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the cdc promotes vaccinations as leading public prevention strategies to end covenanting pandemic we encourage continue to encourage students and staff who have symptoms are encouraged to stay home and refer to their health care providers for testing and care the district will allow non-punitive and supportive paid sick leave policies and practices people who are fully vaccinated and do not have coveted symptoms do not need to quarantine or get tested after an exposure to someone with covet 19.
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we are continuing with our ventilation studies have shown that improved ventilation reduces the number of virus particles in the air in an effort to keep virus particles from concentrating inside the district has purchased portable air filtration systems in classrooms with limited air flow and the funds through the esser programs will help support that streamed instruction during quarantine students again who are under the idph quarantine will have the opportunity to continue learning via streamed instruction that again would be through google live stream daily guided instruction of core curriculum not specials and again access to the after school support to address any other questions from the day through the academic learning labs next slide again we are continuing to focus on getting our students back to school safely and following up on various strategies and our last slide just re-emphasizes our key takeaways we're very excited certainly to start our brand new year we're excited to have our students back we're excited to start getting back to a little bit more normal students we know benefit from in-person learning and safely returning to in in person is preferable for starting our new year these current strategies that we've discussed may be adjusted over time in the response to the risk of kova 19 in the schools and community as we continue to monitor the situation as you know things are coming out all the time we've been waiting all summer for the latest updates and we are still waiting for updates as they come through and we are implementing them as soon as we get them vaccination is currently the leading public health prevention strategy to end covet 19 and masks should be worn indoors by all individuals ages 2 and older who are not fully vaccinated to continue to emphasize a health and safety environment in the following slide could you could you could you clarify that last bullet item there about the masks worn indoors yeah see if we can go back to it yeah we're just again emphasizing to have masks be worn indoors by but for everybody you're saying and this is saying who are not fully vaccinated so you might want to for everybody yes change that and one quick question another question i have how are you going to determine if someone is fully vaccinated or not we are not as far as with the quarantining with the quarantine yeah so how yeah how do you determine if because there's confidentially that's confidentiality that is involved with this so if a student has been identified as a contact trace the school nurse contacts the parents uh the children are given the opportunity if they have the vaccination they would like to reveal that they may otherwise we would be moving them into quarantine situations so it would be self-disclosure at their point at that point okay if you could just verify that have our nurse and you look into it is that action actually a violation of the hip or hipaa law to ask someone if they have been vaccinated or not i'm not sure if that is a violation again i'm not a doctor or anything but i'm not sure if that is a violation because i think it's more towards a medical doctor and a patient something like that so if if it is i just would like to know [Music] uh so schools work under ferpa which is different than hipaa so the issue comes into play really just comes on the hr side and my understanding is as long as it stays confidential and you're not disclosing it to anybody else so for a staff member is one thing but for student it's all ferpa so as long as i'm not telling people who don't need to know we're good okay so it's no different than a regular vaccine okay so so for our staff members or employees is one way and for the students is under another well i i i ca lyle's not here so i mean on a staff member's side they could disclose to me i would keep all their information come from you know confidential and then hr would determine what they need in order to you know alleviate i believe we haven't had an issue with it in the past people are self-disclosing and show proof they would have to show me proof of being vaccinated lyle would ask and i'd be like no they don't have to quarantine got it okay okay thank you while you're there can i ask a quick question is there data then that shows let me make sure i say this right that a vaccinated person who's asymptomatic doesn't spread it i mean because there's people that are asymptomatic that have it right so is there data that shows because it says over and over again that if you have the vaccine and you don't have any symptoms you don't have to quarantine nope so that is actually very good question mister because that has been all over the news this week they are trying to get to like the breakthrough infections to determine what their viral load is the science would indicate that the likelihood that they would be able to spread it is very low because a they're they have antibodies as it is they're asymptomatic so they're not holding enough to be able to infect somebody else as opposed to somebody who has not have the antibodies are immunized and although they aren't symptomatic their body is fighting it they would still have a higher viral load that is what the initial science is saying they said they they have to do a lot more studies on the breakthrough cases to kind of determine but that's where they're at right now so you're saying that a person that's fully vaccinated they can test positive but is that a low risk of spreading it right and that person if they tested positive would still have to isolate the same as anybody else would okay so that part doesn't make a difference if if you are fully vaccinated exhibiting symptoms you would still need to test without you know unless there is like another reason so if you if you are vaccinated and you are not exhibiting symptoms but you were in proximity of someone that was known to have the virus that person do not have to be quarantined either they do not they do not now if they so chose to go get tested out of whatever purpose and came back positive they would then have to isolate the same as anybody else would a lot of moving parts here isn't it it sure is and it changes every day all right yeah you know i see a couple hands up and that was what the public comment portion was for and we're now past that portion so i'm sorry we can't take questions just following the procedure they can send an email to dr yeah you could email them email any questions into dr cara and they'll all get answered quickly but we can't take the questions right now in person please email and i will respond to you dr care i have a couple of questions um the first one is on the heat mitigation strategies for buildings without air conditioning um to me this is a huge burden on the parent and the teacher um if we decide at eight o'clock the night before we're not going to have school what are the parents supposed to do with their children if they're working i mean i think that we need to really address this because we know it's going to be hot let's be realistic we've had a hot summer already so i'm concerned about what families are going to do if we just start calling these heat days and they have no way to have their children at home or whatever so i i don't know about this but i i am concerned about this this item right there about how we're talking well we have five of that five of this an act of god whatever we if and i get it it's hot in those schools i know it is i've been there but i think i don't quite understand how much notice we're going to give them and how we expect them to be able to deal with this at a at random i mean before they knew the kids were going to be home now we're a day here and a day there how how do we expect our families and our our teachers to deal with this just like our just like our snow days we are able to monitor the news and the news is fairly accurate so we are able to look at at least you know 24 hours to determine if it's going to be hot if we think it's going to be hot we'll take a look at that and call it 24 hours in advance okay so it's going to be a 24-hour notice all the time because we do recognize we have working families but parents that have students in these buildings you know we want to tell them ahead of time these are going to be our mitigation processes and be prepared for that if they're seeing the heat is coming you know you know to be prepared for those possibilities okay my next question is on this video streaming stuff the parental how i think ms valerio brought it up that how are they supposed to know if the class starts at 7 25 who's supposed to be there i mean are they just going to see a visual of the of the students but of course they can't speak and how are they supposed to know who's supposed to be there and how they're supposed to be be reporting students that aren't there i mean i guess to me this just sounds like we're really putting a huge burden out there for our teachers who already have a huge burden so what we're doing is we're putting together a process and we're looking between 4 24 to 40 hours notice for the teacher to know exactly what student is going to be in quarantine for example a student you know doesn't have the consent and they are going to be going into quarantine for those the two two weeks the process will then start the building principle will be notified the teacher will be notified and then they will be working with our tech group they will have between 24 and 48 hours to set up that link to work and get that established while the student is at home until we can activate that okay and last but not least i'm very concerned about the stream instruction after listening to all of our employees and getting different emails i don't know exactly what this looks like but i think myself as a board member i'd like to see what this entails because it sounds to me like this is also a huge burden that they've already they've been through a lot we all have been through a lot and now for them to have another facet added and they're saying you know they'd be stuck at their desk they can't walk around i would like to know what this looks like i think i don't know if any other board member i would like to know exactly what we're expecting of our teachers by putting this piece in i agree and just feeding off on you i think holistically our teachers came with a plight they they have some concerns some major concerns and we hired you dr congenies to drive us through this process and and i think again you're doing an excellent job however i see some gaps here i see some gaps just challenging and if it takes some additional funds or anything like that don't hesitate to come to the board give our business manager to support the teachers at the end of the day you know we are in a abnormal situation and we can't do things normal in an abnormal situation so but we have to do the best we could because at the end of the day it's our kids that who we are ultimately serving here and the teachers is the main component to do that so we need to give them the tools they need we need to give them the support they need and again if it takes a little additional funds or whatever don't hesitate to come to the board we are continuing to work on this we just were working with our union leadership just within on monday night to to work out some of these pieces you know before we had to present so we are working on determining what this would look like how we would manage the after after school piece so we will continue to work on putting together some protocols we'll probably go in a little deeper and you know apply this as a practice round to see what it will look like um so we'll have a little bit more deeper in look at this and probably within the next week just what happens if it doesn't work i mean what happens if it's unrealistic i mean we haven't tried this we don't really have support from the teachers right now because they know what's going on in the classroom what what happens if you like you say you just started this what if it's unrealistic what is our plan b well that's what we're working on i know some of the suggestions was again to you know do we hire other teachers that are out in the community we would have to have at least one or two per building that's quite a few staff members that would need to manage this and we don't know how long this would take place you know if it's you know first semester all year so we would be hiring you know potential candidates to come in and we don't know how long and they may not even have any students for a month or two so so real quick too let's so i'm not big on the live streaming but i am big on the google classroom but we i think we need to differentiate we're mixing things up a little bit sick kids are not part of what we're discussing it's quarantined students only my assumption okay is that by the end of the day the nurse will have a list to send out to the buildings it's not going to be at 8 o'clock in the morning or 7 20 in the morning should know by the end of the day who's going to be quarantined and who's not that's going to be in the school day the sick kids that come in onesie tuesday there's no way a teacher is going to be able to figure out who's coming in who's going to who's going to teach live stream so the sick kids that are coming in sick should totally go to google classroom but i really don't see any reason why the quarantine kids couldn't go to google classroom kind of in the same theory just because now we're focused 100 percent here and this is what it is here if we give the if we get the parent consent then at that point i think you said there could be no quarantine kids this year that's correct if we get that parent consent but if we don't then that should be a very easy decision that you just say um okay you're going to go to google classroom you're going to get it almost like an elementary student that's under 12 years old how are they going to get their homework if they're sick three days they're going to get it from google classroom they're going to get from their teacher they're going to get from somehow at that point we got to get back to teaching the kids but we got to make sure that quarantine and sick kids or kids that don't show up that's a total they're totally separate issues because i think we keep mixing that up a little bit sorry i i i agree i did mix it up i'm sure we were left and right here but i think you have to remember we're in the business of educating our students and one of our goals is we have these gaps to make up so while we're concentrating on bringing our children back up to where they need to be we don't in my humble opinion don't need to keep dumping more avenues on our teachers so that they're running over here to do this and we're here and we're here i think we're spreading them too thin already and i get it god bless them all everybody across this country who was in education ought to get a medal of honor but i think we need to make this as simple for our educators as we do for our families and our students and if it means that we can do google classroom and not do live streamers i just think we're we're kind of all over the board and we didn't quite understand and that's why i said i'd like to see a demonstration and they're really two different things and i i truly think that we're doing a fabulous job we've really gotten good recommendations but i think we have to go back to what are we here for and remember that we're here to educate the kids and one of our top priorities is to to lessen this gap this learning gap and if we keep having all these different facets i'm afraid we're going to get deeper in that gap instead of back up where we need and that's my opinion i could be a thousand percent wrong but i'm listening to the teachers i'm hearing what they're saying i'm listening to the parents and i just think we have to put all that together and make sure that we have all those bases covered and we're not making our teachers and our other staff members so thinly spread that there's no way to recuperate them that we lose them in the google classroom still more work it's not like i think someone just mysteriously puts it up there so teachers still going to have to enter it into the system meaning they're going to be doing more work at that but i think it'll be less stressful worrying about the classroom and that's it but i want to touch on one of the things heat days okay i understand we have four buildings in administration here if we can't forecast a heat day i can tell you right now sunday monday tuesday next week's a heat day i can tell you it's tuesday i'm in hvac and anybody watching the news should know more than 24 hours in advance if we need a heat day and i understand ball moral crete csk talala and mec i understand that okay so i think our administration can do a great job and get the information out there and i think you we can make a you should make an email of some sort of contact to the roe or sb five excessive days is ridiculous especially the fact that we have buildings with no ac in it so the five should we should have at least ten and i only say that is because we start in august we're gonna have a couple in august we may have a couple in september and we might have a couple next may so in our district being unique not having air conditioning we should not be limited to five excessive heat days where we're going to be where the teachers now are going to stay four extra days at the end of the year because we have to use those emergency school days that should be an email or a phone call just because our district's unique unfortunately we don't have ac but i think we should be able to work around that and i think um for our teachers well and for our kids we're trying to provide a very as much of normal as possible environment for our kids to come back to and i think with the live streaming the teachers already have such a job on their hands to get these kids caught back up from what they've lost and so i just think putting an extra workload on our teachers with this live streaming i'm i'm really not for it either i think they need to be able to provide the best quality they can right now to get our kids back to where they are and if they're worried about all this other stuff and all this extra work on them i don't know how we're providing that for our kids to get them back caught up from this pandemic also i think it was mrs valerio that said um with a live stream option that it kind of enables you know the option for kids to have excuses why not to come um they might come up with you know a sickness or they can sit home and they know they can go online so we're trying to encourage them to be back in the building that goes through our administration a child cannot determine themselves if they're going to be home but i'm saying a lot of kids will say oh i don't feel good because they know that that option is there for them you know in the morning hey mom i don't feel good because they know they can get up and go online and do it and you know they might not want to come dr carrick can i add to this please please the option is only available for students who are quarantined only the live stream is only for students who are quarantined and only for students that did not get the parent consent for testing if they get the parent consent for testing those students are put back in the classroom so we're looking at a very small amount of students through the course of the year some teachers would never do live streaming for the whole year but the question came up by by a couple that's pretty squeaky testing testing okay the question came up about the issue with live streaming and teachers said that that's not a good approach okay and again these are abnormal more abnormal times and we're trying to do as best we could and some type of normality here but what i did also hear from the teachers and i just want to make sure that we are not violating any contractual item or task we want to make sure we not doing that for sure so then i heard the teachers say if you're going to do the live streaming do the prototype of training or what uh teaching so i'm not sure exactly what that's all about and not nor do i want to know that at this point i'm going to lead it up to the experts like you doctor coghlinis but again i heard so many gaps [Music] it is not for feedback been disgruntled the tonight and youth in the glory last year when we tried different methods [Music] well our team will take all this feedback we will go back rework this we will continue to work with our teacher association to fine-tune this and to try to find something that is a little easier yes go ahead [Music] you're under the speaker that's what it is anywhere better okay i just want to provide some clarity we must provide a remote option for our students who are 11 and under and under quarantine we must provide a remote option for those students again the recommendation is that they have 2.5 hours of synchronous learning with the teacher what we know is that our kids need in-person learning and our teachers did a one and all of the staff not just a teacher everyone who dealt with kids and educators last year did a wonderful job and went over and beyond but we must have an option where we provide remote instruction to those students who have not had an opportunity to be vaccinated and so this is our way of giving that to them students who students do not receive the link so we don't have to worry about a kid that said oh i'm not going to school today you are not you do not meet the criteria to even get into that classroom and so we are in the process of working out what those protocols and procedures look like on one day we could have zero children across the district that is our hope that we have zero children that are not um quarantined but in other cases we could have a few and it would require that our our teachers um streamline and we'll continue to work with cmea to work out what those policy procedures look like for them but we want to give them live teaching as much as possible because those kids could be out of school for 10 days i know what they went through with hybrid and i can only sympathize with them because i'm not on the front line but are so you're saying if i understand this correctly uh child age 14 if they're not quarantined they're not going to get the virtual whatever correct they must be under quarantine they're going to have to go into google classroom and find out what their assignments were those students would make up their missing assignments so yes so teachers post missing assignments to google they send them home with their friends they get it two days later when they return to school so whatever the school school procedures are of how those students who are absent because of you know they were sick they they get their classroom worked the normal way that they would their makeup assignment so is the virtual only for 11 and under it we it we are required by isbee to have it for 11 and under as a district we have said in the best interest of all of our students we would like to offer that to all students so every classroom might have the opportunity to have to use virtual at some point yes so it would be across the district that that opportunity may take place correct okay with quarant if you have a student who is quarantined if you do not have a student who is quarantined then that does not apply to that teacher for the day okay so virtual only applies to quarantined students period period period so a teacher in a classroom they don't have any quarantined students they're going to do normal in-person class is that it that's it yes okay sorry i'm just you know i'm just trying to i'm trying to visualize what their what they're going to have to do when school opens yes okay all right so so we're talking about clear quarantine students what if a staff member or teacher gets it are they under the same exact rule meaning if they get tested by the nurse that they're not going to stay at home for 14 days um if a student or excuse me of a teacher yeah not a student contract or a teacher so again a lot of it depends if they've been vaccinated or not and what if we don't because of hipaa what if we don't know that if they volunteer that information uh we do have subs available that would cover their clients i get i guess what reason would we test a staff member we wouldn't test the staff member if a staff member volunteers and says you know i've been i'm not vaccinated and i've been exposed to covet or i'm not vaccinated and i have covid we would follow our typical protocols and have that teacher removed and we would have a substitute come in for how long i guess the question is if we're putting a kid you know a student back in the classroom why is a teacher or a staff member or a custodian why are there assuming it is the same time period i mean so if if a parent gives consent to a student to test twice a week or however much as they need if they test positive why wouldn't a staff member teacher anybody why wouldn't it be the same that's a question we will further explore without lyle all right so is there anything else in regard to emergency operations plan you started this sandy well we also had a lot of parents with public comment regarding the mask option and i do think there's a lot of things we still need to look at with that if 12 and 12 and over has been has the option already to be vaccinated uh i guess i'm i'm not sure why the necessity it would be for masks because i would think that if you're compromised concerned you would have made that choice already be vaccinated so if you're vaccinated you shouldn't be so concerned about catching it and i guess as a parent i would not have i guess i don't want anyone having jurisdiction over the decision making for my child if my if i believe one way and someone else has an opinion another way so [Music] it statistics have shown that young children are not super spreaders and so at the elementary level i think we don't have as big of concern because the rate of infection at that age is very very very low um i think we have to consider the heat obviously as a big concern for our kids i know i had asked about pe i'm not sure how we're going to wear masks during pe that's a big concern too we've seen kids on the news passing out from that i i don't know what the right answer is here because obviously you have people with different on each side of the fence with all this but i think we still have a lot to try to figure out that's going to try to make everybody as happy as we can in some way i don't i don't know that's going to be done but i do think we need to look at you we've looked at statistics with everything else i think we need to look at young children are not as vulnerable they're not super spreaders and again if someone is compromised or concerned they have had that option to be vaccinated and if they want their child to continue to be masked then that is their decision but on the flip side there's people that have an other opinion with that and to force people i i still have a struggle with that so i don't know what the right answer is but i think again we have a lot of concern from parents both ways and i just think we need to address it and with the heat and not having air-conditioned buildings that's a big concern so you have your work cut out for you thank you for that it is challenging because either way any decision we make you're going to have people that are not happy with it so we always just have to say we're going to out of an abundance of caution try to limit our exposures we don't want our students quarantined we don't want to have to go down that road because once you go down there you can't take it back and then it's out of control so we want to do slow and steady slow and steady slow and steady and my hope is that after one month after first semester we're going to start getting some new directions you know from uh cdc and so forth to see if that um i guess just because like i said you know the people that were commenting were saying how our kids you know over the summer have not been asking whether it would be at a store church wherever it might be and now we're going to have to start the masking up again so the difference is we have children that are sitting all day next to somebody that's less than three feet when they're in the grocery store because i've been to the grocery store i've seen that too people are moving around there's free flow there's ventilation they're moving in and out you're in a restaurant where you're with a small group but a child is sitting all day with somebody right next to them they're in a building with 30 other little people that are breathing that air it's a different environment and i think that's what the cdc is saying triple layering is taking a look at several of these precaution factors and one of them is wearing the mask so that's where the error in abundance of caution comes from in trying not to go down and open up that road and this has been difficult i'm telling you this has been a difficult decision because either way you know there's students out there you know the masks they're not masks it's difficult yeah so we're hoping that we can move through this pandemic we can get through this year and we can start this year and we're hoping to see some changes or modifications in some of these guidances okay thank you thank you dr kaglini i just want to make sure with this board that you are going to make the final decision to implement the plan we let you make the decision when this whole saga came out when lee learning and all of that is that a true statement we're not you're not going to come to us for the board to vote on the final plan is that correct it is my understanding i'm here to hear your input and try to make modifications to this plan this is not the final plan no i'm just saying whenever that comes the board is not going to vote on the implement implement implement implicate or implicat if i can say that word maybe if i take this mass off amplification of the plan the board is not going to vote on that right and not to my knowledge okay okay i just want to make sure it's my understanding we gave her the authorization to make this decision that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be a vote for the board to say okay yeah so we will come back with some of the feedback that we've heard tonight very thoughtful feedback and i do enjoy hearing comments from our community members i enjoy hearing comments from our staff and just our staff has done an amazing job this year you know i probably haven't said that enough you guys were amazing this last year and to hear our community members and parents and even teachers that are working here you know it touches my heart it really does and you are very much appreciated and we want to continue to work with you to try to figure out the best plan that's best for kids easier for teachers so that you can feel good about coming back to school we're excited about having you back and our students back we want to make sure we can find a plan together so we will continue our dialogue with you to see what we can do to come up with something that is a little bit easier and a little less kind of scary coming in okay okay so is there anything else on the emergency operations plan thank you all right um next up then is our healing paws therapy dog program this should be a lot lighter topic who am i calling up here patrick and dave lucy and biscuit [Laughter] good evening everyone um we're gonna give a little update on our therapy dog policy today the healing paws project uh so dave hall and i will uh give the presentation you ready don all right so the healing paws project began in 2019 at mec with uh brian mortel director over there in gracie so that's how the program got started then when i when i got hired dr kara asked me to look into it and we we advanced it a little there between dave and myself and brian uh here's our picture of our therapy dogs lucy's on the right that's my dog lucy's a district dog so she's going to be with me at the central office and she's going to be utilized at all the schools throughout the district biscuit is dave's dog dave hall's dog here to my left and biscuit is going to be primary primarily at the high school the next slide will show gracie brian wartell's dog and gracie is at the mec center and she's been there since 2019 yeah so so you got to be you got to be asking why right why why bringing dogs into a school the research the research up is up there about lowering blood pressure making you more relaxed reduces and anxiety depression all those kinds of things and the thing is that we're coming back from students who have not been in the school um for years now you know uh with the covert that like we've been talking about staff when the staff came back i brought biscuit in from for to meet when they came back and they were just so just some of them had dogs with them while they were sitting at home doing remote learning and they were just so thankful to have and and that the content because we can't touch each other right but guess what you can hug a dog you can pet a dog so that that's one of the reasons we want to make sure that we have these for our students and staff these these animals for the benefit when staff and students come back and besides the other anxiety and things that we're going to go through the benefits again reduces anxiety uh for traumatic uh situation situations uh we know that a lot of students are you know we're we're trauma informed schools here so we're trying to reduce that drama uh our sun eye drama trauma um mo the emotional trauma incidents uh it's the idea of animal increasing compassion for animals uh it's decreased the number of retaliatory viral violence in schools improved self-esteem and again it's in my job especially as administrative dean it's it's about building relationships and having a dog it seems like a weird thing but i i can tell you that i was a little bit of a naysayer at first when i got the dog what's the dog gonna do right um but i can tell you it open it really does open up people and it opens up students um so we want that's another reason for the benefit of the dogs um i wanted to tell you the difference between uh service dogs um and emotional dogs and therapy dogs so service dogs are service to the handler um if i have a disability uh the dog will work for the handler uh same with emotional support dog an emotional support dog is for emotional like on a plane and stuff that's emotional support for the handler with these therapy dogs it's different uh the the support the it's the handler that's bringing support to other people so that that that's one of the difference between if you've seen the different you know oh is your dog a service dog or you know i'll say no it's a therapy dog because it's not for me even though a biscuit does you know i do you know he's my boy right i have three girls at home so he's my only you know i got two boys and two dogs so but um he's third before but it's therapy for everybody else not just a handler go ahead so here's some of the overviews of the program if you want to read those i want to go through all all of these but we have detailed these out we have an administrator's handbook we have a handler's handbook we established a therapy dog committee um all these in in uh collaboration with different partners and uh through the superintendent's office and we're gonna make sure that you know we support the vision and the mission we want to make sure that everything remains beneficial to the students and also the school district overall one of the things that we were surprised about is the the response from the staff we had a little bit of a pilot program where we had the dogs in our school and many staff members they greet the dog before me they know the dogs and they might not even know my name so the response has been really really uh fantastic about um how the staff's responded i've actually had so many few people come up and just hug the dog and kind of had tears and say i needed that and left i didn't know why but it seemed like it was you know beneficial for them and then they moved on with their day so one of the things i do want to stress with everything with the dog is everything is voluntarily we're not forcing anybody to interact with the dog we're not forcing them to do anything when we get to our part about the parental consent we want to make sure that's clear that we don't want to put any stress on anybody it's meant to take stress away it's just a resource that's there for them if they choose to use it if they select to use it yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry so here are a couple of things uh that we thought of to make sure that we are thinking about everything here they're therapy dogs the way that the school's using them is very different than uh anywhere else we're utilizing and deploying them differently here so there's a lot of things that we had to consider the age of our student because we may utilize them different in high school than we would at mec or talala or whatever it is we want to talk about the physical capabilities mental understanding it gets all the way down to religious considerations so we address all this in our documents allergies phobias all this is addressed in all our documents so i believe we left we have a very comprehensive program here and we didn't leave anything unturned where we had the dogs from uh dr carrie asked me to kind of look into this we were talking about purchasing some dogs through some contacts in my law enforcement context i was able to get all the dogs and all the training donated to us for free we have a very good partnership with this organization it's called the paws and stripes college it's in brevard county florida that's where dave and i went to pick up the dogs and they are very very happy with us they they take the dogs the dogs are trained by the inmates they're brought from shelters they are they're trained this they're that they don't train any canines or any other police dogs this paws and stripe college only takes dogs from shelters trains them for therapy and then puts them back out in the community because of the creep money school district and some of the documents that we've created they are now getting far more into education because of us with the support from some of our documents so this is a wonderful program it's a win-win right after covid they had a really hard time getting dogs because everybody was donating them i was just down there last month and they they had some more dogs but they're really moving forward and this is just a great program it helps everybody out that's lucy that's me on the right you can see well one of the inmates uh training with the dog one of the female inmates on the left there you can see the bob wire in the back lucy was there about four months before i got her and then pictures coming up you'll see dave she was there dave's dog was there about six months before we got there and trained her there's a little bit of lucy's bio all trained certified therapy dogs and they're also have a training to be uh to work as an interview and interrogation dog be in courtrooms if there was ever a need for it they do have a couple different training like i just said the the therapy dog training and the interview and interrogation not interrogation yeah victim interview certificate so it it's a really good program and obviously it was totally free the dogs and all the training uh this is biscuit uh he's a boston we're gonna look at his resume in a minute but he he was in brevard county for uh he was a rescue uh he was in brevard county for around six months and was betrayed by the inmates uh it's an amazing program it's a win-win-win rescue dogs with the inmates working with this with them and then coming out to schools and law enforcement here's our certification again like you said that's uh we can we're certified we have to go through a process where they watched us work with the dogs um and we had to actually work with kids and they watched us interview uh we had to interview um um kids my one of my st i i think it was like six or seven year old we i had to interview he said my dog looked like a panda and and he kind of i kind of went with that so we actually actually had to process you know practice that so our dogs can be used in the school are also used in the courtrooms uh will county already has kind of their own set of dogs i don't know if you guys know in the courts um and they'll bring the they'll do they'll bring them into the courtrooms when they interview when children testify with our dogs we can if the law enforcement needed to interview um young kids we could we're certified to do that to bring the dogs in um so yeah so biscuit uh uh boston terrier black and white dog um but um they paired us up too uh we'll get the gracie admit but they paired us up they wanted the school district to have a bigger dog and then a smaller dog uh this for many different reasons it's kind of a mixture of you know different reasons now gracie she's the mec which is brian wertel's dog and she's a poogle which is a beagle in a poodle and i guess she's been an embassy for a while since what 20 yeah not 18 2019 the uh the picture on the left there that's an interesting story that's the the male lady firm you um she changed her entire route so that halfway through her route she would be able to be with gracie and then kind of reduce stress and then continue on with her day that's kind of interesting one of the things that we didn't put in here real quick is the dogs provide service to a lot of other people or have the opportunity to business owners veterans home hospitals that's a lot of therapy dogs can do that we haven't done that yet but the opportunity may be victim victim centers we have one in park forest are we are we doing that right now no but the opportunity and certification is there if we ever had to provide services to somebody else in the community like the fire chief chief waterman has asked us if there was ever an incident that sometimes as firefighters have to deal with tragic accidents and something he's he's he said he might utilize this at that point too so here's uh like i said we i believe we have a very comprehensive program here's uh some of the handbooks and things that were created we created these and then we met with uh the principals and obviously the executive staff and we went over all these and we think we have a a a very detailed comprehensive program all the way down to creating a code of code of ethics simply for the therapy dog handlers and then like i mentioned before we have that therapy dog oversight committee to make sure that we're staying aligned with our vision and mission for cm 201u you can just go through i think we just got some pictures just some more pictures left just to that's uh that concludes the presentation has anybody got any questions do we have any plans that we've had the response that we've been that we've had throughout the district and the community is is really really fantastic and we're uh we're really proud of the product we created do we have any plans for any more dogs coming well they they have um they uh they are very pleased with us they they like us we have a great partnership with them and they've lost our they've often offered us and guaranteed us as many dogs as we want at no cost it's just how many that you guys would like well thank you thank you for doing that and for the relationship and i think now there's a an award to present yes just real quick before you present that award and so we have three dogs right yes and we bring the dogs here every day to the district pretty much bro the dogs might need a day or two off once in a while it depends like she's had a long day today but uh for the most part yes uh if we know we have a long day we got a lot of meetings that might be her day off but the dogs do come come to work with us and they go home with us and then they're at home that's what everything that was my uh okay so each person you and and and mr hall takes the dog home correct yes sir and grace was it gracie gracie stays with brian yes okay and i hope the district is compensating you to take care of the dog food and things like that yeah i mean some good food the district does supply them with bedding and so forth for here otherwise the other kinds of things they um pick up themselves and i saw one of the dogs like chicken there yeah i'm sure okay all right go for it well we are very excited about this program um you know we first wanted to recognize and thank brian wartell he was the visionary that started this program he could not be here tonight because he is on vacation uh but gracie uh he started that at mec as you know over a year and a half ago now and it was so successful when uh patrick came on board you know we said we definitely want to expand this to the district as best we can so they've been working in collaboration between building dogs district dogs to really expand the program we want to thank both patrick and dave for their work they were pioneers in this program there's not a lot out there and so i think there's a lot of eagerness to learn more about a formalized program there are districts out there that have dogs but there's not a formal program with policies and procedures and a special thanks to patrick for taking the lead on this he's done a lot of work with codifying the program with written procedures a manual as well as coming up with a committee that works for it so that as we start to expand the program we have a committee that looks at our handlers to make sure that they have the right temperament in in bringing these dogs into our district it's not just anybody that wants to do it they have the dog running around the school there's definitely a program and procedure for that and so a committee will be put together to review the candidates and then also help and support them selecting their dogs through broward county so based on your fine work patrick has gone down to broader comedy certainly with dave to get the training but specifically he used his vacation days to go down there and work with um sharing the work that we've been doing some of our manuals and so forth so broward county sheriff's office sent us this they wanted to recognize the healing pause program but specifically um our director and certainly dave as well um for their canine and lucy i should say at the school district in appreciation of your continued support of the broader county sheriff's office paws and stripes college these are our graduates for it and that was presented so please work with me and give him a hand of applause for this put your paws together dave had a lot dave had a lot to do with this he just couldn't go with me i got i got invited to be an instructor for the program because they loved our documents everything that we did i think we did a great job and appreciate all the guidance and support i got from the superintendent but those documents that we created here at the crete money school district are now going to be used as the national standard for the therapy dog project through the brevard county sheriff's office so i'm pretty proud of that so thank you can can give him his vacation days back and also you'll see ms nash in her her way she's going to be taking pictures of our employees they will be their resumes will be posted on our website and they are now employees of the district um so you will see their pictures are there so she's going to grab those pictures and we're going to be uploading this website a dog is a man and a woman's best friend huh okay all right well thank you so much patrick and dave we really needed that to reduce our blood pressure and anxiety [Laughter] right okay next on the agenda is our consent agenda approval and before i ask for a motion i want to see if any board member would like to remove any item to vote on separately hearing none uh may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second all right so moved by sawalish and seconded by galbraith and when you're ready roll call brown is an eye mr mr sowalis hi mrs walters gracie no no that's biscuits [Laughter] mrs galbraith aye vice president ruth aye motion carries all right next up is action reports um the first one board policy seven colon one nine zero student behavior uh may i have emotion or do you do it first or do i get the motion first go ahead and do this okay may have a motion to approve board policy 7 colon 190 student behavior moved second all right move by galbraith and second by walter [Laughter] all right sorry dr carrera go ahead i was just going to draw the attention this was just so i have to take a call roll call no no first we're going to discuss i got it got it okay there was just a slight word change in the document we were adding the word in designated areas to the policy to be a little bit more up to date so that was the only change that was for this policy okay any other questions or comments roll call okay mrs galbraith aye mrs walters brown isn't i mr sawalis aye vice president rue aye motion carries next up may i have a motion to establish a date for the 2021-2022 tentative budget public hearing september 14 2021 so move second all right any discussion i was going to say are we going to see ken tonight oh yep there's ken put my glasses ken tonight no i'm just here in case you had a question that's all nope questions all right well thanks ken i don't you mean no i'm just i'm just in case you had a question we're gonna let him come up to that podium and not ask him anything yes i do how was your day good it's been a long day but it's been good okay so hearing no questions roll call mrs walters aye mr siwalis aye brown isn't i mrs galbraith aye vice president rupert aye motion carries next may i have a motion to approve a certificate of payment in the amount of 935 thousand one hundred and twenty seven dollars and fifty eight cents to r l sohal general contractor inc for the 2021 renovation work at talala elementary school and the early learning center so moved second all right any discussion or questions on that and again board just to let you know i'll jump in on this one just to let you know also the uh the work is going well we are on target for substantial completion on august 6th so we are on target i was just over looking at the facilities today and it's going well this amount does include also there's a 10 percent holdback amount that we do hold based on completion of the work at the end of the project so uh just so you know that so that will continue so far uh is the 10 hold back on any payment there will probably be two more payments taking place one in august and then one the final one probably in september once we do all the punch list items okay so district office next month right permanent meetings we'll be back at district office yes our plan is to have uh board meetings back there i believe on the 10th is the committee the whole meeting uh with the regular meeting the week later yes so is it fair to say ken that it's 900 and somehow a thousand dollars i think the contract was for like 3.2 million dollars almost 3.2 about 3.144 million dollars so i think we've expended right now off the top of my head about 1.4 1.5 million dollars so far of that amount has been expended so is it fair to say that they are at least a third of the way completed oh they're they're farther than that i would say they're about two-thirds of the way completed actually yeah i uh i was really happy when i walked the facilities today uh again as i expressed to the board uh in a previous meeting i'm very happy with soho and the work that they are doing you know also keith and his crew have been doing we've actually started i will let the board know this and let the community know this we've actually started taking over now parts of the building to get them cleaned and ready so soho has worked great with keith and his building in ground staff so we're actually getting into classrooms starting to clean and all of that stuff we've told staff um that they can report on august 9th to begin getting the buildings ready both the administrative offices elc and talala we're looking to have extra help there to help the teachers get their rooms prepared and all of that and we do have kind of a cleaning service on hold in case we need to use that to supplement all of our building and grounds workers so so are we i know we are changing the boilers at elc yes we are are we replacing boilers at talala i don't believe we are are we keys no no we are not we are replacing pipes in talala uh yes replacing all the water pipes yes bringing in a new water line i believe um yes so we're doing all of that work have we closed up the walls yet for the pipes or have they replaced the majority of the pipes yet i don't like that oh yeah all the pipes have been replaced all the sprinkler systems are in all of the everything closed up not all not everything is closed up there's still some bathrooms that they're doing block in oh uh but i was just there i'll give you an example i was at elc uh today and some of what i'm going to call the gang toilets with our which are the boys and girls washrooms some already have all the partitions up because all new partitions were put in all new fixtures are put in like in the boys all new urinals toilets all of that has been put in however if you go into our bathrooms outside administrative offices those are not done yet so they're kind of working their way around the building and that they are um in talking with the site supervisor joe today i mean they're working 10 hour days they're working on weekends um they're doing all of that so they'll they'll hit their target i'm just curious again these pipes they were deemed life safety issues for the most part because they have the pipes themselves and galvanized and things of that nature extended their use for life i'm curious to see just what were the conditions of the pipes i don't know if you saved a sample or anything like that your predecessor daniel boom he showed us maybe a one inch pipe two or three feet long that had the inside diameter of like a quarter inch because of the hardness and the calcium that built up inside that pipe so i'm just curious to see what was the conditions of maybe a section of the main pipe i don't know we're talking about six-inch pipes for the mains or what yeah i can talk to i can talk to joe and see if we have something i know she has informed us that a lot of the pipes uh you know were good corroded and restricted flow and all of that yeah i was like maybe some photos or something some before and after yeah i know joe took some and so what we're hoping to do for the board in august is i'm actually asking the contractor come here to kind of give you a little presentation to see kind of a before and after yeah quite honestly you're not going to recognize elc when you go in there because it has changed we are putting drop ceilings in to cover up all the piping we're putting all led lighting i was just telling bill today um you know we are putting motion detectors in uh for that led lighting to you know to save costs and all those type of things so we're we're upgrading a lot of the systems uh we're painting the front entrance all of that stuff so uh it's it you know it's going to look good it's going to look different you'll you'll see a difference so you know i'm very pleased with it so far okay i might be hitting hitting on you up or or our director up uh by the end of this week and you guys all friday you are all friday right there on friday yes okay i may hit you up thursday night about 10 o'clock p.m for a tour at one of the schools i'll contact you guys well we can go over there tonight if you like mr brown no problem that's all i have okay okay any more discussion all right thank you ken uh roll call please okay brown hasn't i uh mr sawalis aye mrs walters hi mrs galbraith hi vice president rupe aye motion carries moving on to personnel and culture may have a motion to approve the personnel report including the certified staff employment leave of absence reassignment intent to retire and resignation and educational support staff employment leave of absence resignation intent to retire and resignation moved second all right i know lyle's not here is there are there any questions or any discussion no that last part was just reassignment in intent to retire and your resignation you said it accidentally twice just so just okay well one was for certified staff employment and one was for educational support staff employment okay and one is reassignment one is resignation yeah or if i repeated myself i'm sorry but that's what i don't think so okay no other discussion roll call please brown isn't i mrs galbraith aye mr silas aye mrs walters aye vice president group aye motion carries and finally may i have a motion to approve the goals of the superintendent for 2021 2022 school year so moved second all right we had a chance to review these and close last week any discussion all right and when you're ready roll call please mrs galbraith aye mr sowalis aye mrs walters aye brown is and i vice president ruth aye thank you motion carries next item is old business does anyone have any old business no okay moving on to new business i don't know if this isn't considered new business or not but um i did have someone come to me and they're having difficulty logging in to register has anyone else had any problems not that i've heard of not that you've heard of if they're having difficulty have them uh phone okay one of us and we can assist with that okay all right thank you thank you any more new business hearing none um we don't have a need for closed session right yay okay then may i have a motion to adjourn so moved second oh all in favor opposed
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hello chris cooper here superintendent of clearwater schools i want to give you an update as we head into the 21 22 school year sounds weird to even say that but i'm excited that we're here and ready to roll uh first of all our first day of school if you weren't aware is august 19th lots of summer activities have been going on sports practices will start prior to that but our official first day of school is august 19th we've had the enrollment process online open for a few days if you weren't aware of that make sure and check your email you should have received something from us on july 12th if you're a returning student that would a parent of a returning student that would have had some information about online enrollment if you're a new student we ask that you would call the school office we'll get you some login information you can start that process neither of those things work you can come to our on-site enrollment which will be august 10th 8 am to 4 pm so that's august 10th we should mention there's there is an accompanying letter that goes with this video that will have probably better more detailed information in it one thing i do want to highlight about the enrollment process this year is a change and that's the household economic survey so every child will receive free breakfast and lunch again this year but you could also receive reduced or free enrollment fees technology fees and at the high school a ct fee one time so we'd ask that you fill out that that household economic survey when you do the enrollment process and that'll let us know you'd like to be considered for that the other thing those surveys do is may allow our school to access some additional federal funds so that would help out our budget and and would be a win-win for um both you and the school if you've completed the enrollment process and you didn't do that we are attaching a uh form to this uh update that you could print off and fill out and bring to the school you could also stop by the school we could get those to you and have you fill that out at that time for those reduced or free fees well what a year it's been i've officially completed my first year as a school superintendent i never would have guessed i would have been doing many of the things i was doing last year but i have to say it couldn't have rather been a i wouldn't have rather been in any other place so a great year we had and i believe that's because we came together kept kids in school and again that's that's our focus is to educate educate kids so again though this year there are some recent changes i'm sure you've heard of the the national concern of covid uh and the recent uptick in hospitalizations and cases so i'm trying to keep an eye on that and we will be having some meetings in a couple weeks because a lot of things can change in two weeks to look at our plans and see what we need to do moving forward what i can tell you right now that we know is a few things one is we won't offer remote learning that's not going to be an option this year for students to stay home and receive remote instruction from our teachers what we will offer is a full virtual option through a service provider so if you would like to take that option please let your school know as soon as possible probably the big question it gets about masks and so we are planning a mask being optional for students and staff they can choose to wear them choose to not wear them we will make every ever possible to make sure that no one's treated any differently whether they choose to wear a mask choose not to wear a mask that's going to be personal choice we will continue some hygiene measures with hand sanitizing available encourage frequent hand washing not touching nose and face a lot of other just good hygiene measures as we move forward we'll also have social distancing where it's possible without being a disruption to the academic learning or social emotional uh well-being one thing we know we're going to be doing as it's required by law is that's continuing to work closely with the sedgwick county health department and i've been in contact with him several times in the last week and one of the things that we'll we're required to do is to report positive cases and then anybody who was a close contact to that positive case they are planning on uh issuing quarantines for close contacts of coba 19 positive cases so what we're trying to do is to to mitigate what that might do to students not being in school first of all if students or staff are fully vaccinated they won't be required to quarantine as a close contact the second option that i'm working with kansas department of health and environment on to provide is if a close contact has no symptoms and receives a daily uh negative coveted test then they can continue to be at school so i'm working to to provide that as an option for students parents and staff so if if students or staff were in a closed contact situation need to be quarantined they could choose to receive a daily test if and if that was negative they could continue to be at school to learn and play we're also working on working on some other creative options my goal this year is that we're able to adapt and change and not have a year-long plan but we may come to a point where we say hey we need to do this for this classroom to keep them in school and we want to do that and then get back to normal as quickly as possible and safely as possible i think the big thing we can do is continue to come together in a positive way my request would be to parents is if if you're if your students are sick please keep them home i really think that uh saved us last year it did a lot of good um that that's gonna save us again this year the other thing my other request and it's in the letter i stated that we would deal with each other with mercy understanding and assumption of positive intent when i tell my kids what's the assumption of positive intent i tell myself that everybody's doing the darn best they can right in this moment and if we believe that i think we can all come together and continue to work through this as always reach out if you have questions again similar to last year there may be more unanswered questions and answers for questions at this point we will be continuing to communicate with you looking forward to a great school year i believe we're going to get through this bump and have a good plan to keep kids in school keep them learning make up for any losses that we might have suffered as quickly as possible that's all i have for today is mr cooper signing off have a great day
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i'd like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight please stand for 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 mustafa i'd like to read a quick statement the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests according to the vision of this act which i talked about that has caused noticing to be posed by having a daytime employees thereof posted in the office of the borough clerk or a library or a wreck department the office of the board of ed and the office of school number three four five six and a high school on july 6 2021 and known as report to reports of the record july 6 2021 this is an official meeting i'd like to take the role if i may this is a group uh mr capano here mrs freya here okay thank you very much just a couple of items i'd like to go over before we ask for committee reports and look at the consent agenda i do want to make mention that for the last four weeks we've been running our summer school program in all of our schools except for the high school this year our high school students are in summer school at our middle school because there's work going on at the high school but we've been running a remediation program a learning loss program for all of our students in grades pre-k through 12.
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delightful jokes give me a second at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart unified school district to order let the record reflect that all board members are present and at this time we'll stand for 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 all right and first up we have dysarts remote instruction plan for 2021 through 2022 school year dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet as required by state law dysert must have two separate um hearings public hearings to introduce any changes or modifications to our school plan with regards to remote instruction or any other modifications to creative scheduling for for schools so we had our first um public hearing a few weeks ago this is our second one as required by law and dr pulling will introduce this item thank you dr kels good evening madam president members of the board cabinet and community um yes tonight is our second hearing as required by law and so i'm gonna hit the highlights of our instructional time model that's an alternate as allowed by law and soon the arizona department of education will be releasing a planned template and later in the meeting is an action item for the board to vote on and if approved then it would authorize me to fill out the template according to what i've described and submit that to the state so for teaching and learning the teachers would be teaching from our classrooms and the students would be learning at home it is a online learning option for our k-8 students depending on the numbers we would have one grade level per teacher per classroom excuse me one teacher per grade level but possibly need to grade band depending on the numbers and right now we have about 300 students enrolled and that enrollment is closed and right now we're in the process of staffing that to be eligible for enrollment students had to pass reading and math for last school year as mentioned before we did have many online students failing courses just due to the complexities and difficulties of of learning from home the second criteria was that they were not retained or on a list to be retained if students have an iep or a 504 they would meet with those school teams to look at the needs and accommodations and to see if if online learning was was a fit for them attendance attendance would be taken twice per day and reported in our systems and they're reported to the state ade is still in the process of coming out with with forms and systems for our finance department to report attendance as mentioned in terms of movement july 12 was our cutoff to enroll in that and that is so we could staff and form classrooms and get prepared for the school year the other movement is if students are failing during the year during the quarter then of course teachers would be assisting and offering extra support but ultimately if there's not improvement in grades then school administration meet with the parents and and that student needs to come back to the classroom just to get the more support that is needed so they do need to maintain passing grades to stay in online learning for testing such as district benchmarks and the state's state assessments those need to be done in person and so students will need to become in the into the building those will be scheduled so students would know what time to come and thank you mr dean he liked what i was saying so much he had to replay it again thank you mr dean so um so they need to come in person we'd coordinate that for families convenience and so that students could have you know appropriate proctoring of those benchmarks and state assessments in terms of extracurricular activities yes those students could participate in the school's extra curricular activities they would need to come to the site to do those we don't have online extracurricular activities i'll also add to our plan that if they're extenuating circumstances whether it's a coveted outbreak or some sort of of of uh you know closure of a grade level or possibly a school even though that did not happen last year that we could have kids beyond remote learning and still we could take attendance and get you know credit for their learning days so i would add that as as just a clause in that plan as a just in case if you will and so that's my presentation for tonight and this is a public hearing so um i'm open for comment on that i would thank you very much you're welcome i will add president densmore apologize this is an option for parents and like i said they did opt into this in about 300 of our probably 18 000 k students have opted in okay thank you so at this time i would like to open it for public comment if any okay all right thank you all right and now we'll begin the regular meeting first we have item c1 recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet there continue to be extraordinary experiences happening in dysart and this evening we'd like to recognize some of our employees and students for some of these happenings first of all we have the arizona school administrator's distinguished administrator award and dr pulling will introduce this recognition thank you dr kellis president densmore and members of the board it's my pleasure to recognize miss dana noble director of curriculum instruction pre-k-8 if she'll come on up she was recently awarded the arizona school administrator's distinguished administrator award this award is presented for exceptional arizona school administrators who have exemplified dedication and leadership towards their staff student and colleagues and she worked tirelessly last year to to uh prepare dysart for our first kate online learning which parents and students and staff are very appreciative of and not only did she uh you know work and lead the team to create that but they also created a really vibrant summer school program so we could help students catch up on learning so thank you miss noble for your award [Applause] continuing on this evening with our celebrations we madame president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet we would like to recognize some of our staff and students for both athletic and cte accomplishments both during the school year and this summer and we're going to begin with our athletic piece and we will start with willow canyons softball coach coach donnie tazzano who not only led the wildcats to their first ever state championship in softball but was also named the 5a conference coach of the year and the west valley coach of the year and willow canyon softball team stands poised to be ready to defend their title again next year congratulations coach tisano you betcha congratulations congratulations continuing on with athletic accomplishments and um coach dozano's awards came late in the in the school year as the next person's award came after we recognized her team and we wanted to also recognize coach rachel matakis from valley vista high school who has led the valley vista monsoon girls basketball team to four state championships in the last five years and she was named the all arizona girls basketball coach of the year and as i stated with willow canyon softball team valley vista's girls basketball team looks poised to defend their state title next year as well so coach congratulations continuing on this evening we have a first with dysart athletics and that is we did some research and have looks like we have confirmed that we have our first ever all-american athlete and so this evening we're excited to recognize alana rogers from willow canyon high school who plays second base on their softball team and is the leadoff hitter she's a junior and alana was named max prep second team all-american congratulations alana quite an accomplishment and if you know anything about alana alana will make sure that they defend their title next year so very good congratulations alana congratulations good job or as she's referred to as a one so very very very outstanding switching to cte this evening we are very excited to recognize two of our graduated seniors and their cte accomplishments this summer would dylan muttersbach and aidan davidson please come forward dylan and aiden hold tight dylan and aiden have earned or have won the silver medal at the skillsusa national award this summer in the area of interactive application and video game creation they created a game called space merchant it is my understanding this evening that this is about the 20th game that they have created and it is uh it is looks like it's headed for apple play correct guys do i have that right it's headed to apple play okay we believe it's headed that way additionally they will both continue their aspirations in the gaming industry by attending grand canyon university and uat um in the fall and we would just like to say congratulations to these outstanding graduated dysart students guys you did us proud congratulations give them a round of applause and dr kellis that wraps up our recognitions for this evening thank you very much and congratulations to all uh next we have audience with individuals we do have a couple okay i'll go ahead and read the statement this is a 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 business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and first we have lisa martinez my name is lisa martinez i am a west point pt or west point parent but i am also the west point ptsa president and i am here today because um i take my kids safety i'm like nervous being in front of everyone sorry but i take my kids to safety um it's like my first priority i've been involved in safety walks with west point we've had a lot of safety issues and i came to thank you guys for approving our light that's like huge sorry that's huge for me my kid's safety is number one and you guys putting that light in front of that school means so much to me and the safety of our kids this is something that i'm passionate about i have been at that school and seen accidents in the past i've seen kids darting across the road when no one's looking to get across and now they're going to be able to cross safely so if you can tell i'm passionate about that about my kids and i just want to thank you thank you for putting that light in or getting that light set to be put in on greenway so i don't mean to get emotional but it's my kids so i just want to thank you thank you for putting our kids first and taking their safety into consideration so that's all thank you [Applause] next we have tracy ortiz hi my name is tracy ortiz i'm also a west point parent we have been a west well our family has been at west point since 2014 and i have also witnessed many accidents i live right at greenway and i have witnessed many many accidents right at the crosswalk at the time of dismissal and also witness kids darting across the streets huge safety a huge safety hazard i'm also nervous sorry um but yes i am very very thankful to all of you for approving that the the safe crossing at west point so thank you [Applause] and then next we have stephanie shay i'm stephanie shay um and i know that they've just said kind of the same thing but i also want to express my my gratitude for um for approving the crosswalk and light um right there at 137th and greenway we i have a son who goes to west point and i have spoken in many different forums before at my concern about the safety right there and how many accidents and such that have taken place and so i'm so happy that we've had this addressed again and that now there's a different outcome because i do think that the safety of the kids are definitely um everybody's you know on everybody's mind but to have that i think will definitely make a difference and i do appreciate your guys's consideration on that thanks [Applause] all right and next we have superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet just a couple of things that we're super excited about we have welcomed our new teachers but well not back they're new welcomed our new teachers to dysert um they get to come a few days early before everybody else so it gives them a chance to get settled in and get ready for school to start also it was an exceptionally busy summer with summer school happening at quite a few of our schools elementaries and high schools a lot of projects with middle schools opening we had a lot of classrooms that had to be moved to different schools and our staff just did an extraordinary job of of the logistics of everything that happened this summer that doesn't happen in a typical summer so that's a great big kudos to them and speaking of summer activities we just concluded this week with our summer school this was a different experience this year because of the volume of students who participated generally we do offer some summer school activities and some programs but this was easily far and above any year that we've had in the past with the volume of students k-12 and so just like to thank all of our employees our administrators who gave up their summer after a very difficult school year to keep on working through the summer to provide this opportunity for our students and that's all i have to report thank you next we have the governing board update i just wanted to say that i had the privilege of attending the new administration orientation uh it's where the new principals and new directors join the staff as well as can't say the old ones you guys are you know the current ones right now and it was great to see the new the new fresh faces that come on and very glad to meet them and also um even though we start school on august 3rd there are i believe it was three school districts that started today and uh across the state and so just be glad that we're not one of them right now so but continue enjoying your summer and we'll see you on august 3rd okay um i also had the um privilege to attend the dysart leadership event uh just the beginning portion of it and i'm just so grateful to be included in that uh it's nice to see everyone's faces old and new or sorry not old but you know what i mean i wasn't not able to attend the new hire orientation but i heard great things about the music provided so that was it okay next we have the consent agenda i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented second i'm not sure who sekka did that tracy okay motion passes next we have action discussion item one dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet this item was presented during the public hearing at the beginning of this meeting which was the second time the information has been presented to the board and there's no additional information at this time administration recommends board approval for this item i will make a motion to approve the remote instructional time model plan for the 2021 2022 school year and give authority to the assistant superintendent of academics to submit the instructional time model plan to the arizona department of education second seconded by ms pritchard okay motion passes next we have action discussion item two dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening administration brings to the governing board an item for approval relating to the covid safety protocols or mitigation plan for the district just as a quick historical review last year administration developed this during the summer time and put it in place in the early early fall before school started as we all know with covet there were constant changes and there were constant revisions to the protocols as advice was presented from [Music] various experts i guess and and other other authorities be they state local or federal this year administration brings the plan to the governing board with the understanding and hope that there aren't a lot of changes that we are in a more stable environment and that the things that we are recommending will be something that we can continue without regular changes throughout the school year it's my understanding that we have some requests to speak to the board so at this time we would do those and then i will have dr dean introduce the item thank you i'll go ahead and re-read the statement now is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursue it 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 further consideration and decision a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing 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 first we have tom vanek good evening superintendent kellis madam president members of the board about a month ago i came in here and spoke on behalf of the larger community and presented to you guys a notice that more or less asserted parental rights and after reading what you the protocol that you've recommended it appears that you have carefully considered our rights as parents and for that i want to thank you all there's been some rumors that there may be some disagreement on how to handle or whether or not it would be necessary to quarantine students and i just want to speak a little bit to that i'd just like to remind you that ars 1-602 a5 protects parents rights to make health care decisions for a minor minor child and i would just ask that you all carefully consider that when recommending any new policy thank you thank you and next we have jennifer drake good evening madam president board members my name is jennifer drake i am here to express total support as an advocate for the students staff and teachers of the mitigation factors as presented by the dysart school district i'm very pleased that the school district is putting the students staff teachers constitutional rights above any governmental bureaucracy and allowing this school year to return to a normal and recognizable atmosphere for everyone thank you for allowing the opportunity for everyone to have the freedom to choose whether they want to wear masks or not or require them to be vaccinated to return to campus these are decisions that should be decided amongst parents and their children and individuals and their physicians so for this item i vote yes and hope you do too and thank you i'll open it up for discussion so at this point i'll ask dr dean to introduce the proposed mitigation plan good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening on behalf of the district's administration and we present to you the covet protocol recommendations for the upcoming school year last year was a very long school year and a year full of daily and sometimes hourly changes and so many lessons learned during the year many lessons continue to be learned during the summer and so this evening we provide you our recommendations in terms of covered protocol for the 21 22 school year as dr keller stated it is our hope our deepest hope that these recommendations would be able to be implemented without interruption during the entire school year just a couple of quick pieces in terms of what mitigation actions have been taken care of and during the summer and what will be available during the school year for our staff as the board will remember through esser funding we have installed air scrubbers in all district buildings in all of our facilities that project will be completed before school starts and so every building will have air scrubbers in them that help to clean the air um of not only uh pollutive part pollution particles um but also of norovirus particles of coronavirus particles and other pieces as well and so we're excited that project is coming to a close and that project will be completed in all facilities as i stated prior to school starting additionally during the the upcoming school year ppe will be available for all staff and students should they ask for it on campus and we have an abundance of ppe um that is left over from last year and if need if need be we can order more so any staff or any student who asks for a mask we're more than happy to provide them if they would like to use them additionally cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer will be available for any staff or students that would like to use that and we are not recommending continuing uh the process we had last year where teachers constantly clean the desk throughout the day um we are not recommending that piece as i stated moving forward for the upcoming school year however if a teacher would like to do that they're more than welcome to and we will provide any cleaning supplies they need additionally if a student would like to clean their desk between classes we'll provide that as well so we have those options available for all staff and all students so on to the recommendations for the upcoming school year we are recommending um that face coverings and masks be optional for all staff and all students and any visitors to the campus as well this was a process that was utilized during summer school it was utilized without incident during during summer school we had staff and students that came to school and did not wear a mask and we had staff and students that came to school and did wear a mask and everything seemed to work just fine throughout the course of the summer so we are recommending that continuation we would like to remind the board that vaccinations are not required let me rephrase that covid19 vaccinations are not required for staff or students they are not a required component to attend our schools or work in our school district and so we want to make sure that we iterate that additionally we are recommending less restrictive distancing measures in an effort to return to more normal operations and so where it has been recommended in the past that where possible six feet of social distancing be used um we would be recommending moving forward that where possible um three feet of social distancing um be utilized however understanding that there are some portions of our day as was the case last year where that may or may not be possible additionally we are recommending that we no longer require our teachers to utilize temperature checks during the course of the day as students enter classrooms again this is a practice that was implemented this summer for summer school without incident continuing we would like to reiterate that all dysart staff are essential workers we believe that they are essential as such should our dysart staff come in direct contact with any student or staff with that has a positive cova 19 test we will be handling that the same as we did starting in january of this year where we would ask them to monitor their own symptoms and make choices as they need to but we would not be quarantined automatically quarantining our staff due to a direct contact with covet 19 positive we would like to state that any student or staff that does test positive for covet 19 will be required to isolate for the cdc duration of that piece whether it be a negative test after a certain number of days or the the full 10-day isolation um anyone with a positive test would be required to isolate likely the biggest change that we're recommending this evening other than the mask piece um would be the direct contact aspect of students who have direct contact to a positive cova 19 um case as the board will will remember last school year any student who had direct contact was quarantined for 10 days and last year we quarantined approximately 14 000 different students which if you multiply that by 10 that's 140 000 days of school mist of those 14 000 approximately 14 000 students that were quarantined approximately 29 um contracted covid and so this year we recommend that if a student has direct contact with a positive cova 19 case at school that we notify the parents of those students with direct contact we provide them information related to symptoms in which they should be aware and be monitoring and allow the parents to make the decision as to whether they quarantine their student or whether they send them to school we certainly will continue to remind all parents and all students that students should not come to school ill we would recommend that any time a student is ill regardless of what what they're ill with uh or what their their um their illness may be that they don't come to school um but however we are recommending that um that our exposure plan be that parents of direct contact students are provided information and they can make the choice in terms of whether they choose to send their student to school or to quarantine and so that is probably one of the the biggest changes to our recommendations for this year additionally just a couple of other additional operation pieces that we want to make sure the board is aware of athletic events will return to normal operations um and we're in the process of moving towards that now for those of you that watched the sun's game last evening or watched any of the finals nba finals we're seeing packed arenas last night there were estimated to be 60 000 people outside of milwaukee stadium athletics are returning to normal and so we would be moving our athletic events back to normal operations our school cleaning would also return to normal operations um pre-covered cleaning schedule but that does include the deep summer cleaning that we that we entail each summer which is is wrapping up at this point in time and then finally we wanted to make sure to mention that our cafeteria and our cafeteria operations are working to begin return to normal operations with regular food trays rather than the clam shell trays that they used last year they'll be using condiment pumps now instead of you know little condiment packets and those types of things and normal operational pieces that we would typically see in the cafeteria we'll resume and and uh to the the pre uh coveted um stages that we had two years ago and with that i'm more than happy to answer any questions today or this evening i'm sorry thank you very much dr dean i just want to thank dr kellis and and his leadership team for just recognizing um parental choice is is very important to our community and i just want to thank you for your leadership i'll open it up for discussion just had a couple of things dr dean all air scrubbers will be installed or they have been installed and about to turn the switch madam president member sawyer sink bill by the first day of school all air scrubbers will have been installed and functional and this was a total number of how many scrubbers a lot um so the the air scrubbers you'll recall and and i'm sorry mr hicks is much more of an expert on this than i am um i don't say that often but i do in this particular subject um but um air scrubbers are installed basically in every duct component of our hvac systems and so it's been quite a project the vast majority of that project has been done after school hours um you know in in the late spring and then through the summer as well working around our summer school schedules working around the movement for middle schools and primary schools but they will all be completed and functional by august the 3rd that is very good news to hear as i know that they were working extremely hard and extremely fast in order to get things done and my other question is you may not know the answer and it may be coming this year a couple of months ago we had two pods that were able to give vaccinations at the support center is there a possibility that we may be having another pod in the near future madam president member sawyer sink bill the community ed department recently hosted another opportunity for anyone in the community who is interested to be vaccinated we will continue to be available to the county and look for opportunities to provide that service to our community as they arise it's important that for those who wish to become vaccinated that they have that opportunity and sometimes schools or school systems are an easy location for those for those vaccination clinics to occur thank you i just have a couple follow-up questions thanks for clarifying the difference between the um mandatory quarantine for positive students versus the indirect contact just out of curiosity i know last year when we were looking at groups like student groups or student teams that if there were two or more on a team that were positive then that opened up a whole other quarantine scenario are we are we back to doing or consider i think an outbreak is what they called it if it was two or more is that still something that we're under the the guideline of doing or is that madam president member prichard um i i can speak um not only in my role as an assistant superintendent but also as a member of the aia executive board and the aia has yet to address any concerns related to covet in the upcoming year the last conversation with the aia executive board in may was that they were moving forward with all normal operations in terms of your direct question in terms of outbreak we would handle that exactly the same as we would a classroom situation and and follow the same contact tracing pieces and notify parents of direct exposure and and and make that decision to answer your question directly the aia at this point in time is not looking at that as an outbreak which would shut a team down nor are we okay um the only other question i have is just asking that administration will continue to keep the board updated only because i can only imagine i know i'm frustrated just in trying to follow in the news to know there's guidelines from the cdc there's guidelines from the department of health at the county level and there's guidelines from our state governor and some of them are all in conflict and it's just new and evolving and it's very fluid so as much information as you can share with the board along the way as you learn things i i'd appreciate it thank you madam president miss pritchard just to put an exclamation point on your comment there it has been extremely frustrating to identify who's in charge and as i have been in in in situations environments meetings with uh officials across the state there's shared frustration from department to department at the state level the county level there's conflicting information coming from the federal government to the state government with regards to transportation these things are are indeed frustrating i have requested from the maricopa county that we get an attorney general's opinion on that very question who's in charge and that i think would go a long way in helping us to to follow the guidance from an authority and not from all these multiple conflicting sources thank you yeah thank you for that comment because that was one of the things i was going to ask because it is confusing with who's what direction are we actually supposed to go with if and not get in trouble um i just have some really basic type questions out of curiosity so when you talk about cafeteria going back to normal and the trays and all that they're not going to have assigned seating then so students can sit wherever they want like with in their class madam president remember grant that is correct hallelujah and then the other one is in high school they changed like entering the buildings you could only go in one way and the other door was closed so are they going to be allowed to go in both sides now madam president member grant the answer is yes we are returning to normal operations on our high school campuses thank you and i would add um i just received a note that there were 2 air scrubbers that were installed all right with that i will make a motion to approve the coveted mitigation plan for the 21-22 school year seconded by ms grant there we go motion passes thank you next we have um request for future agenda items i actually have one i know um i don't think it'll necessarily have to be an agenda item but maybe just an information item that could be sent to the board i know that uh i don't know how many people uh administrators went to the bill daggett model schools conference and i would just like to know based on that conference did they learn anything that would from the schools you know because they're always talking about improving schools and everything that would help dysart with improving test scores was there any some new innovati innovative ideas out there because i'm sure all districts have the exact same problem so just curious out of that conference if we could get some information on that please yes madam president mrs grant administration would be happy to share information with the entire board to help the board understand what what was presented at the conference and what our takeaways were next i'll motion to establish an executive executive session to be held immediately during a recess in the regular meeting second seconded by ms grant motion passes is everyone ready okay at this time we'll reconvene the governing board meeting and we'll begin with action item k1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet upon conclusion of the retention hearings that the board has just conducted now is the opportunity for the board to vote on each of the four questions and you can proceed with with each of them sequentially just as is noted each of these does not mention a student's name rather a code to protect the identity of the students so if when you if when a board member makes a motion if you would please reference the code and make sure that we don't bring up any names specifically thank you will that will the motion be made including uphold or reverse no you're going to you're going to make that determination so it's either motion to uphold or motion to that is the vote that's how the votes reflect okay thank you so you will let me know so that i can change that motion to either uphold or reverse so we change the motion that's what i'm at okay thank you okay to start i will make a motion to uphold the teacher's decision to retain a student in the matter of rpa 2021-001 pursuant to ars 15-342 and governing board policy 9.36 second motion passes my eyes are getting old too all right next we have action discussion item k2 and i'll entertain a motion for this one i move the governing board make the motion to uphold the decision to retain a student in the matter of rpa 2021-002 pursuant to ars 15-342-11 and the governing board policy of 9.36 seconded by mrs grant motion passes thank you moving to action discussion k3 i will move to uphold the teacher's decision to retain a student in the matter of rpa 2021-003 pursuant to ars 15 342-11 and governing board policy 9.36 second um motion passes moving to action discussion k4 i will move to reverse the teacher's decision to retain a student in the matter of rpa 2021-004 pursuant to ars 15 342-11 and governing board policy 9.36 second motion passes thank you i'll move to adjourn the meeting second seconded by ms grant uh did mine come up right in front of my face yes we are adjourned thank you
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leave this on president reese can you hear us can you hear me we can't yes okay it's not working you'll be on open mic the whole night president reese's can like do it good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting to order dr foley roll call please yes please let the records show that four board members are president are present and board president reece is participating this evening via phone thank you uh we're going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance liberty and justice item 2.1 i move that we approve the agenda as it's presented second all those uh all those in favor oh questions or comments sorry questions or comments about the agenda all those in favor aye aye aye aye that motion carries 5-0 vice president wilson yes i would like to take a moment before we go on to the superintendent's report to welcome dr foley as the official superintendent of the higley unified school district [Music] she has been acting as our acting superintendent and now she is our official superintendent so this will be her first official superintendents report thank you president reese do you have anything else to add nope next up dr foley your superintendent's report vice president wilson and governing board president mrs reece and board members thank you so much that just made my day i didn't even realize that but yes today is the official official first first meeting let me start with our upcoming events do we have our upcoming events we could slide up first there we go first and foremost we have an important day right around the corner and we've been working very hard for this very very important first day of school for this school year that we are super excited about you'll notice that we have uh several board meetings coming up and you'll also notice that we will be starting our superintendent visits as a team back into the schools and our very first one is at san tan coming up in august and so we have lots and these these are just a snapshot of the many events that are happening with back to school with meech teacher curriculum all kinds of things happening and so we're we highly encourage everybody to make sure you have the app that you check out our website so that you have all of the upcoming events that pertain to you and your family ready to go uh next slide a big thank you one of the things that i'd like to share with you is the governing board as you are well aware and you've been reading in superintendence reports and you've been seeing in events that your entire higley team from every level of the organization um has been working incredibly hard to get this school year started from cleaning up after storms to everything that goes into getting the school year ready and every corner of this district has been fantastic this entire family of a team is pretty excited for the beginning of the school year so we just want to share with you uh we would love to actually go list by list like this but we would be here until very late tonight of everybody who deserves a thank you so we just want to share with you from the leadership team on how much we appreciate the entire organization for everything everyone has done to help us make sure that we start this school year off right and we're ready to go and we're very excited for this year so thank you for letting me share that and that concludes tonight's superintendent's report thank you dr foley 4.1 uh board comments president or vice president wilson yes i echo your sentiments um i love this time of year i was just looking today on some social media and um i love when the elementary school announcement of teachers goes out because all the neighborhood chats start going oh who has this teacher and who has that teacher and we're going to have lunch together and this and that and it's it's always very usu very positive and it's just you know hats off to our teachers that you know year after year make an impression and then the next generation or the the next um sibling gets that teacher it's just it's higley's a family i keep saying that and yes i have seniors this year so it'll be a different point of view for me again going through my senior year times two and my last kiddos so um hats off to everybody though we appreciate everybody and everything they do thank you i just wanted to say i love the video that went out it was it actually made me a little teary-eyed because it was just so cute and i'm just so excited that we're starting the year out open and here and it's going to be a great year i also saw the video it was very cute um i did get to stop by cooley already today for back to school night the kids were very excited to be back on campus there were lots of smiling faces and they were excited to get their schedules and i'm sure tomorrow night will be a bustling at all of our elementary schools and last week was high school so thank you for all those teachers who participated and were able to help us in addition to the gratitude for all the work and some of the headaches that you've had because of weather and getting everything prepared and having the experience of being in the schools and hoping things are working and not having to manage any issues from the teacher front so i appreciate all the hard work and i and i appreciate the work that you put into canvas getting a digital upload so that um there's digital digital signatures and there's multiple kids and a family that is wonderful i appreciate the time put into that and i'm sure a lot of other parents and maybe students even appreciate that as well i just wish you guys the best as your day approaches and and for the community just remember to communicate out there if there's any any issues reach out to administration reach out to the board let us know what we need to do if there's anything thank you i just have one last thing i received uh phone calls from the teachers today from coronado and i don't know if that's all elementary schools or however that was sherry or how that was but that was so nice and so sweet just inviting and welcoming him back and i just thought that was such a nice touch and it echoes her saying that higley is a family so it was really thank you uh mrs reach do we have any requests to speak all right moving right along oh mrs president [Laughter] do you have anything to say president reece no everyone said everything we're all excited for the school year to start and we're ready to go great thank you so much uh 6.1 i move that we approve the consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.12 i second that motion any comments or questions all sorry that motion carries 5-0 dr foley would you like to say a few things on what we just approved yes vice president wilson members of the board at that at this point i'm going to turn it over to mrs martin so that she can welcome a couple of the administrators who are in the audience who we are thrilled to have join our team yes thank you dr foley good evening vice president wilson members of the board our community as part of tonight's consent agenda you approved some transitions and new hires within our administrative team we've got two individuals here tonight so i'd like to acknowledge them we have miss christy de bono who is going to be the assistant principal at cortina elementary [Applause] and then we also have mr brett vandenberg who's going to be the dean of students at cooley middle school [Applause] as all of you have mentioned i echo that we're excited to start the new year although i will say this summer went by really really fast but looking forward to the new year and all of our transitions and all of our hires so thank you thank you on to information please go ahead keep vice principals so you're fine um i just want to say hats off and a shout out to wholesale floors they donated shirts to the whole staff um to the tune of ten thousand dollars and they're really cute shirts this year i love them and maybe they'll give me a deal on my new floors in my house if i could talk to them but thank you any other comments perfect we're going to move on to information item 7.1 this is our monthly m o financial report for both may and june oh you are able to leave i'm sorry i forgot to release you thank you for being here are there any questions oh vice president reese members of the board i'll just make a quick comment so this is our unaudited financials for the month of may and june um we still have some payments to be made from prior fiscal year um we do have payments um or uh the approval to make payments through july and august for the prior fiscal year so after those two months you'll see our afr and that will be our completely audited financials for the fiscal year 21.
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wearing masks in the hot sun day in and day out taking the Pacer test running upwards of 40 to 50 laps my heart was in my chest praying a child didn't pass out or Worse from lack of oxygen on hot days I chose to keep my children home because of the Heat and requirement of mask wearing because it is unsafe and unhealthy for them I have experts here stating the same thing as many others have stated that I probably won't go through basically knowing that it has been flip-flopped from the experts in regards to transmission and lack thereof um the science hasn't changed nor did new science appear that supports mask wearing so we're putting our children at risk physically and psychologically for an ineffective tool used on them as if they're a science experiment I had to keep my children home from school to protect them on those hot days when I should be able to send them to school with confidence that they're being guided and protected this past year and a half has been far from that the lack of leadership and organization has made me truly think twice about the upcoming school year and what it holds for my children I reached out for guidance from the school district to the health department and was told hands were tied given the run around as to who makes the decisions and was unable to get a response from the health department as Dr Sullivan was unavailable and there was no one to answer my question in the interim I literally have an email from May 18th that hasn't been responded to how could we go on another school year this way we need a reopening plan now with that being said I'm here today regarding the impending possibility of mandating mask wearing for our children in the school district should I swear I didn't do it should there be a mask Mandy I intend to remove my children from the district science shows that school age transmission is well documented unfortunately it is uninformed decisions that are being made at the expense of our children as a parent I believe that we have a right to choose to whether our child should be masked or not I stand here today and I ask you to please advocate for our children and the education they deserve [Applause] foreign Lee see you back no okay Sandra Augusto hi Sandra Augusto from 32 obtuse Road South I have three children two of them are in the school district one is going into fourth grade and the other is going into first grade please keep in mind that my kids my husband and I abided by all rules followed what the school district set up believing that those protocols in place were in the best interest of our kids as time went on and school continued we became more educated on the virus itself transmission rates Etc and knowing what we know today that children do not readily acquire covet in are very low risk I feel very differently when it comes to mask wearing in addition to being more educated on the virus and transmission my Turning Point occurred on two separate occasions the first was when my eight-year-old got into the car after school one day and told me I couldn't breathe today those words went through my Heart Like a Knife I still feel them and I felt immediate panic secondly on a separate day my six-year-old got into the car after school and was extremely flushed it was a hot day and she told me she got very dizzy and she felt like she was going to pass out in the middle school again same Panic set in and I said to her well why didn't you remove your mask today and drink your water she wasn't told that she could and didn't want to break the rules quote unquote please understand I do not blame the teacher or anyone for that matter we teach our kids to listen to the teacher and follow their Direction I told my daughter in those cases to raise her hand but she said she wouldn't as she didn't want to upset anyone as you can see children are highly impressionable in the rare case that they contract the virus it is unusual for the child to get severely ill on the contrary I believe that mask wearing is what will cause the most harm to our children as many have shared not only are the masks highly ineffective once saturated that cause oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide causing headaches dizziness reduced ability to concentrate and reductions in cognitive function the neurological damage is more deafening and fatal than of the virus itself with that said I'm highly against sending my children to school and masks come September however I respect that we all take a different stance on this topic and are simply here to ask you to give us parents a choice of wearing masks for our children a choice to allow our child to breathe a choice to decide what is best for our family a choice for us to or for us parents to parent our own children and not in conjunction with our state and we are we the parents should be given that right to choose what we believe is best for our kids thank you foreign [Applause] apologize I can't make out your last name Hello Lord hello everyone I'm Wesley in men 13 South Mountain Road did you guys know came out today that only three states kindergarten below are requiring masks stated today did you know Nine States require Mass K through 12.
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well congratulations to the parents and the kids they're being very good school year mr marchant this is your presentation please okay so i'm going to be on the reopening plan for the 2021-22 school year i'm going to be going over the changes that we've made from the last time we brought this to the board so first of all as superintendent staley said that we are planning and we are opening our schools to prepare for their students to be back full-time um compared to where we finished last year on the a pm model we will have all of our students back in full time um at the beginning of the school year without um and we are hoping that no changes will come to that from sacramento but at this time we are planning and we are ready for having our students back full time full-time person instructional model um some of the on our on-campus guidelines social distancing in classrooms and meeting spaces all classrooms will maximize their space between seatings and desks face coverings all public schools including chica unified are required to follow the cdph the california department of public health and the butte county public health guidelines regarding facial coverings at this time per california department of public health guideline students are required to wear face masks coverings indoors no face coverings are required to be worn outdoors regardless of vaccination status mr marchand yeah you made no reference in this document that i could see to the follow-up communication from cdph saying that they were going to leave enforcement of this matter up to school districts can you explain what we are going to do to exploit this loophole since a lot of people know that masks are not helpful especially for very young children so yes i can answer that so um literally an hour or so after they came out with these guidelines the the governor came out and stated that they will leave up to the enforcement what not that we students do not have to wear a mass but the enforcement of if they do not wear a mass up to the district each individual district so some of the things that we're looking at for the enforcement of if a student refuses to wear a mask on our campuses obviously we can offer one of our independent study programs like oak bridge or oakdale we have those available uh for families if they want to put their child on an independent study program and later on in this board meeting we'll kind of go over the new guidelines uh for independent study uh what that looks like per the state um ab-130 also we can if a family or a parent or guardian provides a medical release documentation from a licensed medical professional saying that their that student does cannot wear a mask at school we will abide by that of course if a student is not wearing a mask in class we would ask our teachers just to remind them to put the mask up or on offer a face shield if they do not feel comfortable with the mask we will have face shields available for every student on campus in our classrooms for them to wear if they prefer a face shield over a mask those will be available we would also ask our our teachers in our administration to call a family and ask for support um with the mass guidelines um if it through all those different things if the student is still refusing to wear a mask we're looking at an alternative placement for our students on campus outside because right now the guidelines say the student does not have to have a mask on outside so we would be looking at each school site will have some different what that would look like on their campus for having the student be outside without their mask on so we will continue to update what that would look like on the campuses because we're just again we're getting these rules as quickly as everybody else is and so we're trying to figure out what that would look like on our campus if a student had to be outside because they're refusing um to wear a mask and then um our last option again would bring the family in with the student and have what we call a student student base intervention team meeting so we would just try to see what options are available for the family and the student that is not wanting to wear a mask and again we would go over these options with him and try to come to some type of agreement what we could do again one and two our best options would be the oak bridge independent study offering and to provide a medical release documentation from a licensed medical professional that the student does not have to wear a mask and then again we think offering a face shield instead of a mask is another option for us can i ask just a point of clarification on what you said um so the current most up-to-date as of today's cdph guideline or mandate is that masks must be worn in schools and and like help indoors at schools and health healthcare facilities et cetera um and that they're leaving it up to the district how that gets enforced not if it gets enforced right that's the distinction that everybody really needs to understand is it's it's it's up to us it's not a loophole it's up to us how we enforce the mass mandate that's being required by the state not if we enforce it at this time correct and that's the biggest what we see is the biggest misunderstanding what it is because people think that we can say they do not have to wear a mask because they're giving us control each district control to make that decision that is not the decision that they're giving us they're saying all students have to wear masks but they're given a decision on what our discipline policy will be on when a student is refusing to wear a mask mr tennis did you have another so the medical exemption is that basically a doctor's note if you have a doctor's note saying that in the opinion of your child's physician they shouldn't wear a mask correct mr marchand did you want to continue yes uh cafeteria and recess protocols to the extent possible students will maintain a three feet of distance while unmasked for the purpose of eating and drinking again we will be um mr baltimore is telling us that we will have more picnic benches and tables available for our schools for kids to be eating outside it's going to be a little longer through engineering and everything else so we have to get approved to get more shade structures but we will have more tables provided outside for our kids to eat out outside so we don't have to worry about the distancing because outside there is no social distancing a marker for feet um that they need to be a part so we will uh but again we'll inside if it's inside the cafeteria where they want to be then we will do our best to keep them three feet apart inside and they're when they are eating they're allowed to lower their mass um all right so workers and other persons handling are serving food we'll also try to develop different serving stations outside for our students too so it doesn't just have to be inside the cafeteria um our nutrition department is doing a very good job of trying to accommodate different stations so kids do not have to go inside the cafeteria especially the secondary level to get their food of course on recess protocols if they're outside they do not have to wear their mask our clubs and our athletic events if they're outside we'll be following the cdph guidelines for that and along with that i'll kind of pass over transportation if mr bulma can you go over the transportation for school buses for me sure so students will be required to have mass while they're on the bus we will continue with the practice from last school year of keeping the windows down as loud as long as the weather permits and we will disinfect the buses in the after the morning round and then after the afternoon route and the next two are also mr bolton air circulation hvac and cleaning disinfecting so we will continue to replace our filters quarterly at the height of the pandemic we had moved to a mirv 14 filter which required specialized manufacturing was very high cost so we're going to move back to a merv 11 which is still higher than our traditional mirv 8 and we'll continue to replace those quarterly there already is a law that approximately 15 percent of air moving through a heating ventilation air conditioning system and hvac system must be outside fresh air and we'll continue to make sure that occurs we are fortunate that we've had quite a bit of modernization and new construction on our campuses so many of our hvac systems have in fact been updated i want to make sure the community knows that we do have these reopening plans and how they are different on every site on their websites but please be patient with that because what we're doing is we're waiting for our school sites probably all the way up to about the week before school starts because as everybody knows that these guidelines are constantly in flux and and changing so i'm asking my principals to call hold off and not adding the new guidelines into theirs yet until about a week before school until we really know what the state and the health department is telling what our guidelines are going to be right before school sites but about a week before school they will be updated on each school on website also um things that's on there is different that we did not have on there before it's chico high's block schedule as you know that they will be going to a block schedule this next year where their kids are going their students are going four periods a day and then four period a different four periods the second day so i just wanted to make sure that i added that in person chico high block schedule onto the reopening plan because it was not there before and that also there are wednesday collaboration 80-minute block schedules on there also again we still have our oak bridge as i talked to earlier an instructional model is available for any family um that's uh k-12 and again um we have our principal rhonda oblam here tonight to kind of go over the changes and what that will look like tonight again um the contingency instructional models the hybrid learning last year that was our am pm schedule um for one of our board members we've also added the a b schedule in the reopening plan that's where am pm is what we had so the kids half the kids would come in the morning the other half would come in the afternoon the ab schedule is half the kids would go full day on one day the second half the kids would go on the next day so we have added those schedules and you can see um the elementary has their schedule on there for an am pm and also an a b day schedule secondary you can see they're scheduled we even added what an a b schedule would look like for chico high with their block schedule but with the ab schedule since the junior highs and the high schools start and end times are just a little bit different on every one of them we would need to put that schedule up if that's what got voted in by the board the model that we were going to go into we will change that the difficulty and i don't want to get too deep into that but chico has blocked yeah go ahead back up about a sentence and a half and repeat about um what we've approved and as we left the school year last year we were in an am pm model now would be the model that if we had to go to a hybrid and let's no i don't even want to say that right now no no no okay i don't want to talk about any of that but thank you we needed to put it into our opening school and it'd be an am pm but if the board decided for us to change that into an a b schedule we just wanted to make sure that we had those conversations with the union ahead of time and that we had sample schedules of that ahead thank you and then we have what we started out last year was our distance learning model where everybody was online and that it has not changed from where it was last year but i do want to jump in and clarify we would only go to a modified traditional or a distance learning model if mandated to do so right correct we are going back full time unless we're mandated by the california department of health and that's what i have for the reopening plan if anybody has any more questions i'd be happy to try to answer them questions from board members yes mr tennis a comment and i i may be able to lead it to a question i wish we could have given um some treatment to the enforcement language in this document frankly it it um looks like we're just kind of laying it out there that we're going to be we're going to enforce full masking and i don't like that because i don't agree with it in particular for kids 12 and under excuse me [Applause] and ladies and gentlemen please um it makes it difficult for those that may not agree with you to speak their mind if they wish to speak on the subject with a different point of view so if you could please refrain from applause and comment and let's just keep it an orderly meeting could this document be amended to strip out the language about masking it jay go ahead answer no i'm just saying right now we have to follow the law my job and and is it's well my job is to follow the california department of health guidelines i'm not the ruler of this um reopening plan this is a plan for the board so the board will be the ruler of this plan so if i vote in favor of this plan i'm endorsing that language correct okay is it possible to amend this language uh the masking language with the items that you that you specified on that sheet or that you that you read those those five or six bullets mr tennis it's very clear that that's our decision as a board if you wish to put something out there to amend the document thank you you step up and do that could i see a copy of what you what you read please so let me provide a little clarity on this process first of all the opening plan is adopted by the board so it is the board's plan but i also need to say that the guidelines came out on monday then overnight were revised so the board agenda had to be posted on friday so that could not be part you know by our brown act posting requirements none of this could be part of the agenda we did not have the time to do that because the board agenda was already posted so because the masking was in there because we did say we will follow california department of public health guidelines we have also said that in our employee contracts that's why it is in the reopening plan and why we're allowed to discuss it tonight however given three days to come up with how do we make policy make plans for something that we found out about on monday is extremely difficult so with that in mind what we're asking the board is look at the um reopening plan if there are changes that the board wants to make to that that is certainly your prerogative if not and we understand that that you too just got this information it is just coming out and it likely will change uh we may need to add another board meeting and we've tentatively scheduled one for august 4th so that we can have further discussions and make further amendments but because of the timing of this you know we were not able to have a very clear here's how we're going to enforce this plan you just said something in in your statement to the effect that that something about this universal masking is ensconced in employee contract language or something like that can you expand on that please and explain mr hamlin who's in charge of human resources discuss that simply states that we'll follow the guidelines of the california department of health or butte county health whichever is more conservative more more demanding when we when we negotiated that we did not anticipate this ruling by the state we anticipated the possibility that an individual teacher or small group of teachers may insist on everyone around them wearing masks and neither the district's position favored that nor the unions so we wanted to have a party a third party that obviously had some authority in determining whether or not mass reward we did not anticipate a decision where they were required by the state but they had to be enforced by the district in some way um designed by the district um i have a question for mr moretti the union representative if he's available i do not believe he is on the zoo okay that's all for me from now okay miss dolby thanks um so just so i'm clear kind of on the process here um this reopening plan is on the the table to be approved tonight so that you all can move forward with some more detailed planning and budget spending and all of that right okay and if it's the will of the board to possibly make any minor adjustments such as face covering rules or enforcement etc we can tentatively adopt this as it is with the stipulation that you know either we make an amendment or we set a date for a special meeting to specifically discuss the particular items in here that we we may want to amend that is correct okay thank you okay i'm i'm gonna ask again for clarification what you are presenting mr marshawn has the provision for following the california department of public health guidelines for masking indoors in the classroom with uh the accommodation of there are exceptions that can be allowed and the process for that exception involves a licensed medical professional correct i can answer that we are required for both staff and students if we receive doctors directives to make accommodations we are required to do that that was my understanding okay um do we have uh uh we have let's see i think we're at the ask for public comment point on this i understand we have eight that have requested to address the board um who's facilita facilitating that this evening mr morgan thank you all right well thank you um in person here we have a couple of our students um celeste if she can walk up to the microphone there and also to remind you we have three minutes per speaker i'm going to interrupt you mr morgan we have a timing system for those that are here in person mr hanlon is in charge of keeping track when there's 30 seconds left of your three minutes he'll raise the orange yellow and when your time is up he will raise the red flag paper construction paper it's yours again mr morgan all right well thank you um is celeste at the microphone all right go ahead celeste hi hi hello um well at mine in my littles brother's school most of our playground stuff is made out of stuff that you like exercise on so it's hard for us to like to breathe when we're outside and stuff but brandon are you down there with her um [Applause] um oh in class most of us have trouble hearing each other when we talk with masks on so it's like hard to hear each other oh and i don't know if this is where my brother gets his headaches from but sometimes he would get headaches and he thinks it's the masks um [Applause] very brave all right well thank you and next we should have another student her name is marissa is she here she can come on down to the microphone hi i'm marissa hold on marissa let's get your mic adjusted thank you hi i'm marissa i am a incoming junior at chico high and i just want to say that masks don't seem to hinder learning in any specific way the main issues we've been having in terms of learning were more for the hybrid schedule and some mental health issues i feel like the full in person is going to help these to smooth over a little bit and masks should not hinder learning or social things or anything else that would affect school or learning so i really don't feel as though there's any negatives towards masks but they do perfect protect us from the virus which so yeah i have a question from marisa yes no oh no i'm sorry mr tennessee isn't a back and forth conversation where are we never allowed to ask questions of speakers under any circumstances i knew that was true of items from the floor but i didn't realize that was true in general yeah it is true for items from the floor um there can be requests for clarification yes right there there is a different clarification and there has been a difference um over the years in when uh there's been comments on a particular item that a board member wanted clarification on so ask your question of clarification so i don't want you to get the wrong impression marissa i respect your point of view and i'm glad you're here to to give your opinion and everything and it's wonderful i want to know if you think that what you said is true about um about it not hindering learning even if we're talking about very small children that's not a point of clarification it's not a point of view i'm asking if she feels this way not just for her but also that's not appropriate that's not appropriate i'm going to call it out of order mr tennis i'm sorry that's not appropriate of that participant who's our our next speaker all right um our next speaker thanks marissa yes thank you [Music] all right our next speaker is jenny skeebo she should be in person yes jenny so i think i might have chosen the incorrect spot i was um i'm happy to comment here though my name is jenny skibo and i have two daughters attending chico unified schools i would like to request that this board and superintendent declare masks voluntary for our schools by not enforcing the mass guidelines and leave it up to the families to decide for themselves when this all began back in march of 2020 we came together as a community to quarantine for two weeks to slow the spread the quarantine and ultimately masks and social distancing were used as a method to help keep the hospitals from being overrun while allowing them the time they needed to figure out the cova vaccine virus and how and help treat as many people as possible we collectively attempted to slow the spread because we know from history that you cannot stop an airborne virus just like you cannot stop the wind it's going to spread where it spreads and there's nothing we can do to stop it as a community we gave that gift of time to our hospitals and over this past year they came through and found vaccines and powerful therapeutics all available to help save lives with differing needs and health challenges the coronavirus has joined in with all the other viruses that continuously breeze through our communities each year ever evolving and mutating as they have done for thousands of years we are no longer in an emergency state and should be allowed to reclaim the freedoms we were born with making informed decisions on our own lives with unique health needs the state has graciously given you the ability to choose for our district how to deal with the masks as elected officials you have an obligation to be the voice of all your constituents there really is only one right answer for everybody you need to restore our freedom to make health decisions for ourselves and our families based on the information provided by the butte county public health website and a youth percentage breakdown by bc19.live there were 720 total youth cases in chico out of a total population of 121 219 that comes to a total youth infection rate of 0.5 percent for the entire city of chico of all of the data available there was just one quote youth death from coven 19 in butte county a 20 year old college student no additional information was given on this person what does this all mean breaking down the numbers to me saying that there were 720 school-age infections out of a population of over 121 thousand with zero deaths tells me our children are not in mortal danger from this virus it tells me that statistically speaking they have a high chance of surviving this virus just as they survive during other cold and flu seasons each year it tells me we can make health choices for our families without potentially killing other people's children if there are missteps along the way these numbers tell me that we deserve to have our freedom restored vote to not enforce the overreaching and unfair mass thank you your time is up again please [Music] please as has already been demonstrated it's difficult when someone has a difference of opinion to get up and make their point as well as the ones that you are here to support so please be courteous to all speakers by not demonstrating next all right miss robinson thank you um i have another parent i'm gonna be calling them her name is maureen voicemail um i'm going to move on down the list and come back to that person so the next number i'm going to be calling is somebody named torrance i'm sorry um go ahead i am speaking today to show my support and appreciation to this board for dropping a letter to the state requesting local control over covet 19 mitigation and math requirements for our district i want to urge each member of this board to stand firmly behind this and fight for the physical mental and emotional well-being of our children at the same time i would like to address the opportunities that we do have at hand while it is true that the state is requiring mass usage on all campuses in their guidance individual districts have been given and have always had the flexibility of how they choose to enforce this even though you have stated you do not have the choice to not enforce this policy we are seeing school districts across the state coming out with varying degrees of enforcement policies these are ranging from removal and mandatory distance learning for those children who do not comply in lausd to districts like alpine lakeside hamilton city and many others who are choosing to view violations of mass policy as they would a dress code violation with no severe consequences or enforcement this board has been presented many times over the last year and a half by myself and others studies and data reviewed verified and posted by the cdc which show that face masks do not lower the risk of covid19 transmission the children's are not vectors of community transmission and that children have a statistically zero percent risk of serious illness or death from covid in fact according to the cdc children have a much higher risk of serious illness and death from influenza and yet we impart none of these restrictions on them for that virus this board has also been provided numerous studies from decades of research on healthcare workers and adults which have shown serious negative physical mental and emotional consequences of prolonged mask wearing and now unfortunately we are beginning to see studies and data worldwide that are showing the same negative effects occurring in our children it is absolutely appalling to me that with the information that we have that showed these types of adverse effects anyone would continue to advocate or support forced prolonged mass wearing of our children as the hamilton unified superintendent stated i cannot continue to enforce policies i do not support and that i feel are bordering on child abuse i believe as i always have that the masking of children should be the choice of the parents not the state and certainly not this board so i urge this board to use the powers that it's been granted and allow families to make that choice i understand cusd faces potential liability issues or concerns for insurance requirements and retaliation from the state as mr landau has said so write your mass policy as needed to avoid that liability that is nothing new for anyone who has ever worked in the school district however when it comes to written and physical enforcement i ask you that you do a school to do with so many of their required policies and to be non-existent in enforcement thank you all right we are back to our in person audience um there's somebody with no name but their area code is 925.
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that program will end this friday we've had a four-week program that's run very well and then on august 2nd 9th and 16th we have three weeks of summer enrichment programs in various topics such as engineering and cooking and those programs will be taking place at school six the weeks of the second the ninth and the sixteenth uh this summer we are doing a lot of building building maintenance uh we're upgrading the gym in the high school various other jobs that are going on throughout the district our custodians are working very diligently to get our abilities ready for september we're also in the process my administrative team uh working on updating the curriculum uh we may be going through monitoring this coming year which is referred to as cusack we haven't received the schedule from the county as of yet but they did send out a notice uh indicating that there will be meetings in august so we are into anticipating that monitoring and mrs calabrese our newly appointed director of curriculum instruction uh will be forming some committees and i'm working on that preparation with me during the summer and in the fall i we're also hiring some new staff members who will be with us in september taking over for some staff members who've moved on to other districts and also staff members who have retired i am working on new guidelines for september's opening i had mentioned at our last meeting that governor murphy has come out with some minimal guidelines for schools opening in september but um as you know there's a lot of changes to those guidelines you hear on the radio every day the cdc comes out with new guidelines regarding masks uh yesterday a committee of pediatricians came out with some other guidelines that differ so more than likely i will be posting to our website and sending out a notification to parents uh regarding our guidelines in late august so that they could be as current as as possible just want to make a notation also uh each year we do a survey of our anti-bullying grading it's called it's posted to our website we have a resolution on the agenda tonight accepting those grades i believe each of the board members has a copy in their folder there's also a copy on our website of of how we did that's it at this time any questions from our board members before we look at the consent agenda any committee reports no you you've touched it uh you've touched on building grounds it's very busy i i know the gym um upgrades it's a major upgrade over at the high school is ongoing i know there was a meeting that uh ike unfortunately couldn't attend uh last week but dr pantaliano and carl raincourt did attend uh right now the hvac unit itself is on back order with a possible delivery date of august as you know because of covid a lot of parts uh are on delay i have a contact that train i did put a phone call into them uh i got the same answers that land got alfano rba is trying to see if they can get some temporary air conditioning into the gym uh prior to installing the floor because to install the floor the right way we should have the air conditioner on so we'll keep the board posted uh loose been land have been doing a phenomenal job with sending uh emails out and uh giving us updates more than that uh that's pretty much it okay any other committee reports do you want to make mention yeah i just want to make mention that we are in negotiations with the principals their contract is up so we've okay thank you very much okay so um at this point i would like to just look at the consent agenda um mr savasana was there any questions from not at this time okay if we look at the consent consent agenda a couple items i'd like to point out on page two uh i'm recommending kathy burns who's been with us for about uh 10 to 12 years as a grade 3 grade 5 teacher will be a full-time title 1 teacher at school number 6 effective september 1st that will then allow us to have a full-time title 1 person in each of our elementary schools who part of their responsibility besides working with students will be overseeing that federally funded program in each building i'm recommending that recommending jennifer piscocho as our new 12-month supervisor of instruction at a beginning salary of 84 6.
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thank you for that mr moore and we get to see some of that that dr foley puts in status every week so we could see exactly what was going to be coming our way so thank you for that background information always that it helps to look at the vouchers then correctly are there any questions or comments thank you mr moore uh we're going to go ahead and move on to 7.2 this is the special education day school report by and this is our quarterly report for day school special ed mrs miller is in the audience and she would love to answer any questions if you guys have questions great job questions thank you for being here thank you mrs miller uh 7.3 this is the rescue sub report again good evening vice president wilson members of the board the comment that i have and i hope mr moore would like is that we actually spent a lot less than we had anticipated so that helped in terms of budget savings in the overall picture if you recall the board approved a little over 1.2 million and we only spent a little over 760 000 so that's wonderful um in what you approved in the consent agenda we are continuing that for next year with esi uh we have a similar budgeted amount um you know prices did go up and as well as the fact that you guys approved back in april are increases in our substitute not only in our long term but our daily rates so we anticipate that you know it'll be an additional cost this next year but hopefully we'll still maybe realize a little bit of a cost savings at the end thank you mrs martin's does anyone have any questions for mrs martins perfect uh 7.4 the student student data update dr foley yes vice president wilson members of the board okay this is an evening that we actually enjoy talking about because we're going to talk about the business that we do which is teaching and learning and talking about how our kids are doing and one of the things that we have an opportunity to do every year when there is standardized assessment data is to talk with you about how our students are doing on that particular measure knowing that that is one one data point of many that we are that we will talk about but it allows us to see how our higley students doing in their performance compared to students across the state which always is important to kind of know and it allows us to calibrate our own tools how are our own tools telling us about there's many tools that we use and they're assessments for different purposes and we are working very hard to understand those very well we are fortunate to have dr sue borsig who this year is serving as the n trump executive director for elementary and she's also still doing parts and pieces of her student data and assessment and she's going to provide for us a quick conversation snapshot on how our higley students are doing as you know we took standardized assessment this year it was a unique year uh to be standardized assessing but we did and we want to share with you some global results knowing that there are many factors and facets that have to do with how students at any one particular grade level performed when we caveat is that please know that that we will have global conversations here but very deep conversations about why and how come and what does this mean and how do we use this data happens at the site and local level but it's important to step back from an organization to just get a general sense how did haley students do in a very unique year on these measures as one piece and so sue's going to kind of do a quick little dive for us to see about how our students performed this past year dr borzich excuse me i forgot to turn my mic on but president recent vice president wilson and members of the board i'm very excited to be able to present to you this year kind of a summary of the district and or the state data that our students took during the last school year as you can imagine we were a little apprehensive about how this would turn out given the year that we had but i i do want to tell you that we are very excited about the results that we're seeing just as a little bit of background looks like please this year we worked very hard to make sure we defined what our balanced assessment framework looked like here in higley so that we were not assessing for the sake of assessing but just having purposeful assessment that we could use that data to drive instruction moving forward and to take a look at our trends in multiple ways so we use the model that the arizona department of education uses on their website and we actually identified what assessments um are in each one of the categories of our balanced assessment framework tonight we're going to be talking about that area in blue the external summative assessments those are the state assessments the azm2 azm what formerly the az merit next year's to be a the aasa assessment and so the results that i'm going to show you this evening reflect that assessment um and as you know we do have a unique testing situation last year um in addition to not only it being a year of covet unfortunately um we did have a change in assessments azmerit you can go to the next slide sorry next slide um we had azmerit prior to last year which um in the elementary was very similar to the azm2 but in the secondary ac merit focused on courses versus a comprehensive grade level exam so this year when we moved into azm2 it was a comprehensive grade level exam versus focused on whether kids at the secondary were in geometry or algebra 1 or algebra 2.
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so they were asked what is the difference how is the science difference in those other states they had no answers because it's all made up there there really is no reason um you have the CDC dictating that's led by fauci if you guys saw I think it was just today he was actually referred to Department of Justice for a criminal investigation so I don't really feel you know like I trust somebody lying under oath we have the APA who has a vested interest somebody else already said with Pfizer um Let's see we have Lamont his wife is affiliated with PPE mask producer so those are the people that are making decisions what you know that our kids should or shouldn't be wearing masks I personally don't trust any of those people to give us guidance um we've seen the vaccine works it doesn't there was some proposed regulations today that the even if you had a vaccine the kids may have to wear masks so doesn't really make sense Connecticut has 4.5 million doses two and a half million people out of three and a half million people were vaccinated and that's not to mention um all the people that have antibodies people that were sick we know they say follow the silence but the science says that if you were sick you have antibodies there's a huge percentage of the population on top of the people vaccinated so I think Connecticut we might even lead the nation in a highest percentage of vaccinations if the vaccination works then why are we one of the three states or one of the nine states still requiring masks uh the key point I saw was that there's no hospitalizations no deaths the kids are not susceptible every study shows the kids are not affected the 330 kids that did die 100 of them were shown to have pre-existing conditions there's no studies there's no studies to prove one way or another every study that's come out shows masks you know they actually like somebody said bacteria carbon dioxide there's various issues um with them I think one of the big things I took away is somebody mentioned the psychological aspect um people keep talking about the viral aspect of this illness but I worked in the medical field and when I worked the Middle Field the first thing they ask you how are you feeling today how's your mood to ask you a bunch of psychiatry psychiatry has been completely neglected in this situation uh which is like someone said our kids need to see facial expressions they need to see anger happiness sadness to learn and so you know we're doing psychological damage to them think about how many kids committed suicide because of lockdowns how many uh Mental Health crisis as we saw um and The Masks have just made it work every profession that has supposed to protect our kids has actually betrayed our children so I'll lead to my conclusion is what I wanted to say the board is as you know there are many components of Health in fact children adults go to their doctors they're asked about psychology really the viruses even have relevance do the right thing stop letting three letter agencies politicians lobbying groups big Pharma terrorize our children stunt their development the risk benefit analysis clearly says masks are more harmful than beneficial and this analysis can be Revisited in times of higher covered hospitalizations thank you all right that's everybody who signed up I have asked you who did I say you had to stop so you could come back so if you'd like to come back and finish your thoughts please do come back thank you [Applause] thank you very much um I'm not quite sure when Public Health became more of run and hide and be scared than it was to keep the public calm with suggestions and now it's become fear and mandates my children don't want to leave their school or their friends and given their increased anxiety issues due to the nature of this past year due to the pandemic lifestyle we would like to provide them with some stability but my husband and I cannot stand by and watch them lose yet another year of Education tonight I ask that you please update the reopening plan immediately let us know how Brookfield will operate in the absence of a state mandate or once that state mandate has been lifted and I am begging you to allow our students to thrive in their academics provide much needed normal social interaction and allow the parents of this community the right to make their own decisions about their child's health and well-being thank you foreign is there anybody who had not signed up who would like to speak hello my name ishi I'm on 49 Main Street Newtown Connecticut I came here for support but I do have to say that um my smile is my love that I can show humanity and I like to laugh a lot and a young child will laugh about 300 times a day and an adult on our age we laugh about 20 times a day so what happens to us when we don't laugh or smile with each other is our health fails and I've seen with masks I can't see what's going on with you and I think it's very important for the kids to see our smile I have been uh homeschooled and working with PODS of children from home schools and I have been unmasked the entire year and kids have been sitting in my lap they've laughed with me and there was one baby that came to me with the mother and in the beginning the baby wouldn't go to the people it was kind of scared and after the third week the baby started to laugh when I would laugh and he would come to us and hold us so the children are not learning how to socialize with each other with the adults around them and with strangers and I would really ask the Board of Ed to please consider not masking our children and asking the teachers if they're comfortable to please also show their smile and their love to their students thank you [Applause] is there anybody else I mean hi uh Rachel olagna 256 whiskey near Road um you guys have heard a lot of stories from all of us about the reasons we don't want our children to be masked um I'm not going to add to that I just want to say that I think what we're really looking for is for all of all of you to represent us um and to fight the guidance from the powers that be if it's not in the best interest of our children which a lot of us don't believe it is um and I didn't catch everybody's name up here but I just noticed that not everybody who's wearing masks is actually wearing them properly tonight so it almost seems like maybe they aren't the kind of tool that we think they are [Applause] thank you is there anybody else um I'm a newbie as well as well I teach four-year-olds and this year has been a struggle in the environment that you're describing on trying to teach them how to get along our anger issues our social emotional issues are all we've been able to work on in our classroom academics are you know to the minimal because we have to Smart them as social emotionally right now as for my own children I have an incoming ninth grader and an incoming sixth grader who at this moment is two grades below and last year brought him even further his IEP had to be updated twice last year to Encompass the speech the OT that he wasn't properly receiving because you can't do that over Zoom he was a rabbit in a cage at our house while I had to go to work and his sister's trying to help him and teach herself because our daycare stayed open all but one month where everybody had was stuck at home we were fighting on the front with the parents that had to go with other parents who just wanted our children to still play but my son had no choice and so putting a mask on him he has a lack of social skills he has a lack of expression emotion so he can't defend himself and now he really can't even read anybody's faith so now he's even further blind than now our IEP recommended we see a neurologist to catch him up to see what they can help not even just the school anymore so we had to compile a 30-page IEP with now he has all his assessments just to try to see what we can do to play catch-up so if we go back masked we're going to set him back further amongst anybody else's kid who may be in the same position or if not worse because now my sons possibly he was already on possible autism now he's even further since reprocessing and a language disorder that he can't even make up for hiding behind masks the teachers this he's I can tell you he's upside down in a chair because he has no clue what the teacher behind the computer behind the mask is even saying he didn't even tell you what happened yesterday in summer school because he's tired he's tired of by time he gets the language barrier of expressing what the teacher has to say let alone the barrier in his brain of the information being processed he's done he's cooked and it's only three hours for summer school and he has to ride a bus back home and they say there's maybe five kids and the two of them sitting together are siblings so they're like why are we wearing a mask so they say you know what the bus moves we take it off for a few minutes we can't do it and I said fine you can't breathe you can't breathe you can't understand what's going on then you have to seek help but he's not able to get it when everybody's in school so I just wanted that to be heard that some of these kids are even on a worse the Special Ed's kids might even even not even be able to speak like he can at least speak but if he's scared he shuts down he will not defend himself he's been hid he's hid in the bathroom when he was in Huckleberry he's come far enough now he doesn't hide thank God but he doesn't have the words like if somebody hurts him he's not going to tell you hey I'm hurt if he falls off that slide he's not going to come and tell his teacher so if the T he can't even see anybody's face he's not going to know if they're mad at him he's not going to know if they're sad at them and I really can't afford for him to go any further backwards because I feel like I have a five-year-old not an 11 and a half year old and I already have a two-year-old at home and when I get done teaching four-year-olds I don't want to have to reposition 11 year old when I can come home he should be able to help me through dinner I should be able to say you do your homework while I cook and I can't because he's got so much one-on-one so I just asked for some help so they can succeed like some of these other children are trying to succeed thank you thank you before you leave we need your name and address thank you sorry [Applause] all right is that anybody else my name is Janice catino 37 White Pine Drive I wasn't planning on speaking tonight but I wanted to go on record with some of the things that campy picked up by the camera for people watching at home so first of all the air conditioner is broken and for how many of you if we all had to be masked right now would have been so willing to speak as an educator as I shared with you last meeting to teach for eight hours a day to really be doing the job well and facilitating learning it's hard to wear a mask in this heat I shared with you the story of my seven-year-old who was on the bus on a very hot day was so terrified to take down her mask to take a breath she described almost feeling like she was drowning but she didn't want to get in trouble so our our kids mostly in Brookfield are compliant because they're good kids but being compliant does not mean that you are cognitively engaged and an environment like this or on the bus ride or doing the Pacer test as we talked about or learning for eight hours does not create optimal learning experiences for our children um I also wanted to say thank you to the board last time because when we went home and watched the public comments especially to Mr Belden you immediately said we need to Advocate we we felt that you were really listening to us and I'm also proud of our community for those of you who can't see there's about 40 people here many different people than the last meeting and that just goes to show you how many people care but I'm proud of our community because everybody that's come up here has been passionate has been on task but they've been respectful and want to work with you we've all seen many clips of board meetings that have gone viral that have turned antagonistic or combative and that has not happened in our community and that just goes to show you how much our parents care about their children thank you foreign [Applause] I'll just say we as a board appreciate that um it's uh we're all parents too and we were elected and ran for this board because we are vested in the schools because we have kids in the schools or grandkids and for those of us with gray hair um so I appreciate it because we do need to work together as a community so is there anybody else would like to speak sir foreign Ontario I live at 17 dairy farm over here in Brookfield I wasn't going to say anything but everybody spoke so well and all the parents seemed so uh passionate about this that I wanted to say something to the board I think my recommendation is our community is clearly speaking very loudly and provided so many facts that we all know you know if we're paying attention to what's going on out there and uh I think it's time where it makes parents free to choose and we use just some common sense and give the parents the freedom to choose what's right for their child you know it's been a year and a half of just craziness and I coach a lot of kids athletically and I train a lot of kids in different schools Brookfield to Hanbury New Milford all over the place and with masking all the CO2 thing is a real thing the mental health issue is a real thing and the long-term issues with the social piece like they're going to be our leaders 10 20 30 years from now where is that going to put where is that going to put us in 10 20 30 years as a society and then the lack of motivation for them to learn I feel like motivation is not their learning in the classroom or online wearing that mask it's annoying I don't think it provides the protection um that is out there for these kids they are safe and I think it's time we just start using some common sense and again put it back in the parents hands to make them choose to wear a mask or not and wear a mask and I think it's as simple as that so that's all I wanted to say thank you foreign Mickey Durkin seven summer pasture Brookfield um it wasn't really gonna but I have a little something um we're just asking or me my husband we're asking and many of you here too that you are elected board not be dismissive with our request uh whether you agree or not uh I did watch last meeting when I was here uh there were some eye rolls as the parents spoke um I thought this was supposed to be more of an objective kind of thing I understand there are parents that don't feel the same way as I do um or as we do and that's fine they have the right to keep wearing masks if that's what they want them to or I just want us to be able to have that same sort of um right to choose for our kids what we feel is right for them so that's it [Applause] right public comment is closed and I want to thank everybody for very well thought out at one point seriously we don't have all the rights but the but the uh but this is obviously a very challenging discussion um with that I'd like to ask the board if you would be willing to move items X a plan in the agenda from its current position on new business to the next item on the agenda motion yeah second yeah all in favor of adjusting the agenda say hi hi all right so the next up on our agenda is the discussion on Paul opening the plan system recommended so what I'd like to do is invite um Dr Sullivan and Dr Garcia to joined us up here that way if we ask questions there's a microphone for you and I don't have to make you jump back and forth to the program so Dr Burrell while they're seeing themselves could you just give us a broad update on sure we are on the uh I'm sorry Mike my phone's been off uh broad update on where we are on the uh on the opening plan sure so um we are actually in an extremely um Strong place on the opening plan um and uh to answer your question directly I want to thank all the parents for coming out the opening team uh first of all the opening plan that was distributed on June 1st was under the existing guidance and mandates that were still in existence until July 20th this year and as many of you may know Governor Lamont extended his uh his executive powers were extended at this point through September 30th and I'm sure Dr Sullivan will share a little bit about that exactly what that means um having said that we have utilized a new template and our opening plan will be significantly reduced down to about 13 pages from 41 pages is very clear about every piece of mitigation strategy and logistic the main one that everybody wants to know about is the 100 in learn in-person learning that's where we were in the spring the fact that the state has mandated we have a safe reopening plan is based on some people mentioned funding there's Esser Grant funds out there in the state and one of the functions is that we have to produce a new plan the reality is we were in person ready to go 100 percent all spring we had the um there was probably at the high school a little more than 70 of the students in and as we went down the grades more and more children were in terms of a higher percentage while the remote option was still there having said that the new plan is is really almost ready to go we were waiting for a little bit further collaboration with Dr Garcia and Dr Sullivan who have already reviewed the plan um but just let me take you through the process a little bit the opening team which consists of a few board members several parents teachers other uh stakeholders uh from the uh the employee groups and some students they have all looked at the plan over the weekend they've given their feedback the principles and central Office Team and our nurse coordinator have met this week several times to go through the plan and really tighten up all the mitigation strategies mind you based on what we have from the CDC that's the newest released information that came out on July 9th at this point we do not have any further Direction guidance or mandate from the State Department of Public Health or the Connecticut State Department of Education we were to have a meeting with them last week the meeting was postponed until yesterday Tuesday that meeting while they discussed mitigation strategies with superintendents and health directors and so forth they gave us no nothing in writing and they really didn't give us any direction on masks and where they were going to go in terms of a mandate or an option or whatever that might be we are we were waiting for that and then the plan was for tonight to actually share the full opening plan with everybody and then disseminate this evening or tomorrow we are waiting one more week the board has a special meeting scheduled for next week where we'll be talking about um the strategic planning process and also I will share the opening plan with the board in public once we go through that the board there's an approval process the board considers the plan and then votes to approve the plan um at that point I hope and pray that the state gives us further Direction on masking and we will do everything our can we can to give Clarity on some of those but one of the things people need to understand is being under the auspices of the state and the mandates that do come down we want to wait to get their information and so that's why we're going to give it one more week to see what they can give to us in terms of Direction and obviously collaboration with our health director and our pediatrician and from there get that information out to you next week so that's that's the process and the plan thus far Mr Belden I don't know if you have any other questions uh in terms of process and where we're at or any other board members so we have some questions putting the mask point to the side right uh for a moment sure so we're not going to let that go but sure the uh in terms of the basics of the plan is it a full reopening all kids back in school plan we are ready to go 100 okay and one of the things people did ask and Mrs um Greenstein is on the opening team so she's seen the plan um the um our former medical advisor along with working with Dr Garcia who's our new medical advisor Shields are not necessary so those are not not going to be in place we still have the hand washing and some of the classic mitigation strategies sharing the materials is back less cohorting looking at our high school model which didn't cohort was very successful last year so the guidance is forth coming from CDC and if anybody can take it's up there and you can just look up CDC it's right there the K-12 guidance we are really in alignment with that right now we know the American Academy of Pediatrics came out just the other day some people referenced it today with masking for everyone that wasn't in the cdc's guidance the cdc's guidance was masking for the unvaccinated uh optional for the vaccinated so we're trying to make sense of all of this information coming out just like the parents are um I get it and again a little further collaboration with our our medical advisor and our uh Public Health advisor and from there we'll tighten up the plan over the next few days present it to the board for consideration and then disseminate the plan as updated as it can be based on the guidance we have or mandates that come forward one of the things that we do need to mention again I think Dr Sullivan is the best person to talk to the specific extension of the governor's executive order 12a it's now executive order 13.
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and the last two digits their phone number is two four are you present all right thank you um next i have uh nathan if nathan's available to please come up with the microphone hi how you all doing again so um i would just like to well for starters thank all of you guys for what you're what you're doing because i know this isn't easy hearing all this one side and the other and i just also want to stress that i understand that everybody in this building no matter what side they're on whether we should have masks or not are here because of the love of our children and the children of chico and we want what's best for them some people think one thing is best some people think the other but we all are speaking for what we believe is what's best for our children now with that being said i'm going to make everyone behind me angry so um i feel that mask wearing right now is pretty important with the delta variant coming out with the case rate in butte county doubling in the last month and we're so close to being ready to have vaccinations for anybody that wants them and having kids sit shoulder to shoulder with each other when they don't even have the option for any kind of vaccination or any kind of protection from this just seems mean um so you know i'm coming looking at it from a different view because my family has been hit very hard by covid i've lost multiple family members and it's been really difficult so i understand that i'm maybe a little more careful and skeptical about just opening up the classrooms but i mean we're just a few months away from having the younger kids able to get a vaccine so having the masks to protect them until everybody has that choice i think it's a prudent thing to do i believe once everyone has the option to get a vaccine that's when it should become people's choice thank you all right well thank you um next i have corey who's corey here thank you i want to start off by saying thank you for allowing me to take a moment to share with you my thoughts and expectations for this upcoming school year as previously mentioned my name is corey and i'm the proud parent to two wonderful children i have a son entering junior high this year and my daughter will be in second grade within these past two years there has been abundance of stressful events for our children in 2018 we are faced with the campfire many of us know people who lost homes face terrifying evacuations and some of us even came close to losing loved ones but our students were resilient they pushed through with determination and overcame unthinkable circumstances we fast forward to 2020 and we are struck again with the catastrophic event what our students knew to be spring break or simply a relaxing week away from school turned out to be an ever-changing event of what ifs how and is there even a light at the end of this tunnel as a school community we pushed through and encouraged our students to keep pressing forward as they had to do numerous times in the past we promised them it had to get better and for me personally i kept telling my kids look for that silver lining our children miss their friends and their teachers so when the opportunity was given to go back in person my kids personally jumped at that opportunity there is no way to describe the light in your child's eyes when you tell them that they get to go back in person even if it's just two hours there's also no way to describe the disappointment in their eyes and in your heart as a parent when they tell you after their first week back i don't think i can do this what do you mean you can't do this after everything we've been faced with in such a short amount of time you can't do this the emotional toll that this mask wearing is running deep the damage we have inflicted through mask swearing we will see for a long time in the future our students want the comforting smiles and silly grins from their friends all of this is now hidden behind a mask so when they say they can't do this i begin to understand the basic comfort that they are given is hidden behind a mask what was once whipped away from them is still not even close to being replaced you cannot take away basic human contact then cover it up with a mask and call it for called the benefit of the greater good we as parents know what is best for our kids we live every day protecting them and guiding them we know the risks of covid we know the risk of infection we know so and with our kids being disciplined and reprimanded for not wearing a mask to me is completely asinine this is in no way benefiting our children so i can only encourage that we don't enforce the masks that we don't discipline them for not wearing it they've already been through enough and if there's one thing to take away from this what are we doing for our children really what are we doing thank you madam president i'd like to call um maureen just one more time to see you thank you message machine thank you um board we're at the um the point now where we we can ask additional questions of clarification if we wish or if anyone would like to make a motion and i would like to just quickly clarify what i believe is in front of us the reopening plan uh is um following the california department of public health's guidelines regarding wearing face coverings in the classroom it does not require face coverings on the playground and we also have mitigation for helping our folks our folks our kids go through lunch and other things with having multiple stations to pick up their food and significant outdoor facilities for eating outdoors doesn't require them to have a mask on when they enter campus the mask requirement begins at the classroom door and we have outlined what can be done if there is a medical emotional requirement for that child not to wear a mask that is documented by a medical professional it does a board member wish to make a motion regarding the reopening plan dr kaiser i moved that we accept this proposed instructional model again we've only had a maximum of three days to even look at the options and i do think we will probably end up with a additional meeting in early august when there's greater clarification but i believe that this does contain what we said we would do in person uh full day instruction and the other aspects of this we can only change when those allowances are clarified by the county and the state board of health is there a second i'll second that and if i can have just a quick point of discussion yes ma'am on what dr kaiser just said um i think it's important to note that this document um especially on some of these more hot hot topic pieces like the mask mandate and how it's enforced this document's broad enough for us to be able to work on those details you know in the coming weeks and come to a consensus and a really solid plan that you know has the least impact on students within the guys of what we're being mandated to do mr landau um i'd like to like to offer a friendly amendment that we simply go ahead and schedule a meeting for august 4th at this time just put it on the books now we can do that thank you yes it's already been tentatively calendared tom so that's not a problem to intend on purpose to come back on august 4th yes mr tennis um i would ask i guess an amendment friendly or unfriendly i'm not totally sure i have a point of view i'm sorry i don't interrupt you but i'm just a point of order do we need to yes we need i i it starts to get muddy when we have a whole a whole bunch of amendments no you're you're correct ms dalby um we need to deal with mr landau's friendly amendment and actually reject it or put it with the original motion and so it needs a second is that how that works or is it just that the original the original motion maker can would you like to accept that yeah after collecting stepped august the 4th thank you sorry mr tennis i just wanted to make sure yeah it can get complicated and if we don't keep it from doing that that no i appreciate the input um given that it seems like we might be meeting again on the topic um would anyone else entertain the idea of striking this face covering language out of here and waiting until we get something more complete on in august in other words i'm i'm asking for an amendment that we simply strike out strip from this document the face covering language that is specific to students in deference to this meeting that we're going to have in august i'm going to rule that's not a friendly amendment but you may make the motion and if it uh if it receives a second then it would need to be cleared before we go back to the main motion is there a second to mr tennis's motion i'll second that there is a motion and a second to strike the please and my my discussion point is that it doesn't hinder this document and our ability to go forward and we're going to have the discussion anyway um and so i feel like it's it's um no problem to strike that point from this document and have that added later when we have the ability to further clarify the mandates coming from the state and have the discussion with more time on the floor um at a longer at a different meeting mr landau and then ms geyser my concern with this amendment is simply that if for any reason we don't have there's some kind of an emergency and we don't have the august 4 meeting this becomes our reopening plan and we are open to a a lot of liability for not having any language that addresses the cdph's guidelines do we not have a meeting before the first day of school august 4th after the first days yeah if i might ask an administration to not have guidance in what we approve tonight for our site administrators and people to begin to plan if they're going to get things prepared to communicate if we don't if they don't have something to prepare from in the way of guidance from us i'm concerned that not having that provision with the accommodations in this document this evening that we're we're putting our administration that's trying to get ready for school in a bad spot now undoing it if this the state removes it would not be a problem and we could do that on the fourth but to not have something to use as a guidance at this point i'm not comfortable with putting our administration in that position dr kaiser i was already recognized and i absolutely the state has said this is a legal expectation they haven't clarified as many people have pointed out how it gets enforced they have not changed the legal expectation and so i think we need to adopt it as is we can come back on the 4th assuming that we will be able to come back on the 4th and there has been further clarification that all of our administrators and our teachers in our contracts literally state that we have to be following the guidelines so i think that uh trying to take something out that's in all of our other documents and agreements will create a real serious issue so i'm strongly against that okay i'm going to call for a vote on the motion that's on the floor all those in favor you want to restate it so that it's cool yeah we're restating it uh mr tennis i believe that what you have asked for is that we approve the reopening plan and remove the language regarding requiring masking okay yes that's correct specific to the the part associated with students yes all those in favor signify by saying aye hi so i'm sorry i apologize so what about her original i gather you don't accept she doesn't accept it it's it's not because it was not a friendly amendment it's a it's a it kind of stands as an independent standard right if this does if this does not pass we go back to ms kaiser's thank you so much okay um again those in favor aye aye those opposed nay no okay the motion fails we are back then on ms kaiser's amendment as uh miss kaiser's motion as amended by mr landau's amendment to schedule an august 4th meeting so that we can meet the announcement guidelines and things it's so much easier to cancel a meeting than it is to get it on the calendar okay any further discussion i'm going to call then for the vote all those in favor of um approving the plan tonight as presented with the mitigations for accommodating students that have a medical emotional exemption signify by saying i i opposed name it passes three to two uh no i i voted i you were an i i'm sorry my original statement was still valid which is that this is broad enough that we can make changes at the august 4th meeting i would have i would have voted nay without the august 4th amendment let's um let's re-vote orally to make sure that it's clear what we have done in the minutes all those in favor by um indicate please in person uh dolby aye kaiser tennis nay lando i robinson i so it passes four to one erica are we are we clear okay so to clarify um we will move forward with the reopening plan with direction from the board to further develop the protocols for masking which we will bring back to our august 4th board meeting for review discussion and approval by the board yes okay um the next item and thank you even though i i yelled at you for being inappropriately applauding i do appreciate the fact that you have come to the meeting to express where you are with the things that are so important to your children so i do thank you for being being here okay next one is 9.2.1 discussion approval of board policy update on independent study and this is miss daily actually it's mr marshawn ms odelum yeah so um one of the trailer bills that came out with the budget mr marshawn let's take a two minute break to allow uh folks to to leave if they wish and my congratulations to all the little ones who were so well behaved in a meeting you guys were wonderful updates to board policy 6158 as a result of passage of sb 130.
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jennifer whose teachers has done a great job teaching grade 4 at school number three most currently is a highly effective teacher and i also anticipate that jennifer in a new position will be a highly effective supervisor so i wish jennifer the best of luck she will begin that position officially september 1st dennis sayer and simon bronco are per diem teachers at the high school uh they've been with us for a couple of years dennis in science simon braco special education they are going to continue in that capacity uh claudia boscavage is going to be a part-time title one teacher with us at school number four uh lauren nolan uh is a new employee with us is going to be grade six teacher maternity leave at school number six and then when that maternity lead ends she will then become a part-time title one teacher at school number six uh page three fourth one down i do want to make mention that a resolution to accept the retirement of andrea carden supervisor of instruction effective december 31st 2021 i want to wish andrea the best of luck and i want to thank andrea for her many years of service to the district to her students as a special education teacher and most recently as a supervisor of instruction for the last few years andrea's done a great job with her and i i wish andrew the best of luck george sokozen is a was a full-time bus driver with us we accept his resignation effective july 9th a little further down the page as per contract with the cpa we are accepting um salary classification changes which we do each year at this time and usually in september where p where staff members who take graduate credits move from one classification to another classification and that does necessitate a change in salary and that's indicated indicated on top of page four uh bottom of page four we have settled our contracts with the technology group uh each of those technology employees are listed with their new annual salaries we're also appointing at the bottom of page four and continuing on all of our staff who work in our 21st century after school program teachers at thirty dollars per hour uh teacher aids at 15 per hour uh as you know we received the 21st century grant it's a 500 000 a year grant that we receive for five years next year we'll be entering our fourth year of the grantham grant it allows us to run a full after-school program for students in grades four through eight at no cost of the district so the funding that we receive pays for the salaries of the teachers the aides the site supervisors that work in the program so top of page six uh continuing with teacher aides we have uh three site supervisors we're recommending who've been with us scott pavino michelle maldonado barbara squarto also linda lewikowski who's been our project director in the program for the last 15 years linda will continue as project director frank mancuso who is an outside evaluator and works with us to write reports and submit them to the state of new jersey will continue as our evaluator for the 21st century program and again all the funding that we receive for this program pays the salary of the evaluator project director and staff members that run the program uh bottom of page six we have a contract that we settled with our secretarial staff so we are just posting their new salaries for the 21 22 school year that's on page six and on page seven cafeteria workers uh approved their their contract last um board meetings so we're just uh posting their annual salaries and the same is true for bus drivers right below that uh page eight custodians full time in part time we settled the three-year contract with our custodian so we are posting the new salaries for our full-time and part-time and that runs on to page nine so as dr pantaliano mentioned before we are negotiating right now with the principals and then we have the supervisor unit and that should finish all groups with new three-year contracts hopefully we'll have all that finished by september page 10 policies and procedures uh we are approving the violence and vandalism report for the period of january 1st through january 30th we are approving the harassment and intimidation of bullying training report from january 1st to june 30th these are programs and reports that we do each year every six months mandated by the the state and the fourth resolution on that page is to approve the department of education self-assessment of determining grades under the anti-bullying bill of rights that's what's posted to our website and if we have any community members watching tonight you can go to our website and look at those grades and as we do each year uh our principals and our hiv committees do a very good job and uh our self-assessment always turns out to be extremely positive so i'm happy to report that uh so mr alfano want to finance any a couple of items from gina mentioned about extensive work that's being done in schools uh gym upgrade replacing functions uh explored all going so far according to a plan uh no snags not wood we are working on our end of year closed captioning not year our available will be coming and coming most likely mid to late september and the last page of the agenda is the resolution for the county reports those are reports that go down to the county it's the year-end report for 2021 and they will be going down to the county tomorrow end of day along with the executed resolution that's pretty much it okay i do want to point out under finance on page 19.
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so it was a little bit different in content and of course we had no testing in the year 2019 the prior year so really we are we're looking at these test results um almost in an isolated incident because just because given of the dynamics that we had we had different environments for learning throughout the year so keep that in mind you know we had some remote some in person some a combination thereof and the environment for testing among groups of students was different as well we had to bring in our remote learners to take this test because there was no option for remote assessment at the state level so it does change the dynamics in which students are assessed certainly and um attendance modifications of course then were put in place for those attend those in-person and remote learners so as a result we can use this achievement data as a body of evidence and we've encouraged our leaders to do so to determine launch points for instruction so in other words where are our students where do we need to start with instruction and move forward we can also make comparisons to overall state data which is what we're going to look at this evening how did we do in comparison to the state average we can't use this data as a trend over time analysis for the reasons i just spoke of and because they were different tests we're also going to move into a brand new test next year so we'll have some of the same restrictions but but not quite um the same as what we have now so using it for a trend over time analysis is not necessarily the best use of this data we can't determine growth because we're comparing two different tests of course and we can't determine growth over a two year period of time at our lower grade levels because we missed taking a test last year but um and we really can't correlate attendance to be any type of a predictor of achievement due to the fact that we had attendance modifications last year so keeping in mind kind of what the purpose of that is um considerations that we'd like to um i think i went once let's slide too fast grades tested um just to familiarize yourself um in for acm 2 we great we tested grades 3 through 8 and grade 10 for azsci which is the science portion of the state test we tested in grades 5 8 and 11.
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it's it has the power of law so we just need to be mindful of that in terms of how we're operating things at this point so those are some of some of the constraints but also some of the flexibilities and the layered approach that they talk about um is is what we're doing with mitigation strategies but as I said to some parents through email or conversation we had hoped for and we're seeing a relaxing of some of the mitigation strategies as well are you getting any signals at all that the state will decree on masks or will they give us flexibility we do not have signals either way yet or if there's a conversation on both sides which is very frustrating matter of fact Dr Murphy and I have been in communication on this delay feels like a delay and I know the state is also looking at the variant and other concerns and um they'll give us their guidance when they're ready but we need to be ready and by the end of July it's important for parents to know what's going on here so we'll have that information next week so let me turn to Dr Sullivan and just uh you know as you as you're talking to the State Department of Health and you're seeing what's going on in here in Brookfield could you comment a little bit on the state of what mandates we're working with and what you're hearing about and and then what and what you're seeing in the way of you know the facts of what's going on here in Brookfield sure can you hear me all right yep so first I'd like to apologize for the to the individual or individuals who've tried to contact me this past year and may have not been able to reach me uh they should have been able to reach our acting director uh I have experienced uh seven hospitalizations in the past year uh and oftentimes uh communicated with the board and with the town from a hospital bed so I apologize to that individual or individuals who was not able to reach me um second of all I'd like to give you a little historical background with regard to covid-19 in General within the state of Connecticut some may recall that very early on in the game March of 2020 the commissioner of Public Health was fired by the governor this put things in a very very precarious situation because the state had somebody to be a scapegoat for the number of deaths that were occurring in nursing homes and it happened to be the commissioner of Public Health thereafter the um State turned all the decision making over uh not to the remaining Deputy Commissioner of Public Health but rather to the Department of Economic and Community Development under commissioner Dan Lehman and all of the sector rules that you received or read about between March and perhaps uh early fall were written not by the Department of Public Health but were written by the Department of Economic and Community Development I know it sounds weird but that's the way it was and finally a commissioner was appointed as commissioner of Public Health who happens to be a physician and a an mph but unfortunately she was also the commissioner of Social Services so she was sharing the role and so we in the Department of Public Health were kind of betwixted in between as to what was going on at the state level and I want to I want you to realize that we as local Department of Public Health directors are just Messengers we are not the decision makers although our group the Connecticut Association of directors of Health petitioned the governor and indicated that we needed some input from local Health directors with regard to the decision-making concerning all these sector rules that were coming out recognize that the the in the past year and a half our governor issued 300 executive orders now the thing is he was operating under what is called the Public Health Emergency Response Act which gives him total control over all decision making and legislation so executive orders have the force of law so when we say that there is an executive order in place currently because the legislature has continued his control under fira or Public Health Emergency Response Act up until now September 30th any decisions that he makes and he makes alone are the force of law the legislature can intervene but it's not likely that they want to come back during the summer to intervene in any decisions that he makes he has relied on mostly somewhat particular advisors Dr Albert Koh for example from public health at Yale the former director of the FDA who lives in Greenwich and one of his closest friends uh and under some pressure a group of six of us local Health directors have had some influence over the decision-making with regard to moving forward with the new sector rules that will be governing uh covid-19 through September because excuse me through September 30th so that's a little better background I want to clear up a couple of misinformation uh issues that were fostered first of all uh the whole CO2 issue did anyone in this room actually read the journal article in Jama Pediatrics you did what did you think of it from a scientific standpoint duck it's not a backup it's not a back and forth it could be rhetorical it's not a back and forth with a oh okay thank you all right thank you uh the the actual article governing CO2 was retracted in its entirety some people accuse individuals of censoring the article but in point of fact I read 20 journals a month and I read that article in its entirety and I found a great number of fallacies within it with regard to the scientific nature of the study with regard to masking in general I think that the number of cases that we have experienced here in Brookfield would certainly allow us to suggest from the Department of Health standpoint from the Brookfield heart Department of Health standpoint that masking may not be necessary in our schools I want to make that very clear but I am not running the show so I want to make that very clear we have gone on record every Thursday night every Tuesday morning an hour and a half at each time supporting the idea that masking may not be necessary but what can supersede that vaccination the more people that are vaccinated the larger number within our community that are vaccinated will create what we call herd immunity and decrease the likelihood of the possibility of spread so vaccination becomes an extremely important substitute when we talk about the issues within the school the CDC has referred to the elite nine we say nine basic um prevention strategies which when layered one upon the other uh can promote healthy uh environments for kids in which they can learn in which they can socialize in which they can to gain or regain mental stability and this is extremely important and should be the number one issue at the top of our list bring these kids back to school unmask them if possible and enforce and create a situation where they will be healthy those other strategies include consistent uh physical distancing and it's interesting that the CDC has now recommended that physical distancing can be reduced to three feet but they're tying that to mask use and our governor is tying it to mass use for the unvaccinated so we out here in the boonies are in a a very difficult situation with regard to decision making screening testing the state is going to offer free screening testing it will be pooling testing it will be a buy a third party not by School nurses and it may give us some insight as to the um as to the um concentration of the virus within our school community so School testing is another recommendation that's going to be coming forward ventilation classic examples right here ventilation is going to be a key issue within our schools obviously it's difficult it's going to be difficult during the winter but we can crack windows we can get the kids outside as much as possible and we can basically uh use window fans um always pointed out not in uh and we can do other uh things such as having professionals check our units very frequently and make sure that they're operating correctly um hand washing and respiratory etiquette I don't know about you but my grandchildren taught me to sneeze into my sleeve it was not something I knew at the time but my grandchildren taught me how to do that and hand washing frequent hand washing is also a key um staying home when sick very important I realize that parents have to work and it's very difficult to have a child get sick and still be sent to school contact tracing very important to keep the spread of the disease down within the community for example I had a a talk today um with an individual who is a teacher in another area another District who went off on vacation and a three-year-old from another family with them came down with covet 19.
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just our our tech guys took a actually undid our stuff so that we had that actual two minute break oh okay are we still on the two-minute break are we back on okay okay we good yes all right so uh one of the trailer bills that came out with the budget was called ab130 and that was gave us new independent study guidelines that we need to follow so what i would do in that situation is call somebody that's a lot more knowledgeable with the independent study laws than i am and she came in her name is ronda olum she's our principal of our oak ridge independence day school and before that she also did a lot of our work for at oakdale independent school so her and myself and mr shepard met to go over what the new policy would look like within with the new um bill that was passed so i'm just going to have her go over the changes on our board policy that we had to add and if you guys have any questions we were glad to help and i do want to clarify while rhonda's coming up i guess she's already there typically we do two readings we do an initial reading and then a second reading on board policies we are not doing this in this particular case because this needs to be in place prior to the start of the school year because we will not receive any apportionment funding if it is not in place the state has been very clear if we don't have policy on our independent study uh we cannot make claims so this is one that's crucial that we do get in place in time sorry rhonda that's okay um hello welcome for inviting me i love talking about independent study i've been doing it over 10 years now for the school district um i think chico unified um follows best practice um for independent study so a lot of the changes uh were not huge for us i feel like because we were already doing a lot of these things so first thing is do they have copies of this yes okay perfect um towards the bottom written agreements parents have access to a student parent and educator conference prior to enrolling so that was document that's being that's happening in our school district most the time but they needed to add that to the board policy on the second page that's probably the where the biggest changes are with the student interaction if you look at the tk through third grade written policies must include a plan to provide opportunities for daily synchronous instruction for all pupils throughout the year so students should have access to a teacher each day in traditional independent study that wasn't required they could do weekly appointments with the teacher and then basically they're at home with their parents doing it so that's going to be a little bit of a change the next one is for people's in grades four through eight there should be written policies to provide opportunities for both daily live interaction and at least weekly synchronous instruction for all pupils so this is the daily interaction could be office hours available for students to check in with their teacher each day and then weekly synchronous instruction for those kiddos and then for pupils in grades 9-12 this is pretty typical to what we've already been doing written policies must provide a plan for opportunities for at least weekly synchronous instruction we see our students weekly as is at oak bridge in particular we do have labs open for students so they'll come in more than just that one time a week to meet with a stu teacher they'll come in for a three hour block to get some extra help yes question yeah so for the uh tk through grade three um what it's i'm having a hard time visualizing how four different teachers are going to have synchronous daily interaction so how is it that we believe that we'll carry this off what did they anticipate we would do um so what we're going to be doing at oak bridge is in uh there'll be daily zoom or google chat since we're moving to google chat not google chat google google meets yes kids um instruction for ela and math each day and then there's also going to be learning labs that are available on site so students can have peer interaction because we felt we've always felt like even an independent study we need to build in time for students to come on site in small groups to have that pure interaction that was feedback that we got from the climate surveys also they miss their friends and so we want to provide those opportunity to opportunities also even within that independent study situation it just seems like for four-year-olds just starting school this is really going to be a challenge i hope you're as engaging as bluey and some of the other kinds of game video movie things that they're used to engaging with because this is challenging yeah we have a great kindergarten teacher right now she's full of energy any other questions in that section and something else they add wanted to add to our board policy this is something that we've already been doing at oak bridge but they wanted to have it written very specific in board policy about having a tiered re-engage in tiered re-engagement strategies which basically is just intervention so if a student's starting to fall behind within three school days of absences that what are we going to do about it we don't want to let them continue to fail i think mr tennis had asked the question about can they just be enrolled and not do anything absolutely not so the students there's interaction between the teacher and the student between the teacher and the parent then the counselor or the tcm will get involved and then if nothing gets resolved over a fairly short period of time then we would refer students back to a daily attendance program are there any questions additional questions independent study doesn't do sarb only daily attendance does so that's why we have to really hold that intervention we monitor the students so closely because if they that's looking like hey they're you know they've missed three days we're doing intervention if we don't see an improvement rather quickly then we need to refer them back to a daily attendance and then we kind of flag that student and let the school know hey we're having these concerns so that they can be aware as well we don't want students to get lost with us that's for sure um and the one thing i did want to know um these aren't affected i think it's in here where is it oh this does not apply for a pupil enrolled in independent study for fewer than 15 days so if a student wants to you know we have those students that maybe have a medical thing go on or a family vacation where they take five days off they do something called a short-term independent study that would be that traditional independent study where they get those packets and textbooks and they bring it back after their vacation or their medical leave for as long as it's less than 15 days i also want to give one more compliment to ronda we had sorry we had to tweak our master agreements um and actually the law states that we don't have to do that until 30 days after the first instructional day but we have auditors coming in next week on independent studied auditors next week and so rhonda already finished the master agreements for oakbridge so we can have the auditor take a look at them before school even started and if they get approved we will push them out to oakdale and our online academies at the high school so i want to thank rhonda for hard work with that too thank you yeah thank you lost a lot of sleep in my ears over auditors i was gonna say something about sleep too i i would think that getting something like that under your belt and like done yeah would help with the sleep for the rest of the summer a little bit too absolutely sleep before school starts again thank you okay board um let's see are there um any quests for public comment there are none okay do we have a motion mr landau oh oh sorry no go go john i'll move the adoption of the new policy regarding independent study second i have a motion in a second uh are we ready to vote let's see we would do uh a again a roll call vote because the last boat was not unanimous remember dolby dolby aye aye kaiser tennis eye lando i robinson i thank you board okay our next is a letter of support requesting local control for facial coverings in k-12 school districts and um let's see miss staley superintendents daily you're introducing this yes um at our last board meeting it was requested that we come forward with the draft letter similar to the letter sent out by durham and other butte county school districts so we adapted that letter to be appropriate to chico unified and it is attached in your package okay do i have any discussion from the board dr kaiser i really feel like that we should i think actually take no action on this because uh we're in a situation where we don't even know what the next wave of statements are going to be and asking for them to give us even more may be actually extremely detrimental so that would be my position i think i want to see clarification on what they've already said much less saying make it even looser and less clear i'm sorry dr kaiser just a point of order um because that was really bordering on discussion and not so much clarification and we really should avoid discussion and opinion sharing until after public comment okay we do have um okay i i didn't find dr kaiser's comments as far out of line as you but i'll accept your input and ask for a public comment because we do have two people who have indicated a desire to um comment yeah is there a jaden is that correct jaden or vaden no okay we also have ginny she had spoken earlier so she had left that's all we have at this time okay thank you thank you mr morgan okay um does the board have any uh motions associated with this agenda item dr kaiser do you wish to make a motion i would like to actually move that we pull this item and bring it back on august the 4th if we had a need at that point to do so i'm taking a minute to reread what we are talking about submitting because there were changes from the original draft the letter is asking for local control yes okay is there any other board comment i don't have a second okay i hear no second dr kaiser's motion dies for lack of a second do i have any other motions i move that we approve the draft and send the letter thank you mr tennis do i have a second i'll second that a motion in a second any further uh board discussion um yeah i have a question um for anybody who wants to engage um if the support letters that come in that state something similar is ours if we send this in um if the state listens and and does what we're requesting which is to give us control over the decision to implement mask policy then it would be up to us to then develop our procedure in deciding if or when we enforce masks if the state actually grants us that local control is that my understanding yes this letter is designed to ask the state to let local districts decide whether or not masks are appropriate in their community and in their district and if it would require obviously the state to do that to change their current direction and give local control but if they did do that then yes districts would then need to decide if and when to mask i have a question i think it was may have been answered earlier by council but if the if the executive order that the governor has signed stays in place it supersedes anything that may be done legislatively as my understanding so even if we get this what the governor has already done may supersede it i do not have an answer for that that would be a question for the legal counsel that um i would like to have that question answered for us by the october excuse me august 4th this is addressed to the governor as well that's right it is let them figure it out yeah i mean it's essential oh go ahead mr tennis you haven't got this yet well tom had his hand up right but it's okay please wouldn't he just be kind of reversing or something what he already did wouldn't he be changing his mind or or him and dr mark galley from the cdph would be putting their heads together and saying yeah you know i think it's time we kick this back to local districts to that's what they would have to do in order to make what we would do i mean because right now we're in the same boat in the future yes this is what we would do in the future but i think that that we're asking for that regulatory change we're asking for them to have that conversation and and kind of make that make that clear to us that that the the ball's in our court in terms of how we want to implement that so that's what i see the significance of the letter is yeah any other question mr landau did you open i just want to make a quick uh comment we are in the debate portion we're in the debate for you so i just wanted to clarify that uh my second for this mostly is on a matter of uh principle not on the issue itself but that uh it's pretty clear the state government is trying to kick us a political football by saying yeah you've got to do it but it's not our fault it's not our problem if you don't like it and that's a an awful position for them to take so it's not that i have any particular burning desire to take masks off it's that it's a dumb move and we should call them on it miss dolby did you have yeah i think just my thought process on this this ask really does speak to kind of the bigger issue that's been going on which is the all of the push and pull coming from all the flip-flopping at the state level and how difficult it's made it for us for everybody and while it's nice sometimes to be able to lean on that well the state's making us so that's why like it's not my fault it's their fault to when there is the opportunity to have that local control and to utilize our local resources with you know on-site knowledge our local public health officials our local medical experts etc being able to weigh in and not having that push and pull from the state level but just being able to set our policy here based on what we as a board decide is best for our schools and our students i like that idea i think that rural communities really do get a really bad deal sometimes because of that statewide flip-flopping that happens that because they're making decisions based on bigger urban areas that's just kind of my broad sense and i don't necessarily think that it hurts to ask for that ability to make our decisions at our at the local level dr kaiser why aren't you asking why butte county health didn't show up i actually was going to ask that but i assumed it was because that it's not a question right now of if we're gonna enforce because the state said we have to enforce it's how we enforce it so it's not really bcph's uh place to be here to say yeah you have to enforce it like there was nothing for them to give input on tonight they may have input and i was going to ask if they can come at to the august 4th meeting it might be nice to have them on site to be able to ask questions at that point they were asked to this meeting yes yeah i will clarify i did ask butte county public health to attend this meeting um you know they too are in a difficult position because they got this information as the same time as the rest of us and you know their response is really the guidance that we have to follow is coming from the california department of public health they have made it very clear that counties cannot be less restrictive but they can be more restrictive and they were very clear that they are not going to be more restrictive than the state that said i will say that they said if we have questions and if we give them time on an agenda so that they know that they're going to present they would come to a future meeting and danny york was very willing to come to august 4th what has happened in the past and you know this is on me we have had them online on the zoom to answer questions and you have staff at our meeting for several hours and then no questions were asked so their only request is that if they are going to be asked to be present that we actually agendize them and listen to what they have to say which is very fair i have concerns regarding doing this in the morning when i open my email i am able to open and read an enormous amount of quote unquote research from a number of different agencies and both government and private and opinions that are plugged into research or someone else's opinion and if we don't have a structure to follow which is california department of public health to look for for guidance on what to do we're left with five board members that are not medically i'm not going to use the word competent it's just not what we do to sift through all the stuff and decide oh that person's input makes more sense than person b i don't want to put in that position i want medical i'm experts to be making the decision about the guidelines that we're supposed to follow but then give us clear guidelines within which to make decisions if we have options but i do not believe that we should not have guidance and options to function within by doing that we're leaving ourselves open to what if we get it wrong and and we have an outbreak where's the liability it's with us dr kaiser that's the exact point if we are the source of the rule yeah we are the person that we are individually and as a district responsible for the liability and um it isn't even just you know person a over person b there's extreme amount of misinformation yeah that's being disseminated some of it because we just haven't had enough time to study it and including the issue about how many children are being impacted very seriously by the consequences of this because it's also new so are we done with discussion board just just to clarify i i don't think that what this is saying is that we would not rely on medical experts or that we wouldn't work with our own medical experts i think what it's saying is that um what happens in bangor or durham is or chico for that matter is oftentimes very different than what is happening in la unified or san diego and sometimes the policies and the directions are set for the big dogs that do have half the student population or more in the state but doesn't take into consideration individual needs in different rural communities and i think that was the point that was trying to come from durham who actually drafted this originally in my opinion that's not what the second paragraph says and um no i'm on the second page it's the top of the second page it says that uh our board of trustees elected by our local community is requesting local control regarding masking guidelines we could we could pick our own experts i don't i don't want to pick my own expert i'm sorry okay we're ready for um we have a motion and a second all those in favor of uh approving sending the letter as submitted signify by saying i opposed no it carries three to two did you get the the votes without having to okay thank you thank you board the next item on the agenda is adopted district-wide goals and mission statement superintendents daily sure in your packet uh are the board goals for the 21 22 school year based on the lcap that was approved at the june meeting the one area though that we do traditionally add is a board focus goal and this is an area where the board has an interest in doing have seen staff do for the research or implement a program and to give you some examples when the lcap was initially came into play we did not have a standards align curriculum in place across the district so the board directed staff to look at we initially looked at kindergarten first and second grade and made sure that we had standards aligned curriculum assessments and supports and then we moved on to third fourth and fifth and then junior high and then ninth in tenth so that took us up to last year last year we really were going to focus initially on social emotional learning and then when we went into distance learning that focus changed to technology supports so this year we're back in person and want to open it up to the board to see if there are areas that the board can find agreement that they would like to have the district focus dr kaiser well i have been really struck by the emphasis to increase the number of the percentage of students who can finish their cte certification i i still think from my interaction with parents and students that there's quite a bit of lack of awareness about the different pathways we offer in cte and so i would like us to look at ways that we can more directly raise the awareness of students it takes three courses so they need to start at least in their junior year to do that and some of them could start in their sophomore year and i think that outreach would also help with the completion of a to g courses and the by literacy all three of those are areas of focus that the state is looking at having students have a greater awareness of what benefits those would bring to them and how they can go about accomplishing it do you not believe that the achievement in a broad range of courses language covers that that these are certifications and that's the point that i think we need to make families and students aware of that they can literally get certified as having completed those aspects instead of just randomly taking courses that interest them so your suggestion is that that's that that that be a focal goal under under number one i it would be three uh so do we i mean is it just do we put however many focus goals we want underneath each goal or is it just one focus goal for the entire thing we have requested that it be one focused goal because obviously we we have the whole lcap that still has to be implemented i totally um and you know what we had done before was under one of the sub goal one under one of the goals we would write an area for specific emphasis so you know under the academic programs that was when we looked at let's have the standard line curriculum and make sure that was continuous all the way through our district um i like dr kaiser's line of thinking about cte engagement i just i am a little concerned that it's too narrow since it only addresses our upper secondary or just our secondary students however i do want to continue the conversation about expanding our um engagement and in awareness in cte or cte type programs down to the elementary level i think that if we can get our kids even engaged at a career technical education at the elementary level that'll really improve that upper secondary engagement and awareness too and then that could be a focus goal is to look at cte on a k-12 basis what are we doing in kindergarten to initiate discussions about careers and i do know there's our schools that bring out fire trucks and different things to have those discussions about careers so it definitely could be an area that we looked at yeah and actually like not maybe not just awareness but even like little workshops and engage engagement and absolutely just to remind kids that they don't have to just be doctors or scientists because or teachers oh yeah they could be teachers bus drivers bus drivers bus drivers anybody listening in if you know somebody who likes to be a bus driver you need some bus drivers please pay is good join us um i'm wanting to become more informed about the whole cte the state of cte is this equivalent to what used to be called vocational education equivalent so we're all clear on that i'm not i'm not messing up by by thinking that way so um yeah i've heard from a number of people in the construction community actually and i know that there are some things that the school district is doing to try to build up welders and and so forth but um uh we need people in the building trades big time um and so um i i endorse this as a as a focus and things we can do to kind of pave the way to people going into that line of work which is i know has good pay you know locally i'm all for it mr lando uh two things first a quick point of quibble because the people who work in cte today would be a little grumpy if we said oh it's the same thing as vocational ed um because it's it's analogous sort of right like it points people towards careers but it's also part of the broad range of college prep stuff that we do and it blends rigorous academic learning with an idea of what's out there in the career world so anyhow um that was my main point but it's worth saying because for all the cte teachers out there we'd get grumpy um one of the things i heard dr kaiser say was that not everybody knows about these courses and it struck me that we've also heard that a lot of people feel like they weren't made aware appropriately of things like the lcat meeting so i wonder if we would maybe consider as a focus goal instead a broader focus on how we communicate and looking at all the possible channels we have for reaching not just teachers and parents and students but the community at large i think that's something that we need to work on for for a while frankly i'm next my suggestion after listening to everyone was that this might be what would make a really good workshop topic so that we could look at all of the aspects of what we need to do to take it k-12 to look at the communication thing to look at how we inform our kids about what what's available and and what it takes to get a cte certification would it be more appropriate to have it as a a workshop topic and bring in our cte teachers and our counselors and and our people at the elementary or well we don't have counselors at the elementary that are doing career guidance and that may be a problem the 4-h thing happens on that level yeah right by age 10 would it be better to have a slightly broader this sounds this sounds not okay a broader focus goal um is that funny no i'm the only one who thinks that's funny okay good thanks jay i appreciate that um and something more along the lines of communication and engagement about programs i mean it about everything really but our focus goal is communication and engagement possibly like that seems really broad as a focus goal but that seems like the direction that that conversation is going and i i i hear you i'm making the same notes like workshop question mark and next to all the ideas because any of them can be workshops so we want to find that good brain one of the things that happens with our focus goal is we use it to really evaluate the superintendent because we charge the superintendent with inflammation of what we have chosen as a focus goal and so it drives the uh the evaluation of the superintendent i i had another i have another topic that i would like to to suggest as the focus goal and it's something that we've we've talked a lot about in the last few months that i feel needs to be an ongoing from the time school starts until we get out is taking a look at learning loss the evaluation of it the what we're putting in place to mitigate the learning loss how often are we evaluating and re-evaluating whether or not what we're doing is effective i'd like to have our focus goal dealing with our learning loss and that's that's you know was my topic learning recovery oh i like that yeah i like that better um still waiting for more creative ideas mr tennis i don't know if this is appropriate for the discussion but mr methane terry who spoke earlier mentioned that he thinks that peach jar is an inadequate way to inform our community about opportunities that exist such as running clubs and and you know scouts and things that i think are real worthwhile and uh i wonder if we shouldn't have a intelligent conversation about what role we think outside organizations um you know what sort of a toehold should they have i mean we dominate the schedule and the the things that they think about and of of our young people in our community to a huge extent we are an enormously powerful organization when it comes to the time and attention of young people and being tangentially involved in some of these organizations i can tell you that maybe steps that the district has taken recently to limit participation or exposure from the outside organizations has really done a number on their participation so is that something i can throw out there for possible conversation and i feel like that feeds back into that idea of communication and engagement um because we can get creative with our methods of engagement through the communication and improving that communication i actually didn't realize that that was um an issue really until it was brought up that that outside organizations don't have as much bandwidth within the district they have to kind of they seem to operate a little bit separately is that my understanding um i don't i don't need to be informed about it right now we can i can learn about it later in a smaller meeting at a different time but yeah that was interesting that was interesting to me this this was brought up and one of the things we did was take a look at how many students weren't already involved in a school related club or activity you know that how many are out there that that are searching around for something to do that don't have it already in place for them very few people most students are involved with an on-campus club organization sports um you know the music programs and other things that meet after school so we had very few students that didn't already have something to do or maybe even too much to do but it fits really well into what we said several times we wanted to use as a topic for a workshop and that is better communication with our families which includes you know the kids that live in those households so um just making sure that we have if we have a communication tool and we do have a communication tool available to outside organizations if we want to use that as as a workshop topic to further explore it we can certainly do that any other focus goal yes mr landau um here's a wild one what if we don't have one um and hear me out yeah we're we've been through so much the last couple of years and i understand that it's one uh component of how we evaluate the superintendent but i would love to see us just focus on the big three of providing a really top-notch well-rounded safe and healthy environment for our kids and to say hey this is our year back this is our first year back let's just be laser-like and getting back to our usual great standard of in-person education and i will say there are plenty of there's lots in the outcap yeah that does that this have mr lando i i hear that that suggestion and if we do a focus goal what it does is it pulls attention away from what you just said and maybe this is the year that we don't need our attention diverted in anything other than than what we've outlined in in the lcap with all of the things we've put in place with our mtss and and the supports and things that we put in place for student acceleration for first student makeup for for social emotional help for students and families maybe that is a good idea i think that's his first good idea is that what you're saying so i will say the reason that we originally had the focus goals in is because uh we knew we did not have standards aligned curriculum and we knew we needed to do that but we also knew that we could not do that in one fell swoop so it gave the board the ability underneath um you know that goal number one to say okay we're gonna focus on k12 so that was how it came about and you will hear you know no argument from me if we want to focus on the wealth of work that is in the lcap but again this is a board decision and what i've heard presented so far are cte pathways communication plan learning recovery role of outside organizations and focus on the lcap um let's if we could um set aside this discussion for just a brief minute because there is another component in this agenda item and that's the mission statement so just to be clear here the expectations and the mission statement have not changed in well the mission statement has not changed since it was set in the strategic plan in 2002.
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we have a resolution that we are approving the acceptance of our esea funding this is federal money that we receive it's broken down into different titles title 1 title 2 3 which is esl all of this funding is used primarily to support staff members that we hire for these particular programs so this helps our local budget and uh this year we're receiving i would say about 95 to 100 percent of the allocations that we've received in the past 95 okay 95 yeah which is which is pretty good yes okay so that's one of the resolutions we are passing tonight and page 20 as i mentioned before we have a resolution that's accepting the 21st century funding which is a 500 000 grant that we receive from the federal government that helps run our after-school program in grades four through eight okay any questions regarding the consent agenda at this time i just like to make two comments sure i want to thank mrs cardin for all of her hard work and dedication to the children of this district she has been wonderful and i only wish her the best in her retirement and i want to commend the cliffside park school district with a 500 000 21st century grant as a mom of the child who went through that program every year that you had it i thought it was a phenomenal program one of the finest programs i've seen anywhere and the fact that there is no cost to the parents or you know obviously for the children in the program is just really a benefit to the community so thank you very much and you know very commended on that i have to say i have to say it is a great program the students get an hour of enrichment and the enrichment varies from athletics to cooking to robotics to different things and then an hour of homework help and it's funded and it's not funded staffed by our teachers and that's the best part about that a lot a lot of districts do not do that but we do do that and i think it helps because the teachers know the kids and they're familiar with the work that they're working on and so on and so forth so it is a great program it's excellent you know it's excellent you know that they have their own teachers it's a phenomenal thing and it's not income based right i appreciate that because it's truly for all students and any student can and has benefited from it thank you thank you mr omg one other i am worth mentioning on page 18 we're accepting the awarding of the security grant and there's three components that security grant is a mandate from the state we have four patent buttons in each school and there's two other projects that engage that grant one is the high school pa system installation and phones in each of the classrooms that project is expected to be completed sometime next week and then we will engage in the number five school project same project installing a new pa system and phones in each of the classrooms and that should start immediately after the summer school program which i believe ends with roman gina this coming friday right so we expect to start that project uh next week so far overall the timeline is pretty secure for the high school program and we expect that to be completed by next week great okay anything anyone else just to mention as you know we have an extensive bill list this time of the year uh you know we go through a lot of capital improvements and all the work going on in the schools i did the meet with lou alfano this morning about 7 30.
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and then act last year was kind of an anomaly as well our 12th graders took the test in the spring in the fall excuse me as a makeup for the test that they missed in the spring and our 11th grade students took it in the spring at their normal testing time so once again considerations this is a picture in time we are going to be looking at passing percentage and that is defined as a combination of proficient and highly proficient so we when the state talks about passing percentage and um and once again this is one assessment and a compilation of multiple assessment practices in our balanced assessment framework so um one of the things i'd like to start off with is a celebration of sorts because normally when we're giving the state assessments we are expected to reach a 95 participation rate that is part of our school grading algorithm and an expectation at the state level um we really worried a little bit about whether we were going to make that 95 this year and while that wasn't a requirement while the state eased up on that requirement and um was not going to use that as part of any school type grades because they suspended school grades we still considered it a goal of ours to reach that 95 percent so the next the first slide here shows you our school-wide participation for english language arts at the elementary we tested an average of 97.88 of our students across our schools and in secondary 89 um 82 of the students who did not test were our online students of course so i thought that was a great celebration you see some of the same percentages or similar percentages in writing 97.56 at the elementary level 90.5 percent at the secondary level and 78 of our students who did not test were our online students can i just ask a quick question right here where we um did we make our online students aware for next coming into the school year that they will be testing in person and that this will be a requirement and vice president wilson one of the challenges is is that this is not a this was not a rule higley did this was a state standardized assessment rule that required this and obviously if there were families who chose not to bring their child to in-person learning so they were not going to bring them into the in-person environment to test them and and that is within their purview to do so we will make them aware of that however obviously those were some of the challenges we were working through in this this environment this year and and may persist next year with their with them understanding that thank you and once again um in math very much of the same percentages 97.85 tested in elementary 90 and secondary and about the same percentage of students 82 percent um who did not test for our online students nonetheless a celebration for getting that many students in to test so so let's break it out um this is a remember this is an overview we did break it out by school each school has a distinct color in the same order on every slide the red line across the middle of the slide represents where the state passing percentage is in other words those students that were proficient and highly proficient and as you can see on grade three english language arts every single one of our students every one of our schools had average passing scores higher than the state passing average vice president will send members of the board it's interesting point to know that third grade remains one of the very few uh grade levels with a high stakes association with the assessment of the move on when reading this year the state did not stop the requirement for the move on when reading expectation but we're happy to share that within the within the level of the law we were able to work with all of our students who may have been subject to retention to receive additional support this summer so that they can continue next year so we're really grateful that and it's just important to note that that's still a piece that's connected with third grade in arizona at this time per legislation in grade four english language arts the state passing percentage was 44 and you can see that we are all of our schools are well above that grade five the passing percentage was 45 percent and once again we said we exceeded that at all of our schools and then grade six the state passing percentage was 35 percent and we exceeded that as well now switching over to middle school in grade 7 the state passing percentage was 38 and once again both of our schools are above that grade 8 state passing percentage 35 and grade 10 the state passing percentage was 32 and once again we are above that as well can i ask a quick question um are you guys going to break down the data or use the data to compare um online or remote versus in person as far as the data goes is there going to be any difference in approach to that at all like did you notice any differences did you look did you look at that data at all um we did begin to look at that data to be quite honest with you but as students moved from online to in-person and and from in-person to online throughout the year that became more difficult to measure um because it was more difficult to define what an online student was sometimes we had online students that stayed online all year long sometimes we had online students that were in person for a certain portion of the year and went back and forth so it became a difficult measurement to define however each one of the schools will has received a workbook an excel workbook but that breaks down this data and gives them the opportunity to use multiple filters to break it down by various subgroup categories so that they can identify then within their own school community where they might have gaps and where they might um launch for for instruction for this year board member wilson those are board member wilson and board member anderson those are critically important those pivot tables that allow us to go down because we're looking at these as a whole we're looking at averages those pivot tables allow us to drill down with other filters to identify specific patterns and trends so that we can look at things like why or or or and explore things a little bit more and those and that is one of the things that we spend some time at our admin retreat with our leaders on and that they will be bringing back to their plc groups as well it's a data point but there's some there's some interesting patterns and trends that we can see much easier in those pivot tables that are a really nice resource that the our department puts together for us something we've noticed at least in our district is you know there are gaps and then you worry about the proper placement of your students and i know you know guys know that but that's definitely a concern for the students indeed so moving on to math i think you'll see some of the same patterns this is grade three in math the state passing percentage was 36 percent and once again all of our schools surpassed that in grade four the same the state passing percentage was 34 percent and our fourth graders did quite well grade five the state passing percentage was 31 percent and most of our schools surpassed that we have unique situations at each one of our schools as you can well imagine so taking a look at breaking down that data is critically important for them to determine kind of where those gaps might ex might be and then grade six the state passing percentage was 29 percent and um our students well exceeded that state average grade seven the state passing percentage was 30 percent grade 8 the state average was 26 percent and finally grade 10 the state average here was 26 percent so while we always have room to grow and we always have room to improve it was very exciting and very nice to be able to see that we maintained that practice of making sure that our students score above the state average the science test that was given this year to our fifth eighth and eleventh grade students was a um field test so meaning that they took what they thought to be a comprehensive test and took about two-thirds of that as sample questions if you will and gave that to all of our students when we when they do a field test they then bring back all of the data tweak the questions tweak the test as they feel it needs to be tweaked and then they will launch a full and final uh science exam for this year we do not get data nor is data available when they do a field test on a standardized test so sorry i just have one question and i'm if i missed this i apologize but is the the state average for this year lower than normal or is that state percentages or is this always 35 percent uh board member schultz it is a little bit um it's hard to say and i'll be quite honest with you because we didn't have a test in 2019 so we don't have any averages to pull from 2019 and then the year before that it was a little bit of a different test so i really can't comment on whether they're higher or lower than they have been in the past historically the state which is about there when you look back over multiple years of azm2 the state averages tends to be lower you're taking in across the entire state it tends to be on the lower side higley has historically always performed quite well when compared to the state average dr foley um when will parents get the data for these tests i can speak to that abort vice president schultz uh thank you for asking we just sent out the paper reports for third grade students you should actually have those or you should be handed those um sometime the first week of school if they don't have them ready for you even when you go back to the to the open houses um because we delayed the testing window into mid-may to accommodate all of our online learners last year the paper reports for students in grades four and above are delayed a little bit they're due to ship to our district on the 24th so as soon as we get those we will get those out to school so they can be distributed so it's okay parents i know you're used to it for back to school night that we normally get the paper copies but we're not getting them so make sure take note that we will be getting them in folders and backpacks which is kind of scary and finally i'd like to just share with you the results of our acts exam two now the first this first slide is the grade 12 once again the the students who took it in the fall who were making up their spring tests that they didn't get to take the red line the arrow facing up gives you a national average we don't pull a state average this or we didn't this year for because it wasn't a mandated test so not all students had to take the act which skews your state results a little bit but on a national average for all students who did take the a.c.t the national average was 20.7 and you can see how that plays with that red arrow there in the middle of the chart and then for our 11th graders who took it this last spring the the national average is the same act does not differentiate between school year tests so those given to 12th graders and those given to 11th grade all tests administered in the same year are get have obviously the same national average so that's why you see the same average for them so next year we will be going and taking a new test it's called the arizona it's aasa arizona some i can't even remember what that stands for are you um but um it it's a little different from the azm2 i have been told that it in terms of targeting student growth that we will be we will have projected growth percentages for next year because it is still based on the state standards and mastery of the state standards and that has not changed next year the state will not be giving state assessments other than the science assessment to high school students the high school students in grades nine the cohort for grade nine will be required to take the act aspire and students in grade 11 will be required to take the act as a mandatory assessment and as for progress monitoring i'm happy to report that we have benchmark progress monitoring standardized tests in place in our district we look at those to measure growth for students throughout the school year and we also have as dr foley had mentioned our formative assessments and practices in our plc's that also help drive to day instruction for our students so we're glad to report that those are in place and we will be administering those with fidelity this year so to close i just want to reiterate that higley is on target um through our plc and you know structure we have uh processes in place to identify our gaps determine root cause try to identify students in a wider range of learning for this year and to adjust our instruction accordingly so that we're meeting the needs of all learners any questions i just want to say well done to the to the students to the teachers to families to guardians everybody administration like that is good data for considering i think you're really really good and thank you for putting that together appreciate that yes i always think we can look at numbers but all these numbers are tied to little human beings and um you know last year was rough on them as well and so i'm just i'm grateful that we did so well i think that uh i'll go back to just saying i supported opening our schools and staying open and i think that played a huge part in how well the gear did go so hats off again to everybody that made this happen and thanks for again i liked your um i loved your powerpoint so easy to kind of navigate and read i know this data does get put into data walls and rooms and spreadsheets and and then they're tied to a little human being so hats off to all those little human beings that they worked hard they did well great point a board member kaler they are tied to a little human being and has had a very rough year so any other questions i was just gonna say sorry i don't take the time but that is a great point for the human beings and i don't think the students realize you know they always ask why are we taking this test why what does it matter and then they don't realize the discussions that are going into play to make sure that their experience is um it's just um what's the word i'm looking for it that it matters that it's productive and so um thank you for reminding us that it's those kids that were doing a lot of the work that have put this out there and the teachers too who have taught these little humans that you know even in a pandemic and they're getting above average state test scores which is crazy so thank you um we're going to move right along to item 7.5 if there's nothing else here this is dr foley with the administrative handbook yes vice president wilson administrator sorry ministry of retreat it's a little bit of both yeah it's a little bit of both it's a little bit i'm like wait i thought go ahead i'm sorry vice president wilson members of the board i'm excited to share with you just quickly a snapshot into three days that were spent with your leadership team and i really want to show this for a couple reasons we spent a lot of time together as a governing board with your leadership team talking about our strategic initiatives and plans this year and i'm excited because i want you to see how the work that we started talking about is already beginning to foundationally build grow by no means are we done but you're going to see how a lot of the time and work we did is already beginning to be infused and it's coming together and we just want to do a quick show and share because we're proud of the work we did together and we want to show it to you so like i said we had three days with with our entire general administrator team so that means every every leader in this district whether they're a principal assistant principal a director an assistant director if you're responsible for leading a team you are part of this leadership group and i will tell you one of the things that i'm so proud of is i believe that the work that we had to do together last year as we were literally building the plane as we were flying it created a team that is really cohesive and works well together in the fact that we don't worry about hurting each other's feelings we get real and we talk and we get down and dirty and we created an environment where we talk where we are where it's okay to to share your thoughts and opinions and to create things together it is rare to be able to do the kind of things that we were able to do together with the group this large and i want you'll see one of the products we created out of this but over the three days we we dug in deep because again previously last year our admin retreat was done virtually um as we were trying to figure out how to start the school year in a platform that nobody had in elementary grades had had familiar with um virtually this year we were in person and we did this at the park university the the city of partners for us for a free opportunity to go there and use their spaces we started with an overview of the handbook which i'll show show you in a minute we created this as one of the things we talked with you about is processes and procedures and having a place to go and everything in this leadership retreat the final formal copy lives in this and this is a living breathing document that we're going to be working on and sharing all year long with our admin so no longer are they searching in their email okay who sent that oh mom sent that now when did she send that february you're not looking in your email to find something you have a place to go and i'll show you in a moment so we started with here's where it is here's where it lives and know that this is where we're going to always put things and when we have meetings our agendas are here this is intended for admin only it's through canvas it's through their user login because we also put training information and accountability pieces behind that um we talked with them about the governing board initiatives we talked with them about some core values and i'll show you some work that we did together because literally over three days this was a conversation that we built on spending over an hour every day talking about what this means to us and how are we going to lead by example as a team of leaders in this district what does this mean to us which is really part of the start of helping with our updating of our strategic plan because you align all of this to this work because we want the our values which we'll talk about here in a minute to walk the halls not just be documents that are on the walls so we also did some required training annual required training that we needed people to have and we brought special trainers in we worked with the trust we worked with others to bring experts in to do title ix training and we had to work around those presenters but we got a lot of people in and did a lot of training we then had breakout sessions in the afternoon and that first day where we talked about public relations and the resources that are being created and our branding and our our communication structures and we talked about bond information what you can talk about what you can't talk about what you can do not do and shared our resources we then had a session for emergency plans where some of our new leaders got digging i mean james walker led with with jillian uh here are updated plans here where these are going to live here are expectations here's what we're going to do together here's still the work that we have to do um and so we spent some time in that and then we talked about deep dives with data what is our data telling us what is this testing schedule this year what are our expectations so that was day one next slide day two we started at new teacher orientation to welcome and greet our new our new teachers who were in the room who were precious i will tell you one of my favorite things about this is we were stressful to start like 8 15 ish you know because we allow them to come brand new teachers are there right and then bright and early you know check in 7 45 they're ready to go um all here um so we even started early with them we started with our new teachers and then we slid over to back to our um admin retreat where we went deeper with core values which we'll talk more about in a minute well then we had our procurement person come in and talk about what you can and you cannot do and she's a consultant and a cpa who basically laid down the law what are the rules for those of you who now have a budget what can you and can't you do what are the rules what are the expectations what does the district do what do you need to know we then talked about our budgeting process and how we monitor that and what we're going to be doing this year with our leaders who are responsible for budgets and our expectations we talked about our updated processes our field trips what field trips travel professional leave forms um if what are our club expectation boosters responsibilities any all those things that are important to get the year going and food food is fun but we had to talk about what are the rules around food and food trucks and all those other things then the afternoon we went deep we talked about special education we talked about 504 processes we talked about some of the handbooks and expectations we also started talking about mtss which is those multiple tiers of support and you've been reading about that in your status and how important that is and how we're going to begin to use our dashboard and tools to help us make sure we're documenting and responding appropriately for all of our students and then we talked about plc best practices we've been working so hard on plcs over the last several years even in the middle of a pandemic and we talked about what are our target takeaways this year with our leadership teams what are we prioritizing how what does that look like how do we help support you and the work that our district team is going to be doing to help support administration and their focus with their teams at their schools so that was day two then day three we came back and started talking more about strategic planning and core values and this is where i love it because we had to monitor and adjust because we had over planned and the beautiful thing about a team who feels comfortable sharing their thoughts they shared their thoughts and we were able to work through creating a core values document which i'll show you here in a minute but it was created with the team by the team that will help lead the work around this which is very important human resources mom provided a whole lot of updates and we talked about our evaluation process and and new new things in in the hr world that she needs her team everyone in the room to know about of course anything and everything we talk about is living and breathing in the administrator handbook we talked about discipline data our processes and some of the work that we'll continue doing obviously there is a lot of work to be done and we want consistency throughout how not only are we recording it and reporting it responding to it and the process that we're going to work on updating what i think our administrators walked away with is wow we have a lot of processes and procedures we need to be working on and we're going to be updating and doing together but in the meantime we started compiling and creating a resource for everyone which was essential and needed we talked about seclusion and restraint and we talked about those processes that surround that and we also then had our annual cpi training where where our team helps train to make sure that in the event that you have a student who needs to help be subdued how do you do that and what is the process for that so again we had three very busy action-packed days with our team next slide okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna make i'm gonna have you let go okay i'm gonna have you let go of these slides and i'm gonna take over because it looks interesting in the admin handbook we have it there's two ways that that our team can get there they can go through the student side or they can go through the staff sign but it is all administrators have their own unique key and they log into canvas so right now i'm alive and well in the canvas page so when i go into my courses there's everyone who as an administrator who should have access to this has their administrator manual now you'll notice i'm going to just click over our governing board initiatives first of all this is kind of like the like the oh table of contents where you will if you will um but when i dig into the guts of this this is a beautiful thing because and again i'm just going to show you every one of these things has powerpoints or videos or trainings beneath it like i'm going to just show you this has handbooks inside handbooks for instance when i'm talking about the special education 504 it is its own little handbook you might have a hard copy but you also now will have the most updated electric company at all times so it isn't so because you and i both know the minute you you um print a piece of paper it's outdated if you have to update it all all original documents will now live here but when i i'll show you when i scroll take a look at how our our admin handbook and our processes and procedures that we are beginning to put together we didn't have anything like this as a district in the same place at the same it might have lived somewhere in a shared folder it may or may not have been the most updated but it didn't have the policies or the things the administrators need so we've started to create again as you can see a start of lots here and i just want to show you this is again by no means are we done but what we're beginning to do is get organized and have the administrator handbook in a place for our team with tons of resources and you can see i'm still going so a lot of work your leadership team put into this and we'll continue to put into this but this is now if we were to print everything that was in here we'd have a it would be very very fully i really like this because i think there's a way to search this a little easier yes instead of having to dig through maybe a giant handbook of a book and here's probably a search feature i would assume somewhere on this and probably within each of these documents there's a search these are the categories that take you to your section and so i think this is like very awesome that we have this able this ability to be able to search for you know key words that you might be looking for because you don't know where something might lie and the beautiful thing is awesome thank you when we have our administrators come to our meetings and we talk about it we'll have it here we'll show where it is we'll model it talk about it and so that way you're not searching your your inbox for that or wondering where it is in the shared box and this is really it's standalone it's separate from you you enter it in through alert this is a learning management system which is where we're holding our our ad so we're actually modeling our for our admin what we are working on with our classroom students this is like a course a class this is the administrator manual if you will so it's in its starting phases but we want to show you because we're we've worked really hard on this and we're really proud of it and it was well received so that's one now now i will you can go back to the powerpoint thank you so we show slide slide you can keep going again how we these were our slides when our when we first introduced them with our admin we said this is where you go now go there with us let's show you what's there so again i bring this up here because when you look at the agenda of the work that we accomplish with our admin team i want you to see that the foundational work of what we've talked about is our priorities this year are happening are we're starting the initial foundation of our work with our strategic plan and obviously we've got stakeholder groups and many many multiple things that are coming but we've started this foundational piece with using our leadership team as a compass to help set some core values that we're going to work and align with we are working on the so our safe return um we talked a lot with our team about the social emotional we're going to be creating a task force a task team with our admin and teacher teams to begin building our higley resources for this um and then continue to build on in multiple years you will see that we talked an awful lot about our technology we talked about our data we talked about teaching and learning and our use of plcs and you can see one of the things we talked about is processes and procedures we're beginning to refine and define in our handbook is our our bible if you will of where these things are beginning to live so i think what's important to see is we're just beginning this year but a lot of foundational work that we will build on this whole year is in place that we're excited about and makes it very relevant in aligning the work that that needs to be done is aligned here so dr foley this is um fabulous already just knowing that we work so hard on these initiatives and coming up with them and talking about them and believing then and we've done this every year believing that they were being you know brought forth and knowing now they will be is phenomenal having that i just seen on the canvas you had the initiatives right at the top core values at the top if anybody needs a refresher they're right there they're going to be right there every time they open the page and so when that permeates through our administrators it will get down to our teachers and i just know that and i i'm so thankful to see how you've implemented this hats off your entire team has worked very hard and we're real proud of it and we're looking forward to continue building it and we work with our team to refine and improve the processes in there together so this is a great start um so thank you for that so then we spent some time with our why with our team which is why are we here and who are we and how do we ensure that we don't just talk it we mean it um and how do we create that environment with our entire entire team so we started with this little golden circle of the y we talked about values who we are as a team and we started next slide defining them um with our team when we talk about values those are those motivational behind the purposeful actions why are they important to us so we started talking about who are we as higly and why are these important to us next slide we did talk about again the fact that we don't just want a pretty document we want to start talking about how are we walking our talk um and how to and what would that be next slide and we talked about the fact that these are those things that are those daily commitments we make to those we serve and so we started with a self-reflection first to say okay leaders of higley who have been selected to lead this uh district why why um what do you think is important um and we said because we're going to strong effective organizations that have strong core values define them by what they mean by them and then they describe what does that mean how will you implement that but you don't just you don't just do it to people you build it with them so at first we use the minty meter where we do the wordles where people started putting their words and when they thought about who what are their values so we went ah now the more times values were a certain word was entered the bigger bolder it became but when you look at that with 60 people in the room you go we have a lot of words so we have a lot of words and a lot of those words are saying similar things so what do we mean by this so we did a little ted talk or we got a little bit from simon sinek who was the same person who defines this we watched this a little bit and said okay simon says that values are essential because those values plus the behavior to find the culture so who are we as a culture and hinckley and how and what are those words that we want to define around um because we don't want to just use these words we want to embody them so the next day teams began talking a little bit more and as a group began identifying these core words that they thought were the four most action words these are the words that embody the other words so we took a look at that initial or we took every single word that was here and came back day three and said we have some themes here because the other thing simon says is you can't have a whole lot of you begin to have words that are saying the same thing you're saying between three and five so we said okay higley let's talk about our core four so this is though where i think the power of our leadership team came soaring through which would be very hard to do in a regular group of 60 people with at all levels of leadership organization began to debate and discuss because we were going to say okay if these are emerging themes that were bold you like them or not and event after hours and lots of conversation and deliberation now um our pr team and thanks to curtis has made this far prettier this is the this was the original document that we finalized and got everyone's input on but we came up with our core four integrity connections learning centered we talked about integrity it was a big one that was a theme throughout and we defined what do we mean by integrity what do we mean by that and if we mean if that's what we mean by that what are the actions individuals do to be part of contributing to that one of the words on there it was interesting created a lot of conversation in in topic and deliberation and debate and the word on there that people were concerned about putting on there but then it ultimately came to consensus it has to be on there was accountability you'll notice that that wasn't an emerging theme at first and we all started talking about the fact that you this was important and we needed to help define because it may a negative connotation does not it's not what we mean what we mean here is being committed to a standard of excellence following through it's not enough to just have good intentions and to try hard we have to be accountable and have outcomes and work toward it so you will see this team this administrative team said no this is what we value and what is important to us as leadership teams and how we will define this together as part of who we are and how we will walk the halls and lead our teams in higley and how we will organize around and we feel that you know what those fit very nicely with what came out of our strategic initiatives too obviously what we do and how we do it matters how we we can't have relationships without connections and we talked about these values transcend every individual throughout our organization regardless of what your job title is learning centered we're not only yes we're about students but we're also about adults as well and and on continuous ongoing learning but how we define accountability there was such rich dialogue that would happen in that room and i think we were real proud of of the who and what we were so i took just a few pictures um on that last day again going very deep into what do we mean by this and and and in a large room having large discussions saying uh-uh i don't agree with that and regardless of um again and you'll see there in the front of the room one of the things we had had our team do that we're going to go deeper with is a swot analysis what are our strengths what are our weaknesses what are our opportunities what are our threats and and those are color coded there in them and we really are going to go deeper into those but you know when we talk about who are we how do we get better um it starts with living and aligning to our values so again a lot of work um went into those three days and a lot of productivity and we're real proud of our team and we're ready to get this year started but it's just the beginning of great work that we're going to look forward to doing together as a team any questions great job thank you we were very excited we we left mentally exhausted but proud of who and what we do together in haiti so dr excited about the year did you happen to do a survey of the three days to the staff and what they thought compared i mean did we do that we have not formally submitted that we received lots of informal information we received lots of information formal information we have not sent out the official give us your feedback but we are going to do that we literally have not had a second to but one of the things we talked about was we received a lot of um unsolicited feedback going liked this what we heard was wow this is a lot of information what we heard also was this is too much and we said we know we know we understand we also realize we are catching up from from not having the ability to do this and now we are now we're really on the track and we're going to figure out how to do that so we will get some additional feedback and did you did you know or did you hear was there enough time for them to kind of gather this and prepare for them to go into their back to teacher information one of the things one thing i the only thing i heard is some had wished it was sooner yes but i know we were still you know recuperating from other things but moving forward maybe if we were doing this as a yearly event we would just have a little bit sooner so they have more time to process it to take it back to their campuses that's the only thing i heard and it wasn't negative it's just deleting the timing the timing well and i think that there's a lot of infrastructure that we were working to put in place that now exists in other words we were building our handbook and putting some of these now that some of those things are in there you we can we can differentiate so brand new administrators our introduction to you in a handbook doesn't need to take as much time uh with the whole group we update you with the more recent in current things so i believe that our ability to do that will only be easier in the future as i look at like day one agenda i have to say there is a lot of stuff on day one agenda that could be a three day on just day one agenda well and i think each one of those i could say that same thing about so job admin who were able to digest all of this and drink from the fire hose that we have now given them it was and i think what we're talking about is we are just this is the foundational piece so it was almost like the intro to the chapters that we're gonna now go deeper in as and and but there needed to be an overview um to get going um the timing is always tough and this one was truly catching up i mean this is we haven't been able to do something like this in a while and it felt really good to be in a room all together and one of the nice things about the park university is it has breakout rooms that have some really unique furniture so to be able to break out we had and we we worked to customize the information in each of those sessions so we had elementary together we had secondary together we had district admin together so as they went through each of the sec sessions we customized the what you needed to know for your area in this for this topic which again really helps we try to differentiate a little bit more and i think we'll be able to do some more easily in the future i just want to say that i'm impressed with the amount of work that they were able to do on the administration handbook and all the training and all that information it's that's a huge undertaking and they got so much done and started and we've been asking for a long time for something so i just want to say i appreciate everyone's hard work i know there's still work to be done but it is an amazing start thank you dr foley when we hire a new admin are they given like maybe just a quick run like if we had to hire an admin mid year this year is there a way that we can give them like a quick you know i know it won't be a three day onboarding process but a quick run through of this um so then they can like just something to think about in the future some way to onboard them at least so they know how to log on to canvas where this is how it's all going to show up for them i and and vice president wilson i think one of the nice things too being that this is a living breathing document once upon a time it would have been oh i need to go back and copy the agenda for you oh i need to help find these documents for you now everybody knows where to go in the most recent form because even administrators had been here a long time ago i don't know how to do that i need to show me where where's the where's the how-to on that and so we're going let's add it to the handbook so now we have a one-stop place to go that will be easier to do a quick overview on board and make sure everyone always has access to the most recent information and we can continue to add sections that we need to as the year evolves i mean one of the things we have learned is that um like life happens when you're busy making other plans and then you need new resources to address whatever came up and this would be the place that we would put that thank you are there any other questions i just wanted to comment um i love that this is an organic and intentional um meetings of of the administration because you're going to find these words these are not new words but you find them in classrooms they're in the syllabus or on the walls and we expect the same thing of our students and and it's just been said for years but and you guys just didn't read a book and say these are the things we should focus on you came together and then you know you use the word accountability and that is scary and it's good to hear that word from the administration and then i've i've you know through trainings and i you know we've used accountability and ownership you know we've gone back and forth and that's what it is so it's going to be good for your staff and your students and the parents to see the amount of work in in the coming together for this this is fantastic thank you for your time thank you and doing that everybody we are blessed with an amazing leadership team and took the team and coming together even new members of our team um to start officially in july helping to build something to turn around and train train with but then as as a foundational part that we'll build with them on so i i think that we have such positive things in our leadership team and i'm proud of them all so thank you for your positive feedback to our entire team because this took an entire team and we're proud of them thank you again um we're going to move on to item 7.6 and we have a bond update and i would assume from mr moore thank you vice president wilson members of the board i've lost track what update we are on for the bond but uh yeah we are bringing a informational update to you um and just to remind you the governing board that after the board voted to authorize the resolution for the bond um the district enters into these election guidelines that i'm going to go over today um and so when i'm going over these these are guidelines that we are going to be following up into the election so arizona law states specifically statute 15 511 prohibits persons acting on behalf of a school district from using or spending district resources including the use of expenditure of monies accounts credit facilities vehicles postage telecommunication community computer hardware software web pages personnel equipment materials buildings or any other thing of value of the school district for the purpose of influence the outcome of the election so in essence we need to communicate in a manner that is impartial and neutral as district officials whether that be the governing board administration or school district employees teachers custodial staff etc next slide um so there are some things that we can do as district officials um so some of the prohibited or permitted activities excuse me we can distribute informational reports as we're doing today um with factual information concerning the election we can respond to questions about ballot measures and the content that's neutral and factual and manner district officials including governing board and administration can act in a private capacity on their own time um using the orange owned resources um and pacs political political action communities advocating for or against the proposed bond we also permitted to place campaign signs on private vehicles permitting that they're not parked on district properly permanently okay prohibited activities um pretty much everything above and beyond what i just mentioned um again we cannot spend or use district money accounts credit equipment on anything to influence the outcome of this election as acting as a district official we cannot use students as messengers of election information in any way we can't not use the authority of your position to influence the vote or any subordinate employee and we can't place campaign signs banner stickers on district property um what we have done and what we've worked with with the pr team and they've done a great job is we've done our best to get as much information out to our public as possible we have utilized our website and our pr team has created this lovely one-page handout that kind of really just highlights um the major points of our proposed bond and i think dr foley is going to i'm going to take over walk us through our website if you will transition back to our website thank you so one of the things you'll notice we're on our home page and it's a little delayed here but is it showing on your screens okay good it's a little delayed here on mine um one of the things that you'll notice is that this is we are no longer covet capital here this used to be the uh where all of our our information was for covid one of the things we will show is that those are all still down here but right now our our highlight here is our bond information and so one of the things the pr team teresa and her team have done a beautiful job is putting together some factual information with these tabs over here created some wonderful information about higley with some fast facts all factual with additional information so what you can see here we have a lot of information um about this with background information you'll notice too that we have road shows coming up and one of the things that we'll be doing is also creating a video version of the road show so if you can't road show with us what is shared at the roadshow will be videoed in here as well but again you'll notice that anything you'd want to know we have tried to capture everything here on this website and so her team theresa and her team have done a really nice job and again it is right home on our website right there in that middle section if you want just the one page fact sheet they did a beautiful job getting a lot of information on that we will send board members we'll send you invites to those road shows if you're able to join us great if not you at least have them on your calendar so that you know when they are but again more info there's lots of information here for anyone who would like to look at that could there be a road roadshow after the ballots go out because the ballots go out i think on october 6th sorry for not asking this beforehand i've just realized that the ballots go out on the sixth so some people may not even be aware we're putting a bond on until they get their ballot so is there any way you could think about possibly doing a road show after that bond that they get the physical piece of paper in the mail that doesn't have to be answered we can certainly look into that let me translate so the bond roadshow dates as dr finally went over um right now there hasn't been much um requests for information to the district office at least not of what has faltered down to administration um but if there is that large request we can certainly look at um bringing another roadshow date after that ballot is published um in that october time frame um i think that just might be just realizing that the ballot didn't go out until october 6th and i only realized it right now as i'm sitting here and all of our all of those road shows so a lot of parents a lot of community members may not even realize until you know they get back from that fall break because we do have that two week fall break that i believe falls right in that same time frame that that may they may not even realize that there's going to be a bond until they get back from fall break and open up the mail and realize hey there's a bond so let me yeah so the intention of the the september roadshow dates is this is an all mail-in election so as soon as they get that back there's no going into the the voter pamphlets typically in an all mail an election once you get the pa the voter uh pamphlet you're going to vote um so the intention was to get out there early prior to those voters receiving that mail-in election pamphlet and and really get the information out to those community members staff um the individuals that we have not been able to reach at least give them an opportunity to hear what our proposal includes again our website is fully active and we're constantly adding information to that website but these three dates there you know myself and i believe dr foley and dr fowler will be there and we'll have a informational powerpoint and we'll be taking questions again we can we'll answer as factual and as neutral as we can but those are the dates in which we have established right now but yet we will look into whether we do get an increase of um questions and concern we will look at adding an october election thank you just real fast i think to her point though you might not get the questions until after because there's going to be people that don't even look at it or realize or pay attention you'll have the half that send it in right away and then you'll have the other half they're like what is this so it's just something that i think you might not get the questions beforehand to know yeah but just a thought yeah we'll definitely look at adding that october an additional road trip date can you still watch um or view website traffic so after ballots can you go it click in there and see if like all of a sudden there's a bunch of hits to the website that might you might be like okay we're getting more interest and maybe we need to start considering i don't know that's how you do your job and to your that's a yes we can be monitoring that and to the point too you know you had asked about can we make sure that we put the information and we also identified in our when we started talking oh you can't see it on my screen yet but in that first one says bond presentations it talks about the summarized packet and our reviews and it has the videos of us talking about it as well there we go this was something you had talked about at our previous meeting is can we be sure to have this information there and we do also have it here too and yes we can monitor it um but i i i hear the thought and think it's a good idea about potentially adding that date which we can of course easily add we will also record what the road show is about so that we can put it here as well so that if you couldn't attend even if we had an additional date and couldn't attend but wanted to know you could get the same information dr foley on that um the one page fact sheet is that going to be a mailer out to the community of higley if that pack helps support it because we can't fund it because of um will you be using this as long as the pack funds it so we'll have to worry about the pack we'll have to talk with them about helping like like provide those that would be an event too that people could pick up you know so that we're not making the copies and trying to influence the election so we're trying to how do we get the word out within the realm of how we can legally get the word out right and i and i always bring up my little trilogy friends to make sure that they they are and we have the name of the individual one of the things is they may not want to come to us but they like for us to share the information so we've been in consultation with who we need to talk to that's a great idea i know they've always been very supportive of us in other ways so i think that's a great yes they vote one note on that fact sheet board member taylor is that all employees will have that um as either part of their their welcome back or i know principals have talked about um being able to hand that out um and so we haven't made that available to them so a few other dates um like you mentioned vice president wilson the october 6 is the ballots ready for mailing the last day to register to vote is october 4th and again this is an all mail-in election [Music] after october 6 the district will be hosting a election dropbox so if you were to drop off your ballot it will be up in the front office and then the dates of october 25th through november 2nd the district will also be a host for replacement ballots so if you were to lose your ballot in the mail or never received a ballot or got eaten by a dog or your dog ate your ballot um we would we'd be able to replace that ballot here um and then of course november 2nd is election day so after that all board members are will receive election results from the maricopa county elections office as well as district administration and that will be dr foley in our front offices are there voter registration forms still i know at one point that we used to carry for new residents of our area i know that obviously north of our district is growing and a lot of changing addresses so i know that having those voter registrations maybe in that front office area of those schools might be helpful um because those tend to be the people who need to vote thank you for that reminder so we can look into yeah and maybe have some here as well at the district office when people are registering their kiddos coming in possibly the next couple weeks it might just be a good way to get them that information that they might need thank you and then lastly there's been one pro political action committee identified and there's no um con committees out there but their information is up here if you're interested in being a part of that committee and that is all i have does anyone have any questions for our 18th uh bond update we should really have counted that's pretty funny on how many bond updates we've had [Laughter] president reece do you have anything to add no i'm all good thank you thank you thank you mr moore all right we have some action items that we need to attend to item 8.1 i move that we approve the august payment of the longevity pay for the 2020 2021 school year in the amount listed for the years of service totaling 15 750 any questions or comments all those in favor aye aye aye did i get everybody's eye tiffany okay that carries five zero moving on to 8.2 i move that the governing board ratifies the 2021-2022 member member thank you of understanding between higley unified school district and higley education association any questions or comments all those in favor aye aye [Music] aye motion carries five zero nine point one any future agenda items we have a little list going but we can always add more are we all set board member anderson no oh okay right um and then 10.1 is our governing board initiatives that we've always had we can keep and then 11.1 i move that we adjourn all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero good night everyone and had good luck on the first day of school [Music] yay okay you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
she then became positive she was a breakthrough case because she had been fully vaccinated interestingly enough and remember moderna is only 94 effective Pfizer is only 95 effective so five out of every hundred individuals can break through so anyway in this case the individual has two children in the school system and they're not in school right now so we're doing okay and we don't have to do contact tracing with them but we certainly will deal with the family so contact tracing becomes very important to curb the spread within a community and the community rate is going to be reflected in the school rate whether or not a child tests positive or not they still can be carriers I don't think many of you are old enough to remember Typhoid Mary from New York she spread typhoid and was responsible for 24 deaths in the city of New York because she was a subtle carrier nobody knew she had typhoid and she was sweating so individuals both children and adults can be can be subtle carriers and cleaning and disinfection we don't have to go overboard of because of the fact that we learned early uh well relatively recently that it's not important to do as much cleaning and disinfecting as was previously thought what brought the initial cleaning and disinfecting out it was fear it was fear that the somebody was going to contract the disease when it was very popular and when it was widespread in the community so we've had well over two thousand uh deaths I mean well well over 2 000 cases in Brookfield um and unfortunately sadly I just received the report today that one more Brookfield resident died yesterday in North Westchester Hospital uh so that's going to happen but it is rare and it is the exception so the bottom line is that we want to layer the prevention strategies such that if enough prevention strategies are in place and we have enough of the community vaccinated such that there won't be any such thing as herd immunity we then have a greater opportunity to get rid of masks from a local Health director's standpoint it's certainly going to be our recommendation to the governor whether he will listen or not who knows someone mentioned we might have an answer in a week it's not likely we probably won't have an answer for two weeks that was what the governor said yes uh yesterday um no no testing would be pool testing and it would be for well I'm sorry this is this is a board meeting and public commentary results thank you um testing will not be mandatory it will not and we applied the elite nine in our plan as we did all of last year to what Dr Sullivan was saying and I know Mr Belden you had a question for yeah I'm listening to the discussion which is which is very helpful by the way thank you um so what you're if we're given the option would you recommend that we lift the mask mandate in Brookfield and use all the other layering to to control the spread I would say I would say yes that would be my recommendation me how much how much power I have I'm only one of six Health directors on the advisory committee and uh I must say my experience uh being on an advisory committee has not been very good I was also on the vaccine allocation advisory committee for the governor and uh my thoughts didn't go very far there either right and and when you say lifted it's all ages young up through High School correct that's correct okay thank you um the disease is very real that's the one I'm important you know we've had 600 000 people die in this country um and uh it's significant and it does affect kids in some instance all one has to do is if you can get in walk through ccmc someday and look at the Missy's award uh Missy is uh multiple uh multiple organ syndrome uh in children and it's very real there's a study going on at Children's in Hartford right now with regard to the number of cases so if it's your child then it becomes even more important but it is somebody's child and that's my concern I have 17 I have 11 grandchildren and I don't want a single one of them to get infected that's for sure but the fact is that the disease is real and we have to try to convince people that it is real and it can't be compared to other diseases because it's so highly contagious and now we have this new Delta variant the Delta variants started in India we know that it's much more contagious we don't know who's carrying it that's the big thing you can even be a carrier and test negative that's another thing the fact is that the slightly older age group of children 12 to 15 who are being offered vaccination are the ones that are mostly spreading the disease 12 to 15 and then 15 to about 35.
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so that does not 2002. um that was when there was a large community convening and this came out of a community-wide group that was pulled together to put this vision and mission statement into place so this has been [Music] there for a long time that may mean that we need to change it um or maybe it has tested the it's stood the test of time i think it's very comprehensive and it's how the community uh came together with us as you said in a collective movement so i don't see a need to change that the expectations came into place my first year as superintendent and that was working with what at that time was called district leadership team has since morphed into district leadership council and that was designed to provide support and clarification on expectations for district employees so the expectations in the mission statement have been consistent from year to year it has been the goals that have changed from year to year but i do think it's important that the board see these in their entirety that was all a very long-winded way of saying there's no expectation that you'd change those yes mr lando i've got one super minor quibble about the mission statement um maybe it's not minor actually i take that back there's a line in there about that we want our student field to confidently compete in a changing global society and that word compete just jumps out at me i really love it if we could participate in or be a member of a changing level society without the i don't find personal success confidently find personal success something like that the idea that we're throwing them into this dog-eat-dog world where they're gonna have to go out guns blazing um i don't know the word compete bugs me i'll be honest in this particular one is abby you suggested a wording change what was it specifically i just know i said personal success um i might suggest that i'd rather see our students confidently take part in or confidently join a changing global society navigate personal access success navigate i can't remember what my word was yeah i think the idea behind your thinking and i agree is that it kind of goes back to our every student every day mantra now um where we're not talking about how they compare to each other we want them to set their own personal goals and feel success based on their own personal growth um so i am i'm i'm on board with you with maybe figuring out different language for the word compete participate are we actually rewriting the mission statement right now yes theoretically okay it's our document i mean i like it the way that it is i'll just say i mean on this on that particular point um no we we compete in in the global society you know and i don't think that it helps the students i mean this is no more than a mission statement but it's no less than a mission statement either and and you know i i think it's a straight talk if you tell kids that they will be competing in a in a changing global society i don't think you should try to sugarcoat it because as many you know insulating things as we have built into our society you know there's no guarantee those things won't go away at some point in time and i think that kids should be prepared i just think that compete is a little bit narrow of a word because it's not just competing that they're going to be doing um i think i like the word engage in an in a changing global society which would lend itself to being competitive but also enjoying life and not always worrying about the rat race you know like we want our students to have that broader perspective of of what their education will do for them yeah i thought about the word engage the problem is that then we have to actually reword the whole sentence because it would say confidently engage in attainable society by engaging in i know it's the worst so we could change engaging into completing because if our mission is you know not just that they're going to take classes but they're going to finish them executing executing see that's that's good bloodthirsty all right how's that for you matt executing sounds even better than compete competing i'm back to liking participate in a changing global society by engaging in a quality education yeah that works too now that i was pointed out that i was being repetitive i need a motion well i would like to move to replace the word compete with the word participate i'll second that motion any further discussion huh no we got we have to wake up matt and kathy [Laughter] i don't have any discussion i i have just something to say i yeah i think it's a dog eat dog world out there and i yeah kind of all the things you said you know um uh i think that i don't favor this change this is not my favorite mission statement in the world the one that we have here but but but on that point yeah i'm gonna have to be a no vote on this one sorry i mean i do think the mission statement is all inclusive and whatnot but it feels like it was made in the early 2000s i'll i'll say that too yeah i'll say that too it definitely lends itself to that it's much different from our equity statement which is eight people to in an hour to my counselor that i had a conversation with today about how i was managing stress in this world would would not want us to have compete in there you know it's it can be debilitating and participate is you know you choose your level and what's what's healthy for you okay uh i'm going to call for a vote we have a motion and a second and discussion on changing the word compete in to participate in all those in favor signify by saying i opposed nay okay four to one in favor okay so we have the mission statement done uh do we want to take another look at the goals or leave them as they are presented we did a lot of work on them boy did we okay let me re-clarify that the goals one two and three are the lcap goals and the borders already voted on those do we want to let those stand um as they are or do we want to add a focus goal if we don't want to add a focus goal we can move on i think our focus has already been described over and over and over in our lcap i excuse me i agree with tom we don't need to pull focus away from that by trying to define something else i think four i want to leave absolutely because we've we've seen evidence over and over that we need to increase meaningful parent involvement and input as much as we've tried we could still do better and i think just having it there and and working on maybe a a workshop with that intended topic would be good and in school climate that encompasses our social emotional structure are everything that goes on in the way of making schools a safe healthy inviting vibrant environment for our kids okay oh i'm sorry maybe i jumped ahead of you i was just gonna say i do think still that it it should have a motion it should probably be a an action item and action to leave it without a focus goal somebody needs some somebody needs to call for a motion okay board do we have a motion to uh deal with board goals for the 21 22 school year i moved to have no focus goal thank you is there a second i will second that i have a motion in a second any further discussion okay let's uh i call for a vote um all those in favor of leaving goals one through five as they were in 2021 without a focus goal one through three huh one through three one two three and we need a roll called loop what are we doing with four and five there's no four and five there's no four sure what have i got did you give me old documents yes that was last year so this is this year you're looking at last year's this is not last year's 21 that's what this says no idea where you got that it came from this is what's in the packet it was a setup that's what it was okay um for those of you that have the correct documents all of us in favor of saying aye dalby tennis not voting and this is based on my my no vote on the lcap lando i uh i think that would be a no vote then yeah that's a no vote robert and i abstain right and tennis now i'm actually abstaining abstaining it's an abstention right that's fine okay um do you have suggestions for what i should say i think this relates back to the lcap conversation right but if you is my understanding just that you're abstaining because you already voted no on the lcap so that you don't feel the need to vote on this because i like i already don't agree with it right i liked the old goals better you know i could go back and read them again and then you'd see how much more how much better they are than these but but yeah i just like the old goals better i i want to point out that we've already had this discussion a couple of times before and so and he can abstain and he doesn't have to explain himself enough to explain okay we just want us to move forward yes okay uh motion carries four to one huh yeah now that i have the right documents because the superintendent's office set me up with incorrect paperwork okay and we are i'm sorry let me get back to where we are next yes yes board workshop topics okay so each year the board has the opportunity to look in depth at additional topics that aren't in depth in a regular board meeting regular board meetings we try to keep the agenda items to 15 minutes in a board workshop we allow 90 minutes and sometimes it goes longer than that to take an in-depth look at a particular topic what i did hear is i asked board members as well as district staff if there were items that they felt were important to have more information for the board or that the board wanted to learn more about and those items are listed here under the suggested topics for 2122 board workshop consideration if you notice there are 15 of them we have five or four workshop months so the most we could accommodate would be uh five at this particular point and that's due to we don't have board workshops in december january and march and usually not august another part of this process is as we determine the board workshop so we always ask for two board members to be the liaisons to staff to make sure that we get it right these workshops are for you to provide additional information so we want to make sure that the information we're providing is what you want nothing worse than you thinking you're getting something and we present in a completely different direction so as we go through this and determine which five we would like to learn more about we'll also be asking for board members to serve as liaisons to staff to help develop that workshop or guide us yes um yeah yes thank you just a quick comment and i wonder if we couldn't fit one more in given that uh we're not gonna we're not gonna have a board area of focus it's true so we have the month for a workshop also your topic what was your topic i didn't have one i never took it i was just uh asking whether we could fit an expert we can do anything you want this just because uh you typically in may we review the board focus and we just chose not to have one so um what i do want if you can look at the sheet that's in your online packet as well that lists the dates of the board workshops and then uh the september first one has already been allocated to the california voters right act because the board is engaged in that process but we've been on hold for a period of time so that one um does already have a topic assigned to it but october 6 november 3rd february 2nd april 6th is that 1 2 3 4.
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