Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
yes is it advice like how would that work he actually the deposition is not necessarily just in the building that's the one that's going to go out to work sites he's going to make sure that those work sites are safe that they meet all of the future requirements make sure that these sites um visitations um i don't have an exact number at this point but i can get back yes um 614 uh approval of the national honor society it says that that this has to be the club needs to be uh in operation for three years for the person to get the cycling set standard or is that i mean no i believe it's two years it has to run for two years [Music] is sustainable okay any other questions or comments hearing none can i get a roll call mr ball yes yes yes yes yes number seven personnel resolutions middle and elementary resolved the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in personnel resolutions under middle and elementary schools 7.2 to 7.11 can i get a motion miss mustang can i get a second back in miss morris any questions or comments very nice the eagle scout service project that would be nice hearing no other questions or comments may i get a roll call mr ball yes mrs mustang yes [Music] yes yes number eight education resolution resolutions district in high school resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district and high school 8.2 to 8.4 can i get a motion motion is mars can i get a second second mr ball any questions or comments yes that calendar change is is a give back day okay um the summer school at the beginning says the kids are going to be required when are parents going to be receiving that once it's approved tonight it'll go out approximately um i would say uh for summer school probably about mid-may okay yeah i would say no later than tonight have the have the children and the parents been notified the ones that does that include high school students i mean i they still have a fourth well high school students it's a little different um high school students think that's a little more in june but they know that there are summer school options available but it always because it's credit based it all depends on when they know that they're actually failing for the year and when they decide right that's nice all righty number nine education resolutions middle and elements oh i'm sorry so i asked a yes mr zepco yes yes number nine education resolutions middle and elementary resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under middle and elementary schools 9.2 and 9.3 can i get a uh motion miss morris and mr uh thomas elliot any questions can or comments me a little bit more about the grand balloons we've been doing the last three years this year unfortunately it'll be virtually but they the two gentlemen come they play music they put on the show about uh you know earth day health uh cleaning up the environment science and the kids love it so that's not able to do it for free and virtually so we're all right thank you can i get a roll call mr ball yes yes morris yes yes [Music] yes 10 finance resolutions resolved the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in financial resolutions 10.2 to 10.14 can i get a motion motion mr vatalaire and mr thomas sally second any questions or comments i just have to extend from check hearing no other questions or comments can i get a roll call i think we have it yeah roll call [Music] yes uh at this time any other matters yes okay um you received a letter that i shared with you from a student from the high school regarding casting down um i know that i've heard back from a few board members um i think i could pretty much have the the gist of what um has been set back to me i just want to make sure that everybody's kind of in agreement with this before i give any direction to high school for next year um obviously this year um we're going to stay with our weight and credit cash and gowns um our yearbook pictures are already taken with white and red caps and gowns um so we're kind of in that position of um you know staying with with my red caps and gown for this year however the feedback i got was to consider going to meet one color gown for next year um seems the trend seems to be that um you know just having the one color down moving forward so my recommendation to you guys would be to consider going just with the red gown um for the next school year but again it's you know i mean your input and you're okay to do that before i give direction on it group here in the high school um about the um casting out of having white four females and and red for males and it really is um not representative of students who are um identifying in different ways organizations um so they they made the requests to have only one color down moving forward um so that way it's more inclusive of everybody um and not something that kind of segregates people depending on male or female um so that's the gist of the letter that the board received i asked the board to give me feedback directly so i can kind of get a consensus to make a recommendation to our high school principal for next year for guidance and direction so that's kind of where we're at um and that's what i'm asking for can we just have them pick what color they want between right away or is that just not gonna i don't think um i think we need something that's unifying okay you know one of the one of the big things when i was high school principal you know this mercedes right if we're gonna be crusaders let's beat crusaders let's pick a caller and beat mercedes so let's you know this is to me this is no different let's let's pick the color let's all be crusaders and let's go out as well if we're going to b1 let's be one so let's pick a color in b1 let's beat crusaders and that would be my message if i was the high school principal or crusaders once a crusader always a crusader we're going to be crusaders let's be crusaders i'm okay with that all right mr smith right next year please all right any other matters to come before the board uh i had the thing with the security um did we buff up security or anything like with the cyber attacks than the other two school districts um are we good with what we have currently i'm not sure you know this job so my apologies so um most of our backbone is very much up to date one of the things i did when i was superintendent i added an appliance it's called an intrusion appliance so we have a company that um has an intrusion appliance on our system so it's right behind our firewall so what happens is if anybody's trying to get through our firewall break in that extrusion piece of equipment notifies us immediately that there is a cyber attack going into our system and that has happened so we have been notified in before that you know we've had some issues and we've had to literally shut down our entire system to make sure they didn't get in so we do have that intrusion technology and that has helped us in the past um we have a creator of firewalls and our switches to make sure that we have the most up-to-date things um ishgard i believe is here he's done a fantastic job making sure all of our our updates are done on a timely manner everything is completely done he i found him especially after what happened at burns i was on him about that no one had the hillsborough was on my way on them again so um we're on top of this best we can i can't give you a guarantee that would never happen yeah because it's never there's no 100 percent we're not gonna get attacked and it's yeah i just know there's a lot of public the government stuff in schools that are getting attacked right now so i just want to make sure it's a lot hey trust me if there's something that probably keeps him helping me up at night it's probably that fishing for unemployment well we've already we've already gotten a number of those um and you know we've had to notify individual staff members that somebody can make a claim using their information yeah so we've been on top of that as well uh mr snell has done fantastic jobs he's worked with the employees we've worked right through unemployment um notifying unemployment that it is fraud and working with the staff to say unless somebody does have your information start monitoring your information because they're doing it with unemployment they can be doing with credit cards and other things as well so the other letter um so robotics is now a varsity sport is that correct yes so they get a letter and and everything correct yes so how do we get them the people to uh you know the uh mr houston and i'm not sure the coordinators of it how do we get them on the stepped road as a varsity coach now negotiations uh okay okay and then the other thing is what kind of what's the agreement for the fields um out there um for softball and baseball how does that work [Music] um we work really well together i think the borough and the school works really well together to make sure we accommodate each side um i don't have any complaints with it i don't think they have any complaints with it okay um you know we try to be as fair as accommodating to each other as humanly possible we try to help each other out as much as possible um you know i i really don't have a complaint about it at the moment is there any safety issues at the baseball the only thing i can think of would probably be defensive they haven't repaired um there was some some winter damage some i don't know if it was kids or whoever it was there was some centerfield and possibly maybe send our grounds a supervisor and maybe the baseball coach out and walk the field together absolutely that'd be great there's it's just been it's coming to my attention that there may be some safety issues so i'll send building some ground to eat me myself and the coach yeah that'd be great i appreciate that okay anything else i can think of more no no i'm not i'm not trolling for news information uh all right at this point well i'm gonna go down and take a look at the field and see what kind of damage it is and see if we can repair themselves behind smallie they may be on private property all right all right at this point we are open to the public for any discussion all right description 745 schoolhouse lane so um i posted this on online too about um when parents can get confirmation whether or not they're going to have a full day of school next year as in eating lunch at school and having a full day for next year for next year yeah i'm just going to have a confirmation of that i can tell you that's what we're preparing for we are preparing for a full day back to school everybody back in full day eating lunches everything else in school for next year you're preparing for that okay well in regards to mr tomaselli's question regarding the uh high school robotics if that's now a uh a varsity sport so to speak um and you said it was uh negotiable um i don't know i mean i don't i don't see why they can't just get moved up to a i guess something that's more equal to a head coach of a varsity sport you have a cba and you have a salary scale in there right but the activity changed from a dysport to a varsity sport with letters so okay but again okay i'm just putting out there i'm just putting after that that i agree with that it should uh i mean let's be at least talked about let's say i think we all agree with it but it's got to be done already right we have to do it through negotiations we'll be more than happy to sit down with you guys i'm i'm throwing it out there mr paxton the board will be more than happy to open up negotiations okay see nothing no one else no questions uh we need i need a motion to move into executive for number one a matter of rendered confidential by federal or state law number three material the disclosure of which constitutes an unwarranted invasion of individual privacy four a collective bargaining agreement and or negotiations related to it seven pending or anticipated litigation or contract negotiations and or matters of attorney client privilege and eight specific prospective or current employees unless all who could be adversely affected request an open session um we are not going to move anything except for hib when we come back so uh can i get a motion to go into executive motion mr val can i second mr thomas elliott okay all right like i said uh we are only moving him when we come back [Music] i'm very disappointed sir you look normal yeah come on i'm sure the kids look forward to seeing what you look like that's great mr smith i tried to get the gowns in midnight green but nobody went for it i tried all right we were grounded wrestling like 80s or something yes you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
families may have reduced travel and attendance to private events and family gatherings but they have continued since 2020 and mass have not been worn consistently during those times also looking at our march and april numbers after spring break when travel and social gatherings occurred with mass inconsistencies our numbers are low and that's after families are very close together and traveling the second factor student experience students are noticeably less social quieter and some completely unhappy with masks on at school students exhibit sadness physical suffering difficulty breathing uncomfortableness and cannot focus because of the distractions created by mass hot itchy claustrophobic debilitating the word miserable has been used countless times in my classroom students have complained of acne headaches migraines stomach aches exasperated systems for panic and sensory disorders depression suicidal thoughts and speech delays in my in the school district i teach in since the mass have been removed there's kids that they're new they're new kids i'm sorry they're participating in my class like i haven't seen before it's pretty fascinating i didn't expect it i really didn't i just thought 90 of my students aren't wearing masks right now it's fascinating i'm sorry it's embarrassing um also some students don't mind wearing a mask but 93 of my students are currently choosing to not wear a mask in my classroom without masks on students have been happier and more productive students that sat slumped in their seats and hardly participated in class discussion are completing their assignments and their brand new students um there's mention of fear of bullying those that would choose to still wear masks i have not witnessed such behavior at all queen creek's got good kids i guess i don't know but i don't believe it's happening i'm not saying it wouldn't but i'm not seeing it um the day back i walked up and spoke to every single one of my students that wore a mask and i said if you want me to wear a mask i'll wear a mask if you want wherever you want to sit in the room it's your seat i had students sitting next to them say yes do you want me to wear a mask awesome thank you and it was appreciated and the students some students that were in math said you know it's your choice i choose to wear a mask and you choose not to wear masks you choose it's the most adult thing i've heard high school students say [Applause] i also want to just make just point out that some younger students have to wear masks much longer than others because they wear it during school then they have to go to after school care those hours get long those days get very long and i'd like to close with that third factor of my experience so in addition to my experiences and observations already stated i'm currently choosing to teach without a mask in the queen creek unified school district i would be a hypocrite to choose to not wear a mask and then make others wear them thank you i just want to make one comment um i made the motion to have it effective immediately but i still respect everybody's decision to wear a mask and i understand there are many families who are not comfortable and i want to give that choice to everyone but i do see for a lot of the reasons that miss anderson mrs anderson mentioned that masks aren't being worn properly and my kids pick their mascots off the back of the car off the ground and the germs that they're getting on their face so i don't see them being rare and effectively but if your family chooses to wear a mask i respect your decision and my children and my family and i hope everybody in the community continues to respect each other should this vote pass [Applause] president reece mrs kaler thank you mrs anderson for those eloquent words tonight i did not write a speech maybe i should have [Music] i've struggled this week i'll be very honest last year was so difficult as a board member and i thought we're kind of in the clear and then ducey comes out with this beautiful lovely announcement a month before school's over and it's really had me i'll be honest struggling because no matter what i vote tonight i'm a no win situation and that is a really terrible place to be to be honest because i do i am a people pleaser and i want people to be happy and it's not going to be that way tonight no matter what we do and we went through this last year and i'm so proud of higley and the decisions we made at the time we made them i remember in december dr foley was like do we have a meeting do we do we close our schools for two and you know you kind of had to hold me back because i wasn't sure what the right decision was back then even and now i know we made the right decision by staying open and keeping those kids in school thank you really no applause necessary this is this is not a glorious job by any means um one of my one of my struggles this past spring was spring break i'll be very honest i had i was seeing pictures blatantly thrown in my face from people who were adamant about not being able to work or go shopping or go anywhere but then i saw their pictures on beautiful places across our country and even out of our country and i really struggled with that i'll be very honest because i felt like that was a slap in my face as a board member where i was being told one thing and actions showed something different and i'm not calling out anybody particularly it was parents it was teachers it was it was across the board hypocrisy in many many ways um i i appreciate your emotion tonight i i've struggled i i've looked at this so many times and i thought okay do i do i amend another emotion and say something like well maybe can we meet in the middle two more weeks do we do we i want to end higley on a high note i'll tell you that right now i think everybody needs a high note in higley this year and if that's taking these masks off these kids and letting these teachers see their faces for the first time and having that again it's it is such a choice now and it's a choice everywhere we go you can go to costco with a mask or without a mask target everywhere we go there's choices now yes there are a few companies that are saying no you have to wear a mask or you can't come in or they're one trader joe's i love trader joe's one person in the store at a time can be on without a mask which i think is just silly but that's again and again we we've been sitting up here and we're being told make your make your decisions on um science well i get science every day sent to me where one day it's masks work and you better wear them and the next day another study comes out and says they don't work where to okay now we wear two masks i emotionally cannot keep up with what's going on in the world today and i don't think any of us up here ever expected to be sitting in the seat once again making a decision and it's going to be a no-win situation but in my humble list of humble opinions i believe our children need to end higley on a high note and they need they need to be free and so and and i know i know there's people going to be upset with me for that choice of my my views and that's okay um keeping a mask on if that's what you need to do then you need to do that and you need to you need to instill that in your child if that's your family's [Music] position i applaud you and i and i'm here to support you even my own children i'm guessing no matter what vote is tonight will go to school with a mask on tomorrow my own children so even in my own house it's divided and it's been not fun to have those conversations with my adult children um so anyhow it's kind of where i'm at tonight president reese this is we're open for questions correct that we can okay i just want to make sure dr foley um how would this be communicated since there's an amendment and there's some maybe a little curveball thrown at you today i just wanted to know how is this going to be perceived out if this vote were to pass i'm not saying it will um i don't know um i can't obviously poll but i just think that we should have all the answers before we have to make a vote thank you president reese vice president wilson your cabinet team has been prepared with whatever outcome would come up tonight obviously what we had to provide for you tonight was a recommendation from your administrative team based upon our protocols and our expectations but we also have been working very hard so we have multiple sets of communications and plans ready to go depending upon how the outcome of this vote goes tonight we will send immediate communication to the fam to families we have literally two versions of communication and between any amendment you're going to make we're going to make those changes so we will be here late tonight whenever it takes to finalize whatever is decided will be communicated we'll then follow up with our administration so that we are able to begin implementing it will require us to make some communication changes but we can make that happen and so regardless of how this goes tonight we're ready to implement and put in place your just make execute your decision thank you thank you everyone's had a lot of great conversation just the same as everyone who came to speak for either for or against i do have to say that while this is a very personal choice for individual families i want to thank everybody it was not nearly as emotionally charged as the decision to return whether we go in person or not so i want to thank everyone for the emails that we got with the exception of a few and maybe i'll just say those were very direct but it was a much different tone um than it was when we returned and like mrs keller said i don't think any of us expected to be again placed in an absolute no-win situation yes this is what we were elected for yes these are the decisions that we need to make and this is our job but as everybody knows in all aspects covet has thrown a complete and utter wrench in what we do we have to make tough decisions but again this one is very very divided and we continue to have a divided community um like you said it doesn't have to be in us against them but it has been for um almost a year now since covid started and and there's many factors for that so i know it's been said everyone needs to respect everyone's decision and um whatever the outcome of of tonight's vote is and it has been difficult when you read an email and you hear about the struggles and you know take our masts off and you're like oh my gosh yes i mean it's like i i have three kiddos at home too and it's like oh okay how many times walking out the door do you have your mask nope okay go in and get it we're driving down the street to go drop them off oh i forgot my mask um and so you read the the family situations you you understand with your own kiddos it's like oh wouldn't it be so nice and then you read another email and it talks about people who chose to do in person school because we have these mitigation strategies and the face coverings were part of that strategy and they talk about their situation and you're like oh my gosh yes we're almost done let's just make it through it and literally it's you're going back and forth and within your own um within minutes of each other when you look at it because you can see both sides of it you can feel for each person that you're reading their comments from so it has been a difficult decision and it has you know i appreciate the time that our staff and cabinet have put into what they feel is the best option for our schools we have kids in close quarters we have lots of kids in classes if we're having to quarantine entire classrooms we have from a high school level ap tests coming up what does that look like if they if their class is quarantined or if they're quarantined and they have to do it online we have finals coming up we have graduation coming up there and we've finally been able to move a little bit and get some events happening and what's going to happen if we start having an outbreak and these events get cancelled um and so you think about it from that side as well so um there is there's a lot and i appreciate everyone who's taken the time and we've purposely taken this time to be able to gather information to ensure what the health department was going to do what what it would look like on both sides so i definitely appreciate the countless hours and and the time that everyone has spent putting that time in president reece mrs kaler when you talked about the emails um yeah some are um you know quite inappropriate but uh one really touched me today that um it was an email from a sweet mama over at cortina and she actually gave us a picture of her son's mask at the end of the day and i have not witnessed something that gross in a while to be very honest and um i have adult children so my perspective is a little bit different they work and they're expected to wear a mask at work still and so they're a little more careful they actually asked me to wash them all the time um but when i saw that little kiddos mask i thought this this isn't good for him this is not helping him today and it and it really touched my heart in a way that i hadn't read an email before like that so um and it was really kind to the way she wrote it so i was very very touched by that email and other emails not so touched by [Music] i do appreciate all the emails um i think we'd be remiss if we didn't say that how many we got uh there were pages and scrolling and scrolling on my phone to the point where i had to do just three times a day checking that's it and i would read groups of them because that's all i could handle but it like president reece said you would get one and it would be just so moving one way and then honestly the next email it was back and forth and it's i think a divide and i think whichever way this decision goes i i want to just echo those words that i said earlier come alongside those friends that might not be on the same side as you of this vote and tell them it's going to be okay and you'll do what you need to do because man i just i feel for them either way our our campaign slogan of be kind let's be kind this last month of school more than ever let's be kind okay any other questions or comments on the amended motion so at this moment what we are voting on is mrs schultz's amended motion of to make face masks optional effective tomorrow so all those in favor aye all those opposed nay all right that motion carries for one then we will go on to the [Applause] we will go on to 6.2 second i'm sorry you're all ready for it so i moved that um does this one need you give me just a moment as like because it was president reese members of the board that was part two so i think there's no need to no need to suspend what you didn't amend so therefore um you have already you have suspended in your your um your amended motion that that passed you have suspended so so there is no need for 6.2 because the policy is already suspended based on the previous amended amended motion all right thank you for not seconding me all right with that i move that we adjourn second there all in favor have a good evening thank you for your time i went back and forth all day every day so
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second mrs corner i'm mr lightfoot hi mrs moyer hi miss morgan hi mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mr bauman aye motion passes seven zero item 9.3 i make a motion to approve the destruction of the audio recordings of the closed session meetings from april 29th 2019 through october 21st 2019. second miss morgan aye mrs croner i'm mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mr bauman aye mr lightfoot aye mrs moyer aye motion passes seven zero item nine point four i make a motion to approve the release of the following closed session minutes which no longer require confidential treatment and will be made available for public inspection as discussed in closed session january 14th 2018 2018 2008 2008 sorry i apologize february 14 2011. is this right february february 28 2011 april 23rd 2012. mark march 18 2013 september 23rd 2013. january 23rd 2017 october october 28 2013 [Music] december 9 2013 february 10 april 14 2014 january 23rd 2017 october 23rd 2017 july 30th 2018 september 24th 2018 august 19th 2019 september 23rd 2019 october 7th 2019 may 11th 2020 june 27 2020 september 28 2020 october 13th 2020 and october 26 of 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
congratulations ladies so with us all tonight so i have okay yep we have haley brown marianne girona molly thule or tully [Applause] and then coach chloe hoffman and on behalf of the board first of all sportsmanship awards don't come often so on the behalf of the board and administrative team congratulations because that's an award that i know is earned based on just making sure that we're doing things right outside of the actual competition so that's a great accomplishment so congratulations on that as well [Music] um [Applause] congratulations yes i think i've been on i'm this is my finishing up my 19th year on the school board and i can't recall a year in those 19 where we didn't have the latin club up here receiving substantial recognition for achievement at the state level and usually at the national level so this is an annual tradition the resolution reads as follows ground point board of school trustees is honored to command the 2021 crown point high school latin club for meritorious achievement it hereby resolve that the board of school trustees for the crown point community school corporation wishes to express sincere congratulations to the 2020 21 crown point high school latin club for being named overall state champions winning the sweepstakes trophy placing first in the helen wampler spirit award second in publicity contest first for t-shirt design first for local chapter publications tempus kunis thomas i'm sorry and second for the sharon gibson community service award at the indiana junior classical league state convention we got about 25 names here the board of school trustees publicly recognizes this achievement and renders it permanently to its minutes to be preserved for public posterity this 26th day of april 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we're a little shy of our time and you know it's okay for us to end now i i always think the gift of time is always nice too right i i was saying to you earlier maybe maybe people need to feed their kids or feed themselves or you know go for a walk take a breath and unwind yes take a beat exactly all right well thank you and you take care enjoy the rest of your day thank you so much thank you everybody i hope you have a really restful night thank you doreen i appreciate everything you've done thanks you're welcome bye-bye
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
students will go right to first period class um one of the one of i didn't notice on the slide but one of the changes that will take place is that our breakfast right now we have the grab-and-go breakfast students grab it and go um breakfast is only going to be available in the dining hall um once we go um to the to the full return and that's because our classrooms will be at three feet not at six feet as they currently are so we want every student who's going to have breakfast to do that in the dining hall where everything's set up for six feet so that is a change that we'll be making um and i've already spoken with mrs sheridan about that so our food service is on board um and they've been phenomenal as well all year off food service folks as well let me give them a shout out um afternoon dismissal will continue to be tiered meaning that the first tier that we just missed are our first run buses so we can get those buses off and out of the parking lot then we go to our student drivers and parental pickups and then finally second run buses uh we just miss at 210 and kind of monitor them until their bus comes lunch was a was a big um challenge for us just because again we're going to be going from having you know 500 kids 450 kids in the building at once to about uh 900 is what we anticipate based on the data we collected um you know so we have three lunches which um i did reach out to gene sheridan as i said she thought capacity to serve would not be an issue um so we just have to it was a matter of finding additional seating capacity so that we could maintain six feet um and so i put the seat capacity for you um up there our dining hall has 136 seats our auditorium has 75 seats those are the two spaces we've used so far this school year um some of our larger lunches we use both of those spaces most of our lunches we can accommodate with just our dining hall currently um but we're going to have to expand that so the lmc has 51 seats we put a number of desks in the back part of the lmc where the you know what we refer to as the classroom portion of the the lmc we put a number of desks individual desks there spaced at six feet apart and then with our tables that are in there as well we can easily accommodate 51 seats at six feet we're going to open up the outdoor patio area and again we our custodial staff and mr martin marked out and measured out we can actually see 45 students that's using the stone wall so students would be sitting you know on the stone wall and we would put up folding chairs outside as well and then finally the band room and the stage we would use as a last resort and i spoke with mr flint about this to make sure it would work for him and for the music department and what we would do there is um you know on those lunches we know we're going to need those uh additional 46 seats or so we would offer that space to our music and band students um again we thought it was important that since that's their space primarily that they'd have ownership and mr flint thought that the the music students would appreciate um being able to have that option as well and fortunately the band room is fairly close proximity to the dining hall which makes um makes it easy to to transition there passing time is a is a concern um but again um we have marked uh traffic patterns in our in the school we have all year um we are going to need some renewed vigilance in this area and i say that because with 400 450 students um you know and then you add some of those 450 students have stayed home on hybrid days and googled in you know joined virtually our halls are fairly empty so um transitions have not been an issue thus far obviously when we double the number of students that's an area that we will uh paid increased attention to uh and we will continue to message to students that the expectation is that they move from one class to the next that they're not stopping and talking um again if students are moving right from point a to point b and they're universally masked i'm not concerned you know there's no hallway that gets so packed that um you know it's stagnant it's moving so i'm not concerned um overly concerned but but we will have to make sure we pay attention and remind students constantly to keep moving and not to stop and chat um we did give consideration to staggering transitions or to um making one ways and we just didn't think those things were feasible for the staggering transitions particularly at the high school level you can have a class of 25 and because you know it's not like middle school or elementary where they all would transition to the next class together they could go 25 different directions you know one kid could go to a math class another kid could go to a different math class and they could go in an art class and so just to control what classes are moving when and make sure they're arriving at classes that don't have students it's just just not um possible to do so rather than having kids waiting in the hallway to get into their next class we just it's best if we just move from one class to the next quickly and efficiently restroom the only other you know building adjustment i would talk about would be the restroom access we only have about half our restrooms open right now because we have half the students and it was easier to monitor um we're going to be expanding restroom access obviously so that you know our capacity uh limit meets our need um but we're also um spoke with mr kylie and we're able to add a hall monitor to help us uh make sure we monitor those restrooms um again 95 of our students do the right thing uh all the time but restrooms are one of those areas in a high school that you do have to monitor and so um we'll be doing that um but again i think our students will rise to the to the occasion finally i just wanted to thank the faculty and staff this is another transition they've been through a number of transitions this year um and they've done phenomenal job rolling with it making transitions making the changes we need as as we go our students especially and our parents have been very supportive all year um huge shout out to our custodial and maintenance staffs um who worked throughout april vacation to install those plexiglas batteries build desks and deliver them to the classrooms that need you know needed them obviously our central office has been very supportive as well and of course the school committee as well and with that i will answer any questions so i'll open it for questions but i just want to remind everyone we only have like seven minutes so i will ask everyone to try to at least three question part brief mr nunes thank you mrs thank you madam chair uh two quick questions uh the 164 that are still virtual i mean were they just more comfortable being virtual and question number two uh how are you handling phys ed classes you know with uh the locker rooms and such now that there's going to be more students in the zed class i kind of think is the you know what mia has said with locker rooms and such for sporting events right so the the first the the first question you asked about why the uh 164 vla students it really varies some are there because they live with family members who just have you know uh you know compromised so they feel more comfortable for others they've already been in a virtual environment for you know by the time all this happens we're gonna be four or five weeks at the most of school left um you know so i think that plays into it as well and then to be honest with you the other piece of the virtual education is students can move at their own pace right so for some students they have to increase what they're doing in order to raise their grade so it doesn't make sense for them to necessarily you know um come back and you know so so it's really a variety of reasons in terms of the the locker room um that's not something to be honest that i spoke with uh mr chris foley or mr gaffney about um but i will and i will get back to you um i do know that for phys ed um they you know most of our students have not been changing or anything like that this year and they've been doing things like lawn games that you know they're not working up a huge sweat yeah okay you know so um you know uh but i'll get back to you on the locker rooms themselves thank you and again those are in your discussion those are two things that came up in my mind so thank you you're welcome i'm good man other questions comments just wait i just have a couple of quick things um when we talk about the students who are going to come in because they're quarantining you know or they potentially have symptoms are we going to have those parents this time give bring a note is there going to be you know in other words is it going to be some sort of you know doctor's note or how will that actually so that if we're saying that you cannot be you know home you know joining on google me how are you going to make sure these students are in fact in the category that need to be home so our nurses already manage um that and what i've what we've and again the planning phases right but what we've spoken with the faculty about so far is that um i don't want teachers having indiv for a number of reasons right if if i'm conducting class right now and you show up on google me i don't want the teacher having that conversation with you in front of you know the class um so the nurse will follow up the teacher will have to you know if the teacher hasn't been notified mary wait is on the list to join via google meet then the teacher will need to forward your name to the nurse the nurse and or an assistant principal a member of the administrative team will follow up to see what's what um in the current model when teachers have forward and we have had teachers forward names um that's what we've done um and in most cases um it's been you know things like i said oh so-and-so was really tired today that's why they stayed home but in some cases it was a legitimate reason and um i i have to say overwhelmingly though the parents have been very good at communicating with their nurses and sharing that information without us having to track it down but for moving forward um like i said any any student who shows up on google meet we will um as soon as we have the name reach out to to follow up okay and i don't want to take a a lot of your time but i did have um just a question two questions one about lunches when students are you know those spaces are they going to have the option to choose those spaces besides again the band students or are those going to be assigned spaces so we so um so the way our dining hall has worked all year um and the way it will continue to work is it's really you know we need to be efficient so we can't wait and we can't have kids crossing paths that would defeat the purpose so we you know the kids who are buying lunch go right into the survey the kid who the students who bring their lunch we fill in as far forward as we can and then as we reach capacity in the dining hall the next overflow area is the auditorium um and then so on right right and i guess my last quick question outside seating would just be one of would be an extension of our dining hall essentially okay and then i think we talked before about tents were you still utilizing tents for anything at this point or is that no um mr kylie and i had a length multiple conversation and just it's again it's not there's no bang for your buck for us for tents particularly for eating out you know it's going to be primarily eating outside we don't have a need for classroom space uh that's good for it so there was no you know no point to that so um so no no no tents at the high school okay but again like a tremendous amount of work here can i cut you off real quick here we go yeah pretty much almost out of time and i'm really concerned about this i want to check in with the committee um the return of the high school is a really important thing right and i don't want to not have missed mr oliver or miss amara or myself be able to ask questions but we are running into the time where we need to sort of motion out and get into uh the with it with a joint session so my question to the committee i and the one like on the one hand i hate to ask mr tebow to come back but on the other hand i think this is an important issue and i don't want to say okay miss amarillo you have 30 seconds and mr oliver you have 30 seconds right um so what's the pleasure of the committee about how to proceed here mr oliver thank you uh yeah i've got lots of questions uh so i'm not sure if we want to uh see if mr tebow's available to come back this evening another night our next meeting you know what's the date our next meeting is until they show up it's not until the 17th that's that's concern so mr t which will be after the day yes mr tebow would you be available what are we thinking about an hour to because we can we can adjourn this meeting and reopen back into um this session correct me if i'm wrong mr newman you are correct we have to adjourn any we have to adjourn and we will return to open session right but the question is mr tebow would you be available to join us again and probably about i don't know what did we say think about an hour i hope so i hope so yeah otherwise mr tebow we're going to ask you to come back to another meeting so pick your voices i know i'm i'm happy you know i'm happy to be back at 7 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second mr lightfoot aye miss morgan aye mrs doyle aye mrs swanson ah mr bauman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye motion passes 7-0 item 9.5 can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the building administrator contract as presented second mrs swanson hi mrs doyle aye ms morgan aye mrs croner aye mr bowman aye mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot aye motion passes 7-0 item 9.6 i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mrs croner aye mr lightfoot aye mrs moyer hi miss morgan right mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mr bauman aye motion passes seven zero item 10.1 can i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn second second all in favor aye aye we're drunk
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we got a team award here and i'll go through and hand out the individuals madeleine thundberg congratulations keep up the good work megan this is back congratulations keep up the good work [Applause] abby nimigata she's not here but i pronounce that close to correctly thank you christopher han [Applause] congratulations keep up the good work elahan family affair [Applause] abby godson hey right here congratulations ella wrigley good job ella vinnie badali rachel wallen congratulations keep up the good work miles vicker katrina valente and uh luke sherman congratulations keep up the good work gigi sapienza harris proudman [Applause] congratulations keep up the good work gracie kenda [Applause] good job gracie lucas johnson granny greg congratulations thank you aiden greg [Applause] tristan grady kristen congratulations gabby edwards joey bell jeremy walker [Applause] that's the team is is your assistant here sarah she's on jury duty and recognizing sarah whitebrooke who is going to be leaving us at the end of this year so once again congratulations uh you can have all those i guess like i said this is an annual event we're very proud of our latin program and uh was even prouder since our primary competition seems to be year in and year out as brownsburg to put them in place in the indiana high school girls basketball state championship so in addition in addition to latin club so congratulations everybody keep up the good work we're very proud of this [Applause] but it's program because of them all right we need you to scrunch into the middle for our photo taller people in the front parents feel free to come up take some [Laughter] pictures hang in there all set congratulations keep up the good [Applause] work thank you so moved second move by mr hoffman is second by mr angel so move into at this time the regular meeting has been suspended we're moving into public hearing item 3.02 patrons that are commenting to patrons comments on the public hearing we don't have anybody this evening registered to comment on the public hearing we go to 3.03 approved resolution number rainy day education fund additional appropriations ms dowling thank you mr president the public hearing today is for resolution 796 additional appropriations in the rainy day fund as well as the education fund the additional appropriation in the rainy day fund is for reimbursable capable capital costs related to the large-scale capital projects that we're undertaking here in the district uh we're utilizing our cash balance to prolong our needs so we can issue bonds later thereby saving the taxpayers about three quarters of a million dollars for every 30 days that we delay issuing those capital bonds so this money will all be reimbursed back into the rainy day fund once we have sold the bonds and closed down and received the funds essentially the second piece of this is an additional appropriation in the education fund part of what we have been working on at dr terrell's direction mr hardman chaired a technology committee to determine technology directly to the classrooms uh themselves so as we've worked through that determine the appropriate materials the state and federal government have released significant amounts of esser funds and so the demand for products of that nature has escalated so in order to procure those and obtain them as soon as we can we're doing an additional appropriation in the education fund so that we have the funds available to purchase now and encumber those funds so as to not delay getting those the technology items into the classroom to the benefit of students with that the administration would recommend that the board of school trustees approve resolution 796 an additional appropriation in the rainy day fund for a total amount of 5 million dollars and in the education fund in the amount of 5.5 million dollars station was telling it i'll repeat that recommendation for the recommendation to approve resolution appropriation rainy day funds there's still about five million dollars in this educational fund in the amount of five point five million dollars we have a motion to approve yeah so moved second that's moved by mr smith and second by mr hoffman any questions uh just to comment i only want to thank um previous board members who served mr angel mr hoffman other administration uh for putting us in a financial position and being fiscally sound and responsible to be able to do this in the long term so a lot of hard work and just want to recognize those individuals who've done that thank you mr smith any other questions or comments from mr if not all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries 5-0 motion to resume the regular hearing second regular motion motion by mr angel regime regular hearing and second by mr hoffman i was in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed which carries 5-0 will now resume the regular business meeting item four patron comments patrons registered to comment on the agenda items uh we do have somebody this evening uh if you come forward i'll give it a shot your name looks like it's faye mattingly is that correct faye are you here hey thanks for joining us this evening are you familiar with the um the guidelines to speak okay absolutely oh yeah come on come on forward to podium and if you could just please introduce yourself and state the dress that you um reside at and then uh just uh the general i'll hit a couple of them in case there's any issues but we generally have a three minute wait not generally but you do have a three limit time limit to speak um just so if you do get going if somebody gives you i'll ask mr angel to help out if the time starts to run you know he'll he'll give you a little warning that you know please wrap it up okay okay but otherwise thank you for joining us and uh what would you like to comment on this evening does it have to be something it it does not it was a correction we've made in the recent past that no you do not have to comment on the agenda so feel free i'm faye mattingly i live at 4750 and the reason why i wanted to come today was just to question a couple of the um ways that we're doing our quarantine for and why we haven't gone along with the indiana state department of health recommendations on our quarantine so i have two boys that are in the school system my oldest has been quarantined four times so that's eight weeks which is two months of not being in school and i was just wondering with cases being down with most of our teachers being vaccinated why the school board has not decided to go with indiana state health department recommendation well let me help you that you're it is just an opportunity to comment so we won't have discussion with you this evening um you could express more of your concerns maybe we'll have a little bit of that covered this evening by just getting an update to the board on where we stand with um protocols um so just you know it won't be we we're not gonna offer it back and forth right but i understand um but please continue if you have anything else that you okay my other concern with a lot of parents wanted to voice was um getting to the decision of wednesdays and having wednesdays off and how we will go forward for next year and with our children having lost 20 of their education is at home now will that continue until next year the main concern that i kind of wanted to represent some parents than saying our concerns for where we want the board to be making decisions for next year thank you and um if you'd like to stick around for the rest of the meeting i think we're going to like i said receive an update and okay um maybe i'll get a little bit of information back to you that way thank you so much okay thank you all right good evening you can do that as well five points keep just reminded everybody i don't know mr gill is that hitting the green button for you to speak is helping for the um it's necessary for for live stream yeah so i'm not sure if i i i keep forgetting so i apologize i'll try to do better yeah they saw dr trail's light so okay i just reminded everybody um you've heard the consent agenda as presented by dr tell do we have a motion to approve second i was moved by mr babjack and second by mr angel do we have any questions or comments for dr terrell on the consent agenda if not stay put all this all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed most carries 5-0 thank you dr terrell and action items this evening 6.01 is to apply for and receive the ido cares act mr hartman thank you mr president uh this evening i'm uh asking the board to approve an application for and receive the funding from the indiana department of education for the education stabilization relief funds you might have remembered uh last uh last summer when the federal government uh did allocate stimulus money to states and at that point in time uh we were allocated crown point schools approximately 433 thousand dollars and that was to uh help us through the this uh this time so this was the first of these stimulus allocations so this evening seeking your approval uh to receive to apply for and receive those funds uh in the amount of 433 975 dollars and 43 cents thank you mr harvey for the recommendation to apply for and receive the funds from the ido we cares act we have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr hoffman is second by mr baby any questions or comments for mr hartman not all those in favor signify by saying aye hi hi opposed promotion carries five zero and staying with mr hartman 6.02 is received grant funds from the crown point community foundation endowment funds thank you very much um again from the crown point foundation we're very thankful for the endowments that have been set up to support cromwell community school corporation this evening we'd like to ask the board to approve the funding that's coming from crown point foundation from the beth esbucio endowment fund in the amount of 622 622.87 for timothy ball elementary art department uh dr jerry and trish uh ali the endowment amount is one thousand one hundred and seventy eight dollars and eleven cents for the crown point high school latin club and charleston virginia iceland 848 dollars for the crown point community school corporation seeking your approval this evening to receive those funds thanks mr harvin recommendation to approve to receive crumpling community foundation distributions do we have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr angel on second by mr smith any questions or comments mr hartman all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 and we have item 6.03 professional service proposal the lead inclusion organization mr harvin thank you again mr mr warney this proposal that i'm seeking uh your approval for this evening is to train our leadership team in the area of inclusion as you remember from the audit for our special education uh programming the the five items that i've listed in the uh the overview come directly from the the audit that really impact the instruction in crown point schools in an inclusive manner where all students are receiving quality education the the organization lead in q inclusion was identified as the i'm going to say the vendor for this based on what we had heard from the indiana iep resource office they um lee ann young who is the ceo presents often to the uh the organization for indiana works nationally is also works internationally with school corporations so we feel very fortunate we have an opportunity to work with her and her team in developing our leadership teams at the school and the district district level the proposal does include a kickoff of august 3rd and 4th with our leadership team there is extended coursework over the time of the two years as well as an additional check-in time throughout so seeking your approval tonight of the proposal as we move forward with implementing and the components of the audit that we receive from special education programming thank you mr harvey for the recommendation to approve the proposal with the lead inclusion organization an amount of 134 500 to provide district leaders and school leadership teams the research and tools to plan develop implement an inclusive learning environment do you have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr hoffman and second by mr babjack any questions or comments from mr harvey mr has she worked with any of our close school corporations or how did we send her direction mr hartman uh we actually have received direction from the indiana iep resource center she has worked within indiana state professional development uh and that's her name came forward from that because many of us just recently participated in a workshop with her and therefore that's how we landed on on mrs young that's all thank you any other questions or comments from charlotte if not all those in favor signify by saying guy aye aye opposed kerry's five zero thank you thank you mr harmon uh 6.04 is wheeler middle school air conditioning project ms dowling thank you mr president the auxiliary gym and main gym at wheeler middle school currently do not have air conditioning or active dehumidification the recommendation before you today is to add air conditioning and active dehumidification in the main and um auxiliary gyms at wheeler middle school the as you can see there were bids that went out we had six companies that responded the low bid on this project uh was two hundred and eighty six thousand five hundred dollars uh the project specifications were prepared by gibraltar and the bid uh and related specs were reviewed obviously by skillman corporation as well um this is going to be funded out of the 2020 general obligation bond the administration would recommend that the contract be awarded to circle our mechanical in the amount of 286 thousand five hundred dollars for the installation of air conditioning with dehumidification in the wheeler's middle school gymnasiums thank you miss dolly for the recommendation to prove contracts rewarded with circle our middle circle are mechanical in about 200 6500 for the installation of the air conditioning dehumidification and wheeler middle school gymnasiums we have a motion to approve second moved by mr babjack and second by mr hoffman questions or comments from ms dowling all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 thank you ms dowling and mr molaskey for the work there i'm guessing you may be involved a bit 6.05 winfield elementary school renovation furniture replacement ms dowling thank you mr president as we move towards completion of the renovation and expansion at winfield elementary school we had a need to replace as well as add furniture to accommodate the new facility the updated facility in order to provide the school with some some level of choice in what they were getting but also being cognizant of the budget set forth for furniture replacement mr molaskey worked along with gibraltar to generate essentially a request for proposal for various items within the building that needed to be replaced then they advertised that solicited bids they did send out to seven school furniture providers on april 5th two responded in effect and so to meet our needs the items from two vendors were selected um in order to allow for all the pieces that are needed to complete the classrooms and ancillary areas um to be provided so the also this was a planned expenditure out of the 2020 general obligation fund and the awards r2 lee company for the a larger portion as well as sharp school services and this will complete the furniture replacement at winfield elementary the administration would recommend that the board approve contracts to be awarded to lee company in the amount of two hundred and twenty one thousand two ninety six forty eight and sharp school services in the amount of sixty eight thousand five seventy four the grand total of the furniture additions and replacement purchase will be two hundred and eighty nine thousand eight seventy forty eight thank you ms donnie you've heard the recommendation as presented by ms dowling i moved to approve the two contracts for furniture additions and replacements in the total amount of 289 thousand eight hundred seventy dollars forty eight cents second most mr hoffman is second by mr angel any other questions or comments from miss dowling all those favors signify by saying aye all right opposed motion carries five zero and the 6.06 receiving approval of resolution 798 799 miss dowling thank you mr president resolutions 798 and 799 begin the process for the school corporation to issue bids or issue bonds excuse me through the holding corporation and in concert with the board of school trustees resolution 798 approves the preliminary plans for the overall scope of the projects that information will be available starting tomorrow on the website as well as a hard copy here in the office for anyone that wants to view the forms of the lease and authorizing us to public to advertise the notice of hearing on the lease due to the size of this project we'll be utilizing a lease agreement whereby the debt is issued via the holding corporation by agreement with the border school trustees resolution 799 allows the board to reapprove or reauthorize the formation of the building corporation the building corporation is currently chaired by mark bates as i stated earlier so this allows us to um prepare to issue bonds uh to be cognizant of the market but still holding off until we need to issue bonds so thinking about the additional and rainy day as well as this so we're trying to get to the point where we can issue the debt but we're cognizant of the market which is a little unstable so that if interest rates would suddenly rise we're ready to issue bonds and start that process in may we'll come to you with public hearing and resolutions to authorize execution of at least in the additional materials this is about a three meeting process for us we would recommend approval of resolution 798 and 799 approving preliminary plans form of lease and authorizing publication of notice of hearing unleash and reapproving formation of the building corporation thank you miss dolly you've heard recommendation from administration to approve resolution 798.79 approving preliminary plans forms of lease and authorizing publication of notice of hearing on lease and reapproving the formation of the building corporation we have motion to approve so moved second moved by mr angel on second by mr hoffman we have any questions or comments from ms dowling just another comment to thank mr bates again for all his support and health through the years and again just heard his name mentioned again so just want to take time to thank him for his time are you any other anything else for mr allen before we take them out if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries five zero and uh 6.07 miss downing vacant land farmed by a third party via lease agreement thank you mr president as we've worked through the process of identifying a site for the new middle school as you know we had the site of 98 acres that will be the location of the new taft middle school as well as a site on state street of roughly 20 acres and a site on 231 that is approximately i believe 52 acres we have had an undocumented agreement in place for those farmers to maintain that land on our behalf and as a result they can then farm that make profit do the things that they do however we need that to be reduced to writing and that is what this does here today this formalizes the agreements that we have had in place for some time with a lease that runs through november 30th of this year and then sometime in december we'll actually have to go through a bid process to solicit and advertise but we just wanted to reduce this to writing have it documented but also allow the farmers to continue what they're doing is we're in the middle of a season to some extent so we would recommend approval of the farm leases with wayne nelson for the property located at 11052-11084 state street and with ej farms for the property located at 3615 east 129th avenue both located in crown point indiana thank you miss dallagas mr stated administration recommends approval of the farm leases with wayne nelson i'm just going to repeat the entire listing here witness for the property located at 11052 and one one zero eight four state street and with ej farms for the property located at thirty six fifteen east 129th avenue both located in cromwell indiana we have a motion to approve second as i moved by mr babjack in second by mr hoffman any questions or comments from miss dowling i have a comment and just for informational purposes it's not having a written lease is fairly common in the agricultural industry so the fact that we have not had at least four years and have worked on a verbal agreement with farmers is pretty typical so mr president i just need to abstain on this one as a result of professional relationship with one of the parties so thank you mr smith mr hoffman any other questions or comments all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries 4-0 and mr smith will abstain from this vote 6.08 purchase of the lightspeed top cat sound system miss dowling thank you mr president um as i mentioned earlier mr hard men chaired a technology committee essentially to determine and well identify what technology is appropriate in the classroom we had various members of staff in the district on this committee one of those pieces is a sound amplification system and we worked with gibraltar we work with different folks to get an understanding of the things that are out there and available so this particular type of amplification system offered by lightspeed was the preference and in addition lightspeed actually has a quantity purchasing agreement on through the power source which used to be the tri-state multi-state quantity purchasing system that allows us to move forward with this purchase with your approval obviously so that we can get our orders placed again going back to what we talked a little bit about these demand is up because of funds that are becoming available to public entities and so time for us was of the essence and we were lucky that lightspeed was available on a quantity purchasing agreement so they've already done the sealed bid they've done the work to solicit the best price which we're clearly taking advantage of here so this amplification system will go in every classroom as well as ancillary spaces we would recommend approval to purchase 500 light speed top cat amplification sound systems with flex mic and media connector from lightspeed technologies incorporated and the amount of six hundred and fifty eight thousand five hundred dollars from the source well qpa contract 111 616-lti thank you mr administration recommends approval to purchase the 500 light speed topcat amplification sound system with flex mic and the media connector from light speed technologies incorporated at a cost of 658 500 from the source wall qpa contract number 111 616 lti we have a motion to approve so moved second moved by mr hoffman and seconded by mr smith any questions or comments from his balance uh i want to thank our i believe if i'm not misunderstanding we had a technology team that kind of brought forth this recommendation by doing uh maybe mr hartman was involved mr gill i'm sure um i think that what ms dowling mentioned about just being prepared and if they have the funds to know what to do with the funds and then you know act quickly in this case where there's probably gonna be some competition to get this equipment so um thank you guys for having the organization to have it in place do we have any other questions or comments for miss downing if not all in favor signify by saying i opposed emotion carries five zero and uh our last item here is 6.09 resolution 797 authorizing payments of athletic officials through electronic means miss dowling last one i promise the school corporation has paid staff via electronic payment for a number of years mr darula has requested that we extend that to athletic officials those are paid out of the athletic extracurricular account this is pretty commonplace um today state board of accounts requires us to have the board approval resolution because it is not we're not paying employees or paying independent contractors through the extracurricular account so resolution 797 essentially authorizes that as stated in the recommendation i'll be working with the deputy treasurer and the high school staff to have internal controls on how this will be documented and preserved for the purposes of audit i know mr drewell is ecstatic because this will also eliminate some work on the staff part of his staff the front office staff they won't have to issue 1099s it's really a win-win and we're already paying for the service so um we use event leak for the building event scheduling so we would recommend approval of resolution 797 authorizing payment of athletic officials through an electronic funds transfer thank you mr recommendation for administration to approve resolution 797 also authorizing payment of athletic officials through an electronic funds transferred with motion to approve so moved second moved by mr angel in second by mr hoffman any questions or comments on the statement system for miss downing if not i was in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed most carries five zero thank you miss dolly we'll move to uh let's go to discussion report items we have a 7.01 to 7.01 the taft program and design presentation dr terrell thank you mr gill if you could switch that over now so this evening we're coming to you and want to bring a report an update on where we are with taft middle school and with the design that has gone on there we've had a committee a design committee who has been led by mr gian fermi and has been made up of several different people we appreciate the work that they have put into this process we're not going to go through all 33 pages of this tonight but this will be posted on our website tomorrow morning we have a portion of the website that's helped me with the capital improvement projects and this update along with other updates will be placed there for our public to be able to view those so as we go through this tonight um we want to get to the point where we talk through just kind of giving you a better explanation of the site development what we're looking at there this is not new information this slide right here this is what we have shown you multiple times just kind of bringing you with an update though with the fields now in place looking at what the school building is going to where it's going to be placed on the 98 acres that we have chosen out there on gibson street just kind of gives you some updates with some information with car parking what we're looking at for 705 spaces the reason i point that out is that will give us plenty of space within the property to be able to park cars as they wait for their students before and after school which should help with traffic concerns on the roads surrounding the property again there's traffic flow here's getting into you can see the general education portion of this over here in the orange or peach colored area the blue on the opposite side of the building will have our auxiliary gem our regular gym our auditorium as well as performing arts center rooms and or performing arts rooms in the back of it this will also allow we have a community room here for the public to be able to utilize and for us to be able to lock down the building except for this end so that we can use that for activities after hours and as i go through this if there's anything you'd like to ask or point out please do so same for dion we appreciate him being here tonight and mark as we go through it as well jump please feel free to jump in this slide shows you just a better idea of where the classes are going to be so we're looking at grade levels we have three grade levels being here with the media center in the middle long hallway where you can look all the way down through the entire building the front entrance right here with administration on one side and student services on the other in the cafeteria back here be behind the administration offices again this one just gives you an idea of how many classes we're looking at where those classrooms will be located the academic spaces just kind of gives you a general overview of what a typical classroom would be if you'll notice in here as we just talked about with the technology update and what we're looking at right here f4 is that 70 to 80 inch interactive monitor which will be in all classrooms and we look forward to that being in all of our classrooms throughout the district in the next couple of years here again just more examples of what classrooms can look like this is the part that gets really cool to be able to see the progress that we've made here with what those classrooms could look like again these are sample classrooms you'll notice the interactive display board up there on the wall as well media center uh very different than what they're currently utilizing at taft and the opportunities that will be available there with additional space we've got two different large group instruction rooms along with a couple of small group instruction rooms and then you can see over on the blue side some additional supports we'll have a tv studio media production and then the work room for the media specialist there as well here you can kind of see some ideas of what the media center will look like inside if you'll notice we have a lot of windows to provide natural lighting and that is the case throughout the building just again utilizing the space and making sure there's plenty of space for our students to be in those areas as you approach the building there'll be a couple of different ways to come in one is through the administration office here which will be the principal's assistant principles and the other side would be where the student services would be counselors nurses office as well coming in there one of the great things about this building and the development the as we've gone through this process again you can see the wide open corridors you can see the natural lighting coming in from the windows up high that will allow us to benefit from that again looking from the cafeteria out into the commons area cafeteria will be large with a large glass window space with a step up platform for multiple purposes to be used there students will also be able to eat there during the lunch periods again kind of showing you the commons area looking into the cafeteria and i hope the thing that you're taking away from this is the amount of space that will be there for our students here in the auditorium we will have a 500 seat auditorium there's two spaces back here that have been identified as flex rooms and they will have an additional up to seats there also then right here will be our concession stand that will help with the cafeteria or with the gymnasium right across the hall without having to go all the way back down to the cafeteria for concessions as we host events coming down here to the gymnasium area you can see we'll have a main gym that can be divided into two separate courts here and then also an auxiliary gym health classrooms will be there as well fitness lab just really pleased with the opportunities that are going to be available here for our students also outside entrances for those different athletic events and teams who practice outside to be able to have access as well this just kind of indicates and shows what that vestibule is going to look like between the auditorium and the gymnasium you can see how open it is with the higher ceilings again permitting that site line of sight for our administrators as we supervise activities in the evenings as well as during the school day outside and again these are not final drawings of what the outside will look like just more conceptual drawings here you can see the entryway will be covered with plenty of distance as parents and different people approach the building a lot of glass windows in the front for administrators for student services to be able to see who's approaching the building the top view looking from the west this is the auditorium with the space in between the gym and the auditorium back here is the auxiliary gym this space right here in the middle will be cafeteria on the back side offices located on the front again anywhere on the roof where you see these structures those are going to be there to permit that natural light to flow into our building this gives you a better idea of what the academic wing will look like just focused in on that again pointing out the natural light that will be allowed to come in so this will be looking from the street looking south towards our building again as you guys can see just a very sharp looking well-constructed well thought-out plan of utilization of our space and look forward to really some great things and great opportunities for our students as we move forward with that any questions comments that you all may have that we can answer for you dion anything that you would like to add with that originally we looked at one package for this project but considering it needs to be complete by august 2023 you know a project like this typically take about 16 months so we requested that they develop an early site package that means moving the dirt infrastructure putting some information a few weeks ago we also added structure because if you've been seeing what's going on with steel joyce specifically what used to be so at a minimum early site package footings and foundations deal which is going to go out to bid late late june and come before you fourth monday in june to award that first phase first package intend on breaking ground that'll give gibraltar enough time to continue developing you know the footprint will be locked in that will allow gibraltar time to finish his mechanical electrical system and then the rest of the building package will be in august again for completion there is a third package we may have to consider um just based on the timeline of off-site utilities what i mean by that is working with indian american water nipsco we're still trying to define some of those things and work with the local developers be mutually beneficial everything's going to be moving fast forward the next plan submission to the town of winfield they're very excited literally the biggest thing that's happened just by brief snapshot thank you mark i know i think you covered everything rather well i just it's been really uh great working with gibraltar as they really listen to us on our education side of it and have some real experts who have been in education that are on their team so there's been a lot of things where you know we say no we want this we want that and they just come back and keep keep making it happen in the design so it's been a really great process with them and working with everybody is there has there been anything specific i'm sure there has been and i know you've got a background in expertise in the security side of things so what types of security features that are new to you know building schools these days can we expect to see um in this project kind of as you know was mentioning some of that's kind of going to be in more of the detail okay move into those pieces for creating the footprint um a lot of the design itself and dr carroll alluded to this is just as the approaches to the building having windows in strategic places and just kind of how they put together the outside structure pieces of it has been considered but we'll be talking about cameras and the other pieces as we get into i think the biggest security thing though is uh you know mr carlson and karen both the director of transportation they worked with a lot of the graphic patterns of how we were doing so that was one of the things that we've already tackled any other questions comment uh as i indicated before but based on my years of experience on this board and many building projects uh i've got all the confidence in the world that if skillman says this will be open in 2023 it'll be open in 2023 and i frequently relate the story of when we built jerry ross elementary school i approached uh larry kunis who was with skillman at the time and i said larry can we can we have this ready to go they gave him a deadline and larry's comment to me was well on a scale of one to ten it's a 12 but we'll get it done and they did so you know being able to jockey these things around and take advantage of starting here and finishing up designs in a different aspect at a later date makes the project go well and we're counting on you dion dion is that area nipsco gas and electric or is it kankakee valley for that uh and that's it it is okay all right thank you okay thank you i'd also like to thank dion and scott have been really uh essential in having us get before different community groups to be able to meet with them possible developers out in the area to see how we can partner with them as well at winfield so it's been a good working relationship with our community members as well and that's our intention is as we continue to move forward thank you dr terrell if any other any other questions or comments for anybody uh let's move forward to information items we have superintendent discussion groups about mr smith or hoffman or maybe just anybody have anything to uh share from winfield cedar lake or crown point okay now we can move to about chief academic officer mr harmon oh there we go got it all right i was waiting for the cue uh thank you mr president um as we uh come to the close of the of the school year um we're a month away now from the school year we are preparing for summer school uh we are monitoring the uh the governor as far as his uh comments and direction as far as schooling after this close of the school year also monitoring the indiana health health department as far as their uh um recommendations uh so at this time we are we're going to be having in-person summer school throughout the uh the school district uh and uh as we continue to wait for the governor's next executive orders that comes out in the guidance from the indiana health department there will be guidance as far as what health and safety will look like in the in the summer as we move forward and closer to the school year we'll be monitoring those things to identify what exactly uh that will be and communication will be coming out uh regarding that to our community the second thing i'd like to comment on is um in regards to the our department we've been fortunate with restructuring that dr terrell has uh has organized to to have directors that were critical in secondary elementary as well as special education and assistant director there i think that was a a really significant move as far as trying to add focus and alignment compliance to to those areas also we are in the process and we have posted some instructional specialist positions and these two will add a focus to areas like language arts and mathematics secondary and elementary school coordinators at special education blended learning which is the the online component of the of the curriculum diagnosticians so all of this is coming together to really hone in on the academic processes that are within crown point community school corporation and continue to improve the instruction and the learning environment for our students so dr terrell school board we appreciate the the support thank you thank mr president um as i kind of reflect on our accommodations even prior to this board meeting but if you listen to mr walker and coach hoffman and coach vasser one of the themes was that nothing's normal this year and nothing's easy however we still see our students really achieving and and doing well and that's a testament to our students as well as our teachers and our coaches and i think you can apply this to our accountability testing as well because currently we're in the midst of giving our grade three through eight ilearn testing and it's not easy and it's not normal but um our administrators and our teachers are making it happen and if we reflect um back in february we administered the istep test to all of our 11th graders well 97 of them which is a huge rate of kids coming in and taking that test because you had to do it in person they achieved 80 percent of them passed uh the language arts portion and 51 in the math compare that to the 2018-19 istep test and that's 80 percent passed in language arts and 41 percent tested math now you could take away a couple different things from those those stats um yes they were 11th graders taking it this year in a test that normally 10th graders take so we would expect them to do a little better or hold steady but also remember this is a group that's gone through a year where nothing was normal and nothing was easy and we sure didn't go backwards but we actually improved in some of those stats that we're looking at so i think we can be confident and look at the great job that our teachers have done with what they've had and um and our kids are still learning so that's that's one big takeaway when we looked at that that we were like hey now we have some data that the things that we've done have helped our kids so we'll just keep on plugging away and try to get back to when it's normal it's never easy but back to when it's normal that's all i have thanks good evening mr warney and board of trustees i wanted to recognize one of our paraprofessionals at the high school it's actually been a little while since this happened but i i wasn't here last month to recognize carrie woof in mrs hanlon's class was with one of the students while he was eating and he started to choke on his lunch turned blue and she jumped in and did the heimlich maneuver and saved him so just her quick action and and thinking saved a student's life so just wanted to recognize her yep i keep for getting my green light off i don't have a name tag it means i don't have to sit up here every month so that's all right last month you all approved moving forward with a new website which we know we need so dr terrell has pulled up our progress so far i have to stress that this is just in the template form we still have a lot of work to go and we're about two months away before this goes public but this is the front page of the website you can see that it's a little bit of an improvement hopefully are you able to scroll down a little bit you tell me where you'd like to go yeah scroll down the front page of here those young ones didn't have starting blocks so you'll notice a significantly paired down layout there's only a few places to click instead of 50.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
yeah okay thank you that would be fabulous thank you whatever yeah thank you i was rushing yeah what i will ask is um dr gifford can you keep uh mr tebow uh sort of updated via text it's gonna be earlier or if we're running late you know he can go put on his pajamas or whatever i don't want him to be at 7 30 in the meeting waiting for us if it goes later so we'll try to keep you updated that way mr tebow okay we'll give it some space and miss wait says she has questions and the rest of us i think have questions too um all right so um first um i believe now i can entertain a motion to adjourn our regular session to convene into an open joint session with the select board and the finance committee to return to our open session later did i do that right mr nunes very good will you make a motion for me so moved secondary all right so i have a motion uh for mr mr nunes a second from mr oliver um we will reconvene into uh same link we'll stay live um we'll reconvene into this session after that session is done um mr will join us again um i will also remind people that um if you have public comments um we will check in with miss guenther i miss gentler do you have anything right now no so i will remind people that they can email you right while we are in the joint session um when we reconvene and we will take that back up so need a roll call chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen emeril yes mary waite yes john nunes yes and thank you everyone i'll see you in the joint session and then back here in a little while back here in this same link okay thank you uh so we're still live for our live audience i'm just going to let everyone know we're waiting we have a couple more people i'm waiting to come back from the joint meeting and then we will reconvene for anyone who's watching i'm going to give this another minute and then we'll get started okay all right correct me if i'm wrong mr nunes but i believe i need to entertain a motion to reconvene into open session is that correct like my parliamentarian mr nance yes ma'am so i will entertain a motion to reconvene into open session so move second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mr oliver um can we do can we have a roll call please miss gentler shannon jenkins yes chris oliver yes mary wait kathleen amaral yes john nunes yes so hopefully miss wheat will be able to join us in a second um i didn't want to make mr tebow wait any longer we've been keeping on hold a long time um i know miss amaral and mr oliver probably have questions i do too and then hopefully miss waite will join us and she can put forward any other questions um that she had mr oliver you indicated that you had some questions so would you like for mr tebow would you like to begin um could i interrupt can i just respond nunes um i told him i would get him an answer on the locker rooms and in the break i actually called mr pretty impressive so i i would just like to confirm that we have not used the locker rooms for our phys ed classes this year which is what i thought we've used it in a very limited capacity for athletics with uh markings at eight feet apart um and limited to no more than 12 athletes at a time in the locker room and that's true of both the high school locker room as well as the locker rooms at the middle school that i used for athletics um again those markings were put down by mr christopholi and all within the guidance in terms of moving forward um we don't anticipate using the locker rooms for phys ed classes like i said a lot of it will be outdoors a lot of it are long games yard games walking the track things that don't include high respiration you know given the pandemic and with only five weeks left in the school year that's kind of the plan for that so thank you mr tebow i appreciate that you're welcome all right mr oliver go ahead thank you dr jenkins uh so first of all thank you for the presentation mr tebow i appreciate all the work that you put into you and your staff um for trying to make this happen the reopening of the high school um to mrs waite's point about uh notifying um the school about um and students that are having to quarantine and whatnot but correct me if i'm wrong i don't know if there's a question from mr tebow or dr gifford that deci has kind of changed the requirements or changed the reporting um for what what they consider a close contact in the school systems um so i i think i i do agree that um that we're gonna see a lot less uh close contacts uh being reported especially due to the fact that essentially deci has changed the guidance to allow for um you know full return to school that's essentially what they're doing they've gone ahead and they've changed the guidance so we can now go ahead with uh move forward with the full in-person uh classes so i fully expect that we won't see anything we haven't um yeah i believe we haven't seen as many close contacts already as it is um do we know how we're just coming off of april vacation this is just a general question do we know um have we had any positives in the district have reported to us over the weekend or today i know i received one today from demelo um obviously it was you know from vacation okay so that's that's actually not too bad no before we move on can i follow up on the same sort of in this wheelhouse i took mary's question a different way and it may not have been the way she meant it but here's the way i take it like my son is a senior and he is they are not good the seniors right they are like a lot of them i see all these friends they're like checked out they're done they dislike the hybrid and what i took from mary's question is is not like people who are need to cover quarantine but people whose parents are like yeah sure you need to covet quarantine you know i'm just i call in and say you had a close contact to mr tebow's point there's only four weeks left so i'll just couple a call in a couple of close contacts and you can hybrid it out that's the way i took it i don't know that's how where i was going so thank you shannon that's what i'm seeing and so i wonder how you're going to combat that yeah uh it's a great question um i will say this that the nurses marisha wildrick has been nothing phenomenal in terms of her close collaboration with the department uh with the board of health rather and with um dartmouth town nurse mora they're they're in constant communication with one another um you know but again even the close contacting even the the contact tracing it's all on the honor system for lack of a you know better word right though it's up to people doing the right thing we you know we're 12 months 13 months into this at this point it's been like this for the past 13 months um you know i the optimistic side of me says people will do the right thing the more realistic side says there will be people who will do what you're saying it's a handful of weeks we're not going to eliminate it at this point the only thing i think i can do is encourage people to do the right thing encourage people to send their students to school you know and i i i do think there will be some seniors i think there'll be some students across all grade levels who quite frankly are 13 months into a pandemic and they've gotten used to not coming five days a week um and at the high school level i think it's a little bit different than the elementary or middle school level where parents have more control i mean that's the reality of it although i have two elementary kids and sometimes i wonder if i have control so i get that but you know it's different sending an elementary school school student to school versus having that battle with a 14 15 16 17 18 year old who has gotten used to not coming every day um fortunately it is at the end of the year and this is a step towards a full return to normalcy we have 150 kids who are going to stay fully remote who next year the department of ed is saying is not an option um so those students are going to need to be integrated back into school full-time as well so there are certainly certainly challenges at the high school level there's no no doubt about it sorry no mr oliver you said you had other questions one just sort of followed on that so i wanted to go go ahead with your questions yeah no problem so my one of my other questions mr tevo is just talk logistically around the students moving in the hallways are we going to see are students going to see more staff floating around um how are you going to you know control because like you said it's really difficult to have a staggered um a staggered bell schedule or a staggered schedule where students are because just because of the dynamics of the classes how do you how do you expect to accomplish that sure so the administrators we have assigned routes that we take during the passing time um you know obviously from time to time you're in a meeting you don't get to it but you know we try and be pretty vigilant in terms of our routes to to to do that to monitor the hallways we also have the security uh monitors in the hallways we also do have teachers who come out to their you know to the door um during passing time as well um it's one of those things though that if you're at the door now there's more people in the hallway as well so so it is you know it's it's our our kids for the most part are very good at moving from class to class much more so than in years past obviously sure um but again it is it is going to take consistent messaging and a consistent push from everyone all hands on deck because as i said earlier with only 400 450 kids in the build the building does feel quite empty most days and so there's not you know i it's very easy to become lacks i guess is my point because the halls aren't crowded right now so i think when we have twice as many kids um repeatedly saying come on guys let's get to class they do they move they listen our kids are so good in terms of they listen to the direction of the adults um you know so as long as we are consistent in providing that message i think our kids will rise to the occasion for sure okay well that's i'm happy to hear that uh just just one last question this is kind of just generally speaking um and i guess this might be for dr gifford i don't want to take up any too much more times uh but has has deci or the state talked about any kind of mandates for the vaccine for next year for students of uh of 60 plus right now or if they change that require if they change the age guidelines is there any talk about mandating it no i haven't heard anything we've had some conversations about that on our campus and part of the problem is the emergency authorization it's difficult to legally mandate a vaccine until it's um officially authorized um and so it's not clear our our director of health services has told us um when that full authorization from the fda will come in um i will we've been told a lot of people in the state are looking for guidance from the state on this but as we've learned in the pandemic you know action from the state can be hit or miss right who knows when and if that will come but there are there are definitely legal questions about that um so i i had heard dr jenkins that umass amherst had made it mandatory is is they just did they just did in fact all the all the publics were playing chicken and they all kind of came out on the same day um but we're we're getting different guidance from different lawyers so interesting okay yeah that's that's really it uh that was my my last question so thank you all right this miss wait i see you but miss amarillo i think had some questions too and i'll come back around to you okay are you good you know i'm good i'm just i'm just uh i'm just in and all i really appreciate all everyone and ross you're you and your staff and and just everyone just bending and flipping and pivoting and and making this work um that's really all you know others have kind of covered the questions that i had i can't think of any others i just look forward to this happening and i commend you for all of your planning um and dedication to this and i just uh hope for the best really that's all i have all right miss wait and then i think maybe i don't know if mr nunes is stretching or so he's after miss wait and then mr nunes i see you all right go ahead i just had a quick question kind of follow up on what you're talking about on the back seams do we know how many students and staff like what percentage roughly qualifying for the vaccine or and how many have actually gotten the vaccine at this point is there any record keeping of that for let's say like my daughter got her vaccine to her first shot today is there any record keeping with the nurses or just to kind of give us oh that that would be hipaa we we wouldn't have records on that no okay all right mr nunes that was that was kind of basically my question i was just wondering you know especially with the the shots now open and they're telling people you know that there is not a surplus but you know it's not as long await and everything else if you know mr tebow had heard of you know any of our 16 year old sophomores and ups that started to get the shot back but that kind of answered that question if he had breakthrough the great you know as through the grapevine as things can be yeah so i i can tell you that i met with the student council officers they're all seniors um so they're all probably 17 or 18 at this point um excuse me of the four i think two if not three of them had already gotten it one of them um shared that she was the last of her friend group to get vaccinated so that's i mean that's encouraging it's anecdotal obviously and it's a very small it's for seniors right so it's it's it's anecdotal and small but i do think we have a number of seniors uh you know a number of students who are who can get it because of how old they are starting to get it so that's that's encouraging all right thank you that's great to hear so i guess i i i want to just sort of start off and say how again to echo miss amarillo how deeply appreciative i am you know everything your staff has been doing this has been a real a real challenge it has um but i said this at the last meeting and i also shared this in an email with with you and dr gifford um lots of kids are struggling right like i just looked at some data 46 percent of parents report um that their teenagers have a have some mental health issues related to the pandemic and i remain deeply concerned that we're not doing enough for these kids we can talk about learning loss and making that up next year but the high school in my mind is a little unique because it creates a record that then must be sent off to colleges right which they may say okay was a pandemic but if other schools are giving passing grades you know doing learning academies like everett i worry that our kids um are therefore going to be disadvantaged in this situation i do not want to create more work for teachers and administrators right right now in this moment because we're all burnt out we're all stressed it has been a very difficult year but i want us to think really seriously outside the box um particularly in the high school about how not to hold these kids harmless it's a global pandemic we're all struggling we have decades on these kids right so we have way better mental coping mechanisms than them and i know we've talked about oh well we can do credit recovery for these kids yes but then we can do we do credit recovery anytime right that's not a pandemic solution and my bottom line will always be these kids have to be held harmless um it is been there's lots of words i want to use that are not appropriate for a public meeting like this for how bad it is for these kids to have the misfortune to be in school during a pandemic none of their lives should be negatively impacted because nearly half of them have some sort of mental health challenge um i know it's been great you know for a week after right you can go and you can like my kids were depressed for months right a one week makeup window doesn't help and they've shoveled themselves a hole so deep because of our mental health challenges that i'm not sure they're going to be able to get out um squeaky wheel and mr tebow you're the social workers the guidance counselors they have been fabulous but i worry about some of the other kids who maybe aren't squeaky wheels who we don't see whose grades have only dipped a little and i just i don't want to do it now but i don't want us to forget this and i really want us to think outside of the box about what we can do to make sure these kids are held harmless and again i think i'm saying this to you i think it's generally we have to be concerned about learning laws but the high school is in a special position because of the fact that they are creating a record that goes out into the world um and so i really want us to just be creative in thinking about how we can help these kids who've been harmed yeah i mean i i don't disagree with you with many of the points you're making uh to be honest i i don't really worry about learning loss so much um to be quite frank if we've done our job as educators and teach kids how to think and give them the skills they need to con to be lifelong learners they can make up learning loss you know they're going to live a long time i am much more concerned with the social emotional toll of isolating during you know the pandemic um there's no disputing that that has had an impact on high school students for sure um i also agree with your you know your um assessment that the social workers school counselors assistant principal the student support teams in themselves have done a phenomenal job of you know monitoring exactly what you're talking about yes um you know you advocate for your for your um children um and do a nice job with that um but i hope you understand that we do have systems in place for those students whose parents aren't as comfortable or um you know able to advocate um you know we look at you know i i happen to look at notes you know because we do have students who are struggling um and we do and we have this year try to not try to have treated every case as a case-by-case basis we try and we try and identify what interventions are needed to bring that particular kid you know back to success um sometimes you know it's it's a wide range of things that we do like you know i was just looking at a student today who we've reduced their schedule down to just absol it's a scene it happens to be senior just what the senior needs to graduate so we remove all that other anxiety we remove you know and again that's a small thing but when you do that a case-by-case basis can i follow up on that though like those situations that student who's had their schedule drawn down what happened to the grades in the classes that they were dropped from so it all depends on when right you know some of those things and again some of those things are not within our control right the department of ed the way we have to report it if they leave after a certain time it has to be withdrawn past or withdrawn fail right right but these are the things also that i think we as a school committee can advocate for like i will send letters like we we want to help in this effort right i think we should just be in our school at umass we have extended the withdrawal deadline to the last day of class and it's a w it doesn't indicate whether you're passing or failing can't do this then we as a committee should be advocating to our state legislators for our kids to say you need to make this rule change this is a pandemic so i 100 appreciate that but that kid that case i don't know whoever it is his transcript for a senior year should have the four classes that he finished she they them whatever and because it's a pandemic right and that's really what it should be so i hope if there are things that you cannot do that would be good for the kids you let us know as a committee because that's our job and i think i'm speaking for the other members of the committee we will make that case i don't know that we're going to be successful but we all have been in contact with our state rep and our state senator um they are very good about being communicative with us and responding to us um so let us know if there are things that you'd like to do and you know dusty says oh no you can't do it that's that's literally our job miss wait yeah i just want to piggyback on what dr jenkins has said and again also you know reiterating of course we appreciate what everyone is doing in the schools and reaching out i mean it's just there's so many kids that are in great need so um you know and i think one of the points that um she was alluding to also was that you know these you know there are juniors i was just a friend of mine in a different district who has a junior and you know lo and behold he was you know fairly autonomous she thought and then she gets her tran his transcripts he's failed three classes and you know she's he was someone who was looking at high level colleges and now you know he's got mental health issues and everything else that you know dr jenkins is referring to and he's concerned about now his future in one year has gone you know in into the pits and that you know and that you know it's not just getting through those classes and he finished the work for the class it's that he's looking in his mind at a completely different future based on this one year and the entire family is struggling with that you know tension and frustration and how do we let you know again it just ends up being you know cascading so it's happening over i hear the story over and over again from you know friends that i have and you know other parents and i just i think it's not as simple as to say we just want to finish the class it's the the sense of what you know this means you know as you know she dr james was saying you know for the future and that it's a tough scenario but i think oh i did yeah my audio cut out there for a minute um there's two points um one i just have note here when it comes down to the reporting i can certainly understand your point of view dr jenkins and and i agree that it comes back to deathy you know i don't think doing a wonderful job leading this this commonwealth during the pandemic uh the way they have flip-flop the way they have given out um or not given out guidance or a lack thereof good guidance in a short period of time um and this is just another example of you know i don't want to say poor leadership but a lack of leadership during this pandemic um and i agree i i think we need to advocate at the state level about the the withdrawing about tran reporting grades let's face it every school district at the middle school at the high school level has to report final grades to the department of education um so you know they're looking at that data so they're aware if we don't do that that we're not going to be in compliance with their um protocols so i agree we need to advocate we need to do better um because they're clearly uh not living up to um you know what i expect that that they can do and just my other point is i agree i think we're gonna see a lot more students as we're coming out of this pandemic i see it already with you know some of some of the teenagers at the high school that i know uh being more withdrawn they're they're withdrawn from their their their friend groups they're withdrawn from school um and they're just you know being living through this past year has has made them um given them significant um mental health issues so i am worried about that and i think that you know the the the addition and this isn't a cure-all but the addition of social workers in the district um is at least the start um but i do agree that you know anything that we can do to be proactive uh in in this issue with mental health i think will go a long way any other questions or comments all right mr tebow thank you very much we appreciate you i'm coming back after that break and even doing research during the break um to answer our questions thank you thank you my question yes thank you very much appreciate it have a great night thanks bye so that was technically mr bebo's presentation was technically part of the superintendent's update i'm gonna ask the superintendent whether she has any other updates that she would like to add no you're all set okay i don't have anything to report as chair um right now i may be you may be losing me too um can you guys still hear me i got that interesting ball you know you get that and you're like oh my god like what have they heard what have they not heard um does anybody else have anything they would like to um add before we adjourn yep madam chair just yes mr nunes yeah through you to mr kylie uh do you have any warrants that need signing i mean we normally would be signing them tonight but i do have one ready uh so you know i can leave it in my office and whenever anybody gets uh you know gets a chance to stop by it'll be there i can do that tomorrow i can as well well that'll be great yeah i can too i'll be okay so well if the three of you do it that's fine if nobody if someone doesn't want i still i have an overdue library book from demelo that i can wrap up yeah what's the hot potato for that you know there are fees for that yeah yeah i know mr kylie will be after me i'm sure uh any other um comments or questions skenther did we have any public comments during the period we were off you did not okay thank you so if there's no other business at this time i will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for an update on negotiations with union and not union personnel um not to return into open session yeah our next meeting is may 17th madam champ correct yes thank you mr demons i'll make that motion all second all right so we have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss wade is there any discussion on the motion hearing none can we have a roll call please miss gentler shannon jenkins yes mary wait yes kathleen amaral chris oliver yes john nunes yes an executive session everyone you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and the focus here is just easy navigation for anyone that visits the website it is mobile responsive of course the idea is just where do you need to go we will get you there instead of feeling confusion when you arrive so each school will have their own site with a front page looks very similar to this can you click on eisenhower's thank you again just in template form but i was able to drop in a couple of pictures on their site with the new branding that we've done for each school it's starting to come together next week each school will start to move beyond the template phase that we have right now and they'll put their content in we've been spending the last month getting all of that content prepared we're doing some in-house training on what makes a good website what do you need on a website what can we get rid of that's been there for quite a while and can go and i want to thank the people in each building that have been doing that work but in particular brent barber at the high school has been my guinea pig his site was ready first and god bless him for his patience with me because every time we try something new he's the one that gets to try it first if i might say so you notice here when brooke was just mentioning branding so brooke has gone through and developed our own mascot and brand for every school in our district that's unique to us not borrowed from clip art or from another school and has developed cards for them stationary anything you would need to use for that and has just put an immense amount of work in there much to the rest of our dismay she actually got an ovation at our principals meeting last month because of her work and how excited they are to have this so brook's doing a great job for us and we appreciate her efforts and it looks the same on a phone as it does on your laptop as it does your desktop or your ipad so so there's content yes so at every building there's someone that holds the extracurricular contract that updates the website and each of them are going through some training right now that they've not previously had social media pages like the same person or as a different person not necessarily the social media is a volunteer position some of them are the same people some of them are a different person it's just whoever had the opportunity to step forward and the willingness to sort of serve there looks great our goal is to have this ready by well moving quickly although it's great thank you very much chief human resource officer mr akiwa thank you mr president and board members um two things to report on this evening first one is staffing and hiring we have had an incredibly busy month and i'd like to just thank support staff administrators central office staff for uh posting an unbelievable amount of interviews uh over the past three to four weeks we're not there yet but we have identified incredibly high quality candidates for a number of positions so it's it's always a very busy time right now but for me it's one of the more enjoyable you know times because you really just get to meet some incredible individuals so we're really excited about the talent we're attracting here in crown point community school corporation um they're we're getting plenty of interest from quite a different you know places not just local school districts but you know outside of our county and even outside of our states so um we're very excited to uh to employ we hope just a very very high quality group of individuals for this hiring season secondly i'd like to report a little bit on um you know our covid situation right now um and as sort of a reflection and and kind of bringing back to where we are right now um i think i'd be remiss if i didn't initially thank and congratulate the tireless work by our nursing staff they are put through quite a bit of pressure this school year and so i just want to thank them the entire crew and that includes the substitutes and then of course our leader dana toriano um but you know rolling back and rolling forward we've been through quite a bit uh peaks and valleys and and um many many challenges you know one of the things that uh we can sort of review and clarify is you know the protocols within the schools have remained very very consistent now there have been things that have been offered by the the health department to try to make things a little bit easier for school corporations and we do our best to try to leverage those um but for example one of the big questions we have all the time is you know you know tell me about you know this contact tracing um so um historically we've all know the six foot rule and um the six-foot rule is something that we still employ and who's always been best practice and it's always been recommended now we've had the opportunity here recently to put uh into place the new three-foot rule but there's a lot of misconception about the three-foot rule and it's very important for us to understand initially that some guarantees have to be in place to use the three-foot rule first of all you have to make sure that people are able to stay at least three feet apart from one another now in some of our classrooms this is achievable uh but in some of our classrooms this is not achievable um if you've been in our schools they're they're crowded and and we've got a lot of folks participating right now so depending on the building and the level you're going to have you know different spread you know the physical spread of individuals but in addition to guaranteeing three feet for us to use that it has to be an environment where the mask is worn all the time i mean unequivocally all the time and while this seems like oh well in every classroom we'll just wear all of our masks this is not always the case you know some of our classrooms students need mass breaks now we try to encourage our staff members to have them take mass breaks outside of the classroom okay so that that three-foot rule is not compromised but there are some great levels where they just need mass breaks in the classroom and they just don't have the places to go outside of the classroom to take those mass breaks so we do our best to to leverage that three foot rule uh wherever we can just a final comment on the three foot rule because another misconception is the three foot rule is applicable everywhere well it is not it's only in the academic setting so it doesn't apply on a bus doesn't apply in the cafeteria so and these are our if you will those are these are high hit areas you know what i mean the unstructured you know highly populated areas like a school bus i will say that in addition there are some things that really haven't changed as well and that is our expectations that is self-monitoring self-checking making sure that whether you're an employee or a student we really don't want you to come to school if you're symptomatic okay so that's probably most important stay home if you if you don't feel well and then find out what's going on before you you come to the school building and obviously you're all of your hygiene you know practices wearing a mask washing your hands frequently and of course monitoring your symptoms um a final a few comments uh here the mask um another common misconception that i'm hearing a lot as i talk to folks you know people think the mask sort of protects you from being contact traced and that is not true you know the mask is is there and it's recommended that we wear a mask to minimize social spread okay because of what we're breathing but when it comes to being a closed contact if you're wearing a mask and you're within that that you know whatever distance if it's a three-foot world with six foot rule you're you're a close contact um we've always been very consistent in following the recommendations of the health department and it's not our history in crown point community school corporation to shall we say just randomly not follow the recommendations and this goes for a lot of conditions we think about things like chickenpox you think about things like the measles you know lice and all these different conditions and transmittable diseases that that we deal with we lean on the health department to tell us what's best practice and we follow it so there's been a lot of yes yeah so um it and so there's been um there's been a lot of um as we all know with the presentation of vaccine now and what does that mean for us so you know i guess i should probably make a comment on on that is while the adults are being vaccinated you know right where we haven't gotten to the point where the vaccine has found itself down into the student body completely okay now we do have as of recently last week the ability to explore an option for individuals who have received a vaccine to potentially not be quarantined but because we don't have this huge presence of vaccination in the student body we just can't employ that yet and as i understand it we're still drilling down on that if you've been vaccinated you have to you are you may not be contact traced but it's two weeks after your last shot so for example if it's the johnson and johnson it's two weeks after your johnson and johnson shot after that then you would not have to be quarantined and for those taking the pfizer um or the moderna it's two weeks after your second shot um so of course we're going to try to leverage that where we can but once again you know as far as students go we just have not seen the uh the employment of vaccines that you know channel its way down that far so we've seen a a recent uptick a little bit we've seen some more presence of positive cases here recently but um and we do know that when we're in green we have a tendency to to feel those a little more um but um you know we're doing our best and we keep encouraging our uh school community and our schools to practice proper hygiene monitor your symptoms please don't come to school if you're if you're feeling any of your symptoms and and social distance as much as you can where possible to minimize the impact so um you know i guess i should say questions about some of the comments that i've i've shared with you here today before before we go into questions or comments that you might have let me also uh i need to thank artie and dana they've throughout this entire year they've been our point people for this and the amount of time they have to spend keeping up on it i participate in the weekly webinar that they're watching that comes to our nurses every week from the united states department of health and we are following to the t the guidelines that are set in front of us from them making sure and sometimes there's confusion about what the cdc says or the state health department says we have taken the stance since the school year began we're following the state health department and going with their guidelines rather than the cdc as they waver back and forth at times we've really and that's what our county health department has really gone to more of the state health department guidelines to the point now that they're pretty much just saying whatever the state says that's what we're doing and we've seen that change since probably before christmas our our county health department kind of moved in that direction so as we continue to move forward please know we're continuing while we're all sick and tired of this and we'd all love it to go away tomorrow we continue to pay attention to those weekly updates doing everything that we can to put our kids we get and i feel bad for parents who have had their students have to be quarantined multiple times anytime but multiple times especially we all understand the challenge of that and as mr g and fermi mentioned with our kids showing that they're still achieving and even achieving at a higher level sometimes i really feel like when we get ready for teacher appreciation week coming up here in a couple of weeks we're going to make that educator appreciation week because it's everybody in our system is a teacher but we probably need to send something to every one of our parents because of the amount of work that they've put in and i know many of you a couple of you three of you sitting on the board you've dealt with that yourselves and we don't take that lightly or just take that for granted we get that it's been a lot of work and a lot of challenges as we've gone through the school year so we continue to push forward with this every week trying to make sure that we are up with the latest information and guidance that we are receiving at the school level so with that though i would encourage board members you have comments questions it'd be great for us to have this open communication opportunity with this to be able to get answers to you and to our community as well it's frustrating i mean everybody's frustrated by it i received phone calls today from friends that had you know children that are going through quarantine situations and and ultimately the conversations are all very similar we understand everybody's trying to do their best and um you know there's been no playbook for the situation and it's all kind of been built as we go and what everybody's looking for is just you know what's the measurement by which we stop all this you know and nobody has that answer either because we're still doing it for the first time so i guess that would be everybody has done an amazing job uh doing something that's never been done before and and coping with this uh situation i've been very pleased especially with how our teachers have done everything that they've been asked to do you know the effort by everybody has been very substantial i guess my challenge for everybody in this room that's coming up with you know making the policies and the decisions on on when we change would be to we used metrics going into this thing to make decisions as to when we would shut down buildings or classrooms or quarantine kids and distances and all that stuff i'd just ask us to start considering maybe coming up with some of our own metrics for a way out of this thing in case we don't get metrics from the county or the state because i i think it's good to have them for guidance but ultimately we can we can make our own decision as well so i appreciate your comments um one of the things that i would say is similar to other guidance that we get for instance for other chickenpox or lice or and we're told what we're supposed to do we still have to rely on the state health department to give us that okay as to where we go with it we'd love to be able to say that it's going to be done by the end of the school year and summer school is going to be back to normal and what it's going to look like we just simply don't know yet we're hoping to get more guides from the governor this week for his next executive order as mr hardiman mentioned that'll help us be able to make those determinations as well i think um too if i may just had an additional comment i i really want to congratulate our staff members just basically the entire school community because we really do we try to leverage everything we can to minimize impact and give us the best chance for a successful continuous run for for an educational experience and that that's how we're arranging our rooms how we're spacing our students how we're spacing ourselves apart how we're holding meetings how we're holding activities how we're doing recess i mean it's just lunch um it is it's it's been a challenge um and and we we appreciate our faculty members and our staff members efforts to try to do whatever they can to to minimize minimize the impact given what we're dealing with because they really really do a tremendous job you know giving it their all have we had much fluctuation in the number as far as the percentage of students that are still e-learning 100 percent you know jim you might want to help me out here but i i think we're in that just 8-12 maybe 12 to 15 distance 85 so not much less than when we originally started which i think we were around 15 15 to 20 maybe we're down to 12 now gotcha because that's one of the things that's good for people to know because that's one of the main reasons that we're not going to school on wednesday is for the teachers to be able to have that time to manage those you know the virtual learners as well as catch up with their with their planning for their live students so i get that question a lot it's like you know scott we if we can go four days why can't we go five and it's not a matter of anything other than we need catch-up time to for all the people that are still virtual learning not to mention the individuals that are just fluidly being quarantined throughout the week it's it's those and you know those that get displaced you know you know day in and day out hopefully that's a small amount but you know you're right you know that's inaccurate what you're saying and the other piece of it going back to what mr g and fermi mentioned with the state assessments that we're still required to give to all of our students whether they're in our building or not they have to come into our buildings for the testing and this allows us permits us to be able to really facilitate that requirement as well for our students and for our staff members as well yeah to be able to utilize that wednesday time is there but to answer a question that was posed earlier our plan for next year is as we see this going into it is that we will be full in person we plan on offering online opportunities as we would have in the past which is mainly at the high school level and also for our alternative programs that we have in place but our our plan is and our goal is going into the 21 22 school year is that we will be in first fully in person point of clarification is the governor's orders or those mandates or are those recommendations i think that's important for the public to understand well i mean it's interesting there's a little bit of a dichotomy in his his comments you know many of the things that he talks about have to do with communities adults how commerce is taking place in our communities but underneath all that what we find is that they're asking the schools to stay the course and continue their operations as is so we get this sort of i don't want to call it a mixed message but sometimes we get a little confused when we we feel like you know the we're getting cut loose a little bit here as as communities and as people move around in public places but yet underneath that the the message for schools is still stay stay the course stay the course stay the course finish the year as you have okay i think reason you know one of the concerns i have with strictly if we have to follow the governor's recommendation is each county has different dynamics when it comes to covid the testing one county may be at one percent there may be an outbreak in southern indiana that's at nine percent and so it becomes very difficult to have one one mandate for the entire state it states a very large area and so there's some problems with governance from a central location as opposed to allowing the locals to to make these determinations and so um you know i just curious to see you know what what i guess we'll see what the governor does and i appreciate all the efforts of the teachers and all the individuals and parents and everybody just to to go green and yellow and back to green and online and offline you know the there's no doubt that the quarantines are disruptive i mean they're not they're not just disruptive to the to the children the students the they're disruptive to the teachers they're disruptive to the parents um you know i i still believe having a senior myself who uh in schools who has missed time i think she's been quarantined two or three times herself um i appreciate the consistency but i think you know the reality of is it's had a major impact and i i'm gonna be very frank i'm gonna have a hard time if we have an option starting back up next year to i've seen how it's impacted the seniors um in their high school careers and the year before and it's had a major impact on these on these students and taking some of their best years of their life away and that's not to minimize covid some people have really been impacted as a family and lost their life so i'm not trying to minimize that but um you know if it's a recommendation it's something that i think we have to make decisions here on the local level what's best for our students and our school corporation if we have the ability to do that and that's great that's where i would stand i agree any other comments i just i think just myself to wrap up what everyone's just said is that and something that dr terrell i think is you know we've implied it but we haven't really said it and nothing is ever set in stone but you know the wednesdays are going to be off the remainder of the year because it's just the way it needs to be and i i've received some personal questions about that you know and miss maddie lee this evening asphalt wednesdays but sometimes although it's not what you want to hear sometimes it's better to just understand the way it's going to be for the next five or six weeks um mr akiwa the bus rule yes um that is if a student is on the bus all students on the bus or what is the how is the contact tracing work on a bus that questions come up is it it's the same six feet yeah i here's the challenge i was approached with somebody who was well every kid on the school bus was and as that doesn't sound right to me so yeah i mean when you get on we've actually gotten met we've measured you know so we understand what kind of that six foot radius is in our minds we think about oh the bus is huge it's not that big when you get on a bus and you know i'm 6'3 so if i spread my arms up this is pretty much what we're talking about well i think uh you know hats off to karen toth because she works so diligently at this you know we have seating charts on buses but we all know that seats change you know sometimes bus drivers are making these decisions like hey you need to sit over here today so you know my kid doesn't even sit there well you know what yeah tuesday they did you know so we're watching video and i mean we're spending quite a bit of energy and time making sure that that we're not displacing anybody we don't need to um it's not like we're trying to do the reverse let's see how many we can get it's it's no let's make sure we're not impacting any any more individuals than we absolutely have to the the bus rule is uh that's a tricky challenging location it just adds to the displacement because you're in a confined space and it's the six-foot rule in there right and i think it's comfortable to ask the question because the response in the community or if someone comes up to you is that well it's not that someone just throws into town and says everybody on the bus is quarantined there's a lot the amount of work that's gone into this from day one has been you know just tiresome and hours from everybody and i you know we something that it comes up we just want to keep repeating the same and my last point was that uh often and us as board members are referencing a lot of things that come up to us are brought to our attention in the community and the other one often is comparing us to other school districts and you know it's not that we in crown point think that we're above anybody else or do things that marks the beat of our own drum but at the same time it's our job to worry about crown point and that's not always going to be an acceptable answer to to people in the community and um you know i just i like that dr terrell said hey have some discussion throw some comments out there this evening so we can work talk amongst ourselves and anybody who wants to to listen and um you know i i also think it's important to say don't think that nobody in this room mr akiwa dr terrell mr dean fermi or anyone else hasn't had conversations with superintendents from other districts to understand hey we heard that you guys are you know very low um you weren't really well it turns out they have distancing that we don't you know i'm not just going to flat out say there's always an answer but it does seem when we're able as board members to come to you guys and ask questions you've not shied away from giving us answers so now i just want to that was my last point of to bring up that often comes towards me like well this district is doing it they haven't had a single quarantine all year and how can you possibly have two or three of one individual so um that's it for me anything else for anybody did we as mr angel just mentioned we'd give you an opportunity um um so the um we do not mandate that our families go get get tested um and then keeping track of tests and you know there's some controversy if you will over the rapid versus the two day and so despite all that language in there the the recommendation the best practice is still the full quarantine and that is in the end what what we follow throughout the entire you know then that dates you know goes back all the way through we could test our students with swabs you know and that just wasn't economically feasible because we had to run the test back and forth and try to get results back there's a lot of things that just create more disruption um than just remaining consistent with our protocol so yeah well i'm sorry that's a good point brooke and that is even though you're you are testing when you return you still have to maintain social distancing um and which is in green very hard to do um you end up isolating students in rooms away from people you know in the building which we don't have the space to do that for for a lot we already we're already short on space so there's a lot of reasons why we're sticking with that it's not that we haven't examined whether we can't employ when we feel like we can leverage something we leverage it um if we think it'll work and maybe for anybody that is you know listening or cares or wish to come and express public comment um you have questions come up we've been trying this year to say ask them through an email everyone will do the best they can to get you the best answer whether it comes through to the board or to individual board members we've all tried to help and you know filter some of the questions answer them ourselves if possible or you know get in contact with the the right person to answer the question so um that'd probably be best to just you know continue to go that route as as as a corporation to yeah if you have any additional follow-up just shoot us an email and then we'll decide you know one of us or multiple people can follow up with you if you'd rather talk on the phone i'm we're willing to do that as well okay mr q appreciate the update i think that was healthy and helpful for everybody to have a discussion thank you thank you for all your work on that during the course since last march so i i think just thanks to everybody working together to get through what has been a really challenging lyrics it's impacted us all in so many different ways so just thank you to the entire school community i can tell you sunday afternoon i got a call and it was late afternoon and it was from a building full of administrators and nurses central office administrators were there as well trying to really contact trace and dial in to so that we make it as few kids as we possibly can still adhering to the guidelines that we've been given the rules we have to follow so we're doing everything we can to try and have as many people in buildings as possible but still keep people safe not based off of what i think of coven or you think of covid but based off of what we're being told so thank you how about uh 8.07 chief financial officer mrs dowling thank you mr president um as you may have read the state uh has finalized the state the biennium the state budget um so in the coming weeks uh we expect to get some clarification so that we'll know more what that means exactly for crown point community school corporation however i'd be remiss and i think dr terrell would agree that this was really a positive outcome for the budget given where we started anticipating where we might end up because of the revenue estimates to where we're at which is over a billion dollars in the biennium for public education so in the next couple months we'll i'm sure bring some of that information back for discussion i would like to recognize cara bonich who is our benefit specialist in the business office we just well we're almost through the first third of the year but first through the first quarter we started the year with some changes to our insurance program as you may remember we changed our prescription provider dental vision and then added a partnership with franciscan with their healthy access clinics and as per usual miss bonich has handled herself um flawlessly with a great deal of empathy for staff because it really isn't always fun to handle those conversions and cara has done it beautifully as she always has and has is known for and so we're really going to miss her when june 30th comes however um i'd be remiss if i didn't mention i think i asked her if that's why she was retiring because we made those changes and she said no but it didn't help so i just wanted to recognize uh her this evening thank you thank you mr superintendent of schools dr terrell the only other thing i'd like to add this evening i received an email just recently from the indiana department of ed and we have been rated again as a performance qualified district because of earning an a from the indiana department of ed which we don't take for granted and appreciate the work of our teachers our students as well so it's just good news and indication of what we continue to do here in the district as well so just wanted to let you know that thank you doctoral other business and board of school trustees do we have uh anything anybody would like to discuss that was covered covered earlier in my opinion about we move to board statements appreciation we'll start with mr smith yeah i just want to recognize um again speaking of uh quarantines the play the theater high school musical had a chance to watch that no surprise here but um my microphone on sorry um just want to recognize mr degenhardt mr flewelling mr woods and miss kavochkov for their for their great work and in particular i mean what a fantastic play uh what a production again they just do such a great job um this year had its own trials because of some interruptions with the quarantine and i think they're actually practicing by zoom i mean you know you wouldn't know by going to the play so they just they just overcame a lot the kids were awesome it was it was just a great play so great theater and great production and if you haven't had a chance to see him i still encourage everybody not now because it's over but whenever they put another production on to go out and watch them so it's just uh it's really well done so i want to recognize them for their for their hard work and a job well done thank you mr smith mr babjack uh nothing for me tonight thank you mr hoffman can you see me i have nothing i'm going to get the date but i just want to give a shout out and thanks to everybody that's going to be that is involved and will be involved in this event we're doing for all the high school students at the football field may 14th may 13th 14th 14th may 14th to where a celebration with the coven everything where these kids are going to get a chance to do a celebration outside in the social distance parameters we're in but um i saw the flyer for it and everything else and i had to send dr cheryl because i couldn't remember the date of it but it's just great that we're able to do something like that and the minds that were behind that to allow these seniors some sort of resemblance to a senior year of a celebratory event that can be done in those kind of circumstances so to all those that are involved in that thank you and we appreciate his board members knowing that we're trying to do whatever it is to give them some sort of normalcy as mr smith imagine their partial junior year and senior years were disrupted so uh that to me just shows that we do care about your students and we're trying to do whatever try to do what's best for them but in a situation to where uh we can make sure we still maintain the protocols in force and i'd be remiss if i didn't give a shout out to mr molaskey who's here um you know with all these building projects and everything going on and trying to get things figured out with now the town of winfield on the new middle school and the project's going elsewhere just like all the rest of you and i say this every month but i mean it the behind the scenes work that needs to be put in no matter what it is whether it's grants for mr hartman with special education with mrs paskas our new website is dialing with finances mr g infirmi making sure our middle schools are in order uh mr keyword just with everything that's involved from hiring we really have a special group of administrators that we have here in crown point and it's uh it's nice to know that when we have a question that we can't answer um that we can reach out and get that answer and if some reason it's one of those answers that they don't have they'll get it to us in a timely fashion where we can respond but to all of those that have been involved with everything going on thank you on behalf of myself and the board to where i feel we are in a special place here in crown point and once again i tell people a board member's job is to make sure that we are giving the best education to every student involved and i really deep down when someone asked me that question i i think we attempt to our 110th percentile to try to accomplish that maybe there might be a few bumps in the road for certain students or certain individuals but i really think when i get asked that question that that is the goal of everyone that's involved behind that kids education 12 13 years in our system yep thank you mr angel i'm well said and i don't have anything specific deceiving myself either but with all the talk this evening about where we currently stand with covet it's really exciting to think what this whole team and administration will be able to do when they could focus on you know 100 of their time on what their job was meant to be so um i think i was just wrapped would wrap it up with that motion to adjourn that was motioned by mr angel in second by mr babjack all in favor signify by saying aye pretty good
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
in a scheduled board meeting uh we have a need for an executive session this evening item 1.01 call for executive 7 pursuant to ars 38 431 point zero three a and three and four for discussion consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney regarding reduction in force matters and for discussion or consultation with attorney to consider its position and instruction its attorney attorneys regarding the same did i read that correctly so the floor is open for motion for executive session dr santa cruz i move that we move to executive session as outlined on the agenda thank you mr carr is there zero second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion okay we will vote all those in favor moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries four zero and we will recess to executive session good evening sorry for the delay we're trying to work on some technical issues and i think we've created a workaround so we'll call this meeting of the gilbert governing board to order today is april 27th we have just adjourned an executive session we are now at item 2 the called order on 2.01 and we will move to 2.02 and do a moment of silence and 2.03 pledge of allegiance led by mrs wood would you please join me in a moment of silence please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the fight of the united states of america and to live over to stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mrs wood we're at item 2.04 roll call mrs wilson would you please assist dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here mr reed carr here miss jill humphries here miss sheila you jetty i heard her say here you heard her yes thank you miss you jetty i'm here thank you mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson and we'll hope that mr jetty can hear and we'll try to pick your vote up on the portable phone as best we can we're word item three three point zero one is approval of tonight's agenda is our motion submit thank you mrs humphries is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion seeing no discussion we will vote on approving this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero the agenda is approved and we'll move to item four item 4.01 our superintendent's recognition awards dr mccord defer to you thank you dr santa cruz i'll move down uh in front of the diocese and we will recognize some of our students this evening good evening everyone how are you dr mccord we'll we'll stay put just for the distancing you betcha thank you so as we slowly move back into these types of recognitions it's it's it's really a pleasure to be able to talk about our students and some of their accomplishments we have three students that have been recognized and winners of flynn scholars those individuals are sophia hammer from gilbert classical academy sophia are you here come on up sophia where are you going to go to school um i'm going to university of arizona you of a any u of a fans here that's all right you're kind of in sun devil country but that's all right my son graduated from u of a and so i guarantee you if he can do it so can you um next we have eugenia trackel from gilbert classical academy and how about you have you made a decision yet yeah arizona asu give her a hand sophia what do you think you want to major in um it's kind of long it's the ppel program so it's politics philosophy economics and law wow wow those topics under one and then i'm double majoring in family studies and human development it's kind of like social work so what do you want to be when you're done um there's a lot of things i want to be well um i would like to work in local governments um just so you know that doesn't pay anything back there um town council and then my other thing i kind of want to do is work with immigrants immigrant families good good thank you eugenia what about you so i'm gonna double major in finance and probably business sustainability wow intersection of those two majors with certificates in international business and maybe data analytics wow and and and your dream job with this these degrees would be what that's so hard because i can take the non-profit route work for the arizona community foundation and their community impact loan fund or maybe take the corporation route worked for like morgan stanley or blackrock with sustainable investing all right well i understood a little bit of that but i'm very proud of both of you we have another winner and that is jennifer tran she's not in attendance she's from mesquite high but we wanted to make sure we recognized you two for being here so thank you guys congratulations again [Applause] eugene don't don't leave you're back up here one more time she's like what i do now in addition to her flynn scholarship um eugena is also the winner of the hispanic heritage foundation award and this program honors latino high school seniors who excel in various categories the awardees receive grants for their education or to fund an idea or community project to encourage actionable leadership recipients are mentored by past award winners as they prepare to attend college and start their careers so congratulations to you congratulations thank you now on to the uh athletic portion of this a couple of announcements and we i think we have some folks here um winter sports recognitions granted it's going to be 100 degrees on saturday but we're going to talk about winter sports because we've been through this and we have some that can't be with us tonight that will uh definitely honor at the end of may first one is camp over the girls soccer they are the division two state champion so congratulations to them desert ridge high school fourth in state for division one boys wrestling mr jackson are you here along with uh kisting is that come on up congratulations now coach will you uh talk about um some of your winners and what they did come on up you get a talk now i know all right first off i'd just like to thank everybody for letting the season happen i know when it wasn't going to we were had many kids devastated it was hard to get some back we actually lost a couple one was a defending second champ but these guys um as a team they were section champs by over 80 points state fourth in the state which is pretty good considering the powerhouses kind of have a stranglehold and we're gonna we're closing the gap but um as far as state placers go looks like we're missing one up here but alexander sweeney was state runner-up as a sophomore and 106 pounds kai viglio was third at state in division one at 138 pounds nathaniel meza as a junior nathaniel meza was third at state heavyweight grace valetcheck became a two-time state placed her at 106 pounds she was a runner-up as a freshman she's a junior this year uh mr keistein became a two-time state placer he was fourth in the state as a junior or junior and sixth this year and one another one that's not up here gabe corrales was a two-time state placer his fifth as a freshman and fourth as a sophomore but most of all i'd like to thank these guys for overcoming i mean i know everybody overcomes some stuff but our team had five individuals lose family members during the season three of them to covet and these kids just found a way to keep persevering not making excuses and loving each other and finding a way to help each other get through those those those times that it was like holy cow we we're gonna get these kids back but it was an incredible accomplishment to be able to win a section title and finish the eye in the state so thank you guys for having us [Applause] also we have campo verde third and state uh division two boys wrestling there's nobody here from camp but i think we're gonna also recognize them at the end of the month so i'll save those for the end but again for academic and athletic accomplishments so far and there's many more that we can honor as we'll move through this in may please give another hand to all those individuals dr santa cruz that concludes my recognitions thank you sir we now move to item six which is a request to speak to the governing board oh okay i am ahead of myself so 5.01 is still the superintendent's report so my apologies dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members good evening and welcome to everyone to our meeting last week was support staff week and i want to thank all of our support staff for everything they do for our students and each other on a daily basis during this uh pandemic this school year you are an integral part of our success and we could not accomplish all the things that needed to be done without you again a sincere thank you to all of our support staff i also wanted to let everyone know that our vaccination pod which was held in february and march of this year was selected for a hot shots award by the arizona partnership for immune immunization for outstanding organization and distribution of the moderna vaccine to employees of gps queen creek higley high school as well or higley high school school districts and the surrounding centers that serve children congratulations and thank you alan kane and jen frost and all of the volunteers for your countless hours of dedication and work you are greatly appreciated and lastly this past friday evening i had the pleasure to attend a jazz concert at campo verde in their cafeteria we were treated to some extraordinary sounds from our students and guests from arizona state university and chandler-gilbert community college i can honestly honestly say that it was one of the most entertaining and enjoyable evenings that i've had in a very very long time well done to all those campo families they had the cafeteria set up where everything was social distance they had family sitting together they had couches up front and i'm telling you it was one of the most pleasurable and one of the most rewarding times i've had as a superintendent because these kids were absolutely phenomenal so appreciate all the hard work all of our music programs put into what they do dr santa cruz that concludes my report for this evening thank you dr mccord now we move to item six which is the request to speak to the governing board we have two speakers before we move to that we have a recorded message so please play that message the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k e k e b and k e d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website we have two speakers this evening cindy bonnen country and robin daughter good evening thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you my name is cindy bonacontri and i'm the admin assistant at south valley junior high i've been at south valley going on 15 years and have been the admin assistant for eight years i wanted to take the time personally to thank you the school board for being so supportive of the schools through this craziness of this last year i know that you have all had to make very difficult decisions this year but i wanted to bring to you a positive and a big thank you in particular for proving that each school have a flex substitute teacher on campus every day i know this started out as a temporary thing for just a few weeks and then it turned into a month and then thankfully you extended it until december and then again thankfully extending it through the end of the school year being the admin assistant in charge of the substitutes at south valley and being responsible for finding a way to cover all of those classes when we do not have substitutes i have to say a simple thank you is not enough each morning waking up to find out that i have five or six teachers sometimes more on a friday is a huge weight off my shoulders to know that i at least have my two amazing flex subs each and every day that i can count on also i know that rachel and her team will give me another flex sub when they are available this is such a giant relief i know that rachel and her team have worked tirelessly and a lot of late nights and weekends getting the system dialed in but this is awesome to us just the fact that i have my two preferred subs every day really is a godsend on the very seldom days when i don't need my flex sub to cover classes and rachel doesn't need them at another school i send out a campus-wide email stating that i have extra help available for our teachers my flex team works in the library fixing and shelving covering books making copies packets for our teachers grading filing in the attendance office getting registration caught up on things we make great use of these people we i guarantee they're not just sitting around i do put them to work this program is very worthwhile and beneficial to the campuses on that note i'm here to persuade you to continue with this program next year even if we only get one flex sub every day instead of two would be so helpful i'm sure there's an extra cost to this program but you really have no idea how beneficial this is to me personally as to all the other schools and k gift at greenfield and jessica brown at mesquite wanted me to let you know that they as well love this flex program and wish that it would continue next year i no longer wake up stressed out in the morning worrying about subs and how i'm going to cover sometimes anywhere between 15 to 25 hours of classes i know i at least have my two flex subs that i can count on also with rachel's help i can sometimes get a flex sub from another school i really pray that you will continue this program in august it really is great and we really do appreciate it at the school level so thank you for your time and efforts and supporting our schools i did bring you a thank you grift not a bribe but just to thank you for everything you've done for this year thank you have a great evening go saber cats thank you cindy it's rapping daughter thanks for hearing me um i'd like to bring up a few concerns today but i'll keep it brief because i'd rather focus on solutions first the concerns even though you built clear criterion to decide who to riff the rubric scoring was without checks and balances teachers who moved online this year were evaluated by unfamiliar administrators or by home school administrators who couldn't assess this year's performance if we were online and had a new principle it's a blind score several teachers have shared their rubric scores with me and i saw zeros in plc for teachers who were indispensable to my plc this year as department chair i ran that plc and i wasn't asked inflexibility zeros for teachers who didn't know what subject they were teaching until the week before school in leadership zeros for teachers who did lead in prior years and who did step up and lead at global before we had department chairs assigned in pd zeros despite studying to learn a brand new teaching format in extracurriculars zeros despite prior coaching in clubs weren't even coached this year for online teachers the grade for extracurricular docs points for something that's outside of our control so those who went online due to a health condition lost points simply for being chronically ill what's worse requests to review and revise incorrect scores were denied by administrators and otm i get that the riff and raises are driven by separate forces but i think it's a little naive to act as though they each exist in a vacuum they're absolutely entangled and are both parts of a very precariously balanced budget i believe mr carr you mentioned that we have to align our staffing and student numbers and we have to remain competitive with neighboring districts but what if we didn't what if we could be competitive in other ways what if instead of aligning our staffing to our student numbers we forego that two percent raise that's costing the district 4.4 million what if we kept those teachers and saved the district 4.5 million that saved the district 4.5 million for being dismissed what if instead of balancing the cost of enrollment by maintaining the status quo we pitched gilbert as the public school district with the best student-to-teacher ratio what if we kept a full staff of teachers who have the time to give kids individual attention because our classes are in the low 20s what if we could offer a large district experience including full arts and industry based elective programs with private school class sizes what if we reminded the community that our teachers can serve their children better because we don't have overpacked classes connect create care kids would do better most teachers would take lower pay for rational class sizes most parents do want their kids to get that kind of individual attention the pr campaign writes itself thank you thank you now move to item 7 which is our monthly reports 7.01 and 7.02 dr cordell defer to you thank you dr santa cruz governing board members we have ms betts our assistant superintendent of business services ready to present our monthly budget report as well as the final fiscal year 2020 audit report ms betts thank you dr mccord president santa cruz um board members this is our monthly financial reflective of march 31st so um as is has been our practice it's always a month in arrears that we're presenting so to begin we want to talk about our district operating funds so note uh the maintenance operations fund at the top our adopted budget was 200 and just um under 259 million i revised number two based upon capturing of additional uh average daily membership as well as the esser one in two grants and the enrollment stabilization grant we were able to revise the budget up to 260 million about a 1.8 million dollar increase note that revised budget number three went down slightly the pending revised budget number three went down slightly due to the enrollment being very sporadic students withdrawing and enrolling on a daily basis but i also wanted to point out that the revised budget number three reflected here is as of the end of march in april due to the hard work of joanna cantonzero our student count accountant she submitted our final distance learning adjustment which went from 67 69 down to 32 percent so i just wanted to let you know that next week we are presenting the final revised budget and you will see that revised budget number three pending to be about 3.3 million dollars more so it'll be 260.8 million 263.8 million that we will be reflecting on the revised number three and then you can see the available balance of about 14 million and as we indicated most of that is allocated out however there's not a lot of time to spend anymore so it could be that that much of that will go unspent so we are gearing up for our end-of-year journal entries and making sure that our expenses are reflected in the correct fund so we're starting that immediately the next fund to look at is the civic center we've talked about this before that the rental income is is uh down due to the pandemic so you can see that in revised budget number three pending we are bringing that value down based upon our experience to date in the current year and finally unrestricted capital so you can see that the revised budget number two and revised budget number three pending are very close to one another but the but both of those reflect the budget balance carry forward reflective of the annual financial report so those numbers are accurate and should not change the rest of the year in addition between number two and number three there was a question about which calculation was accurate the auditor general's calculation or the department of ed's calculation so we've gotten that clarified and that's why you see that small reduction from 16.8 million dollars down to 16.7 again you can see an available balance of 6.5 million dollars most of that was allocated to the curriculum adoption um that was was to begin being piloted in the current year that was put on hold not fully understanding what our financial status would be for the next fiscal year so that 6.5 million dollars will likely roll over and be allocated to that curriculum adoption in 2022 just to prepare you um miss bets can you just tell us which one was correct the department of ed or the attorney sorry the auditor general the um the department of education okay reports so i've already been through these highlights on the operating fund but i wanted to move to there the unrestricted capital financial highlights so the year to date spent an encumbered is 10.2 million dollars i wanted to enumerate some details on the unrestricted capital fund and how we've spent those monies in the current year curriculum instructional material so this does include florida virtual it does include some of those curriculum items that we've adopted in the past that we've been required to purchase a continuation of materials in the current year to a total total of 3.4 million dollars technology most of this is your non-discretionary software so remember that we are with visions which is our financial software we have infinite campus we have iep pro which is for our special education management system even identity management the infrastructure all of those licenses are within this technology non-discretionary software bucket operations cleaning and grounds equipment we did talk at length at the beginning of the school year about the sprayers that we purchased both for transportation as well as at least one for every one of our elementary and junior highs and two for every one of our high schools to make sure that we were able to clean the classrooms quickly or at least sanitize the classrooms quickly at the end of each school day in addition we do have an intergovernmental agreement with the town of gilbert associated with the mesquite junior pool as well as the greenfield junior pool there are regularly expenses associated capital expenditures associated with those pools and you can see that our portion was somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30 to 40 thousand dollars in the current year extracurricular athletics and performing arts we've made some headway into meeting the needs of our extracurricular activities so for athletics we did have an allocation to make sure that our our pole vault pits and our high jump pits are ready for the season also recall that the unrestricted capital funds instructional materials which does include baseballs and footballs and basketballs and that's tennis nets etc so all those are in there and then finally in performing arts we did buy several expensive instruments at the beginning of the year due to the pandemic and and the need to separate uses usage from student to student and then in addition district wide we did replace the orchestra and band storage equipment at all of our high schools to the tune of about a couple hundred thousand dollars so we're making headway into those uh extracurricular programs schools marquis we've done three or four this year oh excuse me we did five i'm looking at jason mr martin we did five marquise this year we also determined that it would be a good idea to provide a principal allocation of about fifty five hundred dollars per school there has been such a lack of unrestricted capital at our schools and in order to provide some flexibility to our principals to get what they needed without without necessarily totally planning for it there was about 1.4 million dollars spent along with the cafeteria tables we did replace all of the cafeteria tables that were needed which was intended for both the fact that they were in bad condition as well as adding additional cafeteria tables because of the pandemic to make sure that we could social distance when school began in mid-september and then finally the transportation facility the completion of the construction most of it did occur in fiscal 2020 but the final the final construction pieces did finish at the end of july and and we've talked about that in the past as well so those are just some of the details of how we spent the understated capital this year federal grants just wanted to point out the idea revised budget number three pending note that that has increased to reflect the budget balance carry forward or the balanced carry for that has been approved by the state of arizona and then sr3 note that we are reflecting sr3 there as a placeholder we are anticipating about 20 million dollars we have received notification that we will not receive the allocations until mid-may so we're still not sure what that final dollar amount is the other specific about sr3 though we do know that we are obligated to spend 20 percent on student learning loss so we are we are estimating right now that we may spend as much as two million dollars this summer for um for summer school not charging in most cases our parents for summer school as well as providing free transportation across the entire school district for the summer program and then we expect that whatever our allocation is that we would schedule the spend of that from fiscal year 2022 through 2024.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the uh the teacher-centric one but okay called it all right hello everybody thanks for joining us for this um information session about returned in person so i'm talib sadiq the principal of the school do a quick introduction hi i'm nikki gramacki assistant principal at the high school i'm sam camera interim assistant principal oh that should go yeah i'm ben harrington i'm the assistant director of facilities for amherst public schools in the district all right so tonight you're going to get a lot of information about some of the expectations some things that will be happening starting on monday that returned our return to school in person for those of you who signed up for it which should be everybody watching and then you're also going to get this information you'll be able to refer back to the video whenever you want we'll also be sending an email with this um some bulleted it meant some of the main points that are mentioned tonight so if you missed something uh you'll be able to revisit it later on so actually now mr harrington is going to go first we'll go through a slide i have a chance for q a and then we'll get on to the rest of the presentation perfect all right if we can get the slideshow going here this presentation is actually pretty much an abbreviated version of the presentation i gave to the teachers earlier but all right so these are our custodial protocols and procedures it's a quick little run through over the uh course of the pandemic our custodians have actually been trained in sanitization by the manufacturers rep from the place we get our chemicals from and uh they've all received hazardous communications training basically that that means that they know how to deal with chemicals they don't want to mix what mix and what's actually going to work next we're using these fancy little gadgets these uh electrostatic sprayers what they do is allow us to cover like a broader swath right so if we skip to the next yep so what what happens is the uh the product that we're spraying right the sanitizer is positively charged right so then it attaches itself to pretty much any negatively charged item in the room that's pretty much everything in the room that's grounded so so it's super effective yep oh where'd we go we can skip past this that's just the video so what we're using to sanitize is a product called green clean and then we're also using hypochlorous acid which we're generating ourselves in house i'll talk a little more about that later they're both highly effective against uh the sars cove tube virus and have been tested directly on the virus itself so pretty good stuff here if we go to the next one this is like the chemical breakdown of green clean if we go to the next one so there's the one part in the box here that's important the uh where it says apply solution with a spray device cloth sponge yadda yadda then allow to air dry no rinse required if you've been to the schools around the facilities you'll see like a chalky substance on the doors that's what that is is the green clean it kind of adheres there we'll talk more a little bit about our sanitizing versus cleaning at times go to the next one we can skip past that so this is hypochlorous acid if we skip to the that's the chemical breakdown so what it is is we basically make this in-house when we basically we make it in-house by using water uh non-iodized salt and electrolysis and basically it's produced it's the same chemical that's produced in your body and we're using it much the same way that your body would so we get the next slide so basically in your body like a pathogen would attack and come in right a virus or bacteria your immune system calls out the white blood white blood cells the white blood cells go ahead and engulf the pathogen and what they create is that this hypochlorous acid and that kills the pathogen that's exactly what our custodians are doing in the building so pretty much anything that's on a doorknob or a you know surface is going to be killed by our sanitizing process here we can go to the next one we can skip past that that's more elementary school stuff there yep let's get past that so yeah like i was saying the primary focus for our custodians is sanitizing and disinfection that's that's basically infection control right so with the sanitizing and disaffecting it disinfecting our main priority is to kill viral matter bacterial matter etc etc whereas cleaning is is uh more aesthetic like we're looking to make things pretty we're trying to find the balance these days you know with more more information that's been coming out we're less concerned with uh with a transmission via via um surfaces sorry about that and then uh most importantly our restrooms are being cleaned twice daily in addition to the sanitizing that we're doing so let's get past that we can skip past that that's all right so yeah we actually have for the first time put together like a comprehensive document that that breaks down everything that custodians should be doing like step by step by step this is probably the most thorough we've gotten into custodial work like so our custodians were great a year ago they're extra great this year basically so your kids are in good hands next you can skip past this i think we can yeah we can skip out all of this that's that's really it and so the thing that i would add to that is what we're also doing in classrooms in our core classrooms is we're using these air purifiers that are an enviro cleanse basically what they are is a hepa filter that has a it's uh charged by a uv light so and they they pretty much turn over the air at a minimum of four air exchanges per hour they'll get a room up to that if it's not up to par and so we've done extensive work to make sure that the air quality in our room in our buildings are much better than they've been before and so that that's most important for me to have you know as parents and that's what i have so i think we can move to questions from the crowd if you want to put questions in for ben in the chat that would be great and it takes us there's a little bit of a lag so it'll take a minute for them to come through but we'll see if anyone has questions for ben before he heads out and if people can't think of questions right now they can all obviously always email us or contact us and we'll get back to you another time oh you're welcome will there be desk cleaning in between classes not necessarily so uh teachers will have in their rooms alcohol wipes so if if somebody needed to wipe something down that that definitely could be done but the custodians won't be oh thank you trish that's awesome to hear not a talkative crowd here might have been a long day for some folks and also there's been a we've i think as a district we've shared a lot of information with people i think they may have heard some of this especially if they have um children in other schools as well so they may have already gotten many of their questions answered personally all right well going to the next slide and then if any other questions come up i think i see one actually before we well windows be open too yes teachers actually are allowed to open windows we're kind of encouraging that so yes on that last question is that for me is that a facility i think it's more of a general question so the question is have there been any kobe cases among staff lately and the answer is no not in high school there has not been and i haven't seen any mailings from the district about cases in other buildings lately either um so it looks like char the questions are now starting to shift to um our next few presentations um [Music] there although there is this question um what kind of testing has been done on green clean residue relative to adolescence health that is not a question i can answer but in terms of the other questions that charles has posed we'll we're going to answer those questions a little bit later in the presentation yeah as far as specifics to adolescent health i'm not aware of any any testing there's there have been extensive epa testing based on you know general public health and i mean we're probably using the two safest and most effective products that we can use so all right okay so i think it's time to move on to the next portion of our presentation this evening thank you ben thank you have a good one two all right so this is gonna be more information about the day-to-day stuff happening in the building starting on monday go to the next slide please so this is a rundown of what the schedule will look like so the schedule itself there's only two minor changes the two um times that are highlighted this is to we added five minutes to a period so now it goes from nine to 10 25 when we were in school and had our seven drop one schedule our a period was five minutes longer then as well and this allows teachers five extra minutes to read morning announcements which contain a lot of important information for students and this is we also thought about that we had 10 minutes built into in between classes before now we've moved the passing period back to the way it was pre-coded which is five minutes so that's where the other highlighted time shows indicates about five minutes in between the two launch periods other than that the schedule will be the same as it has been for in person and the folks who are staying remote one of the things that has changed is that 2 30 to 3 times is really going to be a time for the teachers one person to provide extra help to everybody who's remaining remote people who are in school will be receiving help throughout the day during a longer block period right okay so we have a number of slides here that are you know frequently asked questions that that we think would sort of help with the conversation but these are also questions that came to us um sort of in the last month and so we thought we would answer them now um so the first question is how will i know where my classes meet starting on monday this is a question that's come in a whole lot so what's going to happen is students actually this now that i'm looking at this this changed so on students will hear from their a period teacher where their a period class meets and then in their a period class they will be handed a schedule and then schedules are also available in the front office okay so you'll go to your a period class so if you don't hear from your a period teacher tomorrow or the next day be sure to ask because they will tell you which classroom they are in the next question is will lunch be in classrooms when not outside so the answer to that is is for the most part no it does depend on the numbers but students are going to be eating in the cafeteria as well as the hallways spaced five feet apart but we also have tents in the back of the building um for students to eat lunch so our goal is to get students outside to eat lunch as much as possible um and so that's that's the ultimate goal if it's pouring rain or who knows we'll get a a snowstorm in may it's possible um we will shift to some indoor spacing that's six feet apart can students get school lunch or do they have to bring their own lunch you can do either of those things so both are options school lunch will be free for all students if you'd like to receive a school lunch but you can also bring your own lunch well students be physically distant in classes the answer is yes we're going to maintain at least three feet and we're striving for six so most classes are at least four and a half feet but in general they're pretty much six feet um are we going to have mask breaks we're not going to have mass breaks in the classroom but teachers are planning to take students outside for mask breaks all right so next slide so i'll take this one um this is mickey so the when will d period meet and actually i'll be able to answer carrie crosby's question in conjunction with this so students will have a period then b period and then after b period is that one hour lunch block and in that one hour lunch block about half of the school will go to lunch so therefore students who don't have classes with their friends there's a strong likelihood that they'll have lunch with some of their friends and students will be able to you know they're not going to have to stay with their b period class and at the same time while most of the students will have a direct like a like a directed study type opportunity to log in do work um just you know take a break uh students who have actual d blocks will have that time with their d block teacher so every single day students who have d blocks will be with their d block teacher so there won't necessarily be five days a week of synchronous instruction with their d block teacher but that allows them to actually have time with their d block teacher and then everyone else will have lunch in addition to students with d block and then students who have academic skills in their d block will also have the opportunity to meet directly with their liaison at that time so what time will the building be open so the high school doors will open at 8 and so students who arrive earlier will be asked to remain outside uh so you really need to think about the weather and make sure that um you know you have proper clothing um and then the question about will hand sanitizer be available yes we will have hand sanitizer available and we're asking students to use that prior to going into their uh three or four different classrooms students may also bring their own hand sanitizer all right so i'm going to do these next this next slide because for the first question what will happen if students are not following expectations about mass so our first approach will obviously be trying to talk to the student to find out what's going on is it just they need a mass break are they is there some other thing happening with them are they feeling extra anxious or stressed out then if it continues obviously we're going to remind them of how important it is for everyone to maintain to keep their masks on at all times except for when they're eating or when they have a designated mass break it becomes a problem an ongoing problem we'll be communicating with the families to figure out if being in person is really the best fit you know some people may have not had to wear a mask for nearly an hour or an hour or more and what in one stretch so it may turn out to be too much for some folks and they may decide or we may decide with student family that it's better that they switch back to remote learning excuse me hey which cl uh what classes happen outside so ideally clas many classes will happen outside some will happen outside more often than others but i think you will most likely have at least one class outside a day they're going to be in we have a lot of space around campus we're trying to work out hot spots for a certain teacher so they can go a little bit further away from the building so they won't if they even if they do need to access the internet they can take a hot spot with them and be again a little bit further away from the building and have more of their classes outside so i think as the fourth quarter progresses and the weather gets even warmer and nicer i think and we you can work out a few things more and more classes will be outside the next question will students be able to use lockers so we are not issuing lockers to students for the fourth quarter we're really trying to cut down the congregating in the hallways when students in the hallways are really going to want the traffic to keep flowing from one class to the next class and for students stop and use lockers it just creates again a lot of the crowding and it makes potential contact tracing even harder to do so the next question after that is where will students keep their instruments and their sports equipment so students with their instruments they will be keeping their instruments in the auditorium each student will be able to you know place their their instrument in a seat in an auditorium and be able to retrieve it whenever before their music class and they can put it back there after their music class and for students with sports equipment there'll be a space either in the locker rooms or the gym will make that clear on monday morning where you'll be able to put your equipment but it will definitely be in the gym area so when you first thing monday morning if you have sports equipment you want to store you can head over to the gym area and we'll show you exactly where to put it you'll know where it will be when it's time for you to get it before practice the last question on this slide is how bathrooms work so bathrooms people will be taking bathroom breaks during class time it's really hard for us to monitor all the bathrooms during passing period and unfortunately that's been a time that we know students have congregated in the bathrooms met up with a friend the gun bathroom and we really want to try to avoid that again trying to maintain at least three feet hopefully six feet distance as much as possible so students will be getting passes from their classes and going to the bathroom it makes it a little bit easier for us to monitor how many students are in the bathroom at a time you can go to the next slide all right so i'm seeing lots and lots of questions and i really appreciate those um we're gonna come back to them we're answering a few of those but a lot of them i think are probably important to hear out loud so we'll answer we'll do you you're welcome to put questions in the in the chat but we'll come back with q a because there's a lot of really good questions um so what time will school be dismissed school's going to be dismissed at 2 20 and we will and you'll be expected then to leave the building at that time so in order to answer a few questions over um here even though i said i wasn't going to here i am answering them um we're just expecting students to go outside and so if you have sports after school you're going to go hang out outside there are there are a number of covered spaces if it's kind of a rainy day and there's also a chance that if it is a super rainy day that practices will be cancelled so um keep you know stay in tune to that um will there be after-school help in the building after 2 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
miss butts yes a quick question um i've understood that we are paying and i actually have paid for summer school this year there are um not all summer school programs are free we have some title one programs that are being provided which is normal and some of our most at risk students but i would love to defer this to to miss taylor to give you some more details on that i just wanted to make sure that what i understood was that that because last year all of the online summer school classes for the junior high in high school that i understood were covered we didn't pay for them for summer school but this year we have been charging and um i've had a few questions from families so when you said that it made it there was a little bit of confusion i'm saying so there is we are paying for summer school as normal some of the summer schools um that that are specific to the enrichment there's a difference between summer school and summer program some are programming so that's that's where i think the confusion okay in addition though all the transportation is being provided without cost so there's there will be if you sign up for there's some summer programs that uh we have selected students because of some of the learning loss and where they felt on some of the testing that's been done throughout the year we've identified them as needing some extra help and they will not be charged for that for the transportation no they won't be charged for the troops offered to other students too then or i'm just asking i'm just trying to clarify no it's it's offered to those that we've provided transportation the past so if we've normally provided transportation there might have been a cost to that there wouldn't be a cost this time okay thank you so the the last funds to speak about would be the enterprise funds we wanted to draw your attention to this because nutrition services and community schools are improving their financial status at this point in time and so we wanted to share that the estimated revenues have been increased uh for the for and will be increased for the final budget revision in the current year miss vets sorry to ask one more time okay i the extension for the nutrition services i heard that it's extended through at least through september it was initially extended through september 30th it's now been formally extended through june 30 of 2022 2022 yes thank you and that's all i have for the report this evening thank you mrs betts and then for the second report i'm very happy to hand this over to miss jackie matanin and she will give you the details of the final audit results for fiscal year 2020 almost a whole year ago just to make sure you know that we're talking what we're talking about welcome mrs matin good evening dr mccord dr santa cruz members of the governing board i am very excited to be here this evening to present the final fy 2020 audit reports to you tonight's report will include the fy 2020 instructional spending as per our kaffir and the auditor general's report fy 2020 single audit reporting package the fy 2020 uniform system of financial records or the usfr compliance questionnaire and our best practices also tonight on the consent agenda we will be recommending um an audit firm heinfield meech and so we're excited to move forward with the fy 21 audit as well so this guy are you really excited for that yeah saying that okay no i really am checking you know i'm a nerd yeah that's not i didn't say that it's a good thing so this graph shows the instructional spending from fy 2020 from our kafir this is the government-wide funds whoops and then this pie shows the instructional spending from the auditor general's report this breaks down some of those spending areas for district spending for gilbert public schools the first row is dollars instruction this is classroom teacher salaries and other supplies used directly in students hands in the classrooms you can see that we've increased slightly over the years the next row is dollars in the classroom instruction which includes the 1000 function above also instructional support which is library media services assessment curriculum and then student supports which is guidance counselors attendance health services and increase over prior year there and administer administration which is the district office and the schools slight increase there as well miss matin i think you're downplaying when you use slight um when we're already one of the top two or three districts in the state as far as dollars sit in the classroom it's not easy to to move this needle but as you can see it has moved in the right direction as far as dollar spent in the classroom and dollars on instruction each of the years on this so i think that's worth a little bit of a celebration to our community that we're continuing to work diligently to put dollars where it impacts our students yes thank you very true this slide shows our peer district spending so you can see on the dollars it's the same grid and you'll see that the smaller districts higley and queen creek have a higher administration cost which would stand to reason they're much smaller districts it's a nice comparison to show gilbert compared to our peers as well any questions before we move on to the audit reports so first up is the single audit report this is the fy 2020 single audit this is required for districts with 750 000 of federal spend or more this year we had a clean or unmodified audit report we had no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies in the area of financial reporting or federal awards the report also notes prior year findings in 18 and 19 including payroll cash reconciliation and compensated absences i believe and these have all been resolved i would like to go off script just a little bit and send out a shout out to my team pat donahue internal auditor isn't here this evening but ashley miranda our budget manager is she was instrumental in in our cash reconciliation process and of course miss betts for her leadership so thank you ms matin and as mr carr pointed out relative to the first slide uh bullet number two and actually number one this is cause for celebration as well so congratulations to you and your team thank you now you know why she's excited [Laughter] miss matt how many how many years has it been since we've had a clean report seven and that predates any of you that are in this finance team so um and i don't mean to disparage anyone and your predecessors i mean to give credit to this team for taking on some challenges that that they inherited and overcoming them and get the getting this clean audit this is this is a big deal we're very proud thank you next up is our uniform system system of financial records compliance questionnaire or usfr i really like this questionnaire as well i kind of think of it as our playbook against which we are audited uh this year we had approximately 175 yes or no questions the auditors are required to answer either yes or no there is no other option this year we had 17 no options which is down from previous years some of the areas where we had these no answers one was in budget the question asks did we submit our final revised budget for 2020 by may 15th the statutory deadline and the answer was no we did not but the auditors did note that we were allowed to extend that through june 30th which we took advantage of we also revised again in november which they noted we did that to take advantage of the esser monies and esg monies expenditures we had an after the fact which means that there was an invoice dated prior to the purchase order being in place which is a very common finding among arizona school districts especially a district this size technology we had a finding that our at the time the audit was done um the disaster recovery plan had not yet been completed it is now so that's in place a couple findings in transportation in route miles and student rider counts and student attendance again very common findings across arizona school districts we work closely with our student information system to ensure that we are working together accurately and reporting those absences a little bit more on the usfr compliance questionnaire we did have some areas of 100 compliance so these were all answered yes in cash and revenue procurement classroom site fund and financial reporting some implemented best practices from all financial processes are consistently reviewed and updated and we are documenting process as we move through the reconciliation is completed monthly we have an ongoing review of expenditures and the general ledger implementing best practices in the current year in finance we have implemented budget journal entries which allows us to track our budget and expenditures much more closely it provides us kind of real-time information at our fingertips revenue tracking we are tracking revenues against anticipated revenues what we receive in our bank accounts in the maricopa county treasurer's office the technology again the disaster recovery plan is in place mr castellano is here should you have any specific questions there and transportation the data collection tool has been created to capture and substantiate the data uploaded to ade the 100 day report reviewed and verified prior to submittal new routing planning software has been implemented along with the zonar passes and miss betts is here if you have any specific transportation questions that's it for my report tonight any questions all right i just have a comment i this has been a process in the work of you know getting a new financial system getting new technology to deal with our buses and our transportation and and i do appreciate all the hard work i mean i want to call attention to the fact that we're presenting all this to our community so that they can understand the work that we're doing on our finances and how we have improved greatly and i will say um just i i was going to back when in the slide in 2015 when our administration was lower that was a a point where we were very tight on our finances so our administration was very very um liked and maybe not quite enough people to do all the work so i really appreciate how hard everyone is working to to show and really make good use of our finances so thank you thank you anyone else ms metz miss matinen ms miranda thank you all for the good information it's actually heartening to to hear that we have reached a point where we are seeing our head above water way above water so thank you all right we move to item eight consent agenda items we have the consent agenda items you've had an opportunity to review them and we are open to entertain emotion dr santa cruz i move that we move that we approve tonight's consent agenda thank you mr carr is there a second second thank you miss humphries i saw miss wood's hand go up there as well any discussion seeing that there is no discussion all those in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda as presented and printed please signify by saying aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we are at item nine action items for consideration discussion direction and possible approval 9.01 by way of introduction dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members before you we have a policy i kfb the adoption of this new policy is basically a revision to our current policy this is a graduation policy we're able to adopt this policy on emergency basis due to policy bgb essentially for our graduation policy the governor enacted um and signed into law some different requirements that needed to be put into our policy that's why we're putting this on there this evening the additions to our policy which are just additions there are no other changes to our policy um are the following a student who is a member of a federally recognized indian tribe or who is eligible to be enrolled as a member of a federally recognized indian tribe may wear traditional tribal regalia or objects of culture significance cultural significance at a graduation ceremony next for the purposes of this section objects of cultural significance and traditional tribal regalia include an eagle feather or eagle plume and so those are the additions to this graduation policy again something that was signed into law by our governor just recently thank you dr mccord uh item 9.01 does require a motion and this is the first and only read i think it's submitted to us on an emergency basis from the governor's office so is there a motion i move that we suspend policy bgb and adopt policy ik fb graduation exercises as written thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr wood is there any discussion um i just wanted to point out that the the statutes already gone into effect i had an emergency clause so that is one reason why we are doing this policy in one read instead of taking our time and usually doing it in two reads anything else okay seeing no additional discussion we will vote on item 9.01 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries five zero we are now at item 9.02 action to clarify and confirm that the board's march 30 20 21 approval of the reduction in force recommendations constitute board approval for the rubric used to develop the recommendations and if you would by way of explanation allow me before the motion to just review our district enrollment declined by approximately sixteen hundred students during the twenty 2020-2021 school year resulting in a substantial loss of state funding for the 2020 2021 and 2021 2022 school year and significant overstaffing in district schools said another way as of the date as of the date the board took the difficult but necessary action to approve a reduction in force there were simply too many teachers for the number of students expected to return for the 2021 2022 school year governing board policy g c q a as adopted on january 26 2021 describes that non-exclusive criteria that the superintendent is expected to use to develop his recommendations for the non-continuation of specific state staff members as a tool to help implement policy gcqa a rubric was developed prior to march 30th 2021 every board member reviewed the rubric and determined it was aligned with the board member with the board members understanding of policy gcqa as well as the rubric was provided to the board as an attachment to the march 30 2021 board meeting and included in the presentation on the reduction in force that took place prior to the governing board vote that evening to implement the superintendent's recommendation for the non-continuation of specific staff members since march 30 2021 the governing board has learned that some teachers who were non-continued for next school year have expressed concern that the rubric used to develop the reduction in force recommendations was not approved by the board or does not comply with the governing board policy gcqa relative to the reduction in force criteria by the proposed board action tonight the board takes this opportunity to address this concern and so we are at item 9.02 is there a motion dr santa cruz i moved to clarify and confirm that the board's march 30th 2021 approval of the reduction in force recommendations constituted the board approval of the rubric used to develop the recommendations as fully consider is fully consistent with or an approved exception to the criteria set forth in governing board policy gcqa thank you miss wood is there a second i second thank you mrs humphries it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing that there is no discussion dr santa cruz i just want to say i believe you you presented what i would have wanted to say so thank you for doing that thank you anything else with that then we will vote on the motion for 9.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries five zero we are now at item 10 requests for future agenda items 10.01 as is typical for us if there is nothing you would like to communicate this evening please make contact with mrs wilson and we will include them on a future agenda we move to item 11 board committee reports 11.01 gilbert education foundation ms humphries um yes i i want to report um thursday night the gilbert education foundation held their scholarship re reception and so they honored those who would want who had achieved the volunteer letter by volunteering at least 200 hours also the scholarship recipients which were recipients which were both students and teachers and staff and it was a delightful evening we we wore our mess we social distanced it was take-home refreshments because we wanted to be extremely careful but it was a delightful evening i wanted to also just take a point of personal privilege and share um this year i've worked really hard and i have visited all of our schools except one that i will get to before the end of the year and it's been a wonderful opportunity to see what's going on in our schools and see what our students are learning so much and our teachers and staff and principals are working so diligently to make sure that they have the best experience possible i i just couldn't be more proud and then secondly i wanted to share um some people may not be aware of the organization school connect that is an organization that's working to support schools through partnerships with community and business through community engagement and on thursday morning they heard held their first virtual award ceremony and i had the honor of being awarded the leader uh collaborative leadership award for school board member so i wanted to share that because i'm i think it's a really awesome opportunity so it is one of my goals to work on community engagement it's not something we've been able to do a lot of this year but hopefully next year we can move that forward and and really enjoy some good opportunities with with um supporting our schools so thank you thank you mrs humphries and congratulations miss wood item 11.02 city of mesa liaison yes thank you just a couple comments they're working on budget discussions in the city right now but of note of interest to our community and our school district they're having a community meeting on may 13th to take citizen input for the monterey park expansion that's the park next to superstition springs elementary so if if you'd like to give input on that in any way please look on the website or contact a town council member too to find out how to do that may 13th thank you mrs wood item 11.02 and 11.04 town gilbert liaison and finance audit committee mr carr dr saturn crews i think the finance committee has given its report very well tonight so i won't add anything more to that and i do not have anything report from the town of gilbert if i may at the end of this i'd like to take a moment following the rest of the reports thank you sir we'll circle back to you item 11.05 insurance and trust representative miss eugetti dr santa cruz i don't have anything to report as our meeting has been rescheduled thank you 11.06 is legislative representative and my report is ongoing you keep track of information coming to you through our local agencies newspapers and media outlets and there is still a great deal of activity going on at the legislature so as you have the opportunity to present your point of view we encourage you to do so mr carr i'll circle back to you sir thank you dr santa cruz um over the past couple of years the demands on my time have pulled me a variety of directions i've found it increasingly difficult in the past several months to meet my own expectations as i balance those competing demands after carefully evaluating my demands and opportunities to serve i've come to an extremely difficult decision and have submitted my resignation from this governing board effective june 30th by continuing through the academic slash fiscal fiscal year i hope that the timing will allow for a smooth transition to identify a replacement while allowing us to complete the school year consideration of the decision has given me the opportunity to pause and reflect on many years of involvement with our school district i i think back to when my children were in elementary at pioneer elementary and the art masters program engineering weeks science camps field trip chaperoning booster clubs site councils superintendent parent council override campaigns and then of course the last four and a half years as a school board member um this school district in particular its teachers have been a blessing in my family excuse me i don't consider myself an emotional man but it's an emotional moment to each of those teachers faculty staff thank you you have my deepest gratitude the past four years on this governing board four plus years i've tried to ask meaningful questions and i've tried to question the status quo i'm sure i've made my share of mistakes and at least some of the emails that we receive tend to validate that perception nevertheless i hope that those efforts are received as intended i've always tried to improve our school's ability to serve children to my fellow board members we've had some lively discussions we've occasionally split votes and i'm sorry for that mrs humphries we've faced red fred walkouts we've seen covid cause disruptions we've closed and repurposed schools and just very recently we've made some difficult decisions to reduce staff but it hasn't all been negative we've had some wonderful successes we've adopted and implemented a strategic plan although interrupted by kovid we're seeing that plan lead to improved academic opportunities and scores at one point we actually reversed the downward enrollment trend something that our demographer predicted was not possible and a sign that we were becoming the choice of our community i look forward to watching the board return to that path of progress we now have parents complimenting us on our communication in the past it seemed like our complaints were that they didn't know what was going on and now they're telling us we're communicating too often as discussed earlier tonight we've consistently increased the dollar spent in the classroom and for the first time in years we have a clean financial audit for some reason that seems to be something that i've paid increased attention to so i think those i believe we've accomplished the above i believe the way that we have accomplished the above to be every important is every bit as important as what we've achieved despite momentary lapses in which frustration has been expressed and i apologize to all for my contribution to those lapses i commend and thank each of you for your sincerity your passion and your civility regardless of agreement with decisions or disagreement i believe this board exemplifies how to interact in a respectful civil manner perhaps one of the best decisions we've made as a board was to hire new superintendent dr mccord and his staff made the above possible he faces constant criticism and has even received a threat or two but each day whether recognized or not he worries about the students and staff in this district i thank him and kristen for their dedication to the community it's not easy being a superintendent a large visible with a large visible target on your shirt every day shane thank you for not giving up on us thank you for answering my questions even when they were annoying thank you for pushing back at times and helping me see different perspectives to all of his cabinet i express those same sentiments we are lucky to have you i will miss touring campuses all particularly misreading students and i should probably once again apologize to the teacher at greenfield elementary whose exams i interrupted getting a little exuberant with where the wild things are but they did roar a terrible roar i hope that i will still be invited to championship games and regular season games to choir and orchestra concerts to patriotic commemorations fall festivals all of the great things that our district does i have loved meeting with teachers and i have loved witnessing your love for our students you do amazing things again i thank my fellow board members dr mccord his administration i thank the principals educators and staff of this district your dedication is appreciated finally thank you to my wife and my family chantal is four-footed vacation time she's tolerated morning and evening phone calls and she's overheard my verbalized self-directed in other words talking to myself conversations and generally she's just put up with me as i prepared for or cooled down from board meetings and of course as miss wood would remind me if i'd missed this thank you to the parents in our community your support means everything to gilbert public schools we know it's been a tough year in particular but thank you for the confidence thank you for the confidence that you've placed in electing me to this position i've been honored to serve thank you thank you mr carr if i may at least a point of personal privilege and and perhaps i'm speaking for the entire board that uh your service to this community uh is undoubtedly honest and forthright and your commitment to young people is certainly always evident and on behalf of the board and gilbert public schools and i'll defer to mr dr mccord here in a bit uh thank you for your service could i could i just add something ms i'm ready for santa cruz um being a board member it it kind of has to take number one in your life and i know that um mr carr has balanced being a scout master and being a leader and and a job um paid position nobody gets after me because i don't get paid for anything i do so um he's balanced a lot on his play and um you know i really appreciate serving with him and look forward to serving with him until the end of june so thank you very much dr mccord mr carr and i talked about this a few days ago and um and i appreciate that um it isn't easy doing what the five of you do um not just in times like this but i think just in general you carry the weight of the district on your shoulders and and the families out there that depend on you for a lot of different things and i think you've managed that extremely well um as you noted all five of you haven't agreed and you've heard me say this over and over again to all five of you but i think you've shown the community how how easy can be to agree to disagree and do it in a civil way there's two things you don't mess with in this world and that's people's children and their money and we do that on a daily basis here uh one way or the other and it's it's not easy and but every time i've had conversations with you you've wanted to know what's in the best interest of kids and that is exactly the type of person you are and that's how you've served so i i can appreciate that again not everybody's going to agree with everything that happens up here but never ever have you made a decision without thinking it through and wondering what's best for our students in our community and our staff so thank you for that appreciate your service ms eugetti and ms wood sheila would you like to say anything i can't i'm crying okay miss wood just thank you all right with that again we wish you well mr carr we're we're going to work you to death until june 30th but we do wish you will i do item 12 meeting dates 12.01 dr mccord our next meeting is next tuesday may 4th at 6 pm that's a work-study and a brief board meeting and then we also have a policy meeting on may 11th and a board business meeting on may 18th and then coming up after that is graduation where our kids will be walking across the stage and so we're so very happy and proud of that thank you sir we moved to item 13 13.01 is adjournment is there a motion summit thank you mrs humphries is there a second i'll second thank you mrs wood discussion doesn't seem like there ever is on that one all right with that we will vote all those in favor of item 13.01 adjournment please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 5-0 we thank you for your attendance those of you on live stream and those of you who are in the room we appreciate staff and their work in preparation for the meeting have a good evening we are adjourned you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this is the the thing that's changed and the answer to this question is no teachers are going to use that time to support students who are remaining remote for students who need extra support when in person they should make arrangements with their teachers for extra help to happen within the class period or during the lunch block or just make an appointment with your teacher so teachers are really accommodating um but we don't want them to sort of contort themselves too far but in general they'll accommodate you so just have a conversation with them if you need extra support for students who remain remote will there be orientation in the fall to support them with their transition to the high school building of course right so we have this friday there are a few tours for um new students and ninth grade students but that doesn't mean we won't also have them in the fall so we will have those for ninth and tenth grade as well as new students in the fall how many teachers are returning to in person almost all of our teachers are returning to in-person there's only a few that are unable to return how many students will be in person so we've got 500 sorry 481 students in person and 404 remaining remote so it's approximately half and half so now this is our packing list this is very important given that we won't have lockers what this means is that students are going to have to carry a number of things around with them during the day which i understand is not ideal um so bring two masks so one mask that you're wearing and then an extra one if possible in case yours breaks teachers will have um kits that have a few extra and have extra masks in them just in case yours breaks or you lose um etc etc we want you to be prepared for outdoors so bring a towel or a yoga mat or you know something that you want to sit on if you're comfortable just sitting in you know on the grass with your clothing that's totally fine then you don't need a towel yoga mat um if you have an epipen and aren't in the practice of bringing that to school because you're mostly inside i'm going to encourage you to have that with you all of the time because you may be outside it's also important to bring appropriate clothing right so pay attention to the weather this is tricky pay attention to the weather is it really cold are you going to need a sweater is it raining do you need a rain jacket is it really hot right so pay attention to that as you're as you're preparing for school each day all of these things are really important to use when class is happening outside so water bottles um you can bring a water bottle we're also going to give every student a water bottle the water fountains are not going to be available but the water filling stations will be available so for the first day you could bring your own water bottle i think if you think of it and and can put a straw in that water bottle that makes it a little bit easier to drink from behind the mask but in general we will also provide water bottles um if you need to remember one thing from this list and only one thing from this this this is the one which is your chromebook needs to be fully charged so you get yourself ready for bed plug your chromebook in make it part of your ritual set a reminder because you need to start your day with a fully charged chromebook you also need to bring in your charger for your chromebook okay and then there's this little caveat here which is if you can put an extension cord in your backpack consider it and if you've got one right it's not a requirement but if you've got one that might be it might be a great thing to have you'll need some headphones with a microphone so we have given um out headphones with microphones when we handed out the chromebooks and so if for some reason you do not have a headphone with a microphone please reach out to us there is a a student help desk that you can request headphones or let someone know and we can and we can get you a pair don't forget your school supplies right so you'll need a pen and paper and a pencil if you're taking a math and you need calculator or physics if you need a calculator you know what you need right your notebooks that you'll need textbooks if you need those your art supplies your kit supplies right and the kits are things like science and engineering teachers will be in the practice of letting you know what you're going to need for the following day so so it may be that you don't have to carry everything all of the time and if you're curious about that i would encourage you to ask your teachers that question also be sure to bring your personal care items right so bring your own menstrual products um and anything that you might need because it's going to be a little bit trickier to run down to the nurses off to get office to get those products right so have some of those with you as well all right and we're going to move on to this last important slide that mr sadiq is going to talk about right so this one definitely is a really important slide so most of the students coming to school starting on monday are not taking the school bus that means there is going to be a whole lot of cars coming in and out dropping off and picking up so we will have people out kind of directing traffic for the first week or so but the main thing to remember is you're going to stay on matune street for the whole time and you're going to enter you're going to need to enter mattoon street from triangle street or from taylor street like if you can see where the baseball field is in the first arrow next to the baseball field that is kind of where taylor street is and triangle street is of course the street that runs alongside the baseball field and so you'll come in and you'll be directed when you drop off you'll be directed actually to go all the way as close as you can to the stop sign where platoon street reconnects to triangle street because again there's going to be a lot of cars we'll also have school buses we have students who are driving themselves to school so we're going to try to keep all of the people driving and who are dropping off their students out of the parking lot and only on matune street it's also important to remember to keep the intersection clear right where mattoon street turns and becomes a one-way street because buses will be leaving the front of the school and taking that left-hand turn to circle back to the parking lot to go down to the middle school or they'll be taking that left turn turn to leave the parking lot to go off and do whatever they do after they drop kids off so again there will be some signs out there there will be people out there directing traffic we ask everybody to be patient because especially the first week or so this is also our first attempt at coming up with an effective traffic pattern if we find out it's not really working we'll rethink it and we'll let everybody know what the new plan is but again there will be people out directing traffic and the same thing when you come to pick up your child you'll need to go drive down as far as close to the stop sign where mattoon street reconnects to triangle street by the track as possible and your students your children will need to walk down to wherever your park and try to find you that way most of them have cell phones and so you can let them know how far down you are and again we ask for people to be patient understanding everybody is going to be in a bit of a hurry there's going to be a lot of cars there and we're not really going to exactly know how well this will work until we get into it on monday so please be patient and work with us appreciate that all right so now there are also a few other slides we're going to go through but before we get into those we're going to have a chance to answer some of the questions that have been posted while we were talking do students need to order lunch in advance this is an excellent question the answer is no um we're the the um staff has done a pretty good job of sort of predicting that and if they're really off we'll learn quickly but in general you do not need to order in advance right there will be two lunch options there'll be the main menu option and then a vegetarian option great because that question i saw showed up a little bit later as well yeah and it'll be like packaged in the little clam shell and the students will be given that and then expected afterwards to drop off the clam shell in the designated area once they're finished do students have to stay with their b period class for lunch if they're outside no you may eat your lunch in designated areas with whoever you would like to eat your lunch with as long as you're in designated areas and so if you're in the cafeteria you'll see there are very particular markings on chairs as to which chairs you can sit in because when we're inside we have to really be strict about maintaining that distance um outside there are designated areas again there should be there is strict strict adherence to distance as well but that we can't mark chairs per se right so in the cafeteria we've actually decided to go with deaths and chairs in there because the the the kept your tables that were in there they take up too much space and can only have one or two students at it so we thought it'd be more effective to and easier to space out desks and actually have a lot of extras because they can't all fit in the rooms that they were in so we're using some of them inside the cafeteria but most of them are going to be out in the courtyard or outside an other side of the cafeteria so there'll be a lot of places for students to sit and eat their lunches outside um i think it's worth mentioning too that for um students they should ask their beep here they are welcome to ask their b period teachers which lunch they will have teachers will have that full master's schedule by tomorrow afternoon and for the other half hour so the the lunch is half hour and the b period teacher will tell their b period which lunch to attend and then the other half hour will most likely be with students in your b period for classrooms in the high school where there were very few in-person students in b periods we've actually combined a couple of those b periods so it doesn't guarantee that you'll definitely have your b period teacher but most likely for that guided study you will be with students in your b period class what are students expected to do between the end of classes and the beginning of sports can we go to the library we happen to have the librarian with us she's our behind the scenes um tech expert believe it or not um but in general we're asking students to go outside i think that there may be an opportunity for students to go into the library to do additional research but there is a capacity to the library and the librarian will be ms stocker will be in charge of that capacity and letting folks know if it's at capacity you will see a note on the door suggesting that i'm not sure miss stocker if you wanted to pop in and add anything to that but you're welcome too hi grace what a great question um we would love to have every student come to the library after school in an ideal world we'd be back to our normal crazy after school library environment obviously that's that's not really possible we often have upwards of 200 kids in the library after school and that's not feasible um so we are figuring out exactly what our capacity is going to be in the library and if there's any other reason that we might need to use the library for g period related things after school but we are hoping to make it available on a somewhat limited basis and figuring out a good system for that so stay tuned there'll be more about that probably in the morning announcements next week as we figure out what those will be so great question hope to see you soon when will students learn which cohort they are in good question so i think part of that is uh mr mackie answered that question it's going to be teachers will have that schedule so the cohorts you'll find out like what lunch here and that's the only real cohort that you'll be in and your b period teachers will find that out by the end of the day tomorrow can students get help from their teachers during their guided study eg if they are not in a d block class i would encourage you to speak with your teachers about that right so they're likely going to be setting up opportunities for additional help so this is going to require a little bit more um planning and communication with your teachers so the answer to that question is possibly as long as you're communicating and making a real plan with them going through the questions here let's see looks like i think matthew charity's question was answered are they pre-packaged vegetarian option yes um yep a lot of these were answered let's see i see one that says will you be able to heat up your lunch oh yeah let's go ahead and answer that one yeah they'll be michael the microwaves that were in the cafe before will still be in the cafeteria so you'll be able to use so will classes be similar to how they were before the pandemic or will the teachers be sitting at their desks and looking at their computers this is a really important question and given the physical constraints and the distancing requirements they will be in a designated space at the front of the classroom so they may not be sitting at their desk um but they will be in the front of the classroom and in order to um fairly address the remote students and the students in class they will need to be looking at their computer okay but they will be projecting um up on the front board all of the teaching that they're going to be doing okay this doesn't mean that the students in class will also all be in the google meet right there's some variety here um and and teachers have been really creative about about thinking about that but in general in order to be equitable they will be needing to look at their computer in order to address the remote students as well as you all in the classroom but you'll see some variety there is some creativity here people are doing lots of different um lots of different things can we bring in our own laptops instead of chromebooks the answer to that question is yes okay oops i may have gone too far down it moves too quickly um do students need to get parking permits if they're going to drive so they do you can get those if you haven't filled out the the form yet they can pick them up excuse me on monday or during next week when they start school but the forms will be in the main office and at some point they can stop by and grab it and then take it home and fill it out and drop it back off in a day or two yeah and it we understand that it's going to take a couple days for that process and so there's absolutely no penalty or anything if someone's in the parking lot without a permit especially for the first week or two that that's no problem so this question is too late to sign up the buses it's not too late but you may have to wait a week or two in order to have the bus route re-adjusted to be able to accommodate you it really depends that there may be someone you know your next door neighbor or someone down the street may already be taking the bus and in that case it would be a quick easy fix but in some cases you know it may take some adjusting i know the transportation department has put in a lot of hours trying to create and come up with these bus routes so there is a form if you email me somebody at any point i will submit the form transportation form then once we find out from transportation that you've been added we'll tell you the time and place that you'll be picked up in the morning and what time you'll be dropped off in the afternoon yeah it's probably also worth mentioning that the issue is more than just having a stop it's also the number of students on the bus and so they've already planned for that as well and that's in conjunction with the middle school and so it could be that just because the bus is nearby you won't be able to just hop on if you haven't already asked for transportation because they are closely monitoring those numbers will we have the same lunch for the whole quarter yes well you know the same lunch no a quarter yeah will in person students be watching their teachers and engaging with them through the computer yes and no so for instance let's say you've got a padlet or a jamboard right you might be using your computer to engage with the remote students and the teacher but the teacher is also going to be speaking with you and you will be talking directly to the teacher and not through the computer can you explain the tour on friday for ninth graders and is there class as well as the tour so for the ninth graders the those classes a and b period will be asynchronous so those classes the teachers now have a list of all the students who filled out the form and over there and we also know that there's some students who want to go on the tour but didn't fill out a form they're more than welcome to come the three times the tours will be offered all right the one will start at nine for the students who are there another one start at ten another one will start at eleven tours will take approximately 45 minutes it will be 10th 11th or 12th graders giving the tours and they'll be the students who show up to receive the tours will get their schedules printed scheduled that day and they'll be taken around to all their classes and the students who are showing around i will talk to them about things they wish they knew when they were in ninth grade little tips words of encouragement and advice things of that nature if students have the no c period can they leave the school building early yes they can yeah because some students have work studies some students have college classes still and some students don't have c period classes just like if students some students don't have a period classes for some of the same reasons they'll have an alps an alternative learning program for a period for either a or c period and during those times if you don't have an apiary class don't show up until it's time for your b period class and if you do don't have a c period class you'll be expected to leave the school after you can eat let's stay and eat lunch during b period you could stay for the directed study during b period then once c period starts that's when you'd be expected to leave the building buildings don't really have a place a supervised place for you to be at that time will there be anywhere to see the school lunch menu that is a question i don't know do you know that mr city i just um i just provided the link um to miss stalker in the private chat that hopefully she can post to the public chat oh there it is she did it i just didn't see it awesome go team so if we had signed up for the bus would we have heard already we can't remember if we did or not so um the bus routes have have they've been sent out haven't they mr sadiq so you'll have to just take a look at that and see if you can see your address if you don't remember and if not then shoot us an email and we'll contact transportation and get the answer for you there seemed to be a lot of questions about the tour on friday so we never received any information about the tours where can we access it so that the information was sent out to students a couple of weeks ago so the main choice the main the most important part of the tour is deciding what time you want to take a tour and the three options are 9 10 and 11.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so and also they're in in the phone that was sent out we're not going to be able to provide transportation like we could have potentially tried to come up with buses to get students there but because of elementary school and all the running around that transition is doing wouldn't have been able to then take folks back and it would have taken a lot of a lot of time and energy and we might not not have been able to get the buses so basically there's no transportation unfortunately but i did also send out a link to a virtual tour that families and students could take if they weren't able to make it to the high school for the tours but the main three things are which the main time either nine ten or eleven the tours will start so if you show up at the school at 8 55 right 50 we'll get you on a tour for nine and the same thing if you show up right before ten o'clock you can go on the ten o'clock tour same thing with eleven how will students be able to change clothes after school for sports so students will be able to change in the locker rooms right now is the is what we're planning because the lock but that will be probably the only time students will be using locker rooms throughout the day is a quick change before before they go out for sports do you want us to complete the tour request form now if we haven't already or just show up as my guess is the other part of that question right you can complete it if you still have it it's still open so you should be able to complete it and it looks like miss stocker found the link so she posted that in the chat thank you that's the link to the virtual version virtual oh sorry sorry guys you can't go in person not the google form i'll send you the link to the tour i'll put that in the chat okay shall we move on to the next um slideshow and then we can do another round of q a sure although i said that just as miss docker was doing something else my apologies miss stalker all right so i just sent i just sent the soccer the link to the form to fill out for the tours i'll put that in while she's checking up on the chat while she's pulling up the next slideshow put it in the private chat i think you clarified this but to allison's question so there are not there will be no in-person classes on friday the only thing that's happening on friday um are the tours correct yeah okay so these these slides are again more about health and safety type stuff so these this is an example of the mask that will be allowed and the ones that won't be allowed so we will have extra mass for students who either theirs break during the day or they forgot theirs or something you know unforeseen happens but we're not allowing bandanas or the neck gators they do not prevent they don't really filter anything the way mass do so here's an example of the types of mass are allowed the ones that are not allowed you will also share excuse me this information with you again so you can refer back to it all right and this is a little bit about mass exemptions so of course there are some people who because they have a medical condition have been exempt from wearing masks so there may be a few students walking around the school without masks on and they will so you can students you can assume that they are they have a medical exemption adults may check in with them if you're someone who has a medical exemption listening now and you know adult may check in with you and then you can just let them know that you have a medical exemption and we went over the mass breaks a little bit before you know while you're eating and drinking of course and also will be times when your teacher may take you outside to get a mass break they're not really going to happen much in the classrooms all right throughout the school there's going to be signs like right now we have all the hallways lined so it'll be we have one way one side of the hall everyone leaving one direction on the other side of the hall people are moving in the opposite direction and there will also there's also signs in the hallways reminding people to stay six feet apart and then we'll have some signs on the bathroom doors as well that will either say not first or occupied we're trying to keep people safe as possible so also caregivers were counting on you to really monitor your child's health you know if you suspect they have of course any symptoms please keep them home there will also be a text or an email sent out from the district every morning reminding you to check in with your children to make sure that they're feeling well not symptomatic and that they're good to go to school if they do come to school and we find out you know they're not feeling well of course the nurse will be alerted we do have a medical waiting room for people who have any symptoms of covet they'll be if the nurse determines that the person is symptomatic we do have binex tests available that will be given to students who of course are showing symptoms of code and then they will start the whole contact tracing protocol which is really led by the amherst department of public health of course we work very closely with them they do most of the investigating and we answer their questions and give them as much information they need to do a thorough job with contact tracing in the next slide this is of course you know explaining some of the reasons why you may need to stay home from or maybe you could do your learning remote if you're not feeling well obviously if you're you know you have the chills fever upset stomach because of that nature when i set you you know sometimes in the past people would feel a little sick and they would still come to school now we're asking if you feel sick at all please don't come to school take care of yourself and you know also you're not only taking care of yourself you're also looking out for other people when you stay home if you're not feeling well and it's going to be the same thing for adults as well all right so went through those last slides pretty quickly and people have more questions please feel free to post them at any time so we'll be doing pool testing in the fall that is a good question not sure i think well there's a lot of time between now and the fall we've seen how quickly things change so that is the question that we can't i can't answer accurately at this point i could tell you yes and then things change and hopefully we won't need to do protests in the fall or things may change and that may be something that we feel is the best way to keep people healthy healthy and safe more information will come out about that sometime in august can you choose to do some remote days even if not unwell so you could choose to do remote days you know if um say you missed a bus or something like that or you just you know you're feeling really tired and you want to sleep a little bit you know you don't have to get quite as early to do remote as you do to get to school so you could do remote days can i just say though we are doing extensive planning and we're working very hard to find coverage for all of the different blocks and periods and so having large numbers of students just coming and going and not being able to plan for that is very challenging so i do think if it gets to a point where it seems like remote is a better option we would prefer to know about that because it would allow us to potentially better utilize staff throughout the building if you don't feel well and stay home but still attend class who should you let know the teacher will know so the teacher has an attendance system that um is set up to articulate if the person is remote present or in person present remote absent in person absent so the teacher will you don't let anyone know the teacher will know that a few more minutes to see if more questions come through yeah we've got a thank you you're welcome again this is a lot of information on some of it i'm sure you've heard before another information especially if you have a sibling or a child at another school so but we will also make it available and sending it out so people can refer back to it and and this is recorded so it'll be available on this youtube channel so um you can um share it watch it and you can watch it at a faster speed even [Laughter] yeah skip through some parts looks like i don't see any more questions ms docker do you see any questions coming in from the outside that's not delayed nope okay so i gotta say i'm excited to see many of you on one day all of you like you and maybe your parents will see you in the parking lots because i'll be out there walking around so it's gonna it's gonna feel a little different especially the first couple of days so but it's uh everybody's really looking forward to it people are a little nervous and i think more i'm nervous but i'm more excited than nervous i think it's going to be a lot of fun see each other again and get back into the swing of things and get ready for full school next year yeah you're welcome meg and cheryl and carrie and stacy and elizabeth and matthew and bria you're welcome you're welcome so the i see a question why would a slide deck be available outside of the video i was going to say if you guys are okay with it we can put a link to it in the description box it'll just take up you know i would give it a little bit of time for it to get in there but we will put that in there so you can refer back to it later as well as some of the other links that are in the chat we can try to put those in great all right excuse me all right well thank you all for joining us tonight we look forward to seeing folks in person definitely appreciate you taking time out of your busy days here's some more information see you soon yeah thank you everyone bye bye everyone take care
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart unified school district back to order let the record reflect all members are present and we'll continue with item h3 senate president i just want to acknowledge for the record the list of people who did sign in to speak those people are encouraged to email the board if they would like to further express their concerns regarding the agenda item the people that signed in to speak this evening is are charisse booth dale diehl kimberly hyde michelle dillard angelina russo steve daniels colby jorge and nathan friendly thank you madam president uh just giving some more background on this the last regular schedule board meeting during the administration update on uncovered it was the recommendation of the district that we continue with the current protocols throughout the rest of the year since then the governor made an announcement that essentially removed any requirements for the wearing of masks in public which brought the mask issue to the front center of attention and since the governor's announcement this has been a very emotional and very strongly debated topic in our community but also in our school district and for this reason it is specifically brought to the governing board for for conversation just to give some some basic information at this point our active cases are very low we are hovering at about five students total throughout the 23 000 students we have about one or two at any given time of adults employees who are reporting active cases we we're continuing to implement the protocols with contact tracing and quarantine as necessary although as i mentioned it's very low it is the community once again has seen higher numbers that are not reflected in the theiser community i believe that many of these low numbers are a direct result of the safety protocols that being said i understand that conditions have changed at this point with regard to the number of people have been vaccinated and the recent information released by the cdc about being able to be outside and if you're vaccinated and even gather gathering small groups inside if you're vaccinated so there are it's still as it has been for the last 12 months it's a moving target as new information is released as the health experts continue to weigh in on the various topics all throughout this year administration has received lots of opinion and input about the protocols and the the decisions that have been made and while it would be tempting to look at a popular vote and go that direction we have been consistently following the direction of the health professionals the health professionals said the safest place for kids is to be in the classroom and we did that the health professionals said um here are very specific guidelines for contact tracing for quarantines we have followed that these have not been popular decisions for in every case somebody and the board at this time has the monumental task of weighing in on the same conversation and if the vortel chooses there's a recommended motion with two options and that is to either continue the the mask requirement or continue current protocols in place until the end of the school year which is may 20th or to discontinue the mask requirement beginning tomorrow the board has delivered these are recommended motions the board can have discussion and come up with a different motion that is some variation of those so with that i'll turn over back to the president to facilitate the conversation a couple questions um i know we talked about this briefly but can you give us an update as far as the air quality filtration systems that we used our coven money for that to put back into our schools to improve the health of our students and staff can you give us an update of where we're at on that yes so um the board approved the use of federal coded relief funds esther monies as what we refer to them as and that a portion of that money was specifically dedicated to what we call air scrubbers right air scrubbers are you put a mechanism in every single room where there's a vent or an air intake and these air scrubbers basically ionize the particles make them very dense and they are captured in our in our filtration system our current filtration systems to do a single campus takes about one to two weeks we have already started that the installation of those um but with 25 sites it will take 25 weeks which is about six months yes that is underway and with the um short time left before the end of the school year we are hoping that we can have more access to the schools during the summer there will be some summer school but that's not filling the buildings so we're hoping that the contractors can get in during the summer and expedite the installation process before school starts in the fall questions well i'm just i've i did some research um because there's everybody saying science on this side there's everybody saying the signs on this side so what i was finding is as i was looking into these articles and this is not cnn it's not msnbc it's not fox news it's not newsmax or whatever this is like studies done back in 2014 and 2015 over in asia okay because they've been dealing with the mass mandate for so long and what these studies are finding is you know and this was like right after sars is it's finding that cloth masks are only like 90 they have a what was that a 90 penetration rate cloth masks and handkerchiefs medical now have a 50 penetration rate so um you know just different quotes you know this one these this one article i was reading you know says we know that wearing a mask outside healthcare facilities offers little if any protection from infections you know and then there's there's all these other studies and it says what is less clear is whether a mask offers any further protection than healthcare settings in which the wearer has no direct interactions with symptomatic patients you know and it talks about there's a quote here from yet another study that said a masculine will not prevent healthcare healthcare workers with early coping 19 from contaminating their hands and spreading virus to patients and colleagues so it's talking about all these different variables and one of them even mentioned kids kids wearing masks a lot of times the masks don't fit them and so it really doesn't do anything for them anyway you know and not only that but they've got these holes on the side you know and so stuff still gets through skittle still gets through with these kids and they're constantly touching things like they're touching their face more you know and working as an instructional coach i've been in the kindergarten classroom for the past month and i'm telling you like they have a mask mandate at their school but these kinders all the way down all the way down these kinders and it's not because they're just trying to be defiant but they're just kids you know their teacher will try to remind them to pull up your mask pull through your mouth put on your mouth but their day is just nonstop and so what's happening is these kids are taking it off putting it at their desk or they're pulling it down to their chin and then they're dropping crayons on the floor picking crayons up putting it on messing with their mask taking their pencils dropping it on the floor picking it up oh hey i want to borrow your crayon and then messing with their mask and not only that but it's let's see surgical masks were also found to be a repository of bacterial contamination so and it says that various respiratory pathogens were found on the outer surface of used medical masks which could result in self-contamination the risk was found to be higher with longer duration of mass use so what these guys are saying and these really aren't opinionated articles is you know this is the 24 2015 so this is like way before covet even started and i don't know if you guys are familiar with reading journals and articles and scholarly research and all that but when you're doing a research you typically just publish the results you typically publish the results you start off with the research and you say this is my question and then what you do is you do all the data you collect the data and then you publish the results you don't say well i think it's good or i think it's not good you just say and then one one article said penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97 ninety seven percent and medical masks forty four percent so moisture retention reuse of cloth mask and poor filtration could result in increased risk risk of infection and the results caution against the use of cloth cloth masks you know and it says masks have been demonstrated to have a degree of effort have not been demonstrated to have a degree of efficacy that would warrant their compulsory application for the checking of epidemics you know and then one study suggests that basically the masks are a reflective action a reflexive action to panic so you know it kind of questions the using of masks for actual safety does it just make you feel safety so it's suggesting that people are saying just wear masks okay so what these authors did these doctors they researched it they took the controlled study and these are the results so you know and this like i said these are studies done back in 2014 and 2015 before kobit was even anywhere so it's not biased it's not opinionated this is just studies medical studies so i i honestly think it would be beneficial if we just removed the mandate and kept it optional because you know a lot of people are saying there's only three eggs though okay but there's summer school you know and we're just going to keep going around this mountain again you know if we don't lift the mandate tonight then it's going to come up for summer school do you want children wearing masks in summer school and then again for next year so i i honestly think it would be beneficial if we lived in the mandate and let it be optional that's much sense based on what i've seen from science we also have choir concerns fan concerts and plays coming up as well and for for those that sit on the vista stage like we did last week it's pretty hot on that stage with those lights so for me personally i just i think it needs to be optional one of the things and you were talking about the studies that were done some time ago one of the things that i actually teach cpr and um one of the things i go over with my students is the fact that when we breathe in oxygen we expel co2 and that's the bad air so of course when the bad air is expelled where is it expelled into the mask and so you're breathing back in the bad air and then you're expelling more bad air so it's it's a consistent thing that's getting into your lungs but on the other hand i do see that it is only was it 16 days left of school so do we provide that option for the parents do we still protect everybody as a whole because we as a board we're supposed to be flying at this 30 000 foot and it's um it is difficult you're right students will take the mask they'll pull them off they'll oh i forgot and they'll put them back on this has happened all year and um teachers have been frustrated principals have definitely been frustrated um i'm not sure what the happy medium is but i the one thing that keeps sticking in my brain yes there's only 16 days left co2 is bad so it's it's just like should we provide that option for our parents i want to see students walk across the stage for graduation i want to see our students go through their eighth grade promotion i don't want anybody else to get sick they're great numbers as far as you said about five cases district wide but that's for our students so we basically have three different types we have people that are against keeping the mandate continuing the mandate or providing that option um but the question is i don't know which one dropping a mandate though still provides the option for anybody to wear a mask true yeah true it does um but i did have one question for you dr kalos if we did drop the mandate or provide it as optional would we still continue the other protocols such as the cleaning such as the other protocols that we have in place right now would we still continue those presidents sourcing yes the intent is that we continue any protocols that the word doesn't actively remove off the stage protocol plan can ask some questions first before i kind of voice some of my concerns or opinion um so because i know dr kalash you're more involved with those intimate conversations with cdc arizona department of health for a while it would seem like every day if not weekly is it is it still the understanding that despite the governor's recent action the cdc and the arizona department of health are they have they changed their stance on the use of masks and schools my friends pritchard they have said that if they are engaged in rigorous activity because they should not be wearing masks and so based on that health professional guidance we have worked hard to allow students who are at recess and at lunch time the ability to not wear masks assuming that they are running and having rigorous exercise during lunch and recess since the governor's and that was before the governor's announcement since the governor's announcement they still they being the health experts still say that wearing masks is one of many protocols all by itself it's not going to solve the problem but in conjunction with multiple protocols collectively they are effective but are they saying have they said that they agree that masks are no longer needed in schools last night on the news the cdc they interviewed the cdc director and she said that they are still encouraging math indoors they want to continue if you're outdoors that's one thing that they're saying indoors to continue to wear now and that was the cdc or the department of cdc um in a sense we could still do the same thing right we could still encourage masks but not make it a requirement who's going to monitor that i mean you send a child to school and parent thinks that child has a mask or the child has the mask in their pocket they put it on and they get to school then they take it off because kids like i don't want to wear them out then something happens how are the parents are we going to have the teacher say is this optional are you supposed to have a mask or not have a mask something happens and they get that parent lines up and they're going to call and say why didn't you make my child put his mask on i mean i just i the last few weeks of school why do we want to put that added pressure on our teachers and administrators um if maths become optional because i i hear what ms sends more saying as far in this shape and as far as having it be optional people who want to wear it can people that don't don't have to it's kind of like a win-win but i'm concerned about the fact that those who maybe either live in multi-generational families or have underlying health concerns um and maybe they don't feel comfortable being in a room with people who potentially may choose not to wear their mask and when this first came out to the issue with mask was if i wear a mask i'm protecting you if you wear a mask you're protecting me so i could wear my mask but if i'm next to somebody who doesn't want to wear one then i'm really not getting that protection i don't know if they change that because i know it's an ever-evolving thing but basically what i'm one of my questions is is it truly fair all around if we are not going to allow the students who are uncomfortable being next to someone who is not wearing a mask will we allow them to flip back to online learning because they do not feel safe in the school will they be given an option to keep themselves safe and and flipped back to online learning the plan right now is no that doesn't mean that a student can't self quarantine the board has had that conversation about self quarantine um that is typically for seven to ten days we have 15 days left and so it would be difficult um i have heard from principals who have said that they have worked very hard to get kids back into school who have been online and they're concerned that they'll go back home obviously we can't stop them from not coming to school they're absent there are state laws regarding the the 10-day absence requirement that they must be dropped but there are ways that people work with the attendance policies and regulations and and maintain enrollment but as far as this the quarantine option i think when we've had discussions about that in the past you said it's really up to the teacher if they want to provide that zoom link if you're not in a true quarantine situation so let's say you're you have been exposed to someone in your class but let's just say the simple fact of risk is going to go up some if you're around unmasked people and less than six feet of space and if those people choose to not come to school because they feel unsafe it wouldn't truly be a current team because they may not have been exposed yet but again with that 10-day drop rule how would that come into play because they really wouldn't and as they had a teacher who maybe was like no zoom isn't i don't offer zoom or you know at this time of the year with all the other um demands that are on that teacher it would just be too much for them to have to do online that's really not that's really not a guarantee i guess basically is what i'm asking i'm sorry lucy open the door um so it would be easy easy it was a funny word it would be easy to require all teachers to live stream their their lessons every day we can has purchased a livestream cabinet for every classroom for that very purpose if we were to be shut down as a state again we're ready to go live live stream within five minutes um yes that can happen now obviously the quality of that is not ideal meaning we have seen by experience that when a teacher is teaching a class they're not giving attention to the kids who are viewing the the live stream so they miss out on that direct instruction engagement but yes we have said anytime a parent requests that a teacher live stream a student could break their arm have nothing to do with perfect if they break their arm and they're at home it's very easy to just flip on the livestream camera again is it funny word but that can be done and then if if mouse become optional if that's become optional if it's largely because we're saying that you know now we're down to just five cases for the entire district then would administration be willing to lighten up on the quarantine policy specific to indirect conduct so for an example true exposure they say is any time you're within six feet or maybe now they change to three feet but either way six three to six feet of someone who is tested positive for covid for more than 15 minutes unmasked so if you're a student who again if the board votes to make mass optional and you choose to wear a mask and there is a student within three feet of you six feet of you in your classroom who test positive for coded are we going to still maintain those mass quarantine mandatory quarantines um even for those students who maybe choose to wear their mask that goes back to the question is are we going to continue with the other protocols and the plan would be to continue the protocols unless the board specifically removes protocols from the safety protocol plan so that's enough that's an option the board wants to solve and finally just as far as just my question piece and then after everyone else is done i'll talk about some of the things that have been kind of weighing on my mind regarding this decision as far as administration different uh principals even district administration teachers what are you hearing as far as their um their thoughts their comfort levels over the last 15 years of school everything i've heard you've heard as far as the written communication what is fascinating to me is what you have seen the emails some teachers who you might kind of want to be tempted to group all teachers into one opinion that keep keep the mandate in place and that's not the case there are teachers who have expressed desire via emails to the board to me that we lift the mandate and make it optional um there's a lot of teachers who want the other way you would think all parents would want to let the mandate and yet there's a lot of parents who don't we did have a meeting with our principals earlier this week and the general census of the conversation was that there's 15 days left let's not disrupt so much when we're doing state testing this week we are doing final exams and students are trying to finish out the year with their end of year activities and if they are no math some parents are going to pull their kids there's the potential some teachers will we'll stop we'll just say i'm done some have said that is why i say there's a potential whether any of that happens i don't know parents may say what they're going to pull their children for one side or the other and they may not um some some uh teachers who said i'm out of here may or may not it's 15 days left so to answer your question it's all over the place how would how would that tell that if they went off when parents pulled their kids out they can't do finals at home so and how they do like they're doing testing right now you can't do that at home so they still have to come i mean we have to make other arrangements now for them to do it in a separate room or i mean how would all that work with because of all the things that are happening at the end of the school year my president mrs graham we're doing that right now with our online students who have to take the state test they're coming in the schools have set up a large room it might be the media center or cafeteria or the gym and they're spreading them all out i was just at riverview today and observed the entire media center with students 12 feet apart but they were all online kids that were required to come in to take the state test obviously some tests can't be done remotely if it's a performance-based test like ceramics or culinary arts i say never never say never it'd be difficult but uh and more likely than not they'd be required to come in in a separate study to take the test but what about finals i mean when we're talking about the lining like a high school kid right exactly they would have to be other arrangement now we're asking for another which is what we've done for the state test for high school so if students not willing to bring their students in school if there could be around people that aren't working that could be an incomplete on their report card until they come in and do it yeah and to the point of summer school the plan was to continue the protocols through the end of the year and then use summer school as the optional trigger point because summer school is optional it's not required and then use that as the transition into the hall how do we work with outside groups right now i know we have a few like religious organizations that use our facilities do we require those outside groups to enforce our mass mandate yes just like so after the governor's order was over did we have anything in between there to where the state mandate was dropped but our mandate was still in place um we have maintained our protocols for everyone consistently okay it's kind of like the state farm stadium setting the requirements for us for graduation we don't have choice right and they are requiring math correct um so an example would be the vista show over the weekend that vista so here's here's some of my thoughts then just just keep discussion going um to five of us that are all of us in here there are 15 instructional days left of school i'm particularly thinking about our high school seniors our 8th grade promoters after may 9th theoretically if the students exposed to code in the classroom they'd be excluded from participating in their graduation ceremonies due to quarantine and then also during this time as we've said there's going to be our testing that's going on right now that could potentially be impacted i think our numbers are low and and i think our numbers are low because uh i know this is kind of goes on everyone has an opinion about mass i do view that they are a mitigating factor i think they have mitigating factors in place for a reason and i think they've been effective i think they've helped us get here i don't think they're the be all end-all but i think they've helped um the difference is to one of the points of you know when did when does it end as far as summer school you know we could continue to have this i would recommend if the board decided to keep the band-aid in place through the end of the year that we revisit summer school and we specifically have a date to do that the difference for me is that summer school students are going into that scenario eyes wide open knowing that okay the board either voted to keep the mandate in place or make it optional for summer school sessions they have a choice they either go or they don't right now students are in their current situation based on the fact that dysart put these mitigating factors in place one of them being masks it's too late for some of them to go fully back into a high school setting that's not even an option for them so really it's not a fair i hate to say it's not fair but it's not a fair balance for all because they're in a situation where they're denied an opportunity to make the choice like they all were in the beginning of the semester of you know there was a clear end date of after this date you cannot flip back so we're telling them you can't flip back but now we're taking away a potential safety net that maybe was the make or break for them to decide whether or not they were going to stay in person or not so to me it's just a difference of and even for our teachers and staff i mean they decided to continue teaching and dysart or stay with us because of the mitigating factors we have in place now they still have to fulfill the terms of their contract and maybe doing so in a scenario where they're not feeling safe because they're going to be around others that aren't wearing their masks so there's that piece the students and then also that those under 16 can't get vaccinated so you know they're so again i go back to the multi-generational families underlying health conditions the very very sad reality of if we remove mass right now there's a potential for infection rates to go up the corn the mandatory quarantining that could start happening again and the thought of some of these high school seniors or eighth graders who are getting ready to promote be told we've already got another email from someone that they could attend a shadow ridge prior event because they're quarantined and so a lot of these things they could be missing out on when we could just stay true to what we put in place for the next 15 days reconvene is aboard talk about summer and at least at that point people can make a decision based on all the facts presented if you don't want to be around someone who might not be wearing a mask then you don't enroll in summer school those are my thoughts i and i'm the first person to say people should have the right to choose don't impose your will on me i get that but it's to the point to where it doesn't negatively impact another and by doing this we are potentially impacting negatively the will of another or the safety of another or at least their perceived safety and i just think we have to look at beyond my feeling of how i feel about certain things we have to look at everybody and everyone has different circumstances so something that miss pritchard just said revisiting it for summer school summer school starts wet day again june 6th or 7th whichever that month we have other activities between the end of school year and the start of summer school and we do and i want to make sure that we keep that in perspective correct i feel like if we're going to make any decision for summer school then we should do it either tonight or really soon because there's so much going on you know and if teachers are afraid you know to go in the classroom without a mask well they all had the opportunity to be vaccinated we had a pod you know so if if teachers are vaccinated then it really shouldn't be an issue for them being in the classroom with or without a mask well not everybody well you're right we offered it to them but in talking to some people they they wanted to wait until the school year was over because they didn't want to get sick and have to miss school because they weren't sure about side effects because they heard of you know we've all heard of it for the first shot this might happen after the second shot this might happen and i talked to several people they said nope i'm not vaccinating until after school is out and then i'm going to go get the shot and then you know whatever the other thing is we have kids that haven't even been vaccinated i mean some of the seniors maybe but not all of them and we from the very very beginning when this whole thing started i believe you have followed cdc guidelines and maricopa county health and we continued that whole thing um it just my biggest concern is the vaccine you're right people had a choice to be vaccinated but they're not and we don't know who's been doctor i mean nobody's going around and checking it's not have you been vaccinated have you you know it's there's no record of who's been vaccinated or not but again the vaccination the math the hand sanitizer the washing of the hand all of that goes together it nothing none of it is the the absolute answer i mean i've been vaccinated but i still wear my mask because i don't want to get in there i don't know if i'm going to get cold if i don't wear my mask i mean this is a very moving puzzle nobody knows all the answers but it all you have to put it all together and to your point didn't worry about this and how hot it is up there i have to say i'm very impressed with how creative they were on rather than wearing masks they were face shields one of the plays anyway they were wearing things of the the anyway there were and i thought how creative of them that not to have because they were singing and moving around a lot that they were wearing facial in fact i couldn't even tell until i looked at oh look at that they have face shields on the way i mean i'm very impressed how creative everybody has been with this whole this whole thing i appreciate the creativity too but i don't know particularly with theater but i know with some groups it's booster parents it's fundraising it's parents it's children that are you know using their money from their you know their summer job to pay for these masks and these extra you know safety accessories they're not all school provided so i just you know i i don't know for a backward theater but i know that for other groups there palm was an example they had to you know use a lot of their own funds for certain mass that were aia required so just with that um so dr kellis can you remind us how many um kinder we had a deficit in this year i think it was like three or four hundred now present members of the board i think between kinder and first grade it was probably uh madam president members of the board this year at the beginning probably down 700 kids i believe probably 350 400 were probably kindergarten first grade okay and do we have any feedback as to why i mean was it maybe because we were going to be requiring their you know five and six-year-old to wear a mask um we don't have any formal feedback we didn't do a survey of them anecdotally we have heard that with everything going on they're just going to red shirts a year and they'll come back next year and hopefully august hopefully when things have settled down but we also have a charter school moving in that could absorb some of that there are again mixed messages some because of the mass because they don't feel safe i mean it's some just don't want to deal with it with their littles madam president members of the board i would say uh nsba if you've seen the articles this is a question nationwide everybody's asking the same question so technically i believe school districts are down around 60 to 65 000 students and charters are up about 10 000 um but ultimately there's kids that were here last year and are not here this year and there's no school system we don't know about micro schools you might see the article of the attorney general's now looking into that there's a lot of homeschooling micro schools or just take off a year that is why there's just so much unknown do they all show up the 700 plus show up for the next year plus our growth that's why we're taking a middle ground but there's a lot of unknown and uncertainty there at one of the cip meetings i forget the school i want to see marley park but that may be wrong they've had 78 kindergartners come in over the course of the year that they're just starting to come back into the school was it 78 i mean this is after september right but as parents are you know getting more comfortable bringing their kids to school so they have quite a few more coming in i guess i just don't i i'm still not convinced that masks are the best option if kids are constantly touching their faces and breathing in their carbon dioxide you know and we all got the same emails flooding from parents saying just let us choose let us choose and you know there are people out there who develop breathing issues from wearing a prolonged mask you know just the bacteria being on it all day even if you just get a fresh one every day i do but just constant bacteria bacteria bacteria you know and you also have to consider kids immune systems yeah we're trying to keep them from getting covered but i mean as children when we eat dirt that's where we get our immune system from so if we're shutting down our immune systems now are we doing long-term damage you know and honestly you know if if i've got four or five studies that say the medical masks have 44 to 50 penetration rate and the cloth masks i mean 90 penetration right it doesn't matter if i'm wearing it and somebody else is not whatever i'm spewing out is still getting out it's but i i honestly think it would be best just to lift the mandate and leave it optional but what would you say to those families that's my only thing i mean that um there's so many different studies out there and lots of people that emailed would link different studies and i looked at those and there's just an overwhelming amount of information and evidence for whatever the study you know adhered to examining and it's hard to like okay is this a credible group that did the study is that that's why i kind of always go back to what does the cdc say what does the department of health say as kind of like my authority i you know i'm different too i mean since 99 i have been one of my jobs has always been in the medical field so i know that that's a hard thing to pull out of me and i know not everybody buys into the medical you know evidence and things but that for me i i do i do put some value into what the cdc and department health says so although there's different studies out there that will kind of tell you mixed things depending on which one you read i just kind of go back to that main authority but aside aside from everyone's view on that i guess my big thing is we do know it's a mitigating measure and if we do take that away which then as a result you know you're increasing whether or not how much or not again that goes back to what study you're reading but if the risk is increased and then you have these seniors who have had the year they've had with covid and everything they've endured and then that puts them at higher risk of being quarantined or sick and they can't walk and finish their high school experience just for 15 days of lifting a mandate i just feel like that is such a huge risk for [Music] for 15 days and i just i don't that's where i'm really torn on that i know this conversation would be totally different that this was the middle of the year this would be totally different if the governor had lifted or did what he did on april 19th and we would be having a totally different conversation and if it was the middle of the year i would lean more towards having it as an option but for right now i just think that we need to continue and this is my own thing i think we need to continue uh keeping the mast in place it's it's just a short time so what do we say to those people that have been sick and tired of hearing the 15 days to slow the spread and we say oh only 15 days more after we've had like you know how many 400 days um and what do we say to those parents concerned that we're violating their parental rights to have control over you know health care decisions for their child whether or not they can you know they can wear a mask or their shield those all those conversations you know happen in the beginning of the school year you know when we were coming back on campus um and it seemed like they got different answers you know from whether it was from administration or their teacher or from the district office on what their rights were in that whether or not they could wear a shield or they didn't have to wear a mask that wasn't very clear and i just think that we need to make this exceptionally clear um i i just think that we need to have a process for parents to opt out if that's what we decide to do as a board tonight to keep this mandate on i think that we need to allow a process for parents to opt out of this because right now we're talking about vaccines and while we can't vaccinate our kids well you know there's a lot of parents that never ever want to put a needle in their child and give them a vaccination and who are we to take that right away from them so for us to say that we you know have all this medical knowledge and we're going to honor what the cdc says i thought that we were about local control not a federal agency you know that's funded by federal tax dollars and the bill gates foundation in bloomberg why are we listening to them why are we not listening to our governor you know and then making that decision on her own as the asba says we're all about local control we're big girls and we can make this decision on our own i don't understand that and that's where my frustration is and i feel like we're violating parents rights well and what about all those parents no i i my mentality is not okay not okay in any situation but what about all those parents who showed up tonight trying to get in to speak trying to get in to let us know the community's wishes because ultimately we were elected by the community right so either way we're going to make some group of people mad tonight it's just going to happen but honestly i feel like the parents have gone out of their way to show up for us or show up for their kids in our emails to let us know we want this mandate removed i feel like the majority you know and the majority of the emails that i'm getting are from staff members who should have already been vaccinated and if you don't want to get vaccinated it is what it is you can wear a mask that's fine but the majority of the emails i'm getting from parents saying please remove the mandate and most of them are pretty nice the majority of what i hear from the community is please remove the mandate we have no problem with people sending their kids to school if they want to like that so my problem is not just you know everything going on not just thinking about two weeks of school left my problem is big picture here so what we keep it for two weeks we say oh just two more weeks just two more weeks and then summer school rolls around oh just two more months just two more months and then you know then it becomes the lockdowns that never end almost you know i wasn't on the board but it seems to me like this is a conversation when you talk about local control you didn't have this conversation way back in september or when the when you mandated math was that a board decision it was never a poor decision but there was never a conversation you you're the board you could have asked it to be a board discussion so i mean to say now with 15 days to go where is the local control well we've had no local control until now i mean that we never had an opportunity to have it you can ask to have something put on the agenda always so and i'm not i'm not saying either way i'm just saying but it's a conversation that could have happened way back when you talk about local control but so from the very beginning everything has been going along regarding all these guidelines and now we're going to question the guidelines that seem to be what's happening i don't know either way we're going to have people that are going to be very upset either the folks we're those three buckets either way we're going to have people that are going to be upset yeah and you know when you look at them you got a lot of emails opposing but there's a lot of parents that didn't respond i mean that's not the majority of parents within our school district so you always hear from the local ones they've been interested i mean you can't do a survey because it's a little late but a lot of people are going to school and begging you know they were talking about bringing please come back please come back okay what's your protocol and they're giving them the protocol and so i think it's a it's a whole list of things that parents are bringing their kids back because of all the protocols they didn't say oh it's because you're wiping the guests down you're washing their hands i think it's because of all of them and those that don't want to wear them they could have way way way back that they would could have gone to high school but they chose not to they chose to put their children in the classroom knowing that we had a math mandate and we can really beat this thing all night long so i am going to make a motion that unless you want to talk about it some more but i'm just going to remove that the board re keep the math mandate until the end of the school year may 20th may 20th for discussion purposes i will second or further discussion purposes can i ask one more question further um because uh to ms dunsmore's point regarding the parent right argument that's been brought up have you discussed that with our attorney in regard to this decision and the board having legal authority to make this decision and whether or not it violates any legal rights of a parent uh my prison was richard yes we did consult our attorney who cited the attorney general's opinion on the matter and decided that it is within the authority of the school district to issue such mandates didn't you get an email on that yes i wholeheartedly agree with that opinion of the agent so that would be can we share that email with those pianing it wasn't a confidential email worker um corresponds between an attorney and the client is privileged but the ag opinion itself is public but i mean you can tell you can fight opinion sure if you'd like since we're on the topic of it i don't know if this is going to happen but um i i brought it up earlier too are we are we in the position to where we want to addend the uh the quarantine protocol at all if again they're they're defining exposure of unmasked unmasked students is what constitutes an exposure unmasked within six feet for more than 15 minutes as far as are we still feeling like as a district we want to continue this full classroom quarantine if you are not the person who's actually infected with covid as long as everyone's wearing masks is that really a true exposure we want to still quarantine students at this time of the year or what are your thoughts on that as far as working that into the motion at all presidents richard the maricopa county and state work together on the contact tracing and the quarantine protocols it changes we have adjusted our protocols based on their protocols with regard to contact tracing and quarantine so to answer your question we would continue to follow the template flow chart that is online for american county in arizona and does it matter though is was it ever defined as to whether or not it matters if a student is master because in our district we're masked so does that change anything as far as the department of health's recommendation as far as a true exposure oh my pitcher to my understanding the mass was never part of the contact tracing or quarantine it was as you described within six feet for 15 minutes or longer within a 24-hour period they've adjusted that that and they said for 10 days they've redone that so that if you get a test at a certain period a certain day and then um if it comes back negative you can return within seven days there have been some minor adjustments along the way but essentially to my knowledge i have not seen anything regarding mass other than the recent cdc guidance on outdoors not wearing masks i just kind of feel like again at this time of the year if we're within 15 days they're wearing masks and usually they say exposure is without a mask are we still wanting to quarantine entire classrooms when we have five students with covenant and dysart but i think we can participate either way it sounds well it's not that are we keeping demanding for outside as well are we adjusting the mandate to exclude outside activities for cdc guidelines since we're listening to them um that would based on the motion that's on the table um to continue with the mass protocols we would require them outdoors unless the students are engaged in rigorous activity such as lunch and recess all right well i didn't need to get off topic if there was going to be a change in how we are with an emotion i would say that the motion on the table has an expiration date of may 20th which would mean that after may 20th they would it would not be required what are we having what's our next meeting is the implications of may 12 12 so are we are you suggesting we modify or edit the motion to include an expiration date um one just that the motion that's already on the table says continue the mass mandate through may 20th okay so that implies that may 21st there's no longer mandate should we when's our next meeting after the 20th i mean should we should we specify just for people that are concerned about you know is this going to go on or you know what kind of giving them that at least fact-based piece of information like the board will discuss this for summer school it's not going to be something we keep pushing off like um until the board reconvene or the board will discuss summer school on x you know date so it's definitely parents can count on the fact and staff can count on the fact that we will be addressing that and well our next board meeting is may 12th well right now it's set to expire on may 20th like the mandate is set to expire the motion was the mandate expires on may 20 20.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart unified school district governing board to order let the record reflect that all members are present and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and well next up there's a recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we are very happy to be celebrating some extraordinary accomplishments of our students and the hard work that they and their coaches have put in over the last year mr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet just as we did at the last governing board meeting had the opportunity to recognize several state champions we have the opportunity again this evening tonight and tonight we focus on our arts area and we're very excited this evening to let the governing board know that the indoor percussion group convergence which is based out of willow canyon but features students from all throughout the district is the state champion as well as our winter guard congratulations please come before come forward and please be recognized [Applause] if you could just stay right up here at the front if you could just gather right up here at the front that'd be great just hang out right here you can use the steps just hang out right here for a second how's it going good you guys so ladies and gentlemen in the audience governing board members before um we dismissed this group we would just like to thank coach rad and and all of the other coaches for all the time and effort that they put into what they do this group is phenomenal if you've never had an opportunity to see willow canyons winter guard and the convergence percussion group you are missing out because they are absolutely phenomenally amazing and they highlight and spotlight how great the arts programs in our school district absolutely are would you in the audience please once again congratulate our state champions congratulations thanks guys next up we have um audience with individuals do we have any speakers madam president we have several asking to speak tonight i do have multiple requests that are specific to a particular agenda item h3 so those i will wait to call up until we get to that agenda item although we do have one individual who would like to speak but i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the district the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and we will start with mr joseph benton uh good evening board members and extraordinary members of dysart unified school district my name is joseph benson this is my seventh year as a social studies teacher at shadow ridge high school where i am also the current history department chair my comments tonight directly reference the previous meetings addressing the adoption of the world history project pilot uh one concern i have is that the board has forgotten the democratic process when they voted against adopting the curriculum as a piloted program skipping public comment and usurping curriculum committees the comments made by the board members were deeply troubling to not my only myself but also my many other colleagues throughout all curriculums it is clear that the board did not fully vet the curriculum but merely saw bullets and key phrases that they believed controversial this resulted in the board illustrating possible misunderstanding of what social studies is as a subject as well as critical state standards worse it appears as if the board was showing personal political bias against standard topics that have been approved by the arizona board of education history is not merely facts or quote written by the winners it's actually written by people people who are infallible people who make mistakes or write based off their own experience without foresight of the present creating controversy in history and discovering new information is history and history changes all the time what the board inexcusably declared as quote a dangerous path was the belief that students should not be taught quote accounts based on particular perspectives or to quote pick the stories apart analyze test the claim and build their own lenses what you are effectively saying is that the danger facing our students in dysart is the ability to receive an education in which multiple perspectives are given diversity is celebrated recognizing bias and then addressing it i must remind you that even though these young adults are impressionable the worst thing we can do as educators is only let them think one perspective it's an accumulation of one perspective the worst thing that we can do as educators is only let them think one perspective on any subject history teaches just this that history is not set in stone it is not one perspective it is the accumulation of primary and secondary sources otherwise known as stories and narratives mixed with raw data from varied number of different perspectives and interpretations to give us the most likely truth about the past therefore history is not just facts members of the board please understand that we live in a highly technological and globalized world and like it or not students need to be prepared to be members of it in fact it is part of our state national standards and part of our shadow ridge mission statement of home in which e stands for empowerment through collaboration networking students have the confidence to explore real world issues that will prepare them for contributing members in our global society i encourage the board members to please reconsider their decision about adopting the world history project curriculum and to please do whatever it takes to serve our students over their own political agendas and talking points thank you the rest of the comments will be held for the agenda item next we have the student update dr killis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet we do have a student update thank you luis there you go my name is louis spion i am a member of dlc currently attending valley vista high school currently we are planning to send out a district-wide survey to all of our high school students asking them one question and that question is why is dysart extraordinary after the survey we will be presenting the board with the top 10 to 15 responses we also share the results online we also want to add that dysart willow and shadow have all had their proms and valley vista will be holding theirs on may 8th that is all i have to report thank you next we have the superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um this week we reckon or last week we recognized our dysart heroes and i want to again extend congratulations to all the all those who receive this prestigious award we have a lot of heroes throughout the district who do extraordinary things every single day and it was a pleasure to recognize a few of those employees and volunteers at that special ceremony we have state testing going on right now and also i wish all of the students the best of luck the best of success um and also to thank everyone whatever role you have in the district that helped to prepare the students for the azm2 test and then next week is our teacher appreciation week we are calling it our employee appreciation week and we're recognizing all our educators throughout the district that's all i have to report uh next we have the governing board update and i'll start um i also attended the dysart heroes event and i just wanted to extend again another congratulations to all of our dysart heroes we really do appreciate all that you do and also those that were not you know able to be recognized so just really appreciate all that you do thanks let's see excuse me i visited shadow ridge high school and last night i had the fun event of attending the end of the year band concert and it was really enjoyable and i don't know people sitting around me when the jazz band started i couldn't sit still it was it was a lot of fun i also attended the heroes ceremony and last week was volunteer appreciation week and i know volunteers haven't been in the schools because of the covid and everything so i hope they're nice and rested up so that next year when school starts are going to be very very busy and of course with the employee appreciation week next week thank you to everybody in the district for what you do for our students so that's it i would just like to take a moment to congratulate the valley vista palm line for a successful trip to uda nationals in orlando florida last week where they competed in the national dance team championship event at the espn center in disney world the team received their bid to uda nationals after receiving a superior rating for their camp routine in july the team under the coaching and leadership of miss amy crow advanced to finals where they ultimately improved their semi-final score from the previous day this is a very rigorous competition one in which no other dysert spirit line has ever attended so they were not they were going in not knowing what to expect but these young ladies and their coach represented our district and in extraordinary ways and for that they should be very proud and i would just like to thank every there's so many people too many to name personally but um valley vista administration district administration parents so many people that went above and beyond to make this happen for this team and we are all greatly appreciative so congratulations again to valley vista palm and then last but certainly not least i just want to wish our teachers a very happy teacher appreciation week for next week it's been a challenging year and i appreciate all of you who continued to show up every day determined to make this year successful despite the many obstacles that we all faced and that your dedication and commitment is just very much appreciated so i hope you enjoy your week next week that's all i have uh i do have a couple of events that i have attended but i first want to preface it by saying that the reason that board members actually attend concerts or stem celebrations or go into the schools and actually see our teachers and students engaged is because we don't sit up here just to sit up here we go in and see what is going on in the schools and we appreciate everybody's everything that they do for our students and um to actually see a concert with all the preparation and all the man hours it takes to perform that concert all the man hours it takes for to put on a stem celebration we appreciate that and all of us up here have flexible um sometimes very rigorous but then sometimes flexible schedules and we get to our schools as often as possible so we do appreciate what our teachers and students do and one of the things that we do go into the schools and see is known as a cip which is a continuous improvement plan and each of these schools actually give us benchmark data the dibbles testing data high school credit things of that nature and their challenges that they have put up with over the past year what folk things they need to focus on for the next year so it really gives us a better shot looking at what is going on in the school so we really appreciate the work that our teams put in to share with us about the continuous improvement plan i attended four of those last week and i think one this week and also thank you to the admin professionals on the 21st of april we know our admin is the backbone of our school schools and the district office so we thank them for what they do attended the dysart hero celebration looked a little bit different this year but we were still able to congratulate our heroes and also congratulate everyone else uh also attended the um the concert last night for shadow ridge and um they played i had no idea but they were playing one of my favorite songs birdland and it was extremely awesome kids are talented please keep up the arts it uh it does wonders for the soul and for everybody else so i think that's all i have thank you next moving on to item e1 the consent agenda items i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented second seconded by christine pritchard motion passes next we have information item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet as part of our annual monitoring of governing board policy we bring before you for the first reads section 11.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
foreign hey buddy thank you uh apparently um oh all right sit down great welcome everybody uh to uh this special meeting april 28 of the columbia board of education like to call this meeting to order could you do a roll call home for me please kim a roll call for me karen anderson here tammy hi here donald here greg meyer here here right now here this is like to welcome our our visitors this evening and those watching at home on to item three a public comments correspondence i don't believe we have any public comments do we kim no okay and i believe there's no correspondence at this time so on to item four we're going to approve the minutes for the regular board meeting on april 15 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
[Music] 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 all right we're going to start out tonight with a moment of silence in honor of a student named terence from whites who was on a home pass i understand this past weekend and tragically passed away in a car accident so if you would let's just have a more assignment for him thank you future board meetings may 11th and 25th and june 8th all here at our regular time at 6pm we have no revisions to the agenda and so we'll start with public recognition we have a recommendation to approve a 140 donation from the wabash county sheriff's department for the southwood elementary to purchase snacks for the little nights and kindergarten classes also a recommendation to approve a 100 donation in the form of a gift card from harbor freight from our first southwood elementary's robotics a recommendation to approve a 300 donation from an anonymous donor for northfield softball and a recommendation to approve a 1600 donation uh 500 from hoffman's nursery and landscaping 500 for mckenzie food 300 for mckellips seeds and 300 for agricum all for the northfield softball and baseball programs a recommendation to approve the 300 donation from shemwell and sons for northfield softball and finally the recommendation to approve a 110 donation from jonathan cloth for northfield track let me see one thing about the sheriff's department i think this is kind of fun though part of that is sheriff baker has allowed the deputies to grow beers typically they don't grow beers and so they allowed they allowed them for a donation to grow beards and so that's how they have raised their funds and they said it would be for different schools and things like that so we appreciate them along with everybody else i just thought that was kind of a interesting thing that they did to help the community and help our schools to approve the very generous donations all in favor say all right okay school recognition and we'll start with mrs moore thank you um first thing to share is last week our kindergarten students went on a field trip to paradise spring and joining them were four northfield seniors um keaton stout clay herring ethan galbraith galbraith galbraith this is his last name and then kessel and they have um created our quite historical tours and our kindergartners for their first official customers they are have created this business model um through grow wabash as part of a i believe competition correct mr snyder um but this business idea stems where they're wanting to do tours downtown and so they were in costume and role play and our kindergartners loved it and if you've been around kindergartners they are a tough audience they tell you the truth every single time and so when i asked them what they thought about it they gave great reviews so it was exciting and several of those guys are more veteran so their kindergarten teachers were pretty proud of them um we also had a parent that even though you know our closure due to copa was over a year ago that reached out to celebrate mrs stacy bone and the support that she gave her daughter who's now a second grader but when she was in stacy's first grade class the parents shared that even though school was closed and during the summer mrs bone made sure that every student in her class felt like they had someone to talk to and was truly there for them and then she also commented how mrs bone believes in her students and their dreams and that she continues to push them to be the best that they can be lastly um we just want to thank our junior achievement volunteers we have had i think seven volunteers this school year through junior achievement come into our kindergarten first and second grade classrooms to deliver some community-based curriculum that aligns with our economics and social studies standards they give you know it's either five to six weeks but about an hour a week for that instruction some do more than one classroom so thanks to ben mcfarland jennifer nessler tiffany weaver tricia oswalt jett snyder ashley sheets christine chamberlain and then i have one more [Music] i know i know i'm so sorry um brandi stack house so appreciate them coming in and teaching our parents about our community and that is uh the choir students who participated in the isma district vocal piano and solo and ensemble contest we had 13 high school students excuse me shs at junior high had 13 19 junior high students and 13 high school students got to get my eyes checked excuse me 26 entries and we brought home 22 gold ratings three silver ratings and one bronze and so uh very good there we also had we received an exemplary behavior report for boys baseball both their game against madison grant on april 19th the report means it's clear that the coaching staffs for both southwood and madison grant have worked to instill the value of respect in their players respect for the teammates their opponents and umpires being able to officiate a game with this kind of positive atmosphere as pleasure players are polite respectful and approach the game the right way i commend both programs for their efforts in from the umpire uh we'd also like to thank our senior responder sponsors carrie johnson and cynthia bell for planning organizing and attending the senior trip to pigeon forge in gatlinburg tennessee kids were able to see some really really wonderful sites while they were there and i think that it it we really need to recognize melissa ball because she volunteered her time to drive down there so it's really challenging to drive a school bus on the highway for that long but she was taking up taking us up to different places in the mountains and i used to drive a honda civic i wouldn't trust my civic intention all those ins and outs but she was able to do it flawlessly so outstanding outstanding driver uh we also want to recognize seniors alex weiner and aj getz they both qualified and presented at the regional innovate within competition alex placed second and is in the running for the wild card spot for the state uh aj did not place the only reference first and second places and then mrs johnson's introduction to business class will be completing wednesday tomorrow in the county competition uh we'd also just today we received word from u.s news world report soundwood is recognized as one of the top schools in the nation and in indiana for their status for our status with student performance on state and math language language assessments student performance on college level exams or basically the advanced placement exams and our graduation rate and so i think that might be all of it from me um oh i'm sorry one more thing the indiana basketball coaches association announced its top high school basketball all-state teams including the supreme 15 it's a list of top senior athletes and this was on march 24th so uh carson rich grade 12 i made a small school all-state team and he holds just a host is our number two leading scorer so congratulations to him thank you mr martin from sharp creek we have uh would like to celebrate two student groups that have been active in the past few weeks first of all way to go to the battle of the books competition students for a fantastic job this competition is sponsored and put on by the wabash carnegie public library students are asked to read eight books and answer many questions about the details in the books and they do put in quite a lot of practice time together obviously reading books on their time too we scored two nearly perfect rounds of 11 out of 12 points team members from the sixth grade dawson tex texera ashland macy sage martin keanu gretzman fifth graders colin beale montgomery dawes michaela schue and callie mcclure and fourth graders alexis leferny patrick nessler kiera oswald sienna stalker and addie brensman and chase ross and they did all doing a fantastic job and also want to thank mrs uh brettsman for uh being the lead on that and then the other group is our math bowl team this year which who competed in a virtual competition different than the norm but uh virtually battled the books of virtual also this this team was led by mrs saunders so we want to thank her but the team was made up of 14 fourth fifth and sixth grade students elektra merrell sienna stafford jonathan young easton mckinley gavin lester joseph hall nate hodgson bryce peterson jasmine gill hayden copeland chloe youngblood eli shu sage martin and landon mclaughlin students worked hard to improve their abilities a numerous problems have challenged themselves they did practice on monday and wednesday mornings which is in and of itself a challenge sometimes had a great time competing getting to work through challenging problems as a team and each member of the team played a key role in the achievement so great job to all of them so just appreciate those students uh appreciate that we have staff that are willing to take on those activities and give students opportunities all right thank you mr mcdavid um i would like to speak a moment about terence and thank you mr davis for on the silencer that means a lot thank you very much i know that terence was on his first home pass what that means is um he had progressed in his program to the point where he had earned he was he was coming to an end to his placement probably had another month six weeks maybe eight weeks to go so this is first home pass and terence like a lot of our kids come to us with a host of challenges but i would say terence probably more so than most of our kids were just a tough kid but underneath that tough exterior a leader was really starting to develop on campus and and that obviously maybe it's not obvious but it was very noticeable on monday and the day since uh just other tough kids just reflecting on how much tenants meant to them and so terence was way behind on credits when he started with this in november and he had he had worked really hard on his classes and he was his goal was to graduate before he left and he was working on the core 40 diploma so when i let staff know saturday morning what had happened mr biggs our counselor did some some transcript checking and we are able to award a posthumous excuse me so haven't actually talked to his grandmother's grandmother mrs guardian but we'll figure out the right time and place to present that diploma and you know to his grandmother essentially so it is never easy it's not the first time i've been in a building that's lost a student it's never easy uh if um if there's anything good that can come up it does give it to these kids that have been close to him an opportunity to just reflect and think about you know what his parents taught me and how do i want to move forward you know with that knowledge so that's that's our hope in our prayer that his death will not be you know certainly in vain um then on another note i do want to celebrate chris whitaker she's one of our teachers at school um about 14 months ago i approached chris uh whose retired band choir teacher said and asked chris would you be interested uh i said no pressure like i said i was planning to see but would you be interested in creating a choir at school and i didn't even let him ask me any questions or give me feedback i said i'm just going to throw that out there and i'll come back and check with you later so the very next day chris comes to see me and he might have been thinking about it all day and so it sounds like he's interested so obviously covenant hit and we did a good start choir last year started this year of course pretty crazy but we actually started uh in march uh our girls choir class and uh long story short chris has done a fantastic job we were able to find a a keyboard living in storage at northfield just collecting dust that's working great by the way so we're able to put that to use and um mr whitaker will tell you uh there's various talent levels within this group and so but he is doing some really cool things so last week was mr boyer's birthday and uh he was able to get the girls to sing in a two-part harmony happy birthday to him over the pa system and honestly he did really they did a really nice job and so uh we are hoping as this progresses to do some public performances when that time's right probably started in other student chapels but we'd certainly like to get them out into the community as well that's a long-term goal but really chris has done a fantastic job and it's really cool as a principal to tap into a passion of one of your teachers because you've met chris is passionate about it he is really enjoying it so and so i'm enjoying watching him enjoy it and just helping those girls experience a new level of just connection to their school something different to do so it's been really cool all right and i don't know mr schneider you're not on the list here and i know there was a switch and i didn't know what happened for sure but anyway well may 11th we have our senior honors banquet okay and then i'm leaving with the eighth and ninth grade to go to dc okay it's probably over here yeah and so i'm here tonight so i saw that on the list and i don't know how to get on here but uh um you're next so i won't be here our girls softball team got an exemplary behavior report from william ball who was the umpire he said northfield coaches players and parents grilled out and had purposely prepared enough food to invite our entire umpire team to join them on saturday which was two weeks ago i think he said i would like to nominate the northfield softball team for their hospitality during our double header on saturday it was genuinely a kind gesture and provided a very welcoming environment for our team to compete in so i think they just made enough to let the coaches from the other team and the empires always so it's nice when you hear the good stuff from the vampires another one was for the baseball team this was from a.d eric heisner from eastern and he's the ada and head baseball coach at eastern and he said eastern was playing nhs at kokomo and there were two games i guess they use a stadium in kokomo to play i didn't make it to them but the game was supposed to start like at 6 30 or 7 and the first game went long and the second game of northville didn't start till 8.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
hello everyone i am here with candidate number four lori robinson the situation we have at this moment in time is that the you know due to the inclement weather the service that she has is not working as well as we'd like it to and therefore she's not able to join me in the broadcast studio and so my hope is that you can hear her i do have her on speakerphone and what the plan is is that i will try again with her tonight but we're going to see if it'll work right now with me asking the questions and i'd like someone in the chat to let me know if you can hear her if you can't hear her then you know as i mentioned we will end the broadcast early i will do a broadcast with her later on either tonight or tomorrow when her internet service is much better and we will still post it and you can watch the replay on youtube okay so i'm going to start off like i said i'm hoping i see that there are 10 viewers at this moment so i'm hoping that someone in the community can let me know if you can hear her responses to the questions that i'm going to ask so lori um there's a there's about 14 questions and you have approximately an hour and a half to respond to the questions the first question as typical is asking you to tell us about yourself what roles what responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that have helped you to prepare to be the next principal of fort river elementary school okay um so i said good afternoon good evening to everyone my name is lori robinson and i have been i live in springfield and i've been working here for 25 years as a teacher as a vice principal and also the department chair um 16 of my 25 years i have been in leadership as the vice principal and the department chair i hold licenses as a teacher an administrator a director or district director and i have also applied for my superintendent certification okay i've more about me um i taught in new york wilbraham and spain for two years and lastly in springfield for the last 25 years 16 of which were in leadership as i said before so if you give me did i cover everything in the question um i can repeat the question it just asks what roles responsibilities experiences or license you hold that makes you feel that you are prepared to be the next principal or leader at fort river okay well i've kind of i have touched on all areas where most of the areas within the district as the teacher the department chair i have a license as i said as a director and i did an internship as a director and as an administrator so i think that i have vast experience allow me to work into and become the principal of the school because i've got vast experience and i've got vast knowledge i also have a large network of people that i could use or to employ to help enhance the experience for me as a principal but also for the school okay thank you very much um question number two says how will your leadership style influence teacher instruction um my leadership style is collaborative i believe that everyone has a voice and that we should all be able to use our voices and express our needs and our desires and our hopes but the other thing too is that we work together um i believe that when we work together when we work using the same language that not the same language meaning the same terms etc like that that it brings a more cohesive environment for the students because there's no confusion we're all on the same page we're all looking at the same thing per se but within our disciplines so there's certain vocabulary words that we would use as far as instruction goes and i think that working with people to develop that would be beneficial to everyone so that we have kind of we have we're moving in the same direction and that direction is for student achievement so whatever we can do to support students is the most important thing thank you for that lori question number three says knowing that there is a pandemic and students and staff are just returning to in-person instruction what is your vision for a fully thriving school committed to equity social justice and the social emotional well-being of students and staff i think that first thing is to acknowledge the pandemic and acknowledge the worlds that we've had during the pandemic um i'm sorry decide and think about we should come together and address certain things we'll have to address social and emotional needs mental and emotional provide mental and emotional support for both students and staff um see what assess what we have and what we don't have what we've lost in learning what we've lost even in teaching due to the pandemic just the way things have changed we know the plans that we've seen or none of the plans that we've experienced i myself went through two plans almost three plans and everything is lack every plan was lacking something so it is how to identify the deficits or death or the lost learning loss and then figure out ways of um bridging those gaps and this has been a tumultuous year we have heightened heightened awareness of racial injustice and racial inequality and being able to address these things there are a lot of issues that these students have gone through that we as a society have gone through but as young people especially have gone through and they're not necessarily equipped to handle them so it's very important to acknowledge them share with them as well that we have acknowledged that we've experienced these things and work on ways to work through them support them address their needs and discover ways to bring people together and it could be as simple as giving them time to just release let go say what it is that they're experiencing and then as a community as a group we work through that because if one person's experiencing it someone else is experiencing it it can be an adult and a child but it's the community being able to communicate having the space to communicate with each other and then as far as instruction goes look at different models of instruction especially now with the gaps with learning gaps we have to look at how or what's most important is should the focus be on coverage of material or is it better to cover less but have more deep engagement to cover less but go deeper and stimulate you know curiosity and inspiring and encouraging more learning and peaking your curiosity and reassessing things reassessing the purpose of assessment itself why are we doing it or how are we doing it what what are our expected outcomes and looking at different ways of assessing students and assessing ourselves as well just trying to to find ways to address all of your needs as best as possible we have to create means for students to be able to speak to voice their angst you know their their lack of understanding of certain things or their understanding or their interpretation of things but it's also creating that space for adults too because a lot of things that we ourselves have experienced that we have to come to terms with and examine and understand so it's creating a space for everything to happen for people to be able to connect with each other and connect with themselves within a curriculum as well okay are you ready for question number four i think so okay so question number four will be very familiar to you it says at fort river we consider all groups to be critical stakeholders how would you work effectively with a diagram with a diverse group of families or caregivers who may have values that differ from yours how would you get input from groups that have not felt included in school decisions in the past okay um the first thing would be to create a communication um be it through telephone through the internet through letters in some cases it may be home visits but it is to create a path of communication language may be a barrier the amherst areas is diverse it's international i'm fortunate in that i grew up in a very diverse environment so i understand i have some understanding of different cultures and it's learning well it would be learning those cultures and understanding what their values and what the cultural values are and implications are and speaking with people getting them i'm i'm a student of life i will be a student forever um it's about learning learning cultures learning the world understanding people so it is working on understanding people and letting them know that it is okay that it's important that they participate that they are important to us you know we work we're in a community we work as a community we work as a whole and opening communications however however possible if it's about having meetings when we have meetings we can just decide on the time if it works every for everyone have meetings early morning then we have meetings early morning um if we need to have smaller like satellite meetings then we do that but whatever it is we work to accommodate as many people as possible and remind them and encourage them to speak because they do have a voice and they are invested the students are invested in them they are invested in the students this is a community where we work together we have to be we have to have some type of cohesiveness so recognizing differences is a wonderful thing but also embracing the differences in a positive way is an even better thing we learn from each other our world gets bigger with as we learn more from each other okay question number five says tell us about a time when you had to make a decision that you knew would be unpopular what steps did you take prior to making this decision and how did you handle the pushback if there were any um okay when i was an administrator in the seventh grade the school closed and so they brought the school up into satellites and what happened was part of it was that you lost staff so there were people that were very entrenched in the one thing that they taught and it couldn't be with the new situation it couldn't be the one thing that they taught we had to expand their offerings and there was a lot of pushback i've only taught this for you know 20 years or something like that and i thought about it beforehand and [Music] as the as things were changing as transitions were coming i kept telling people there were going to be changes i wanted to prepare them you understand that the schedule that you have now won't necessarily be the schedule that you'll have then and i'd ask them what else would they be willing to teach what else would they like to teach and of course most of the people didn't want to change anything but there was not much that i could do about it because we only had we had a limited number of people and the curriculum still had to be addressed so i looked for their strengths i spent a lot of time speaking with people going to classrooms observing asking them about what they felt what they felt strongest about and um i worked with i worked on learning them in order to be able to to give them a schedule that would work for them in the sense that they would be accepting of it but also most importantly that would work for the students as well and it came out to be pretty good we had an english teacher that i knew i found out was a reading specialist so i worked with her to create a reading program for the ell students because we didn't have any ml teacher in the building i worked with a science teacher to expand her her science offerings and that worked out well and then we we actually expanded that curriculum a bit for the students so that they learned they learned more and they got to experience more one because they were one grade but also because the teachers had some more they had more of a chance to express themselves and expand their offerings to use their expertise okay you ready for number six yes this is usually a time when i asked the candidates if they'd like to stop and get a sip of water are you are you okay with continuing or would you like to pause for a second no i'm okay for now okay great so number six says what is your ideal discipline policy and how would you develop such a policy my ideal policy is something that's fair and just um but and equal but understanding that equity or equal isn't isn't necessarily straight across the board balance it's understanding the children but to understanding the people that are in front of me as far as how to discipline or what or what the discipline should be i think that one one thing about discipline that i've seen in the 25 years plus that i've been teaching is that they kind of do discipline across the board as one thing but you know at times there are underlying issues it could be an issue at home it could be um personal issues sometimes you know it could be personal issues um it could be a lack of understanding it could be a cultural issue a lack of understanding um or something else and so it is finding out what the what the problem is before administering across the board discipline i think that you have to work with people you know address the student behaviors but also work with the student to work to learn how to work through their conflicts and issues and create relationships build relationships with the students have the students build relationships with each other so that they can voice their frustrations it's not to say that every disciplinary issue is something that's underlying sometimes someone just needs to act up because this is what is happening we have to deal with those things but i think understanding the underlying issues sometimes gives us more insight and we're still there's still be discipline but it doesn't have to necessarily be what is across the board you're allowed to have some creative discipline if there's a violation against the community then they pay they pay back the community let's just say the kid rode all over the wall or something like that or the student wrote all over the wall then they'd be responsible for cleaning the wall it's not for anyone else to clean the wall you've made the mess so you clean it up if you're leaving your your your food tray on the table or you've made a mess with the food you know with the food in the cafeterias then you get a broom and you clean it up it's about giving back to the community that you violated and then understanding why that you did why you did it so i want it to be fair i'd want it to be just but there's also has to be discipline in it as well the discipline would be that you pay back the community in one sense in one case or if it's something larger than we have other excuse me we have other means or other types of discipline but i would look for it to be fair and i would look for it to be just and um i look forward to be educated educative educative as well okay well thank you for that i believe parts of your response to that touches on the next question so question number seven says can you give a specific example of action steps you have taken to implement restorative practices in your prior schools um well that worked on community building with the students among themselves but also with the adults so because it is a community it's not we don't have two separate communities in the school it's one community students have to understand that and they have to work and build their community as young people but as young people they have to connect with the larger with the older community with the adults and working on resolving conflicts before they happen the student is having an issue with this with the teacher when the teacher notices the issue perhaps they can have a conversation before it turns into something else you know catherine i see that you know you're a little upset about something or you seem not too engaged what's you know do you want to talk about it what's the problem what's wrong and it could be that the child just doesn't understand what's happening you know doesn't understand the curriculum and then sometimes people act up because they don't understand so there's a way of getting away from it so we can avoid the problems before they start it's much better um we work on resolving the conflict beforehand we build relationships early on in the beginning so that students can feel comfortable i'm at least moderately comfortable speaking with the teacher ahead of time or if the student doesn't feel comfortable themselves they have a partner in the room that can speak to the teacher and say katherine's having some trouble can we work together it's just looking for positive ways to support each other positive ways to address issues you know jews and wrongdoings and [Music] control behaviors personally finding different ways of uh expressing a problem without being destructive to the community okay question number eight says how ready and equipped are you to address issues of racial justice please provide examples of how you engage with this type of work so right now we're in the we're in a tumultuous time there's a lot of issues connecting a lot of issues concerning racial justice and injustice and really trying to make sense of it i think for me one of the things is listening to students and letting them voice their feelings and their interpretations of it i'm by no way by no means an expert and i would actually invite people with better knowledge than i have with more accurate knowledge than i have because i would hate to say something that would be misconstrued and turned into something else but i would invite people that with better knowledge and better experiences to be able to speak with students when i was in high school i think it was my freshman year we had people that came in to talk about drug addiction drug and alcohol addiction so we they were experts and what they were talking about because they lived it and when you have people that may have lived certain racial injustices or ethnic or cultural injustices they can speak better to it and explain it better to someone maybe on the outside looking in because we're looking at it and making judgments based on what we believe and what we feel and i would rather i personally would be able to speak somewhat but i would also ask for the support of people that were better equipped to invite them in to have a talk to have like workshop sessions even for very large things have like maybe workshop sessions for kids to learn and to understand how things why things are happening and even offer them the opportunity to work on ways to again improve and avoid such happenings i mean i share i can share personal experiences but how far my personal experiences are pale in comparison to what life is like right now [Music] so i would invite people to help the students work through it and the students and the adults even because these are very large issues and it's tumultuous and it's destructive to our society as a whole and it's helping the students work on rebuilding what our society and our cultures okay are you ready for the next question yes okay question number nine says please speak to the importance of art music physical ed tech and library instruction in our students education and in our school community art i think well depends on the type of art that we're talking about if we're talking about visual arts and theatrical arts visual arts tell our history it is before we we have art we've had art before people were writing we've had art before people were really standing straight and art tells our history we see our history through art through a contemporary lens and through an ancient lens so art tells our history and it's important because it's also for students [Music] the ability or the opportunity for students to create art is an outlet because it's a self-expression and i think that's important that they again have their have the ability or the the occasion to express themselves and use their voice through a different means to show themselves in a different way i was in new york this past weekend and there was art all over the place and beautiful murals everywhere you look there was something beautiful murals on the sidewalks sides of buildings everything and i think that's something that children need or we all need it to be able to create something because that creativity it's a flow and it it's nurturing i think that's the word that i'll use it's something that's nurturing um theater arts theatrical arts is the same thing it's again the ability to to express oneself to show oneself in a different way and it's also a means for us to tap into some hidden talents we may or may not have had tech again is creating it's tech itself is a different it's art itself you're creating all these things are creative you're creating something you're building something it's your own hands it's an expression of you it's something that comes from you it comes from your heart um the library is like a second home to me libraries and bookstores are my favorite places to go um they're so much and they're so rich and i don't know for me it's a solace i just find it calming to be there in those places but you have the opportunity again to explore you can never leave you could never leave your city but you could travel all over the world it gives you the opportunity to to imagine and to experience so libraries are very important there are educational places we learn we have the opportunity to learn you know express ourselves or expand our knowledge through the creation of someone else [Music] did i miss one art all right music pe tech and library art second library so maybe music and music well music music is again i mean these are all means of self-expression music is that it's a creative outlet it is a creative outlet it is a different way of learning all of these things have an opportunity have a place in the classroom as well because we learn through art we learn through music you learn different things we can approach a curriculum differently by incorporating art by incorporating tech we can approach learning differently so as opposed to talking about a prism we build a prism and so we see the size of it and we understand it because it becomes real to us we learn you know working with numbers tessellations with math for example um art is a very strong learning tool music is art all of the arts or very strong learning tools theatrical arts learning to to speak you know um being able to enunciate being able to project but also being able to pronounce you know to pronounce words joe biden was a stutterer and he conquered his stuttering by by reciting poetry amanda gorman the poet laureate she herself had us speaking a speech impediment and it was through the art for both of them that they were able to overcome their difficulties so art is a huge outlet but it's also a therapeutic tool as well tech is the same thing it's a large outlet but it's a therapeutic tool because you have that ability to create you have an outlet and you need those outlets in order i think you need those outlets for survival i knit and it's i don't know it's not therapeutic for me because i'm a little it's not therapeutic for me but in the end i've created something and i feel better about it so it does offer me some therapy after the fact but not endurance but that's my personality um it is that means of letting go that means of outlet but it's also learning as i said art tells history it tells all of our history from the beginning up until the present we see our history no one can imagine and granted you know some paintings are embellished but no one can imagine what the world was like 200 years ago without having had art there are no snapshots of 200 years ago so we use art to see we use art to learn history we use art to learn culture we use art to learn about ourselves and others okay so now we're at question number 10 and this one should also seem familiar to you it says at fort river we have three district-wide programs caminantes our dual language spanish english program aims a specialized program for students who have high functioning autism spectrum disorder building blocks a specialized therapeutic program for students with emotional disabilities who who need specific social emotional and behavioral supports could you please discuss your experience with each of these populations and your experience working with specialized program students okay um i've had i'm as a foreign language teacher as a spanish teacher i had a lot of experience working with students from other who spoke other languages in addition to spanish even as an administrator when we didn't have a teacher that was strictly for ell was an ell teacher so it i come across a lot of you know i come across a lot of different students with different needs we had one girl who had been a refugee in kenya and then she came over and she did not speak english at all the only thing that she could say was my name is and say her name that really that was a name that was assigned to her because where she came from they wouldn't have an english name for her but nonetheless it was eye-opening to have been around someone that had absolutely no knowledge of the language and to watch her grow and watch her thrive within in the school environment i would because i wanted to know more about her i would go to class with her every once in a while and sit down and learn with her and to see how she learned and to understand um as for other children with i went to reading classes with some of the other students and watched how they started to understand humor and humor is the most probably the most difficult thing to understand in another language they started to understand humor and and their enjoyment yes and their enjoyment of it um and as a teacher i've um [Music] always had students yeah i have i've always had students from my first year where at my current assignment i've had students that had high functioning autism and sometimes it was just working through and figuring out ways to make the curriculum accessible to them i had one student that couldn't keep up with writing and taking notes so i started making notes for everyone sitting down with the students and working with them individually to address what whatever it was that they had issues with i mean if it's an issue of being able to write quickly or handwriting or spelling so we would work together to figure out how we could make things work for them the student and i what would i would ask them what would what do they need what would be beneficial for them then i would have to make that happen so i had a lot of experience i used to request students that that came from what was called life skills so because they may have had they were perfectly fine in the classroom they didn't have any as far as i was concerned they didn't have any real issues that would prevent them from coming in to the classroom and they were fine with it and so they were usually my best students because they were very very focused and dedicated to what they were doing and we work together again addressing your needs knowing what your needs are so we need to work with writing and spelling then we sit and work with writing and spelling and my teaching point is for and i'm teaching this from a different point in the classroom it's still working and having everything successful i've always had i've been fortunate i've always had very good luck and very strong relationships with the students that i've had from from the diverse populations i had a class once where i had four students that were from length which would have been students with high functioning autism then i had some more students that had ieps that had some more cognitive deficits and this is all in the same classroom and then i've had then i had [Music] some students that needed to move at a slower pace but it is finding what is needed through for all of them and working so that everything was working in a way that allowed them to achieve what they needed to achieve and be successful and be content in the classroom which is the most important thing okay thank you question number 11 says caminantes is the dual language program at fort river how will you support the mission staff families and curriculum of this program and serve as an ambassador in the larger community well number one i've read about the program and i heard from and i heard about it and i actually love the program so that would be the biggest and i would probably be the biggest ambassador because i think it's something that is very important in our society in our culture and in our country we are a very large country and we don't support learning second languages as as we should this is a country that was built on immigration everyone has an ancestor that originated from somewhere else very few people have ancestors that were here in the beginning so with that it is embracing cultures and it's embracing cultures and how do i say um reviving reviving our country and reviving what this country is about this is the country that was built on immigration people came from all over the place to live here and we have a vast wealth of cultures language customs and we should celebrate those so if we can have a program that offers dual language it's a wonderful thing it's because we are making ourselves ourselves more accessible to the world for opening the world up to us and bringing the world to it and bringing the world back to us because there's so much to learn from another culture there's so much to learn about our own culture by studying another culture by being able to speak another language we're making the world a smaller place for us we're making ourselves global citizens and in the end that's what we should be we should be global citizens not simply a citizen of this country but a citizen of the world and perhaps these students will be the ones that will actually achieve world thing i peace be a big and i would be a big ambassador and i would tout the program the not only the unique quality of the project the essence but the unique quality of the program but it would be something that i would encourage and i would actually want to expand i won't interrupt now no i was the one who interrupted you it's it's different when we're not in the same broadcast studio to see eye to eye or anything so for me to take the cues that you're finished it's hard um so question number 12 says what thoughts or ideas do you have for bringing a sense of joy compassion love and unity into fort river elementary school at the student level the staff level and for the whole school excuse me um again it is communicating and building relationships asking people to [Music] step outside of themselves be willing to open up you know it is finding a means to share um encouraging dialogue encouraging communication encouraging openness um sharing something about ourselves understanding each other really working on understanding each other and finding ways of connecting finding something that we have in common or creating or that we may have in common it could be as simple as finding interest finding interest common interests working together creating maybe micro clubs or something like that where we can share our expertise and our knowledge students have a vast wealth of knowledge as adults do and it's sharing that and working together that we could just find some harmony and create and create art create something that is something that shares like i said you know earlier walking through new york city there was so much art and then i was in harlem in fact that there was a piece about it and it's working toward that piece that makes things more cohesive when we're calm and we're and we're together we're on the same page and we're looking at the same thing and we're thinking about the same things we tend to be more more cohesive we when we share ourselves and share our beliefs we tend to get become more cohesive so that what i would do i would work on creating space for expression and finding things that would be well it could be fun and joyful i mean it could be something singing and dancing having like i said small clubs where there's the ability to sing to dance to share something to cook anything that brings us together and gives us the opportunity to create real relationships and lasting relationships i think in my bio i said that i still talk to my spanish teacher from high school you know we commute we i we call each other i check on her because she lives in florida now but i check on her to see that she's okay we and we talk about life i still go to dance with my dance teacher from high school so but it's creating those laughs and connections where you develop the love and the joy for what you're doing but it's also the love and joy for the people that that are in your surround so creating a space for them creating a space for people to express themselves and share that's it okay good thank you so you mentioned in your comment that students have a vast wealth of knowledge and adults do too and that leads us into question number 13 where it says how would you support fort river staff to demonstrate their expertise i would ask them what their interests were a simple um what's the word a simple i can only think of it in spanish at this point a simple survey find out what people's access are and what they think they're best at it didn't it doesn't have to be academic so what do you think you're best at and what would you be willing to share so academically if you would like to teach quantum physics now that's fine we find a way to incorporate the quantum physics into into the curriculum but and students have their own they have their own their own knowledge they're vast they know more than we can ever know about a lot of things that we don't understand right now as far as society goes i still don't understand tick tock but they can explain that to us um each we each we learn from each other so it's again it's about sharing i would ask adults what they would like to share um with students probably not i wouldn't term it that way but we do a needs assessment and find out what they like what they do and create something that allows them to express themselves but also adhere to the curriculum so you can find ways of tying everything to the curriculum um that's a good thing about project-based learning you can find some ways to tie everything to the curriculum but at the same time students are sharing their knowledge sharing their expertise and they could possibly involve the adults as well if there's a larger project i don't know like we're in a drought right now this world is in a drought finding ways of conserving water finding ways of creating means or access to water that's not just simply out of a bottle doing that investigation students can work with with adults to do that investigation and create a plan for the community itself it's working together and just sharing everything that we know i did a video for a student she learned she was learning to knit but she didn't know how to finish things i i made a video for her to show how to finish things off but with native you teach number you teach you're teaching numerology we'll use that we can share our knowledge just we can share it we offer we we have discussions we talk about different things and then you ask someone what can you explain such and such to me you know like i don't understand new phones it's all the things that go on with the iphone the students are your best they're your best information your best teachers so it's encouraging them it's encouraging communication and again it's building relationships i think it's really about building relationships where you can share what you know share your expertise and your knowledge are you ready for the next one yeah all right so typically at this point i go back to question number one because we have more people viewing the broadcast at this time who may have missed and although they can always go back and rewind and watch it later on youtube i still have been going back to that question number one so in keeping with that question number one once again says please tell us about yourself what roles responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that have helped you prepare to be the next principal at fort river elementary okay um my name is lori robinson and i am from queens new york i have worked in springfield public school system for 25 years and as a teacher as an administrator and as a department chair 16 of my 25 years have been in leadership as a department chair and a vice principal i'm licensed as a teacher and administrator a director and i've applied for my superintendent certification as well i've taught in new york wolverhampton and spain for two years and spring school for the last 25 16 of which again were administrative order and leadership positions um i think what i didn't share with you was my commitment to education or how i became involved in education um my cousin who recently passed was a special education teacher but she herself was an inspiration because she suffered from sickle cell anemia she had a stroke at the age of 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above