it's really important that you put a lot of alternate choices down okay it's definitely important to put you know your first choice but if you have a lot of alternates you have a great chance as a ninth grader to get the courses that you've actually asked for so thanks for a great question so there's a question about the budget cuts and how they are affecting the availability of electives and dance art et cetera so actually the budget cuts this year aren't really affecting our electives the way that we originally thought they might so we're able to there's a lot of details involved but we were basically able to shift some funds and not have to lose any of our elected classes this year awesome so there's a question about how big typical classes are which i think is a great question as well that is a good question and you know there's a huge range it depends so let's say ap computer science is often a much smaller class than um a popular um engineering class which might be you know go all the way up to 25 students so the range i would say average range is somewhere between 18 and 23 students per class but again there are some smaller classes something like music production is dependent upon the number of computers that they have for use so those classes are a little bit smaller great um so there's no other questions that i'm going to give it a few more seconds here they take a little while to migrate their way over from youtube to where we are conducting this live stream so we'll just give them another little bit of time to get here but no questions at the moment and while we're waiting for some questions again i just want to thank everybody for taking the time of your busy schedule to be with us tonight and if you want to spread the word if people did come in late or if you know some people who may have missed it um like miss stocker said there will be a this will be available on our on the arps youtube channel for you to watch at your convenience if you miss something you want to go back it'll definitely be there for you um there's another question from eamon here which says what time do clubs start and also what time do advisories meet during the school day so clubs will start after school and generally they'll start at three o'clock if actually since the schedule is changing a little bit for next year they will start right after school gets out and we're still working out the schedule for advisory so we had to put advisory on pause this year while we're in the three by three block schedule we're still and we before this we had a special advisory schedule because unlike the middle school advisory does not happen every day at the high school it's generally it hadn't passed been a once every other week meeting and next year one of the plans is to meet either every once a week or once every other week and once we work out those details we'll have a much better idea of when it will happen but when we do send out information over the summer about you know all important information that you'll need to know going into the 21 22 school year you'll definitely see what the advisory schedule will be there's a related question here about um sports starts times with the new schedule hey and that's something else we're also trying to work out because we're also trying to coordinate with other schools about game times and what the practice now will also influence when the practice times are so they're still you know we're trying to get as many things ironed out as we can but there are still a lot of details that we are working on great and then i also see a quick question from helene about the time that school day ends i know we went over this but it's probably good to remember folks but the actual start and end time of the day will be next year right so the last class we'll get out it's 3 15 and then we have the last 15 minutes is the d plus time when students can have the opportunity to meet with their teachers to um figure out what their homework is for the day to ask any questions that were unanswered during the day then at 3 30 students will be going off to either clubs or practices or heading home awesome and then there was a question a little bit earlier that i accidentally skipped over apologies maria she is wondering um the 80-minute block of time and sort of concerns around attention spans for high school students i love that question and it's something i like to think about as a teacher i've taught at amherst high for 21 years before taking this role it allows us an opportunity to do really interesting projects and so our there's a lot of project-based learning um i agree with you i think 80 minutes is a long period of time i think the sort of average time the average amount of um attention span for folks is around 20 minutes and so teachers will create lessons that are really pretty varied um so small lectureets something then to um do an interactive component and so there's it allows for lots of variety but i do recognize that 80 minutes does feel like a long time this year we've got 80 minutes and our teachers are really reporting that they're able to really go deep in individual topics so the depth is a little bit different and that's been really wonderful they also have the opportunity to help individual students a little bit more in that amount of time so it gives them an opportunity to do work in class and also helped students individually so i do appreciate that that question and i do think about it a lot i'm not sure if mr sadiq or mr mackie want to add to that but i there's a lot to say about that one i think you did a great job awesome so there's a question here about criteria for getting into honors classes how do you get into them how they set up all those kinds of things okay so from going from 8th to 9th grade a lot of it will depend on recommendations from your teachers and when you get into the high school like with the english class for example you'll be able to decide after the class starts for some of the other classes there are prerequisites you have to do really well in the classes that come before them but it is a lot of conversations between your family and with your guidance counselors and with teachers figuring out if it's gonna be a good fit for you or not awesome um there's two questions about this so i'll put one of them up here but there's a repeat right below it about i'm sorry this is a different one about um range of science classes and i think that's something that'll be covered in the the videos you'll be able to watch right after this but not sure if anyone wants to fill that in i think it's worth noting that it's um ecology and environmental science that's the required ninth grade course for all students yeah all right so let me see i think i i may have accidentally skipped one so i'm just going back through our little uh roll of comments here to make sure i haven't missed anything important um there are a couple questions about um being able to tour the high school before next fall or an in-person orientation i think is what somebody else said right so in the in late summer we will have an orientation for all you'll be ninth officially ninth graders at that time and also were thinking about ways to introduce you to the high school slowly without all the other students around so one of our ideas to have you have a day the first day of school will be only 9th graders in you'll be in the in the high school only 9th graders for at least half a day potentially the whole day but again one of those many details we're still trying to work out but there would at least be an orientation day for you to come through the high school do tours talks talk and meet with some of your teachers and then you also get at least a half a day in the building with just other ninth graders actually also students who are new to the district will be there as well and actually there is uh virtual tours available there is a link to that we can get that centered out it just kind of gives you that you can get a one a sense of what the building is like but of course there's nothing it doesn't compare to being in the building but it'll give you kind of an overall view of what to expect once you get here or to the school so there's a question here about um college prep classes and also about taking classes at the colleges specifically foreign language classes here but i know there are other subjects people may be interested in so that you want to go ahead in this camera so the the college prep classes that's just the term for our standard level classes and then we have the honors option in a lot of those classes as well and for college classes we have a great agreement with amherst college and they allow amherst high school students to take up to two classes a semester there for free the trick is to figure out how it's going to fit within your schedule most of the time most of the classes students take there are students who are on if they want to take a class that's not offered at the high school first off and if they also if they're on accelerated math track and they want it they've gone through the ap calculus bc and now they want to take a higher level math class they would take that at amherst college and there are also students who are on accelerated track from the world languages and they would take a class at amherst college as well but it is open to take other introductory psychology classes again classes that aren't offered at the high school that would be a conversation you would start with your guidance counselors and then would figure out what makes the most sense and how it would fit into your schedule and it's mostly that typically is something that juniors and seniors generally do great so here's a question about how do mixed honors and college prep classes work and i'm assuming that's meaning classes that have those heterogeneous groupings so yep i can take that one um so the idea here is the material that you're covering is the same for for honors and college prep but when you take the honors option you're going to get more depth and there may be more asked of you right so let's say you're doing a research project as an honors option you may need to go find additional primary sources you may need to work with ella stalker our librarian um or if you're in an english class you may be reading some of the same books but you might need to read additional books that are more challenging um and so it's really about depth it's not just additional work however it's about it's about how much deeper you need to go and how much harder is the material to know and understand so here's a great question about what teachers will you have you have the same teachers for all four years we have different teachers each year i think it's a great question i can also answer that one um you will have a lot of different teachers however you may discover that you have a particular passion for playing you know in the wind ensembles and so you would get that same teacher or you love engineering so you would get that same teacher so electives there's a chance you'll have the same teacher but in terms of you know four full years in each different department the likelihood that you'll get one teacher more than once is actually pretty slim it happens for sure um but it's less common than you'd think great question that is our last question at the moment just these have been some really great questions so thank you all for asking such thoughtful things about your future high school careers or your students future high school careers if you're a parent writing these questions um here is a quick question about ap courses and if you can take them earlier which i'm not quite sure what that means but um i can i can answer that too unless mr siddique do you want to answer that right that's fine i think that's worth looking at the program of studies um for and there are ap courses in almost all departments um and there are a lot of different options um i think this means can you take an ap course in in ninth grade i think that's probably what that question is and yes you could take ap computer science so what you want to do is you want to take a look at the program of studies and click on 9th grade and scroll through those different departments and see what the options are here's a question about how many hours of homework will students can expect to receive so it's going to vary ideally it will be no more than a half an hour per class but there may be times when you're involved in a research project or you're preparing for an exam so it may be a little bit longer than that but we'd like to think there's approximately a half hour of homework per class but it again it does shifts from time to time i think we'll take maybe one or two more questions here there's a great question about just where the virtual link to the high school lives on the high school website and i actually don't know the answer to this i feel like i probably should but i don't um does anyone know on this call if not we'll figure it out and send out an email to parents and families about where to find that information yeah i'm not sure if it's linked to the the high school website or not but if it's not we'll make sure that it's up there otherwise it would be something that um we could email to you but i like the idea of having a link to the high school website so we'll make sure that gets up there as soon as possible and this i think is a perfect final question if we come up with questions after this live stream ends who should we ask excellent question so you once you watch the slideshow with the embedded videos you will see at the end of that slideshow is a form that allows you to ask any question about anything um and so we will get back to you that way you could also write to any of us at the high school but i think the form makes really good sense because it will we'll have that coordinated responses so guidance counselors will answer guidance questions you know engineering teachers will answer engineering questions english teachers will answer english questions etc etc yeah great point um the other thing i just wanted to add about that is that that form is linked in the slideshow everything that we've just mentioned the program of studies the the slideshow are all linked in the description box right below this video um so that is where you'll find them if you don't see them right away you may need to click a little button that says show more and then more of the description box will appear so if you're having a hard time seeing those links make sure you click that show more so you can see everything and i think that is it sorry that's just a nice thank you from folks we appreciate having you here as well definitely yeah please do reach out if you have other questions and we will be in touch again thank you all have a great night everyone
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these days i am a barely a community college dropout and mostly uh spend my time doing odd jobs sometimes for other people mostly for my family and um struggling with my own existence it's great [Music] meanwhile uh me uh still in uh middle school um senior uh graduating middle school sorry high school thank you for that uh if you had any doubt we are siblings um wait we're siblings um yeah and pronouns on anything else i should say in my scattered uh speech um oh also uh what i've been doing is um having a thankfully downward trend in the amount of times i get overwhelmed by school work and um have at least moved in the direction towards being able to be a functioning adult well said even thank you stanley want to pick it up from there hi i'm stanley i graduated graduated amherst regional in 2018 i'm currently a student at wooster polytechnic my current achieve my current achievement is that i've been on the dean's list for about 2.5 years and my and dark chocolate is hands down my favorite confection it's not it's a great balance of savory sweet bittersweet i love it such a good fun fact thank you stan lee fi are you ready you can unmute and introduce yourself i'm leaving i'm a ninth grade and i'm a songwriter all right nice jesse take it from there my name is jessie i mean as you can see i am in ninth grade and i can't like i find most right uh anyway the current current like personal achievements just we're getting it's the the audio is not very clear from me or other people having that issue okay yeah i agree i'm also having an audio bad and audio i'm so sorry to interrupt you jessie um do you you know what do you want to go out and come back in and see if that helps um sure i already got booted out one so um oh it's better now go ahead okay well shane pick us up from there hello uh my name is shane and i um graduated in the class of 2020 and i um and i'm gonna take classes this summer at gcc and some of my interests include playing ultimate frisbee playing with my dog and today i biked 20 miles and so that was a lot of fun and that's it wow okay beautiful day for it uh jessie cave hi guys uh this is very strange talking to an audience that i don't know is there so it's all good um so i'm jesse uh there's another jesse on this call um let me think oh gosh i literally forgot everything i was gonna say um so i am actually a senior in college um actually no i should go back um i graduated from amherst high school in 2017.
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that we have about 37 million of that now every year we get 2.7 more and the governor's proposal are 2.17 i apologize roughly because it gets adjusted every year for our population but um get us to that yesterday's tomorrow's dollars you know i'm sorry yesterday's dollars um like 10 years from now so this is just showing the governor's proposal if we froze that also and waited you know that further complicates the problem and then and the city mentioned that we have the 14 million that 14 million is already spoken for for k teachers for esl um teachers for um our data assessment group i mean every piece of the alliance 14 is spoken for so we talk about the increment you know when we talk about the additional funding and so if you know for example the city didn't freeze it but put us where we should be you know that could offset some of that if we talked about it in that way um so we're just we're doubly challenged here um and you know building up to this if things don't change which is in 2026 so and this just showed that when i when we looked at it over time on average over like the last 10 years the city has given us on average 1.72 which you know that's just a fact and then this just shows because people keep talking about the high number for the coronavirus relief funds but we wanted to show you that we have chronovirus the first one is the relief funds those are to be spent this year the sr1 money is it ends um actually in fiscal 2023 but this is a proposed schedule for how we could spread it out so you could see that if we were to spend 4.6 this year which is the estimated amount 13 next year 13 the following year 9 it goes down to 1.09 because you only have until september in fiscal 2025 to spend the sr3 and again this is just projected so the total funding related to coronavirus relief is about 41 million it's a lot of which 36.59 is future dollars if we schedule it out this way and we dedicated about a third of that you can see here in our proposed budget to support those operational things that we ask for in our new budget so we in good faith did do a lot of commitment of those funds where we could there are certain things like teachers that leaders we need that are just not eligible to be utilized into esser funding so that's just the way it looks like it drops off in fiscal 2025 we don't want to build ourselves a place where we're going to be challenged you know by using just fully ester money for operational needs when it comes to the year we need the academy we want to grow to that and so it was really encouraging in a lot of ways to hear the community interest it's encouraging to hear dr casmiro talk about the academy it's encouraging to hear the passion that people have and we're just excited to get out there and continue to educate people um so i'll with that i'll stop and i thank everybody for your comments [Music] mrs cooper i would like to mention something courtney i thank you for all your hard work and i see that what you sent over to to the the council people including what you just demonstrated to us was about 103 pages of data which is a few nights worth of reading to those that are concerned uh but the the lead i think the league sheet would be the multi-year sheet to start with and as kevin said the other night you know we are or you are educators and i think in this short period of time it it's up to us to take that 100 not 103 but the summary pages and make known what those numbers are and then basically more perhaps more important the impact of why we need those and also the impact is what happens if we don't get them so as as you're talking and i'm thinking i'm just trying to come up with some sort of a time period or a day where the possibility of a quick workshop i i know monday and tuesday of next week the council and you guys are on vacation but the council has a schedule for tuesday and i'm not sure if they had something monday so perhaps later we can try to figure out a day if need be between thursday and friday if that could be rushed i really feel it's important to to get the high points and the important points of what you've just demonstrated and what we're trying to show across to a cross section of the council people i do feel that there are many people on the council that are supportive of us as well as there are many that you know are are not more conservative so you know we'll have to put into joe's point guess what happens historically you know is what it is but i keep saying the wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the oil and it's gotta be a day of reckoning thank you mr janelle any other comments yeah you can't get blood out of a stone i get blood out of you mr jim uh thank you miss cooper that that that is all from us thank you courtney okay do you have anything else on the um superintendent report no no that that is it for the superintendent report this evening i i think uh i know in our package for information the overview of the healthy uh food certificates uh i don't i'm quite sure there's no action on that but just to take it and read it for information and i would assume that it would be on the next agenda okay okay so are there any uh committees reports or any uh you know madam chair uh yeah mr brit mr britton asked me to give a brief report from sites and facilities he apologized for not okay okay go ahead um sites and facilities met last week um the main function and the main thing that we did was review the dr the preliminary draft ed specs for the career academy uh we had a good discussion uh everybody on the committee was supportive of the no of what's going on supportive at least in draft form the preliminary at least moving forward with the ed specs we asked the the architect and the administration to carry forward keep up the keep up the work they're doing on it and hopefully we'll have something in more detail something more final that sites and facilities can review approve and send to the entire board that that was the primary thing we did that at that meeting thank you thank you yeah uh before we move on and we're moving on at the end of our agenda i personally uh would like to thank all the board members because this has been to me a very rough and difficult year ever since last year and most of you that was here we met all during the summer trying to keep the community informed and i didn't hear any of you complain and i know some of you you know how working obligations and some of us are not working but you know we came and we did what we were supposed to do as elected official and as a board chair i just would like to say thank you thank you thank you so very much uh i'm going to uh do the chairperson report and it's going to be very brief i am pleased to be able to update you on our search for our new superintendent as a board we have had many conversation about the upcoming process and together we decided to retain an outside search consultant to assist us i appointed a working subcommittee to review a long list of educational search consultants this group will work hard to narrow the list and review the proposals from a number of firms who have best met our needs the full board will interview a small number of them and we will formally retain one firm we are excited to work with consultants who will who will experience thoughtfulness and high and will help to focus us in our search i will bring you updates at each board meeting over the next couple of weeks and hope that we as a board can work together to bring a new superintendent into this district so that's where we are with the superintendent search seeing no other questions i entertain a motion excuse me yes okay excuse me i did i did receive some additional public participation i just wanted to bring it to the board's attention if you wanted me to share that how many do you have carol there's four okay go if they're not a whole bit you know okay okay your discretion would you like me to read them yes go ahead okay okay the first one is from maria sorrentino hello i'm a danbury resident a taxpayer had four children attend the danbury public schools they were successful and two had learning disabilities and went into college i would like to correct one parent that claim that middle school has students from other school districts and the tech school is state-run also my thesis for my master's degree was on charter schools these are facts and i will send citations to anyone who wants them most charter schools are autonomous of the board of education directives the charter school model was based on the parochial school model the students were uniforms and they are not required to provide free meals the teachers of charters are also not required to have a certificate in education the most successful charters do have to provide um sped ell or bilingual programs this is why they excel they have to they have what is known as a skin and purge system that means if a student cannot keep up with the curriculum the student is asked to go back to a public school my daughter was a teacher in a charter school in new orleans and it was shut down after three years the teachers were not paid well and they really stayed longer than a year a private charter school does not have to follow the common core and many are backed by corporations that are about making money the walden foundation walmart owners made a profit putting students into below par buildings she taught in the basement with exposed pipes and mold it was horrendous kindly researched the most successful charter schools and you will find out that many directors do not represent students of color or low income and those students are required to keep a high gpa the lottery requires parents to invest many hours of volunteer service and if they cannot keep up the students are also asked to leave those single parents or parents that have two jobs cannot provide unreasonable volunteer hours many charters do not have physical ed art or music department either the next one is from evan fernandez good afternoon my name my name is evan fernandez and i am an ace graduate thinking back on the time i spent at the alternative center for excellent i am overwhelmed with gratitude i was very lucky to have had the opportunity an option to find a school that was able to teach me in a way that felt accessible and fun my freshman and sophomore year i attended danbury high however i quickly discovered that my personal learning style was not compatible with the way i was being taught luckily the alternative center for excellent accepted me and they were immediately able to help me in a way dhs dhhs couldn't i often think back to my friends at dhs who also wanted access to find a school that worked for them but unfortunately they were not able to have the same experience as me again i emphasize how lucky i was to get randomly accepted to extend to attend ace but as you know the school is only able to help so many students and there are a few other options in danbury i hope that soon in the future danbury students will will be able to choose between charter schools magnet schools alternative schools montessori style schools or traditional schools based on what is best for their individual needs i hope in the future these options aren't limited to students lucky enough to win a lottery thank you for your time have a great evening gabriella perez hello my name is um raquel and i have two children my first son currently attends an elementary school in danbury and my second is two years old i love both my boys dearly and felt lucky to be able to send them to a school in a district where the students are so diverse i'm sure they will not only find friends from their own culture but also a learn about a variety of cultures and become more sociably socially conscious children my only qualm with danbury is that i feel this plethora of diversity does not extend to teachers and staff at these schools as i've recently moved i've been able to experience the demographics of two different schools and found that they are both pretty similar while i still believe my son will receive a great education i still wish there was they were able to be exposed to teachers of various backgrounds so that all students are able to see themselves reflected in their role models please take this opportunity to think of how something that that simple can change a child's perspective on education thank you for your consideration and the last one is from adana bosworth hello i'm a danbury resident a taxpayer had four children attend the danbury public schools they were successful and had two learning disabilities and still went on to college i would like to correct one parent that claimed that middle school magnet has students from other districts and informed that the individuals that detect school is state-run also my thesis for my master's degree was on charter schools excuse me i'm sorry i read this already my apology okay we are all set that is the last one thank you so very much want to thank everyone for taking time to submit their comments uh if there's no other questions i entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting so move madam chair moved by mr jeff silver second by all second gladys this is kate okay seconded by kate all in favor could i hear i i i i i care thank you have a good night everyone good night you
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so this is an example or an illustration of one-way communication right so at the center there staff member maybe the superintendent is providing information through a maybe a friday update or some other type of update that information is being shared with with the board members that's totally fine i've actually as a legal counsel from time to time i don't believe with center or with other clients i work with depending on the matter i might sometimes be asked by administration to send an update to board members and in that capacity if i'm sending it out one way that's totally permissible so moving on to slide 12 this is another example of a permissible communication so in this illustration you have staff sending out that information to the trustees and individuals trustees coming back to that into that staff member to ask questions to get additional information and so on and that's entirely fine however if during that question and answer opportunity with staff a trustee asks well what does trustee two think about this now we have a problem uh because the the brown egg specifically prohibits that all right moving on to slide 13.
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and then they have 10 12 and 13 each online one of those teachers most likely would have to go online full and then that teachers 15 that come in person would most likely have to move to those other two teachers classes yeah so odds are that unless we simply axe the online option for anybody we are going to see some students moving moving teachers yes only other way if we could find teachers this late in the school year to hire to teach online model this late in the school year that would be the only other option that we we would have and again that's a rough example of i just that's if you're asking if those 485 we were going to have to find full we'd have to move teachers into teaching full-time i hear you i just i see this the first bullet here it's of all students return person no class changes but yeah i don't want to make sure everyone knows reality of this is that that happening the odds of that happening are very slim and there probably will be some class changes regardless correct we once again we've had families that were very desiring to stay online and they shared that with us mr tennis so for clarification mr sullivan um you wrote in a note to us there could be between 100 and 485 teacher changes for the elementary school class changes for students yeah class changes for students yeah yeah meaning those students would change teachers yes so um how many total elementary students are there in the system deliver five thousand five thousand five thousand uh-huh so we could have as few as a hundred class changes correct but then for the balance of all those students they would not be displaced in this in this way correct if they agree to come back like that yes thank you mr sullivan yes um in uh input that i've had from um elementary and secondary both but but especially elementary the impact of combining just a few kids with another cohort of kids that they were not with earlier in the year is significant and i repeatedly got input that it is such a significant significant culture change and a a re-education of how that class is to function who gets along with whom how to pull out your small groups by accommodating need levels even though the teacher may have some previous experience with the students because they had them in either am or pm that once you put the cohort together the dynamics change significantly i mean this was not a a minimal impact i also heard from um she is a speech and speech and language specialist in the district who indicated that [Music] to reschedule of the time and place for assisting the students that are right now having assistance from a speech and language therapist to get help with their language skills so that they can access the curriculum that that vulnerable population of student is particularly susceptible to being negatively impacted by that kind of a change and goes into great detail about the amount of time and trust that is built up with these very vulnerable children that are struggling with those types of disabilities in order to stay up with their class cohorts [Music] do you see this i'm not going to ask you that question because it's impossible i think to know if in two to three weeks can you make it better so that the period of time left before the end of the school year evens out and how do you account for that loss in that two to three weeks when we only have seven left that's i'm editorializing rather than asking a question so i'll shut up and i do think um each student is so unique with how they react to change and i do think some would flow with it pretty smoothly i think others it would be really difficult for also they really are very unique with how they react to some of those kinds of situational changes mr tennis i want to confirm one one thing it but it sounds like with respect to the number of students who could be experiencing a teacher change we might be talking about two percent of our student population if i take 100 divided by five thousand i think wouldn't want to do some bad math that's two percent that's not a very big representation of our of our student body and on the elementary level if i may editorialize rather than ask a question for just one moment thank you so a third bullet down one of the considerations elementary principles been talking about is just what recesses would look like and how do we schedule and kind of look at our space and how do we use it efficiently effectively so that we can maintain distancing and another big issue that really we've been talking about is teacher supervision expectations before and after school with student supervision and one of the areas for a lot of discussion that came up was us like having lots of students on campus before school if you watch a typical elementary school you will see students starting to arrive at 7 15 7 30 potentially and typically they are kind of um supervised in a designated area or two and we depending on you know some of the circumstances of a distancing things we may not be able to do that in our current format or how we've done it be pre-covered before so we'd probably have to do something different with kind of admitting onto campus before school and make some adjustments there so that we could have um students all coming on at the same time potentially going into classrooms we talked about a lot of different possibilities but we couldn't do things where typically you would see a lot of students go in the cafeteria and be there together with maybe 200 students in the cafeteria we couldn't do things like that before school and meet the social distancing requirements we'd have to adjust to kind of as far as supervision before school uh same kind of situations with lunch spaces and protocols you know what a lunch room looks like if you've never watched a lunch room during the school day you see a lot of students filtering through and you see a lot of students that are much closer typically than three feet pre-covered kinds of things so we would have to do some significant adjustments and nutrition services has been very helpful and given us some good ideas on what we could do to kind of meet those requirements and even kind of spacing out lunch on the campus and looking at other opportunities there to move forward with something like that if we wanted to also and last one as mr marchant mentioned we would certainly have to be doing some additional hiring of staff to supervise if we are spreading students out during lunch time we're going to have more space to kind of supervise and cover for it also so we want to start hiring process sooner than later and make sure we could have enough people to supervise all those students as they're kind of spread throughout the campus and as well yes sorry madame uh madam president i wanna just ruminating on what you said a bit ago i want to get clarification on your a concern i think that maybe you have about making this change is that it'll be difficult for some children to adapt to a larger cohort or a different cohort of children with dead is that in essence what you said yes what percent of the elementary school parents because we did not survey elementary school students did we no okay what percent of the elementary school parents want to return to full-time in person i am going to look at mr karis and see if he i do not remember that exact percentage i'll tell my head but i think mr keras might john can you pull that up so we can share the survey results with you here about 76.4 percent it was there were definitely a lot of interest from elementary parents and that was a one-third parents responding elementary so i that's combined it's it's a few slides down from that okay so more than three quarters of those surveyed want their kid back in full time so i i just the ones responding that's incorrect the ones that responded i think i said that actually one third of those surveyed oh say sorry you're right you're right okay of those who responded thank you um i would make the point that i think that parents are extremely frazzled right now and i think that a you know for for me you know we don't know conclusively but i i'd say a huge chunk of the the people who did not participate would elect to send their child to full-time in-person school if given the opportunity and i just know that from having been in touch with many many stressed out families who weren't able to to to participate in this survey for those reasons but i mean i'm sure that we're living in an imperfect world and there are going to be some children who would have difficulty similar to what you're describing and but please i i was pulling off of the data presented by and she said that i could use her name it's our speech and language specialist callie vernell it was what she i believe you got a copy of her her letter as well yeah so it's me pulling from her information not don't use me as the source i'm i'm not the right specialist but even in that case we're talking about a sliver of our elementary student population that's your interpretation dr kaiser yeah yeah i remind all of us that we are have a legal as well as ethical responsibility to groups that require additional services but i was going to ask you ted and there is some kind of a sound thing because we all kind of had a little bit where you weren't real clear i don't mean what you said but i mean hearing um so when you said if you've been in elementary cafeteria yeah it's like somebody stirred up a pot of ants they're all over the place good description throwing food in the garbage can just so they can get out to recess quicker so what would be have to be the time framework of having food presented and somebody watching the kids and how many spaces what we started talking with nutrition services was doing more of a grab-and-go kind of option where a class may walk down to the cafeteria they would have kind of sack lunch style things lined up for them nutrition services could kind of verify just walking through very quickly and then students would go to different parts of the campus because we can't fit 300 students in a cafeteria 250 students in a cafeteria like is happening typically so we would be using parts of the campus and kind of adding we've looked at adding additional seating space in some of those kinds of things but students during lunch time instead of sitting in a couple small confined eight spaces would be spread kind of throughout campus different places where we hopefully be comfortable for them but also that's where we need to add some supervision and then also yeah so you would have to have a lot more campus supervision in that context yeah what's the anticipation of the time framework of how long that like with lunch speaking of students and bringing them back in the classroom would last vincent cyril yeah online if we want to events do you want to talk along those lines yeah good please at least i was told he was online right while we're waiting for inside dr carson i think um i don't think we need longer time periods for lunch i think nutrition services was comfortable kind of adjusting so if that more of a grab-and-go kind of thing it they can get through quicker and pick up lunch i think there's vince yeah sorry about that go ahead vince we go ahead we repeat the question again it kind of breaks up and i heard part of it repeat it for me one more time please so the query was as we look at you know having to keep the number of kids getting food at one time and then going to separate areas to eat and coming back what would be the estimated time framework that would be consumed by quote unquote feeding them lunch and some school support is feeding them breakfast too right right and and i think that in in the last couple of weeks working with ed services that we've come up with um lots of different options for how we can get them through as far as coming in classroom groups and having more of a controlled flow to it and still being able to get that done in the amount of time that's allocated for lunch it would just take a little bit more planning and coordination but i think in the timeline we have time to get that done well i thought we saw some estimates about start times and finish times but what you mean like at 7 30 you could get them all fed breakfast and then at 8 10 they'd be in class yes wow thank you vince yes i'm sorry and then at lunchtime the same thing is is they would be able to come down through and pick up their meals and then head to designated areas to eat thank you vince you're welcome uh let's see we asked i asked of uh classified personnel mr cole about hiring of more uh classified lunch supervision personnel it was hard to interpret the note from him maybe somebody may have spoken in person are we sad mr cole i believe this fill those positions he's outside at the door they're going to go get him right now ah okay as we're going out to grab him president robinson would you like me to go through the secondary considerations yes go ahead so we talked about the first bullet and we do have some administrators here after we're finished with some general and elementary and secondary considerations to also provide some information we'll get to the slides in a second and as we said there are approximately 115 sections and we did remove from this this number some of these sections that are already considered are usually oversized for example our band sections they have waivers for those sections to be larger so we did reduce the total number of sections for the aggregate total here as director sullivan explained we do need to be thinking about how we're going to socially distance our our students within confined spaces obviously with the weather getting better you know it's not quite as much of a concern knowing that if if it is raining and they are inside they need to still be six feet away well while eating their breakfast or lunch it's not a three foot separation we are trying to wrap our mind around ensuring that the communication between students and their teachers continues in some situations and if they are back in in person and they would they obviously would be seeing their teacher every day so there's some as as assistant superintendent marchand explained we're not providing pros and cons we're just trying to provide considerations we are getting into the testing season uh we have multiple assessments we've already started with some of our standardized testing we have advanced placement testing starting we have international baccalaureate testing starting and then we have cumulative testing starting so we're getting into that season so we need to be considering pacing if we were to move students back into into the classrooms and and the scheduling for for student curriculum and then as you can see here at the bottom if any of the requests for changes become available we'd have to consider individually how we would address those if the mandate was not that you stay in the current model you're in so mr sullivan do you want to introduce david cole is here i think president robinson to answer questions uh david let me ask my question again uh as we're looking at um how to manage um the lunch cohorts as as they you know classroom in classroom out um kind of thing where we may have students in in a number of different locations it seems as though we would need more lunch and and campus supervisor type positions do you feel that that we have an adequate number on our current eligibility lists to that are available that we could accommodate hiring um additional positions well i think there's a couple of issues there um we certainly could start uh further uh recruitments for eligibility list for our school agencies i'm sorry we could certainly um increase the number of recruitments for uh school aides but we've been talking with the union regarding specifically that issue in terms of lunch before and after school some of the additional cafeteria breaks and things and there's been discussions about increasing the hours of the employees that are currently working on a per site basis and working with the union to say if we have an ip a structural para that they have time that we extend their times as well to cover those periods thank you okay any other questions of mr cole mr tennis i want to make an observation i can barely hear what people are saying from the podium out there and i don't think it's anyone's fault i liked the old policy for this where we could hear people and that was when we did not have speakers wear a mask when they were at the podium there so i i i just want to throw that out there um is there anything we can do with the sound quality on volume at this at the speaker's podium because it is difficult to hear mr cola i do actually have a question for you um i had a social engagement you could say with a a high level representative of the cuta bargaining team recently and that person made a point to me that that the cuta has basically followed the lead of the school board and everything that has transpired over the last year and as far as i know that's correct and there's been you know i guess what we would call labor peace between the direction of the school board and the cuta can you confirm that i think actually jim hanlon would probably be the best person he had he deals directly with cta or more with csea okay yes i would definitely confirm that um if more much of the school year only about 12 percent of the school districts in california have been open and we've been in that 12 percent and i attribute that directly to our relationship with both unions it was never a conversation about whether or not they would agree to open it was how do we open in and what are the issues we need to deal with in order to open so [Music] from my perspective they've been a full partner in opening the schools for am pm when most of the schools in the state have been closed or online online only um this person who i won't name they didn't say that i couldn't but um they represented to me during this conversation and said i could quote them to say that similarly if we decide to go back full time in person right now this spring that there would be labor peace in that context and that there would not be any pushback um from the from the union i hope i'm not misrepresenting that person but basically they would follow the lead in the direction of the board yeah as i said we've negotiated um with them in good faith and and they in return have negotiated in good faith we in fact have mousse for online am pm and in full full day person so we have those um ready to go depending on the board's decisions since fall we had those in place before we opened on october 19th so um we went through those mlus fairly quickly and reached agreement so you know and from that perspective with both unions we have agreements in place no matter what decision the board makes so would you characterize it as a green light to go back to full time in person mr hanlon um i would say that we have a we have agreements with with both unions depend no regardless of what decision the board makes to go yes i uh we approved all of those mousse at the last board meeting and i remember specifically mr moretti making a statement at one of the meetings when that a similar question was asked and he said that the position of cuta is that the board decides and cuta will implement to our best the best of their abilities just as mr hanlon said they take direction from the board miss yes i'm just wondering if mr moretti is with us and if he has anything to add to that i i'd just like to repeat what jim said back in the summer we knew that there were three choices we were looking at and and we recognized the authorities more to decide which learning model we're in and we negotiated the factors that need to be decided for any of those three models i'm sorry might have been back spasms tom thank you um i actually wanted to take this conversation uh back um to what jay was talking about a moment ago i hope that's all right um but just you mentioned uh something about uh 115 sections let me back up one slide um all right thank you very much um i was wondering about when you're saying we lock in everybody in the model they're in now does that include students who are not in one of the kind of traditional models i'm thinking of one student who's taking five classes online and then comes on site for just one course they would still just come on it'd still be in the exact same situation exactly okay thank you very much yes dr kaiser i'd like to move to go to full time in the start of the fall semester 2021.
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katina are you there yes i'm here thank you senator would you like to make an opening statement please yes please um i'd just like to say i'm really grateful for this opportunity to represent um again a small island i'm from molokai raised from 10 days old and this is my community like said you know we have to grow our own um there are very few people who are willing to um come and live here it's it's a very special place and you either love it or hate it and so we've had to be really creative in filling our teaching positions with licensed certified teachers and quality teachers for our kids so i'm hoping to be part of that movement and some of the innovative practices that have taken place especially to fill our hawaiian language immersion program and having qualified teachers there so i appreciate the opportunity to be considered thank you thank you katina we have one oral testimony from lynn hammond's executive director of teacher standards board thank you again senator members of the committee again i don't know dr sores but i've read the very strong testimony in her support on the hearing site and the htsp stands in support of her nomination thank you thank you we also have probably half of molokai that testified in written support remember you have questions for uh dr suarez any questions if not katina you know mahalo for taking time to respond to the the questionnaire that we sent out in your response to question two you noted that you will research additional programs and opportunities from other states or districts licensing entities so what current policies or practices do you see within a hawaii teacher's standards board that could use improvement um one of the things that just from my own experience that i've noticed is teachers are committing with the knowledge the the intellectual knowledge but not necessarily some of the practical knowledge i'd like to see our program strengthen the areas of um like lesson planning some of the routines that that teachers you'll see if you go into the elementary school they have you know set routines from the calendar in the morning like one of the students um in a classroom could actually probably run the classroom for you they have these routines that are not necessarily taught in licensing programs that would take our teachers up a notch from the day they step in the door if they had these opportunities taught to them as part of the licensing process or their education process so that's one area that i could see some growth in and we could learn a little bit from other states and as well as um bringing on board some of our current practicing teachers to mentor them very good um also so what are some specific issues that your school community has expressed which you believe will help improve the policies htsb has to meet statutory statutory responsibility for promotion of high teacher standards and accomplished teaching like mentioned i think the the grow our own is huge um especially for us a small community with um teacher shortages and like i said people in my opening um people who want to be here will stay and then um for the most part other people who you know they'll come and they'll leave after a year so it's really important for us even as a system with a huge teacher shortage to improve on our grow our own programs and having people be able to work and earn a living wage while training to be a teacher and then they would be picking up that practical knowledge as well as you know the educational or university type knowledge in the training program so that would be one of the definite areas i would look forward to working on thank you so much dr soares for your input members further questions if not mahalo moving on to gubernatorial nominee jonathan guillen teen for a term to expire 6 30 2023 also for the hawaii teachers standards board jonathan are you there yes uh chair kidani would you like to make an opening statement please yes please uh it's my honor to be here today to be considered for appointment to this to hawaii teacher standards board i have to say to be included with this class is very much an honor i consider i have not had the privilege of meeting dr soares yet but um i consider lo kehan and glenn miyazato long time friends and colleagues and that would make if indeed i am confirmed that would make the transition onto the board that much um more smooth more uh wonderful because of the connection to these two individuals and others on the board that i that i know i'm grateful for this opportunity to be here today and to to be considered thank you thank you for that and we have to testify in support of your nomination hammond's executive director teacher standards board then uh thank you senator and members of the committee i do know dr guillen team and i can tell you that i can't think of a more accomplished highly recognized educator than jonathan and i think the board would greatly benefit from his service as with all teachers and students in hawaii so the htsb stands in support of his nomination to the board thank you thank you and there are a number of written testimonies also in support of the nominee jonathan in your uh thank you for your answering the questionnaire and i had a follow-up two actually follow-up questions based on your response in your role as a state review panelist and review chair for htsb what recommendations can you give regarding the future of state-approved teacher education programs sata as to how to accomplish the teacher standards board statutory mandate to promote the high teacher standards and accomplish teaching yes um thank you one of the one of the recommendations that i have for consideration for new programs or added programs that are adding fields and so forth is to have flexibility for example one of the programs for which i sat on the review team was an online program and having the capacity to allow teacher candidates to enroll in these programs to pursue either a degree or certification through the program and to be able to do that while while teaching as as emergency hires i i suppose it's the terminology i think is important because it has that connection to teaching in the real world and facing those situations that might be challenging but that are you know connected to everyday work that teachers do and with real life students and being able to connect that to what they're learning through the programs that they're engaged in thank you one of your goals was to provide a system to communicate information about teaching standards and licensure how do you plan on addressing this if you are confirmed for another term on on this board chair kidani i've had the privilege of being the recipient of awards and fellowships and connected with teachers across the mainland across the country in different contexts some of them principals heads of charter schools of course in different contexts than we have here but all of them very excellent very accomplished to be able to access those individuals to ask them questions how do you folks do address this issue how do you make sure that your professional development is authentic it's connected to the students needs to the communities and so forth being able to ask those kinds of questions of my colleagues i think will help to serve the board in addressing the issues that we face here thank you very much for that response uh dr guillen team members any further questions if not thank you so much for being willing to serve thank you cherokee members we will move on to item number five um and we are now going into the uh early learning board the nominees so this is gm 626 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee leilani ao for a term to expire 6 30 20 22 is leilani with us i am thank you would you like to make an opening statement leilani um i i appreciated the survey you sent um kidani i just wanted to let you know that i have valued the short term that i've spent already on the early learning board um and i think we have a lot of good work to finish or continue working on and i'd like the opportunity to continue so thank you thank you and uh to testify we have robert peters chair of the early learning board bob are you with us there you go yes i am thank you chair kadani members of the committee we stand in support of leilani al's confirmation as a continuing member on the early learning board while she has only been with us for a short time she reflects the center-based director's perspective which is a voice we need to include in our conversations and our deliberations and waivani is a strong voice on behalf of that sector so thank you thank you also to testify lauren moriguchi director of the office of early learning teacher kidani vice chair kim and members of the committee eoel supports the nomination of leilani al to the early learning board as a representative of the center-based program providers ms al has dedicated 35 years to the field of early learning as an early childhood specialist early childhood department lecturer and case trainer with her extensive experience in center-based programs and supporting the professional development of the early learning workforce ms al would continue to be an asset as a member of eob thank you thank you and there is no further oral testimony miss al thank you for your responses to our questionnaire i wanted to take a moment to um to let you know that in your response to the third question you noted that the early learning board has an unique and powerful role as advisor to the executive office on early learning and i wanted to make sure that you knew that in 2017 we passed act 202 which uh the board is not an advisory in an advisory role anymore it is a decision-making and governing board so i wanted to make sure that you you know were aware of that and i apologize i guess the um i needed a better verb that we do by you governor govind through advice but yes i understand that it's a governing board and i take that quite seriously thank you can you um clarify if confirmed how you will meet your statutory responsibility as a board member to direct and not just advise the executive office on early learning to meet its statutory mandates to create an early learning system thank you i'm actually quite interested in the idea of the system i served in a role when the state was looking at doing a quality rating system years ago and i think a lot of the work that i was able to do then and that i continue to do now both as a center director but also through my work with haiuic and working directly with center programs i also was really i was fortunate at the time i got on the board i jumped right in and i was very involved with the state plan and i served on a number of the different action groups that were working on it i'm particularly impassioned about both the quality of experiences for children for families and for the providers which is very challenging to balance all three but also looking towards the future i think that workforce development is going to continue to be a challenge as we try to attract people into our field when it is not necessarily a lucrative field for our workers um but it's so incredibly value valued and this is only going to work through a systems approach while we're looking at both what exists in the private sector what exists on the government level and i think there's a lot of models nationwide that can really serve as well i'm particularly proud of the work that the executive office on early learning created with the state plan and my small role in that is one of the things bob peters was able to say i always ask questions about center programs and how child care workers are being treated in our work as we're reflecting on things and i will continue to do so um the last part about for me with the system is that as we've gone through this pandemic and everything has gone virtual i've actually been able to participate more in different experiences public policy and join different organizations just to try to figure out what's going on what people are doing and more importantly what they need and i think that we again we set the stage really well before the pandemic hit we're doing a little recovery now but i think we're absolutely ready to really look at what children and families and providers need as we move forward i think that's an issue that every educator faced as we went into the pandemic and also parents who had to uh now be teachers so thank you for for saying that um can you elaborate on the resources that you believe eoel needs to accomplish its mission um so i know that finances are going to be an issue and i absolutely appreciate oh the work that went into act 46 before we had to close down was amazing and gorgeous and there was just so much opportunity there but i do think that the work that went into creating it still exists so right now our biggest resources are the people who are already doing the work the different systems that exist and as a center director myself who's currently not operating at financial stability i understand the state's point of view about being able to keep our finances moving forward but one of the things i think that's important is being able to just make decisions about how we allocate the financial resources but i do think we've been super impressed with the people resources digging deep again just one example executive office on early learning was very available to providers like myself but also i sent families to their website and their information as we were trying to figure out how to take care of our children at home while we're also doing full-time jobs and the website that came out of their work while they were working on that in that way is a fantastic resource for providers and one of the things i would like to do in my if i'm appointed in my continued work is to get that information out to the center-based providers and currently um our elb does not have a family child care person on board right now so i think that i could help you with that responsibility as well but i think we need to get the resources out so that people can respond better when they need help so a lot of the resources again really are just the people and the early learning board has provided me lots of opportunities to meet people who are fantastic resources for our children thank you for that response members any questions if not thank you leilani so much for willing to serve moving on to gm number 627 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee melody vega for a term to expire 6 30 20 23.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the state has to allocate as those formula funds grow because of enrollment growth adm growth they allocate typically fifty percent of the money another fifty percent is coming from property tax so that's it's an ongoing annual obligation the state has every year based upon the estimated growth in students statewide so that's the governor's version it totaled some 600 700 million dollars it's uh it's it's significant in that he's uh interested in allocating free and reduced lunch that's that's a first i think for for him but that seems to be what the focus is senate budget highlights um some of the same things they're spending 67 million to restore capital uh the same um bill that you saw earlier in bill form is now in the budget for restoration of reduced funding because of distance learning the school facilities board for 108 million that's somewhat close to the governor's and then some miscellaneous funds so i i think it's safe to summarize this into there's not going to be probably in the end a whole lot of funding for education i mean these are the major pieces of legislation these are the major sections of each of the senate and the governor's budget they're they're focused primarily on continuing the current funding structure they are not likely going to be focused on restoration of any funding for uh virtual learning that's going to be up to the districts and covet and other things in order to figure out how that works and now i'm happy to see the school facilities board at least they've got a piece of it but it will be a significant change i believe in terms of where they're reporting to so that whole application process where the priorities are what gets approved is now much different uh it's going to be very much controlled by the state now and then if you so if the board has any questions on any of these i'll be happy to try to answer them we will furnish to you at the end of the session which is probably the middle of may would be my guess because there's not anything significant there to hold them any longer we'll give you a final report thank you any questions for mr god thank you for covering that all right we are now going to go on to 7.3 which is our third review of the 2021-2022 capital outlay budget i believe that's going to be mr moore yep good evening president reese members of the board this is our third presentation of the capital outlay budget much like we did with the mno budget we are requesting we bring this and information and then later in the agenda we're going to request for tentative approval of the capital budget there we go so the highlights um again nothing has changed here um like mr again just mentioned in the legislative update um the governor and the senate had both projecting a fully restored district additional assistance and that is going to bring us back to um the rest restored to pre uh recession numbers this is back 0809 uh numbers funding numbers so again still inadequate for for districts and on an annual basis but we'll take whatever we can get second bullet here we have a designated funding source next year for a curriculum adoption and i believe as the the year moves on dr foley and her team will bring some more information on how that process is going and what adoption will be presenting the third bullet here a lot of this budget is based on our high budget balance carry forward that we've been carrying as a district as you as it notes here we are bringing over roughly a 16 million budget balance carry forward for reference our annual allocation in capital is 6 million so it's it's relatively high for a district this size so this budget does bring that budget balance down to about 8.6 million which we still feel is healthy and conservative in terms of a budget a capital budget and it leaves us room for the next few years to fund various items that we will present tonight the fourth bullet there we complete we have some allocations to complete the one-to-one student-to-device ratio this is a technology initiative that has been ongoing and we hope to complete that next year with this capital budget we've talked about in the mno budget the reduction from emino the amino transfer to capital so that is funding and we've been utilizing our emino budget to fund our lease payment our annual lease obligation is 4.4 million we are projecting to move some of that obligation to the capital budget so the difference there would be 1.5 million be funded from the capital budget next year and then still transfer 2.9 from the eminent budget we have a allocation in here that decentralizes some of the ffe requirements that are obligations that the district has historically purchased for schools and moved some of that budget down to the school level i've indirectly talked to a few principals and a lot of them are excited and can't wait for next year to get this underway and lastly we will continue to pursue any sfb funding and e-rate funding those are additional grant funds and other federal governmental grants that we are available to us based on applications and certain capital needs so we'll continue to pursue those but we are not projecting those into this into this budget so any grant funding we receive will be a benefit to the district in terms of budget balance which will benefit us in the prior next or excuse me the next fiscal year so nothing has changed on our on our summary here i'll touch on a few of the highlights of the big dollar amounts so on the first line there we have the district-wide usage we mentioned we previously mentioned the adjacent ways funding and that we do have some approval to move forward with spending some of that money down and not holding that as a budget set aside so that is positive news we have an unallocated amount of 1.5 million this is set aside for those emergencies those unknowns that come up during the year and this amount here will hopefully fund those and we don't anticipate in emergencies always but uh we do have a set aside you'll see the annual building uh lease payment again that's a 4.4 million obligation um mr gadwal will later expand on some plans that we do to reduce that out of our capital budget but right now our obligation annually is 4.4 million i mentioned the classroom technology that one-to-one device ratio cost is going to be roughly 1.7 million i believe there's three schools left to fulfill that need we have an annual technology budget of 000 these are our annual renewals our software microsoft our emails our financial software etc we have a major maintenance plan this is a going to be an annual obligation from the capital budget of roughly 1.7 million again these are our annual costs of the district capital needs ac repair hvc water heaters etc those are annual costs that the district incurs every year and this is a budget for that major projects we have set aside both 1.5 million out of the capital budget and 1.5 million out of the current bond for future or projected enrollment growth or projected classroom increases or wherever we may need those funds next fiscal year three million dollars should be an adequate amount to address any needs that may occur next year we don't know where those may be right now but we have that set aside as i mentioned with the ffe we we're allocating forty dollars per student to uh decentralize the small roughly 492 000 capital budget down to the school level um this is like i mentioned uh a breath of fresh air for first school principals and even athletic directors are going to get a portion of this so they're very excited to have an allocation at their school level and of course with direction with the the finance department and purchasing will give them some money to to purchase some of their capital needs for next year as we move down the list the warehouse has a small allocation for a forklift a new forklift they need for efficiency uses um in the warehouse they have a 14 or 15 year old forklift it's a little outdated and juan and his team are managing but we have a a plan now to kind of replace some of those outdated equipment needs and there's also an old copier in the the print shop that we are going to be replacing to help support our schools with some of their larger print shop jobs going forward we have a transportation budget roughly 40 000 for equipment upkeep this is an annual small equipment budget they would utilize to keep their vehicles up to speed you'll notice out of the bond we have 350 000 set aside this is in the bond current bond and i believe this is purchasing two buses next year of course we'll bring those back to you under consent once we get a quote and a plan for this you also see a small allocation for white fleet i don't know if you've seen our white fleet driving around but it is aging as well so we are addressing those needs with this allocation and we anticipate this being an annual allocation educational services again we are decentralizing a lot of our capital budget with some oversight from our department heads so we are having a library budget to replace some of those outdated library books even this budget can be used for instructional software so a lot of our districts are one-to-one so there may be online needs in terms of online text or instructional software that the libraries can utilize with those devices so this budget is for that purpose we have a hundred thousand dollars budget for musical instrument replacement you know as we mentioned we seems like the theme is a lot of our equipment is outdated and aging um so the plan of this budget is really to address those needs so i know that budget will go a long way and it's not sufficient but we again we hope this to be an annual allocation to bring our equipment up to speed as i mentioned there's an athletic equipment budget again that will be decentralized to the middle and high schools who have those athletic sports teams they have a little higher need in terms of equipment upkeep athletic equipment like uniforms etc like i mentioned the highlights there's a budget for curriculum and textbook adoption we set aside 2.9 million while we still working on a plan for that this budget can be rolled over year after year to address whether we do a phase approach a k through five an elementary or middle through high the budget yeah is sufficient or we can roll it over next year to address those needs so the higley online academy we're estimating around 55 000 a lot lower than what our current subscription is again that's based on student base and kind of estimated roughly what our enrollment will be for the higley online academy that will fluctuate once we find out some enrollment numbers but we do have a set aside there for that software that we plan on utilizing for hva lastly you'll see the carry forward of 8.6 million that's roughly 1.5 times our annual allocation so you'll notice we're bringing our overall capital budget down a little but we are still maintaining a healthy budget balance going forward into 22-23 again this this capital plan here is a very safe kind of structured budget we are addressing a lot of the needs that the district has but we are again maintaining a budget balance carry forward for future needs in 2223 and that is all i have is there any questions on this capital budget for next year president reiss mrs wilson i just want to thank you everything under on page 11 is so meaningful for our students to have the ten dollars for library books and per student and the fine arts and the athletic departments at the middle and high school i just think those are so important and to see those in our budget is so nice to see and i think i said it before but i'm just really excited that our librarians will see some maybe a little wiggle room in their budgets not relying so much on scholastic and so i just want to thank you for making sure that they're really well taken care of any other questions for mr moore i think you guys cover it pretty thoroughly so and that we've seen it a few times which is definitely helpful all right well thank you then we will go on to our 7.4 uh bond study so president reese members of the board before mr gad starts on this we have been on a financial journey together since october i believe we put together a calendar and we've been coming almost every meeting i think by the time we hit june each of you will probably you could be resident experts and and teach uh board members a thing or two about all kinds of funds from mno to capital to bond you've got we've been we have become well immersed in that and so as you know at our last meeting we tentatively approved our mno budget tonight one of the action items after our third review is to tentatively approve the capital budget which are budget-controlled funds but along the line we now move into another another category uh which is uh bond and how we use that and in our planning as you know since october we've also been on a journey where we've been learning about so where are we and where are we going what are our needs as far as growth in our students and our our facilities and where do we have space and what are our major projects and needs so that when we make decisions we are informed with all information to help us with with those decisions so tonight as we continue our our journey on budget and deep dive this is bond study start which will continue to build on each time just like we've done with everything else and we'll learn more through mr gad with our bond study so i will let him begin madam president board thank you dr foley um this will take a little time i think so um i hopefully i'll keep your attention and we'll move ahead and if you if you ask if you need to ask some questions feel free let me start out by saying you know bonds especially a bond is significant as this one requires a lot of planning and we've hopefully injected a lot of plan and you can see that in the capital budget you just saw and you see it in mmo and now you're going to see it in bond where we're trying to put together the best planning process we know of where we allocate the resources to the best of our ability in the right places and that's what this bond is intending to do it is a study packet for a possible bond election that you would be asked to call on june 9th that is up to you that would be in the form of a resolution uh creating a ballot question in november and in the dollar amount we have some flexibility there we are recommending a 95 million dollar bond amount that has the kind of detail in it that you can see here the duration is five years it could go a bit longer but that's the expenditure plan it could last six good last seven but when you get to the end of that process if you need to continue and you probably will some of these expenditures then that would be the time frame in which you would look at another bond and decide if that's what you want to do at that point so that's kind of the you know the process that you would have so let's let's begin by taking a look at page two um of the packet sometimes you get confused about i don't quite understand what relationships there are of different funds and if you think about what number two does is it it's got a it's got the three or three major sections really the first one is mno that's your day-to-day operations that will be all your salaries and benefits and you guys know that you've been there number two is the budget that mr moore just presented to you it tends to be short-term one-year capital needs funded by a formula just like mno is so you know as long as your needs don't exceed that short term process and it's one year at a time and you don't have really any major expenditures that are going to exceed the amount that's allocated to the formula fine most districts eventually get to the point where they have some major needs technology etc and i i have to have more funds in which to implement those plans in order to stay competitive uh with market changes and you know competitive with other districts especially in the choice environment that we have now you know there's lots of things in here that would benefit the district in a number of ways not the least of which of course would be our students need to have what's necessary to be successful and that leads us then to what kinds of expenditures plans do we have for major multi-year projects and that's what this bond is so it's it's a supplement it's an add-on to the short-term needs that you saw earlier and uh it's a five-year plan basically a five-year capital plan uh that's funded through uh bond sales saleopods page three is what are the reasons for a bond well as you know very well know that the state has reduced in the past annual capital funding that's the restoration subject we just talked about for a number of years the formula has been reduced by the state because they needed money to balance their budget and it comes from that 08 recessionary period and has now finally over a long period of time been restored but that meant that districts were denied that capital money over lots of years so you tend to fall back in whatever plan you might have had emphasis on technology is as you well know very very high and that consumes a lot of capital money to stay up with internet speeds and technology and devices and all kinds of things so the funded technology plan in my opinion probably requires at some point that the district established a fairly large budget in which to deal with the hardware and software of technology i don't know how else you keep up without with that without doing that energy conservation is there should be and is in this plant so is safety and security in this plan the district has some older buildings that you know you don't think of it sometimes that way but you know some of the schools are older than you might think and so they're going to need some major maintenance it does eliminate the reliance on mno for capital so it allows more money to stay in mmo as it should and you can enhance your pro your instructional programming that way it also rely it also provides uh uh eliminates the reliance of short-term capital to try to satisfy long-term needs you know you you have a budget that mr moore presented to you and instead of exhausting it with trying to meet some of these needs and and it doesn't really actually do it because it doesn't have enough money in it you eliminate that issue you eliminate all of that because you now have another funding source to deal with those major kinds of projects and this one happens to contain a possible outright purchase of one of the two schools that we have under lease agreement that is a significant portion of the debt service the district has obligated itself to by pursuing the purchase of one of those two schools they're both basically priced in the same way we expect to save the taxpayers 21 million dollars it does require 32 million as you will see within this packet to do that but there is a significant offset to that with the taxpayer savings the district would be normally would be spending for interest so uh this lease as you well know also runs out into 2052 it's extremely long period of time and so it probably needs to be out with as soon as you can with some more realistic approach as to how you get to ownership for those two schools so each of the two schools with curry if you if you tried to purchase them currently are about 32 million each in which to pay off the outstanding payment obligations that you have that's the principal amount it currently is containing another 21 million of interest on each school of that of that side so there's a total of 53 million dollars that's being paid from your debt service tax rate for each school over time to satisfy those lease requirements so the savings would be coming from interest on one school simply would the interest would obviously be cancelled we would we would generate an amount of money through the bond that would satisfy the remaining principal amount and we've tried to put it in here in a way that it doesn't cancel out lots of the other things that we should address in a bond for district needs it's about a third of the total of what's projected in here so it's it's a it's a start it's going to take a while if if you decide to approve this proposal it's going to take a while for the district to get bonding capacity in which to try to deal with the second school but at least you know we could we could push ahead maybe even get an agreement where the second school at some future date would have a buyout amount and and we can negotiate that potential so we'll see how that goes okay um some other budget highlights on slide four uh as i mentioned earlier it's got technology it's got building safety it's got security it's also got a section for major construction you may recall the demographic study that mr bremer presented to the district it does have some enrollment growth in it selected locations particularly high schools emphasized and so if classrooms are needed over the next five years whatever renovations might be required it's got a significant allocation in here to make that happen and uh and that's just i think we need to pursue always having adequate facilities for whatever number of students that we have and this would satisfy that and as you know that environment is somewhat unpredictable because school choice etc but if we do need additional classrooms the money is here in which to do that major maintenance that's a significant item the capital budget that you saw had some maintenance money in it it's not enough it needs to be more because we have 1.7 million square feet under so it's it's a lot of facilities we need to be more aggressive with painting with air conditioning replacement what kinds of things that people would expect normally for us to do especially those folks who have built you know voted for a bond in the past and would think that you would maintain whatever they invested their money in so that's what this plan does i will add that both the major construction projects and the major maintenance dr fowler will be making an in-depth presentation to you at the april 21st meeting so i won't spend a lot of time there but he'll be going over that in some detail it shifts the lease payments that we currently have for the two schools totally to bond so it not only eliminates the transfer of money for the one school that would not be purchased from mno but then eliminates it again from the capital budget of which we've moved money to so the end result of all of that is there is there are no other contributory budgets that would be sacrificing their budget capacity by paying for another lease it's all going to be in bond and that will give us more operational money every year give us more short-term capital money every year to do what those budgets are intended to do and i say that strongly intended to do rather than make sizable lease payments okay possible then purchase of one middle school is contained in the proposal on slide number five it also provides for a potential land purchase a site purchase this may not be necessary but if it is from my view of what i've seen in the district if you're going to have the flexibility of having a site a second site to build a school on the vacant land that i see is quickly being consumed you're going to have to do something with moving ahead on that subject or there won't be any subject to move ahead on it will be that we need to re-boundary that we need to add classrooms maybe create schools that are larger than we would like because there's no real viable option to do anything else the current site the district owns you will see especially on the 21st that it's not located ideally it's it's it's it's in a spot that potentially it may serve a bit a better purpose by doing something other than being a future school site but it is there and it is usable it's got a lot of commercial and freeway activity right around it it's not as ideal as a neighborhood school would be and so the intention here would be if we pursue this that the district would be able to find a site that might be more suitable for a school and then you could use that existing site for whatever other purpose you would want it could create a second school site if you needed it and and the shortcomings that we see i've talked to dr fowler about this several times is we don't have a lot of school capacity in the northern part of the district north of pagos and that's where the projected growth is at so this would help with that whole subject and and in my opinion if we don't pursue it now it's probably not going to be a very viable option in the future because you just can't find it if we pay no taxes on it we could turn around if it were let's say currently farmland and lease it back to the farmer and get some revenue from it so it's really the outright purchase amount and then you can get some revenue from it and you know in the future when if you do need it it's there for you to build on mr yad um there's a there's a new development going down south of queen creek and saseman area is there a school site do do we know the school site in that area it's legato it's a brand new development dr fowler i was told there's a school site there but i just have always wondered i know this is kind of a little bit off topic but is there a site there still [Music] president reese um vice president kaler i'm sorry um board member taylor sorry vice president wilson um i didn't get my program before the no i i it is true that legato is the subdivision and um way back many many years ago i think before the before the downturn um there was discussion with the district and legato about um setting land aside for the district to purchase um the district had an option to purchase land there the district has not acted on that um at all um it's again per mr gets conversation it's not a location right now really where we need a school so that's also part of the challenge when we've looked at the demographic study and the work that mr bremer had presented prior to covet and then he's done some work since then um we don't just really have to look out the window right here and we can see this is where all the growth is it's happening right right where we are and so that that's why i think the site at legato um there still may be land there but that's not something that at this point the district's been pursuing and i just didn't want another kind of school to go in that spot i guess okay thank you that answered my question thank you you know i can't emphasize enough here that if you want that flexibility i think it's important to pursue it as soon as possible or you won't have that option to pursue because something will be built on it and that will be that will be the end of that so i'm going to do it now is the time to do it okay um we are proposing with this 95 billion dollar bond 75 percent of the current district's remaining bonding capacity bonding capacity there is a formula that limits how much debt you could issue and this would take us up to 75 percent of the remaining amount there still would be some 30 million dollars of remaining capacity to add to the capacity that you will generate over time annually through the formula as as the district grows with property values including building the capacity of the district to bond grows with it so over the next five or six years there should be enough growth that you would be in a position to have another bond and and could be in the magnitude of what we are talking about here but in the meantime you know that's not going to be likely just because of the cost of bonds and because the available capacity needs to rebuild itself if you actually do this proposal here the tax implication is pretty minor we currently have a tax rate of 28 cents total per 100 of assessed value this bond is projected to add 14 cents to that so it's it's very minimal when you think of a seven dollar rate and you're adding 14 cents not not a major concern i would not think and the next bond you know mr moore and i have talked about this a couple of times because the debt service that the district will be doing over time will start to decline you will be paying off debt and the tax rate will be going down according to that so when you start into that significant decline you want to think about do i allow the tax rate to decline and then later on all of a sudden increase it because i need another bond so as it declines you might want to consider that's the point in time where i have another bond so it stays flat the taxpayers can predict what their tax bill is because it doesn't change and you get the advantage of having that monies then in that second bond and mr warren i've talked about 2829 somewhere maybe in the 30 but i mean right in there is where we think that you would have enough body capacity comparable to this to move ahead and that might be where you deal with the second lease so that's a possibility okay uh slide number six are some definitions that you'll see later on so the technology safety and security the technology of course you'll see the details of that plan basically device one-to-one refreshing existing computers all of those things that you would expect to do to keep up with those kinds of of technology standards and there's some attention to district safety and security especially it does have in a significant number of new cameras so that would help you know with that subject transportation it has over the five year period a pretty aggressive replacement schedule for buses and white fleet yeah you should be in relatively good shape if we're able to follow this schedule it basically retires district buses at somewhere in the 12-year age range that's pretty good that's a pretty good schedule for most people and support vehicles we have a standard of 10 years or 100 000 miles and it meets that standard so you're replacing roughly four or five buses a year and a same number of support vehicles for the next five years that's contained within the bond the uh the lease payments i have talked about mr dad i will simply mention there that oh i'm sorry what is the normal life of a bus the life of a bus like you said it was a 12-year turnaround i think that might be somebody else's question i think 20 to 25 years okay for parts after that the difficulty is not so much that the bus is worn out that you can't get parts for it okay i was just wondering because i wasn't for sure i'm not schooled in that area so i wasn't sure how that was true what the normal life capacity of that is thank you okay we've talked about lease and that will be the subject of an executive discussion that we're scheduling for april 21st because it's got significant real estate implications and we need to talk about those and then land purchase already talked about in debt in detail in the northern part of the district major maintenance dr fowler along with major projects we'll give you an in-depth uh review of those and then we have a contingency that's contained in the packet so moving on to slide number seven this is categorically how we would recommend spending the entire bond amount over the five-year period and you see down the left-hand side some major headings that gets you kind of oriented to what the total is and then on the far right-hand side you see a percentage and those percentage amounts are the amount that each of these major categories occupies of the total so if you go down that right-hand side 16 of it is technology 33 percent of it are the leases we talked about 28 is major projects uh 11 is maintenance so it gives you some idea of how much goes to each one of those purposes and it's it's pretty basic i mean it goes to those things that you would expect it to go to that are long-term multi-year capital needs for the district i don't think we've left anything out of the list and then we've just flattened that expenditure plan across the five years we are also containing the contingency and so this would be the plan that we would propose to you over the next five years slide eight is the technology plan in detail there's a part one and a part two there's 15.5 million over the five years there's about 1.8 million annually of that 15.5 and there's about 3 million thereabouts each year for part 2.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i think that's right i think that's right yeah um and then i um i'm actually a senior in college i'm a psychology major and i'm graduating in may so that's really exciting um we're getting closer and closer so things are a little strange at the moment um i would say my current achievements well i just finished my senior thesis and it was actually a project i needed to graduate so i guess i don't really have that much left to do um so there's that and i'm also graduating um magna laude um this with honors which is basically it's just having a really high gpa in college so um those are two things that i'm really excited about i'm also going to grad school and counseling um this fall and i'll be back in massachusetts so that's really exciting i'm currently in arkansas right now and a fun fact i have to agree with stanley um i love dark chocolate it's just the best ever thanks um thank you all right so just all right go for it so i i have made many games that my friends and family play and my career goes to be a professional game game designer and the usual fun fact i say like for things that ask me to say fun fact about myself are that i'm autistic but if i wasn't i wouldn't be here and that i'm a game designer which i already said so kathy you're on me by the way thank you jesse um yes so great so i'm gonna ask a few questions and i see this some questions popping up in the chat which is fantastic so if anyone watching has questions comments throw them in there and i'll make sure to leave some time for those toward the end so um i'm going to ask a question and then if people have an answer to it feel like they want to speak on it just kind of raise your hand and um or unmute and you'll have the floor okay so the first question is um autism that's what we're here to talk about everyone is very different right there's no one per you know the whole saying about if you've met one person with autism congratulations you've met one person with autism um so as far as your own experience what's been your journey with it in terms of you know maybe thinking back to when you first found out about it to where you are now or um anything like that that you want to mention about your sort of autism journey does anyone have a i mean my journey was kind of wrong and kind of hard i was i had to find my streams and weaknesses which i have some difficulties with muscles and stuff and it was hard yeah that's all i got right now thank you levi yeah leilani okay hold on a second we're gonna go to leilani and then we'll go to you jesse also you're it sounds staticky what's going on on your audio it does to me i don't know does it sound like that typically yeah it sounds like just general uh make problems unfortunately i'm aware of them but i don't know how to fix them okay so leilani why don't you talk about your journey well well my journey was really complicated and really simple at the same time and because well i am well first of all uh i had a really difficult time with my parents for reasons i'm not gonna get too far into right now uh they're different tactics on how they accepted my autism my uh feelings of incompetence or that i didn't have value in the things i cared about which it's um i'm sorry this is so much easier when you're talking at people you're doing fantastic yeah i will talk to you cathy great my friend um so it's really difficult for me for a long time to accept and find strengthen the things i care about the things that but make me unique like being asexual autistic um loving cartoons loving anything with animal characters in it and i doubted myself for all those reasons like uh autism asexuality are both things you get tell their about you being immature a whole lot in your life uh how you'll get there you'll uh find someone and then you'll have this magical thing called being attracted to people or you'll understand one day how adults are supposed to work and think but i found my journey to a career and a husband and my a little apartment here that her to be more about accepting and building on who i already am and what i already love and then i found people who respect that uh who care about that who helped build me up and it's one of the best feelings in the world in my opinion thank you leilani just so meaningful i appreciate yes i've been honored to be a long part of that journey with you thank you and this uh woman is fantastic by the way i need to take them uh jessie cave i feel like thank you lately are you did you wrap that up it seemed like you yeah i'm good i just want to say you're fantastic and thank you for helping me for i feel like nearly a decade now don't plan on stopping so stuck with me jesse hey did you want to add something about some of your feedback better by the way much better okay good i moved to a different room i think i'm just in a space that's really loud um so it should be a lot quieter over here um yeah my journey with autism has been kind of interesting so i actually didn't find out that i had autism until i was 17 um and at the time i was actually a senior in high school so that's interesting because typically you know you find out that you have autism when you're really young um and so my parents knew but um i i'm sorry i have no idea who to look at i guess i'm just trying to figure it out my parents knew when i was little but um they never really got me tested because they didn't want me to they didn't want it to limit me um they didn't want it to limit my abilities and so uh when i was in elementary school i was in a different state i was in arkansas and i didn't really have a whole lot of the resources there so when i came to massachusetts i quickly got connected and got like social support and everything that i needed and actually that support's continued into college which has been really fantastic because i've been able to learn um a whole bunch of different cool things that maybe i wouldn't have learned um if i had been in that place before i went to high school and uh yeah actually what's interesting about my story is that when i was in high school and it was before i came here i want to make it very clear that it was before i came to massachusetts um i was told that i wouldn't graduate high school um and if i didn't graduate high school then i wouldn't graduate college um if i ended up graduating and so it's been interesting because both of those things are about to have happened um like high school happened and all of a sudden now i'm graduating college i'm about to go to grad school and i'm doing the things that people in my life said that i wouldn't do um and so i think it's interesting that leilani mentioned some similar stuff too especially with her sexuality like i've found out kind of what it means for me to be attracted to people and like i'm just really unique and i you know i'm gay and that's something that i've really been coming out to terms of the coming to terms with in my life and so it's been really cool to be so unique and to be on the spectrum and be able to be an advocate for people who are like me or people who are different um and being a psychology major like i just learned all of these things on top of that and going into counseling it's it's a crazy world out there and i was actually just talking to somebody the other day and i was realizing how much power there was actually listening to people um and how much like they have to say and how much they want to connect with you when you listen to them and so um yeah that's that's basically my story in a lot of crazy long words um and i just want to piggyback what kailani said that kathy's been really a great huge resource for me and she continues to be um and i hope she doesn't plan on stopping because i'm gonna be around so uh yeah well er so much of what i've learned is from directly from you guys so leilani and i were just talking about how the idea to even go on field trips to work in to work on social skills and community skills by going to the movies was leilani's idea you know so like i wouldn't do so many of the things that i'm proud of if it weren't for you guys telling me to do them um so thank you does anyone else have any um thing that they want i can move on to another question or if there's something i suppose i could see a thing go for it um yeah i know um i feel like i sometimes i feel like my family is one of the very few that actually um is helpful and supportive of all of us and uh yeah um from that i haven't had any problems with um self-doubt or um such like i was personally but um well i have um i still have had lots of problems um figuring out uh what is an executive functioning and how do i do that which has um ha it seems like every year except maybe this year or the previous year um something has gone catastrophically wrong in uh with um school where i've either gotten behind on something or um have bitten off more than i can chew or um whatever and uh picking up the pieces to get some form of grading by the end of the year has been a its own um mess but uh that was slowly i've gotten better though sure yeah yeah thank you i'm not here um ellie do you want it we're always getting better all of us right does anyone uh have anything right oh ellie did you have something you wanted to say i was just saying that if i i'm gonna wait for another question simply because you know that i always have things to say and i am used to having a budget for my time so i'm trying to conserve it there yes this like our um our journey in terms of understanding autism and ourselves yes so okay so i mean i don't think i've had any like big negative experiences due to autism i mean some things i don't know if it's because of autism or not and i think autism might have actually helped me with school because i picture like the homework assignments as like in the video game plants versus zombies i picture them being zombies that are coming towards my house the ones that have duped farther away but our big projects are slow but tanky zombies and the ones that are just normal daily assignment are really fast but easy to defeat so i feel like that helps me with time management and also makes it like maybe a bit more satisfying and not as not as unenjoyable jesse i love that i love how you're gaming the system yeah yeah you're not making those things i love that i love how you've made it work for you in that way that's your audio was a little shaky so i don't if i was cutting you off there i didn't mean to um thank you i love that does anyone else have anything to add or should i move on to another question i think i would like to say that i didn't really know i was diagnosed until i asked my parents at the age of 13 because up until that point my parents they were actually they were really supportive they were really supportive they pretty much whenever like i kind of questioned or doubted myself they must just said everyone thinks differently so i'm so so i am really confined my so i'm really put myself in in a label or in a box it was mostly just everyone has their own way of doing things everyone has their own way of thinking about things and from that i think and from that i kind of uh kind of flourished my my love for myself and or just my and inclusion of others so perfect love that again been honored and blessed to be alongside of so many of these journeys definitely stanley ah wonderful just kind of seems like maybe i should move on unless somebody had something they were just burning to say on this okay um is there anything specific that i mean jesse kind of touched on this already that you feel um sort of proud of that you feel like autism has kind of led you to or um something that you're really interested in that you think having autism was a real asset in in that or kind of led you in that direction um well is it okay if i speak first okay um i just didn't know there are other people that were speaking i actually it's interesting i was just talking to somebody about this but i feel like being on the spectrum has um oh my gosh i lost it i was gonna say what was it oh yeah i'm sorry i have stage fright that's why i keep losing what i was going to say he's part of an audience i can't even see um thank you for the question that's helpful uh so basically yeah so i feel like being on the spectrum has allowed me to maybe see things that maybe i didn't see before and kind of and by that i mean you know really having a value of listening to people and really just kind of going back and looking at that conversation again because i used to be so type a um i still am kind of type a if you don't know what that is it's just like very go-go-go all the time and i'm always thinking about things and here's where i remember what i was going to say but anyway i'm always thinking about things my brain's always processing and so i think that that's something that's really valuable is that um those those thoughts those things i'm always trying to figure out why how when where like what's important you know it's like once i know why then i'm like i want to know how and i want to know how i can fix this and i want to know like what can i do and like maybe it's that excitement and maybe that's something that i get really excited about in general but um it's interesting that my brain is always on all the time and i feel like if i wasn't on the spectrum i don't know if i'd have that same kind of child-like curiosity you know of like always wanting to know just why it's everything or how and i think that's really served me well as a researcher my senior project i had to research a lot of things i'm still working on that research and so yeah it's been like you know i find an answer on my research and i'm like but no like that's not the answer i want like i want mores uh more answers more answers and so uh it's it's cool because i'm having to learn that i can't always find the answer um even though i really want to know why and how things work and so i guess it's a long way of saying that um if i wasn't on the spectrum i don't think i'd have that same level of curiosity i love that i think that's really insightful thank you i'm going to take that away i think you muted but you maybe had something free to go first if you want uh ethan dandarrelly you might have something too can we oh i'm sorry i'm not gonna say much of anything i was just gonna say that um jessie i have that same experience of having to like you know wanting to know more i wanted to know wise and like it's like wanting more information me three wanting all the information like reading actually when you were saying that that that felt like it struck a chord thank you ellen um i have something on the um sort of what autism has led you to engage in or i mean i would definitely say something for sure i mean that was someone i didn't know until i went on the middle school and was some reason i went to me joining this club and now i just know how to send songs and lights on just really cool that's kind of a big defining part of my life and then also we want to become a fish fisheries biologist definitely too right thank you shane yeah having the having a autism diagnosis has uh led me to find a whole community of just me of amazing people with that also have autism that i've been able to connect with and just um a lot of resources and people i have people like like kathy who are have helped me so much to um succeed through life and just uh yeah autism is just yeah something i can connect with other people about and talk about expert you know shared experiences fantastic i love this community everything um anyone else have anything on that thank you shane all right uh hey uh if everyone's else good i just want to uh touch on a little bit that well at my interests and everything uh i found my husband because because of writing stories about the franchises i've adored most of my life i've got my career that way i we also found a drive to help people i think ink because of it because i can emphasize with the social issues these being a kid and actually when i tried to get into college it's a pretty good story for this i wrote my essay on how when i was going through high school i think the only autistic adult i had ever heard of was temple granted a couple other celebrities right i could not name a single autistic person i knew in the workforce who wasn't you know wanted a thousand celebrity and i thought that was really sad and then i met someone through my interests who was an autistic college professor and we got to talk about it and that in my senior year and that was such a good experience for me because we need to show these kids and teenagers that they've got a path just like anyone else it else to a life to one they want and they'll enjoy and will make them happy yes thank you yes yes yes yes should i move on to another question yeah okay thanks guys helping you out here right i was gonna say here um something um i suppose um for um me um well it's um it's both um helped and um hindered me is through every uh school project and um interest i've had where i am either um laser focused on something to the point where i can work on it for hours until i have no energy left and i'm completely burnt out or i can be just so resistant that as much as i try to force myself to do something i just can't so um yeah it's sort of i so um do any of y'all have advice that you might give to somebody who was recently diagnosed and i know that might depend on their age comments i have some advice go for it i was gonna say just find just claim some wealthiest and try and figure out what they are and then work on them and get them bad them and then you will be able to find how awesome that affects you because it's different very bad i love that don't just go with the list and and but really figure out how it it affects you and what your own style are yeah jesse yes i agree with that and this is basically answering one of the other prompts but go for it i think it is connected here it is not a disability like if something has both um both benefits and negative things then it's not a disability like you could say some aspects of it are like disability fragments or something but there's also beneficial parts of it and like don't get into thinking about like that you have a disability or like even if you do have something that's a disability like it's not it doesn't mean that you can still have strengths totally i love what you said disability fragments and i think what you might be getting at and i'm going to get you jesse but something like it depends on the environment it depends on the demands it's only necessarily a disability if what you're being asked to do if it conflicts right but it's just a difference yeah jesse oh i'm sorry can i uh expand on mother jessie's uh point for just a minute jesse i've lost who jessie and the other jessie are you yeah i realized i was a mistake about halfway through saying it but i had to keep going with my hair anyway i just want to expound on that that's something that's been a conversation in the aims room for years since i was a student and not something i've talked about with kathy and ellie not with but in the same general time zone as stanley was around two and jesse cave as well so that's something i think we should keep pushing towards is the idea things like over stimulation that's a disability that makes it hard to function but autism can be one of the most useful things you can find to focus on something in your work or because that hyper focus awful if it's on anything you that's a distraction from work but when it's on what you need to be doing it is fantastic yeah look out and i would uh i would tell someone to like i don't know you guys have all said great things um but that it doesn't define you um because i i grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me um because i was so different and so out there and i had teachers who just kind of just gave me grades to get me through but they never really stopped to understand um and so yeah i would say that it doesn't define you and also that like you are smart and you have the ability to be smart and like now like i'm being told that like people are like oh my gosh like you're you're brilliant you're so smart um you know you've just had some things in your life that haven't been you know the best and you're learning from those things even continuing now like i'm about to graduate but yet i'm still continuing to learn and i've realized that i've gotten to a point where i don't like being perfect i don't like being good because it means that i can't keep growing it means that i'm just kind of stuck there and so um yeah i keep telling my professors like when they're like hey this thesis is great i'm like come on give me something just tell me tell me that i'm wrong please so i can just grow because i feel like i don't want to be stagnant i want to keep growing and and maybe that's part of the autism thing too but yeah because of the way that i was brought up with teaching and education when i was so young i i just thought that there was always something i knew i was different but i thought that there was something that was so bad and now like i see it as something that's so good and even like going into counseling like what a perspective am i going to have for these people and for the people that i help and like that was another thing people are like oh people on the spectrum don't have any empathy why are you going into counseling and it's like i don't know i think i have empathy um and kathy's shaking her head but you know i think there is a perspective that that i can bring and i think that there's something that i really can share with my clients and so i'm really ready for that and i'm ready for that field um but yeah definitely in terms of what i would say that you're not broken you know you're not disabled um in any way shape or form but you have a different ability and that's something that's really cool perfect now now we're speaking all right well we better be um as far as what i what i would say to somebody who's newly diagnosed i mean people who know me know i can be a bit cynical but it doesn't uh don't um dismiss that as me just being a downer about everything um i would say to like accept firstly that this doesn't change anything about you it's just putting a name to the face secondly that yeah autism absolutely is going to limit some of the things you can do with your life and it's not about your life is over and you're never going to be able to live it doing anything you love and you'll never be good enough it's about um figuring out where you can manage and then managing as best you can and going where you can basically reframing so that instead of thinking yours of yourself because you've probably been a lot of people have been raised like thinking that they have to achieve what their peers have been achieving and how they've been doing it and that's more likely than not just not the reality you probably won't be able to succeed that way so start looking at it differently try to reframe it that's the way forward if i might respond to that briefly as well that is uh definitely true but we are in the system that's trying to funnel people into uh one way of thinking one way of looking at the world with neurotypical whole thought processes and trying to make everyone behave neurotypically instead of treating everyone as having this frankly amazingly diverse and fantastic a set of unique and wonderful tools or tools too that one person might have an easier time with equations they might be able to do incredible things with nuclear technology or what have you that no one else can someone else can be very artistically minded and think in pictures that's what i do etc every person can find a place and can find a use for their specific skills and talents that's if they look hard enough and have a support system geared to helping them find that and may i respond to this too and then i feel like how they talk because i know she hasn't i wasn't i wasn't entirely finished oh sorry and speak yes i'm sorry i wanted to uh continue what i was saying um very briefly um that it's important done with acknowledging that you're not going to be able to go forward probably the way that a neurotypical person can but that no the words the words are escaping uh yeah my brain my brain is doing that thing where it rebels against me even you speak um all right well it seems like something you've been saying things pretty similar to what i've wanted to say so um what i was going to say which may also have uh is that um as much uh like um autism or any of your other or anything else in your life might make you more uh well suited to something or have a harder time with other things that doesn't necessarily stop you from going after something that you um struggle with in fact you should probably work to at least get a little better in whatever skills you uh lack but it's going to be harder than um someone else and you will you will need to put in more work and effort than your um typical uh person uh would so um keep that in mind and if you are still motivated then definitely uh do whatever i found my thought it was that um regardless of your uh sorry um when you're going to experience um regardless of whether or not autism has its advantages there's always disadvantages to being neurotypical uh to being very diverse in a neurotypical environment and it's going to you're going to experience it as a disability in some way shape or form throughout your life disabilities are exhausting people don't necessarily talk about it but disabilities take a lot out of you so give yourself if you can self-care you know look after yourself and accept that you're going to get tired before a neurotypical person is going to get tired dealing with all this stuff and whether or not they believe that you're entitled to arrest and recuperate from that i oh sorry that i wanted to to add to this whole thing because all of you people just said really great things but christy can i just before you say your last thing i just want to make we do have we only have about 10 minutes left so i want to make sure that we've gotten some interesting questions in the chat so i just want to make sure we do have some time for that so go ahead i promise i can't even breathe um it was just something that was that was interesting as i was thinking about like i'm in this place now where all of my friends are getting into grad school and they're getting into some pretty huge places like we've got people who are going to harvard we've got people who are going to do we've got people who are going i think somebody just got into west virginia and vanderbilt and all of these things and it's like my little college that i got into i'm really excited about right but like nobody really knows it unless you're from that area in massachusetts and so it's like you know it's hard for me because all of these neurotypical people are getting into these big-name schools and i'm just like i applied for johns hopkins i got an interview with johns hopkins i probably could have gotten in but i i didn't keep going because i thought that you know maybe the prestigiousness would have been too much for me and so like in the fact that i would have been way too perfect all the time i would have been trying so hard to strive and achieve and so that was why i made the decision i made but it's still hard sometimes to be seeing people who are getting into such great schools and i'm just like i know mine's a great school too i just it's hard when like i said when when you've got the neurotypicals who are achieving so high and i know that i'm a high achiever too um it's just you still compare yourself sometimes to them and so which is problematic right i mean i'm hearing that over and over again right yeah at the end of the day what determines if you are successful in your life is you are you happy i do you find someone on that you love whether it's platonic or romantic do you are you doing a job you like are you doing a hobby you like are you doing something that you feel makes the world a little bit better than when you start those are a lot more important in my opinion than anyone's opinion of what what the typical person should be doing well thank you so i have just added jesse another jessie we have a three jesse to the same oh no it's a plague and then the two jessie's are spelled differently yeah at least with that definitely that helps um so i can um pull some questions i don't know um just see the then juliana jesse if you um have anything that stood out to you that you think um would be good to ask so sure so to jesse cave uh mara would like to know where do you actually go to college uh it's called um university of the ozarks and it's in a very small oh i see the question wow um it's uh university of the ozarks it's in a very small town called clarksville arkansas it's probably it's close to fayetteville if you know where that is a lot of people don't know where that is um it's also about 90 minutes away from little rocks so if you know where little rock is it's the capital of arkansas um it's a small like i said liberal arts college and it is um very helpful for students with learning disabilities so i've been able to get a lot of support here great um to leilani from aryan do you have a fursona uh yes i have a little fluff cat dragon thing that i'm sure that's one of the persons from my discord so uh shoot me a ping on my discord and i can show you lots of art and some emotes it's not that's one of my current students oh it is oh i'm sorry i presume because i put this on my uh discord it's full um yeah i i do um how about you go through the questions and i'll just pop a picture of her on my screen great so uh sarah would like to know what's one thing that you wish you had done in school that you didn't get to do everybody did everything they wanted to do no i uh i'll answer i guess um i wish that oh okay well i'll give you oh you can i've got answer okay i wish that um i could have lived my life a little bit more meaningfully um a little bit more authentically i think there were still parts of me that i was still trying to figure out and trying to understand and now that i've tasted that ingredient now that i've tasted these things um i don't really want to go back you know and so that's something that i wish i could do and like live in the moment i was so like gotta get this done go go go all the time i was missing things i was missing what's important in life and so yeah i wish i could have lived in the moment a little bit more when i was in high school but you know we live in leeward so thanks uh levi did you have a yeah my answer was in eighth grade there was supposed to be a town show and getting on cancel and that we and i really really wanted to do it so i really haven't wished i want to show my talent of somebody into the world that's kind of something i appreciate that when you have the chance put yourself out there that's what i'm here yeah nice um yeah i read a lot of very manga to brighten my spirits and um a lot of them you know cover high schoolers who have like friend groups and go to going to high school and stuff and it's that keeps reminding me every day that i feel so sad looking back on high school and middle school too and thinking about just like the magic of having friends that you'd hang out with and like a lot of kids would walk into town and amherst and spend an afternoon and i just went home on the bus every day to be alone in my house in the woods like miles from anyone i knew and in the woods we kind of are we debate aside the chance to really just like get to know people and have fun and socialize because i just couldn't connect with fully with like the other kids that i liked or thought were interesting i i never got that and so you know i just i wish i could have that time to like thrive in the social community of the high school instead of being kind of off in my little world with you know as the wife was they were only the ames kids for socialization i i'm sorry guys i'm trying to show my uh the thing i was asked about but i can't we'll do that in the after party i'm gonna put a link in here there's the after panel party it's a google meet so we'll we'll do all of that but everyone i guess i can do this at least oh yeah it's going to be great yeah everybody should come to the after party because leyland is going to be um live streaming her art so that's going to be cool um right really was going to say something about oh and then can we do that can we get stanley's and then chains okay uh probably one regret would probably try to be asking someone out like on a date or something because i kind of like high school it was more like i'm around people and i have my family it's like that's enough social interaction for me now kind of with a pandemic where it's like i've been cut off from interacting with people for so long part of me thinks maybe i could have tried to be a bit more bold not really too bold because i think i would i was still like trying to figure things out and also i'm not too fond of being here and also i kind of do like having time away from people but i feel like if i i do kind of hope i i kind of do regret not being a bit more bold plus when someone asked me to go to their prom i was pretty much i pretty much had a smile on my face for like 30 minutes straight so i'm so i have some idea of how when you ask someone out that kind that kind of like they it's not necessarily like you should expect them to say yes but you should kind of think that the person may think oh this person finds me interesting or this is a this is this is nice it's a great feeling to it's a great feeling yeah i love that turned really red i just realized that um i yes i did ask stanley to prom um and i had a lot of fun so anyway but i i turned really red when he said that i had no idea why and i thought it was funny because i was sitting there looking at myself that was adorable it's everything yes i had a lot of fun uh it was a lot of fun with stanley at prom so thank you and shane yeah i related a lot to what ellie said and i i wished i had um personally that i had made more uh that i had reached out to some of the people in my graduating class because i um yeah i haven't had a lot of contact with them since and i just yeah i feel like i missed a lot of opportunities to kind of get outside of my comfort zone and try to overcome some of the social anxiety like i've experienced and kind of you know just talk talk to people and hang out with them i guess bit of an odd one but i wish i'd uh spoken out more about what my living situation was like because maybe i could have had good advice good help maybe things could have changed aged if i'd uh been more open about things and i also wish i had spoken more to people who weren't just in that ames room because i would have liked the chance to connect to more people's old people just because i i am a complete and utter extrovert so yeah you're giving me lots of pause there thinking about how we can make that happen more absolutely um we probably have time for like one more question i mean we have two minutes is there anything else so here's the fun thing i would like everybody to know both watching and whatnot that we are actually international right now somebody is watching us from finland of mine actually so i think that that is awesome like so way to go guys you guys have gone international um and our last question that we have in the chat is um what do you think would have been helpful to work on in speech and language sessions this comes from rael who is one of our speech and language pathologists in the middle in high school um oh i have an answer for that okay um so i actually work with the speech and language pathologist i guess i mean i put that in quotes um they're actually called uh autism spectrum coordinator i think it's the same kind of thing um it's probably more of what kathy's job was actually to be completely honest but regardless um i wish that i worked a little bit more with like how to enter a conversation um because i feel like that's still something that i struggle with and i've definitely gotten a lot better um i actually was looking for the captions on here so i could turn on the captions um that's been a strategy that i've been using to kind of help me figure out how to enter a conversation and also exiting the conversation i am the worst at exiting conversations and i feel like that would have been really useful too because it's like how do i stop how do i stop saying what i'm saying you know like how do i make it respectful and how do i leave this just feels so awkward like okay i'm done talking but i just kind of fade out like me could not do that um so i wish i had learned those things and this is awkward now i have to exit this conversation here i'll help you give me something to say myself um first of all uh positive thing is i completely agree with that especially when i'm in a group i have such a hard time figuring out like where's my opening to nudge in here um is it there is it there uh there's silence for two seconds oh no that person started talking again and i can certainly ramble too long as well so that's all very useful i agree with that one other thing that i think about uh most special ed or even school in general though is that you'll have a great deal more luck working with a kid rather than against them so if you try to have a conversation about something they like and they're going to be enthusiastic about they're going to much more want to communicate with you and to know how to communicate it but you know i honestly that is so poignant and i honestly want to kind of leave it there um working with rather than against right and with with yourself rather than against yourself right work with others rather than a guest so it's everything well and i just i put in the link to the chat no not i put the link in the chat that's the google beat after party so everyone can round up and come there but just thank you so much this has been amazing you all are about the after party so the lonely the lonnie aside my family and i agree that for the most part like an autism social event seems like a bit of an oxymoron not necessarily it's just different i'm in a struggle again it's like oh great i'm so excited and then i'm like how am i going to enter a conversation again in the group oh gosh oh and one other thing i'll just throw quickly in the in the chat here is the link to our website that many people here on this panel have contributed to and many others who um couldn't be here tonight but they contributed um artwork and writing and music and there's so much to look at on this so please check it out oh people are already in the party so i'm gonna end this and see all over there thanks for coming everybody our wonderful invisible audience hopefully we can get some stats on later yeah um well i might not go to the party because my my computer will try so i don't really know okay bye guys love y'all
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this one looks crazy but it happens uh especially when you deal with emails now this is an example or an illustration of a prohibited meeting occurring by email so in this in this situation you have the staff member sending out let's just call it the friday update to all of the trustees and unfortunately trustee one doesn't reply all and now we have some discussion going on because trustee one has now responded to the information that was provided with a question or some other comment and other members on that email chain of the board are now aware of trustee one's thoughts or position perhaps on this item or items that were in the staff communicating shared with all of them that's a problem uh and and one of the issues that can arise when a serial meeting occurs is it could lead or it may be justification to invalidate a future action of the board and again what is the problem with this issue or this item occurring is in essence you have an electronic meeting occurring where the public is not present the public is not able to see what's going on or hear what's going on or read the conversation that's going on and so that's where the issues arise okay moving on to slide 14.
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dr kaiser i don't believe that is part of the agendized item and it is on the board's agenda for the next meeting okay i'm hesitant to approve that as being in order since um you know the brand act requires full disclosure of our anticipated actions um so i'm i'm sorry but my my decision would be to rule it out of order ms dalby did you have a point i i just called a point of order um we're not in a you did not ask for motions right we are not at the point where we would be asking for motion since we have yet to have any public input on this informational item what i'd like to do is move through to the next part of the component and continue to allow our board members to ask questions mr tennis i don't know if there's some later moment when i should ask this question or or yes state this concern about the presentation but um i don't hear a lot of differentiation between junior high and high school when talking about the um you know the possibility of going back full time now i'm aware that there's a lot of high school students who have responded to our survey i see you caitlin we'll we'll bring you in next um i feel that it's highly detrimental for the junior high students to remain out of full-time in-person school um can you are you treating those equally you know in your analysis are you are you assuming that the situation for junior high students is identical to that of high schoolers when it comes to the prospect of you know and how their schedules will be affected there are certainly nuances for each level uh when we've been creating these these are suggesting these considerations we are grouping through 6 through 12 because of the basic scheduling and the the format of the day there are also staffing considerations that are 6 12 so we when we're looking at the the entirety um for for general um considerations and then um trying to disaggregate those by grade level we can certainly i can certainly answer questions related to the specific to middle school or specific to secondary but when we're looking at it through a staffing lens and a scheduling lens and a social emotional support lens we do group them 6 12.
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melody would you like to make an opening statement members of the committee um for this honored privilege of considering me for the early learning board thank you to testify and support robert peters chair of the early learning board thank you chair kadani on the early learning board supports the confirmation of melody vega for return on the early learning board melody has a long history in early childhood education and not only does she bring is a great resource for the fcil programs but she brings a great deal of knowledge and experience addressing the workforce issues and particularly workforce force equity her contributions in that area an area we have a great deal of work to do will be immeasurable thank you thank you bob also to testify is lauren moriguchi director of eoel thank you chair vice chair and members of the committee uel supports the nomination of melody vega to the early learning board as the representative of family child interaction learning programs ms vega has worked in the early learning sector and supported workforce development as bob mentioned in various capacities in hawaii for 33 years with her extensive experience in the field ms vega would continue to be a an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you thank you lauren melody in your response to question 3b you stated that you wanted to influence support toward the focus and prioritization of the pieces of the system that require the most attention right now what are those pieces of the system that you see as needing the most attention well i believe that the climate has changed somewhat since the pandemic and really knowing what the needs of families and children require us to be in communities to both rural and urban to understand and know what that is and right now child care even before the pandemic has been um a a challenge and an issue and and having enough capacity in scenes for children so that parents can go to work um has been a challenge and an issue and i i think that's one of the uh pieces to prioritize um right now thank you um and in your response to question six you noted that you believe eoel needs to remove themselves from overseeing programs and concentrate on creating the system can you elaborate on that yes i think it's a a difficult thing to do both and um i i know uh it's been difficult over the years to provide funding for creation of a system [Music] that doesn't have a program attached to it and but yet at the same time to get out into the communities to have enough staff to really engage in um in surveying finding out what those needs of the communities are and to assist the communities with building their own system because every community is different and the pieces of a good early care and education system within that community could look different and so that's that's um why i think the effort toward uh focusing on the creation of a system is so much more of a priority than overseeing any type of program there are agencies and and organizations out there that are actually overseeing and providing programs thank you for that members further questions if not melody thank you so much for your willingness to serve thank you members moving on to gm 628 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee justina acevedo cross for a term to expire 6 30 2022 justina would you like to make an opening statement please yes good afternoon senators i welcome the opportunity to be able to continue service as an early learning board member i've been able to serve for the last two years a couple of pieces that i'm very active with right now is a small role in helping to advise with some of the finance committee to review budgets but a couple things i'm very passionate and proud about are spearheading a workforce equity subcommittee of the early learning board where we're really diving in about what are the needs around compensation and other key issues to propel the field forward and then lastly i am serving actively on the search committee for a new director of the early learning of the executive office of early learning thank you sounds like you've been very busy already on this committee on this board excuse me you mentioned in your response targeted expansion of early care and education programs in under service areas of the state do you have data to use to identify where the under service areas are i think some of our best data is actually work that was um was came about through the preschool development grant that the executive office of early learning oversaw the needs assessment so they're able to look at some of the risk and reach of different early childhood programs in our communities and it did show some areas that do have higher needs it was interesting because some pieces actually have higher needs and maybe higher vulnerability in terms of the index but some communities actually had higher numbers of programs that were available so you actually need to do a little bit of matching of both like look at the communities that really don't have some of those programs thank you i was so anxious to hear your responses that i forgot to let the testifiers have their say so um bob peters chair of the early learning board please thank you senator kadaman kadamin the early learning board supports the nomination of justina acevedo cross to a continuing term on the board as justina has noted she's been a very active member since her start she represents the philanthropy community and provides that connection between the private and and public funding sectors that is so important a connection that we want to continue to cultivate her role in launching a new committee with terry locke from the university of hawaii has added another dimension to our focus on the workforce and issues of equity you bob also lauren moriguchi director early learning board thank you chair vice chair and members of the committee eol supports the nomination of justina acibito cross to the early learning board as a representative of the philanthropic organizations that support early learning she has over eight years of experience in philanthropy and in her current role with hawaii community foundation her work is focused on early learning and workforce development with her extensive experience in philanthropy and supportive early learning initiatives ms acevedo cross would be would continue to be an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you justina to go on to another question i had that in the questionnaire you at when asked about resources that are needed for eol to accomplish the mission you talked about the needs but do you have any idea with regard to the resources that would be required like what would you push for as an uh allocation of resources yeah i do think there's a couple things to build on that eol has already been working on but one example of that is having some grant and contracting authority to help expand the work in programs so for example being able to rebrand funds out to family child interaction learning programs and communities that need it it feels like a strong step i also think there's pretty tremendous opportunity with the implementation of act 46 and even though there's not necessarily funding undergirding that yet there's still a lot of foundational work that could be done to set us up for 10 years of all three and four-year-olds having access to high quality early learning programs one of those first steps is actually around the kindergarten entry assessment and eoel can really play a role in helping to design what that looks like because that transition moment between any sort of early childhood program into those kindergarten years are incredibly critical and i can say that both as a kind of more on the academic side of it but also as a i have a child who's at that moment exactly a preschooler who's going to be transitioning into kindergarten and i do want their teachers to know what kind of prior experience they're coming into that classroom thank you for that members any further questions thank you so much justina for your willingness to serve on the early learning board appreciate it moving on to [Music] let's see gm 629 submitting for consideration and confirmation to the early learning board gubernatorial nominee cherylin shinoki for a term to expire 6 30 20 22.
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part one tends to be more of a long-term maintenance you know maintenance type budget for technology maintaining the the internet structure buying printers feature laptops projectors servers those things that need to be replaced or added to over time and part two is a straight refreshment replacement of student use computers maintaining the one-to-one ratio so that the students have the latest technology that you generally would expect them to have and it's it's guaranteed over a five year period okay looks like transportation as i mentioned earlier this is this is one where it assures you that that bus fleet will stay current and it assures you that there will be some attention paid to white fleet vans trucks that we have out there that we do need to maintain and make sure they're safe we have some a lot of student use of some of those vans as you know especially at high schools so it's it's important that we keep those vehicles in some sort of shape and that means we need to have a replacement schedule so this is four to five each of those types of equipment over the next five four to five full-size buses four to five vans trucks whatever that mix turns out to be the replacement standard is at the bottom and that's where basically the yellow feet every 20 years or 250 000 miles i don't think we have to worry about 250 000 miles but if if if you wouldn't ever want i wouldn't think the fleet to go past or any individual muscle within the fleet to go past 20 years it's it's just just too long for for um adequate maintenance and then we put if we put a limit on white fleet that it's not those are not more than 10 years old okay uh the next slide is police there are two schools coulee and scotland that have this long term lease each payment each year's payment is 4.4 for both of them that's contained then in this capital budget or one of that one of those lease schedules 11 million would be taken and added to the the at least schedule would take the 22 million and add 10 to it from the total and that would be applied then to that purchase of one school for 32 million is to set aside so this removes the lease payments from capital transfers lows to bond and there's a an annualized amount then for continuing lease inside bond if one middle school is purchased the district would save an estimated 21.7 million dollars in interest savings through discontinuing one of the two leases and if the purchase did not occur for whatever reason then the 10 million that you see up above would be reassigned to other capital needs we would retain the 22 million in order to continue the current lease payment schedule mr cad i don't mean to put you on the spot here and if you don't know i get it because just as we were going through this essentially what i'm looking at is right now our if it were to play out for our lease for one school um we're looking at 53 million-ish dollars yeah i don't recall what and i know you have a vast experience so what would typically a school of that nature cost do you know well i can guess it i can speculate usually my guesses are not too far off this was done in 2013.
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all right so let's talk about some situations that aren't considered a meeting that don't fall under the the brown act obligations or requirements so having individual contacts or conversations uh between a member of the board and any other person and any other person might be a member of the public those are entirely fine they're not subject to the brown act thank goodness um attendance of a majority of of the board at a conference or a similar gathering that's open to the public where issues of general concern are discussed a great example of this would be perhaps the csba conference i would imagine at some point you all will be attending those in person again hopefully that's a great example of where the entire board or perhaps a majority of the board travels to attend a conference to mingle with their colleagues or peers from other districts to attend presentations and other training sessions and so on to get information and to learn about you know what what issues are facing school districts and in that kind of a context it's entirely fine for for a majority of the members of the board to talk and discuss issues of general general concern what else is not a meeting in slide 15 attendance of a majority of the members at a open and publicized meeting of another organization for example maybe a pta meeting or a neighborhood watch meeting that would be totally fine if the majority of the members are in attendance there's not an issue with that the brown act carves out these exceptions moving on to slide 16 and attendance of a majority of the members at a meeting of another body of the local agency of the agency so let's say perhaps the district's school site council one of the school site councils at one of the sites is having a meeting and it just so happens that a majority of the members of the board attend it's permissible under the brown eye for that for that to occur as long as they're not discussing things that should be discussed at a board meeting you're fine uh or perhaps maybe a majority of the members of the board attend a meeting of another agency like a city councilman though that's entirely permissible as well now moving on to slide 17.
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and we do have administrators from elementary junior high and high school here to answer questions from the board that are very specific to those individual grade levels as well so ms dalby you're next um yeah so on that last slide um i kind of thought maybe it was going to be asked and maybe this was clarified verbally but it's talking about sections um where students there's more students than there can be fit in the classroom do we have an estimate on the number of actual students who would have schedule or roster changes either at the middle and high school level or just generally in secondary i just want to reinforce these are approximations but if we were to do the math you know 35 times 115 those students could have each of the students in those sections could have up to six schedule changes based on the complexity of their schedule their pathway it would just depend specifically on the on the student's schedule also mr shepard i just want to make sure we understand that 115 that we're looking at possibly at 35 or larger that does not include on bringing any of our online students back on the campus that are full online correct correct unlike the elementary where we're telling parents they could come back into the classrooms because we have space for them that is not at the same level for secondary dr kaiser in response to the query about the distinctions between our middle schools sixth through eighth and our high schools we have a number of students who are accelerated in the middle school area correct they are taking classes that are more advanced so i think that as you noted this is way way more complex than saying okay here's a fifth grade class a student might be let's say seventh or eighth grade in english but seventh in english but eighth grade in math and maybe even stepping further ahead than that so that's part of the ap they can take ap in uh in middle school classes and and so this becomes it makes it far far more complex we just can't because to deny a student who's put all this time into an accelerated course that they couldn't stay in it because quote unquote they're the wrong grade that would be a severe loss the pathway consideration would definitely have the most impact on on the scheduling what pathway each student was on but again under considerations if the classes sizes at the am pm or at a certain lower size kids would not have to change schedules correct okay i just want to make sure that's understood okay we ready to move on to we have administration here to um i'm sorry member dalby has another question uh yeah that that last statement just prompted a real quick question um uh just can i clarify um at the elementary level though that um there's a significant number of the kids who are online that need to stay online who would likely have a teacher change and so therefore for the last 33 days of school depending on when this would take effect they would be in a new online class environment with a new teacher that's true that is a possibility yes and i would say a majority of them possibly would have a different online teacher yes and how many how many is that again i'm sorry it could be anywhere like we talked about between 100 and 495.
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sherilyn would you like to make an opening statement good afternoon um senators and thank you so much for the opportunity to serve to continue serving on the early learning board it's been a wonderful experience of being able to advocate for my fellow parents and i'm sorry i just got back from picking up my son like a parent does and so hopefully i can uh address your questions with some concentrated thought thank you to testify bob peter's chair early learning board thank you chair kadami um cheryl and shane gnocchi has been a member of the early learning board whose contributions really help to keep us focused on parents and families she's also a strong advocate of looking at how the system develops and that we don't overlook the infant and toddler segment of our community i've been we've been particularly impressed with her own programs in the family who we where she helps parents to learn how to interact with each other offer networking and support for their roles as a child's first teachers we support chairman's continuation on the board thank you thank you chair peters also lauren moriguchi director for early learning board i'm sorry and members of the committee uel supports the nomination of cherylin shinoki to the early learning board as the parent representative miss shinoki began her 17 years in early childhood education as a parent eager to learn more about child development she's currently the executive director of family hawaii a nonprofit organization that provides parenting support and early childhood development knowledge with her diverse experience in the field and as a parent ms shinoki would be would continue to be an asset as a member of the early learning board thank you um cherylin thank you for your service and your willingness to continue i wanted to ask you a few questions thank you for responding to the questionnaire that we did send you do have a great depth of experience and knowledge both as a parent and as a teacher and early child care provider and i wanted to make sure that as a board member you realize that you are statutory required to set the directives for eoel for statewide policy and not as advisory and i've said this before because this is very important for us to carry on the mandate of the early learning board so in reframing your role how do you foresee yourself taking responsibility for the direction of statewide policy to ensure that eoel incorporates feedback from parents no yes thank you for that i i do understand that i was around when it was an advisory board and understand that it is a governing board really my role in that in that lane of thought is you know really ensuring that the executive office of early learning um follows the the mandate that we need to make sure that it's a system from prenatal to age to kindergarten entry i i serve as the co-chair of the capacity and resources ad hoc committee on the early learning board and we are recently we've been trying to ensure that the state early childhood plan has a a um excuse me a methodology a plan to actually make sure that we are on track that the executive office of early learning is on track in implementing that plan so it's a you know we don't always just provide advice it's to make sure that we are that eoel is fulfilling of those statutory requirements thank you for that um you made an interesting statement that this is in question six you noted that you believe the eoel director should serve on the board of education in the same capacity as the doe superintendent serves on the early learning board and i think that's a very interesting observation and my question to you is what impacts do you believe having the eoel director on director would have on how k-12 operations function you know if you think about early learning as a system education as a system it starts prenatally and then continues all the way up you know through college and so if we want to make the best impact overall we have to start early brain research is it's very well known that we need to start early and then the greatest returns are if we start early i believe that the eoel and the doe need to be able to work together to work collaboratively to work for what's best for the children and the families that surround them it is not something that we can really do separately we have to be able to work together um you know i know that the eoel is not in the elb is not in charge of putting our director on the board of education but in that sense i think if we really want the board of education and the early learning board to work together for the benefit of our kids then we need to be able to have shared leadership and it was just an observation i know it doesn't necessarily have any power behind it but it is an observation and as a parent it makes sense to me as an early childhood educator it also makes sense to me yeah i i like the observation actually um it it does make sense and so going further delving a little bit further what parts of the state early childhood plan coincides with k-12 education that you think warrants the eoel director to be on the board of education um i i think i'll answer with an example um and i'm the executive director of family group hawaii and i understand that i am the parent representative i do not represent family to be on the early learning board but for instance we actually have we are a grantee of the early literacy project which is part of a doe through it's it's really a pre-k through a it's a birth through grade 12 grant now when we listen to the the literacy plans of the health partners and listen to the literacy plans of the prenatal to h5 literacy partners there is a great need for family engagement and all of it and it's something that the schools i believe if we really embrace the idea that if the child if the child is the parent is the child's first teacher then when we involve the parents not so much just um fundraising for instance but really involve them in understanding child development understanding how there can be a two-way conversation between parent and family that we can really work and i'm sorry between parent and school then we can really work together to support that child in every way in the literacy literacy is a great example of it pre-literacy skills start at birth if the child if the parent is reading to the child every day they are going to increase them on a conversational turns increase just the whole health and wellness aspect of attachment theory together and be able to support the child's whole language environment which will impact their ability to read you know by the time they're in third grade so i mean there really is a whole um a need for that consistency of family engagement just from from birth all the way through kindergarten entry and then beyond and studies will show that the more you are engaged in the early years the more likely you are to be engaged in the primary school and secondary school years and that is really the key to consistency of having a family be able to support their child through their whole academic career and it just makes it so much easier to work with pam with with teachers when you actually have a relationship and a partnership with them so you're not so afraid of when the school calls because your child has been acting up well hopefully you already are aware of some of their challenges schools where some of their challenges and you'll be able to work together and i've had that personal experience with my youngest son thank you very much for engaging me in that discussion cheryl and i find it very interesting members further questions if not thank you cherylin for your willingness to serve uh our final um gm 630 is going to be deferred uh the nominee has notified the governor um that she is withdrawing um from this nomination process members you have the boarding sheets uh the recommendation of the chair is going to be to take all of these uh gubernatorial nominees for both the hawaii teacher standards boards and the early learning board and to advise and consent on all of these nominees i think they all have a lot to offer and i look forward to to working with all of them so without objections members um the chair will recommend advising and consent on all the nominees to the early learning board as well as the hawaii teachers standards boards chair boats eye okay so chair holding eye on all of the nominees gm 788 gm 789 gm 790-791-626-627-628-629 so if that is there any member on the committee voting with reservations any member voting in the negative hearing none we have let's see senator de la cruz are you with us thank okay four members present all in the affirmative your recommendation and advising consent thank you thank you members and thank you to all the nominees who came forward and we look we look forward to your service thank you for being willing to serve with that meeting is adjourned you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so if you think back to what the prices would be in 2013 i i would guess we're talking 200 a square foot these are middle schools we're probably in the neighborhood of 90 200 000 square feet electrical or something like that how much 120 okay so 120 times 200 whatever that would be my calculator but that that sounds like around i would suspicion around 20 to 25 million 120 000 square feet times 200 and i'm high with the 200 that's 24 million and i'm high with the 200. so you probably could have it have built either one for 20 million dollars and this is this 32 million right now isn't even talking about what we have paid right up to this point right so significantly significantly significantly yeah overpaid yeah okay what would have cost you 20 million on and out right now is way 60 70 million dollars if you took out the currently schedule all the way to 2052 and you included principal interest those schools are costing you three times to what you would have paid on an outright purchase basis so what it would cost us to run the whole lease and what even more we could have had two yeah we would have paid for two on its own ours yeah saved our tax payers a ton of money yeah i really think that it should be important for the district to look at the long term here and and try to save money wherever you can i mean decision was made at some point to do leases and that's a done deal but you don't have to obligate the taxpayers to uh to a schedule of payments that just doesn't make any sense no that i think that's great that i mean we have an opportunity to to save money um as you've presented it so i it just popped into my head as we were talking about this and i'm adding those numbers and i'm like wait that's one that's not even both and um so thank you for watching giving me your rough guess yes mr fowler just excuse the interruption i i got the exact number so i was a little bit off but it's actually the actual square footage for each middle school and they're identical 140 000 and 502 square feet so what would the total be a little bit more than 120.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
attendance of a majority of the members of the board at a purely social or ceremonial occasion party a celebration something like that hooray right that is entirely permissible the advice though that i always share with with the clients that i work with is and this just kind of comes from where i grew up i spent a lot of time in the ocean the ocean is rough we used to say when in doubt stay out right if the ocean's rough doesn't look safe when in doubt stay out same thing if you're attending some kind of a function or a meeting and there's a number of uh you see a number a majority of your board your colleagues there three or four of them there and you feel like yeah you know maybe i should stay out maybe i shouldn't sit amongst them follow that intuition if if you're getting that voice telling you not to do that because the other thing that can occur and i've had it happen with some clients is the appearance of the appearance to members of the public you know if members of the public are in a meeting and they see all five members of the board three members of the board or four members of the board sitting in a circle or all clustered next to each other talking about something it's real easy for a member of the public to look at that and think hmm that looks like an unofficial beating what are they talking about you might be talking about marie huggins root beer cape recipe right but they don't know that there might be the appearance that somehow an improper meeting that's occurring and then superintendent has to deal with trying to dispel that misunderstanding and so on so again one of the doubts they have is my advice all right moving on to slide 18 in social media use actually slide 19.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above