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so i mean they're to me they're relatively close now yes we could end up in a situation where our five zip codes end up on one side of the line and the other five and or the county ends up on the other and it could be good or bad either way for what we want to see my default though is you know i'm not seeing a huge discrepancy over the past week of those numbers um so what's happening no i just wanted to look at that bottom line it's easily defensible to start with the cdc recommendation and then monitor that as we're going if i was seeing a huge discrepancy right now and the county was at 80 and our five zip codes were at 20 i would likely be coming and saying look i i don't think i can recommend starting there because they're so far apart but they're i would say i would flip it around the other way as well yeah oh right yeah if it was the other way too tony was at 20 but we were at 80.
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i went through the school system my kids have gone through the school system i only have one left unfortunately but i want to stand here before all of you to represent my one son william metz we have not experienced the covid however i have had friends dear friends of mine that have experienced it it's been kind of a bad thing but you know what we all recall a spanish flu which we were probably not around then we all lived and survived that and i think that today with that man there i don't know his name i'm sorry but he did a very nice job of explaining what needs to be done and i concur with what he said and i feel as though that the vote needs to take place tonight get this thing done and stop putting it off we're here to get things done thank you [Applause] thanks tim next kelly cameron apologies for being tardy had issues with children um so i i'm allowed to read on behalf of someone okay um i haven't timed it so hi i'm so kelly cameron i don't know if you can hear me or not um i am reading this on behalf of a um well i know who she is um a substitute teacher named leanne landstrom who is a christian wife mother of two incredible teenagers and a school district 301 six-year full-time substitute dear dr stern and dr mangan if i said that wrong apologize i'm asking the lord for wisdom and words to communicate my heart's cry to you tonight in regards to the almost 5 000 beautiful children in our district i've had both the honor and privilege to serve daily in all seven schools for six full years since 2015.
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that's also something i'd want to talk about so um but so long as as the county numbers somewhat closely parallel what we're doing here in in our zip codes i don't see a a reason to to go against the cdc guidance uh on this yeah not yet i mean that's why that's my recommendation now i don't know if if other members feel differently i know you're down on the other side there i want to joanna had joanna was trying to say something so joanna then terry okay can you pull it close to the mic pretty much i'm agreeing with mike i think that we need the consistency i think the masks on the mask off i think the kids become frustrated with that and they don't even know what to do and i think wearing a mask is a very small sacrifice to make to be in school all the time so that's the bottom line for me and i think following what the cdc says is the way to go chair i'm fine i know i have a different mic so that's why um i i agree that uh we need to use the cdc guidelines rather than going back and forth between just our county and or i mean our district and that and i think we need to start with masks and see where we go well we might we might not start with masks because the we could be reaching a peak right now and before school starts it could drop i i hope it does that means that you know that that covet is getting back under control and maybe this delta variants getting under control and hopefully the friday before school starts we're back under that that substantial level and we can come back even closer to normal like we had hoped when we had met the last time right but if we're not then i think the prudent thing to do according to the guidance and what the health experts and idph and dupage county are telling us is that if we're above that threshold we need to universally mask until we drop below it and i think at this stage of the game everybody has a mask kind of with them anyway and as we did last year any of our new students will be we did i think we put the order in today so that any of our new students incoming ninth graders or transfer students we can provide them with the same masks that our students had last year so that nobody's kind of left out and doesn't have access to the same resources that we provided if if a student lost a mask they could get another one um i don't know if we have enough to give everybody a new one i think it's only new students that we ordered them for we can always negotiate that right we'll see how many requests come in i i'm sure students uh you know have their own preferences as well and maybe the one we're providing isn't their favorite either so that's a good point all right so any questions on those changes that have come any other questions jen did you hear anything no okay okay all right so our plan looks really similar to the last time we met we're excited to be back on any period day with lunch in our brand new spaces we're going to have outdoor seating if people want to take their masks off and eat outside although so we found out today some of our furniture for the new construction including our new spaces is running slow so we might have some temporary furniture in those spaces while we wait for the the new and improved stuff not even improved just new stuff uh to show up so we started troubleshooting that issue today since we're on lunches so will there be any opportunity to eat inside like in bad weather or at all eating out no the most of the opportunities will be inside okay so the way that would look is that students would go through the lunch line with their mask on go to wherever they're going to sit and then once they're seated they could remove their mask and eat and then if they're sitting within three feet of anybody then we have to contact trace if somebody would become ill at that point um that's a you know that was a that's that was a good point to this remember because we had an issue at the end of last school year where yeah at the end we were allowing the students with you know close to three to get down to three feet but that meant they had to quarantine because they were less than six so this is a significant change going to this year which hopefully minimizes the number of students that would have to quarantine um because they don't have to quarantine unless they're within the three feet correct and the quarantine at six feet had really nasty ripple effects throughout the rest of the school especially because we had a remote option at that point and to avoid the possibility of quarantining students were just not coming to school at all and they didn't want to end up quarantining from sports or activities so it really you know i i fought with the health department a lot about okay this is something that on paper in theory appears like it would work but in practice it's not it's not serving us well so we're very excited to see this possibility of getting down to the three feet um you know in what we're looking at well thank you for that advocacy that's that's a it's a key piece to this i think it really is so is the plan still done that vaccinated students do not have to quarantine yes correct so it according to the cdc guidance if you are if a student is vaccinated there's no contact tracing or quarantine or if they've tested positive for covet and then recovered in the past 90 days both of those work interchangeably with one another really when it comes down to getting everybody back and keeping everybody here the the most important thing on that slide is that people stay home when they're sick that staff or students you know really take that seriously families take that seriously the more we can keep illness out of the school the more it won't spread here and the more we can keep students here and not have to worry about contact racing and quarantining and all of those things we're going to continue to promote and provide opportunities for students and staff to be vaccinated i'm going to share some of those with you this evening we'll continue to follow mask wearing based on that cdc guidance based on transmission levels in the county updating it each friday as we said tonight we'll start with the county level numbers and monitor it and and see what that looks like moving forward we're is everywhere that we can we'll maintain a distance of more than three feet as much as possible um i've already had conversations with several teachers that are trying to think about how to set up their rooms how to set up activities you know and really the the good uh good thought that we're just thing that we'll just keep sharing with everybody's just keep an arm's length away from everybody around you that that works out to be about three feet and if everybody just kind of stays an arm length away as they're doing activities or things in the classroom then they're not within the distance that we have to worry about contact tracing right so especially if you're spending a good deal amount of time with anybody while the masking it's wearing the mask keeping the three feet away when we drop down into the other levels we'll expect that it's just keeping the three feet of distance are we still going to do the hallway hallway or no what's that nancy no i asked if we were still going to do the one-way hallway yeah we didn't do one-way hallways last year we just felt with the way that our floor plans were that it would actually cause people to actually have to spend more time in stairwells which you know are way more packed together than our hallways are so um we never did the the one directional hallways and we won't this year and especially with things like the commons and and some of our new hallways that are there it'll be a lot easier for students to spread out as they go from one side of the building to the other as i said last time and i guess it was a premonition of what was to come guidance from federal state or local health officials could cause information to continue to change so could an increase of illness here at school could result in the dupage county health department telling us to change a certain practice in response to that um so that's kind of the plan right that the plan is we're really close to back to normal right and as we talk administratively uh we keep getting a lot of questions about what do we do you know last year we did this what do we do now and our first response is well what'd you do before the pandemic like that's where we start from and then we really have three pieces of safety that are on top of that right now the universal masking because of high transmission levels that hopefully those will drop and universal masking goes back to a choice as to what you do with that the next thing is contact tracing and then quarantining which are required for the cdc required for the dupage county health department we must comply with those those orders um there's options as to how those happen though depending on if a family chooses vaccination or not so we're you know it's far less restrictions than what we saw last year and some more choice for families than what we saw last year but this will continue to likely change as the school year goes on we're still dedicated as much as possible to offer a normal learning experience pre-pandemic style learning experience in our brand new beautiful buildings as much as possible so any questions on that is a plan from board members i mean not much has changed other than the masking piece since the last time we met and the actual details on quarantine all right this is just a slide that reviews what we've said multiple times tonight on close contacts in quarantine i wanted it pulled out as a single slide though so it'd be easy for families to find if they wanted to reference it nancy it looks like you have a question yeah and i'm sorry i didn't catch until now but to be clear if you've been vaccinated and you test positive you will still quarantine if you are vaccinated and you show symptoms you will you will need the quarantine yes you will just not quarantine if you're close contact correct okay yes yeah and i i have a typo on the slide there so cdc still defines a closed contact who is not fully vaccinated well they do is six feet of an infected person but we're able with the mask wearing guidance to reduce that down to three feet okay so just to make sure that that's clear there and then those who are vaccinated those that have had covert in the past 90 days do not need to quarantine unless they have symptoms right then obviously anybody who's sick is going home you know that's the key to keeping everybody safe when we follow this new mass guidance quarantine is 10 days without symptoms if they have symptoms then they have to follow a longer quarantined practice and if you're a close contact to a person who's already been vaccinated you will have to quarantine whether you're if you are not vaccinated so yeah if a vaccinated person has symptoms and tests positive and you were a close contact to that person and you were unvaccinated or did not have covet in the last 90 days then yes you would need to quarantine and the fact that i know that off the top of my head is scary all right uh as jade pointed out we have a vaccination clinic here tomorrow through walgreens it's up on our website we tweeted it out and put it on facebook and next door students can still sign up for that today and show up here tomorrow and get their first dose and then for those that were part of our code care clinic last month their second dose is on thursday and then dupage county health department shared this other half of the slide with me today it's hard to read there but if you go to the dupage county health department they right there under vaccinations show you all of the options here but i i posted this and i'm calling it out because there's two opportunities here in woodridge uh upcoming as well so some local opportunities from the dupage county health department caravan where you can go and get vaccinated at the sites where they're kind of roaming around the county and you could get a vaccine from them i think the woodridge public library on august 4th my eyes aren't as good as they used to be yeah and uh there's another one i thought in woodridge no westmont west suburban community pantry oh yeah and west yep jefferson middle school that's a naperville though okay but there are also westminster an open house at the westmont police uh tomorrow night so several opportunities in the neighborhood through dupage county health department as well all right so i received a lot of questions last after last month's presentation about what happens if somebody is from parents and students so this was a piece that the community felt was missing in in the presentation last month so we want to make sure we brought it back and kind of close that gap this month so gina is here to talk a little bit about this little this is this was in last month's presentation and i'm circling it now to just call it out that everything that gina was about to share was in this bullet but we didn't dive into the details of it last month so this month we're going to kind of dive into the details of the fact that we've added additional supports and programming to help students remain successful even when they're out because they're sick or they're quarantined students being out for a duration of time is not unusual for us you know whether it be for flu or strep whether it be on a a string of college visits or out because of a family reason or mental health issues or other physical issues throughout the year and this is something we've seen an increase of over the last five years and that we have continued as an administration and a board to add additional resources and personnel especially in c triple s our counseling support services to respond to these kinds of student illnesses or reasons that they're out we've increased those this summer and over the past year knowing that you know especially for some students at no fault of their own they're just close to somebody who happened to be sick that they might have to be out for a period of time um that that we have supports for that students will continue to be provided instructional opportunities help from their teachers and will be provided an opportunity to learn that being said every student's plan for that is different because it depends on the courses they're taking what the teacher is even teaching that week what's going on you know a classroom one of the things i used to teach was chemistry there are certain weeks of the year where there's a lot of like information and you know notes and lecture and and presentations and those kinds of things where you're gaining concepts and the next week you might spend five days in a lab right the student that misses the week where there's a bunch of content and information what i would provide them as a teacher would look very different than if they missed the next week when we were doing a lab all week right so i received a lot of questions from students and parents that want to know like what will happen when i'm out for 10 days what will happen is that our our teachers and educators will make a plan for you and then you will be supported through that plan from our teachers and also our counselors and other variety of supports depending on what you as a student need so gina's going to provide an overview of the menu of things that we've added on top of those resources that are already there within our district that we'll be kind of picking and choosing and selecting from to make an experience for each individual student mike just a point that occurred to me 10-day quarantine means the maximum number of days that a student would miss school would be eight so it will be eight or less days missed so one day is too many but it's not you're not going to miss two weeks of school correct and that's that's the key of going from 14 to 10.
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each year i teach approximately twenty five hundred to three thousand students in these amazing schools with administrators and educators and service staff who are passionate towards these young hearts and lives they allow them to thrive grow mature and learn each school year i look forward to younger siblings graduating into the schools where i teach and gracing the desks in the classroom i temporarily occupy to date i've subbed for well over 100 teachers and staff meeting these young ones on different points of their journey from childhood to adulthood last school year i rushed into pkms on 8 2020 the very first day of this unknown and unusual school year with my heart overflowing with joy to be back physically with students after a five and a half month hiatus those are 160 days plus at home brought illness loneliness sadness despair worry concern and hundreds of hours of prayer so on the first day of school i was jubilantly bounding into the office to get my sub badge and my assignment walking into the main hallway i saw hundreds of masked faces walking in two distinctive lines properly spaced taking hand sanitizer at proper locations and sitting in my classes six feet apart and using only allotted stairwells at lunch they sat alone or two each large table which usually seats eight students throughout the entire first semester i noticed how almost no sixth and seventh graders would talk to each other at lunch simply looking down at an electronic device passing the time with digital entertainment or distractions best friends were split apart by alphabet and were never physically in class together anymore they were not on the bus at lunch or in pe together which are all critical times to socialize allowing stress and anxiety to dissipate also in those places they get some much needed mask breaks while eating and walking outdoors the levels of stress and pressure on typical american teens and adolescents is already at our nation's all-time high before the added fear of sickness joblessness quarantining and isolation i passed these 100s of mass kiddos and prayed repeatedly to recognize them simply by their eyes and small part of their foreheads and to call them by their proper name kids want to be known to be seen to be recognized and cared for exactly who they are what they are capable of and for acceptance in social settings there's a lot more to this could i defer to later if someone has extra time okay um at these middle schoolers we're only together now two days a week getting minimal time to unwind relax be themselves breathe sufficient amounts of oxygen school became increasingly difficult throughout the school year i would repeatedly check in with students asking questions such as how are you doing really how are things going with the hybrid learning how are you dealing with being at home do you get to see your closest friends still are you making new friends with your new schedule looking at navigating those types of radical life changes even in adults they have an incredible children have an incredibly hard time assimilating now consider school age maleable brains with fluctuating hormones and every changing social standing and recognize the heavy impact on children emotionally mentally socially and physically not to mention spiritually after asking how they are navigating their new normal notoriously i would hear i want to be in person i just want to be at school or for those who would say i only want to be remote i like sleeping in and playing games all day long i don't like doing any homework i realize this last group of comments illustrates signs of social detachment emotional isolation despair and loneliness which are all traits of depression i witnessed students having anxiety attacks which caused them to leave the room ask to see a nurse or take extended bathroom breaks other students were in such a state of fear that they wouldn't allow people to touch them or anything they own or even allow kindness in lending a pencil eraser or paper to take notes in class the design the human desire to high five fist bump side hug sit shoulder to soldier shoulder to shoulder and willingly meet the needs of others by affection kindness and sharing was replaced with awkward glances sidestepping in the halls careful navigating stairwells staggering bathroom breaks and missing out on every fun and creatively designed pe game our staff has worse decades to perfect i'm going to sorry how much how much longer is it really what was the name so um i will just kind of go through some of things so the highlights of this is you know the the things that were um kids being taught digital symphonies and choirs without students allowed to sit side by side stress and strain on teachers and staff who worked full time in person while having while their own children were at home all day e-learning in closing our children do not need to be dehumanized by covering up their faces their expressions their emotions and innately who they are i know my students well and i know their countenances and their personalities when i see their expression i know if they are struggling with something heavy or emotionally taxing i can pull them aside or drop a note on their desk and ask lovingly what is happening to you today is you don't seem like yourself is there anything going on that you want to share we impact our students by encouraging them lifting them up in hard times praying privately for them speaking to their hearts and letting them know we care deeply when we cannot see them we have been stripped of ninety percent of the evidence that this child needs care a kind word an adult to show them i see you and i care um may we seek god's wisdom his power his authority and his guidance in every single thing we decide tonight and perpetuate on to our next generation i pray he will fill you with his perfect peace and he showers you with his presence as you carefully and prayerfully decide on behalf of almost five thousand children in their families finally will you vote for freedom for the kids for their faces to be seen to allow their bodies to breathe the oxygen that god ordained for them to breathe by his design and for all of us to show kindness and humanity to one another that is hardwired into our dna i pray that you will indeed choose these freedoms my blessings and prayers leanne landstrom [Applause] next michelle dubanowski hi um i did not plan on coming here tonight but hi dr stern but uh i got a disturbing text from a parent and speaking to some of these other parents here i came to find out that other people had heard the same thing today and to me as a parent speaking to all board members and lauren you're not even looking at me giving me the courtesy to look at me it's upsetting to to hear this and basically the message i got was it said fyi the district is voting tonight on masks if they get a hundred people to show up this evening they have stated they will make masks optional if this is something important to you please join us at the district meeting this evening between 5 30 to 6.
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yes right yeah all right gina thank you dr sealy as dr thiele said we have several supports that are new or additional we've added supports this last year and we're adding additional support for this school year and i divided them into two areas personnel and then other resources or programs we are in the process right now of hiring student success coordinators this is a new position for us we are planning to hire one at each campus the student success coordinator will work very closely with our interventionists last year we had a full-time intervention second semester at south and a part-time at north we are planning to add an additional interventionist itself so we'll have two and then a full-time in addition to a part-time interventionist at north and the student success coordinator will work very closely with the interventionists they'll coordinate various resources and interventions for students including students who may be receiving homebound students including students who are quarantined they'll coordinate those interventions working with counseling and student support services with teachers with students with families they will be the conduit between the school the counselings the teachers and the students and parents so that we're really excited to be able to add those positions we also increase social work support at both north and south for this upcoming year we are again returning to having an additional agency nurse at each campus to assist with everything that they need to do related to quarantining covet contact tracing serving students and we are adding additional ft as well we had very deliberate choices in terms of adding fds to certain courses that were higher class sizes we wanted to bring down the class size we are adding 0.6 which is a little over half time 60 percent teacher here at north high school for our bilingual and el students the board may recall we added to south we've added consistently the last few years for our el and bilingual students we're also adding an additional 0.1 so an additional resource period for bilingual students at south all of these new positions will be funded out of the sr arp grant which is a grant to enable schools to provide additional supports for students and so all of these positions will come out of the grant for this year and just if i can just interrupt for a second and correct me if i'm wrong but for the benefit of our new members just fortuitously prior to covet we had increased our support staff our counselors our psychologists et cetera because we knew there was a need so if you look at this it says well you know is this really all we're going to do but it's actually we had just increased staffing tremendous a lot just prior to pulving yeah this is huge because we've consistently over the last few years added support to counseling and student support services and we're continuing to add so in terms of resources we are in the process of redesigning our academic resource centers that will provide services tutoring to students during the school day so during lunch study hall you know those those kinds of of resources we've also expanded our strive program our strive program has been in existence for more than a decade and we added last year at south a strive to a higher level to support students during covid and really saw some success with that and so we're expanding that this year and we'll continue doing that at south but expanding that to north high school as well our path program and i know we've spoken about that a few times our path program we were unable to fully implement last year and as the board may recall the path program is supporting students in and out of school suspension it's restorative in nature it's designed to decrease suspensions and increase students therefore being in class we have a curriculum for that it's called the why tri curriculum and we're very excited to get that up and running fully this year we have had teacher office hours last year and that will continue into this year which is synchronous in nature and students can receive support from their students we also are in progress in terms of our social emotional learning programming we are we have groups working and attending conferences and then working to design curriculum for not just counseling and student support services but for teachers to use in the classroom so we have sel collaboratives that are working on designing curriculum aligned to the framework which is aligned to the sel standards in the state of illinois and then we have paper which the board has heard about before we actually had that open for summer school students and i was very pleased that some students were using it even in the summer so we will continue with paper into this school year we will be replacing anonymous alerts with a safe to help program it's actually a state of illinois system for schools it's 24 7 365 days a year multiple modes to obviously report those kinds of things that are that are urgent can report through text and phone and different different models and so that is completely funded by the state it's also an anonymous it is anonymous absolutely um but it's provided by the state so that's also good for us in terms of not needing to use district resources um to support it so these are not meant to be an exhaustive list of supports for students but supports that are either changing being added or are new okay i got a quick question for you so let's say i'm a parent of a freshman coming in everything's new to me and we get a month in and my child has had a close contact has to quarantine what should i expect to happen yeah you should first expect that you'll hear from our nursing department that that close contact is happening then they'll contact trace in cooperation with the dupage county health department and they'll provide you information on what the next steps are for you health-wise and then shortly after that you would hear from likely the counselor and maybe in cooperation with our uh interventionist the interventionist thank you i'm starting to get my vocabulary confused uh and putting forward a plan that has been developed in cooperation with the classroom teachers as to what your experience will be over uh the next 10 days in advance you should have already been connected to your teacher through google classroom and all of those other tools as well as be aware of when their office hours are which are a combination of in-person and virtual although during the in-person time uh a student that's on quarantine could remote into their teachers office hours during that time and get real-time help from them you know during those office hours every teacher is expected to have a blend of in-person and remote opportunities so that t students can connect in whichever way on a normal basis you know when they're not on quarantine that they're most comfortable connecting with their teacher so that that would be the path going forward and then it would be monitored by the the group of support to make sure that you're being successful and then when you come back well a lot of students will still continue to submit things that you know there's a lot of digital opportunities and they'll stay on top of it as much as they can while they're outside of class and then hopefully fold right back in when their time on quarantine is is done or time being sick or whatever that is thank you other questions all right so any overall questions on the plan once again uh tonight you're being asked to approve the resolution which kind of takes this plan and says as of today this is what we're doing and authorizes the administration to adapt that plan moving forward outline first contact with nancy for an emergency or an urgent issue and then we put that response in place the default would be to take it to the whole board at a public meeting like this with less substantial changes and the board tonight is being asked to approve both of those things in the action by default by approving the resolution you're approving the administration's administration's plan at this point so it seems a little weird in the way that it works but i just want to make sure all of our members are clear as to as to how that opera is operationalized can you say again i'm sorry what how you're going to convey changes yeah so it depends on how significant and rapid the change is that needs to be made if it is something significant and immediate that needs to occur then and you know we're not able to call a board meeting before that has to go into place so if that would occur i'd confer with nancy i would say work with her to say we need to put this in place immediately based on the recommendation of dupage county health department legal what whatever that is right we would confer then we would put that in place because it was a some kind of a urgent issue that we had to respond to the board would be informed that that change would be made and then we would communicate that out to the public to students and families and staff if it wasn't something that was urgent then it would happen through the normal board process now i might not be able to wait two or three weeks for the next board meeting for that to happen so i may need to work with nancy to call a special board meeting to talk about that that change so it could be any number of the like just in the normal board work that hey here's a change we would like to make we're seeing it's not really urgent but we feel like we need to make this change whether it be in practice or board policy as a result of the pandemic um one of those i'll give you one that we're looking at right now is our immunization policy and how that fits in right now with not not and it's not anything related to covet immunizations it's the required state immunizations that have been there for like tdap and all of those things right yeah yeah so we have some language in there that might be difficult for families right now just with kovid and everything else that's out there and we're having internal discussions about what our board policy says about immunizations related to the state required immunizations and the timing and how that works i might need to before school starts depending on what we find out related to those come to the board or use this process over the next couple of weeks and say we need to make a slight change in that because right now the way that our language is written is that if you don't have the state mandated vaccinations in place by the first day of school you cannot attend right now we're trying to ascertain how many students haven't gotten those vaccinations do they intend to be able to get them before school starts is there something related to the return from covid or increased cases or anything that's preventing them from being able to get vaccinated if we find that that's the case i might make a recommendation that we waive that policy and give them an extension to get those vaccines done before the school year starts or you know or after the school year starts so that they're not held out of class due to something that isn't a fault of theirs right if that's the case let's we'll just play that forward and say that's the scenario our next board meeting is on the 16th the 13th is the first day kids are back in school if we find that that is a true issue i will likely reach out to nancy and say hey for the 13th and the 16th we'd like to waive that part of the policy i'm recommending we do it as administration it's kovit related we found that this is an issue related to covid for those first two days of school i would like to suspend that policy and not hold students out of school nancy i would confer with her we'd discuss the pros and cons of it i would let the board know nancy and i are discussing it we would make a decision at that point then on the 16th which is our next board meeting i would come to you and say okay we made we talked about this i administratively waived that policy under the resolution you're about to pass tonight hopefully now i need the board to give me direction of what we do moving forward do i continue to suspend that policy or is it in in places as written which means starting the next day it the decision i made is nolan void and now it's what the board has decided right so that's kind of walking through a real scenario we're playing with right now is we try to determine the impact of covid on our families and our students um that that's exactly how what this is set up to try to work around but to be clear you're not talking about to be clear you're not talking about culvert immunizations there is no code required administrative vaccinations no no not being discussed not being considered by the administration or the board in any way what i'm talking about is the traditional ones which is why when i started talking about i'm like oh do i even want to dig into this but it's it is the real thing that we're dealing with right now is the board policy says we must exclude students without their mandated vaccinations on the first day of school until they receive those vaccines the state has a later deadline we've got to figure out is this a big issue or not we're also talking about trying to run with codal care who's been a partner for us on vaccine clinics for covid bringing them in to run clinics for families that were unable to so we're we got a lot of irons in the fire right now that i'm not prepared yet to tell the board hey this is truly an issue and here's our solution and here's it's developing in real time so i might need to make a decision before we're able to meet as a board to say this is what's best for our kids during these times and then the next time we meet we'll sort it out with the full board and make sure that the board feels comfortable with us continuing down that path or gives me a different direction but that's how this is set up to work just because things are developing and changing far more rapidly than they traditionally do around our practices at school you know things like this like a a pop-up vaccine clinic for mandated vaccines not covid the other mandated vaccines would be something we would spend months working on but we're starting to get a feeling like this might be an issue as we return to school this year and a lot of people that haven't seen their doctors in maybe 16 months because of kovid might be having challenges getting their student their children vaccinated right now with the required state mandated vaccines so if we determine that that is truly a problem we're going to try to respond to that and help our families and our kids out so that they're not held out of school but we we got to work through it all and figure it out so that's a real time example of something that administratively we're wrestling with and trying to get our our heads around how to respond to that and might have to make a change in real time to offer resources to our our students and families so that's a very long answer to a very direct question any other questions sorry can i ask about people that are going to be having to quarantine more than once yeah it's possible we had it last spring it is possible that somebody would have to quarantine more than once and so then you're looking at someone who's possibly missing days of school the the question is is it possible that somebody would have to quarantine more than once yes it is possible and yes then we would have to respond and meet the that students learning needs for the entire duration that they're they're out for sorry the plan we're voting on then every friday you're going to make a determination based on the numbers yeah i mean i've ever had yeah it's not really determination right well i mean yeah are we above the line or below the line if we're below the line for the next week we would go back to the mask optional well you know you raise a good you raise a good question because oh sorry thank you you raised a good question because last year before you guys came on board one of the things that was difficult was that we were trying to match the mitigation for depending on the numbers and it got to you know do you round up do you run down it would seem to me that and i think what did we we had we had it we had it that you had to have three consistent weeks it was all over the place because the guidance kept changing the guy and said but you have to have a trend for over three weeks so i would hope that we would never get to the point where we'd say this week we're at 49.9 so no masks and next week we're at 50.1 so we mask i mean we would want to see a trend of at least three data points of a downward um or upward trend the cdc guidance has you reevaluating every seven days it's a seven day rolling the the fact that it's a seven day rolling average has a trend built into it by using that number and our experience from last year was not seeing a jagged line right we didn't see that even in the the variety of data we were looking at last year you saw steady increases and then steady decreases and steady increase right now we're in one of those waves up right now i fully expect based on what we saw last year at some point we'll hit the peak of this new wave and it'll turn around and go back the other way until some other factor variable plays in into it and then it'll turn around now it might go up and stay there for a little bit but then something will cause it to go back down whether it's expansion of vaccines to pediatric patients whether it's enough people have gotten the delta variants that now there's you know just less people getting it so it's it starts dropping we have not seen a lot of zigzag patterns over the last year and a half we've seen these steady increases and then falls and then rise and then fall i would imagine we would see the same thing here yeah it is possible that come friday a number sits right on one side of the line or the other but we talked through this multiple times last year at some point there's a line and the cdc is recommended as to where that line should fall i'm recommending that that's for now what we use and then we monitor it and see what makes sense from there i'm hoping this is a quick turnaround as i said earlier and by the time kids come back next week or the week after i mean but by the end of this week we're looking at the next week's numbers that we see a rapid fall here over the next few days and then we're back closer to normal if not you know for everybody's sake health-wise that it continues to fall and we get back to normal as quick as possible so the data point you're using is the seven day rolling average 50 or less would put us in the massive optional 50 above 50 or what no actually it's 49.9 or less would be mask optional 50 or higher would be the the higher substantial transmission rates and would be universal masking well my point is if you look at the daily to your point you're looking at the seven day average we're not looking at the daily number we're looking at the seven day average number on friday thank you yeah the seven day average number has a trend built into it all right any other questions all right as i've mentioned multiple times this is up for action later this evening under the resolution we have moved the first reception of visitors to this point so that the audience had an opportunity to hear the administration's recommendation and provide any feedback so we will begin the first reception of the decision the way that this will work is this first reception of visitors is for action items i'll call you up in the order in which the slips were received we have two of them [Music] once i call you up you can get there i'll advance to a screen that has a timer on it once you start talking i'll start the timer once it hits the end of the time we ask that you step away from the microphone and conclude your comments so the first person is kevin custer good evening um first hank i'd like to say you haven't referenced and if you have i apologize you haven't referenced what specific site you're getting the positivity rate from can you please inform the public of that so we can monitor it as well according to the dupage county health dot org which i just looked at the five-day county zip code excuse me the five-county zip code for seven day average positivity rate for a hundred thousand is 74.
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it's no biggie either way but i wanted to spread the word and this parent said to me i just received this from a parent that knows somebody on the board they don't want their name released but they're aiming for a large number anybody that's interested have them go to the district building in burlington near pantherfield and she said i'm not sure how reliable this is but somebody just sent it to me and unfortunately i can't go um i'm a small business owner i was at work doing my payroll so i can make sure my employees get paid that we've struggled through this entire covit thing i set everything down and i'm going to go back when i'm done to finish i this is very upsetting to me as a parent i don't know if it's true but i can't imagine that multiple people that i talk to and a lady that i trust my own children with would have any reason to tell me something that wasn't accurate um i have a son that's going into ninth grade he has an iep he has add he's got some other learning issues and last year we struggled mightily thank god for kathy jackson at cms she is literally the glue that held everything together including my family through some really tough times to get him moving forward and continuing to move forward during school he struggled with anxiety because of the mask we even got an um not an exemption because it wasn't an exemption but it was a change from his doctor that he could wear a gator instead of the mask so he had that on he still had issues he was in and out of school all year last year i had him at work with me sitting in my conference room at times because having edd i couldn't leave him at home it was rough and i would tell you it was rough it was rough if i don't go to work i don't get paid i didn't get to sit at home i don't collect unemployment i don't get i don't get it it's up to me so to hear that what's sort of sounds and i'm not naive i know how politics work and how things work but what sort of sounds like to me that a decision has possibly already been made to have all these people here is very disturbing and upsetting to me as a parent um dr sterny and i had a conversation and it's private i won't share that with anybody but i know you know i know dr stern wants nothing more than the kids to get back to normal and i sincerely appreciate that as a parent you taking the time to talk to me but hearing this message it doesn't sit good it really doesn't and i just hope that all of you i know people are upset they want the freedom they want this they want that blah blah blah but you know what for me it's about my kid and him struggling through school and the lady i don't know where he went the lady that was just up here reading about the reading from the substitute teacher letter everything she stated in those letters i've seen with kids and it is sad and i realize people want everyone to stay healthy but at some point life's got to go on here and there's so much science now heck the new cdc recommendations are based on a study i think it was from india that is based on a vaccine that's not even used in the united states so i don't even understand how that makes sense anymore yet we're you know i don't want to collectively add all of you to the bunch but you're saying you're following the cdc so i don't understand that but that's about all i have to say and i really hope that you know i guess time i guess we'll know after you vote how you guys really are thinking about this and that's all i really have to say so thank thank you [Applause] stuffy all right good evening dr stern and 301 board members my name is erin stuffy and my husband and i currently have two young children in 301 schools first we would like to say thank you once again for your efforts at reopening our schools last fall while many other districts remain closed strictly with e-learning options your district led by example then and once again has an opportunity to lead by example now please do what you know is right and maintain the mass optional guidance for our children giving parents the right to choose unmask unsocial distance and focus on the health of the whole child as medical doctors and educators are trained to do our babies have suffered enough we implore you to maintain your recent statement for parents choice despite the pushback you may receive from big government as stated at the last board meeting we the parents and we the people will not co-parent with the government my husband and i and many other families are awaiting your next move if you go back on your word and mandate the masks many of us are enrolling our children from your schools altogether many speakers at the last board meeting gave examples reasons and sources for why masks should be optional this school year tonight i want to focus strictly on the numbers numbers don't lie after speaking directly to the kane county coroner rob russell who was present at the desk at all deaths in the years of 2020 and it is a proven and documented fact that no one under the age of 30 died from covid in king county he also stated that anyone who did die from kovid between the ages of 30 and 70 had underlying health conditions such as severe asthma or underlying heart conditions mr russell and his team scrubbed every single covet death for legitimacy so again numbers don't lie this is not affecting our children also dr stern and 301 board members if you do decide to revoke your previous statement of masks optional rules and guidelines are that are labeled as compulsory mandatory or obligatory will require one's active consent i know that i speak for many parents in this district when i say you no longer have our consent to mask our children it is not a law [Applause] it is not a law yet this is a political game that you are all playing using our children as pawns enough is enough again you all have the ability to do what is right at a time such as this our children should not and will not continue to carry a burden that was never theirs to carry in the first place please do what you know is right lead by example once again and leave the masking decision up to us parents yes thank you bart and parents mass are really for infected people to keep them from spreading infection to people who are not infected the typical mask you buy in a drugstore is not really effective in keeping out the virus i do not recommend that you wear a mask dr anthony fauci viruses become more contagious but less deadly as they spread this is basic biology our children learn in school the media governor and others in the government want everyone to be in fear of the big bad wolf the delta variant except the delta variant is less deadly than the alphabet according to uk statistics cases did not did get near the 50 000 case high that was set in january but then cases began to fall after about five to six weeks and continues to fall hospitalizations around are around six thousand compared to twenty thousand in january the daily dots are around sixty five compared to a thousand in january rising cases are no indication that hospitalizations or deaths are going to get to the emergency levels which is the only standard when direct government intervention is remotely justified in a supposedly free country the governor idph and isbe has no right to institute rules and regulations due to rising covert cases this is the definition of abuse of power and has no scientific basis one of the biggest things that was lost over the past 18 months was the term science science has no scientific meaning anymore because when our government and government agencies speak about science they are speaking about political science on 10 28 2020 pritzker said the contact tracing data doesn't tell you where somebody caught the virus in fact there's no way really to know where somebody contracted cover 19.
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that is below the number of 78 where we need to wear masks we are not in compliance for your own rules i'm going to pause you and i'm going to give you back two minutes in 30 seconds so i can fix it just sure so the the data comes from the cdc that points to county by county data and the threshold cut off your reference to 74 is below our number the number from the cdc as presented just a second ago the cutoff is at 50.
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so schools can't use insurance reliability as an excuse because that's completely untrue covet is seasonal and will not be going anywhere we have to live with it just like we live with the flu but because code was politicized from the start we were made to believe that all these measures mandate school closing et cetera was for our health if the government cared about our health would they have closed beaches parks and workout facilities when physical health and sunlight was some of the best ways to stay protected from coven idph and isbe endorsed the cdc recommendation that all teachers staff students and visitors to k through 12 schools masks well indoors regardless of vaccination status the update updated guidance reads while not a mandate it is an increase in strength in the state board of education's match recommendations not a mandate means recommendation which means masks are optional so the only thing that's changed in the past two weeks is that you recommend a hundred percent of people wear masks in school versus seventy five percent that would have been from the last after the last board meeting the cdc has shown over and over again that they cannot be trusted their initial recommendation 15 days to slow the spread was based off a terrible empirical data that said 2 million americans would be dead by the fall of 2020.
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so under 50 would be masks optional 50 or over would be masks required thank you for that clarification 50 puts you it's substantial 50 puts your substantial so i just want to you know i'm sorry 50 puts you at substantial 50 puts you it's substantial and then above that puts you at uh i can't i mean it's high uh let me pull it up for you so 50 to 99 is substantial 100 or higher is high so those two ranges would be universal masking required and then below that would be moderate or low okay okay just to make sure we're all clear absolutely i'm going to start the clock and just i'll resume your three minutes thank you since i i cut into your time the other thing i want to say is this perception becomes reality it's what is perceived and as a parent here of district 99 the perception is that information is not getting to us in a timely manner i'll take for example the board meeting last week right there were so many people that kept saying i can't hear i can't hear rather than adjusting the audio or people speaking of the voices they kept saying that that just increases people's anxiety and their frustration and that then comes upon you guys right and i know you don't want any more frustration so i commend you for making adjustments and changes to the audio here today if you're back at south i'd recommend you do that again hank you said that the board member in terms of this math mandate that you received it a while back i don't remember your exact words but you received it prior to today no noon today was for illinois noon today you received it yes okay what i'd say to you is this the more information people have the better they will be and they'll better feel about things in terms of the voting on consistency mask or not mask here's what i'd say to you michael joanne join i noticed you were cold i got cold too you put a sweater on you made an adjustment based upon your environment okay i didn't wear a parka today because i don't need one so if we're gonna have these mass mandates at certain thresholds these kids are smart enough and they can make a changement it changes they'll make adjustments in their clothing when it's cold when it's hot they can do with mass and that shows us that we're moving towards getting back to a sense of normalcy right inconsistency is life having just this blanket thing saying we're always going to do it without thresholds is not what the educational system is about right you set up this is what you need to get an a this is what you need to get a b and you hold it hard and you hold it fast what i'm asking the board to do is to do a better job in communicating giving information as quickly as possible hank i get it you got it today right but just let people know that so you've got all these people that hear about the board meeting going on today and the perception is that you're withholding whether it's right or wrong that's the perception and that's what you guys get painted with when people can't hear things they believe that you're withholding and they believe that it's adversarial last thing i'm going to say today's death total was 362. 320 people die every day of alzheimer's 1800 people die every day of heart disease at the height of the pandemic there was three thousand to four thousand people dying a day we have lowered that rate by ten fold i'm sorry your time has expired thank you all right and then oh boy i've been out of the classroom a while so reading handwriting is is not as good as it used to be i believe this is a is dan submitted a slip yes please please approach the microphone what's that oh no you're that's it this is the second slip that's it yeah could you please state your name dan uh good evening i i just you know i guess wanna make a comment or two i know hank you and i have had several conversations already and uh i think this is a lot that we're all going through and uh there's a lot of information and disinformation out there and i guess you know as far as i know i i don't believe the fda approved the shot yet to call it a vaccine is that true uh it is approved under emergency use authorization but not officially approved so that's just might be no it's officially approved it's under emergency so it's been tested and it has been approved it's by the fda by the fda okay not official but emergency use only correct right so i think there's a big difference there i guess is my opinion but um that's a big concern i have you know we've had conversations about that before and you know just parents are watching closely these are our kids and we should have choice in what they do or do not do as well thank you all right um that's it for the slips we've received okay we'll have another reception of visitors once we're done with the remainder of the evening um so we're going to move in then to title nine training yes uh gina okay as the board may recall we underwent title 9 training last year and we have kendra from franzik joining us this evening of for an update it's recommended that annually we review title ix and that the board be trained before title ix regulations so with that i will turn it over to kendra thank you gina can you guys hear me yeah okay well thank you for having me out this evening it's nice to see people in person again i'm used to doing these over zoom um i'm an attorney at franzik and happy to be here to talk about title nine there we go okay so i know a lot of you did uh do a training with jackie last year on the 2020 rules about sexual harassment and so for those of you this will be a little bit of a review i also have some updates for you uh for those of you who are new this is a good foundation and overview of what title ix requires and specifically the new regulations that went into effect last august so first of all um there had been some talk what's going to happen now that we have a new administration the rules that went into effect last year are here to stay certainly for this school year most likely for several school years to come still president biden when he was campaigning did indicate he intends to make significant changes to these rules but that is easier said than done it is a lengthy process some of you may remember that back in when president trump was campaigning he also said he was going to make these new rules that took quite some time it took until november of 2018 to come out with a proposed rule it took another 18 months to go through 125 000 comments that people had people are very invested in this issue and had a lot of feedback the final rule came out in may of 2020 and went into effect in august so if the abiding administration moves at that same pace we won't see a new final rule go into effect until 2024 right so this is a long long process the administration may be able to speed that up they are pursuing a slightly different approach they had some listening sessions and hearings in june to gather public comment before proposing a new rule so they can gather some feedback and hopefully then shorten that process a little bit but this is going to be a long process and in the meantime the 2020 rules do remain in effect so just in july the office of civil rights issued a question and answer it largely reiterates the information that was in the preamble to the 2020 amendment so some people had thought that the new administration would try to sort of maybe massage or you know change a little bit how we interpret what's in the rules um and parts of it that they don't like as much but they went at it a very straightforward way the answers to the questions really pair it back exactly what is in the regulations and what is in the preample and there's not that much room for different interpretations anyway it is interesting in that it highlights the things that ocr thinks are important what are the things that those of us in schools need to know that's what's in the question and answers and so i'll highlight some of that as we go through the presentation today one thing to note is that you remember from the presentation last year that the definition of sexual harassment under title ix now is narrower than it used to be it covers less conduct it is a stricter definition a higher threshold ocr wants to make sure that we know that conduct that is sexual harassment that doesn't meet that threshold doesn't mean you ignore it it wants to reiterate for you that still if it violates your student code of conduct you are going to investigate and impose discipline if it is found that it occurred if it's employee matter you're still going to follow all of your standard procedures even if it doesn't fall under title ix okay ocr has been busy over the spring and summer so another q a that they put out was specifically about civil rights during remote learning and school reopening and there's nothing really surprising here but it's really reiterating and emphasizing the biden administration's focus on civil rights and saying that all the civil rights laws they continue to apply regardless of whether you are in remote or hybrid or coming back into school buildings so it addresses racial discrimination discrimination based on disability and title ix sexual discrimination and there are several questions specific to title ix about if you receive a report about harassment that occurred during remote learning do you have to address that yes absolutely if you receive a report and you're currently doing remote and so you're not in the building and easily able to handle things do you still need to address it yes absolutely um some things might look a little different you might have interviews that take place over zoom or other technology but we're still going to comply with all the same rules regardless of the format that school is operating in one thing i was hoping we would get that we don't have yet is some data on how many of these complaints we got last year there was anticipation that we would receive fewer complaints that schools would get fewer complaints that ocr would get fewer complaints because the standard is higher and because the process is harder we don't have that data yet when we do get it it's going to be a little bit muddled because we also have the effect of kobit and we have the effect of a lot of schools being remote so there was less opportunity for students to be in the same place or harassment might occur additionally even if there was harassment i think we had a situation where some students didn't feel as compelled to come forward and say hey school this bad thing happened i need help if they knew they could just be on remote and they wouldn't see the other person and so it's possible now that kids are coming back you might start to hear that last year when we were on remote learning this thing happened and now i'm concerned about it because we're all coming back into the building so we may see sort of an uptick in reports that you guys are receiving as we get students back into the building another report that the department of education put out has to do with the disparate impacts of proven 19 and different groups of more vulnerable students and one of the groups that is addressed is lgbtq students so these students prior to the pandemic had higher rates of bullying harassment victimization mental health issues suicide attempts all kinds of difficult things uh there are more likely to be runaways more likely to be homeless which also you know compounds the challenges that they face the data coming in is preliminary on the impact of proven 19 on this group of students but preliminary preliminarily there are concerns that they are more heavily impacted because they relied heavily on the mental health services that schools provide and that was harder to access just because people aren't as comfortable doing that kind of thing over zoom you have to schedule it you can't just pop into somebody's office as easily you know you don't have that daily communication so early survey results indicate that lgbtq students had a harder time with their schoolwork had a harder time communicating and connecting with peers um and had a higher impact mental health wise so that's another thing that we're going to be on the lookout for as students are coming back to make sure that we're supportive of all students and especially students who may have been more impacted by the pentagon okay more from the department of education they keep up on this track we're just going to be here all night um so this is specifically about lgbtq students in title ix and this is a notice that the department of ed put out saying that title ix protects students from discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation this is based on a supreme court decision called bostock versus clayton county that was decided last year it was in the employment context so under title vii of the civil rights act as opposed to title ix of the educational amendment and the department of education says there's no reason that we should come to a different conclusion both statutes prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and the court found that you can't discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity without discriminating on the basis of sex it's just definitionally part of discrimination on the basis of sex and the department of education says same exact reasoning applies to title ix what's interesting is they do not specifically call out the issues that have been hot button issues over the past few years like bathrooms locker rooms and sports what they do say is very broadly that no student should be deprived equal access to the educational program of a school because of their sex including sexual orientation and gender identity biden has nominated catherine layman to run ocr she was also in charge under obama and was very aggressive in promoting the rights of lgbtq students and ensuring that schools followed the law and the way that the obama administration interpreted the law so we expect to see a similar approach from the binding administration additionally here in illinois we kind of already have that because the seventh circuit has decided that students should be granted access to restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of their gender identity um and the illinois human rights act also requires that so not a big change for us here but you know a shift at the national level okay so getting into the regulations and responding to sexual harassment you guys are aware the impact of sexual harassment can have significant long-lasting negative effects on victims certainly on their mental health on their school performance additionally and this is kind of what is attempted to be addressed by the regulations unfair processes can also have detrimental effects on both parties if the process when you report harassment is unfair to either party that's going to be a problem that's going to impact them broadly as well as specifically in school we also want to make sure we are addressing this because there's legal risk involved the law requires that we respond to reports of sexual harassment and failure to do so can lead to legal challenges both within ocr as well as a court and that can come from the complainant the person who is saying they experience sexual harassment if they believe that the school district did not appropriately address it it can also come from the respondent from the accused if they feel like they did not get due process okay so starting big picture title ix the first thing most of us think about is sports especially right now during the olympics that's what i'm thinking about um title ix however this is the language of the statute it's quite brief but it's very broad no person in the united states shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance so you notice it does not reference force it doesn't reference sexual harassment right it's really really just no sex discrimination you can't treat people differently based on sex so that has been interpreted to apply to a whole range of different things including athletics like we talked about sexual harassment like we're going to talk about today but also with discipline you know if a boy claims that he is being more harshly disciplined for the same offense than a girl wants uh it also has to do with uh how you treat pregnant and parenting students it encompasses a large variety of things we're going to talk about sex-based harassment because that is what the regulations govern but all of these things are still falling under title ix so if you receive a report of a problem in any of these areas it still needs to land on gina's desk to be addressed it just won't be addressed using this process okay so our title ix regulations prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and really the big change is there are a bunch of procedural requirements it used to be that ocr was just looking to see did you follow your policy if you got a report of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct in school did you do it the way you said and was it fair now they've set out this very detailed process that we need to follow and we've got to step through all the hoops so this requires that you have the policy a procedure you have your title ix coordinator and a whole bunch of really nitty-gritty details that we'll talk a little bit about but that your administration has been trained on in a lot of detail okay so when is the school district required to respond to sexual harassment i've broken this up because there are a lot of components a school with actual knowledge of title ix sexual harassment in an educational program or activity against a person in the united states then you must respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent so there are a lot of pieces there and we're going to talk a little bit about each of them just so you get a better sense of what really falls under title ix so actual knowledge this can be something that you actually personally witness something that is reported to you verbally or in writing something that you just hear about the q a that was just issued mentioned if you read about it in the newspaper if there's an anonymous report if you get this information if your employees get this information pretty much from anywhere that there's sexual harassment occurring then the school district has knowledge you sense it you hear a report or you hear about it okay if someone wants to make an actual report anybody can report it it does not have to be the alleged victim it can be somebody else you can make it by mail telephone email and it can be made at any time so you guys have systems in place so that you know somebody doesn't have to come find gina in her office during business school hours you can make that report anytime any day and you can make it anonymously if you want to so you are required to respond if an official with authority has knowledge an official with authority means an authority to take some sort of action to remedy the problem and at the higher education level that's limited to certain particular employees at the k-12 level that is all employees all employees no matter what their role is if they hear about sexual harassment the district has an obligation to respond as board members you guys are not specifically included as an employee you are whoever mandated reporters if you hear about sexual harassment or abuse that would fall under anchor under abused and neglected children so just a distinction to keep in mind okay so let's narrow in on what exactly is sexual harassment falls into three buckets one is hostile environment one is quid pro quo by an employee and the other are these sort of big four sexual assault domestic violence dating violence and stalking so let's start with quid pro quo something for something specifically we're talking about an employee of the school conditioning an aid service or benefit on an individual's participation in unwelcome sexual conduct so it's important to note that this is initiated by an employee as opposed to a volunteer or a student if the head of the school newspaper tells somebody else on staff i'll publish this article if you engage in this activity that doesn't follow quid pro quo we'd have to look at it under hostile environment but any employee towards any student says if you engage in the sexual act then i will give you a better grade get you onto this team any benefit of the school system then it's going to fall under quid pro quo the big four that's the ones that i mentioned here sexual assault domestic violence dating violence and stalking you have the citations there because sort of unhelpfully they send you on this sort of goose chase to find the definitions of those they are now helpfully in the q a exactly what each of those means and so that is helpful to have those definitions any of these between students between staff and students that's going to fall under title ix sexual harassment okay hostile environment is the one that comes up probably more frequently is more typical harassment and i've broken up this definition into lines also because it has a lot of components so it starts with unwelcome conduct that is determined by a reasonable person to be so severe pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the recipient school education program or activity so you need to have a lot of pieces there it starts with unwelcome conduct which is subjective to the alleged victim then it switches to an objective standard a reasonable person standard reasonable person in the shoes of the alleged victim so a person of that age of that gender in the relationship to the other people that is both severe and pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies equal access to the school so we've got to have all of these different components again if we don't have one of these that doesn't mean it's okay that does not mean is it accepted in the school environment it means we're going to address it under our code of conduct and not through these procedures one of the the last phrase there was that it effectively denies equal access to the program the q a says that this really shouldn't block anybody out this should be looked at very expansively it could be a student who is having trouble getting to class because they're trying to avoid their harasser it could be a student who's upset by what's going on and their grades are dropping it could not really be showing up at school they give an example of a third grader who's crying at night and wetting the bed there could be a lot of different impacts and the ocr has encouraged schools not to look for necessarily a concrete injury but to say if we have met all of those other criteria we're going to assume that that student is not going to be able to have equal access to their education the next part of the definition is that the sexual harassment has to take place in a program or activity of the school district what that means is any location event or circumstance over which the recipient exhibits substantial control over both the alleged harasser and the context where the harassment occurred so clearly if the kids are sitting in math class harassing each other you are in school you have authority over the context you have authority over both students that would fall within your program or activity things that happen off campus things that happen online those we're going to have to look at a lot more carefully to think about is that something that the school has control over we did get from many districts reports where people were coming to school saying this thing happened off campus at this party over the weekend and i want you to do something about it i want you to look into it i want you to do something that's not going to be within title 9 most likely because you don't have any authority over the party that happens over the weekend um these things that doesn't mean you say sorry we can't help you at all right you can still support that student but it's probably not going to fall under your title 9 process again online is going to get really difficult online if it's during remote learning on your remote platform yep that's going to fall within your program activity on snapchat over the summer probably not but there are probably a lot of gray area in between those two examples where we're going to have to dig in and look at those facts additionally we have to address sexual harassment if it occurs against a person in the united states um the time when this might not be the case if you have a trip abroad your band your choir some group that goes abroad um hopefully one day in the future we will be able to do that again um but if something happens abroad that's not gonna fall under title nine again absolutely you're gonna address it you would not use this process okay so how do we respond what is required now there are three possible responses depending on the type of conduct so if it is title ix sexual harassment that we just talked about you have your policy to 265 and that is the new one that is specific to these regulations for other sexual harassment other forms of discrimination based on sex that will often fall under 2 260 which is your uniform grievance procedure for other misconduct between students most likely that's going to fall under your student code of conduct so you can kind of think of it as a road that splits if it's title nine you're going to go down your procedure under 2 for everything else where you get a report that even if true it doesn't meet that threshold then you're going to use a different process to address it now if you go down your title nine route and you find that the respondent is not responsible you cannot turn around and then use a different method to try to impose discipline you're just done if we can't use the title ix because it doesn't fall under all those criteria then you are going to look to see whether another policy will apply okay so here's the response first step when you have information that looks like it could be title ix sexual harassment is the title ix coordinator or designee is going to meet with the complainant to offer supportive measures then if there is a formal complaint we go through these steps of informal resolution if both parties agree investigation decision and a possibility for appeal so we'll talk a little bit about each of these so the first step is that informal meeting with the complainant this is not an investigative interview this is a time for the title ix coordinator or designee to say we can offer you supportive measures we can offer you help regardless of whether or not you file a formal complaint additionally if you do file a formal complaint this is what the process is going to look like so that they know kind of what this is going to look like what they're going to go through and what their options are in the high school setting for students who are under 18 this will involve parents parents are going to be involved throughout this process anytime we were dealing with minors confidentiality if no formal complaint is filed we will maintain confidentiality of the complainant if the complainant does file a formal complaint their identity has to be disclosed to the respondent the rules in this area are very specific that in order for the respondent to be able to defend themselves they need to know who the complainant is so you're still going to maintain confidentiality among other people right that doesn't mean that just anybody in the schools should know but the identity will be disclosed to the respondent so they are able to respond and defend themselves supportive measures i mentioned these are individualized services offered as appropriate without charge they can be offered to the complainant or if a complaint is actually filed to the respondent as well before or after the filing of a complaint or if no complaint has been filed they can still be offered and the point is to try to restore or preserve equal access to the educational program without unreasonably burdening the other party so oftentimes we're talking about counseling or social work support for one or both students it could be additional supervision it could be changing the class schedule it could be a mutual no contact agreement there are lots of different things that may be beneficial depending on the specific situation there's also an opportunity generally we cannot take the respondent out of their class or out of their activity because they haven't been found responsible yet right we're not prejudging this so we're not going to do anything that would be punitive at this early stage the exception for students is if it is necessary to protect a student or other individual from immediate threat to their physical health or safety in that case the title ix regulations allow for that student to be removed you guys should have alarm bells going off saying well wait a minute what about sb 100 and we have rules about suspension and expulsion and protections for students with disabilities and you're exactly right and it is difficult to mesh these um and we need to follow both processes so we will be in close communication if we get to that point which hopefully you will not it is different with respect to employees so if an employee is accused of engaging in sexual harassment or misconduct you can put that person on administrative leave in line with your cba and with state law okay so it does not put any restrictions on your ability to do that so briefly here just student removals we do have our discipline laws administrators only can uh suspend for up to 10 days the board you guys would need to approve any sort of expulsion any removal for greater than 10 days and of course the idea and section 504 have additional protections so we want to keep all those things in mind before removing a student okay so if a formal complaint is filed let's talk about that formal complaint the formal complaint is a document that is signed by the complainant or by the title ix coordinator alleging sexual harassment against a respondent and requesting that the school investigate the allegation of sexual harassment it cannot be filed by a third party so a third party can report it but they cannot file the formal complaint so the complainant can file it if they are attempting to participate in your program or if they are not willing to i think i have another slide on this yes to file a formal complaint they don't want to pursue this if it is something that is significant if the respondent is a staff member somebody with authority within the school system if it is repeated if there are other reasons to be concerned that if we do not go through this process we could expose other people to risk then your title 9 coordinator can sign a complaint the alleged victim is still the complainant even though they have not filed a complaint it's sort of confusing language but in that case the title ix coordinator signs this is a really weighty decision because like i said a few slides ago it means that complainant can't be confidential anymore their identity is going to be disclosed to the respondent that they came to the school and said this is what happened and i want you to take action so that is a new thing with these regulations the next step is informal resolution this cannot be required it has to be voluntary both parties have to agree in writing that they're going to participate and you can't say you know if you participate in this then you get this benefit or if you don't it has to be completely voluntary it is not available if the respondent is an employee and the complainant is a student and it's not allowed then only allowed if it's between student student or between employee and employee it cannot be used unless a formal complaint has been filed it can be used at any time during the investigation process so at any point if we're going through this process and both parties say hey this is kind of onerous i don't know where this is going to go i think we can work this out in an easier way you can stop what you're doing and do informal resolution however if you're doing informal resolution and one or both parties says this is not working for me i don't think this is going to get me to where i want to go then it stops and you go back to the investigation okay the investigation this is a really detailed process in the regulations that obviously we're not going to go through all of the requirements your administrators have been trained on this and this is really a shift from what was required before 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
do you know what the cec is using to justify their new mass recommendations 100 person study from india where they use different vaccines not approved in the us and hasn't even been peer reviewed but remember we must follow the science statistics from king county department of health kane county dust desks per month per hundred thousand round it so it's easier to follow remember cancer 12 cardiac 13 accidents three suicide one remember accidents three suicides one king county covet deaths deaths by monthly hundred thousand per hundred thousand twenty twenty one january eighteen february six march three april five may six june two july one june two july one compared to accidents three suicides is one what about any of those statistics say that we are in a pandemic or epidemic we simply haven't been in any sort of pandemic or medical emergency this year except for maybe january take away from the covenant 19 round table in florida just last week dr jay betta char y'all sorry if i must pronounce that professor of medicine stanford university i don't think the delta variant changes the calculus or the evidence in any fundamental way look at the data before the delta variant take sweden for instance kepler schools open unmasked no social distancing all year the teachers themselves before the vaccine were at a lower risk of covert deaths compared to the population at large and the school's children had no deaths and florida schools that imposed mass had higher rates of teachers getting sick from covid and the kids there was no difference in outcome kids are pretty protective from coven correlation evidence is mixed and there's literally no randomized evidence whatsoever for maths in school dr cody meisner chief of division of pediatric infectious disease tufts university school of medicine even if kids do become infected the likelihood they will become sick is very small the data is pretty clear so i strongly disagree that the recommendation that all children two years in the body should wear mass in fact there are some studies that child is less likely to become affected in school than they would at home i think it's very difficult issue but people like to say they are basing their decisions on science but they're not they're basing their recommendations on emotions dr mark mcdonald md clinical psychiatrist my position is simple i'm asking children as child abuse there is no evidence to support there's no evidence to support the contention that mass prevent the transmission of respiratory illness through viruses at all and there's substantial evidence that shows children who have been medically physically and psychologically harmed by mass mandates so there's no studies or evidence that matching children prevents covet spread period everyone has stopped thinking for themselves and the last comment any common sense they had prior 2020 well there could be a chance of our four to five thousand students one could get sick and die of covet being that there's roughly zero point zero zero zero six percent percent or one out of one hundred and sixty seven thousand chance of someone five to seventeen dying from cover 19 19 per cdc data to put that [Applause] to put that in reference that's less likely than dying from a lightning strike a dog attack hot surfaces a hornet wasp or bee sting my favorite a cataclysmic storm whatever that is or sharp objects so why don't we just put our kids in a bubble never let them outside again which means no more school definitely keep them away from dogs don't let them near stove or oven remember safety scissors only if we continue to follow the madness the cdc governor idph et cetera keeps telling us what we should follow when does this all end remember 15 days is slow to spread i'll tell you when i'll end never if we don't say enough is enough have the intelligence and common sense to make decisions for ourselves this will never end our kids will be mass arrests with our lives and all because adults we're too scared to stand up and protect them well you have the chance now protect the children from overreach of government and do what's right for them end masking now get the choice of families where they rightfully and legally belong thank you [Applause] thanks ken uh max chris beamer ford how are you guys doing tonight parents how are you guys hey i'm gonna make this short and sweet uh i didn't give here i didn't come here to give a long lengthy speech i'm a police officer i got off work late i made sure that i made it here i had someone come in early for me so i appreciate the time that you're going to give me to speak as my job as a police officer one thing that i've learned is it's service to the public i could come up here and start doing all the buzzwords of covet masks crt all that stuff i'm not going to do that when i started looking at my job as a police officer it was to help the community especially kids and i look in the back of this room there are a ton of kids that are going to come through this school district right service that i look at now is serve us right so we pay i want to use a foul word but i'm not going to taxes a ton of taxes right for this and the only reason we lived in evanston for 10 years and we've moved out here five years ago we have made more loving friends in five years than we had in 10 years in evanston we knew one neighbor i can't tell you how many neighbors we have now they don't know right so to hear parents start talking about the school board right kind of feel i have to get involved a little bit not returning phone calls not returning emails this can no longer be looked at as an adversarial thing between you guys and us it just can't because this is not going away i promise it's not going to so the only thing i will say like i said i'll keep it short because i know there's a bunch of other people here right you guys all volunteered for this right most is that correct board members yes okay so what i'll tell you is that should tell you something right you volunteered for a reason and the one reason is for the school it's not for anything else it's for all the kids that are going through school right here and you got a boatload of parents in here that are saying don't mask our kids right or make it mandatory if you feel comfortable masking your kids fine nobody has a problem with that but just let the parents decide okay thank you i'm gonna mess this up thank you uh chris uh brock he's gonna say that name brock hi my name is brock and i am in the fifth grade and i do not want to wear a mask to school these masks make me hot it is my skin it makes my skin itch and it is so uncomfortable when i wear my mask i have a hard time hearing what my teachers and my friends are saying and sometimes they have a hard time hearing what i'm trying to say too i used to love school but when i have to wear a mask i can't wait for the day to be over just so that i can go home and take it off my face please don't make us wear masks at school again [Applause] kelly my name is lori kelly i am here as a parent i have several conversations a week with people asking me how it got to this where did our freedoms go why are we being asked to mask up again and we thought it was over the answer is simple and it's happened before for many the loss of freedoms is no big deal but when does no big deal become a big deal when they knock on your neighbor's door or they knock on your door all for doing what's right since facts and law don't seem to matter and you've most likely already made up your minds and you'll probably play on your computers like last time so instead i'm going to share a story with you that relates to what is currently going on around us and why i'm here to fight for the staff and students of 301 so how did hitler get elected leading over 11 million people to their deaths well he lied to a nation he said men do not think make the lie big make it simple keep it simple keep saying it and eventually they will believe it in his autobiography mein kampf he wrote that the great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one only 10 percent of germany's population at the time was part of the nazi party the remaining population stood by and watched the injustices taking place at first slowly and only little changes see no big deal and it grew to more restrictions and now neighbors being taken away well that's no big deal because it's not me mothers fathers held their voices and covered their eyes and closed their ears the vast majority of the population collected their salaries by avoiding the uncomfortable truth around them and when the nazis came for their children it was too late people knew what was happening but they tried to distance themselves from it because they felt well what can we do to stop this in some villages every sunday morning they could hear the train whistle blow and then the wheels coming down the tracks and the villagers became disturbed when they would hear the cries coming from the train as it passed they realized it was carrying people in the cattle cars and week after week the whistle would blow in the villages and dreading to hear the sound because the villagers knew more cries would be heard of more people being taken away to the camps the screams tormented them so they would sing hymns at church as the train passed if screams from the mothers and fathers and the children were heard they sang louder and soon they heard the screams no more and i know of two children that were taken away from their parents never to see them again for the rest of their lives and my grandparents are a reminder to me to tell all of you to not repeat the evils of our past my bible says to me lord inca don't let what happened to me happen to your children and this is why i won't stop fighting ever the most dangerous thing is trusting a liar to lead us and i'm so disappointed in your cowardice as a school board you are directly and legally and morally and individually responsible for the staff and students and making sure their legal rights are protected so do not comply [Applause] because because we the people will not we all know the truth from the lies can you tell the difference can you hear the wheels and the whistle coming down the track and how loud are you singing uh brian kelly all right so i was gonna read something but i actually just have a couple of quick questions um well one the fact is that there's going to be a lot of kids coming to school in a week without masks without any covet protocols no medical testing is going to be allowed to be done on them anything like that so it's going to be a big problem next week so everyone has to figure out how we're going to proceed with this because they will be showing up and they will not have mass or any of that stuff going on um and then i would like to know what the disciplinary actions that are going to be taken which i thought was very very strange to read thank you abby and jennifer hi my name is abigail schlicker and i spoke last school board meeting when i spoke last time i was nervous but now i'm just mad that i have to speak again like what i said nobody even cared about when when are you guys going to see that you are just playing with us like dolls when i heard our parents get were getting to choose if we were a mask or not i felt happy like if it was a dream come true little did i know it was not true it's like taking candy from a baby it's so easy but it's so sad we are all just humans so make the right decision and make masks optional i yield my time to my mom thank you for listening [Applause] good evening everyone my name is jen schleicher my daughter abby and i spoke at the last school board meeting when we got the email after the last board meeting that masking our children would be a choice for parents i was thrilled because i believed we were making a difference my daughter was so proud to have conquered her nerves and speak at the last meeting when she heard of the mask optional email she said wow we can really make a difference what an amazing feeling as a parent you guys are all parents that is an awesome feeling right that lesson taught her more than any amount of e-learning trust me it did um then the minutes for this meeting were posted and made it sound like full masking would be the direction the district was going our children have been so flexible throughout this pandemic with masks and quarantines we've asked so much from them on a daily basis they have given up so much and it is our turn to give back to them it is one thing when you have an expectation for an adult to get a vaccine or wear a mask because we can make decisions accordingly we understand actions and consequences and weigh those every day when making all sorts of decisions it's heartbreaking to see these decisions shove down our children's throats and there are no other options right now it's the adults on the board in the administration building that are not being flexible those same adults are putting covering their own butts above or from liability above what is actually best for our children and you can't even admit it which is the worst part because everyone in this room knows why it's happening you made tough calls and went against the norm last year when all other districts went remote that took guts you made decisions and had kids in person learning as much as possible parents appreciated being involved in the decision and although it was not a perfect year we knew you were trying it was harder logistically but it was better for the kids right now i feel like we're in the middle of a blame game nobody wants any liability everyone just wants to pass the buck and get through all of this and say it wasn't us it was them that's fine if it's them then get me into a building so i can talk to them and plead our case but as of right now it's my understanding that the school board and administrators sitting in this room are them and you guys are making the decision district 301 is deciding to do with the rest do what the rest of the county decides to do the rest of the county decides to do what isbe recommends they do isbe is only following directions from the cdc it's basically copy and paste every level is so far removed from our children and the different populations and variables how can you possibly let them make decisions that would impact these children our children kids in the city have different circumstances than kids in 301 everybody needs to stop with the cya here's an idea the district can remove themselves from liability that they fear so much and give parents a letter to sign it can say if we send the school send the kids to school unmasked then we're releasing the school from any covert liability i'm just thinking out of the box because my kids will be in school next week and they will not be masked if you don't like that then let's hear a better idea that's we why we're all here because this district can do all the contact tracing in the world and the schools can make the kids stand six feet apart and wear masks and not hug their friends but as soon as these kids get off the bus it will be a contact tracing nightmare and i will not cooperate i've been patient up until this time but right now i am so done and since the district apparently only recognizes our parental rights existing as far as the bus stop or the school doors are concerned you guys are in for a rude awakening when my kids get home they're going to jump on the trampoline they're going to see their friends cousins family members they're going to have sleepovers and campouts and bonfires they're going to play sports and dolls and they're not going to wear masks because they are my children and i get to make the rules for them and i know that many other people in this room and at home feel the same way and we're allowed to because we know that the childhood years are fleeting and the district and the state have stolen those years from my children and i will not stand for it any longer have fun contact tracing that or is the total overreach going to extend farther than the bus stop and violate more of our children's rights and our rights as parents maybe you guys can set up a neighborhood tattletail hotline so we can all turn people in you know they don't follow the rules you have the trampoline police at a certain point this stopping about safety this has now become about instilling fear prejudice compliance control and conformity don't you see how damaging this is to our children the new variants that are popping up will never be gone so is this the plan to do forever are you telling us that our kids will only be able to receive an appropriate healthy functional and successful education if we parents bow down to the board in the districts in the state we can't question decisions when does it stop how far will you guys be able to take it it's a dangerous precedent to set right now you guys have a decision on your hands and i think you need to understand the gravity of the situation this is not about masks this is about the rights of citizens and parents and our right to choose what is best for our own families this is about parents not wanting to give up control over our children's health right now they are my babies but they are all of our future [Applause] do you have any is that okay or do you want to sure thanks john i like the hotline idea my name is vera kelly i was so excited to go back to school until sunday morning when my best friend told me that masks were the rule and i would get in trouble for not wearing one to school now i am angry i was so happy when i had a choice to be masked or unmasked my friends and my brother's friends all don't want to wear a mask they are too scared to stand up and get in trouble i am here today for kids like me to stand up for our rights there are thousands of students across the country whose rights are protected why is 301 different are you too scared to stand up for us children and follow the law you are hurting us more than you will ever know i am stressed annoyed and angry with all of you who are wrecking my education i will be going to school and running cross-country unmasked no one can force another person to do anything to their body medically against their will i wish you would just listen and let me go to school like a normal sixth grade girl i hope you have taken in what i've had to say and make the right choice goodbye um hi my name is angie gall i'm actually a former employee of the district and i have three kids in the district and i'm a high school teacher i had um no intent on speaking tonight but i wanted to just bring up a couple of things that haven't been mentioned tonight um i'm a special education teacher and as a teacher the reason i'm completely for us unmasking the kids is how difficult it was as a teacher to teach kids with special needs now my three kids do not have any special needs but they struggled big time this year masks were hard for just one of mine but it was a distraction it made her uncomfortable but they were fine what my concern is we have to have equal education for all and the special ed group does not in masks um first of all the main thing speech path pathologist it's a nightmare you can't see you can't hear and part of learning to speak is they need to hear clearly we are muffled in masks you cannot properly hear i mean how many times do we all what did you say what did you say you know it's muffled so they started with the gators it's still not the same you've got a cloudy glader they're trying to read lips and look at the way you form words so speech path alone that was a complete nightmare i personally work with mostly students with emotional disabilities so they have we have a lot of adhd sensory issues were huge you've got this on their face and what are they doing and then you know we're supposed to discipline for that and say put not discipline but put them on and correct it and that takes from their learning and finally most of us stud teachers said i am not correcting it anymore because i am never going to get through to these kids i'm never going to be able to teach them if they're completely distracted so we started to let a little things go and um it makes them miserable they have sensory i mean they can't handle clothes too tight and now we have this tight mask on them so that was a huge issue social emotional um we have a lot of oppositional defiance disorders in all of our schools and now we're giving kids a rule and you know with that type of disorder they fight no matter what rule so you're fighting this and you can't get them into a social worker when they're fighting with you because the social workers are overwhelmed from all the kids that are having mental health issues from the kovitz stuff so i know if the stats were there and it was showing that there's so many people dying of covid right now i would say oh my gosh we will get past that but we are depriving these kids of their education for a 0.3 chance of being hospitalized a zero percent chance of them i mean it's really really rare to find a child that passes away from kovid and even a teacher's age i mean even at elderly age it's a four percent death rate we're making years of education go away we're we're ruining their education for stats that don't they don't match up so that's all i wanted to say so [Applause] thanks angie all right that concludes public comment uh we're gonna go on to action items i need a motion second to discuss and an approved cue center contract for prom of 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so who's going to be investigating would you not recommend having your title ix coordinator do the investigation because she's going to be sort of a resource she's going to be monitoring everything we want somebody else to take that role they do need to be trained they need to be unbiased meaning they don't have any actual or perceived conflict of interest and this is really an interesting thing here we have a presumption that the respondent is not responsible right kind of like in criminal court we assume that the defendant is not guilty however that does not mean you presume the complainant is lying right we believe the complainant and so you have to hold both of those things in your head you believe the complainant and you believe that the respondent is not respondents full full because we're not going to prejudge before we have any evidence so at the outset everybody is credible there's a lot here like i said the investigation is very detailed in the requirements top one is another important one the burden of proof is on the school it's not the burden of the complainant to prove that this happened and it's not the burden of the respondent to prove that they're not responsible the school has the burden to prove what did happen additionally both parties always get noticed before there's an interview of when and who's going to be there and what the topic is parties can have an advisor or an attorney with them during an interview after the investigator has collected all of their evidence all of the evidence goes to both parties they both have an opportunity to review all the evidence and submit any feedback to the investigator the investigator then writes a report that summarizes all of the evidence and that is also provided to both of the parties so you can see this is can be a fairly lengthy process because there's timelines built into it getting to the decision next the decision maker again not the title ix coordinator not the investigator so it needs to be somebody new you are not required to do a live hearing in higher education they are in k-12 we do not recommend it a written determination is required but before you get there because we're not doing a live hearing and the respondent should have an opportunity to confront their accuser and the witnesses we have written cross-examination so each party or their parent or their attorney has the opportunity to have questions they submit it to the decision maker the decision maker submits it to the other party the answer send it back to the decision maker who sends the answer back to the party who asked the question and they can ask follow-up questions so again this can take some time the decision maker gets to decide what's relevant uh we follow the rape shield laws which means questions about the complainant's sexual history or predisposition are off limits uh we cannot access treatment records physical or mental treatment records unless there's consent to do so also legally privileged information remains legally privileged so they can't ask questions about what did you talk to your attorney about what did you talk to your clergy member about all of that would be out of bounds and the decision maker uses the preponderance of evidence standard of proof that's 50 and a feather so if it's more likely than not that it happened the respondent is responsible if it's not more likely than not then they would not be remedies if the respondent is responsible then there can be discipline taken additionally we can offer more supportive measures counseling for the victim or for the accused there might be changes to services changes to your policies whether or not the respondent is responsible it might result in the district saying we need to beef up our education our sex education on consent on dating safety on internet safety we need to make sure that students have a good understanding of what this means and how to protect themselves okay appeal you also need an appellate decision maker so this is another person this is why gina has so many of your administrators trained because different people have to do each step of the process so again this cannot be the title ix coordinator can't be the investigator and it can't be the initial decision maker both parties have an opportunity to appeal both parties have an opportunity to submit a written statement and the decision then will be issued to both parties you cannot appeal just on anything you want there are three specific reasons the first one is a procedural issue that impacted the outcome the second is if there is new evidence that was not reasonably available during the decision phase that would impact the outcome and the third is if there was a bias or conflict of interest on the part of anybody in the process whether that was the investigator the decision maker the title ix coordinator there was any sort of bias that could be a basis for appeal as well this biased conflicts of interest and fairness is a big focus of the new regulations all of the people involved the coordinator investigator decision makers informal resolution facilitators cannot have a conflict of interest or bias for or against complainants of respondents generally or for and against any individual person involved in the matter and cannot prejudge any matter before them so we want to make sure that we don't have decision makers and investigators who are outspoken kind of on either side of this issue kind of in the more global sense everybody needs to come to this issue this particular case with an open mind ready to gather the evidence and go where the facts lead them there's also a lot of record keeping involved in this at each stage there are records created that need to be maintained those are student records so they're going to be confidential but would be available to the student's parents all right i went through a lot of information hopefully that breakthrough uh does anybody have questions at this point i just said one first of all thank you sure it was actually very clear for us i know gina if you don't know is a title ix coordinator who who's involved in the the decision making in the appeal so we have i'm sorry thank you we have trained numerous people for each role to ensure that we're always covered so for example decision maker could be the principles but we have other people trained as well because it could be it doesn't have to be the principles even for me as title 9 coordinator it could be a designee so for example uh scott ugaiser has been trained as a title nine coordinator so he can step in so we trained a lot of administrators um and we'll be doing some retraining in fact so that we have it covered and so we've also done it so we have both genders by the way so that it's not just so the administrator level is trained and we have multiple okay thank you pretty much everybody on the administrative team has a role that they could play or multiple roles that they could play in in the process and gina has spent so much time making sure that district 99 is prepared to respond to these changes and do it appropriately and respectfully of everybody involved she needs to be commended for the amount of work that she put into this over the last i don't know a year and a half and with very short notice last summer uh while we were in the middle of trying to figure out what to do in response to a pandemic gina was also sorting out how to respond to this appropriately so i just want to make sure that that doesn't go unnoticed all right thank you thank you so much thank you kendra appreciate it all right a couple of quick items uh location of future board meetings uh as noted we moved into here this week uh we had to keep our location before because of construction the south high commons was our only large space available last board meeting we did complete the new tile right outside here in front of the main entrance so you can see that on your way out and that opened up this location for this board meeting and then the next board meeting we're going to hold it at the brand new south auditorium so we have a chance to show off that new space um so that'll be august 16th we'll be there after that kids are back so all of our spaces start getting filled up by student programming and musicals and plays and athletics and all of those kinds of things so our big spaces are going to be limited moving forward because we're back to normal instruction right and normal activities and those kinds of things so starting in september we'll move back to our old home back at the administrative service center we will accommodate right now there's currently no restrictions on number of people so we'll have chairs set up just like we used to and if large groups wish to present we'll encourage them to send a representative to speak on the group's behalf if we have anticipation of a large controversial issue like a major change in the return to school plan as we have done in the past we'll try to locate to another large area like we've done at the cafeteria south before you know maybe it's one of the common spaces or we'll try to move into a large space but we try to stick to a consistent space because of the audio and video and those kinds of things to make sure that people have a a good experience if they're attending our meeting in person or if they're watching online as a result of kovid one of the things we did do was start live streaming our board meetings so even though we might be back in a smaller space everybody in the world can participate in real time and watch our meetings take place as a reminder school board meetings are meetings in public not with the public so the fact that they are streaming allows our entire public to observe our work as we do it as a board and administration so that's the plan moving forward um so board members over at south to check out that brand new space on the 16th and then from there back to our good old home you'll have breadcrumbs to get auditorium the auditorium's still where the auditorium always was yeah that's just will we be coming in the front door then yeah we're going to come in through the main entrance and walk through the brand new commons on our way and pass the new cafe on the way to the new auditorium um on the uh the next thing since we're on it master facility plan just a few images that were released today these are hot off the presses the board hasn't even seen these yet some of the pictures of the auditorium and common space that are being put into place you can see the top left hand corner is the auditorium top right hand corner is the new west events entrance entrance with the fly tower of the auditorium in the background that's another one of those images that looks really close to a rendering that the board has seen in the past you can see the main stage entrance that you'll be entering in for the next board meeting in the bottom left-hand corner and then you can see some parking lot uh getting finished up as we clean up that west events entrance over at south way in the background you can see the brand new bleachers south commons is coming along top left-hand corner is the grand staircase still a lot of stuff activity going on on the floor around it you can see that then uh the next picture that is the new uh meeting room uh the community room at south and that top right hand corner bottom left hand corner is an aerial view of the outdoor eating area outside of the commons that's what's left of the old courtyard which is still a lot of outdoor space for our kids and then bottom left-hand corner is some more of that commons cafeteria space coming uh into shape so a lot going on over at south over north if you have an opportunity uh board members or anybody in the audience that would like to uh you could just walk out the door here at the end of the night you could walk into the commons here at north and it is gorgeous and north didn't have as much going on this summer so they're a little further along than south is that's far left is the commons middle is the boy that is the oh the outdoor events entrance where we are replacing the glass curtain wall that is there that's an update as part of the capital project i believe and then the far right hand side is the outdoor eating patio at north that that's coming into place and you can see it's very similar to the the commons you if you walk through the comments you'll be able to see that tonight as well so a lot underway you can see it really taking shape here and coming to fruition all right so uh master facility plan remains on time and on budget i've reported that for the last five years and i'm very proud of that all right we have one recommendation for action this evening okay so we need a motion for the board of education to approve the 2021-2022 return to in-person instruction plan approval resolution so moved second mike and i didn't hear the fact that jerry thank you very much mike davenport aye terry pavicich aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller aye jenny heggstrom aye the motion carries next we'll move into the second reception of visitors is there anybody who wishes to address the board we have no additional comment slips but i do have a short prepared statement that i would like to read go ahead i would like to take a moment to provide some perspective on the public comments at the last board meeting related to our work on diversity and inclusion when we hear the term critical race theory crt we here as the administration believe that this is referring to the branch of graduate level research within critical legal studies crt is a graduate level tool for investigating the role of race and racism in the legal aspects of society or in other areas of scholarship this is not a concept that has been used in our work around equity inclusion and anyone who says the two are connected in district 99 are wrong regarding our actual work district 99 is dedicated to continuing to teach students to recognize and overcome challenges students may create these challenges for themselves sometimes like kova they arrive out of everyone's control while others are built into the systems into systems and are almost invisible to all but those who are impacted by them and sometimes there's obstacles that are intentionally put in students ways each student also comes to us with unique abilities and benefits that should be grown and developed to their full potential we are in a community with enough resources where caring for and challenging each individual student does not come at a negative cost to other students generally we have resources to provide an appropriate learning experience for each child and we are not running short on caring as we support our students we believe that it is the community's expectation that we create an environment where each student feels like they belong at school so that each student can develop to their full potential and that is what we will continue to do thank you i just i just say that's been the guiding light of every board as well that i've been part of in the ten years that i've been here um so i i'm i'm so so proud of the work that we've done in those in those areas um diversity equity inclusion every student deserves as it's it's customized education as they can get for their you know for their need and i like to say i wish every student could have an iep you know because every student is so important every student learns differently has different needs coming from a different background and the work that we've done here is just stellar and i'm i i will be fully committed to it continuing for as long as i stay on the board for sure so thank you for all that hard work well said mike thank you all right we have no visitors remaining so we're going to move into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity do i have a motion so what was that mike davenport aye christopher espinoza hi jenny hagstrom aye terry pavich hi joanna vazquez drexler hi and nancy kupko hi we're going to go in close session we will be returning only to adjourn no additional action will be taken so our students can go and enjoy the rest of their evening so can the administration the administration can go enjoy the rest of their evening we thank you all and this will be very short are you going to be here for a few minutes yeah okay
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
second roger sorry oh do you have any details um you have a copy of the contract in front of you in a handout originally the high school was looking to go to a different venue that was far more expensive so we asked them to find a venue that was closer and that was more affordable this contract is in line with what we've paid previously for for prom questions yes 301's back to school guidance all right i know that many people have seen the guidance because they referenced it in their in their public comment tonight it is linked to the to the board agenda so um we've always said that last year people mentioned that they're proud of our ability to return to in-person learning and um it did not come without a lot of hard work as everyone's aware and um we made that choice to return we believed in that choice you're grateful for that choice and i'm thankful for that but we still followed the guidance we didn't deviate from the guidance that was given we've traditionally said that we will follow the guidance of idph and isb now what happened we did an issue about recommending mass by looking at various ways with enforcements but conditions changed on july 27th when the cdc offered up new guidance based on the delta variant and that guidance calls for universal masking i'd like to i'd like to refer um the community that's present to board policy 830 that the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among all people on school property or at school events note first on school property at a school event including visitors students and employees shall perform any of the following acts impede delay disrupt or otherwise interfere with school activity or function violate the district's policies or regulations or directive from authorized security officer or district employee or engaged in any conduct that interferes with disrupts radley adversely affects the district or school function we are an official meeting of the board please repo please refrain from public comment at this time so we were able to um return last year as i was saying on july 27th the guidance changed and now it's calling for universal masking of all individuals ages 2 and up in our building whether they be student staff or visitors regardless of their vaccination status today on august 2nd isbn idph issued frequently asked questions and when the subject of masking comes up who should be masked inside our school buildings the answer was everyone this weekend kane county moved on its covet level level from moderate to substantial for increase and i know in my phone call with the king county health department today hospitalizations have dramatically increased in the last week so in light of this in a consultation with various groups including law firms we've issued this updated guidance the district continues to follow the guidance of the center for disease control and prevention which was adopted by the illinois department of public health and the illinois state board of education key elements include the cdc recommends universal indoor masking of all teachers students staff students and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status cdc recommends that schools maintain at least three foot of physical distance between students within classrooms whenever possible students teachers and staff should stay home when they have signs of not feeling well covet 19 prevention strategies will remain in place with layered preventions this will include increased ventilation increased filtration daily sanitation and disinfection to name a few and then like everywhere else we're going to have to monitor by locality for transmission of what's occurring in our area and in the county guidance for face mask coverings there is a cdc order because it falls under uh public transportation that students must wear a mask on the bus the students who attempt to enter the bus without a mask will not be allowed to enter the bus and will be sent home face coverings are not required when individuals are outside it's only when they're inside face coverings are not required when individuals are outside they're required when individuals are inside school premises so for our classrooms we will be following the cdc recommendations those of idph those of the ken county health department and we will be requiring masking for all teachers students and staff and visitors to our k-12 schools regardless of their vaccination status we will continue to monitor and work with the king county health department and hopefully hopefully in the near future there will be a relaxation of these layered preventive measures and we can go back to a more normal type of school year that said our school year is still going to be far more normal than it was last year with students three foot social distance with full use of our facilities and with use of the cafeteria order so public comments over please refrain from making comments now well you're still disrupting so please stop disrupting this this is this is this is a meeting of the board and the public i had a public this does not require a vote so i'm going to continue for health screenings sir you're out of order you need to stop or ask that you'd be removed call screenings hull screenings daily health screenings are no longer required however we do ask that families monitor their symptoms at home and that they they stay home remain home if they have the new onset of a cough diarrhea fatigue from an unknown cause fever onset of moderate or severe headache known case exposure to a diagnosed covid19 if unvaccinated muscle or body aches from an unknown cause vomiting onset of loss of taste or smell shortness of breath or difficulty breathing or sore throat quarantine status quarantine will occur with close contacts quarantine the district does not quarantine students the district has no authority to quarantine students ken county health department quarantines base coverings are expected to be worn inside the buildings and not school buses except while eating all district employees are expected to wear a mask at all times when inside the school building students who refuse to follow masking instructions will be subject to disciplinary action outlining the student parent handbook this falls underneath the rights of the board of education in the school code under section 10-20 and 10-20.5 so progressive discipline could be followed so so they're massive exemptions mask exemptions still exist so um it is possible to receive mask exemptions uh for for medical purposes and reasons so we've received documentation i'll just address that now so we've received documentation from from some families with form letters um saying what they will do or what they will not do um that documentation is being reviewed by legal counsel and by the king county state's attorney so that um you know what official recommendation could be made i'm not an expert in those areas extracurricular activities well oh i'm going on instruction dr mangan so instructionally the the plan for this year will be similar to what we had last year uh we will expect that teachers uh fill out canvas accounts as well as the week at a glance for the sake of when students are absent from school they still have access to the learning environment weekend class we filled out at the beginning of the week so that there's access as well as we'll be hiring the two liaisons that we had had last year at the elementary school level they'll work between the teachers the school and the families for educational purposes the 6-12 grade level teachers will have the canvas accounts as well as the week at a glance and we will expect that teachers touch base with students at least two to three times while they're out uh to make sure that those students are following the canvas and we can glance but for the most part those students are a little bit more inept at being able to manage what's going on inside the classroom and having conversation between the teachers um and what's expected um do we a question do was that something that had to be renegotiated wasn't that part of the mou last year it does not need to we've talked to both uh david everyone's moving forward with those types of options thank you ken having a common communication structure we believe is really important we found that that helped us a great deal last year in terms of having parents have access to a common thread they understand where to go they can see where to pull information from so having that canvas account for its parents who are aware of that as well as the week at a glance gives them an opportunity to be able to communicate fluidly with the teachers um and it helps to provide a good understanding in terms of where they need to be we do plan on having all extracurricular activities this year remain as if we're in a pre-covered state so we do have football starting with the normal football season as far as we know ihsa has not pulled back on any of the restrictions or the iesa we expect that all sports and activities will run as we had uh prior to last year um we anticipate that faculty will have their activities they'll be running their clubs they'll be doing all of the same things as what students would have done are they prior to last year are the since we did all that work with the activities last year with the virtual options and how um uh down blinking um you know how they had to follow up with that are we expecting they saw the option of being a wrote are we assuming everything will be in person with little exception we're assuming everything will be in person with limited exceptions we don't see a reason at this point in time unless for some reason we are directed to do otherwise that we would pull back so it's our expectation that students need that activity and that we have students present for those activities algebra community college which is dual credit courses that many of our high school students attend in that case uh elgin in some cases is still having some courses be remote so they need to pay attention to if it's a remote course as it was last year or if it's actually running in an in-person setting so they'll be contacted by their professors there at elgin and make sure they're following through with that we are intending to run all music and theater courses as planned so we still will have band in chorus and theater so that kids can experience those kinds of extracurricular as well as the music and band pe uh we are expecting to run pete just as usual it is our preference that physical education teachers want the weather is good that they go outside to get our students out as much as possible if it's in inclement weather then they would be inside in the gymnasium we are not planning on serving lunches in our gymnasium so we should have full use of all physical education facilities we'll be using the just the cafeterias for our lunches our goal is for the first few weeks of school to have a slow roll-up primarily to make sure that we're taking care of the social-emotional needs of our students trying to make sure that we're building relationships with teachers and students because we know relationships are extremely important and then moving forward from there into the academics so i i have a couple questions so especially referencing what um i think it was miss gaul right the the sped teacher so i think that that's something that i'd be interested in um exploring what our options are with distancing for those kids um if we do have the ability to be i mean i know the rules exist we obviously did what we could you know last year with the partition things for our speech therapists and our um our reading interventionists who you know were clearly we did what we could when we could and so i'd be curious to know about that if that's feasible based on the space the spaces that we physically have especially in our great schools and i certainly want to reiterate what i very clearly and i think we all agreed with last time which was as you already stated todd i mean my goal and i think i i think that our goal we have very diverse group in a variety of ways up here at the board level um and i think my goal and i think i will speak for everyone at this point saying that all of our goals are to increase our capacity to move towards a closer version of the year and so i think you know even like i said last time like what if we wait until five weeks a week after labor day and if we are looking that good i'm all for pushing the boundaries just like we did last year but we went up two and so we then as a board have to decide how far we go me personally i'm thinking k2 we talked about that last time like how do we think about our youngest ones especially from a literacy standpoint um you know reading and all that stuff phonating observing i think that that's really important so i think i just want to be very clear about that that i think that's my goal if we can do so reasonably safely based on what our numbers are in our district and i also have talked about this with some of my friends in infectious disease i mean one of my concerns with the way that we're running numbers is so we're looking at infection rates which are high but again as people have pointed out rightfully so um deaths are lower than they were a year ago with higher infections and so and hospitalizations are lower and so the challenge is we're getting recommendations based on hospitalizations which great that's one metric of many so my hope is that we shift away from just infections and move towards those metrics but again we don't have any control over that so i think that that could be potentially something that we we you know opt to use in our area if it gets the point where we feel like our data looks good for our district we can monitor our zip codes and see where our numbers are versus 60120 and elgin and we've got aurora just just different animals even in the tri-cities right their density is different so that's my goal so just just like um last year after the adaptive pause many districts remained closed we advocated that we took advantage of our actual two weeks open back up was wonderful and then in my weekly meetings with the king county health department that is something that i've stressed that look as we start the school year we have to look at what's happening in our district in king county because a district in a different part of the county could be different than our district so i think we have to they have to look at that and if we have low numbers if we have low numbers then we should be able in a systematic way to begin removing these layered preventions one at a time like they've talked about and i think that that's and and you know we talked a little bit about this last time too with what we had talked about and then a lot of things have changed in the last two weeks not only in the state of illinois but across the country for for what these numbers look like and so again i mean i think the same thing holds exactly what i said i repeated now i said the same thing last time i think we're on the same page continuing to use data my concern is about jumping into the school year like that instead of saying great can we get five weeks of data can we get 25 school days can we see what that looks like with our every two weeks running the numbers that esther did last year and getting us that information and what does it look like at that point so we can assertively but appropriately pull back on that and again work work on again our to me our youngest our sped kids of course or especially our youngest special ed kids um and any of our self-contained classrooms and uh our k2 would be my priorities personally so i again i'm hearing you say yes we're on board i think everybody sitting up here is on board with that and so i'm hoping that all of you hear that and i hope you don't think we're blowing smoke i i genuinely believe that we last year just you guys putting out which i appreciate that you guys have identified what we did last year but last year we used the cdc recommendations we pushed the edge of the recommendations we were essentially being as consistent as we can from last year to this year as far as using those using the same the same entities whether people's thoughts are about them that's a whole other ballgame and everyone's entitled to how they interpret that data but i think again we have maintained internal consistency at the district and board level which is something that i said every time this comes up isn't very important to me and what i do personally to maintain internal consistency and i do appreciate that i believe i believe that we have done that for those of us that especially here for the whole last school year right it's about a measured approach and we keep trying to take a measured approach to every decision that we're making at this point in time we're starting at where the cdc is asking us to go i think we'll have a measured approach we continue to watch our data we will monitor it every two weeks like we did last year and make assumptions or make decisions based on what we're seeing in terms of special education our speech language i know in talking with early childhood kids and talking we heard from somebody last year last meeting as well regarding speech language issues which we know is a challenge when you can't see the mouse even for social emotional learning when you can't see the smiles of their faces and we're teaching that in social studies at the kindergarten first and second grade level it's important sometimes for kids to see those expressions that we have in our faces i would want to definitely talk with staff to see where they're comfortable in terms of is there a way to get some leniency and some teacher choice in some of those activities making sure that they're providing the distance that they need guided reading is coming back this year we did not we were not able to do guided reading last year in small groups that is something we are offering this year because we can get within three feet and so we'll do our best to stay within that three feet sometimes we may break that a little bit to make sure that we're getting what's appropriate for our students but ultimately we want to make sure that we're doing what's best for our kids academically for speech language pathologists they do have small offices or they have different areas they could pull them and they're only taking one or two kids at a time so i do think being able to provide distances without mass could be something that we could work to do again i'd want to talk with the slps to see how comfortable they are with that to ensure that they feel comfortable as well and will our k5 be able to with reasonable ability take classes outside if they want to yep the new law this year requires that they have to go outside every day for 30 minutes um and so that is being that is being put into place this year so they won't be going outside for recess at least 30 minutes a day so not not for recess i mean like can they teach outside if they oh yeah they can absolutely teach outside yes okay they did last year too right that's what i want to make sure that our administrators are uh they can go outside and teach outside and and the reason why i think that measured approach makes sense is even based on some of the comments that we heard tonight so the the delta variant in india and the uk did spike but then after like five or six weeks started decline for various reasons and there's still questions about why that decline occurred so right now kane county health department says that this was today said that delta variant uh if if under the original covet strand every infected person could potentially infect an average one or two they're saying it's closer to eight to ten that's that's based on what they said i did not see any data on that but so but if it follows the same if order if it follows the same if it follows the same pattern then you could see like numbers increase over a five or six week period and then start to decrease but again we'll have to see what occurs with it all right they have changed mandates through public comments cdc will continue to make recommendations and then idp idph will either adapt those recommendations or adjust those recommendations and then the district will follow idph guidance what does that mean in the room public comment is closed yes it is do we need to take a meeting pause take them yeah moisture a second to pause motions what was the motion [Music] so people can cool down yes oh that's a good idea um so the district will follow um progressive discipline is spelled out in the parent student handbook so the goal as always is to keep everyone in school we want schools to remain open we want kids in school so the scope of that again things are under review just like we received documentation with forms from awake illinois those are also under review so there's areas that that we have more expertise in than others our expertise is education um i have to rely on the guidance of others for for health information and then for a legal input related to other mandates or other requirements or implementing recommendations i realize that this is a stressful time for everyone i really do and there's strong emotions on on both sides because um just like so many of you tonight have very strong feelings about mass being optional there's other people who really feel the mass should be required so there's this is a this is an issue that has potential to divide and that's something that no one wants no one wants that so i just want to get kids in school i will actually i mean i take issue with this like there's issues that there's differences on two sides there's more than two sides to this and i think that's the challenge as we've all fallen into this either or this binary and i think it's more nuanced than that which i think is the challenge um absolutely i as a disruptor myself in my personal life i appreciate people who i do not get me wrong i absolutely do that and i encourage my kids to do the same um and this this for my family is just not one of those things i might choose something else that somebody else might say absolutely not i would never have my kids do that so i think there is some individuality of this i absolutely appreciate the passion i love that there are kids here by the way again good job girls this week too so thank you very much for coming i think that's fantastic um but at the same time i mean i think the the either with us or against us i think that's a really really dangerous kind of position to take um and so to i think you said something about the community from you know evanston versus here i grew up here moved in 1985 kindergarten through 12th grade i'm back here for a reason i'm on this board for a reason so i completely agree with you it wasn't even evanston it really wasn't it was just the community which again everywhere and i looked everywhere and this is the most inclusive place that we came and what i said we have made more friends out here than we had in 10 years out there we picked out here specifically because all the parents care they teach the exact same things right love everybody treat them right don't give up on your rights that's what which you don't which which again wait so my point wasn't to go back and forth just to be very clear about that i just want to say one thing and that's it and then whatever the only reason that i came to this board meeting tonight was specifically because my kids came to me and said do we have to wear masks again two years two years and the only reason because i have taught them facts not flip-flopping of all the stuff so the reason that they ask is because which which again my sentiment being i feel the same way about the community as you know a two dad family i don't even know if there's another one in the district right now so i certainly appreciate the fact that i have been welcomed where i am i i i appreciate that um i think that you know so for for for all of us i think you know continuing to push forward to at least have compassion for viewpoints that are different than our own that are owned not necessarily to be persuaded or minds changed but at least to be open to respecting things that maybe we don't understand or otherwise i think that's the only way that we're going to get through this and what i feel is um the certainly the people that have spoken very passionately here tonight um are feeling like there's a lack of trust or feeling and i don't want that to be the case i i hope again as i already said i hope the public you guys trust us and we say we're going to move forward as fast as we can as regionally as possible um and if if we've lost that trust then i i you know i to be fair like people vote like that you somebody else runs for the school board and and you you do it like that's the po to chuck's point about the power of the people like that's the point i want to be here for a reason i hope to be here as long as people will have me you know and i don't know about everybody else's plans the bottom line is we're here to do our best for the kids right now we're not going to have everybody agree very clearly we know that for sure um and i really do think and i i appreciate esther and todd's effort in particular i know the board does because the amount of time and effort that they have put into responding to people and phone calls and emails i certainly appreciate on our on the board's behalf so thank you the last parts of the guidance regarding operations i kind of covered earlier that basically the layered prevention strategies that we had in place last year will remain in place and then with the exception of food service we're going back to normal uh hot lunches and in the cafeteria and then anything with human resources and then we will continue to communicate out um to our families as conditions change and as um as we follow and get the metrics that are coming in all right thank you very much move on to uh the track buzz it presentation now the real fun begins for students and i know last year my son personally and carrie walter over there is not my favorite person for multiple reasons but she took it upon herself to basically issue him i can't think of the word i'm so upset so let's let's not talk about public let's not talk about students we'll reach out to you with student services okay i guess they'll be left at their bus stop not like in the middle of the street we're not going to pick them up and drop them off in the middle of the street down the block and be like sorry yeah if you're concerned about the little kids being alone at the bus stop probably don't leave if you send them without a man i just answered your question though ma'am i'm just saying for other people that you know if you're concerned about that with little kids i'd either send them with the mask or stay there until the bus comes and goes and we will have a supply of mass should we need them you know for the bus but if people refuse to wear a mask they will not be bust parents would parents would have to parents would then okay let's move on why don't you give me a call tomorrow we can talk all right third time's a churn um so tonight i'm presenting the tentative draft budget for fy222 at the next board meeting august 16th i'll re-present it again and ask for your formal approval to approve it then it's going to go on display at the district office be posted in the newspaper and we'll have our public hearing held prior to september's meeting and then at the september 20th board meeting you'll be asked to approve the final budget and then once it's adopted it'll go on our website and i'll deliver it to the roes so a lot of my budget presentation doesn't change that much from year to year because it's numbers and just kind of updating things but i just want to make sure i don't i'm going to go quickly over some things so if you guys have questions definitely reach out and ask but i i want to kind of go over things too for the new ones on the on the board so fy21s budgeting process was pretty much like throwing a dart at a at a target blindfolded there were so many unknowns factors and variables at the state with the coven 19 guidelines and state and not knowing what we're going to do but we're still pleased with the outcome of our of our budget overall revenues exceeded expenditures in all funds i know we projected to have some deficits but timing of some extra categorical payments came in we budgeted for two we ended up getting four so in the transportation fund that was 1.3 million more than what i had projected so that would add to it registration fees um late fy 20 payments came in in fy 21 which normally doesn't happen most people do pay their fees for the next school year in in april and may but a lot of them straggled into the fall and then so we kind of had double registration fees this past year and then impact fees and transition fees i report out every month at the board meeting those are through the roof increases that just goes to show the growth that we have in our in our area and then the tax levy receipts they were saying that people could delay their payments july was going to be really low so i kind of projected more on the conservative side and we received almost 3 million more than what i had planned for so those also added to our fund balance and on the flip side for the revenues though we had less interest income because the interest rates were so low we basically got no interest on any of our money our lunch sales at schools were under budget 300 000 because we weren't feeding kids for the first half of the year and on wednesdays and a la carte is our big ticket item and not selling that really hurt the middle school and high schools there wasn't as much expenditure on the expenditure side there wasn't that much being spent on supplies because the kids weren't in there so you'd think that you'd be saving and offsetting the cost but we also had salaries that we were still paying for our cooks and just different supplies that we needed in the container self-contained containers and everything pre-wrapped is more expensive than just buying it involved athletics and fundraisers athletics and they both had declining results in revenues we didn't have fundraisers and then on the expenditure side we were very frugal with our spending we um just at any extra spending was basically kind of put on pause because we didn't know what to expect so um we were very conservative throughout the the year and then when the extra categorical payments came it was too late to go and spend that to offset it so the expenditures came in less than we had projected as well so that adds to the fun balance because we didn't spend as much as we thought we were going to spend so just different areas of the budget [Music] let's see so then the fund balances though all ended with um for fy21 ended with positive numbers um they'll be added in the fund balance reserves um and that kind of helps over the next couple years so uncertain what's going to happen with state and funding and everything [Music] and then some major capital projects that we completed we did central middle schools the district office and a portion of the central high school roofs the bleachers that were left in the original gym are updated to match the rest of the rest of the gym and then we got three maintenance vehicles we also started other projects like the cms windows and chs windows but those started so late this this summer that they they're going to be in this coming budget and then like we do every year whenever there's over budgeting or we can see that we're going to have over money we try to start spending stuff for this fy22 so a lot of the schools got all their school supplies for teachers so that it would hit last year rather than this coming year so we're kind of a little bit ahead of the schedule our budgeting philosophy this is the same slide that has been here um for my time um the number one reason we're here is for our students education providing instructional materials for our staff and supplying the tools for students to learn while giving them safe environments is our top priority our goal when we're budgeting is to balance revenues and expenditures when we can unless we're reducing upon balance we try to maintain adequate levels for fund balances which helps us give a steady cash flow by having those fund balances in april and may when our revenues and expenditures are getting low and we haven't got our early tax money come in that helps buffer that it avoids us from having to borrow or do tax anticipation warrants which that also causes more interest and just a waste of money it strengthens our bond rating and gives us better interest rates when we do need to go out for new bonds so very near future we're going to have to build another elementary school this these reserves will help with that we get a higher state recognition and um it just protects us from unexpected events like covet 19 or estate funding um and then we're also while doing all this trying to balance and be sensitive to our taxpayers with our tax levy request and try to be fiscally responsible and and trying to keep our tax rate decreasing if we can and then just being fiscally responsible with our purchases and keeping track of all of our assets throughout the district and everything that we possess this slide shows some key points the most expensive areas that drive the budget on the revenues and expenditure side you can see local property tax is our primary source of revenue state revenues the evidence-based funding is vital too those are the kind of the top two revenues on the expenditure side salary and benefits they're the largest expenditures that's the run of the people business so we have a lot of teachers and staff and then along with all of that trying to make sure that we're moving forward with our capital improvement projects not letting our buildings deteriorate and be in a pickle if they get really bad trying to cover our regular cost just normal electricity and everything and then predicting if we need more cleaning supplies or added more staff you know depending on on different things like that so revenues this slide shows you it's broken out by local state and federal so every every fund has their own local state and federal revenues these are the top ones that that kind of fall under the different categories so local property taxes registration lunches athletics and rental income off all under a local state is your evidence-based funding your categoricals and then your federal one these are all your grants your special ed idea grants medicaid national school lunch and then new this year i added the sr 2 and 3 that we're going to be receiving local revenues make up about 79 of our budget states 14 and fed is 7 so this year we're basing our state revenues on assumptions like we did in previous years evf right now in the budget is is kept flat from last year there they did approve more additional funds to be added to the state budget but we've not seen those calculations yet they said august 9th or 10th they might come out so hopefully i might be able to get those tweaked in here for the next the tentative or definitely for the final the last two times that we were given increases it was like 200 000 and like 186 000 so it wasn't much but everything every little bit helps and then um but i mentioned earlier that we budgeted for two categorical payments and they surprised us with four um which then adds to our reserves so this year based on how they paid last year i'm budgeting to receive four categorical payments the one that was owed from last year and three for next year um if and just yeah hopefully the timing and everything will will come out for that but that's how i budgeted revenue assumptions so local taxes we um for most most years we get fifty percent in the fall fifty percent in this in the spring um 49 51 you know it's really close to that these last two years it was like 40 and 59 and it was like way off kilter so that's probably part of how the just the assumptions weren't accurate last year so this year we're back to we did receive 49 so i'm projecting that we're going to get the 50 next year instead of the 43.
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um so our local taxes are going to be about 53.8 million dollars um evidence-based funding already touched on we're projecting those to be at 7.25 million we'll see if we get any new money on that one state categoricals same one delay payment and three and then it just shows you how much if transportation fund is the biggest one if we get all four payments we get 2.3 million dollars if they don't that's like 590 some dollars less for every payment that they don't pay so you'll see when we get to the transportation fund by me saying we're going to get 2.3 if we get the 2.3 that's how my projections are going to land that we're pretty close to meeting revenues and expenditures but missing one payment then transportation's going to be in deficit spending so it's that that's key for that fund impact fees and transition fees they just were crazy this year um it kind of spikes it's spiking back to when we were in 2006 2007 when we had to build the building is just crazy so it's it's coming from all different areas of our district so i i projected at these which is less than what we got but way more than what we had last year so i'm hoping that these kind of are pretty accurate so this is a snapshot of our historical tax rates you can see from uh levy year 14 through 20 on here our rate continues to decrease as eav increases and new construction begins to increase more significantly starting in 2012 which is not on here but through 2014 our tax rate was rising but since then eav's been increasing so our tax rate is going down except for in 2019 eav did not go up as much and then you saw a little bump up but then it dropped back down again and for projecting the levy that will be in november and december just doing rough estimates if we have three percent in new growth which we've seen huge growths all around us um and the 15 million in new construction then we're predicting that our levy's going to be 6.65 cents so in another decrease of 10 cents in our tax rate um so these are just the factors that go into the projected tax levy here again showing you the three percent increase eav 15 million new construction um 2020 levy those numbers are all known and the bond extension for the 2021 levy is known so you can see our bond payment went up for next year and then if based on the projections of the 15 million new growth then these would these numbers would be where we would land and then these numbers will all change when we do the levy in november and then december so on the expenditure side throughout the whole entire budget there's different account numbers and they're coded by different object numbers so every section in the account numbers mean different things throughout the budget these are the main objects so you have your salaries your benefits your services supplies capital outlays dues and fees and capital non-capital outlays so every section of the budget has ever has every well not every one of them not all of them have dues and fees or non-capitalists but you'll see the salaries and you'll see benefits and services and supplies in throughout the budget as we know salary and benefits are the major part of our our any school district's expenditures so here you can see the breakdown 73 of our budget for expenditures is salaries and benefits um 27 would be all the other sources of expenditures this doesn't change from year to year it might have been 72 last year maybe so it's pretty pretty stagnant over here total expenditures by all funds this one shows you the breakdown of all the operated funds it does not include the capital projects or the bond in interest those are not operating funds this year this one did shift a little bit from the ed fund which is your biggest pie that's where all the salaries and benefits and curriculum and everything comes out of and and some of it did shift to the o m fund which is um for capital projects and um you'll see um where we mentioned in our district gold board retreat all the projects that we were looking to use the asset funds wasn't this ad funded like 70 or 71 percent last year it was yeah so um but it moved over to the o m fund which was probably i don't know the exact numbers so don't quote me but that might have been seven so it kind of shifted where it went so for expenditure assumptions you can see a list of some major the major expenditures there's just changes happening every day the numbers and stuff in the budget are reflected of like salaries and positions and fdes as of july 22nd so payroll and hr went through we go through the budget line by line and we put everybody's salaries and benefits in their proper buckets based on where people were at if we knew that we had an opening that wasn't filled we you know would have that person's like a holding place for that person but i just watching the emails there's people shifting left and right so i i do expect a lot of changes um hopefully it won't net to a lot but it's definitely been a crazy summer which it always is in the summertime um so we basically added um we adjusted the salaries based on the contracts um we backed out those 10 temporary secretaries that we had last year that were did not rehire this year so those have been removed we added you know a little bit more custodial overtime for the extra cleaning that they may or may not do some of those weren't fully staffed all the time so salaries might have been a little less it was just a big fluctuation capital projects this year cms windows and frames that we received fifty thousand dollar school maintenance project grant a year or two ago we already got the revenue for it so that will be completed hopefully august september i think the final ones are done in september we have mobile units coming for the elementaries just for the growth and meeting all of our building capacities transportation and buildings and grounds they've overgrown their facility with their one stall bathroom so we need to and by moving buildings and grounds out of cms we'll free up more classroom space and cms for other teachers to take over and moving them out so that facility hopefully will get up and running and then we're just doing um ntec upgrades so that's all of our hvac i think almost all of them have been worked on we just haven't paid for them yet and then we always have our bus leases our insurance specialist tuition a bunch of things good question with staff janitorial staff i know last year i think we hired like another person for building are we keeping that staff on this year we are keeping the added staff on yep so we'll have the mid-day staff which we put in place we did not have free last year so it should help yeah we're still short trying to find custodial staff we're a little short but all right and then you'll see the overtime because other staff are filling in for those those gaps these next few slides just show you some of the key expenditure items by the fund so this slide shows you the education fund it just gives you the grand total of the like elementary salaries middle school salaries high school and athletics this next slide will show you same education fund again total food service department for the whole entire department supplies and everything is the 1.4 million dollars special ed tuition um 3.5 million the tech budget and then our contingency within the total education expenditures are 48 000 406.
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48 million 48 million o m funds these are the key lines within the operations and maintenance fund you can see the total o m expenditures will be 10 million 531 632 next we have transportation fund same thing you got your salaries your bus leases is 1.3 million fuel your contingency so your total transportation expenditures are 4 million 858 365 dollars um this slide is all the other funds um just kind of in in grand total showing you your debt service which is all your bonds and your debt certificates um that we will be paying principal and interest your imrf social security medicare your capital projects and your torque fund this is your fy 22 fund summary so it basically just get it's all the funds it tells you what the projected revenues were based on all the line items in the budget your projected expenditures and then the difference of where we're going to land so you can see education and the o m fund do have a deficit but on the next slide you'll see that they have fund balance reserves that they'll just be dipping into them it won't make them negative but it will it will reduce their thing um and then here you can see transportation is only 160 000 um so if one of those 595 payments don't come through or two of them um then your expenditures or your revenues will be down and you'll be deficit spending there as well so on this slide you can see column one is our unaudited fund balance we've not been audited yet but this is where we where i believe we're going to land there'll still be some some adjustments to it maybe and then the middle column shows you those deficit or surplus from the previous slide that other column those are the difference and then that shows you the 6 30 20 22 fund balance is where we were going to land so the education fund started with 26 million they'll be down to 23 million if this budget holds true so you can still see that where all the funds are still positive balance and then also looking it doesn't show you on this but all funds have less than a year reserves except for the transportation in the imri fund i'm that transportation fund if that one payment doesn't come then that whole thing is blown out of the water um so for the imref and social security i can look when i do the tax levy to maybe shift some money up to some of the other funds to help cover some of the deficits um the most of them like the headphones six months o m is seven months and towards like about eight months that's with everything as is so all funds total the reserves are on average about seven months if we took out our early tax money that we don't that is scheduled for the next year total funds will be three months reserved so it goes down dramatically without that early tax money so even though these look wow and healthy and and strong they are but without that early tax money it includes money for next year already correct and then this is my second to last slide just there's always issues and concerns that we're always you know working on and and trying to keep up with you got your staffing your ftes some of these issues have been on here since when i started like the property tax relief task form is that's been a couple years old but it's kind it's still there but it's not really being talked about um the newest one that could hit us pretty hard would be the p-tel reform um it limits our new construction to 50 of our assessed value rather than 100 percent so um instead of the 800 000 that we would get extra we'd only get 400 000.
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so where's that other 400 000 going um i have no idea it's just they're just going to reduce our rates so you wouldn't get 100 it's like a proration they would just reduce it and you wouldn't get the full value of it it seems exactly but you get it the following year um i don't know i have not seen any further guidance on it you may never it's just a bill that's out there so that one was one of the ones that struck me when i was listening to some webinars i was like oh that could affect us so i think just some of this all these issues they build up steam some of them dissipate um dr stern dr mayan they're always watching the legislation we're running different scenarios making sure we're staying on top of it um then our enrollment growth is the next thing that's kind of a little alarming on our schedule because we are growing faster than any other school in king county and we just don't have the space for kids so we're going to definitely have to look into building another elementary and then the essa requirements i don't know all the details it's it's esther's world over there but there's a lot of stuff that's being thrown at us that they're working tirelessly to make sure that they stay up on those kind of those guidelines and things that we have to do so that's that's my budget in a nutshell any questions i'll ask what i ask every year did anything surprise you in putting this together um nothing nothing really surprised me i i mean i i was shocked at like registration fees was like whoa how did we get so much but when you look at it there's an answer for it i don't i i was shocked at how much we didn't spend because we i think we thought that this that copper is going to be a lot but i think we just we have good vendors we were very you know frugal with our stuff we didn't we didn't go by 3 000 million trillion plexiglass dividers and then not use them we didn't overspend on like some of these schools that they were buying things i was like oh my gosh that seems crazy um i think we just we just do what we normally do and we're just always very conservative with our purchases almost maybe to a fault um so i i don't think there was no i have a question do we ever look at the previous year in comparison so actually show it next to it so that you can actually compare so um for each one of those funds so that you kind of know where you where you started and where you're going for the future so we do in the budget let me fill that one up for you this big packet yeah so i would say um it would be helpful if you could kind of see it next to you within the document oh that's pretty okay there's just a lot more lines to look at in that one and that's right there's a whole lot more lines here versus here in the pretty graph so maybe next to that and i'm not sure why it's not projecting by the actual yeah what percent got it yeah that's really pretty i like the picture of you dragon on the beach you can see the cell's there but it won't open on the screen change my display i think i'll tab here what if i close uh so um to answer your question there is a detailed budget um it goes line by line and it goes by every fund so you'll start with your education fund it gives you every single line item for every single revenue we have you'll see your here's your tentative budget which is where my totals came from here's last year's budget and then you have where we landed so that's what we actually did for the the school year that we just passed and then this is um a percentage of the change so every account is in here gives you your total total revenue from your local then you got your state then you have federal and then it goes into all of your expenditures so you'll go through salaries um here you have elementary salaries all the different stipends teacher pay lunchroom supervisors then you have all your benefits your trs your insurance medical dental life um then your services your supplies your capital outlays and then it just goes through every department and then after the ad fund would be the on fund and then it just goes through all the funds thank you for your work on that esther thank you sorry yes you
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welcome to our regular board meeting that is starting right now calling the meeting to order at 7 pm i want to go ahead and share our mission one more time yasuza unified school district equips every student with the knowledge and skills for college and career readiness to fulfill their purpose and positively impact society as we move into open session i want to welcome mr ryan velasco from asusa high hi ryan how are you hi i'm doing well great great how's your summer been my summer's been pretty good so far thank you good good are you ready to come back i feel ready yes great and what grade are you in i am currently in 10th grade right now awesome great well welcome back to this new school year i know you'll you'll start uh we'll start uh august 19th our first day back and we are so excited you're here to lead us in this flag salute today so whenever you're ready may everybody please stand and put their right hands over their heart ready begin 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 ryan for leading us in this flag salute for today for our august 3rd 2021 board meeting we welcome you to stay and hear this meeting um or it's up to you if you want to log off um but i wish you the best for this next upcoming school year and as always um we are here you're welcome to join us and anytime on zoom to just hear what we are talking about it might be a little boring for you but hey you never know you take care of yourself and thank your parents for letting you come on as well have a great evening thank you we're moving on to 4.2 roll call we'll go ahead and start to my left we'll have board member sabrina bow board member adrian greer here board member channelling cruz gonzalez here board member yolanda rodriguez pena here and i gabriella arayanes i am present today so we are all here today moving on to 4.3 approval of the agenda can i please uh get a motion to approve 4.3 second we have a first motion by board member greer and we have a second by board member rodriguez pena let's go ahead and get to our computers to be able to vote are you guys i'm not advanced to oh here we are oh there it is we can go ahead and do a hand vote i don't i don't see it okay we have a board member cruising dollars did she vote yes but i think she just got are you guys seated on your screen okay let's go ahead and we have one yes yes four member career bird member bow yes yes and i s and it passes five zero 4.3 has been approved we'll go ahead and move to our agenda item 5.1 and this is a student matter final settlement for office of administrative hearing oah case number 202105087 student number 21-20 can i please get a motion to move 5.1 a second we have a first by board member grier we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez and if we can go ahead and take a vote great awesome and it passes five zero we'll go ahead and move now to our recognition and awards this item is 6.1 we have a souza high school asusa high school softball team recognition with coach hugo and team we have alyssa brianna and liliana do we have them on zoom yes they are on there [Music] all right yes coach he goes here uh dr gomez are you on the zoom yes he's just coming over right now okay perfect uh well while um he uh is logging on i just want to share how um extremely proud we are of the softball team it's been 14 years uh since the team has won mom view league champs and advanced to cif and so we're just uh very proud of the team very proud of the support system around that that includes coaching and parents what a great accomplishment uh so i'd like to turn it over to uh dr gomez to uh make some introductions and some remarks fantastic uh thank you uh board superintendent cabinet i just want to give a big shout out to our fantastic softball team um for those of you that uh didn't know uh the year that we went into the covert lockdown uh they were ranked uh in the in the top six in cif uh this year they were once again uh ranked uh the top in cif so slowly but quietly they've been building a strong program um and uh this year they made it all the way to semifinals extremely proud of the hard work from uh uh brianna alyssa coach hugo and all the other coaches and parents that have supported not only the the aztec softball team but the school but just so proud of the of the zuzu community so i want to go ahead and hand it off to either alyssa brianna or hugo congratulations this is coach hugo i just want to also um praise the girls for all their hard work and uh determination and getting uh this accomplished also i'd like to thank coach george for his hard work uh on and off the field uh keeping our fields looking great and um the girls did a wonderful job i also want to recognize brianna rodriguez alyssa savales and gwyndolin rivas all of them are continuing their software career briana and alyssa are going to pcc and uh gwendolyn rivas is going to the university of antelope valley so congratulations to all of them for continuing their softball career and i'll i'll pass it on over to either briana rodriguez or alyssa savage are they are they on the zoo yes okay you can go ahead and okay i would just like to say i'm so proud of all the girls it was a great year really was you know i don't have a lot to say i just was so proud of everybody i honestly did not expect for us to go that far but i knew we just worked hard and we're just a great team like all around all the girls worked really hard together we're just a good team i would just like to thank everyone in the community for supporting us and always being at the games and i would like to thank our coaches for pushing us every day at practice and even though this year was a little hard because of covid we still pushed through and still managed to go the farthest we've ever gone and yeah can you please share your name brianna rodriguez brianna thank you brianna thank you alyssa do we have another student on on zoom gabby can i just add um that this is officially azusa high school 65th year um as a school site um and we we have one cif championship uh in the 80s but uh since since the school opened in 1956 this is the first time that the um the softball program has gone undefeated all the way through through the semifinals so a huge accomplishment and alyssa was saying you know we we were good they were they were more than good they were fantastic so uh thank you again uh board and cabinet and uh uh now coaches uh coach george and coach hugo were expecting this every year now so be ready great well thank you so much congratulations to to the softball team as um you just said right now it's the 65th year of asusa high school this year it's um a big one and to top that off we have uh our softball team um i just want to tell tell the coaches and all of the team and um alyssa and brianna that are here online i want to congratulate you for your determination and you know during the these hard times of coming back hybrid and when were you going to practice when were you know when were you going to be able to play and just the uncertainty you showed that as a team coming together and being able to have one goal and that was to play and second was to win and you guys did excellent i was following you guys on social media everybody was posting and it was very exciting to see you guys um and i remember that one day you guys went to your finals and you guys had an event right after that it was a graduation and some of you guys were running from you know from your softball game to to back to graduation and it was exciting to see you guys have just a tiring event eventful day for you know you guys brought hit this great championship here to asusa for you to celebrate and you guys did the hard work but we celebrate you all we're so proud of you and i know some of you personally and i want to congratulate you and your parents your parents for driving you and doing everything that they have done to to make this happen thank you parents thank you so much um anybody else would like to say a few words um yes i want to congratulate the students and the coaches and also dr gomez reading the principal of that school and uh the parents also it's very true you know i know it was a hard year but if you think about they broke the record after 14 years wow kudos very proud of you thank you okay since uh we have no more comments we'll go ahead and and thank you guys thank you dr gomez thank you alyssa brianna and coach hugo and i don't know if there's another coach on here but to all of the coaches and the whole entire team thanks again guys and congratulations on this recognition and you guys will be getting your certificates in the mail i want to say thank you to the cabinet thank you very much awesome awesome we'll go ahead and uh move on to our next item on our agenda and this is items from the floor public common and agenda or non-agenda items and before as people are raising their hand i just want to go ahead and remind uh the to if you are raising your hand please um stay in the zoom attendance make sure you unmute according to the legal guidelines board members are not permitted to permitted to respond to comments on non-agenda items a member of the staff will contact you if any information is needed and thank you for your participation maximum speaking time is three minutes translation services are available to the public your cooperation is appreciated um we're going to go ahead and open up um public comment miss lika do we have anyone raising their hand we do we have miss lori ray you may meet your mike okay good evening members of the board superintendent ortega and cabinet my name is lori ray and i am the president of csea azusa chapter 299 i represent the classified employees of our district but tonight i want to focus on the ones that have medical insurance offered through the district i am part of the insurance committee and despite our efforts to try to keep costs down like things like switching to cis the cost of insurance keeps going up but the district contribution doesn't so every year there is an increase our members absorb a hundred percent of that increase because the employee is the one who is burdened with the rising cost it makes their paycheck so small that they are struggling to make ends meet and in some cases need to work an extra job just to provide for their family we've also lost great employees to other districts because of this and this causes an effect on the other employees who need to fill in until a person is hired to replace them i have worked for the zuzi unified for 28 years and back when i first started here it was known as the district with a heart because they showed it with good wages and health care contribution but now azusa usd's contribution to health care is one of the lowest if not the lowest in the surrounding area i know the district knows this because there is a disclaimer in all the job postings stating that applicants are encouraged to review information related to employee contributions towards medical dental and vision insurance premiums now why does the district feel they need to add this well it's because they know that their contribution is terrible so come on and let's do something about it last negotiations we brought some ideas to the table on how to improve the district contribution and we were told there's no money for it well we all know that this year there is money for this and now is the time and really the district doesn't need to wait until we get together for a scheduled negotiations we can meet anytime to discuss this and begin to make azusa usd the district with the heart again thank you and good night thank you miss laurie rayford for coming to our board meeting tonight do we have anyone else raising their hand there are no more hands raised okay great well as we're moving along our agenda we now come to 7.1 i'm sorry 8.1 this is comments reports and requests by the board of education we'll go ahead and start with board member career no comments tonight thank you board member cruz gonzalez thank you i hope people have had a great summer and they're getting ready to come back to school um i just have a couple um requests so first a comment and then a couple of requests um so i had um the fortuitous event happened to me i was in san clemente at the beach on a saturday at 5 00 p.m and i was going back to my car even later going back to my car and i saw a bunch of kids and their families coming down the um the steps to the beach and then i saw mrs dorsey from azusa high school and i was like what are you doing here so they they were camped there they went down there to go camping and i guess they go they pre pandemic they would go down camping and do their cross-country training so just exciting to see some of our people some of our kids get back to their regular routines um and just the random interactions i just i just wanted to mention that um but good to see that they're already they're getting ready for the the season this year um i do have several requests i'm not sure if you're going to can cover these in your reports today or just follow up um one i wanted to get clarity around how we are addressing um the transition from distance learning to independent study for families who are true who do not want to come back to in person right so what kind of opportunities are we doing are we are we just are we just are we um complying with the minimum standards of the state put out are we trying to make sure that we're trying to give them a much more robust opportunity and then clarity about like how many how are we finding out whether families want to want to go to independent city obviously i think as a board member i want i think we should encourage everyone to come back in person right safety standards and made it clear that it's safe to come back but for those that choose to go home i stay at home i want to i want to understand what we're offering them um so that's number one um number two um and i'm sure you're aware under i think it's ab105 for where students have the opportunity to request a change of their grade from like a d or an f from a letter gate grade to a pass no fail um so the the information that i saw gives a really tight timeline for so i'm just i would like to understand whether we're able to be more flexible with our with our students because i feel like giving kids 15 days to respond that's not that's not fair to anybody especially if you're talking about like maybe students that are now gone and we're trying to find them and can you communicate so i would like to understand what kind of flexibility we have with that in terms of giving people the opportunity to understand that as they come back um because and then obviously the timeline is off from when kids come back right because we're supposed to notify right now i think and then they have 15 days so they're barely coming to school when their opportunity to have that to make that change request is is over so understanding what options we have for families so that they all understand their options um number three um is around kova testing and vaccine requirements so i haven't seen that we've had a conversation i've seen other districts come out talking about i know ali unified is is testing everybody so i just want to have clarity around what we're requiring for employees in terms of proof of vaccination and or a regular testing so i would like to have clarity on that piece um and then finally the last piece is just around um the fine so tied to both fine it's the request to find towards tied to like all the financial one-time one-time copa dollars that we've gotten from both the state and the federal government and how we plan to come back and recover and be better than ever right um so i i would like to request either a presentation or even if it merits at a study session where we talk about we get that whole picture of really this is how much money we're getting to focus on recovery you know you know some of it's one time one year well some of it's over three years and this is how we're thinking about how we're gonna wisely invest these dollars for the most for the best impact so i i feel like i haven't had that big picture as a board member and so i'd like to see that come to us sooner than later because i believe there's some timelines i'm reporting some of the dollars at the state level right i think so so i'd like to have us have that conversation sooner than later so that those are all my requests thank you thank you board member cruz gonzalez we'll go ahead and move to my left we have board member bo good evening everyone and welcome back to the school year um over the summer i had the opportunity to do a site visit at some of our food distribution partners and it was really inspiring to see some of the community-based and workforce education programs they also offer and um over the next uh over the course of this next year i look forward to opportunities for the district to increase its nonprofit partnerships specifically in the areas of health wellness nutrition and workforce development thank you thank you board member bo we have uh board member rodriguez pena yes uh good evening everyone and welcome back i hope everyone had a great summer and i also went to the summer school visitations i went to murray and paul elementary the goal this summer is for students to reconnect with schools in a positive way all students are having a great time there was a um the think together program they have a thing called move and groove and there was they had they showed a video and all these students were dancing and it was really cute because some kids are really getting down there and you know the main thing was that they were all dancing they were all working even the teacher was dancing so it's really great to see the kids they're like so happy they also have a um sports stacking those cup sports stacking cups stacking it was competitive students are trying to see how fast they can stack these cups by the end of the session it develops self-confidence i seen a mom when i was walking by murray school the other morning and she mentioned that her daughter was having so much fun at summer school that she would ask her that she wanted to go to school every day uh because she enjoyed what the new curriculum that they have i know that they have a new curriculum than they had last year so it was definitely for me seeing it was a summer school estravaganza i know that's what we called it and it was just that so i want to thank dr dana mitchell assistant superintendent of curriculum and also superintendent ortega for taking me to the walk through on saturday july 23rd we had first day la cleanup over a thousand volunteers from sandals church in azusa there were over 13 projects throughout azusa example the caltran cleanup edgewood shopping center cleanup downtown azusa this is a community gardens uh susan national little league they painted it they mowed the lawn at edgewood shopping center they um also had people wash clothes they paid for their clothes to be washed i should say and um i do know and uh i do know that uh board member grier he you were where they were giving haircuts right is that where you were yeah they were doing a number of things there yeah they were just doing different things right so anyways throughout the community it was beautiful because you know mayor gonzalez council member alvarez avila mendez and barbara mcgregor and myself from all uh and the interact students from azusa unified school district and their parents so it was great teamwork we did we had we did a lot had a lot done and i also want to congratulate elizabeth morales velazquez the library technician at glaston high school liz was selected as a csea 2020 member of the year when i go to coffee with the principals at glaston high school i always see her in the library that's where they have the meetings and she's always you know helping students or teachers and always with a smile so that was very well deserved i want to also mention um cool cuts for kids 12th annual back-to-school event three haircuts and school supply giveaway it will be sunday august 15th from 12 to 4 p.m at memorial park and it's sponsored by mayor gonzalez and his uh city council members and they also have kova testing there on site also uh i wanted to um also mention the um request that i like to see our districts you know in the surrounding areas what what they're paying for medical for the medical benefits i would like to see the comparison from missus unified school district and i also want to close this meeting in memory of yolanda valdepeno she was a classified employee she was a health aide office clerk at mountain view in valleydale and she will be truly missed thank you thank you board member rodriguez pena and i also would like to congratulate elizabeth morales velasquez from gladstone high school she is the csca 2020 member of the year so we could give her a round of applause thank you so much for for doing us proud and we're really happy that you were chosen so congratulations elizabeth and one of the things that um i would like to also request is and ask when um when can we make the guidebook to reopening for our parents available i would like to see some sort of town hall um so that way parents would have you know quest that that have questions um would be uh you guys would be readily available to answer those questions because right now um i i've received a lot of emails and a lot of phone calls on what that is going to look like the protocol and so i i would like to go ahead and have that for our district or have our district um navigate that and have our parents uh have as an option before coming back to school so we can get the end of books um that would be great um let's see here um i think that's that's all i have for today i want to welcome everyone back again uh summer just came and went it feels like it feels like this whole year has just come and went but we are here starting a new school year and this is our first meeting of 2021 2022 school year so welcome back everybody we'll go ahead and since there's um no more comments from our board we'll go ahead and move on to the next [Music] agenda item which is comments reports and requests um sorry comments and reports by superintendent superintendent cabinet and it looks like we do not have the student board members yet um but we look forward to um the students that will be joining us hey it could be one of your children well one of you guys so make sure if you're interested to let your activities office know at your high school your asb i believe um to let them know so i'll go ahead and turn it over to our cabinet and now we'll be starting off good evening board of education staff and community i want to welcome everyone to the upcoming school year i want to also thank our hr team who has been hard at work filling vacancies and new positions i also want to give our site administrators and their teams a enormous shout out for their hard work and also filling positions and ensuring that we have a great start to the year in closing i want to announce that we will have our annual years of recognition event also known as the desert social this is where we celebrate our employees who hit milestone years we did not get a chance to do that last year so we'll be having uh two rounds where we'll be celebrating the employees who hit milestone years in the year 2020 and also those who will be hitting milestone years this year in 2021 uh it will be on monday september 20th at 3 15 and the location is still to be determined but you will all receive more information and invitations um for for this event our employees receiving this recognition we'll also be receiving these invitations later in the month thank you all good evening board i am happy to announce on behalf of the business and the state of california that all of our students will be able to have free meals and snacks for the 21-22 school year and what this also means is that we will not have to receive the traditional meal application forms but we will need to receive the income verification forms at that as that is tied to our lcf funding so we will be working on our maria and her department will be working diligently with all of our site administrators to have a campaign to get the income verification forms additionally our business team is working diligently to close the 2021 physical year as well as um and unisys working on the audit and fulfilling the auto request on what the goals of minimizing or eliminating any potential audit findings and with that i'd like to say thank you last thursday the 29th we received the new protocols for reopening schools from the los angeles county department of public health since then we have developed a draft of a new school reopening guidebook that reflects uh this new protocol we have also been working on our website to update so that that can go live where this new information will be housed uh we are planning uh a town hall for the community uh as well our plan is to have the guidebook completed uh by tomorrow that is the plan so that we may then share this with our staff and our community uh this week uh the town halls uh we are targeting uh early next week uh to have town halls available for our community i also want to join in on congratulating elizabeth morales or library liz as uh folks like to call her she is a library technician at glaston high school i just want to congratulate her for being selected as a csca 2020 member of the year what an honor for not only her but for us as a district to have her represent us statewide uh just uh just an honor to uh to to have that distinct that that uh recognition so thank you and congratulations uh liz uh and then just uh excited excited for this new school year august 19th is just around the corner blink of an eye and so uh thank you to all the staff uh csea aea afe our management team everyone who's gearing up to get ready for that for that day so thank you good evening today was the last day of our summer extravaganza three sessions all summer long during my site visits this summer i saw a high level of student engagement and participation in the project based learning i want to give a thank you to all of the teachers this summer who participated in professional learning as well and coaching experimenting and trying new things and implementing this project-based learning want to thank think together for their partnership and all of the administrators the summer administrators the school administrators everybody working together we all learned quite a bit this summer uh as we all engaged again in professional learning and um just learning how to um look at uh how we implement learning a little differently so we're looking forward to continuing our our project-based learning journey our kids absolutely loved it this summer they had a ball so i just wanna again thank everybody for making this happen this summer thanks thank you so much for that i i did want to give kudos to our um to miss latasha jamal i actually um experienced the the income application app today and it was very smooth um it was actually really fast i was able to just you know do it for all my kids and it was actually um at the school at dalton school it was part of the requirement for registration so i couldn't get past the app unless i submitted the application so that that was a good strategy good strategy i do have to say so i hope that all of you guys watching at home are able to complete this income application and again this is not to get free or reduced lunch this is just um part of the funding that we receive that is needed in order for us to be able to continue to receive this funding and we are very very thankful that all of our students will be receiving free lunch regardless of income breakfast and lunch is that correct yes ma'am and snacks and snacks so looking forward to that i i know our students are looking forward to that um so thank you for that that i really really appreciate that app we'll we'll go ahead and move on to um our general functions and 10.1 discussion of decisions needed for future board meetings and i'll turn this over to superintendent arthur ortega thank you uh board president um the governor uh signed uh an executive order uh n821 uh that in essence uh slates us here in azusa unified school district to begin on october 5th our meetings to go back to in person open to the public uh meetings the executive order which is n39 this executive order trumps that and there is a phase-out window that the governor put in and that sun sets on september 30th and so we as a board uh beginning on beginning no later than october 5th we'll need to transition to in-person open public meetings um this agenda item is uh just to uh discuss a couple of points uh as we get ready uh for this school year um in terms of our board meetings moving forward uh so the first kind of item that uh i'd like to hear feedback on uh is knowing that by october 5th the october 4th 5th board meeting we need to be open in public [Music] do we does the board wish to wait to october 5th or do we start a process or a date to say let's just let's just move in that direction effective this board you know this board meeting whatever that board meeting may be that's kind of the first point of clarification that uh that uh seeking can we start there yeah okay um do we have any comments suggestions on this side uh i just want to know the regular what what would it look like so we would be back in person the dice would be back uh back in where where it typically is we have audience members here chairs which have to follow the protocol so people would have to wear masks um people can walk up to the podium to give a public input a public comment and so pretty much the way it was uh before um with some safety protocols in place the biggest one being that we have to all be messed up because we're in and would they have to fill out that form they can fill out or take their temperature walk them to the door so you know right now we are landing uh we would have the screeners like you see in a lot of public places please do not enter if you have xyz um or if you've been exposed to you know this um and then we would have the the digital uh temperature scanner uh there but they wouldn't have to fill out and with someone clean the mic every time someone if there's more than one person speaking on the podium that is a possibility we can have wipes there okay thank you anybody else on this side that was my question in regards to some of the logistics that you asked board member rodriguez penas i i don't see why we wouldn't maybe get get going and get moving and get things going sooner i i don't i don't see why we wouldn't do that unless there's some wisdom that someone has as to why we would wait till the october date i agree if it's possible to to wait we don't have to wait till october 5th why we don't just start in our next meeting i agree uh i'll add to it our next meeting as long as it's if we suppose that that's feasible and if if if it makes sense to push it out into september just for feasibility standpoint i don't have i don't have a i don't see a reason to rush this or or to wait till the the tent i would say let's get moving and if that lands next meeting or if it's the meeting after i i would be okay with that person so so what you're saying is that at the discretion of um of how fast they can go ahead and make this happen is that what i'm hearing okay and this is actually um just it'll be a it'll be a package it would be a package so if you have we have any oppositions i i would agree as well um i i think it's important that moving back into person public meetings before the fifth um would would ease us back um there you know one of the requirements that where we are having is uh the temperature check the the masks being worn i would like to see a designated person to actually clean the microphone to make sure that we are not having the person that's speaking cleaning their own um in a trash can right next to it just so they could you know throw it right away um and what is the capacity um that's one of my questions so what is the capacity i mean if we have a hundred people in here or i mean are we looking to fill the room like we did before because i know the guidelines are saying there's no more three feet and so my question is are we going to set that boundary and limit and and put a capacity um i would we would recommend that the capacity be the capacity of of the room just like uh all rooms have capacity so we couldn't fit 100 people in here just like we would in in normal uh board meetings uh but to your point there is no no uh protocol to say um you know can't do this we can't do that we can definitely um minimize or um not put as many chairs as as we had in the in the past um in in the room um but there is no protocol to to limit those types of things so so what about if uh we're given awards and that's when you get more people even students and they're like down in the hallway how's that going to look are we you know i mean it happens when the wartime you know of the team or whatever the moms and the coaches and everyone you know there is probably i don't know maybe more than 100 people sometimes yeah so again like if it was tonight if it was a softball team we would have them wait outside when it was time they can come in get recognized again we have to be messed up and then they would exit and is the current thinking that we would hold these meetings all of these meetings here in the boardroom so we would not be going on the the rotation of school sites and uh the civic auditorium so we have a couple more things to discuss and i think based on that um that would determine that in terms of what's the feasibility of having the things that we are wanting to keep from the pandemic if you will and i think that would determine um if if it's better to this year keep them here in the boardroom or if it's going to be easy to to move to a school site and or the civic auditorium the only other clarifying piece i know i said i i don't see a reason to rush it or or um you know wait till the the october date do you have a sense of of what an appropriate uh deadline and or an appropriate board meeting would be to to have things set up and ready yeah based on on the conversation right now i think september 7th our first september board meeting seems like an appropriate uh start start date i'm comfortable with that again the next ones are just points of clarification um we currently live stream our board meetings on two platforms uh zoom and youtube just want to again verify that that is still a desire of the board we do live stream both on zoom so audience members if they wanted to they can log into zoom and watch the board meeting via zoom whether they're going to participate or not or if they opt to they can they can watch it live on youtube as well and are we only able to do that if we're in this boardroom or if we're we'll say this at the civic auditorium or because we did it when we're in the schools right if i'm wrong i don't i don't know um i'd have to verify yeah i just want to just does it mean that we have to be here all the time or not i have to i have to i think we should i think we should give the parents the opportunity that they're able to um view it in their own home you know people that can't come here or they want to see what's going on because we have some big things coming so i think it'd be beneficial to the community that we continue and i i would take it a step further than that and and say that i would appreciate if we continue to allow for for engagement and comment to happen virtually into the future as well so not merely streaming but but also allowing for people to remotely uh provide public company yeah i i would like to add to um board member careers comment as we continue um because it seems like the majority would like to continue the zoom and youtube there's two things that i would like to bring to light and that is um and this is just i'm asking the board um what do you guys think sometimes we since we are going to be having some [Music] uncomfortable conversations and decisions that we are going to have to embark in the next several months um we the reconfiguration the redistricting it's coming so there's going to be a lot of people wanting to chime in um coming to do public comment i i would like to suggest that we have a first and last name of each individual that um speaks on zoom just like they do when they come here that has been practiced and so i'm opening it up to what do you guys think they don't have the first and last name when they're on here no they have a phone number what would be the purpose to know who they are just like when right they would come before they would state their name um they fill out a card it you know they would um fill out the address just like they do at city council meetings and it's just for what maybe maybe um i mean i don't know maybe they don't want to hear their last name i don't know i'm just you know and i i don't want them to feel that they cannot speak because they're not going to give their first and last name right but if they were coming to a public meeting in person in person right so let's look what i'm saying is to have uniformity across right if they were going to come in person it's first and last name as well as let's go ahead i would like to go ahead and um practice start that practice on zoom as well and you're just saying they would just say it like orally right right so because they just start speaking sometimes they don't have it there now could we see it on the screen is that why right is that your name yeah but if you don't put your name it might just be your phone number or it could be your kid's name right it could it could it not only your name on your computer or something right so they would state their first and last name just so that way you know we have it um i think it would be appropriate to have it you know to have uniformity as if someone was to come in person right we get to see them when they're online we don't get to see their face they may have you know there may be on their children's laptop but if they state their you know first and last name at least we have a first philosophy so i think philosophically that that makes sense and i wonder if there are even any like legal requirements as to if that needs to happen i i think the the only concern that i foresee is someone starts talking and doesn't say their name do we so so we interrupt them or we don't allow them to finish or if they if they didn't say their name then we say we cut them off we move on just just the enforceability of it is is the what i what i wonder so so the practice we would probably uh what would it look what it would look like lika since she's welcoming them and she's you know putting them on there so she would ask them to please state their name right are you are you right or i'm all right or the president whoever is leading the meeting i i would just like to see more uniformity more a formal protocol um [Music] and uh just moving forward with this and and just to be clear i mean i don't i don't see i don't know that i foresee this happening but just for clarity yes so you ask someone to say their name and they don't say their name so we move on to the next person and they don't they're not allowed to speak unless they say their name i don't know what either that that's the only thing my concern is i mean if they don't i i don't know but have we ever had anybody come in person and not because in person they usually do say their name i will check the legal requirements in terms of that particular thing but in terms of just trying to help out uh i think uh for member chris gonzalez i think that is i think i like that right the uh lika do we have anybody else yes we have a person raising their hand okay great please take your name before you speak that would be a board president and then we can also add wording to the public comment agenda item uh i just said you know please please make sure to say your first and last name to help with that and then i'll check i'll check from the legal to see if there's anything that prevents us or allows us and then we can discuss that further as well right um so thank you one more thing i'm so sorry i had two things oh yes um for four board meetings right we have them on zoom and on youtube i think it's very important that um and i'm gonna bring this up again our regular open meetings are are are recorded right so people can go back and they can see they can hear it they can you know stream it whatever they need to do one of the things that we had at the governance meeting um this last uh month we had a governance meeting there there was um i had asked for all of our open meetings to be recorded it is our diligence to be open and transparent to our community and so i am also asking that if we continue to live stream board meetings it should be all open board meetings including study sessions governance meetings and of course not closed meet you know not closed sessions but any open meeting all taxpayers employees parents have a right to go back and see these meetings and hear what we have to say it's all about transparency we're not hiding anything and i don't want to give that perception regardless of what happens in meetings it's important that we maintain you know that practice anybody have comments i have a question related to that so generally i mean our past practice has been to have like study sessions or your evaluation at other at the pdc or at the spa right so so would that impact the ability to video record those if we if we move i think it goes to the other question earlier that you want to ask about like if we go to the if we go to a school site or if we go to um the auditorium at the city hall yeah so that i mean that's i think that's the other that's the question i would have right and then that and then plus you know past practice has been obviously we're socially distanced right now because of because of situations but i think we use it we normally in those kinds of meetings we sit like in a table sit around so we can have a conversation with each other so how would that impact that for you know for the for those discussion purposes yeah i'll i'll definitely uh look into because i just want to recap really quick uh because board member grier and board member president before president obama you already um talked about the the last two items that that i wanted clarity on one of them being are we going to continue to offer public input on zoom and that that was a conversation and then the other one was going to be do we continue the practice of videoing uh recording and uploading and so board member ariana [Music] spoke spoke on that so if that's where the board lands number one our first open public meeting is nine seven number two um yes we're going to continue to live stream on both uh youtube and zoom number three yes we're going to continue to allow uh public input via zoom and in person of course and then number four yes we're going to continue to record and upload um to youtube and right now board president arianes is saying that that would be all board meetings um then yes based on that recommendation i would i would then we would work as a staff to go to to find out the visibility of city hall other locations here at the district office and then school sites but for sure all of that can happen here do we have any more comments or anything else you guys would like to before we move this wordpress and i have a question regarding action items so can you clarify at what types of board meetings the board takes action on so board um the board takes action on agenda items when it's specified so do we take action at workshops and at study sessions or only at regular and special board views so when we have agenda items that are on our agenda for action items right that is when we take a vote so when we have a study session obviously we don't have any action items okay so i heard you say that when we have agenda items but only if there are action so i just i just want to make sure i understand clearly that study sessions or workshops you generally don't have any action items they're all informational and for discussion only is that accurate that is correct we are in the past uh study session items have had action items uh we are working really hard as a team to not have that happen that to really clear out uh the air and the space so when we have a study session that we really can focus on just the study session so not saying that they won't ever happen but we are working really hard to make sure that that does not happen is the the idea behind um going above and beyond to offer a recording um for everything um because i i guess i definitely understand the idea around live streaming and recording where action's being taken and certainly all the discussion around that action but i'm wondering about things like study sessions or workshops that where no action is there are no action items um what's the what is the can you show your thinking around absolutely yes so what you're asking is what is my thinking about having these public meetings that the board's coming all five of us are coming together to speak right so we're not breaking the brown act we're coming we're talking about certain things we're having a study session it's more it's more uh one of the things that and i'm just going to say it the community did not in the last couple years have trust in the district on the board and so the transparency that has been coming in the last i would say three four three years or so three four years um finally that you know the committee is seeing the transparency the communication and i would like to go ahead and send that olive branch and continue that we have nothing to hide right we're going through this reconfiguration um journey together if we us five are going to have any conversation that we're you know that that is going to be bringing up that we are going to um that affects this district in any way shape or form it is our diligence for us to be able to hey you know what so and so um mr herrera wants to see our study session because we were talking about reconfiguration in our discussion what we're thinking right all of all five of us are coming together i think it is our diligence and our responsibility for us to be able to be transparent and clear and that anybody can go back and see these recordings that's it do you have any more questions board member book anybody else questions comments no but my preference is we take two separate actions because i'm like everything that we've talked about i'm okay with um i just i just think just i i think that it still um makes sense to not um to not record the if we're gonna have governance retweets so i'd prefer to have a separate action on that one so that we can submit so it's not so we can so i can vote on all the things that i do support if that's so let me see if i'm understanding you correctly board member um cruz gonzalez what you're asking what you're what you're sharing right now is that you're not comfortable for the for the community to see our governance meetings that are public board meetings no that's not that's not what i said so can you please clear that yeah because i said i'm fine with it being live streamed i'm just saying i don't see i don't say we need to report and so i i really think that i'm not sure that you want to do what you're doing right now because i think we each are entitled to our own opinions um and so i think we all want to work i just want to clarify your opinion that's it so what you're saying is you're okay i don't want you to speak for me i just want to understand you go ahead i've already i already said i would like to have two separate actions this is um i just want to clarify why you want to have two separate actions and that is because you don't want our governance meetings to be recorded and for somebody who may not have the time to come and see them at eleven o'clock or eight o'clock when we have the seven o'clock they can't go back and and watch our meetings that that's what i'm hearing from you so i really would appreciate it if you spoke for yourself and not for other people so i i just want clarification board member cruising's office that's what i'm hearing is is that what you're saying no i i hear you interpreting what i'm so let's let's take the action that i'm happy to give my rationale for why i'm voting for something or again something i don't want this to come in i i just i made a request that we do it separate can we do that please so let's let's um i would like to keep it together it's all one large sum it's our public board meetings so why don't we start with that right i am going to request a motion so the first motion that i am going to request is well i'd like to make a motion then to um to take adopt all the the recommendations that we talked about moving to in-person public meetings on september 7th to live stream the board meetings via zoom and youtube and to continue recording and uploading our regular and special meetings that happen in this in this room um and then also continue allowing public comment via soon a second okay so we have a so what you're asking again is that all of this except having our governance meetings be recorded is that your motion no no i i said all special and regular meetings that happen in this room be recorded and uploaded so you're making one motion you're not dividing you're not taking it out so um i'm sorry i'm not quite understanding what but that's the motion so is there a second second so okay so we have a first and a second we can go ahead and discussion discussion just so that i understand the motion because you said you said special and are you saying governance you're not you're not including governance your emotion no i think it's i'm just specifying that it happened in this room so i think it just gives flexibility in terms of okay i would have to disagree um i'm i i'm not okay with that i am not okay with only meetings in this room we as a board have a responsibility regardless of what the conversation is or how heated or uncomfortable it gets it is important that we upload every meeting that we have that is an open meeting and that's my final comment you need to call uh for a vote um she wanted him separate so i'm going to go ahead and start with this one um let's go ahead and take a vote for president can we restate the motion for clarity yeah go ahead board member chris gonzalez so um the motion is that we would move to input in-person public meetings by september the meeting on september 7th we would continue to live stream board meetings all board meetings via youtube and zoom and we would continue to record and upload all board meetings um that happen and i can change like at a minimum all board meetings that happen in this room so it still gives you flexibility about the governance meetings the meetings at city hall or schools but at the minimum of the ones in this room and then continue public comment via at all meetings that's my emotion and i also want to make a another just comment i'm not comfortable with putting all this together because i'm comfortable with everything except again the last part i think board member crews gonzales has made a motion and so that's been seconded by uh board member beau and so i think there has to be a vote and board members can obviously speak the other votes okay let's go ahead and take a vote are we voting online there's still the option for additional action within this item right we can go ahead and turn so do we need to just vote for for that for those pieces so we can continue if there's additional items to discuss within here but this is one motion this is one motion within a motion so we can vote we if it passes and it passes if it doesn't we go back to the drawing table and then we can that's not what i'm asking if if we we vote now we do not move to 10.2 we can remain in 10.1 if there are other items that we want to discuss so i'm suggesting that we take a hand vote on what was just discussed and and we do not immediately move to 10.2 because i'm not sure that we've finished our conversation here so continue discussion is that what you're asking there may be more items to discuss within 10.1 so i'm i'm can i'm can we do a hand vote for what has been where we are now and then determine if there's more to discuss within 10.1 before we move to 10.2 board member i think what is being contemplated is to vote on up or down the motion on the table and that the chair can call for another motion and anyone can make that motion another motion i mean there can be many things that we can vote on for this one item that's how i'm interpreting so that maybe it's helpful if i ask this question superintendent ortega are there any other items to discuss within this within this item but it matters okay then we can we can do the regular vote so if you want i mean i can take out the the recording piece so then it's just really clean that we're just because that's the piece where you know that we're not necessarily all in agreement so if you want if we're going to do some motions i can do that and remove that so just why don't we go ahead and do that so um so i'm going to amend my hook and i am in my motion and so my the mail student is just that we're going to open september 7th in person we're going to livestream all the board meetings via zoom and youtube and we're going to continue all public comment all at all meetings via zoom so that's the current that's my current motion we can we can address the the recording of the recording and uploading meetings in a separate motion is that okay are you okay with that with that amendment sabrina i second did that yeah okay so we have a we have a first by board member cruz gonzalez and we have a second for all of for the amendment motion excuse me i second the second the amended motion i okay um i'll all accept the live record meetings recorded meetings uh of all public board meetings any discussion before we move to this vote and then we'll vote on the next would that become a different item i think it still lives within this item okay there's no more discussion on this then let's go ahead and take a vote we're ready to vote and it passes 5-0 as we're continuing with 10.1 we'll go ahead and is there a motion for the floor more present if i may another alternative uh if we want to keep this uh clean um is we can move with the direction these three directions our board meeting that we're talking about going public is on 9 7 we can bring back an agenda item just for uh recording uh and uploading i personally i welcome the motion if anybody else has another motion i would like to go ahead and motion that we as a board are transparent and that we live stream and record all public meetings point of clarification as a chair can you make a motion yeah she can we all have the equal right to make motion we're not i think it's not necessarily robert's rules so all of us can make can i get a second no second so we're not voting i'm so you we're moved to we're moved to a vote or you're making a motion there's more that i would like that i would prefer to discuss so then we can go ahead and discuss after the second question yes except that we we are already in discussion where i'm confused here is because we're doing we're doing multiple motions within within this item so that's where things are are a little strange and confusing so we already had a discussion prior to the motion that took place i would i would it would be helpful for me if we would if we could have a discussion continue with the discussion we had on this particular item before we before we make motions and and uh and take next steps as we did with the previous piece within this item starting with the info piece correct to the action correct okay all right so what what what appears to be and this is we've discussed this now a few times what what appears to be at play here is what what do we do with governance with our governance meetings our governance meetings it well one streamed although although i i've heard we just took action to say no that their stream i think it's a matter of are should governance meetings be memorialized and and recorded and uploaded to to youtube to to be viewed at a later time so there i i understand that the the the philosophy and and transparency which i which i think is important the the other side of that piece where it's important to it's important to to recognize at those governance meetings is that those governance meetings have to do with um not necessarily decisions and and items that that or action that takes place in regards to the district it has more to do with with uh protocols and norms and how the board itself operates and there are even times what it has become space due for there to be interpersonal um conversation that that takes place that if we just assess the reality of it is at is is at times affected if and when those conversations are memorialized and recorded i i can think back on on some conversations and interactions that have taken place at governance meetings and and can be grateful that that they were not memorialized not because there was not necessarily because there was anything sneaky that was that was happening there but only because it allows for there to be you know a space for there to be honest and open and candid conversation that if it were recorded and memorialized it may not happen and so i think we have to so i think the question before us is um or a couple questions before us is do we just have the open and uh in candid conversations that we might have recognizing that they're that it's recorded that it's memorialized and that it's there um do will we not be open honest and candid and address in interpersonal dynamics or other governance dynamics if it was recorded and if that were the case if we did not is it is it more worthwhile to to have a governance meeting that that then maybe we don't get at the core in the crux of of issues that are are at hand because it's memorialized on on a video or is it more important that it's that that it's not that it's recorded and uploaded online which of the two is most important i think is before us you know how i think about it is actually um we're human beings number one and i know sometimes we do talk about certain things that you know you don't always keep hiding from the community i had a situation going on which i wish it would have been recorded i wish people would have known what was going what was going on you know and i i think that they should be recorded for that purpose because we're human beings you know things happen but at least they know that we're having the conversation that's how i feel about it so i say yes to answer your question you know one of the things that i've noticed um not only as an employee before but as a taxpayer um you know a constituent uh board member atten uh attend i attended board meetings the face that we give the public when it's recording we're cordial towards each other majority of the time i understand that and what you just said right now is that well sometimes the dynamics or we might not be okay to say something i've experienced myself in governance meetings certain things that have been said to me that wow because it's not being recorded you you are able to be passive aggressive towards me but yet you're not willing to have a conversation with me outside this room look we don't all have to get we don't all have to like each other sitting here but the one thing that we do need to have is respect how we talk to each other we are leading this district and how we lead this district is the interactions not just on the decisions we make here past this past that where we you know reconfiguration uh committee and now we're gonna close a few schools and we're no it's the dynamics right here between us whether we get along whether we don't i think we owe it not only to our employees to our students to our community and parents to display that respect whether the camera is on or not all that i'm asking is for us to be transparent and yes we are going to have uncomfortable like i said before conversations we're human we make mistakes but bottom line is whether the camera is right on me right now guess what i am going to speak the truth i'm not going to hold back because guess what i don't need to hold back that's all i'm saying for people watching at home they're going to see the real me and that's all i'm asking for we're having a conversation an intimate conversation us for i'm sorry us5 including myself um as five how much more respect would you at home have for us for us to be able to have a very uncomfortable conversation and you were part of that maybe not in the same room you could choose to come and be in the same room with us but you can watch from the comfort of your own home and if you're not able to make it at 10 o'clock in the morning when sometimes we switch the times and you're not able to make it how much more are we saying to our community hey we care about you you can go back and see our intimate conversation because guess what you're able to trust us not only in making decisions for you for you for your life for your workspace but the way that we respond to each other by having these uncomfortable conversations i've been i i got to say this i was at a souza high and i wasn't a board member yet and it was a very uncomfortable governance meeting that they had i had to take time off work to go to this meeting as an employee of a souza unified school district i had to take time off work because it was important for me to attend this meeting because i had something to say why would you know i wanted to see what was the outcome and why not give that to our community hey are we going to have some hiccups between us absolutely but we're adults we should be able to talk things through and be able to get our act together to be able to lead this district with dignity integrity and not come after each other because we disagree on something we are going to disagree on things that is life but the way we respond to each other so that's it i would like to be transparent all transparency and that's all i'm asking this board can i can so i think this would be a good time for me to um so i'm just gonna say and i and i wish we wouldn't dwell so much on the interpersonal because i think i think sabrina's point earlier around you know making sure that if we're we're talking about substantial issues substantive issues that affect the policies of the district or our roles um in decisions that affect the district right it's very important to memorialize that and have that and i and i personally believe especially with this board here that that we treat each other with respect whether we're in a board meeting and an open meeting closed session and governance retreats one-on-one i have not seen disrespect from come from anybody on this diet to any other board so i hope that people don't walk away from this meeting thinking that because i feel like we've all been very respectful um i just i think more it's just a process piece and i think in the governance retreats we spend a majority of that time talking about the process right in terms of like how we're gonna who's gonna be appointed to what position or the norms that we have um and i i think there is value in record and live streaming that and so that's why i think that's that's great i think things that happened we didn't do we didn't even do zoom three or four years ago right i'm so glad that now we can do this and people can just call in um i don't want to belabor this i just want to make it very clear that for me it's not about i don't you know i think we should be able to have those uncomfortable conversations in this diocese when we need to have them right i think that's part of our norms is being able to call a colony to call it call out each other if someone is stepping beyond the bounds of our norms um but i just i just think that of those process pieces i think it just it's i'm not sure that it's necessary to be memorialized so that's why that's why i'll probably vote against the motion that happens um and it's not and it's very much not about how we engage with each other because i feel like i only normally see respect from from board members to other board members i just want to make that clear let me add i while it's also not my intention to belabor the point i'm i'm i'm so grateful that this that this conversation is happening i think even as we talk about uncomfortable conversations that happen publicly i think that that's that that's what's happening here so for me the reason why i'm saying i would prefer that there be a discussion ahead of time is is so that the the the norms and expectations are are set for us and so if if we we move forward with this which we're if if we move forward this it means that um the the the camera being on and and things being recorded not that not prevent the conversation that needs to happen so so even if it is on even if it is uncomfortable or even even when it is it is challenging that it's that it's the space for those things to happen specifically in the context of a governance meeting and i and i would want to ensure that there is at least amongst the five of us that there's complicity in that or that there's there's opportunity well i guess it'd be three of us that the majority of the boy that that there's complicity and ownership over um the recognition of that uh because i think that it would be it would be unfortunate if a decision to to keep things recorded and memorialized meant that there that there were any of us that were therefore unwilling to engage in the necessary conversation any more comments or discussion on on this okay then we'll go ahead i'm going to call it for a vote we're going to go ahead and vote for this or can you receive the motion yes the motion was to have all public school board meetings for a souza unified school district to be live streamed and recorded second can we please do a handball yes we'll go ahead and we'll start with board member cruz gonzalez we have board member sabrina beau no [Music] board member rodriguez pena yes board member adrian greer yes and my vote board member gabriela araganes i say yes so it passes three to two thank you guys for your vote now we'll go ahead and move on to our agenda on 10.2 we have discussion approval of the 2021 2022 board meeting calendar if this is an info and action item we'll go ahead and turn it over to superintendent arthur thank you board president i just want to talk about uh some changes uh considerations that we are requesting uh regarding uh our board calendar um so i just kind of want to walk through those uh the first one is moving our november study session to september 14th uh the rationale behind that is uh we are uh we can see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of our first phase of the school reorganization team and so this would this would grant us the opportunity to spend a study session around school reorganization um as a board as a governance team to really understand the journey understand the data understand the moving parts uh and we can just focus on that conversation around school reorganization uh the second is to move our april 5th study session uh to april 12th april 5th lands on spring during spring break um and then to move our june 7th board governance meeting to may 31st uh because june 7th our high school graduations so we approved this prior to the calendar and so just kind of want to make those these recommendations are reflected on the attachment that you have that you have right now um but also want to bring up two additional items that are not currently uh reflected in this board calendar you heard in my opening remarks that dph put out their protocols on thursday and we've been working on that diligently and so asking for consideration to cancel next week's board governance meeting uh so that we can um focus on the the protocols for reopening uh the town hall and getting um ready for that um the website and whatnot and then lastly uh typically uh here in azusa i don't know how far back it dates so i apologize for that um but board meetings that happen prior to the start of school and board meetings that happen after the end of school uh go we typically go earlier so instead of five and seven um i'm sorry instead of 5 30 and 7 we go 3 30 and five and so asking for those considerations uh for the board calendar i just want to ask a question guardian um i noticed some of these dates are not on our regular calendar um right from our the app percent thank you for that follow that like my bible thank you okay could could you clarify whatever could you clarify what you were saying in regards to next week's meeting you were saying you were saying canceling next week's governance meeting and and doing what he said town halls so would that be cancelling or postponing uh again our our uh ask for consideration would be a cancellation uh but again we're open to what the board decides yeah i just i um i'm i i i wanted to ask why we don't have a second meeting in november then because traditionally we have two meetings in november because then we don't have a meeting from november 2nd until december 14th and i would just i would i would prefer if we keep that second meeting in november and still have it be a study session um because i think generally we choose a education related topic generally has been our practice and if we eliminate that and just do that reorganization we won't have a chance to talk about substantive substantively about the reason that we're here and that is education of children right so i would prefer if we kept that november study session date and i mean we can you know that can be a discussion of what that topic is um but that that would be my fault is this november 16th yeah yeah clarifying questions just to make sure so keep the november but yes still add the september 17th september 14th oh september 14th yeah i'm just saying yeah i'm just saying second second and then just to clarify is that study session just going to be study session and not other agenda items that is correct so then all our financial reports are coming to us in the seventh oh so when are they are they do at the end of september they do by september 15th september 15th for estimated actual or unknown actually so are those coming to us on the on september 7th you guys can work through the processes but i i only request every but let's keep our study sessions and study sessions and not add action items to any of them ortega do you have a a red line of this so we can see what the changes are so i'm having trouble keeping track of i can read this one but then i'm hearing you add in a couple of other things yes so right now uh board member shilling cruz gonzalez is requesting that um that the consideration of moving the november study session to september instead of moving it adding the september meeting and keeping the november study session and that was for november 17th to keep it that's the idea sticking to november 17th session and just add in the september one that is correct november 17th or 16th let me get to the calendar november 16.
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17's on a wednesday just want to make that november 16th is correct okay the other two that are not reflected on the calendar right now uh are they what we typically do here again in azusa and it's not reflected in the calendar is board meetings happening prior to to school starting and board meetings happening after school ends so in this case it would be our uh august uh 17th board meeting and it would be our june board meetings uh to go back to our practice of having those uh start at 3 30 instead of keeping them five to seven you're saying you're you're asking yes that we that we go back to those practices that practice can can we just articulate what is the the reasoning behind that change over the summer um i again maybe or member chris gonzalez or yolanda review can help out but my understanding uh is that during the regular school year uh due to work due to staff having access to uh particular meetings um that was why we had the five to seven but because we were uh in summer and school was not in session um it was easier for people to access it still starts at five which is still technically after hours um but that was kind of the rationale can i just um share i'm unable to come before five o'clock due to my employment um for the rest i i will not be able to to get off at three o'clock so i would like to continue having these meetings um at the same time um so that's that's my take i i will not be able to be here at three or any earlier and if and if i can also say i know that that's what we've done but i think i think it's we should ask ourselves who does the who does that change primarily benefit and and i i hear how um it's beneficial to it's definitely beneficial for us because we get done earlier it's definitely beneficial for for staff because uh if they're if if we have you know teachers or whatnot that don't have classes and so they're able to get there sooner but i i don't see how that's beneficial to our uh to our community i think that their their work schedules and whatnot do not change over the course of the the summer and so their ability to to join for uh for public comment and whatnot um would be negatively impacted by moving it earlier so even though it'd be great if personally if it was earlier i i i would still recommend that we keep it at a consistent time so um i would agree with that i would i would like to have consistency as well even this last year i had people um you know email me and calling me and saying wait what time was that again why are you guys switching and so forth and so just being able to be consistent and that way everyone knows that we start closed session at 5 30 and seven o'clock is our regular time uh moving forward in anybody have any opposition to that well i i do like the early we've been having it like you said i know and people in the community are used to because it's it's been it's going on you know um but but i understand and if you work then you work and and you know i mean i'm retired so i'll come at two o'clock but you know if you work i'm i go and go either way it's not a problem for me great thank you so well yeah to accommodate whoever is fine with me i remember both so that's not reflecting the calendar but it sounds like we're gonna keep it that way anywho and then the last thing that's not reflected in the calendar was the consideration to cancel um next week's uh board governance anybody have any comments i think it's important that they do reach out to the community about school opening that's i mean i'm not saying it's not important that what we discussed but i really think that sooner or later we need to let them know because i am also being asked what does it look like when we start yeah so it seems like um all in consensus uh we will agree to cancel next week august 10th governance workshop and uh to be able to give room for a town hall for welcoming back our parents and students and sharing the guidebook with them and if they have any questions you'll be live and ready to to answer one thing i wanted to to just bring bring forth tonight is uh sousa police department and the city are having a um it's called a national night out and and i i think it's important that for us to be there um and we are not because we're here and this is our our our priority of course um but what do you guys think about for next year um because i know everybody here what is it our surrounding cities um san gabriel valley all of the police departments put it together on the same night which is the first tuesday of every august anybody have any thoughts i feel like we had the same discussion last year and we all agreed to move it to what the wednesday and then we just it didn't happen this year i think we talked about it last year yeah we had her on the wednesday that's true so so would you guys um be open to to moving our our next year's um first board meeting on from tuesday to wednesday to be able to accommodate for for us to you know um for a suse unified district to be present at this event sure i think it's just asking the superintendent to present that revised calendar keeping it super fun for sure okay great thank you for that yeah and then the last thing that wasn't said in the summary but i have it down was uh board member chris gonzalez's um request that we bring back the november study session um and not go to the september one but but keep this one alive instead of moving it let's just add this let's add this yeah i think uh yes we're all in agreeance that that that would be a great move thank you would it also be possible to to ensure that um we all have google calendar invites for for each of these so now that we've had um our discussion um can i please get a motion to move 10.2 discussion the approval of 2021 2022 board meeting calendar with all the um break motion to approve 10.2 with um modifications with an update calendar of what we discussed right any changes second second thank you we have a first by board member rodriguez pena and we have a second by board member career we can go ahead and join to vote and it passes 5-0 we're moving on to our agenda item consent calendar and this is everything from 11.1 to 11.23 can i get a motion to move 11.1 through 11.23 and make a motion to approve second we have a first by board member rodriguez pena we have a second by board member career do we have any discussion or any full items that anybody would like to make at this point seeing that there's none we can go ahead and cast our vote and item and our consent calendar is approved 5-0 we'll go ahead and now move on to 13.0 business and finance we have 13.1 approval of a souza unified school district ausd resolution 2122.01 of the governing board authorizing the establishment of fund 08.0 student activity special revenue fund can at least get getting motion to move 13.1 and make a motion to approve 13.1 we have a first by board member rodriguez pena second we have a second by board member beau any discussion i would like an explanation on this resolution please yes uh thank you um so back in 1718 gasp 84 was passed were identified that all fiduciary activities have to be identified in a specific fund and now um will be a fund that is reported in the district financials in addition it will be audited by our auditors so currently right now all asp funds are just looked at as for internal controls where they go over look at their bank statements profit and revenue loss statements and vice versa now it would actually be reported in an actual fund for the accounting board reported and it will be audited and they would be on um on the monthly budget in a certain category in your student body yeah so we currently right now we receive the bank statements monthly from all our asb where we reconcile those bank statements for them but it will go one step further and now it will be actually reported in the fund where we'll actually have where right now we have fundo one we have fund 17 fund 13.
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now we're going to have fun 08 what would be reporting during our entering report to say okay this is what the total account uh for the asbs um gatsby 84 was actually passed due to most of um some of the frauds that most asbs are have been dealing with and then the students are being impacted because some one person made the wrong decision so this is to give it more oversight and accountability i i think i think it's a great resolution um and asb is only high school high school and middle so all secondary oh okay secondary yeah and um but they'll make the deposits and then they have to give the district a report or yes ma'am and we're still working with our auditors to outline this um just to see what the oversight most districts are actually um uh setting up an actual asb person that runs it because they're going to actually have the audit and overseeing have more hands-on approach with all the sites and we're not there yet i think that's great thank you thank you mr mall yes um this resolution give us um more capacity to address some of the internal controls issues that were found in the last audit um i won't say it gives more capacity it gives us more accountability as far as we will be able to ask for more information um but um regardless the internal controls are being addressed by the process we're putting in place now thank you you're welcome do we have any more questions or discussion seeing that there's none 13.1 is up for a vote 13.1 passes 5-0 let's move on to thirteen point two approval of state of california cal card program canali is getting motion to move thirteen point two i'll make a motion to approve we have it first by board member cruz gonzalez second we have a second by board member rodriguez kenya this is open for discussion or questions i also would like an extra explanation of this program please yes ma'am so the cow car program will give the district the opportunity to have a credit card that we will utilize for emergency purposes only um that would help us with conferences um any last-minute purchases um that could not go through the purchasing department as far as deadlines and um requisition process um but the cow part is the in my opinion the best credit card as far as interest rate um controls and accountability it only allows the district to have three credit cards it's not one of those where you can just say we want a credit card for every person so it was put into place for uh districts and other las um to have more control but i also have the same opportunity to have a credit card for emergency purposes so so you mentioned conferences so when people go on conferences they would it wouldn't be the secretary of the superintendent who would have this card it will be in the safe with the authority for myself or uh superintendent ortega to utilize it thank you you're welcome do we have i see that there's language here about unpaid balances 46 days or or later do we have an internal policy that we would pay the credit card by yes our goal is always net 10 so within 10 days of receiving receipt but then that also goes in to make sure we have the proper paperwork prior to making a charge just to be crystal clear you said it is our goal or that is our that is our policy well there's no written policy as far as when the bill paid but our goal is always to pay our bills and that 10 meaning one 10 days within the receipt of receiving the bill but there is no written policy to say that the district pays their bills within 15 days of the date that we receive the bill there's no written policy but our goal and our practice is to pay the bill within 10 days when people in doable and you would you would say that that tends to be the case with with everything that they'll get yes but this will be a new practice for us so um upon my appointment we actually eliminated all credit cards um that is a preference uh and we attempted that but we're seeing the need to have one just for emergency purposes so this will not become a practice where we're just using a credit card right this is solely for emergency purposes okay yeah i would i suppose i'm okay without having that policy now but but uh it would be helpful then maybe can can this be on a ticker somehow to to revisit at some point to determine if i i suspect that this isn't a concern but but it it's it's usually i would say a good idea to have policy and not merely a goal but but i if you're saying that we tend to operate out of that anyhow it shouldn't be an issue um it may be worth revisiting in the future is all i'm saying yes sir do we have any more questions or discussion so yes so so the responsibility of paying the bill would be the superintendent's secretary or your and actually be the accounting department so once you see the credit card bill be treated just like any of our utility bills or any other bill that we receive for the district i have a question um check and balances so is it just one person who is is paying this bill is you know if there's any late fees um who's doing the check and balances for so that would be myself um shannon and sylvia which is our director of physical services as well as our accounting supervisor so what we do is that we will actually create a purchase order to repay the credit card so each department that would want to have access to utilize a credit card they would already have a purchase order or funding allocation that'll be encumbered to pay a bill as it incurs and so that will prevent a delay of handling bills so as soon as the bill comes we already see that this charge is from the superintendent's office there's rda requisition in place we already see a charge to the business office there's a requisition in place we could pay that bill great thank you for the clarification no problem seeing that there's no more questions or discussion we can go ahead and move to a vote to 13.2 we can cast our vote and 13.2 passes 5-0 we'll move on to 13.3 approval of certification of signatures can athletes get a motion to move 13.3 second we have a first by board member adrian greer we have a second by board member rodriguez pena it's open for discussion or questions seeing that there's none we can go ahead and cast our vote and it passes 5-0 moving on to the next item in our agenda curriculum and instruction we have 14.1 approval of the consultant agreement between a souza unified school district ausd and ekato wind philosophies llc canopy's getting motion to move 14.1 to make a motion to approve 14.1 we have a first by board member rodriguez pena we have a second by board member adrian carrer any questions or discussion i have a question um dr mitchell how many professional development workshops and capacity building workshops are planned uh for the year so right now we have um we have uh based on your approval tonight we have one that actually starts tomorrow it's a six-hour training uh we have uh 12 teachers who are signed up to attend uh high school teachers ela and history social science the next workshop is scheduled for september 20th and then after that we will be scheduling with the teachers um the next the next workshops after that so we've got two that are scheduled right now so just based on the the limit of the not to exceed at 58 000 is that roughly 10 throughout the year yes there are there are several workshops and so we're going to schedule as many as we possibly can we also would like to schedule them next summer as well so we'd like to be able to go uh to continue on with them they have a series this year but they also have additional if we want to have more teachers be able to attend as well thank you um so just just to clarify so i see here that the the intended outcome is to implement an ethnic studies course correct so we already have an ethnic studies course right so so what how does how is this different from what we already have um so we have the latinx studies right right and so um this course would be a an actual course in ethnic studies and so in this course there are different many different so not just latino studies but it's different ethnicities as well and so part of this is um recognizing the value of all students voices all contributions they're going to talk about social justice they're going to talk about literature and how to be able to infuse that um this so there's two ways to look at this one is to implement a course that is an a3g course in ethnic studies we could do that through for example english language arts or history social science another way to do that is to also take components of ethnic studies and other courses as well so that's why i'm trying to get clarity so i mean because it seems to me if we're going to invest this much i would hope that we wouldn't just come out with a single course right um i think i see here it says it talks about having a framework for drop developing curricula because i think um it should it can it should be a bigger discussion around how does ethics studies fit into not only in you know separately identified courses that are social studies but how does it fit into like let's say offer for example and i've said this before a freshman english course right um so i mean i think i think it would be good to be very clear from the outset what what it is um because i think that if we if we're just planning to develop a single ethnic studies course it's going to be a social studies a through g course that kids can take at the end of their high school year i think that that may not align with our goal of seeing of diversifying our narrative and being inclusive um so i just you know i i would like to see better clarity about about those outcomes sure and is it and if it's more than just a single course at the high schools can i ask for uh just clarifying a question so would this be also are you asking for like middle school and elementary school as well no i think i mean i think it's clear that this right now is just at the high school right now that's what we haven't slated for you right and then the other question i have is how does this fit in with the the diversity equity inclusion committee right because it feels like they're doing work but if you're just going to be working with some teachers over here how does how do you make sure there's cohesion with developing vision so how does that committee align or how does this this work and this first element align with the work that the dei committee is doing so part of um yeah with the dei committee and especially the students who are involved in that that are on the diversify our narrative committee a lot of that discussion and work was around how do we make sure that we have a curriculum that includes all students and so that's part of this work with an ethnic studies course right and so um if it were to be for example in uh language arts in ninth grade for example um it's being able to take that coursework with an ethnic studies lens and so taking a look at the the literature the fiction the nonfiction that would align with that um and so this this first part of the professional development is to really learn what is ethnic studies um how does that benefit students um and then how do you develop coursework around that there's lots of examples uh from some other districts that have done some really good work in that and developing some courses so um the first part is really having an understanding on uh what this course is and what are the components and then how you um how you teach that and then after that it's really working with the teachers and developing what our course would would look like in azusa unified seeing that there's no more discussion or questions we can go ahead and move to a vote we will go ahead and cast our vote and we have 14.1 pass 5-0 we'll move on to the next item on our agenda 14.2 approval of the memorandum of understanding mou between a souza unified school district ausd and the huntington library art museum and botanical gardens can i please get a motion to move 14.2 i make motion to approve 14.2 we have a first by board member rodriguez pena we have a second by board member bo do we have any questions or discussion at this time we'll go ahead and move to a vote i just want to just uh what it passes five zero fourteen point two i just wanna say this is awesome that we we're having an mou with the huntington library yay that's amazing i love that place your kids are going to learn a lot thank you for that we have 14.3 fourth quarter williams uniform complaint report 2020-2021 can i please get a motion to move 14.3 get the information though excuse me i'm sorry can you repeat that again it's it's this information i don't think we have an action on this that's right thank you for the clarification that is right this is an info item and we'll go ahead and turn this over to dr dana mitchell so i'm happy to report that there were no uniform complaints for the fourth quarter great thank you for that anybody have any questions we'll move on to the next item uh in tonight's agenda we have policies and bylaws we have 15.1 through 15.6 and do you guys have any questions on these the first reading of our policy and bylaws seeing that there's none we'll go ahead and move over to 16.1 but before i close this this meeting tonight i i would um instead of me closing and doing the observation before it closed i would like to turn it over to miss uh to board member rodriguez pena um to go ahead and hold a moment of silence and closing oh yes i just wanted to hold a moment in silence in memory of um yolanda batafenyo like i mentioned she worked at valleydale and at mountain view and i believe she worked in our district over 20 years and gave over time she was a very nice lady and i'm sorry that she's passed but yes i just everyone got that i appreciate it thank you thank you we'll go ahead and we're closing our meeting today august 3rd 2020 in memory of joanna bosnier and we could just take a moment of silence just to remember her and she was an amazing person and i'm sure there's a lot out in our community who knew her and are remembering her here today so we could just take a few moments thank you for the reminder board member rodriguez pena this time we'll go ahead and move to 16.0 which is the adjournment and again this is a german motion point one that's great we have a first by board member rodriguez kenya a second by board member greer it is 903 and it is officially adjourned i'm so sorry yes we have to vote that is correct now we're voting and it passes 5-0 and it is still 903 therefore we had turned at 903 and all of you guys watching at home thank you so much for sticking around until the end and coming to our school board meeting today and welcome back to this new school year look forward to seeing you guys come to our school board meetings or join us on zoom or youtube you guys have a great night and your families good night
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did i say that right buffer buffer um buffer present um currently in superior township all right john katarski president in ann arbor marianna porter present in ann arbor peggy leonard present in ann arbor michigan sophie grill present in ann arbor placenta young present in anova and our council rep travis rodino will not be attending tonight so chairman you have a court excellent so first and foremost i want to welcome our new commissioners bufford and marianetta porter thank you for agreeing to join our commission um i thought it would be nice if we could welcome them all by doing brief introductions of ourselves and then asking them to do the same um just so they can get to know us all a little bit better kind of get a little bit of information about our background and what we do what why we're here so i'll start i'll be the guinea pig and then we i'll call on people so you know when to unmute yourself so i'm allison buck i am the marketing director with the guild of artisan artisans currently uh we do the ann arbor summer art fair we do seven other art fairs throughout michigan and ohio we run the gutman gallery um prior to that i worked at the ann arbor film festival and the arts alliance and art and really got my feet wet in public art over at the arts alliance doing a couple different public art projects including the canoe imagine art project and the traffic boxes and just fell in love with public art projects at that point and really just wanted to make sure that public art remained present and important within ann arbor so that's why i joined the commission joined about four years ago now and have been a chair this will be my third year so i'll be rolling off at the end of this time um i would have sarah go next but she's not here um david you're the next screen i see if you want to do your introductions sure i'm david easom an architect with cornerstone design a mix of single-family multi-family and commercial architecture worked with a lot of non-profits around town in particular and i was on the arts alliance board for many years that's me thank you david um i'll go over to sophie next hi i'm i'm an artist and i'm live in ann arbor and i organized west side out hop which is a local sort of art fair art walk twice a year and also i'm looking forward to going back to being a docent at uma fabulous john can you give us a little intro uh my name is john catarski uh i'm a retired educator i've been on the art commission for since 2012 uh very interested in public spaces and how to enhance them and i had a public art practice in flint for a decade or so i call myself a recovering artist so but in any event i haven't made art in a few years thank you john um peggy if you could introduce yourself hi i'm peggy leonard i'm an art teacher in the ann arbor public schools and i think i've been on the commission this is my second year sophie would know sophie and i came on together second or third i don't know with covet everything is just lasted forever but anyway um i am passionate about everything that's art but in particular um public art and so i really enjoyed being on the commission i'd like to welcome both of you looking forward to working with you thanks peggy can you do an introduction too please i'm assenta young i'm an artist i focus on mosaics as an art form and mosaics has always been um has a longevity history in public art and i have been enjoying seeing public art here and there throughout the city so i wanted to participate on the commission and sophie invited me and so here i am i don't think it's been a year yet but i'm getting closer to that thank you before we move on to our new folks craig can you do a brief introduction of yourself yes i'm craig hubey i'm public services area administrator which is an odd fit in the art onto the art commission but through the miracle of municipal government and structure that's where the art commission falls um vanita uh harrison who's not here tonight is the staff member in brains behind the city's running of the art commission so i am merely acting as a poor substitute for her tonight thank you craig um we will get to know jennifer a little bit later um marionetta will you do an introduction for us sure i'm marionetta porter i'm a mixed media artist most of my work revolves around african-american history culture and identity i work with a lot of different materials i'm also a professor at the school stamp school of art and design the university of michigan which i just recently uh stepped down and retired june 1.
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here here all right can everybody please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united and states of america for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all hey lauren you might have to move that so they can hear you they couldn't hear you all right um jenny you're up just so you know you've got uh five minutes and we can't respond to anything that you say okay we just have to listen to it okay all right so you're free you're up yes please okay i would just like to know how do you you can't answer me so we're paying a lot of money in tax and i'm speaking for a lot of people i don't understand how taxes in this community can continue to go up during a pandemic people are out of work people are losing their homes people are being forced out of their homes because they can't afford the increase in the taxes and the majority of our tax money is going to these schools and i would just like an explanation as to how how people sleep at night with all of this happening and i i don't i don't understand how people can continue to just say we need more money we need more money we need more money every year there's people losing their homes there's people that can't make their bills and this just continues to grow and every year it just continues and nobody stops it nobody says anything i'm here to speak for a lot of people and i would love to know what's going to be done about this because this is this is wrong what's happening this is wrong and it seems like it's pure greed is what is taking over this country now it's just absolute greed that's taking over now i don't have children and i pay an obscene amount of money into the school system i don't have children but i do it gladly because the school systems i believe in and they're important but to see this continuously happen and nobody says anything nobody does anything just every year we're just gonna keep that five percent keep getting that five percent every single year whatever it is i don't know exactly what it is but i don't know how people sleep at night thinking that this is okay teachers didn't work last year kids were out of school last year now i understand everybody's got to make a living but how can you still raise how can more money be needed for the schools we have a whole year and a half the school is not even being open how can they how can you continue to keep asking for more money can anybody say anything to this can anybody respo i mean come on people so i would be glad to i would be glad if you would uh send me in if we could set up a meeting i'd be glad to sit down and walk through all this with you i would be totally glad i do that all the time for community members we just can't have engagement here because we'll get we would get this a business meeting and we want to listen and want to i will be glad to sit down and spend some time i'll spend as much time as you need to go through any of these questions it's not really a matter of i mean i appreciate that it's not probably a matter of spending time and explaining it it's a matter of doing something i mean i'll explain it i'll listen to you and i and i think when when you see uh you know when i when i can show you what what it what's going on then we can talk about it and that's that's where i can really we can dive deeper into this though well what's going on is people are being forced out of their homes because the taxes go up every year and the majority of it is put to the schools like i said i'd be glad to let's can we meet be glad to i mean are you going to do something about it i mean is somebody going to step up and say something and actually do something about it i mean are we just going to look the other way and just you know we're just going to deal with it we're just going to continue to do what we're doing and let the taxpayers just continue to deal with it and eat it so you know yeah i know what you're saying and we are we are doing stuff so that's why i want to meet with you to talk about this is why we can't this turns this meeting can't it can't be the place for it so i i will tell you exactly what we're doing about it because we do have we do have uh clear plans in place for the finance committee we've been talking about things so so some things are actually being done yeah somebody's actually going to make something happen here somebody's going to actually do something instead of just talk about it and push it off again and push it and keep pushing it somebody's going to do something about it yeah we and we've been very clear board meetings about it so we've been you know so again this is why we don't have the converse because it will turn into i've already gone too far because if i had a hundred people here tonight talking i wouldn't have time to have this conversation so if you can give me an hour or two hours three hours of your time that's fine i will i will gladly do it because i appreciate your i live here too so i mean and again i don't i don't have a problem getting into the school system i don't have children it's just me and my husband i understand so you know i mean if i was a real jerk i could say something different but i i believe in it and i think it's you're not offending me at all you're not offending me at all i understand i understand i just want if you can give me time i would i would love to sit down with you okay so how am i supposed to reach out to you then to do that um do we have your contact did you if you have we have your contact i'll reach out to you tonight i don't have your email pardon if you want to add your email to this sheet i was hesitant if you if i can get your email i'll be glad to reach out i do thank you for coming i really do so your contact information what is how do i it's uh uh can we don't have my card with me but it's bob gold at big hollow us yeah so if you shoot me an email i will respond right back we'll set something up okay thank you so much i appreciate it all right item four mr gold all right um so tonight uh we're going to present the return to school plan i've got it on the screen behind you i'm not going to be because of the recent events this week uh things have changed a little bit for us and um so i'm i'll uh go through these slides i'm gonna send these slides to parents tonight along with a short video that kind of explains some things but um let me just jump right in um topics for discussion this slide these slides are full of information regarding the instructional plans and i'm going to flow through all these all these statements right here we are in instructional plan number two full capacity in person learning with classroom physical distancing uh required we start under some restrictions as you all know instruction plan one would be back to full full in-person learning with no restrictions back to what i would call normal three and four are listed here those are not options for us to consider unless we are forced into it so i think we all agree that we it's not a route we want to go again so yesterday governor pritzker came out with the state mass mandate until yesterday there was it was there was recommendations no mandates so this mandate changed things for us at least for the meantime it also includes sports for indoors not extra not outdoor sports and extracurriculars but indoors um in in early july when i put this slide deck together um cdc came out with guidance on july 9th and so in this slide deck you'll see a lot of the guidance from the cdc and i would just tell you that i don't want to read through all these bullets for you because you can read those on your own but basically at the time they were recommending masks be worn indoors they were you know maintaining three feet physical distancing between students and classrooms which is much easier for us to do than six feet they're recommending screening testing ventilation hand washing respiratory etiquette staying home and sick the things that we've been doing the past year the one place where they did require uh the um masks was on a bus that was it that was on july 9th um they what the cdc guidance i'm just going to paraphrase this a little bit but the cdc guidance opened the door for us to take in local considerations and make local decisions as to how we implement their guidance so i took this statement off the cdc guidance together with local public health officials schools should consider multiple factors when making decisions including community transmissions vaccination coverage screening testing and increasing trends in schools so i think that's one of the important things we need to consider moving forward is what's happening on our campus and the guidance is intended to help us make local decisions that's what the cdc guidance was those were takeaways from the july 9th guidance on the 27th they came out and said they changed they adjusted their guide and said they recommend everyone in the schools wear masks and the idph jumped on that as well and supported that again yesterday was the first time that it came out uh it was always still using the word recommends until yesterday governor pritzker mandated it so all of that is now kind of in the back on the back burner and we're under mass commanding again we'll still look at local factors right now this is a data the top chart is lake county lake county is now in submission substantial transmissions uh for instance rates low transmissions for for uh positivity rates um and then uh the chart below is is our zip code uh our zip codes various zip codes um again our mitigation strategy is same as last year we are we you know we're able to easily bring all the kids back now now that we're able to do three feet social distancing in the classroom we have all of these uh that are on this on these bullets all these are in place the one that's going to be new is the testing program we are signed up with the shield testing program uh this is going to be opt in for parents and staff who choose to opt in this is where the students would spit into a tube we can do it once or twice a week um and again it does require parent consent we're not going to force all families to do that but we do have this available this year we also have the buy next now test as well but this is this one is free of charge to our schools and the company will bring staff here and they'll do all the testing we just provide the space the illinois department of public health came out with a what we call the faq document it's kind of like it's a document that's really important for how we function because we we do have to follow the health department guidelines in like quarantine situations that's where it's very clear that the health department does have the final say on quarantines and our health department is is extremely involved in that so that's one area where we really have to follow you know their uh if they say that johnny's got a quarantine we have to follow that quarantine so they help us with contact tracing as well close contacts again a lot of wording on this page so i'm going to summarize it close contacts within a classroom the last bullet is what i want you to see close contacts who are within three to six feet of the infected student are not treated as a closed content as long as both students were engaged in consistent correct use of well-fitted masks and other k-12 prevention strategies in place such as universal and correct mask use physical density so basically what they're saying is as long as we're doing uh we're doing universal math they'll consider the three feet as close three feet is the distance that's okay if if a student does get sick with kovid they will draw a three foot circle around that student to determine anybody inside that three foot circle would be close contact anybody inside that circle for 15 minutes cumulative for the day if if we're not doing full mask it's six feet here's where here's where there's uh it's become what i think has been kind of a game changer in decision making uh when we talk about having to quarantine kids because our goal here is get all kids here and keep them here i don't want we don't want to have to call parents say that your child has a quarantine for 10 days we don't want to do any of that we want to keep them here because it causes problems for families it causes problems for our staff trying to serve kids both here at home so highlights option one for the unvaccinated students first of all any student that's vaccinated will not have to quarantine if they're close contact at all unless they start showing symptoms so if they're vaccinated that's a you know that's something for parents to consider when that option is before them but they're vaccinated they will not worry about quarantine unless they show symptoms so these rules are for unvaccinated students option one is a 14-day quarantine option two is a 10-day quarantine with some testing involved option three is a seven-day quarantine with some testing involved and no no symptoms showing but option four is kind of the deal breaker in my opinion but uh so option four they let us this is new and they're letting us test kids out of quarantine so if two students are if one student is is a close contact to another student who tested positive we do not have to send that student home at all if the student is if the parent is willing to allow the student to go through our testing program and get them screened i think it's every other day and for seven days and as long as no symptoms are showing that student would be a close contact but not miss one day of school so as long as no symptoms are showing their testing so this is a this is a great option for us to keep kids in school the kicker is that we cannot use this option unless we're requiring all all individuals in the building to wear masks so as soon as we go away from universal masking that option's off the table as of right now but so when we start school year with the mandate with the mask mandate in place this option four is in place and so we're hopeful that we'll be able to keep kids here um i do i'm not going to go through these in detail i have i just want to explain it to you i have a layered approach i have three different layers that maybe we could be moving in and out of throughout the school year uh layer one being the most liberal layer uh looser guidelines where masks would be recommended not required and you'll see in the slides if you read through all the bullets kind of what's in layer one layer two is an option where layer layer two is an option where students you know obviously unvaccinated in layer two would be able to take their masks off i'm sorry vaccinated students would be able to take their masks off unvaccinated maybe have the option if we did some test if they agreed to testing and so those are and these these layers could change because right now we are we are in layer three we're in the most strict layer that we have and that's with the uh with the mandate with masks uh you know it's that all individuals wear masking doors so so we are starting in layer three um initially when i written these slides i wrote i wrote that we would consider layer 3 if we were in substantial high transmission levels but one of the i'm not tying our hands to that because um uh if there are no issues on campus if we're doing fine then we don't maybe don't need to be so restrictive so as we go through this school year so that's why none of these are written so that we're our hands are time isb has a directive for fuller and personal learning which we've been planning the entire time uh what does come up with is the issue of remote learning so if you notice this in the middle of the sentence here um that well all schools must resume fully in person learning for all student attendance day is provided that remote instruction may be made available for students who have not received the vaccine or are not eligible for the vaccine only while they're under quarantine so that's so we're still going to provide remote learning while a student is away from the classroom for a few days under quarantine we still have to work out the details on that but that's what we still are required to provide that i can't have a parent call me tomorrow and say we don't feel comfortable sending our children we're going to keep them home we need you to do remote learning all year that that option is on the table for us right now we'll continue to monitor health and safety factors throughout the year um you know and then that that includes our community factors but it really i think what happens on campus is going to be the key and and that's that'll be key in making us making decisions if we're seeing breakouts throughout those the schools then we obviously have to tighten things up and make some changes so we're going to do our best to keep our mitigation strategies in place and i think we're very well prepared for the year i know that we have some anxious families on both sides of this issue some are nervous about sending their children because of of recent upticks in in the transmission rates and we have some that are upset about people wearing masks so we've got everybody on we got people on both sides of the issue and we just want kids to come back we want kids to be happy we are looking forward to really an exciting start school year and i put a note on here at the end that this presentation could change prior to the start of school based on updated guidance because you never know when that's going to come out we've been burned by that so uh does any of the board members have questions i have one question yeah can you go back to the slide that talked about remote learning requirements yes so it says here that we're required to uh that we're required to uh provide remote learning for students who have not received the vaccine or who are not eligible what about the students who were vaccinated but still catch it because according to that we don't have to give them assuming we would still give it to yes good question we would still give it to them yes okay i think when this guidance was written since people that are vaccinated were not getting sick i just make sure we're including everything yeah i think that's what it was yep what does lunch and recess look like at the different schools good question uh it's gonna look a lot like um a lot like normal we're gonna i mean we are uh basically the guidances do your best and i think uh i i believe at the middle school they they're at all three schools but i know of middle school they were putting dots down but they're gonna try to separate kids three feet but they'll take their masks off and eat and as far as the the building leaders will be sending specific details out and then recess we do we want to get them outside and outside they can take their maps off it's so that will be those will look very much like normal so are we going to give middle school the option to stay indoors anymore i'll have to check on that if the email if they wanted to stay inside and like i think years past they've been allowed to either come in stay in or go outside yeah yeah i just think that i mean i would just say parents should know yeah okay we'll communicate that is is there gonna be a set number of like mask breaks at least a minimum that we can so parents can know that their kids will have some opportunity to you know switch out a mask or take a little break from you know breathing in their mask okay we'll make sure that happens i know that uh um so those are some of those like i've talked to what principles individually about things i know they've talked about in pe maybe just trying to do some of those things and we want to try to get kids outside as much as possible so they can just you know take their masks off and and so we'll definitely keep that as a priority though and are we going to have extra masks available with kids you know the mask gets wet very quickly if they go through their two or three they have if they need another one yep we've got plenty plenty in stock in fact we went to pick up some more today from lake county they have uh supply that's overflowing so we're gonna grab on to as many as we can while the weather is still good will it be encouragement for teachers to maybe even have periods of parts of classes outside where they can especially in the younger grades yes yeah how sorry how will students receive their chromebooks if they're quarantined so if you have to notify them at home their parents at home that they have to say oh so if they're home and then we have to get them their chromebook yeah okay you know we haven't worked out that detail yet but i'm guessing we will deliver it okay so we've uh for the chromebooks we've assigned them to every student every student is getting a chromebook with a bag so that they can carry it to and from school if necessary we're going to encourage teachers to remind students if they're coming out with symptoms or if it's something for middle school they're probably going to carry back and forth every day but at the lower levels if they notice anything and encourage the students to take them home or if there's like a weather incident that's you know possibly coming up um to to take them home with them so uh the kids will have a portable and it's a heavy duty bag we unfortunately accidentally tested it out and it's it can take some beating so it's a it's a strong bag it gets intake back and forth okay but if they don't take them home they will be delivered i would assume this will answer yeah yeah we bought the bags this year because we've had when kids were transporting them we had a lot of breaks so i bought the bags for them but for busing we'll be able to go full capacity full capacity good question full capacity on the buses so right now we just are short bus drivers we're getting there we hire a couple we got a couple on the higher list so what about the hourly schedule is that going to go back to the way everything's back to normal back to normal yep yep and i have a message going out to families tonight as soon as we're done uh we'll send the message out and i let them know in the communication that to really keep a close eye on your email because building leaders because everything's different each building they're going to be sending out a lot of information in the next two weeks but yeah schedules will go all the way i'll go back to pre-pandemic and how are you going to monitor the distancing in the hallways during passing periods in middle school we'll do it our i mean it's going to be it's not going to be three to six feet in the hallways we'll basically just kind of do our best and try to we'll have presents in the hallways but it will not be i don't want to promise people that it's going to happen because there's just too many the good thing is at the middle school we have staggered bells so we don't have all 800 kids in the hall at the same time so uh um but you know it will be we're just gonna be trying to coach and teach kids into kind of keeping distance from each other and thankfully uh it's the uh 15-minute cumulative role that we're that we don't want to make sure we don't violate great questions and if you if you continue to have questions i mean shoot them to me because i want to make sure as an administrative team we're thinking of everything because we may not be right now we're trying to do our best to ease this transition from kids and family so when there is a close contact situation and you call somebody about quarantine first are you calling up about quarantine or is that the department of health that's telling them like how do we know that the kids are actually quarantining that our needs are quarantined first so our nurses are the are the first contact and they're communicating with the health department um and then our nurses will will be heavily involved in the determining who's close contact who's not so you say how do we know do it in as far as so for example we only have to quarantine those who are unvaccinated that will not follow option three if i'm correct right right so is somebody are we verifying vaccination status at that point somebody's closing contact okay yeah we have a we have access to the vaccination status for kids and so we will uh that's in a in a system online so we'll know that and then uh um we'll probably just notify the parents and obviously the parents who child has the quarantine but uh we wouldn't make a a notification we wouldn't make a notification there's a positive test we will notify right and on option four do we on those one three five and seven days do we test them before they're allowed admitted to the school or is the test run in the morning and it takes time before we get a result like how do we make sure when somebody's tested they're not admitted until they clear right no it's it's it's not an immediate test this the spit the shield test is not so um there's a we're still working out a detail on that because if we if we do that test with the binex now which we have that our nurses give that and it's a 15 minute okay so that one was immediate and that might be the way we go with that option four because uh this company that's doing the shield testing will not be here every day so they're gonna come on a regular basis and do the testing for people that opt in so dr pittman and i were talking yesterday about possibly just doing the binex now for the kids that are on quarantine because our nurses can do it it'll be fine to do that unless we get overwhelmed because if we don't have a big staff to do that but i'm i'm thinking at least the way we've set up now i mean we should be okay and does option four also apply for teachers and staff yes good question i just found that out today so adults do qualify for that so there's a lot of tools here to help us keep people here which is good and that's if we can keep people here i think that we can be off to a great start so anybody have anything else and so then basically we're in this level three of masks and testing until the mandate is yeah is lifted when the mandate's lifted that's when we'll have options to consider yeah and that's where the next two items come into play is i put on the item five possible action item and item six is a possible action item not knowing if you as a board want to vote on at this point i mean there's really nothing to vote on because we are we're in what we're in i think it's something for the future to know like option six or item six is voting on a resolution that that says that you want me to make decisions as we go in and out of these phases option five would be if you just would rather uh our item five would be you you'd rather vote initially tonight i was thinking we were going to have to do one of the other i think at this point this is our return to school plan because the mask issue is mandated everything else is pretty clear but when the mask issue gets dropped we'll have some decisions local decisions to make so i don't know if we need to iron that out now or however you want to do it tomorrow well seeing as we don't know how long the masked mandate's going to be i don't think there's that we should make that decision now do we still need to approve the return to school plan as it is because even though there is the mathematic there's still some information in there that's local policy like using an option for for testing as our primary method yes but i want i mean in the presentation complete we talked a lot about testing and testing of kids here i want to make sure that everybody's clear that your kid will not be tested unless the parent says it's okay absolutely under any of the options under any of the different levels unless the parent says okay your child will not be tested yep correct okay we have we've informed shield of that some some districts are doing an opt-out model where they're testing everybody unless the parent opts out we're doing an opt-in model where we're only testing them if they ask to be tested perfect and and they'll verify that at the time of testing yeah right because some kids won't know everyone's going out to get tested i'm going to go out but yeah yeah there's a i think there's a whole bar code system and they got a scan but we'll have a consent form that all parents have to fill out first okay yep i think the return return school plan is fine for us to vote on improvement is basically what's been discussed over the pandemic planning committee yeah everything along those lines um i think as far as item six goes we can discuss that after item five so anybody else have anything else on the return to school plan nope can i please have a motion to approve approve a superintendent's return to school plan motion second ash and geary yes yes yes yes yes yes all right the next one the resolution so i don't i mean i guess i'll open this up for discussion i don't know what people are feeling about allowing the superintendent to make the decision at will or if we want to have board meetings like we did last year i just feel like since it's such an open-ended window as far as when this mandate will be lifted and what situation we'll be in i think the board's gonna have to reassess you know how the community is feeling and just everything at that point come back to me i was still reading it actually okay lauren well i haven't read this okay um but if you have the bob if you if this is if we decide that you can make the decisions do you pose any uh liability or is it different liability than if the board makes the decisions good question the uh so where i get in a little bit of a bind is um i can't i shouldn't say i can't i could it's hard for me to make a recommendation to the board that is outside of that could put the that is against some guidance from the cdc or so even though i might so a board can decide that but if i personally advise you that and then we have a problem then it it causes me some issues as well so uh because i'm so i've been advised that's where it gets a little bit dragged but right now the way the cdc guidance was written it's all recommended nothing was required so there's we had some you know until they came out with the the mandate that's where things kind of change so if i were like tonight if i were to say i know the governor said it's mandate but i don't want to do that so i'm recommending we go this way that would be a a big issue because it's a mandate but uh all the way it was written prior to that there was some there was definitely there were schools all over the state that were interpreting and attorneys and everybody interpreting there was some guy there was some flexibility in there for us to make local decisions but uh when it becomes if it came down to situation i guess what i'm trying to say it came out situation where there was some strong mandates that you guys as a board you wanted me to go against i would have a hard time recommending that personally cool ah i think just given i i would agree with ashley given everything that's happened over the past year who knows where we're gonna be in a couple months that we should probably discuss what's going on here derek i agree right now we don't know when it's going to be lifted it could be two weeks from now it could be six months from now and we don't know why it will be lifted the situation at our school versus the rest of the state so i think we're better off discussing it at that time doug yeah i i agree this is the board should discuss it at the time that it's needed or to be addressed i also just don't think we need to put it all on superintendent's shoulders i guess how how long will it take for us see if the mandate came down in two weeks we would need how many days before we can convene a meeting it's two days how many days is it before you can convene a meeting on the board it's started to change two days two days i think there's a stipulation for an emergency meeting i'd have to look into that i think there's some i can we can do emergency meeting for some reason so i have to see if this qualify probably would okay and then you need four people to vote right yeah okay yep that's fine we can i'm fine with waiting until later and we could bring the resolution back later you might decide later hey let's if things are pretty good let's just bring it back and let's do that but just so people understand if we're doing that it's not going to be if the mandate is lifted it's not going to be the next day right that the rules will change it wouldn't be until we convened as a board right okay and it and it's possible that even around here we were having problems so we wouldn't want to lift the mandate ourselves so it's possible we want to take our time correct can i please then uh for item six it seems the board's in agreement can i please have a motion to postpone uh item six until uh deemed necessary by the superintendent motion per second ash and joe uh all in favor any opposed ice habit employment report anybody have any questions can i mention one thing with the appointment report the there's there's a page that's landscaped it includes the import employment of uh missy carr second grade teacher on the bottom that one is an extra one that was uh added right before the meeting i want to let you know second grade and fourth grade right now are kind of hovering trying to keep we've had a goal of keeping k four as close to 20 as possible and second grade is at probably averaging 22-23 right now so we added a teacher especially in the environment we're in we if we get close to 20 it's best we added a teacher to get it down to 20.
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